Mozilla has pushed out version 11 of its Firefox browser complete with the usual security patches, as well as a few new features, such as add-on sync and two new developer tools. The company was able to meet its six-week release schedule, even though earlier in the week it had announced that Firefox 11 would be delayed due to two vulnerabilities discovered at the Pwn2Own competition.

Apparently, the vulnerability in question was one that Mozilla had already identified and fixed on its own, so they decided to go ahead with the release. However, to avoid conflicts with Microsoft's Patch Tuesday, Firefox 11 will initially be pushed out through manual updates only and not via the automatic update mechanism.

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The most notable new feature for end users is the ability to sync add-ons across multiple computers, something that's been available to Google Chrome users since late 2010. To enable the new feature, Firefox 11 users will simply need to have signed up for the free Sync service, which also synchronizes your bookmarks, passwords, settings, history, add-ons, and tabs with Firefox on other computers.


3D Page Inspector View (Tilt)

For developers, Mozilla has included a new style editor and WebGL visualisation tool. The first lets developers edit CSS documents on-the-fly and immediately see the effect it has on the design of the page without leaving the browser. Meanwhile, Page Inspector 3D View (nicknamed 'Tilt'), is a WebGL-powered "view source" option on steroids, which highlights what raw code looks like when the public sees it on a live Web site.


Style Editor in Firefox 11

Release notes:

  • Firefox can now migrate your bookmarks, history, and cookies from Google Chrome
  • With Sync enabled, add-ons can now be synchronized across your computers
  • The CSS text-size-adjust property is now supported
  • Redesigned media controls for HTML5 video
  • The outerHTML property is now supported on HTML elements
  • View source syntax highlighting now uses the HTML5 parser (see bug 482921)
  • The Style Editor for CSS editing is now available to web developers
  • Web developers can now visualize a web page in 3D using the Page Inspector 3D View
  • SPDY protocol support for faster page loads is now testable
  • XMLHttpRequest now supports HTML parsing
  • Files can now be stored in IndexedDB (see bug 661877)
  • Websockets has now been unprefixed
  • Various security fixes
  • Firefox notifications may not work properly with Growl 1.3 or later (691662)