New Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android is Available for Testing

The latest experimental additions to Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac and Linux streamline the user interface and give users more control when managing third-party add-ons. This update adds support for more HTML5 technologies, improves performance and scalability of HTML5 media elements, updates the WebSockets protocol and adds CORS support to WebGL. This update to Firefox Aurora for Android adds features to make mobile browsing more secure and convenient.

New Experimental Features in Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac, Linux:

Users have more control in managing their add-ons  (#thirdpartyaddons): After upgrading, users will receive a one-time notification with the option to review and confirm the add-ons they want to keep, disable or delete.

Additionally, Firefox will now ask user permission before installing third-party add-ons. Any third-party add-ons will be disabled by default until the user confirms the installation.

Experimental Interface Updates:
  • Tab animations (#tabanimations): Tabs animate to make it easier for users to see when they are moving, reordering or detaching them.
  • Restore tabs on-demand (#RestoreTabsOnDemand): For users that have lots of tabs open, we’ve added a preference that allows tabs to load on demand, resulting in faster start-up times when windows are restored.

To turn on this preference on Windows, go to your Firefox Menu button, select Option, then go to the General tab and check the ‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ box.

For Mac, Go to Preferences under the Aurora Menu, then go to the General tab and check the ‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ box.

  • Channel Specific ‘Firefox Menus’: Each development channel now has its own Firefox Menu color to easily distinguish among Nightly, Aurora and Beta releases (Windows only).

Experimental Platform Features:

  • Improvements to HTML5 media elements:  We’ve changed how we create threads for HTML5 media elements so that a large number of media elements can be created without overwhelming the browser.  There’s added support for new media APIs to improve the overall performance of video and audio in the browser.
  • Additional support for HTML5 technologies:  We’ve done a lot of work in this release to add support for technologies that are in the HTML5 standard. For example, the crossorigin attribute and insertAdjacentHTML are now supported.
  • WebSockets Updates: This update includes a lot of improvements to WebSockets. We updated to the latest version of the protocol and added support for new WebSockets APIs.
  • HTML5 Native Right Click Menu Support: We’ve included support for an experimental HTML5 feature that lets the user add menu items to the right click menu on websites.  You can learn more in the bug.

You can see the partial list of platform features in this Mozilla Hacks blog  or Firefox for Developers article.

New Experimental Features in Firefox Aurora for Android:

  • Master Password Support (#mobilemasterpassword): The Master Password Support feature helps users encrypt saved usernames and passwords for better security. Users only need one master password

To activate Master Password Support on Android, go to “Preferences” and select the “Use Master Password” check box.

  • Add Bookmarks to Your Home Screen: Users can now bookmark any website and add it to their Android Home Screen. From the Home Screen, the user can launch the bookmarked website with one click.

Try the features now and start testing!

Tell us what you think. Your feedback on these new experimental features helps us determine what makes it to beta and final release.To get started:

  • Give us your feedback by visiting our Input Page or simply clicking the Feedback button on the top right corner of your desktop browser. For Android, go to the Give Feedback button from your About:Home page.
  • Or, use the hashtags (#feature) provided above to give us feature-specific feedback.
If you already have Firefox Aurora installed, you will receive an automated update notification in the next few days.
To check if you are running the latest Firefox Aurora on your desktop, go to the “About Aurora” menu to apply the update manually.