Wednesday, September 08, 2010:
Firefox has announced its fifth Firefox 4 beta, claiming that it “brings super fast graphics and incredible new audio capabilities to the Web.” The latest iteration of Firefox leverages hardware acceleration to improve graphics performance for Windows users and also allows, for the first time, the visualisation of audio data within the browser.
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“Until now, people haven’t had the ability to interact with sound on the Web in all the creative ways that video and images allow. Firefox 4 Beta introduces a new audio API to expose the raw audio data housed within the video and audio elements in HTML5 to redefine how people experience sound on the Web. With this new API, developers can read and write raw audio data within the browser, presenting audio information in completely new ways that could allow, for example, for people to visually experience a speech or a song through Firefox,” reads a blog post from Firefox development head Mike Beltzner.
The latest beta takes advantage of the built-in graphics hardware in Windows computers with DirectX 10 to improve graphics performance. On supported hardware, Firefox will use Direct2D by default to speed up the display of content on graphically intensive websites, giving more power to the Web.
It also includes HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), a new security protocol that allows websites to insist that Firefox always use secured connections. Firefox 4 Beta now remembers what sites use the HSTS protocol and will only connect to those sites using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) in the future, helping to prevent “man in the middle” attacks.
Click here to download the latest beta for free.
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