New Firefox beta gets built-in pdf viewer

Published January 20, 2013 5:29am

Mozilla's Firefox browser finally gets a long-awaited feature that has been available on its competitors: a built-in PDF viewer.

The latest beta of Firefox also offers to reset the Awesomebar (address bar) search settings if it has been modified.

"Firefox will offer to reset the Awesomebar search provider, if it has been changed by third-party software or through about:config," it said in its release notes.

Now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Firefox 19 beta - according to The Next Web - has other features such as:

- Canvas elements can export their content as an image blob using canvas.toBlob().

- Startup performance improvements

- For developers: Debugger now supports pausing on exceptions and hiding non-enumerable properties.

- Remote Web Console is available for connecting to Firefox on Android or Firefox OS

- There is now a Browser Debugger available for add-on and browser developers (experimental, set devtools.chrome.enabled to true).

- Web Console CSS links now open in the Style Editor.

- HTML5: CSS @page is now supported.

The Next Web noted the built-in PDF viewer aims to avoid having to use plugins with proprietary closed source code “that could potentially expose users to security vulnerabilities,” Mozilla said.

Firefox beta 19 for Android

Meanwhile, the new Firefox for Android beta adds even more ARMv6 support, making Firefox for Android available to roughly 15 million more phones.

"The beta is now available to phones with minimum requirements of 600MHz, 512MB, HVGA, including the LG Optimus One, T-Mobile myTouch 3G slide, HTC Wildfire S, and ZTE R750," The Next Web said.

The beta also includes Firefox integration in the Google Search Widget, meaning a user can launch a Google search directly from the phone’s homescreen.

Firefox for Android Beta also adds Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese language support. — ELR, GMA News

Tags: mozilla, firefox, pdfviewer