Firefox 9 Aurora (9.0a2) Released

Mozilla has pushed Firefox 9 to the Aurora Channel on September 30th for both desktop and Android. This release is for testing/preview purposes. New features (see this post for more details) for Android include:

  • New User Experience for Tablets: Firefox Aurora for Android now has a brand new look and feel for phones and tablets. Tab placement is more intuitive for larger screens. Users have the option to swipe and hide tabs to use the full screen for unrestricted viewing.In portrait mode, users can view tabs in a list on the top left and keep them out of the way until needed.
  • Refreshed Awesome Bar Interface: Users can access Preferences, Add-ons, Downloads and other Android menu options easily from a new toolbar menu. The back and bookmark buttons are also added in the Awesome Bar so users can access them easily.
  • Faster start-up times: Firefox Aurora for Android has improved start up times, especially on devices with slower file systems.

  • What’s New for Developers:
  • Integrating the Camera UI in the browser: Developers can now use a simple input element to use the device’s camera to take pictures directly from a Web page.
  • HTML5 form validation API: Firefox Aurora for Android now supports HTML5 automatic input validation. This feature makes validating certain types of input much simpler for developers.

What’s New for Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac and Linux:

  • New Type Inference Technology: Firefox Aurora introduces Type Inference, a new JavaScript engine optimization that makes the browser faster than the current Firefox on Kraken and V8 JavaScript benchmarks.
  • JavaScript DNT Detection:Web developers can now use JavaScript to detect if a user has asked to opt out of behavioral tracking.
  • Additional support for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion): Firefox Aurora updates the new application toolbar and icon styles of Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and includes support for the two-finger swipe navigation gesture and improved multi-monitor support.
  • Support for Chunked XHR: Firefox Aurora now supports chunking for XHR requests. This allows websites to display data as it arrives instead of waiting for an entire download to complete.
  • Read more about Firefox features for Web developers.

Firefox 8 Aurora desktop users should be able to update via Help > About Firefox or can can get the new Aurora version here. Android user can get Firefox 8 Aurora for Android via the Android Market. .Final Firefox 9 release is scheduled for December 20th, 2011.

Source: Mozilla Future Releases