A new Firefox Beta is now available for download and testing. Firefox Beta optimizes memory usage to make your Web experience faster and adds a number of developer features that make it easier to build amazing Web experiences.
What’s New in Firefox Beta for Users:
- Memory Improvements: Firefox Beta optimizes memory usage by add-ons to deliver a more optimized browsing experience. As a result of our MemShrink project. users will notice reduced memory usage when using add-ons or during long browsing sessions.
- Native PDF Support: Firefox Beta now has preliminary native support for PDFs in the browser, allowing users to view PDFs within the browser. This is an experimental feature; test it and file bugs to let us know what you think. Expect more to come in future releases.
What’s New in Firefox Beta for Developers:
- JavaScript Debugger: Firefox Beta provides developers with a fast, built-in JavaScript Debugger with minimal impact on application performance, giving developers greater insight into their Web application code. Developers can also use the same JavaScript Debugger over a local network to remotely debug apps running on Firefox for Android, greatly simplifying mobile Web application development.
- Layout View: This visual aid helps developers with page layout, providing instant insight into what their final websites will look like.
- Responsive Design View: Firefox Beta allows developers to view and test websites across multiple screen sizes without leaving the browser. The feature helps developers quickly test mockups for mobile websites and test responsive breakpoints without leaving their desktop browser.
- High Precision Event Timer: As part of the Performance API, Firefox Beta can now accurately report time to within thousandths of a second, giving developers the ability to create smoother animations and other features requiring timing precision in their applications.
- WebGL enhancements: Firefox Beta adds support for compressed textures, enabling significant performance gains for WebGL applications. In addition, WebGL is available on Firefox for Android in as an experimental feature. Expect more to come in future releases.
- JavaScript Engine Improvements: As a result of improvements to the JaegerMonkey JIT engine, games and Web apps that use JavaScript will run faster. JaegerMonkey also manages compile code more intelligently, leading to smoother performance for complex applications.
For more information:
- Get Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux
- Release notes for Firefox Beta on Windows, Mac and Linux