Firefox 9 Promises to be 30% Faster, Adds Support for Lion and Android

Mozilla has officially released its latest Firefox 9 version, which promises major JavaScript enhancements and new developer tools that make browsing significantly faster.

The update announced Wednesday on the company blog reveals that major benchmarks like Mozilla's own Kraken test and Google's V8 show the new browser running 30 percent faster than its predecessor, Firefox 8.

The highlight of this update, called Type Inference, is that it performs faster on Web sites that use JavaScript. It is built to improve speed while loading Web pages, games, videos, and 3D graphics.

Mozilla has elaborated on the new technology: Type Inference is a feature of the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine that integrates with the JaegerMonkey JIT compiler to provide analysis and help generate more efficient code.

Other features include Firefox for Mac OS X Lion support, which allows two finger swipe gestures for an easy way to navigate while jumping between sites. Firefox 9 also claims to accommodate Mac users with multiple monitors.

Mozilla touts more benefits for Web developers too. With Firefox 9 said to support chunking XHR requests, sites that run Ajax or download large data sets, will now load quicker while displaying content as it's being downloaded. Developers can also get to see whether users have enabled Do Not Track privacy feature.

Mozilla also announced an Android version optimized for mobile devices. Users can make use of the full screen mode in tablets while browsing, even in portrait mode.

Another feature specifically designed for tablets is the Awesome Screen, which makes it easy to access your browsing history, open tabs, bookmarks, and saved passwords across desktop and mobile devices so you can type less and browse more, said Mozilla.

In addition to bug fixes, Firefox for Android also supports HTML5 Form Validation API, allowing browsers to validate typed text. There's also Input Tag for cameras enabling developers to build mobile sites and apps to take pictures and scan bars without ever leaving the browser.

The release has stated that latest version is now available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Although overshadowed by competition from Google in November, Mozilla appears to be on a roll by releasing six versions this year, starting with Firefox 4 in March. There's also the subject of a continuing partnership between Google and Mozilla, which involves the Google search engine to be used as a default in Firefox browser. With fresh releases and new developments, the year does seem to end on a pleasant note for the Mozilla Foundation.