Firefox 29 with revamped Australis interface rolling out

After nearly two years of sneak peeks and previews, Mozilla on Tuesday rolls out Firefox 29, the first official version of the open source browser with Mozilla's new Australis interface. "It’s not an interface adjustment or tweak. It’s not a bug fix. It’s a complete re-envisioning of Firefox’s user experience, and it’s been brewing for the past five years," Jennifer Morrow, senior user experience designer at Mozilla, wrote in a blog post on her personal site.

The new look borrows somewhat from Google Chrome, including rounded tabs and a menu icon in the upper right corner. (The image up top shows the old Firefox interface on the left side of the split, and the new Australis UI on the right.)

Nevertheless, the new browser still maintains a Mozilla-esque look with the oversized back button, a separate search box, and default menu options in the toolbar.

We've covered Mozilla's new design decisions previously, but here are the highlights:

• The Orange Firefox button is gone in Windows and replaced with a "hamburger" icon in the upper right corner
• Tabs are now rounded and only the current active tab is outlined
• The menu in the upper right corner is simpler and uses a drag-and-drop interface for easy customization

That last feature is perhaps the biggest change with Firefox 29. Now that the Windows 7-era orange menu button is gone, Firefox's menu uses large—dare I say touchable?—icons above the text.

This results in a streamlined default menu with only the basics available, such as the ability to open a new or private window, save a webpage, print, history, full screen mode, find in page, options, add-ons, and developer tools.

Anyone who wants to change the default menu can easily add or take away options by clicking the Customize option at the bottom of the menu. This takes you to a special tab where you can add options to the menu or the toolbar such as open file, email link, tab groups, or an RSS subscribe button. Drag-and-drop editing for the toolbar is a longstanding feature of Firefox, but the ability to edit the menu is new with Australis.

This tab also provides options to show or hide toolbars such as the bookmarks bar or show and hide the title bar at the top of the window. Anyone who prefers to have text menu options at the top of the window can still get them by right-clicking the main toolbar and selecting Menu bar from the contextual menu.

Firefox 29 is expected to be available Tuesday for download from Mozilla's site. Current Firefox users can force the update right now by clicking Help > About Firefox from the browser's main menu.

Firefox 29.0 released for download

Mozilla Firefox is a fast, full-featured Web browser. Firefox includes pop-up blocking, tab-browsing, integrated Google search, simplified privacy controls, a streamlined browser window that shows you more of the page than any other browser and a number of additional features that work with you to help you get the most out of your time online.

The Web is all about innovation, and Firefox sets the pace with dozens of new features to deliver a faster, more secure and customizable Web browsing experience for all.

User Experience. The enhancements to Firefox provide the best possible browsing experience on the Web. The new Firefox smart location bar, affectionately known as the "Awesome Bar," learns as people use it, adapting to user preferences and offering better fitting matches over time.

Performance. Firefox is built on top of the powerful new Gecko platform, resulting in a safer, easier to use and more personal product.

Security. Firefox raises the bar for security. The new malware and phishing protection helps protect from viruses, worms, trojans and spyware to keep people safe on the Web.

Customization. Everyone uses the Web differently, and Firefox lets users customize their browser with more than 5,000 add-ons.

Download: Firefox 29.0 for Windows | 27.7 MB (Freeware)
Download: Classic Theme Restorer (Customize Australis)
Download: Firefox 29.0 for Linux | 34.6 MB
Download: Firefox 29.0 for MacOS | 56.1 MB
View: Firefox Website | Release Notes (Not yet available)

Mozilla Firefox shortcut keys

Below is a listing of all the major shortcut keys in Mozilla Firefox.

Shortcut Keys             Description

Alt + Home                                     Open your home page.

Alt + Left Arrow                             Back a page.

Alt + Right Arrow                          Forward a page.
F5                                                     Refresh current page, frame, or tab.
F11                                                   Display the current website in full screen mode. Pressing
                                                          F11 again will exit this mode.
Esc                                                   Stop page or download from loading.
Ctrl + (- or +)                                   Increase or decrease the font size, pressing '-' will decrease                                                             and '+'  will increase. Ctrl + 0  ill reset back to default.
Ctrl + Enter                                     Quickly complete an address.
Ctrl + Shift + Del                            Open the Clear Data window to quickly clear private data.
Ctrl + D                                             Add a bookmark for the page currently opened.
Ctrl + I                                               Display available bookmarks.
Ctrl + J                                              Display the download window.
Ctrl + K or Ctrl + E                         Move the cursor to the search box.
Ctrl + N                                             Open New browser window.
Ctrl + P                                             Print current page or frame.
Ctrl + T                                             Opens a new tab.
Ctrl + F4 or Ctrl + W                      Closes the currently selected tab.
Ctrl + Shift + T                                Undo the close of a window.
Ctrl + Tab                                         Moves through each of the open tabs.
Spacebar                                         Moves down a page at a time.
Shift + Spacebar                            Moves up a page at a time.
Alt + Down arrow                           Display all previous text entered in a text box and available                                                            options on drop down menu.

Tricks To Speed up Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla firefox is emerging as one of the mostly used browser for online surfing purpose. Mozilla firefox provides handy features like simplicity and add ons and because these great features it’s the top most choice for every internet users. But this internet browser also have some thumbs down, its speed is significantly low than its top most competitor which is known as google chrome.

 

But there are some tricks exist by which we can speed up Mozilla firefox to almost 90%.

So here we start,

STEP 1: Open Mozilla firefox browser.

STEP 2: Type “about:config” without Quotes in address bar and press enter.

STEP 3: A warranty notice will appear, accept that notice

STEP 4: Search following entries in filter bar and make corresponding changes.

network.http.max-connections-per-server =32
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy =16
network.http.max-connections = 64
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server = 10
network.http.pipelining = true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = 200
network.http.request.max-start-delay = 0
network.http.proxy.pipelining = true
network.http.proxy.version = 1.0

STEP 5: Right click anywhere and select new >Integer in right click menu, Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set its value to 0.

STEP 6: Now restart Mozilla firefox browser and access internet with a high speed.

There is another trick exist by which we can also increase browsing speed of our browser. Trick is simple and can be implemented by only clearing cache memory of any browser. Cache memory is a type of primary memory which works between central processing unit and Random Access Memory. It’s a very fast type of memory and browsers also use some part of this memory to perform tasks at a rapid rate.

How to clear cache memory:

If you are using firefox browser than,

1) Open firefox and Press Ctrl+Shift+Delete.
2) A window will open, from drop down menu Select time range to clear to “Everything” and mark on “cache”.
3) Click on “Clear now” and you are done.

If you are using Google Chrome browser than,

1)Open Google chrome and Type “chrome://chrome/settings/clearBrowserData” without Quotes in address bar and press enter.

2) A small window will open, Now select “The Beginning of time” from drop down box. And mark on “Empty the cache” and finally click on everything.

Note: Cache is a small size memory and clearing it only once is not enough, you have to clear it several times during a browsing session to maintain a high internet speed.

Mozilla to support Firefox on Windows XP after Microsoft ends support for the OS

A few weeks back, Google said that it would continue to support Chrome on Windows XP after Microsoft ended support for the aging operating system. The move is a bit controversial as supporting a browser on an unsupported OS could lure users into a false sense of security as the browser may be up to date with the latest security patches but the underlying OS could be wide open.

But the browser space is not limited to only two platforms, and Mozilla has told Neowin that it intends to continue to support the OS after Microsoft ends its support for XP.
Neowin asked Mozilla, the creator of Firefox, if it has any plans to end support for XP and Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla stated, "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."

This means that for users of Windows XP, who have not upgraded their decade-old OS, they will have two supported browser options once Microsoft ends support for XP (and subsequently Internet Explorer on XP): Chrome and Firefox.

It’s quite obvious as to why Google and Mozilla will support their browser on XP after Microsoft ends support; millions of users will still be using the outdated OS. Where there are users, there are developers eyeing for their attention and in the insanely competitive browser market space, both companies are fighting for any user they can attract. So when Microsoft leaves those with outdated machines in the past, Google and Mozilla want to give them an option to browser securely, even if their OS is vulnerable.

While we doubt Microsoft will change its mind and extend XP's supported lifecycle, it will be interesting to see if IE does drop in market share after April 2014. 

Image via Mozilla