Firefox released the version 10.0 of Firefox on 31st January for Windows, Macs, Linux and for Android platforms. It is the first versions to be the Extended Support Release Version which means that only security patches and bug-fixes will be updated to the browser and major updates to the browser and the add-ons will only happen after 42 weeks. The ESR program was started to address the needs of groups of users who deploy Firefox in large scale organisations and were not too happy with the idea of rapid updates to the browser.

 Mozilla follows a rapid-release cycle which sees the launch of a new version every 6 weeks. The rapid release cycle is also the reason why Firefox 10 is live within a year of the launch of Firefox 4, whereas it took 3 years for Mozilla to release version 4 in 2011 after Firefox 3 was released in 2008.

There are many improvements in Firefox 10 including,  and not limited to, the enhancement of Firefox Sync with which users can synchronize their bookmarks, history across desktops and mobile devices. Firefox for Android now includes multi-touch gestures support amongst other improvements.

One of the significant features is the improved extension support for add-ons implying that Firefox supports most of the add-ons by default. Also, full screen API support will allow users to develop full screen web applications.

For developers, there are a few very useful Developer Tools which can help in real-time modifications of website appearances. Page Inspector is one such tool which can highlight the structure of a site-page  and users can navigate across the page elements.

Let us take the example of this website.

Here is a screenshot of the homepage as it appears to the users. Right clicking on any page element opens the drop-down menu or the context menu.

I clicked on the title element, ‘Be The Geek’ , and selected ‘Inspect Element’ from the context menu.

Note that this opens an ‘Inspector bar’ at the bottom of the page showing the position of the element in the page HTML structure. Click on HTML and you will be able to see the HTML code for that particular element and Style displays the Properties of the element such as ‘font’ ‘style ‘ and so on.

The Inspect button lets you navigate across the site’s different elements.

For more developer tools, users can download the deveopler tools plugin from the add-ons manager.

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