Firefox 23 arrives with new social button, mixed content blocker

Jos

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Mozilla has pushed out a new version of Firefox onto its stable release channel. Among the notable changes is a new share button that builds on the previously introduced Social API, as well as a mixed content blocker, and a network monitor tool for developers to optimize website load times.

Download Firefox 23 for Windows | Mac OS X | Linux

The first of these is the continuation of Mozilla’s previous social efforts, which included the ability to integrate a number of social sites like Facebook, Cliqz and Mixi onto a persistent sidebar. With the addition of a search button to the browser toolbar, you can “post an interesting article to your profile, share a recipe with your friends or send an idea for a gift in a private message or email, all without leaving the Web page you are visiting.”

For now the share button works with Facebook Messenger for Firefox or Cliqz, but Mozilla says it expects more sites to start supporting its social API soon. You can see the functionality in action below.

Also new is a mixed content blocker, which prevents active content from being read or modified over HTTP on a page that also includes HTTPS data. The goal is to prevent man-in-the-middle and eavesdropping attacks against users on public or insecure networks, and though Firefox will block certain type of content by default, it also provides a per-page option for users to disable protection and override the blocking.

Lastly, the new network monitor tool breaks down individual website components, highlighting how long it takes for each to load and providing some insight for developers to optimize website load times.

You can find the full changelog and download links here.

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The new developer tools help a lot when combined with firebug. It's much easier for me to code when I have the right tools.
 
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