Mozilla releases faster, more stable Firefox 6

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08/17/2011 | 09:00 AM

Mozilla on Wednesday  released what it billed as a faster and more stable version of its Firefox Web browser, version 6.

One of the key changes in Firefox 6 was in the address bar, which now highlights the domain of the website a user is visiting, to thwart spoofing.

“The address bar now highlights the domain of the website you’re visiting,” it said in its release notes.

Mozilla also said it streamlined the look of the site identity block, and added support for the latest draft version of WebSockets with a prefixed API.

Support has also been added for EventSource and server-sent events, and for window.matchMedia.

It likewise added Scratchpad, an interactive JavaScript prototyping environment; and a new Web Developer menu item and moved development-related items into it.

Mozilla said the new Firefox boasts of “reduced browser startup time” when using Panorama, adding it has fixed several stability and security issues.

However, Mozilla also noted some issues in Firefox 6, including:

  • Arabic text on BBC.co.uk does not display correctly. The BBC has been notified of the issue.
  • For some users, scrolling in the main GMail window will be slower than usual.
  • Starting Firefox using a locked profile, may cause it to crash.
  • In Windows, some users with certain graphics cards and drivers may see a small rendering error on some websites, while some users of Adobe Reader X have experienced instability when viewing PDF documents in the browser. Mozilla recommended uninstalling and reinstalling Adobe Reader X.
  • In Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), users may see a crash when the file chooser dialog is shown. Apple has been notified of the issue. Users running Lion are no longer able to use gestures to navigate. Mozilla said this will be fixed in a future release. Mozilla also said this version of Firefox will not work on Macintosh hardware with Power PC CPUs.
  • In Linux, the video control buttons may not work when viewing QuickTime videos with libtotem. Also, users compiling from source might need a newer gcc and libstdc++ as the build requirements have changed. — RSJ, GMA News