Firefox for Desktop Now Comes With Built-In Instant Messenger

Mozilla on Tuesday rolled out an update to desktop and Android versions of Firefox, introducing some useful features and fixes. The highlight of the update is the inclusion of Firefox Hello instant messenger for desktop.

The Mozilla Firefox v41 for Windows, Mac and Linux comes with the Firefox Hello service built-in. For those unaware, Firefox Hello was introduced in version 34. With Hello, Firefox users can chat with and call each other without the need of any other software. It also includes screen sharing feature that is aimed at letting users collaborate on a document or shop online together.

Some of the other additions made in Firefox v41 for desktop include support for SVG images as favicons, improved box-shadow rendering performance, and enhanced IME support on Windows (Vista +) using Text Services Framework. Users of the updated browser can set a profile picture for their Firefox account as well. Update also equips several HTML5 and developer-faced changes. The full changelog can be seen on the Firefox website.

As for Android, the v41 of Mozilla Firefox brings minor features such as a swipe gesture to close tabs on tablets, overlay to manually search and copy/ paste login credentials from login manager, and quick search with different search engines from the search panel. Also featured is improved bookmark management with duplicate bookmark detection. Croatian locale has also been added.