The new Firefox 18 Beta comes with Retina Support and a roster of other changes. Extending support for the new Retina Displays in Macs was of course expected and is almost mandatory now if you want to corner Mac users. The new Beta is available for download and testing on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Another significant change is the adoption of W3C touch events. This is in addition to MozTouch events, so users will be able to use screen touch and glide on websites, web applications, and web games that support touch on machines like Windows 8 and tablets.
Speed improvements come with every browser update, and Firefox 18 Beta introduces a new JavaScript JIT compiler called IonMonkey. With the revamped JavaScript processing, web apps and web pages are expected to perform better and hopefully iron out any stability issues while browsing.
Firefox 18 is also expected to maintain the integrity of browser connections with its feature to automatically disable insecure content on HTTPS secure websites and maintain better security. The feature can be turned off from about:config.
Firefox 18 has addressed the core issues of performance and security. But will these turn it into a glitch free browser? Your feedback can certainly help as you test out the beta release.
Source: Firefox Release Notes
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Didn’t realise Retina required dedicated support… as someone who used firefox in lieu of IE for years, before becoming a chrome fanboy, does anyone recommend giving FF another try?
I use firefox almost exclusively, but only because of a few addons that I’m so used to using that don’t have a great chrome alternative. I think chrome is the superior browser, so if you are used to chrome I wouldn’t bother switching to ff, but it never hurts to try.
Nice to see Firefox is keeping up!
maybe time to give it another try for everyday use
When is Firefox 18 planned to come out of beta?