Finally, all Firefox channels have got updates and version number increment. After source migration for Firefox nightly 10, Firefox 8 Beta and Firefox 9 Aurora have been released. These two releases have several new features and stability fixes.

Firefox 8 Beta Features

With Firefox 8 beta, many new features have arrived to the beta channel of Firefox including a very important feature: third party add-ons are disabled by default. On first run, users are prompted to review all installed add-ons and all third-party bundled add-ons get disabled. Although, users can manually re-enable those add-ons. This feature removes all forcefully installed unwanted browser extensions, and improves browser’s performance. Read more here.

Firefox 8 beta has also got a new pre-installed search engine plug-in for Twitter. Users can use this search engine to search twitter updates, profiles and trending topics. Other features of Firefox 8 are support for HTML5 context menus, preference to load tabs on demand, improved WebSocket support, improved tab animations.

Firefox 9 Aurora Features

Firefox 9 will be a super fast version of Firefox. Users can install Firefox 9 Aurora build from here to test the performance improvements of Firefox 9. The biggest improvement is implementation of JavaScript type inference, which may boost up JavaScript processing in Firefox up to 30%. Firefox 9 will have many new tools and features for the developers as well. This include JavaScript DNT detection method.

Firefox 8 final is scheduled to release on November 8, while the Firefox 9 may release on 20th December 2011.