Firefox 10 FINAL brings better add-on compatibility

Ahead of its official unveiling, Firefox 10 FINAL has appeared on the Mozilla download servers, allowing impatient users the opportunity to download and install the new version up to a day early.

Version 10’s headline new feature will appeal to those frustrated with having to wait for browser extensions to be recognised as compatible by new builds: from version 10 onwards, browser extensions will automatically be considered compatible unless specifically marked otherwise. It will also see a minor interface tweak – the loss of the browser forward button – and some new tools that will appeal to developers.

The development making waves in Firefox 10 is the way it handles browser extensions. Previously, unless an extension was specifically marked as compatible for the latest version release, it would disabled until updated by the developer. With new versions now appearing on the dot every six weeks, this has been a source of frustration to developers and end users alike.

The actual functionality of automatically marking add-ons as compatible actually began back with the release of Firefox 4, but was restricted to those add-ons distributed through Mozilla’s own official channel. According to Mozilla, 75% of add-ons are obtained outside of the official channel, so it will make a noticeable difference.

The change is part of a wider move towards making Firefox update itself completely silently – according to the Mozilla Wiki article describing the process, Mozilla hopes to be able to eventually update users with the latest version of Firefox as well as all add-ons without any user interaction, with Firefox 13 (due in June) the intended target release.