Mozilla Firefox 24th Edition Promises Faster Mobile Browsing Experience

Mozilla Firefox 24 was unveiled today, and it includes several updates for the Android version of the browser. For the desktop users, the cluttered browser could be killed by clicking the newly added option 'Close tabs to the right', which is placed right above the 'Reopen closed tab option'. The desktop version even offers a scrollbar style for Mac users operating OS X 10.7 or higher. Firefox's Social feature lets users access certain features of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter via the browser's UI, and now users can simply break the chat windows to separately attend to them by dragging them out. The update even introduces us to several performance and security tweaks.


Also, Firefox for Android now comes with default support for WebRTC (web Real-Time Communications), a new HTML5 API that allows real-time communication which is like video calling via browser. The WebRTC components supported by the mobile browser include getUserMedia (gUM- offers access to the user's webcam and microphone, PeerConnection (enables calls from one browser to another), DataChannels (establishes peer-to-peer data transfer between browsers). Mozilla had already deployed the WebRTC desktop version with Firefox 22, but it's just now that the application can be used via mobile. Also, it's good to know that the WebRTC API doesn't demand any additional plugin or software to function, and rumors are that even Google is planning to adopt it for its Hangout service.

The updated Firefox for Android additionally offers a quickshare feature that adds a one-tap menu automatically for your most used sharing service. Say like you share a lot of stuff on Twitter, then the Share Menu shall directly share on Twitter as soon as you tap on it. The new Firefox also supports bump sharing on NFC-enabled devices, from which users shall be able to share stuff with another user by simply tapping their two Android handsets.

The updated Reader feature in Firefox for Android now lets users shift between serif and sans serif fonts. They also have the conversion facility of 'dark mode' to 'light mode' depending on the light's intensity in the room. Manual conversion is also possible depending on user's convenience. Long tapping the Reader icon in the URL bar adds the e-post to the user's reading list, which can also be accessed for offline reading.