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Firefox 28 Arrives With VP9 Video Decoding, HTML5 Volume Controls

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

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 28 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions include VP9 video decoding, Web notifications on OS X, and volume controls for HTML5 video and audio. Firefox 28 has been released over on Firefox.com and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. The full release notes are available. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play (Android release notes)." Mozilla also announced tools to bring the Unity game engine to WebGL and asm.js.

12 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. I'm still alive by kheldan · · Score: 4, Funny

    Installed the update and it didn't turn my laptop into a smoking crater on my desk; so far, so good..

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    1. Re:I'm still alive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Are you on Windows 7 with IE 10 installed and broken R600 graphics drivers?

      FTFO.

      It boggles my mind that they released the browser with this bug unresolved.

      You can only resolve bugs in your code. That's a bug in ATI's drivers, what they can do is to work around the bug, which they did.

  2. Automatically? by agm · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically

    Not for those of us running Gentoo linux.

    1. Re:Automatically? by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not for those of us running Gentoo linux.

      Then you're in luck! You get to do it the hard way, which should please you since you're using Gentoo.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    2. Re:Automatically? by danomac · · Score: 5, Funny

      Gentoo users probably get more entertainment watching the game compile rather than actually playing the game. Go figure.

  3. Browsers are too heavy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We have come full circle. The rationale for 'puting x in the browser' is so that I wouldn't need x software for y platform...just a browser.

    Nowadays browsers have so much functionality built-in they weigh a ton[in memory]. I don't want all that shit. Just show me the static content. Keep the spinning rims for the simpletons.

    TLDR; I long for the days when all my browser could do display static content. All I ever wanted was standardized media formats[without DRM]

    1. Re:Browsers are too heavy by etash · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We have come full circle. The rationale for 'putting x in the pc' so that i wouldn't need to write code for y platform...just a pc nowadays pcs have so much functionaly built-in they weigh a ton. I don't want all that shit, just show me a 320x240 screen with asci chars. Keep the UI and mice and soundcards and network cards for the simpletons. TLDR; I long for the days when all my computer could do was display characters on a black and white screen. All I ever wanted was to show off my idiocy on slashdot.

  4. Stability & performance Features by AbRASiON · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've had a love / hate relationship with Firefox for many years - but for about the past 18 months it's been mostly stable.
    I'm an extremely heavy browser, ranging from 20 to 150 tabs open at a time.
    This latest build (27.0.1) has been utter shite for stability, so I sure hope that was a priority for them. It would be nice if a single tab crashed it would just take out that tab. If that means more processes or memory, so be it. Also please copy chrome ASAP with the little microphone representing the noisy tab.

  5. Re:150 tabs? by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have tons of tabs open, because bookmarks suck. EG if I'm working on a project with a new framework I might need to reference 3-4 APIs, and 5 classes in each, and 2-3 methods per class in a given hour or two. I want a tab for each method, with a tree of the parent classes and APIs. Tree-Style tabs lets me have that, but Firefox's bookmarks don't. So I leave tabs open. That results in 50-60 tabs or so. Sure, I close the tab group when the project is done, and subsets when I'm done with them, and use different windows to separate different projects/activities, but it results in lots of tabs. "Normal" people use tabs for current pages, I like to have both the current pages and a herarchical history of how I got to those pages. I also open all links in tabs. Tab hierarchies provide a combined history (with list of what lead where,) bookmarks, and tabs, all in one convenient interface. If bookmarks supported this nicely it would be great, but they don't.

    --
    Not a sentence!
  6. Re:VP9 by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 3, Informative

    You have to enable HTML5. https://www.youtube.com/html5

    --
    Not a sentence!
  7. Re:VP9 by Lennie · · Score: 4, Informative

    Have you tried enabling it ?:

    http://youtube.com/html5

    It has been improving, but only very slowly.

    --
    New things are always on the horizon
  8. Re:Now is the time to turn automatic updates off by Dagger2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    As covered on Slashdot previously: Australis is landing. If you read the official blog post you'll get the impression that this is all about improvements, but if you pay a bit more attention you'll see it's actually more about removing most of the in-browser customizability.

    That's such a big change in direction that I don't think it's reasonable to consider Firefox 29 the same browser as previous versions, and I don't think anybody should automatically move from one to the other.