Following its aggressive release cycle, Mozilla released Firefox 9 for OS X, Linux and Windows on Tuesday. This version adds improved theme and gesture support for Lion as well as faster Javascript execution.
Improvements cited by Mozilla include:
- A 36 percent increase in the execution of Javascript code using “Type Inference.”
- Support for Lion’s two finger swipe gesture for browsing pages, just like Safari.
- Improved theme integration with OS X Lion.
- Continued attention to improved memory management.
- Improved support for text overflow and added support for font-stretch.
- Added support for querying Do Not Track status via JavaScript.
- Critical security patches.
The Mozilla download page will detect your OS and offer you the correct version. A more general downloads page covers supported (human) languages.
The release notes, system requirements, known issues, an FAQ and more have been posted. Also, a more detailed, item by item, list of changes in version 9 has been published.
For those who have experienced dizziness and disorientation related to Mozilla’s aggressive numbering scheme for new releases, version 3.6.25 was also released with the latest security patches.
Firefox 9 for Intel Mac only requires OS X 10.5 or later and at least 512 MB RAM.