Firefox has not been good for a lot of positive headlines lately, especially since it seems to be surrendering market share to Chrome faster than the arctic its ice cover. However, it recently sent its first true rapid release (Firefox 7) out the door and there is now a good picture of Firefox 9, which could become the most significant release of the browser this year.
Scheduled for a December 20 release, Firefox 9 is now shipping as an Aurora release and includes, most importantly, support for type inference. This technology allows Firefox' JavaScript to sift through code more effectively and run JavaScript applications much faster as a result. Mozilla claims that Firefox 9 is about 44 percent faster than Firefox 8 in its own Kraken benchmark. Other new features include a JavaScript do-not-track API, as well as the integration of the new tablet touch UI.
The software can be downloaded from Mozilla's Firefox Releases channel.
