Firefox 22 enables WebRTC, makes social APIs easier to manage

Mozilla has released Firefox 22.0 FINAL for Windows, Mac and Linux. The update includes some platform-specific improvements -- Firefox following display scaling options in Windows, and providing download progress indicators in its dock application icon in OS X -- plus a number of other tweaks and improvements.

Other new features include the ability for users to now manage their social API plug-ins via the Add-ons menu (select Services in the left-hand menu to do so), while users can now adjust the playback rate of HTML5 audio and video files (right-click the playback screen and choose Play Speed to do so).

One major behind-the-scenes update is that WebRTC -- the technology used for sharing audio/video streaming and data sharing between browser clients -- is now fully enabled by default in Firefox. This is achieved by enabling the two remaining components, PeerConnection and DataChannels, the latter of which can be used to reduce latency in real-time gaming by allowing gaming apps to connect peer-to-peer between devices.

Another new feature is the enabling of asm.js optimizations (codenamed OdinMonkey), which Mozilla promises will see major performance improvements. Other performance tweaks include asynchronous canvas updates that will improve WebGL rendering, better memory usage and shorter display times when rendering images.

Other changes include plain text files being displayed with word wrap within the Firefox window and support for using the Pointer Lock API outside of full-screen view. Developers gain access to a new built-in font inspector, plus CSS3 Flexbox as well as a new Web Notifications API have both been implemented. HTML5 support has also been extended to support the new <date> and <time> elements.

Firefox 22.0 FINAL is available now as a free, open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux.