It’s been known for many, many months that Firefox 18 would deliver a substantial boost in JavaScript performance. Release day has finally arrived, and Mozilla’s updated browser is now ready to install with the brand-new IonMonkey JavaScript engine that delivers gains up to 20% over its predecessor. In its official announcement, the Foundation does some understandable chest-thumping about Firefox’s enhanced ability to power through intensive web apps and games. IonMonkey has also been bolted on to the Android version of Firefox 18, so mobile Mozillans should notice these impressive gains, too.
Initial support for WebRTC has also landed. Although the communication spec has not yet been finalized, it’s already part of Google Chrome, Opera, and now Firefox. The goal for WebRTC is to offer a powerful, flexible communication framework that can be accessed by developers using standard web code. In addition to the not-yet-official WebRTC standard, Firefox 18 has also implemented support for W3C touch events — which will no doubt become increasingly important as Firefox OS begins to find its way into the mobile marketplace.
Firefox 18 has plenty of other improvements in store — but again, most of them are under-the-hood and not user-facing. Tab switching performance and overall startup time is better than ever, and Firefox 18 users that are behind a proxy should also notice some speed gains. Those of you who own a Mac with a Retina display will now get to take full advantage of that extra pixel density in Firefox, as version 18 adds full support for Apple’s high-resolution screens.
Downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems are available now at getfirefox.com. As always, existing users will be automatically updated. If you’re the impatient type and want to force an update, just click the Firefox menu and choose help and then about.
update as of July 3, 2013 (v22)
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