Posted on 06/26/2013 6:23:35 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Mozilla is out today with an updated open source Firefox 22 browser release. The new browser release includes fixes for 14 security advisories and bakes in new features for users.
Among the big items that has landed in Firefox 22 is WebRTC. WebRTC is a Real Time Communication (RTC) effort that will enable users to use a browser as a communications and collaboration vehicle. Mozilla has been working on including WebRTC over the last several Firefox releases, and with Firefox 22 now considers it to be ready for prime time.
"WebRTC is currently fully enabled and we are excited to get it into the hands of developers," Gavin Sharp, lead Firefox engineer told Datamation. "With this release we've added DataChannels and PeerConnection in addition to getUserMedia."
Firefox 22 also introduces the asm.js JavaScript capability to the browser, enabling a new era of interactivity and gaming. Mozilla has been talking about asm.js for much of this year as a evolutionary step forward for the web. What asm.js delivers is a more efficient JavaScript library that developers can then leverage to run code. The effort is complemented by the emscripten cross compiler which can convert C/C++ code into asm.js ready JavaScript code.
Earlier this year as part of the lead up to the full availability of asm.js in Firefox 22, Mozilla worked with gaming company Epic Games to build a JavaScript version of the Unreal Engine for game development. With that JavaScript version of Unreal Engine, a new generation of web gaming can now be enabled.
The Firefox 22 release could well be the last major release of Firefox before the upcoming Black Hat Security conference at the end of July. Sharp told Datamation that Mozilla tracks security very closely.
"Our release turnaround time is best-in-class, and our security team will be keeping a close eye on reports from Black Hat," Sharp said. "Our pro-active security bug identification efforts (including techniques like fuzz testing) are doing a great job of finding flaws before the bad guys do."
As part of that effort of finding flaws before the bad guys, Mozilla has issued 14 different security advisories as part of the Firefox 22 release. Of those advisories, four are rated as being critical.
Three of the critical advisories deal with memory safety and corruption issues. The 2013-53 advisory details a particularly nasty flaw titled, "Execution of unmapped memory through onreadystatechange event."
"Security researcher Nils reported that specially crafted web content using the onreadystatechange event and reloading of pages could sometimes cause a crash when unmapped memory is executed," Mozilla warned. "This crash is potentially exploitable."
Nils is well known in the security industry for exploiting browsers in a very public fashion. Nils first rose to public notoriety in 2009 when he was able to publicly exploit Apple Safari, Microsoft IE and Firefox at the Pwn2own hacking competition.
I love Firefox but I also love my Delicious Bookmarks. Delicious just has the best bookmark scheme ever. Unfortunately Delicious seems unable or unwilling to keep up with the rapid Firefox update cycle. So I’m stuck at version 15.
So I miss out on all the new Bells and Whistles. Sad to say.
Firefox Rapid Release, or how to commit browser suicide.
I am still using FF 15, because later versions create more conflicts with add-ons/extensions and external programs. Later additions still have problems with Adobe Flash.
FF become more headache than it is worth. It seems to be in permanent beta testing and the only changes seem to create new problems.
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It tried the EAS version (17). It worked somewhat, but still had problems with Flash.
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The new browser release includes fixes for 14 security advisories and bakes in new features for users.
If it's a cake or batch of cookies, things can be baked in; if it's a piece of software that didn't go into an oven at thus and such many degrees for a certain amount of time, the verb "bake" is entirely out of place. I first encountered features supposedly "baked into" software in 1992 or 1993. It was a stupid way to introduce jibber-jabber about features then, and it's even stupider these many years later.
Copying and pasting shop-worn, witless cliches is to creativity as biting one's finger nails is to dressing up.
They need to fix the CPU hogging.
How will this effect us oddballs who use Mozilla’s Sea Monkey package?
It’s kind of quirky (I’ve noticed that Adobe Flash incompatibility issue too with V. 2.17.1) especially on the e mail side, but having tried several alternatives have found it to be the lessor of several quirkbucket programs.
Kind of like voting Republican...
But at least it’s still “free”, and cyber beggars can’t be too choosy, can we?
Is this “improvement” going to translate over into SM?
Some might be interested in this FF tech Forum:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=7
A lot of Mozilla geeks and I suspect a number of their Employees and Techs hang out there and might have something interesting to add.
Good idea.. Let’s morph a good program into something most people won’t want to use it for so it can become useless to everyone.
If I wanted WebRTC, I’d get a WebRTC app for it. Leave the browser alone. Different purpose, different tool. This is how MS ruined Windows, by tightly coupling it to its browser to the point where IE became Windoze.
Ha! This topic (Discussion: Firefox 22 Open Source Communications) just links back to this FR thread!!
Keep an eye on it - it might pick up some informed commentary from folks who would not normally be in FR.
Sort of like casting a wider net.
Since some of Mozilla’s people informally hang out there it also serves as sort of a back door feedback portal.
Thanks for the ping. I just got my computer back from ClickAway. It had a terrible virus and Windows Vista was completely shut down. The guys at Clickaway are great. They installed Ubuntu Linux and wiped out my viruses in one fell swoop under their standard diagnostic package for $149. This is my first post as a Linux user, using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. So far so good.
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