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Download Aurora 8
Today we release Aurora Update 8. We’ve got even more HTML5 support, support for cross-origin textures in WebGL, support for insertAdjacentHTML() and reduced resource requirements for media elements.
Cross-origin WebGL textures
We disabled support for cross-origin textures in Firefox 5 due to security concerns. You can now use cross-origin textures in Aurora Update 8, although servers that serve the images need to use CORS headers to be sent with them.
insertAdjacentHTML()
This is a method first implemented in Internet Explorer 4 and was added to the
HTML5 standard. This function allows you to insert HTML strings inside a document, just like the innerHTML property, but is more flexible and is much faster.
We expect that JavaScript libraries will quickly adopt this because it’s faster and vastly simplifies DOM manipulation code.
Reduced memory usage
Media elements (<audio> and <video>) now use fewer threads and less memory. This is part of our efforts to reduce overall memory consumption of Firefox and it is a welcome improvement as websites switch to using native media elements.
Other changes
HTML
- The
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/HTMLImageElement">HTMLImageElement</a>crossOriginproperty has been added. (see bug 664299) - The
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/HTMLSelectElement#add%28%29">HTMLSelectElement.add()</a>method now supports either an item or index of an item that the new item should be inserted before. Previously it only supported an item. (see bug 666200) - The
HTMLIsIndexElementconstructor has been removed. No elements have implemented this interface since Firefox 4. (see bug 666665 and bug 611352) - The HTML5 “context menu” feature (contextmenu attribute), which lets you add custom element specific items to native context menu, is now supported. (the implementation is still experimental awaiting changes in the specification, see bug 617528)
DOM
- The
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Element.insertAdjacentHTML">insertAdjacentHTML</a>method has been implemented. (see bug 613662) <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/BlobBuilder">BlobBuilder</a>now has a getFile() method that returns the content of the blob as a file (see bug 669437)- Event handling in nested <label>s has been fixed (see bug 646157)
- Two bugs fixed when text insertion cursor is at the beginning of an editable text: bug 414526 and bug 442186
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/document.getSelection">document.getSelection()</a>now returns the same Selection object as<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/window.getSelection">window.getSelection()</a>, instead of stringifying it (see bug 636512)- the HTML5 selectionDirection property makes it possible to define the direction of the selection in an editable text (see bug 674558)
- Range and Selection are now behaving according to their specification when splitText() and normalize() are used (see bug 191864)
- Media elements now have a seekable() method that return a TimeRange object (see bug 462960)
- crossOrigin property defaults to “Anonymous” when an invalid value is used (see bug 676413)
CSS
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/resolution">resolution</a>now accepts<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/number"><number></a>, not just<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/integer"><integer></a>values as per the specification. (see bug 677642)
Layout
- Hyphenation is now supported in many more languages (see bug 672320)
Audio & Video
- New threading model for Audio and Video (see bug 592833)
- Video thread stack size has been reduced (see bug 664341)
Network
- Double quotes are no longer accepted as a delimiter for 2231/5987 encoding (see bug 651185)
- Content-Disposition parser does not require presence of “=” anymore in parameters (see bug 670333)
- Mixed-content is not allowed with WebSockets (see bug 662692)
- Connection errors with WebSockets now trigger the onerror handler (see bug 676025)
- WebSocket API has been updated to the latest draft of the specification (see bug 674890 , bug 674527 and bug 674716)
- Script files are not any more downloaded when javascript has been disabled (see bug 668690)
- DNS entries are now blacklisted when the first request failed (see bug 641937)
WebGL
- Cross-domain textures can now be allowed with CORS approval (see bug 662599)
- Cross-process rendering with Direct2d/Direct3d 10 (see bug 648484)
MathML
- Support for the
displaystyleattribute on the top-level<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/MathML/Element/math"><math></a>element has been added. - The interpretation of negative rownumbers for the
alignattribute on<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/MathML/Element/mtable"><mtable></a>has been corrected (see bug 601436).
About louisremi
Developer Relations Team, long time jQuery contributor and Open Web enthusiast. @louis_remi
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