14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is getting ready to celebrate the birthday of its greatest work, Firefox. Granted, it jumped the gun a bit, as Firefox 1.0 was launched on November 9, 2004, and Mozilla has been celebrating since yesterday. But, better early than never, as they say.
To highlight just how great Firefox is these days, and by most standards it is, Mozilla decided to list nine ways in which the browser is evolving.
Obviously, the mobile Firefox and the Firefox OS project are at the top of this list. While Firefox may not have a huge market share on Android and while Firefox OS is barely starting out, we need quality products like them from organizations and companies who don't just follow profit at all costs.
Mozilla also boasts about how fast Firefox has become and, compared to the initial release or even to the Firefox of a couple of years ago, the latest versions are blazing-fast.
"We beat last year’s Kraken scores by 74%, and we're 88% faster on Octane. Web Apps and games are 25 percent faster due to our JavaScript improvements and a new technology called asm.js," Mozilla wrote.
Pure performance is one thing, but Firefox is also more responsive and lag-free than it ever was – not that it can't get even better.
Mozilla is also bragging about the new social features in Firefox. The browser introduced the Social API, which makes it possible for things like web chat or news feeds to run in the background without having to keep a tab open.
The organization also lists privacy and security as core Firefox features and claims the browser has the best developer tools out there. That may not strictly be true. Firefox has some interesting features but, overall, the Chrome tools are still better. But Firefox's web dev tools are certainly evolving the fastest.
Finally, Mozilla believes future technologies, like WebRTC and greater support for web gaming, via asm.js, the Web Audio API, and so on, are also a core part of Firefox.