The latest version of Mozilla’s Firefox has been released, along with a new Social API that will allow social networks to integrate their services into the browser.
The new release previews the browser’s first social integration with Facebook Messenger for Firefox. Once this service is enabled, users will see a social sidebar in their browser that looks much like the ticker on their Facebook homepage.
Here, users can chat with Facebook friends and see their activity on the site. Facebook Messenger for Firefox also adds Facebook notifications to the Firefox toolbar. In essence, this gives users access to Facebook no matter what they are browsing on the web.
This level of integration will now be available to other social networks via the Social API. Other changes in Firefox 17.0 include the implementation of click-to-play blocklisting to prevent vulnerable or outdated plug-in versions from running without permission, and larger icons for the Awesome Bar.
End of the road for Leopard
Firefox 17.0 features more than 20 performance improvements and fixes for 2,365 bugs. Not all users will benefit from Mozilla’s latest browser, though, as support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is no more.
This was announced earlier this year and Firefox is now available only on OS X 10.6 and higher in order to free up resources for new Mac features and accessibility tools.
