Test build of Firefox for Windows 8 tablets now available

Mozilla has made available an early test version of Firefox for Windows 8 devices, allowing developers and enthusiasts to try the browser ahead of its release later this year.

The release, announced on Mozilla's blog, is an Aurora, or pre-beta, release of the upcoming Firefox version. It is a touch-friendly version of Firefox, designed to ensure people get the best browsing experience on their Windows 8 tablet, according to Mozilla.

However, users are warned that there may still be bugs in this early code, and so Mozilla is asking for assistance in testing and identifying as many as possible before the official release date, 10 December.

The browser features a tile-based Firefox Start experience and supports Firefox Sync, Windows 8 touch and swipe gestures, Snapped and Fill views, and Windows Share integration, Mozilla said.

However, it uses the same Gecko rendering engine and also supports many of the features recently introduced in desktop versions of Firefox, such as WebGL for accelerating 3D graphics and asm.js, which boosts JavaScript performance.

Hardware acceleration for HTML5 video is also supported for open video formats such as WebM, as well as proprietary formats such as H.264.

Firefox for Windows 8 has been a long time coming, and was possibly delayed by difficulties in building browsers for the Metro environment that both Mozilla and Google developers complained about last year. In fact, Firefox for Windows 8 has taken so long, Microsoft's updated Windows 8.1 is likely to be available before it is released.

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• Topics
• Web
• Tablets
• Mozilla
• Firefox
• Windows 8
• HTML5