Firefox 24 arrives with option to mass close tabs ‘to the right’, WebRTC support and NFC sharing on Android

Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 24 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Improvements include a new option to mass close tabs “to the right,” as well as WebRTC support and NFC sharing on Android.

The new desktop version was available on the organization’s FTP servers last night, but that was just the initial release of the installers. Firefox 24 has now been released over on Firefox.com and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play.

Desktop

Compared to Firefox 23, this isn’t a big release for the desktop. Mac users will notice a new scrollbar style on OS X 10.7 and users of the browsers social features will appreciate the ability to tear-off chat windows by just dragging.

The biggest feature addition is probably the option to close all tabs to the right of the current tab. You can read more about it here and access the new option in the right-click tab menu:

Here’s the official changelog for Firefox 24:

• NEW: Support for new scrollbar style in Mac OS X 10.7 and newer.
• NEW: Implemented Close tabs to the right.
• NEW: Social: Ability to tear-off chat windows to view separately by simply dragging them out.
• CHANGED: Accessibility related improvements on using pinned tabs (see 577727).
• CHANGED: Removed support for Revocation Lists feature (see 867465).
• CHANGED: Performance improvements on New Tab Page loads (see 791670).
• DEVELOPER: Major SVG rendering improvements around Image tiling and scaling (see 600207).
• DEVELOPER: Improved and unified Browser console for enhanced debugging experience, replacing existing Error console.
• DEVELOPER: Removed support for sherlock files that are loaded from application or profile directory.
• FIXED: Replace fixed-ratio audio resampler in webrtc.org capture code with Speex resampler and eliminate pseudo-44000Hz rate (see 886886).
• FIXED:
  

  24.0: Security fixes can be found here.

If you’re a Web developer, you should probably check out Firefox 24 for developers.

Android

Mozilla may not have added much to the desktop side of things, but it did add a slew of new features on Android. First and foremost, WebRTC is now enabled by default.

Firefox 24 for Android now supports mozGetUserMedia (added in Firefox 20 desktop), mozRTCPeerConnection (Firefox 22), and DataChannels (Firefox 22). This means developers can capture camera or microphone streams directly from Firefox Android using only JavaScript. Users meanwhile can make browser-to-browser calls (audio and/or video) and share data (no server in the middle) to enable peer-to-peer apps (including text chat, gaming, image sharing during calls, and so on).

Next up, Firefox for Android now includes a new feature that makes it easy to “quickshare” your favorite websites, articles, or videos with family and friends. If you share often via Twitter, Facebook, SMS, or email, Firefox for Android will automatically add your most frequent sharing service to the menu button.

More importantly, Firefox for Android supports bump sharing on NFC-enabled devices. This means you can share open tabs with your friends that have Firefox by just tapping your Android devices together.

Last but not least, the built-in Reader has received some improvements: it lets you change fonts, long tap the Reader icon in the URL bar to add an article to your Reading List, and save all content offline. You can also switch to “dark mode” (dark text on a light background) or “light mode” (light text on a dark background) as seen below:

Here’s the full Firefox 24 for Android changelog:

• NEW: Enabled support for WebRTC.
• NEW: Ability to share open tabs between NFC-enabled phones.
• NEW: Easy access to your favourite share application from main menu. Read more in the blog post.
• NEW: Added support for Braille, Popup announcements, Door hangers retain focus and a lot more for TalkBack users.
• NEW: Better night reading experience with Night mode functionality in Reader.
• NEW: Added Swedish, British and Catalan to Android multi-locale builds.
• DEVELOPER: Removed support for sherlock files that are loaded from application or profile directory.
• CHANGED: Baidu is now the default search engine for the Chinese locale.
• FIXED: Can’t write accented characters on HTC devices (see 906506).
• FIXED: 24.0: Security fixes can be found here.

If you’re having difficulty keeping track of all these updates, don’t worry. Firefox 25 will be out in October.

Top Image Credit: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images