Firefox 10 Releases Today, Fixes Add-On Compatibility Issues
by Andrew Cunningham on January 31, 2012 12:40 PM ESTFirefox 10 is due to release today, continuing Mozilla's commitment to the six-week release cycle it switched to last year. As usual with these rapid-release browsers, Firefox 10 brings a couple of features you'll probably notice and a few more that you probably won't. The browser is available for Windows XP, Vista, and 7, Intel versions of Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6, and 10.7, and most flavors of Linux.
Firefox 10's banner feature is a tweak designed to fix add-on compatibility - most add-ons compatible with Firefox version 4 and later will now automatically be marked as compatible by the browser without any additional updates from the add-on's developer. This is true both of add-ons downloaded from Mozilla's repository, or add-ons installed from elsewhere on the Internet. This was done to ease the pain of upgrading for heavy add-on users, and to make way for Mozilla's silent Firefox updater, which is tentatively scheduled to land in June with the release of Firefox 13.
Mozilla has also hidden the browser's forward button unless it can actually be used, implemented anti-aliasing for WebGL, added support for CSS3 3D transforms, added full-screen APIs to allow for full-screen web apps (though still no official support for Lion's Full Screen mode), and a few other small feature and bug changes.
FF10 is also the first release of the browser to be offered as an "Extended Support Release" or ESR, which will be offered as a separate download - as we reported earlier this month, the ESRs will be good for a year, and will keep the same major version number and rendering engine while being kept current with security and bug fixes. The ESR is intended to replace Firefox 3.6, which has been patched continuously as Firefoxes 4 through 9 have been end-of-lifed, and is meant to placate enterprise administrators and others upset by the new rapid release cycle. Firefox 3.6 is tentatively scheduled to be discontinued on April 24, so if you've stuck by it for the last year you should begin testing the new version soon.
Source: Mozilla
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aguilpa1 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
All I know is Firefox 7 used to run perfectly for the most part then suddenly after the upgrades starting pouring out suddenly I start getting constant crashes with some damn plug in container quit responding issue that did not exist before. The only easy way to fix it is to end task for plug in container and then refresh the web page to reload and everything works again. It is freaking annoying. Has this been fixed with 10?bun77 - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
or disable flash. specially on osx.Zingam - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
One thing they need to fix is: when there are a lot of item in the download list - the browser becomes super slow!!! Firefox has this issue since version 1. That's why I have moved to Chrome and after I moved back to Firefox a few months ago I have discovered that they haven't fixed it yet.theorangutans - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
with this new version why didn't the add block work thensomewho - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
If only the updates are happens automatically and transparently without any user intervention just like Chrome. Running as standard-user and has to manually download and install the new version as an administrator is really a hassle.Altough I agree that Firefox is definitely not "slow" by today standards, it still falls short in several areas. like the font rendering (subjectively for me) and image scaling. And tab grouping is still painfully slow. Would be nice if they implemented the "tab selection" features like Chrome where you can "block" some tabs (with shift) and simply drag them out to new window.
Malih - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
I think they're planning the silent update for Firefox 13.Andrew.a.cunningham - Friday, February 3, 2012 - link
That's correct, as long as the feature doesn't slip - FF13 is due in June, which is still a ways away.KS2 Problema - Friday, March 2, 2012 - link
I've used Firefox as my primary browser since version 1.5 but the upgrade to FF 10 is so broken as to make it *completely unusable.*When it kept hanging, I created a new profile with no add-ins or extensions. Still broken.
I used the 'no extensions' command line switch. Still broken.
When it finally hung up Windows XP itself, forcing a plug-pull reboot, I'd had enough.
It was nice while it lasted -- and I miss a lot of the functionality that my new primary browser, Chrome, perversely won't add (I'm a moderator on a popular bulletin board and Chrome's lack of support for most WYSIWYG 'inline editors' is EXTREMELY ANNOYING) -- but I can't be having my browser continually hanging up and even locking up my machine.