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Firefox 22 Released, Boosts 3-D Gaming and Video Calls

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

Today Mozilla announced the launch of Firefox 22 for desktops and Android devices. For the desktop version, WebRTC, the open source browser-based communications API, is now enabled by default. "This technology makes it possible to place and receive video calls from a mobile or desktop browser or share live video, files and images with friends and family." Firefox 22 also has support for the asm.js subset of JavaScript, which allows for big performance boosts on graphically complex applications in the browser. (We saw a demonstration of this a while back.) Other new features include display scaling options for making text bigger on high-res displays, better WebGL rendering performance, word wrapping for text files displayed in the browser, and the ability to change the playback rate of HTML5 audio and video. The new Android version features include tablet UI support for smaller tablets, and a fix for scrolling in nested frames.

13 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. So... by Jmc23 · · Score: 5, Funny

    when can I use it to run emacs?

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    Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
  2. Re:Boosts 3-D Gaming and Video Calls by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No, I do remember phoenix being that way though.

  3. Does it stop crap code ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    setTimeout(function(){window.locationmanageQueryStringParam('source','autorefresh');}, 600000);

    this bit of code is a nightmare on FF mobile, iam trying to read the comments and bam iam looking at the slashdot homepage ? WTF ? i didnt press back

    sort it out slashdot, your code needs much more work and if you cared about the user you would NEVER reload a page the user didnt request.

  4. I want a car, no I want a plane... by sinij · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't know all use cases, but I personally use Firefox to browse. Why do I want 3D gaming and video conferencing integrated into it? What next, preparing taxes?

    1. Re:I want a car, no I want a plane... by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because the web is increasingly an application delivery platform, and modern web standards reflect that. Many people may not like it particularly, but that's what it is.

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      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:I want a car, no I want a plane... by washort · · Score: 4, Interesting
      "to browse" is a pretty vague term. This is equivalent to saying 30 years ago "I don't know all use cases, but I personally use my computer to compute. Why do I want 3D gaming and video conferencing integrated into it? What next, reading the news?"

      The web browser is now a universal secure applications platform, standards-based, not controlled by a single owner. These are compelling reasons for people to want features added to it to compete with other applications platforms.

  5. It handles the flying periodic table better by sasparillascott · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not perfect, but better... http://mrdoob.github.io/three.js/examples/css3d_periodictable.html

  6. Re:Are there still memory leaks? by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lot better. it is now far faster than Chrome. I have switched back.

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    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  7. Re:nabled by default by washort · · Score: 4, Informative

    Firefox handles it the same as geolocation or offline storage -- the browser asks you if you want to grant access to the camera and microphone.

  8. For the Whiners by caspy7 · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those who read the title and came here to moan about bloat:
    The technologies mention in reference to 3D gaming are WebGL and asm.js. These serve to make things faster and their size is negligible (want to complain when the few extra bits in your JS engine make things go faster?). They can both be used in non-gaming situations, particularly processing-intensive stuff like dealing with images (processing, filters) and video (decoding - see ORBX.js). WebGL was already there, it's just better now.

    You can disable it if you want, but WebRTC stuff doesn't load additional components (encoding/decoding video for instance) unless you're using them - which would be no worse than Flash (better actually). And just like with Geolocation, a site has to ask permission - to which you can say "never".

    Chrome already has WebGL, WebRTC and is optimizing for asm.js. It's possible to land these without adversly impacting performance/responsiveness, and for the past year Mozilla has had their eye on the metrics.

  9. Re:Are there still memory leaks? by nigelo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Memory leaks are normally attributable to the plug-ins used, rather than Firefox, nowadays.

    Unfortunately, memory leaks are usually blamed on the browser, not on a plug-in, regardless of the cause.

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    *Still* negative function...
  10. Re:Are there still memory leaks? by TubeSteak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unfortunately, memory leaks are usually blamed on the browser, not on a plug-in, regardless of the cause.

    Give me an easy way to trace which plug-in it is.
    Surely Mozilla could do that?
    They already tell me which plug-ins take a long time to load, why not some basic memory management?

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    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  11. Re:should be plugins by elementalest · · Score: 3, Funny

    I opened up a bunch of tabs (9 in total) in firefox 22.0 which came to a total of 398MB memory usage. I opened the SAME tabs in chrome and it came to 592MB. I opened the SAME tabs in IE10 and it was 354MB. I guess firefox is actually pretty good. Besides there are a stack of plugins that have been around for a long time that are not being integrated and probably never will. In any case IE10+ looks like a good option for you.