Mozilla today made available version 17 of its Firefox desktop browser, bringing a number of functionality fixes and security upgrades. The upgrade brings an improved Awesome Bar experience with larger icons, revision of the Social API and support for Facebook Messenger, and click-to-play blocklisting to prevent vulnerable plugin versions from running without user permission. The version update brings one major exclusion, though: it drops support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Mozilla
noted back in early October that Firefox 17 would see the end of support for Macs running Leopard. The group bases changes in supported operating systems on trends in the industry, and it says that the cessation of Leopard support will allow it to free up resources for new Mac features like Native Full Screen support and new Mac accessibility tools.
Also released today is the latest release of Thunderbird, also version 17. No major features have been added, but security fixes and performance improvements have been noted. As with Firefox, support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has been removed. Thunderbird is no longer under active development, and release 17 marks the last release from the Mozilla group. Support by third parties is expected.
The new versionsof Firefox and Thunderbird can be
downloaded at Mozilla's page.
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