Firefox 8 To Offer Twitter Search, Other Enhancements

The latest Mozilla Firefox Beta is now available for testing on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. This beta adds features and user interface elements that make browsing easier and tools that help developers build more secure applications.

New in Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux:

- Twitter Search: Firefox Beta adds Twitter as a default search option to make searching #hashtags and @usernames easier.

- Restore tabs on demand: Users can choose to load tabs only when selected, resulting in faster start-up times when windows with lots of tabs are restored. Windows users can find this option in the Firefox Menu, under Options, on the General tab. Mac users can find this option in the Firefox Menu, under Preferences, in the General tab.

- Enhanced control of add-ons: Users will receive a one-time notification to review and confirm third party add-ons they want to keep, disable or delete. When Firefox starts and finds that a third-party program has installed an add-on, Firefox will disable the add-on until the user has explicitly opted in.

- Tab animations: Firefox makes it easier to re-order and tear off tabs with animated tab movement.

- CORS for WebGL textures: Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) enables Web developers to load textures from other domains for WebGL in a secure way.

- WebSockets updates: Firefox now prevents the use of plaintext WebSockets when created from an SSL page, which improves security for users.

- HTML5 Native Right Click Menu: Web developers can now add items directly to the Firefox right click menu using simple HTML5 markup.

- HTML5 media elements: Developers can add a lot of video and audio elements to a website without impacting performance

New in Firefox Beta for Android:

- Twitter Search: Firefox Beta adds Twitter as a default search option to make searching #hashtags and @usernames easier.

- Master Password Support: This feature uses one master password to help users encrypt saved usernames and passwords for increased security.

- Home Screen Bookmarks: Users can add any bookmarked website to their Android Home Screen and launch it with one click.