Firefox 6 Beta Now Available

If you’re the type who enjoys testing cutting edge software, Mozilla’s cooked up another Firefox beta for you. It’s a look at what will eventually become a stable version 6.0. There are a lot of changes in here, with a good chunk of it being bug fixes. Unfortunately, Flash support is still missin (though that could always change by the time a stable version comes around). Grab a look at the full list of changes below and be sure to find the download in the Android market.

The latest version of Firefox Beta for Android has the following changes:

Getting you to the web faster:

The new first-run experience gets you directly to the home page and briefly shows you browser features in the side panels. Firefox starts up faster and uses less memory.

Creating a better web experience:

Higher-quality image scaling (on devices with NEON-compatible processors). Smoother zooming, less pixelation, crisper display of logos, etc.
Improvements for large-screen tablets: Optimizing Firefox for larger tablet devices, e.g. by adjusting UI elements, buttons, font size. (Phase 1)
Better integration of Form Assistant for a smoother user experience
Visual refresh with new Gingerbread theme for phones running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread): A fresh look for the browser to look even more beautiful on Gingerbread.
Universal Access: Optimized rendering of pages that use RTL layout (languages like Arabic, Hebrew) (see bug 634386)

Important improvements “under the hood” and new technology features:

Touch Events (part 1 – single touch only): Expose touch events to content for better interaction with web pages and services, and improved compatibility with existing web content.
IndexedDB database storage for web pages
Better performance and improved memory management
Automatic text hyphenation with the -moz-hyphens CSS property (see bug 253317)

More bug fixes and enhancements:

Move Find In Page, Share Page, and Save As PDF to app menu on Android (see bug 612193)
Implement the W3C DeviceOrientation Event Specification (see bug 615597)
Selecting “Tabs from other computers” on home screen directs to Preferences (see bug 639711)
WebGL textures broken when decode-on-draw is enabled (see bug 647802)
Tweaks to Firefox Gingerbread UI (see bug 659447)
Update Gingerbread UI for Preferences/Downloads/Addons and Context Menu (see bug 659457)
Tweak selection color in Gingerbread theme (see bug 660632)
[Java][SwiftKey] StringIndexOutOfBoundsException in String.substring() via GeckoInputConnection.getExtractedText (see bug 663445)
What’s New with Add-ons

There are now over 160 add-ons for Firefox for mobile, and counting. Nearly 100 add-ons are already compatible with our latest browser version. Thanks to our awesome community, the number of exciting compatible add-ons increases constantly.