Mozilla Releases Firefox 9, Renews Agreement with Google
Nonprofit organization Mozilla has updated its popular Firefox web browser to version 9.0. If you’re on Firefox and you did not receive an automated update prompt, you can manually trigger one from the About Firefox menu under Help. And if you’re not on Firefox, you can get the browser free of charge for your Windows, Mac OS X or Linux-powered machine straight from Mozilla here.
From a functionality point of view, the most interesting things that Firefox 9.0 has to offer to Mac OS X users is two finger swipe navigation and improved theme integration for Lion. This means that you can now use two finger swiping gestures on your MacBook to navigate between pages and you can do so while enjoying an enhanced look and feel that matches the Mac OS X Lion icon and application toolbar styles.
To Mac, Windows and Linux users, the most interesting thing Firefox 9 has to offer from a functionality point of view is a faster browsing experience. How much faster? According to Mozilla, thanks to the major JavaScript enhancements implemented in Firefox 9, the browser is up to 30% faster than Firefox 8.
From a security point of view, Firefox 9 comes accompanied by six security advisories. Out of the six one is rated moderate and one is rated high; the remaining four are rated as critical. Additional information on these security advisories is available here.
If you would like to see a list of what’s new in Firefox 9, here it is:
On top of announcing the release of Firefox 9, Mozilla made another announcement: that it renewed its agreement with Google. Mozilla and Google have an agreement and according to it Firefox uses Google as its default search engine. The two companies have extended this agreement for three more years.
“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.
“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Search, Google.
From a functionality point of view, the most interesting things that Firefox 9.0 has to offer to Mac OS X users is two finger swipe navigation and improved theme integration for Lion. This means that you can now use two finger swiping gestures on your MacBook to navigate between pages and you can do so while enjoying an enhanced look and feel that matches the Mac OS X Lion icon and application toolbar styles.
To Mac, Windows and Linux users, the most interesting thing Firefox 9 has to offer from a functionality point of view is a faster browsing experience. How much faster? According to Mozilla, thanks to the major JavaScript enhancements implemented in Firefox 9, the browser is up to 30% faster than Firefox 8.
From a security point of view, Firefox 9 comes accompanied by six security advisories. Out of the six one is rated moderate and one is rated high; the remaining four are rated as critical. Additional information on these security advisories is available here.
If you would like to see a list of what’s new in Firefox 9, here it is:
- Added Type Inference, significantly improving JavaScript performance
- Improved theme integration for Mac OS X Lion
- Added two finger swipe navigation for Mac OS X Lion
- Added support for querying Do Not Track status via JavaScript
- Added support for font-stretch
- Improved support for text-overflow
- Improved standards support for HTML5, MathML, and CSS
- Fixed several stability issues
- Fixed several security issues
On top of announcing the release of Firefox 9, Mozilla made another announcement: that it renewed its agreement with Google. Mozilla and Google have an agreement and according to it Firefox uses Google as its default search engine. The two companies have extended this agreement for three more years.
“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.
“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Search, Google.
