Mozilla Releases Development Friendly Firefox 10

Mozilla recently released the newest version of it’s most popular internet browser, Firefox. The 10th version includes a laundry list of new features. Apart form adding a number of new security measures, the revamped browser handles add-on software more efficiently. Add-on software will now start by default, rather than being automatically disabled and displaying a start menu after loading (as found in version 8).

Aesthetically speaking, the new browser looks largely the same but will now feature a slightly different navigation bar. Instead of showing both back and forward browsing buttons, the navigation bar will only show the forward option if a user is visiting a previous page in the history stack. As Ars Technica reports, “… it’s an aesthetic characteristic that is uniform across platforms and helps make the browser recognizable.”

Arguably the biggest and most important change to the browser is the addition of new web developer tools.

Previous versions of the browser have included a Web console, a JavaScript scratchpad, and a simple tool for inspecting the Document Object Model (DOM). Firefox 10 has a new tightly-integrated developer panel with a richer DOM inspector and a tool for viewing, toggling, and modifying CSS properties.

The DOM inspector follows your cursor as you move it over elements of the page and will lock in on an element when you click. An HTML pane at the bottom of the screen will show you the markup for the target element and allow you to modify the values of element attributes. The HTML inspector pane also has a slick breadcrumb bar that makes it easy to see the position of the target element in the page hierarchy.

The CSS inspector will show you a list of CSS properties associated with the selected element, including inherited properties. Each one has a checkbox that you can click to toggle visibility. You can also click one of the values to replace it on the fly.

These built-in development tools in Firefox are simpler and less intrusive than more sophisticated alternatives such as the Firebug add-on. There are a number of additional features under development that will be included in the inspector panels in future versions of the Web browser. One of the most intriguing is a tool that uses WebGL to show the user a three-dimensional representation of the page DOM. That feature wasn’t ready for inclusion in Firefox 10 and will potentially appear in the next major release.

Firefox 10 will also embrace new Web standards, including HTML 5′s full screen API capabilities. The demo for this can be found here. Other improvements include support for 3D CSS transforms, offering an easier way to apply animated 3D transformations to HTML elements.

The new browser is a result of a new product release cycle by Mozilla. Last year it was decided that they would release a new version of their browser ever 6 weeks. This ensures that the Firefox browser will be updated frequently and stay current with upcoming web standards, such as HTML 5. Firefox 10 is the first official extended support release using this product cycle.

You can download Firefox 10 directly from the Mozilla site here.

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