14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox 13 is almost here. You can grab the pre-release final version now, if you're confident no new bugs show up until Monday when the browser is supposed to ship officially. Unlike Firefox 12 before it, Firefox 13 actually has several features to be excited about.
New tab page
One of the biggest and clearly the most noticeable new feature is the New Tab Page. Firefox has finally implemented a new tab page, rather than serve the blank one as it has been doing so far, though it's fairly basic at this point.
The new tab page lists your nine most visited sites for easy access. You can pin the ones you really need, remove the embarrassing ones and that's about it. You can also "minimize" the new tab page if you prefer the blank version better.
Revamped homepage
Along with a new tab page, there's also a new home tab. The Firefox homepage, the one you get by default, now has easy access to several Firefox features, such as add-ons, preferences and so on. Those that use the homepage regularly are going to find the new shortcuts helpful, everyone else will simply not see them that often.
A Firefox reset button
Also new in Firefox 13 is a "reset" button. A better name for it would be the "factory defaults" button since that's what it essentially does, it resets Firefox to its default settings, but keeps your bookmarks, passwords and cookies. It's not easily accessible, you can see it in the about:support page, but it's not something you're going to need too often, hopefully.
Smooth scrolling by default
Finally, one last feature that is actually quite important is smooth scrolling. The feature has been available in Firefox for a long time, but it has been disabled by default since it can sometimes interfere with some touchpads and mice. But Mozilla is confident enough that it works often enough to have it enabled by default for everyone. What this means is that scrolling up and down a site will no longer be jerky but a smooth motion.