Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 29 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. This is a massive release: Firefox Sync has been revamped and is now powered by Firefox Accounts, there’s a new customization mode, and the company’s major user interface overhaul Australis has finally arrived.

Firefox 29 has been released over on Firefox.com and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play.

The update also brings a "Customize" tool that transforms Firefox into a customization mode where users can add or move any feature, service or add-on. The update also allows users to create bookmarks with a single click and manage them from one place. Another new feature is the Firefox Sync service that lets you access browsing history, bookmarks, open tabs, saved passwords and form data across your computers and mobile Android devices. According to NetMarktShare, Firefox is currently the third most used browser after IE and Chrome.

Firefox Sync, the service that actually lets you take your bookmarks, tabs, and personal information with you to another device, is now more secure. More specifically, Mozilla underlines three improvements:

• Client side key stretching: a technique that protects against man-in-the-middle attacks, even when SSL credentials are compromised.
• End-to-end encryption: even if Mozilla’s servers are compromised, it is extremely difficult to access a user’s data.
• Public key cryptography and the BrowserID protocol: Separation between authentication, authorization, and data storage servers to minimize the number of servers that handle authentication material, and thus reducing our attack surface.

Here’s the full changelog for Firefox 29:

• New: Significant new customization mode makes it easy to personalize your Web experience to access the features you use the most (learn more).
• New: A new, easy to access menu sits in the right hand corner of Firefox and includes popular browser controls.
• New: Sleek new tabs provide an overall smoother look and fade into the background when not active.
• New: An interactive onboarding tour to guide users through the new Firefox changes.
• New: The ability to set up Firefox Sync by creating a Firefox account (learn more).
• New: Gamepad API finalized and enabled (learn more).
• New: Malay [ma] locale added.
• Changed: Clicking on a W3C Web Notification will switch to the originating tab.
• Developer: ‘box-sizing’ (dropping the -moz- prefix) implemented (learn more).
• Developer: Console object available in Web Workers (learn more).
• Developer: Promises enabled by default (learn more).
• Developer: SharedWorker enabled by default.
• Developer: input type=”number” implemented and enabled.
• Developer: input type=”color” implemented and enabled.
• Developer: Enabled ECMAScript Internationalization API.
• Developer: Add-on bar has been removed, content moved to navigation bar.

If you’re a Web developer, you should probably check out Firefox 29 for developers.

Source : TheNextWeb