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| Source: Firefox browser. Mozilla has launched version 53.0. |
Mozilla, the champion for an open and freely-accessible Internet, has launched several initiatives and product features for Firefox aimed at ensuring users have a smooth, seamless and secure experience when accessing the Internet.
Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, Mozilla’s CMO, said the non-profit organisation has been making strides towards achieving its goal of building the next-generation Web and driving the movement for an open Internet. “Launched in April this year, the latest version of Firefox, our flagship browser, is the culmination of Mozilla’s efforts over the last two years to deliver a next-generation browser that can meet the demands of tomorrow’s Web,” he shared.
“Mozilla is built on the principles of online privacy, data protection and user trust. Besides being faster and more stable, Firefox version 53.0 also offers users greater privacy and security and facilitates the move towards a healthier Internet.”
Mozilla has been working on several initiatives to improve Internet accessibility and enhance the health of the Internet. The organisation released its first annual report on the Internet’s state of health earlier this year, based on data it has collected on five key issues. The open-source Internet Health Report documents and explains what is happening to the health of the Internet, and Mozilla hopes to attract like-minded corporations, organisations and individuals that will collaborate to prevent ransomware infections and data breaches as well as help stem the proliferation of fake news.
Mozilla is no stranger to driving a more secure Internet. In 2015, Mozilla teamed up with many companies to announce Let’s Encrypt, a new certificate authority that makes it easy and free to add HTTPS to any website, protecting the privacy of users, while offering some guarantee they are not looking at spoof pages. While the use of encrypted connections are the norm for banking and e-commerce, such secure connections previously were not considered as necessary for other websites at the time.
Since its launch, the new certificate authority has made more than 24 million websites safer for use. Moreover, Rust, an open source programming language born out of collaboration between Mozilla and 1,500 contributors, is specially designed to ensure that several major types of security vulnerabilities are prevented, including the one that lead to the famous Heartbleed vulnerability.
In the mobile space, Mozilla placed private browsing at the forefront of the user experience with its Firefox Focus mobile web browser for iOS users, which by default blocks ad trackers, and erases one’s browsing history, including passwords and cookies with a single tap. Launched in November 2016, the mobile web browser is now available in 27 languages and an Android version is set for release in the coming months.
Immersive environments such as virtual reality (VR) have also received Mozilla's attention. A-Frame, an open-source JavaScript framework created at Mozilla, makes building VR experiences easier. The application of the A-Frame web framework ensure the success of WebVR, an open standard Javascript API which allows anyone with a web browser to experience immersive VR on almost any device. Mozilla predicts that VR should start appearing in standard general-availability web browsers such as Firefox within the coming year.
Firefox version 53.0 includes a core part of a browser engine announced as part of Project Quantum, an initiative kicked off in late 2016 to develop Mozilla’s next-generation Web engine. Project Quantum promises “quantum leaps” in performance and other major improvements to users by the end of 2017.
Mozilla also included WebAssembly in Firefox version 53.0. The emerging standard allows web applications to run in browsers without a plug-in. This gives it the potential to make applications more accessible. WebAssembly allows web developers to publish games on the web with just a link, cutting out the application store as the middle man. Moreover, WebGL 2 support has landed in Firefox, providing native-like gaming experience to users.
posted from Bloggeroid
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