14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox 24 is essentially here, you can grab it from the official page or from the links below, if you're incredibly impatient. You should get the update soon enough anyway, if you're already using the stable channel Firefox 23.
The latest version of the browser comes with a short list of new features, as we've come to expect from Mozilla, but small improvements add up over time.
The one "big" new user-facing feature that Mozilla is touting is "Close tabs to the right" which is by no means original, it's been an option in Chrome for ages.
As the name suggests, the feature, available from the right-click context menu in the tab bar, simply closes all the tabs to the left of the one you selected. It should come in handy during browsing sessions that sprawl onto several sites and pages.
The Social API implementation is getting an improvement as well. Normally, Social API sites are designed to sit nicely tucked away in the sidebar, accessible at all times but not getting in the way. But if one of your chatting sessions is heating up and just can't be contained by the small sidebar, you can simply tear-off the chat box into its own dedicated browser window.
Firefox 24 is getting some improvements under the hood as well. Accessibility tools can now distinguish between pinned and regular tabs, making it easier for users with visual impairments to know when they are using one or the other. Also under the hood, the latest Firefox comes with some significant performance improvements when scaling or tilling SVG images.
On the security front, Firefox 24 is the first to block all Java plugin versions by default. What this means is that Java will never load on a page unless the user specifically and temporarily allows it. This block can be disabled, so that the Java plugin is automatically loaded by any page that requests it, but that's not something most people will want to do.
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