14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla has announced that Firefox 36 Beta is now out and ready for testing. It comes with quite a few changes and improvements, but it also brings some important news for the add-on developers who will have to make some important changes.
Just days after the stable branch of Firefox has been upgraded to version 35, the Mozilla devs have pushed the first Beta update for Firefox 36. If you take a closer look at the changelog that's been posted online, you'll notice that there is nothing that really stands out, but at least one point is actually much more interesting than it seems at first glance.
The final version of Firefox 36 is expected to arrive on February 24 and that is just a month from now. It gives the developers enough time to make all the changes they want, and it also allows the add-on developers to make some important modifications. It's very likely that some of the add-on won't work without these changes.
Firefox 36 could make some users very unhappy
For the past few months and editions, the Mozilla devs have made no change to the way add-ons are handled, which brought some stability, but now they have something in mind and it's unlikely that all the add-on devs will make the necessary changes in time. This means that after February 24, users who upgrade to the next version might find themselves without some of their add-ons.
The Mozilla devs published a comprehensive list of changes that will affect developers. "The automatic compatibility validation and upgrade for add-ons on AMO will happen within a week or two, so keep an eye on your email if you have an add-on listed on our site with its compatibility set to Firefox 35."
Also, some of the modifications for Firefox 36 include the removal of the -remote option, the addition of support for the ECMAScript 6 Symbol data type, improvements for CSS3, better native HTML5 playback on YouTube, and even a few changes for developers.
You can download Firefox 36 Beta from Softpedia, for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. It's not recommended to have to concurrent versions of Firefox running at the same time, so please make sure that you close the installed one before opening the Beta.
