Firefox 18 Offers Retina Support For Macs, Speeds Things Up With IonMonkey

Earlier today, Mozilla released Firefox 18, which brings with it a host of new features and improvements, including Retina display for Mac support. Thanks to the IonMonkey JavaScript compiler, Web games and apps are up to 25-percent faster, while Android Firefox users now get search suggestions while typing. You can download the latest release from the Firefox website.

IonMonkey follows the previously-used TraceMonkey and JagerMonkey Javascript compilers, and optimizes scripts before generating the executable code. Preliminary support has been added for WebRTC (Web Real Time Communication). The biggest change is support for Retina displays for Macs running OS X 10.7 or higher.

As far as improvements go, a new HTML scaling algorithm is in place that improves overall image quality, while tab switching has also been given a performance boost. MozTouch has been swapped out with support for W3C touch events, HTTPS pages will no longer load insecure content, and the issue with poor response when using proxies has been corrected.

In addition, a new version of Firefox for Android has been rolled out featuring some new changes that will make mobile users happy. Specifically, it has made somes changes to help keep users secure by implementing the malware detection desktop users have already enjoyed. When visting a URL that has been blacklisted, users will get a "Reported Attack Page!" warning. You can nab the app over at Google Play.

[via Mozilla]