FB EDucator

Following the release of Firefox 21 juts two days ago, Mozilla on Thursday announced updates to its Firefox Beta channel, which is now on version 22, on desktop as well as Android. The former now has gained a lot of big features, including WebRTC enabled by default, while the latter has gained small improvements, including the full tablet UI on smaller devices.

Firefox Beta 22 for Desktop

Let’s take a look at the new desktop beta first, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The biggest addition by far is WebRTC support, which is now turned on by default.

For those who don’t know, WebRTC is an open source project that lets developers integrate Real-Time Communications (RTC) across the Web, whether on websites or across mobile web apps. The components DataChannels and PeerConnection along with GetUserMedia enable the Web with RTC capabilities including video calls and file-sharing between browsers.

If that sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to you, just check out this demo of a video chat between Chrome and Firefox. Both browsers can communicate with each other without first requiring the user to install a third-party plugin.

For more details on what else is new in Firefox beta, here are the release notes:

• NEW: Windows: Firefox now follows display scaling options to render text larger on high-res displays.


• NEW: WebRTC is now enabled by default!


• NEW: Mac OS X: Download progress in Dock application icon.


• NEW: HTML5 audio/video playback rate can now be changed.


• NEW: Social services management implemented in Add-ons Manager.


• NEW: asm.js optimizations (OdinMonkey) enabled for major performance improvements.


• CHANGED: Improved WebGL rendering performance through asynchronous canvas updates.


• CHANGED: Plain text files displayed within Firefox will now word-wrap.


• CHANGED: For user security, the |Components| object is no longer accessible from web content.


• CHANGED: Improved memory usage and display time when rendering images.


• CHANGED: Pointer Lock API can now be used outside of fullscreen.


• DEVELOPER: CSS3 Flexbox implemented and enabled by default.


• DEVELOPER: New Web Notifications API implemented.


• DEVELOPER: Added clipboardData API for JavaScript access to a user’s clipboard.


• DEVELOPER: New built-in font inspector.


• HTML5: New HTML5 <data> and <time> elements.


• FIXED: Scrolling using some high-resolution-scroll aware touchpads feels slow (829952).

Firefox Beta 22 for Android

Here are the release notes:

• NEW: Smaller tablets will now get the full tablet UI.


• CHANGED: Improved WebGL rendering performance through asynchronous canvas updates.


• CHANGED: Plain text files displayed within Firefox will now word-wrap.


• DEVELOPER: CSS3 Flexbox implemented and enabled by default.


• DEVELOPER: New Web Notifications API implemented.


• HTML5: New HTML5 <data> and <time> elements.

More to follow.