14 DAY TRIAL // An updated flavor of the Firefox Beta browser is now available for download for the owners of Android-based handsets out there, the very first beta release of Firefox 31 for mobile devices.
The new app iteration arrives on smartphones and tablet PCs with a nice set of enhancements inside, including the option to pull-to-refresh on synced tabs page.
At the same time, the mobile browser now allows users to re-order existing panels in about:home, the available release notes for the application unveil.
Moreover, Mozilla reveals that the beta release comes with integration of generational garbage collection, as well as with mozilla::pkix as default certificate verifier.
In this release, OdinMonkey enables the use of backtracking allocator for asm.js style code, and there is also a partial implementation of the OpenType MATH table (section 6.3.6).
On top of that, there are also a series of newly added locales available in the new browser release, including Assamese [as], Bengali [bn-IN], Gujarati [gu-IN], Hindi [hi-IN], Kannada [kn], Maithili [mai], Malayalam [ml], Marathi [mr], Oriya [or], Panjabi [pa-IN], Tamil [ta], and Telugu [te].
The updated browser also comes with several changes in addition to these new features, such as the removal of the CAPS infrastructure for specifying site-specific permissions (through the capability.policy. preferences).
“Most notably, attempts to use this functionality to grant access to the clipboard will no longer work. The sole exception is the checkloaduri permission, which may still be used as before to allow sites to load file:// URIs,” Mozilla explains.
Changes to the Firefox Hub APIs were also performed, it seems. Additionally, the updated application comes with WebVTT implemented and enabled, as well as with implemented CSS3 variables.
Developers will see that navigator.sendBeacon has been enabled by default in the new mobile browser release, and that there’s a new Array built-in: Array.prototype.fill().
The release notes for the app also unveil that there’s a new Object built-in: Object.setPrototypeOf(), and that CSP 1.1 nonce-source and hash-source have been enabled by default.
The new Firefox 31 Beta 1 for Android was pushed out on June 12. Given the fact that this is a beta release, it might contain a series of issues that are likely to affect your overall experience, so keep that in mind and don’t forget to offer feedback on them, so the fixes would be added to the next release.
You can download Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 for Android from Softpedia today. The mobile browser should be compatible with all devices running Android 2.0 and up.