Mozilla released on June 25 the latest version of the Firefox web browser, Firefox 22, which comes with technologies that allow video calling, audio conferencing, instant messaging and 3D gaming.
The newest version of Firefox comes with WebRTC or Web Real-Time Communication that practically makes the browser Skype-like where users can make video calls and share files.
With the introduction of the WebRTC, Firefox makes communication between users very easy, be it mobile to computer or from Firefox to another browser without having to rely heavily on plug-ins such as Silverlight or Flash.
"How is it different from Skype misses the point of it. It's bigger than that. It's eight million developers who have access to the Web camera, or one of those audio remix tools, online," said Jonathan Nightingale, vice president of engineering for Firefox, in an interview with CNET.
"It's easy to integrate these features into Web apps with just a few lines of code so developers can create more rich and interactive websites for people to experience across browsers," explained Mozilla on its official blog.
Mozilla also injected a kind of JavaScript on steroids called Asm.js. This technology allows 3D gaming and photo processing on the browser without the need to install plug-ins or an entirely new software.
To show the potential of this low cost option, the maker of Mozilla collaborated with game developer Epic that ported its Unreal Engine 3 to the ASM.js. Gaming on the web is made possible using JavaScript, WebGL and Emscriptem.
Mozilla created a demo 3D first person shooter game called "BananaBread" that utilizes all of the new technologies introduced in Firefox 22. The company showed that highly detailed gaming can be achieved without compromising the speed and performance of the browsers.
Other new features include display scaling options for high-resolution displays for Windows, while HTML5 support was tweaked to allow adjustment of playback rate of audio and video. A download progress update also appears on the Dock application for users of Firefox on Mac OS X.
The Android edition of the Firefox 22 does not yet support ASM.js or WebRTC but Mozilla said that the mobile browser will eventually get the said technologies.
The latest version of Mozilla Firefox is ready for download. Likewise, users can go to the About Firefox section of the main menu of their browser and just restart the program to get the latest update.
