‘Servo,’ bring Firefox into the massive, parallel future. Image: Andreas Levers/Flickr

Mozilla wants future versions of Firefox to be able to “take advantage of tomorrow’s faster, multi-core, heterogeneous computing architectures,” writes Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich on the company’s blog. To make that happen Mozilla is developing a new browser engine dubbed Servo.

While Servo is likely several years from being a finished product, it’s an important step in the direction of faster browsers and more capable web apps. Right now you can throw all the cores you want at Firefox, but sadly it won’t be any faster because it isn’t threaded. Servo will help Mozilla build a multi-threaded version of Firefox that will not just speed up the browser, but could enable a whole new class of web apps.

Samsung’s involvement in the project also hints at another reason for Servo — a more powerful engine behind Mozilla’s mobile Firefox OS.

Servo is not an extension of Gecko, Firefox’s current rendering engine, but an entirely new beast written specifically to take advantage of modern, massively parallel processing hardware.

Servo is written in Mozilla’s homegrown Rust programming language, a C++ style language that attempts to provide more security by avoiding memory corruption and buffer overflows, a common attack vector in today’s browsers. Eich calls Rust “safe by default” and says that Rust will stop “entire classes of memory management errors”, helping to eliminate a common cause of not just security flaws, but browser crashes.

As part of the announcement Mozilla has released Rust 0.6, which contains code contributed by Samsung in its effort to port Rust to ARM processors and Android. For more on Rust, check out the project’s website and FAQ or browse the code on GitHub.

It’s going to be a little while, but in a not too distant future Servo may bring a speedy new Firefox to a tablet or phone near you.

Firefox 20 offers an easier way to avoid prying eyes. Image: Andy Roberts/Flickr

Mozilla turned 15 this week and the company is celebrating with a new release of its flagship Firefox web browser.

If you’re already using Firefox the latest version should arrive shortly. If you’d like to take the latest release for a spin, head on over to Mozilla’s download page.

Among the new features in Firefox 20 is a revamped per-window private browsing mode. The new private browsing mode mirrors what you’ll find in Google’s Chrome browser and is really how Firefox’s private browsing mode should have been all along.

Now when you want to start a private browsing session in Firefox you simply select the new “New Private Window” menu option. That will open a new window noting that Firefox will discard any history, search history, download history, web form history, cookies, or temporary internet files for sites you visit in that window. Any files you download and pages you bookmark will be kept.

The new per-window model is much more intuitive than the old method of private browsing which put your normal browsing session on hold, hid it away somewhere and opened a new, private session. Now it’s easy to have private windows right alongside normal windows, very handy for those who, for example, need to log in to two different Gmail accounts simultaneously.

The other major visible change in Firefox 20 is the redesigned downloads window. Mozilla proposed the new download toolbar button and overlay window design so long ago that Apple’s Safari browser has already long since copied and released its own version.

While Firefox might not be the first to get its proposed downloads interface to the web, it’s welcome nonetheless and alleviates the need to cycle through windows or hit keyboard shortcuts just to see if your downloads are done. The button also helpfully converts to a progress bar when you’re actually downloading something.

To see additional info beyond what’s available in the new overlay, just click the “show all downloads” button at the bottom of the list.

One interesting aspect of the new “Show All Downloads” window is that you may discover your history of downloaded files is larger than you think. If you’ve been clearing your download history by clicking the “Clear List” button in the old downloads window, well, that button was quite literal — it just cleared the list. It didn’t actually remove anything from your downloads history. This can be incredibly good news if you’ve misplaced a file or slightly disconcerting if you thought you were deleting references to any sensitive files you may have downloaded. To really clear your downloads be sure to use Firefox’s “Clear Recent History” menu, which has an option to actually delete everything in your download history.

It’s also worth noting that the new downloads manager works with the private browsing mode as well. You can manage downloads within private windows via a separate downloads interface which is then scrubbed when the private session is closed.

For more details on everything that’s new in the revamped download dialog, read through Firefox developer Mike Conley’s post on the new download manager.

Firefox 20 has a few goodies under the hood for web developers, including support for WebRTC‘s getUserMedia API, which allows developers to access the user’s camera and microphone (with permission) for things like Skype-style video calls. The stable release of Firefox still doesn’t offer full support for WebRTC, but future releases will continue to add more features over time.

For more details on everything that’s new in Firefox 20 — including some speed improvements for page loads and downloads — see Mozilla’s release notes.

A mockup of what it might look like to author your pages right inside Firefox. Image: Paul Rouget.

A few weeks back Mozilla’s Paul Rouget asked developers what they’d like to see in future versions of Firefox’s developer tools. The resulting thread on Hacker News is quite extensive and full of some great ideas that Rouget and others have been hacking on ever since.

The result is a bunch of new tools that are mostly still at the experimental mock-up stage, though a couple are available now in the Nightly Channel if you’d like to try them out.

The most popular request, and by far the coolest of the bunch, is the ability to do live edits in the text editor of your choice — effectively controlling Firefox with your editor. The video below shows an example of live editing via the popular Sublime Edit. This would essentially eliminate the need to jump from your editor to the browser, hit refresh, jump back to your editor, and so on. A dance that most of us are all too familiar with. Perhaps the best part, Rouget says this will work with the mobile version of Firefox as well.

Mozilla is also working on the opposite idea — authoring in the browser. That means putting an editor inside Firefox’s Dev Tools suite. Thus far this idea is less fleshed out, but the possibilities include putting in something like jsFiddle or perhaps a more traditional file-based editor.

Other new tools include some catch up features that bring Firefox’s Dev tools up to speed with what you’ll find in WebKit browsers. Examples include a new network panel prototype and the ability to doc the tools to the right side of the screen — great for wide monitors (this is already available in Nightly). There’s also a new “repaint” view that shows what gets repainted on the page, very useful if you’re trying to improve performance. Rouget has also been working on a new, dark theme for the Firefox dev tools.

Rouget recently added a font inspector panel (available in the Nightly Builds) that makes it easy to see which fonts a page is using, including details like whether or not the font file is local or served through a service like Typekit, as well as the actual @font-face code used.

In what appears to be an unrelated effort, Mozilla developer Dave Townsend has been hacking on Firefox’s Tilt View Tool. Tilt View offers a 3D look at a page that can be very helpful for visualizing the structure of your code and spotting bugs you might otherwise miss. Townsend has come up with a number of ways to extend Tilt, including showing only links and only elements that change on hover.

Townsend even suggests that in the future you might be able to pair Tilt with your site analytics to see which links are most frequently clicked. Unfortunately you’ll have to wait a while before these features are actually available in Firefox; Townsend’s hacks rely on some core Firefox features that aren’t ready for prime time just yet.

While many of these coming features are, as yet, only prototypes, things are clearly looking up for Firefox’s dev tools. For more details on everything that’s new, be sure to check out Rouget’s post, as well as the related Hacker News thread that Rouget has been posting to with some follow up info.

So, so round. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey.

Firefox’s tabs will soon sport a sleeker, rounded design.

The new design will likely arrive in the Nightly Channel in the next few days, but if you’d like to test it today, you can download the Firefox UX branch. Retina MacBook Pro users should note that, thus far, the new curvy tabs don’t support high-DPI screens.

The new curved tabs look like slightly over-sized, more rounded versions of the tabs Google Chrome has always used. Unlike Chrome, tabs in the background are nearly invisible.

The big question is why? Mozilla’s answer seems to be little more than “because we can”. On the plus side, the re-skinned tabs will bring a bit of a speed improvement thanks to new graphic elements and faster “paint” times.

For more details on the speed improvements see Firefox developer Mike Conley’s write up on the new curvy tabs.

Firefox’s new per-window private browsing mode. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey.

Firefox 20, currently six weeks away from a stable release, brings two nice new features to the popular open source browser — per-window private browsing and a new downloads manager.

If you don’t want to wait six weeks for the final version of Firefox 20, head on over to the Beta Channel download page and grab a pre-release copy today.

The per-window private browsing mode mirrors what you’ll find in Google’s Chrome browser and is, frankly, how it should have been all along. When you want to start a private browsing session in Firefox 20 you simply select the new “New Private Window” menu option. That will open a new window noting that Firefox will discard any history, search history, download history, web form history, cookies, or temporary internet files for sites you visit in that window. Obviously files you download and pages you bookmark will remain.

The new per-window model is much more intuitive than the old method of private browsing which put your normal browsing session on hold, hid it away somewhere and opened a new, private session. Now it’s easy to have private windows right alongside normal windows, very handy for those who, for example, need to log in to two different Gmail accounts simultaneously.

The change does have some potential consequences for Firefox add-ons using the new(ish) SDK. If you’re an add-on developer, head over to the Mozilla Add-ons blog for more details.

The other big change coming in Firefox 20 is the revamped downloads window. Mozilla proposed this download toolbar button and overlay window design so long ago that Apple’s Safari has already long since copied and released its own version.

The new downloads overlay. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey.

While Firefox might not be the first to get its new downloads interface to the web, it’s welcome nonetheless and alleviates the need to cycle through windows or hit keyboard shortcuts just to see if your downloads are done. If you want more info than is shown in the new overlay (which comes up when you click the toolbar button), the old, separate-window style downloads panel is still available.

For more details on everything that’s new in Firefox 20, be sure to check out Mozilla’s beta release notes.

If advertisers gave you actual cookies while you browsed there would be less resistance. Image: scubadive67/Flickr.

Mozilla has announced that, starting with Firefox 22, the popular open source web browser will begin blocking third-party cookies by default. That means only websites you actually visit will be allowed to set cookies; advertisers on those sites will no longer be able to easily track you by setting a cookie.

While there has long been the option to block third-party cookies, by default Firefox has always allowed them.

Apple’s Safari pioneered the on-by-default approach to third-party cookies and indeed its third-party cookie policy is still more strict than what Mozilla is proposing. Google’s Chrome browser, not surprisingly, allows third-party cookies by default, as does Internet Explorer.

Mozilla developer Jonathan Mayer says the change will “more closely reflect user privacy preferences.” Mayer has set up an FAQ for users and developers, but for the most part, given that Safari has always behaved this way, the changes for developers should be minimal.

The main thing to note as a Firefox user is that the change won’t affect your current settings, nor will it remove any third-party cookies already set. So to get the benefit of the new policy you’ll need to clear out your cookies after you update.

It’s also worth noting that, while blocking third-party cookies is a step in the right direction, if you’re serious about not being tracked while you browse the web you’ll need to take stronger action, installing third-party plugins like Ghostery or DNTMe.

Currently available in the Nightly channel, Firefox 22 is set to arrive in final form in roughly 18 weeks.

Mozilla has released Firefox 19, which features a few modest improvements including a built-in PDF viewer, faster startup times and support for some new web standards.

Firefox users will be automatically updated to the latest version. If you’d like to take Firefox for a spin, head on over to the downloads page.

The biggest news in Firefox 19 is the new, baked-in PDF viewer based on PDF.js. It may not mean the end of those annoying (and untrue) buttons that say “you need Adobe Acrobat to view this file,” but at least you don’t, well, need Acrobat just to view a PDF.

This release will also be a welcome update for anyone who’s ever double-clicked on Firefox, seen nothing happen, double-clicked again and so on until Firefox suddenly comes to life with twenty blank pages open. As of Firefox 19, the browser will not execute any code before the initial window is made visible, which means you click Firefox and you see an open window much faster.

While there are not many new features in Firefox 19, web developers do get some love with support for several new CSS features, including @page, full width text transforms and the new viewport percentage units like vh, vw, vmax and vmin — handy for sizing elements or adjusting type based on viewport size. Just don’t try to use vh and the like with @page because the W3C still hasn’t quite settled how that will work.

For a full list of all the other smaller changes and bug fixes in Firefox 19, check out Mozilla’s release notes.

Got an outdated Flash plugin? This is what you’ll see in Firefox. Image: Mozilla.

The only exception is the current Adobe Flash plugin.

Provided you’ve been keeping the Flash plugin updated, you may not even notice the change. But if you’re running an older, vulnerable version, video on sites like YouTube will no longer automatically load movies. Instead you’ll soon see a gray box and notice warning you that your plugin is out of date.

Michael Coates, Mozilla’s Director of Security Assurance, cites crashes as the main motivation for the change. “Poorly designed third-party plugins are the number one cause of crashes in Firefox,” writes Coates on the Firefox blog. “By only activating plugins that the user desires to load, we’re helping eliminate pauses, crashes and other consequences of unwanted plugins.”

Third-party plugins are also a notoriously popular way to deliver viruses and other malware.

Of course the click-to-play option can’t protect you from yourself – all you need to do to make the plugin in question run is click on the grayed out box and everything will work as usual. There’s also a new plugin icon in the URL bar; click it and a menu will show you which plugins on the page are disabled. Click “activate” to enable them, though obviously it’s a better idea to update Flash to the latest version.

One of the most common uses of Flash on the web these days is to deliver video to web browsers that don’t support the popular H.264 codec. When Firefox’s native support for H.264 video and MP3 audio arrives later this year, most Firefox users will likely have considerably less need for the Flash plugin.

Look Ma, H.264 video in Firefox, no Flash necessary. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey.

The latest nightly builds of desktop Firefox now support the ubiquitous H.264 video and MP3 codecs. When the current Firefox Nightly arrives in final form later this year, Firefox users will no longer need the Flash plugin to play H.264 web video in Firefox.

Firefox for Android and Firefox OS already support H.264 and MP3, but on the desktop the new H.264 support is, thus far, only available in the Windows 7 Nightly release.

You can grab the latest version of Firefox Nightly from the Nightly downloads page. Once installed head to about:config and turn on the preference media.windows-media-foundation.enabled.

Mozilla long opposed supporting the H.264 codec because it’s patent-encumbered and requires licensing fees. For better or worse it’s also the most popular codec for HTML5 video on the web, which drove Mozilla to take the pragmatic approach and add support to Firefox. Instead of including the codec directly in Firefox, the browser will rely on OS-level tools to play H.264 video.

Eventually all platforms except Windows XP will get OS-native codec support for H.264 video. Windows XP, which lacks OS-level tools for H.264, will continue to use the Flash plugin to play H.264 movies.

Even if you’re not a Windows 7 user there are still a few new tricks in Firefox Nightly, including a revamped downloads panel that’s no longer a separate window (and which bears more than a passing resemblance to what you’ll find in Safari 6) and support for the new CSS scoped style attribute.

[Update: As BWRic points out in the comments below the new downloads window/panel design was actually a Firefox innovation that the Safari team got around to implementing first. You can check out former Firefox UX Lead Alex Limi's original sketches of the overlay window on his blog as well as a follow up post when Safari revealed its take on the design. It's worth noting that Limi's sketches have a nice progress bar in the icon (which Safari adopted as well), which is missing from the current Firefox implementation.]

Firefox’s coming Safari-style downloads window. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey.

For more on what else is coming in future versions of Firefox, check out the Mozilla blog’s Bleeding Edge and Firefox Development Highlights series.

W.T. Monkey loves WebRTC. Image: Screenshot

Firefox 18 is out the door, which means Mozilla has bumped up all the pre-release channels, showcasing features coming soon to a final release near you.

If you’d like to try out a pre-release version of Firefox, head on over to Mozilla’s channel download page and grab either the Beta or Aurora releases. (The former is a bit more stable, but both are pre-release software so proceed with caution.)

The Beta channel contains Firefox 19, which is six weeks away from release and features a few modest improvements, including a baked-in PDF viewer based on PDF.js. It may not mean the end of those annoying (and untrue) buttons that say “you need Adobe Acrobat to view this file,” but at least you don’t, well, need Acrobat just to view a PDF.

The Aurora channel has been bumped up to Firefox 20, which contains a far more interesting new feature — support for capturing local camera and microphone streams with the getUserMedia API.

Here’s how Mozilla describes getUserMedia:

[getUserMedia] is a new HTML5 DOM API that allows the browser to capture local camera and/or microphone streams directly, and not through third party plugins. This means JavaScript developers can now quickly and easily write code to access the user’s camera or microphones (with the user’s permission, of course) without having to install anything because the support is already inside the browser.

There’s a demo page you can try out over on Mozilla’s GitHub page.

The getUserMedia API is just the first of several components that make up WebRTC, a set of APIs which enable real-time, interactive, peer-to-peer audio/video calls and data sharing. Two other pieces of the WebRTC puzzle — PeerConnection and DataChannels — can be found in the Firefox Nightly channel, for those who really enjoy living on the edge (you’ll still need to enable them in about:config, set the media.peerconnection.enabled option to true).

Firefox’s six week release cycle means that — barring unforeseen problems — the PDF viewer will arrive in final form sometime in early March, with the getUserMedia tools coming in mid April.