Firefox 44

Firefox 44 hits stable channel with support for push notifications

Firefox 44, the latest release channel build of Mozilla's web browser, is now available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. Notably, Firefox 44 lets users receive push notifications from websites so long as permission is granted (opt-in

Mozilla says the push notification feature is similar to web notifications with the exception that you can now receive notifications from websites even when they aren't open. As you can imagine, this could be incredibly useful for things like e-mail, weather, social networking and shopping – you know, sites and services that you'd otherwise manually check for updates. Push notifications can be managed in the Control Center

Developers that want to implement push notifications on their website can learn more by checking out this Hacks blog post

It's worth noting that Mozilla is simply playing catch-up at this point as it relates to push notifications. Google first introduced push notifications in Chrome nearly three years ago with Apple's Safari following suite a few months later

Elsewhere, Firefox 44 enables H.264 video playback (so long as you have a native decoder), improves warning pages for certificate errors and untrusted connections and enables WebM/VP9 video support on systems that don't support MP4/H.264. The full change log can be viewed on Mozilla's website

Firefox 44 can be downloaded by clicking here

Firefox

Mozilla releases 64-bit Firefox for Windows with latest Developer Edition

Mozilla has finally released a 64-bit version of their Firefox web browser for Windows, joining other major browsers including Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Opera in offering 64-bit variants.

However, at this stage the 64-bit version of Firefox is a Developer Edition build, which is one of Mozilla's beta builds of Firefox. While the Developer Edition channel is far more stable than the Nightly channel, it's not the same as the main builds of Firefox that users will typically download. As such, 64-bit Firefox could be considered as being in the beta phase at this stage.

If all goes to plan, Mozilla will release a stable version of 64-bit Firefox for Windows with Firefox 38, scheduled for release in May. At that point it will sit alongside the already-released 64-bit variants for OS X and Linux.

Firefox 38 Developer Edition, complete with 64-bit addressing, brings support for web applications larger than 4 GB, which is great for developers wanting to build large browser-based games. Thanks to new hardware registers and a larger address space, Mozilla claims the 64-bit version is also faster and more secure than before.

The latest Developer Edition also includes some WebRTC changes and fixes, as well as a few other improvements for developers. Anyone interested in upgrading to the 64-bit version of Firefox can do so via Mozilla's Developer Edition page.