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We have just released Aurora 9 (download and test Aurora 9), which is planned to be the upcoming Firefox 9. In it, we have a number of new things that we hope will get you excited!
JavaScript Type Inference
We’ve improved JavaScript performance once again with type inference. We’ve made significant improvements on both the V8 and Kraken benchmarks, and you should see real-world improvements to JavaScript performance as well.
JavaScript Interface for Do Not Track
Firefox 4 introduced Do Not Track, and now there is a way to detect a users’prefence through JavaScript as well:
mouseenter and mouseleave events
For some time now, web developers have been struggling with handling mouseover and mouseout events on elements, since when child elements have gained focus, the event has bubbled up and triggered mouseout on the parent element – something you would in most cases not like to happen.
Therefore, we are now happy to introduce support for mouseenter and mouseleave events:
Camera UI for Mobile
You can now use an input element to trigger a native app to take pictures. Please try the Camera UI for Mobile demo.
Support for chunked XMLHttpRequest
When doing XMLHttpRequest requests with large data sets, you can now get partial data as it arrives instead of waiting for it all to show up. You can use this to build more responsive and more efficient web sites.
Other changes
We’ve also got support for a bunch of other changes as well. These will be added to the Firefox 9 for Developers page over the next few weeks.
HTML
- We now support document.caretPositionFromPoint
- We now support Node.contains(node)
- We now return true for node.contains(node), as other browsers do. (The spec says we should return false but the spec is probably wrong given the behaviour of all browsers.)
- We now support Node.parentElement
- We no longer taint the canvas data when drawing images where @crossorigin is set on them
- We now only fire onreadystatechange on the document element
- There is now UI for HTML5 Forms Validation in Fennec
- We now fire load and error events on stylesheet link elements that are loaded dynamically
- We now support DOM3 composition events
Graphics
- We now support Vista-style ICO files
- We now decode images only when drawing them, instead of ahead of time
Layout
- We now support the CSS3 columns shorthand where column-count and column-width can be combined
- We now support CSS3 text-overflow: <left> <right>
- We now support the font-stretch property (bug number 3512, filed in 1999!)
- You can now use 65534 rowspans instead of 8190, to match IE.
Video
- We now support temporal media URIs for HTML5 video.
Network
- We’ve changed the way we handle semicolons during URL parsing
- We no longer pop up a download dialog bog when a server returns no data and instead show a corrupted content error, to match other browsers.
- We’ve made some minor protocol fixes to WebSockets
- If you include an empty disposition type it’s treated as an “attachment”
- We don’t show redirect content after denying automatic redirect to javascript: URL
Tools
About Robert Nyman [Editor emeritus]
Technical Evangelist & Editor of Mozilla Hacks. Gives talks & blogs about HTML5, JavaScript & the Open Web. Robert is a strong believer in HTML5 and the Open Web and has been working since 1999 with Front End development for the web - in Sweden and in New York City. He regularly also blogs at http://robertnyman.com and loves to travel and meet people.
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