Firefox 11 release notes for developers

Changes for Web developers

HTML

• The attributes muted and loop on <audio> and <video> elements have been implemented.

DOM

• The element.outerHTML property is now supported on HTML elements.
• XMLHttpRequest supports HTML parsing.
• Removed support for using the XMLHttpRequest responseType and withCredentials attributes when performing synchronous requests. Attempting to do so throws an NS_ERROR_DOM_INVALID_ACCESS_ERR exception. This change has been proposed to the W3C for standardization.
• The new navigator.mozVibrate() method lets you vibrate the device where supported; this is implemented as mozVibrate() on Gecko.
• navigator.mozApps returns an Apps object you can use to install and manage open web applications.
• MozBeforePaint events are no longer fired. mozRequestAnimationFrame() consumers who used these should pass a callback function instead.
• Support for canceling animation frame requests has been added; window.mozRequestAnimationFrame() now returns a request ID value, which you can pass to window.mozCancelAnimationFrame() to cancel the request.
• Several Event constructors (Event, HTML events, UIEvent, and MouseEvent) introduced in DOM4 specifications are now supported.
• The Battery API is now enabled by default.
• Support for the defaultMuted, loop and muted properties on HTMLMediaElement has been added.
• Calling Document/exitFullscreen now restores the previously fullscreen element if some other element was in fullscreen mode when the current element's Element/requestFullScreen method was called.
• The window.mozRequestAnimationFrame() method no longer supports a no-argument form. This form was not used much and is unlikely to become part of the standard.
• SVG-as-an-image can now be drawn into a canvas without tainting the canvas.
• The non-standard countryCode property of the GeoPositionAddress interface has been removed; see nsIDOMGeoPositionAddress.
• Server-sent events now support CORS.
• In the past, when the user followed a link, the values set on the window.navigator object were retained by the new page. Now a new navigator object is created for the new page. This makes Firefox behave like all other browsers.

CSS

• the text-size-adjust property is now supported
• CSS3 Conditional Rules are now better supported: nested statements can now be added to @media, @-moz-document. (See CSS Syntax and CSS at-rules).

JavaScript

No change.

SVG

• The SVGSVGElement DOM interface now support the getElementById method.

WebSocket

• WebSocket API now supports binary messages (see Firefox bug 676439).
• Both the protocol and the API has been updated to the latest draft of the specification and the API has been unprefixed (see Firefox bug 666349 and Firefox bug 695635).
• Previously, messages sent and received using WebSockets in Firefox were limited to 16 MB in size; they may now be up to 2 GB (although memory capacity limitations may prevent them from being that large, Firefox supports it).

IndexedDB

• The support for IDBFactory.cmp() has been added.

• An IndexedDB key can also be of one of the following types: Date, Arrays and Float (and not only String and Integer).

• From now on, transactions are started when the transaction is created, not when the first request is placed; for example consider this:

  js

  var trans1 = db.transaction("foo", READ_WRITE);
  var trans2 = db.transaction("foo", READ_WRITE);
  
  trans2.put("2", "key");
  trans1.put("1", "key");
  

  After the code is executed the object store should contain the value "2", since trans2 should run after trans1.

• Previous to Firefox 11, object store autoIncrement counters were shared across all object stores for a given database, whereas per spec each object store should have a separate counter. This is now fixed.

• It is now possible to create an index with an empty keyPath.

• It is now possible to create a multi-entry index (see IDBObjectStore.createIndex parameters.)

• The abort event now bubbles; in addition, an onabort handler has been added.

• IndexedDB can now be used to store files/blobs.

• IndexedDB now supports complex key paths, e.g., foo.bar to access property bar of property foo.

• IndexedDB can now accept an array as a keyPath when creating an object store or an index (Firefox bug 694138.)

Network

• The change in Firefox 8 that removed support for double quote characters as delimiters for RFC 2231 and RFC 5987 has been reverted, as this broke some sites, including Outlook Web Access.
• The user agent string in HTTP headers now includes an identifier that lets the server know if the Firefox accessing it is a phone or a tablet.

Developer tools

• The Page Inspector now offers a 3D view if your system supports WebGL.
• The new Style Editor provides a free-form way to edit and compose CSS style sheets in real-time.
• The View Source feature now uses the new HTML5 parser instead of the old HTML parser.

Changes for Mozilla and add-on developers

JavaScript code modules

NetUtil.jsm

• readInputStreamToString() has a new, optional, parameter to configure the character set interpretation while reading the input stream.

New JavaScript code modules

source-editor.jsm

Provides a convenient, easy-to-use source code editor that you can use in your add-ons. This is the same editor used by Scratchpad and other developer tools integrated into Firefox.

Interface changes

• The mozIAsyncHistory interface has a new method mozIAsyncHistory.isURIVisited() to check if a URI has been visited.
• A new interface mozIVisitStatusCallback has been added to provide callback handling functionality for mozIAsyncHistory.isURIVisited().
• The nsIMacDockSupport interface now supports adding a text badge to the application's icon in the Dock using its new badgeText attribute.
• In the nsINavHistoryResultObserver interface, you now need to implement nsINavHistoryResultObserver.containerStateChanged() instead of the obsolete containerOpened() and containerClosed() methods.

Removed interfaces

The following interfaces were implementation details that are no longer needed:

• nsICharsetResolver
• nsIDOMNSElement, see bug707576, use nsIDOMElement instead.

Theme-related changes

• The omni.jar file is now called omni.ja.

Preference changes

ui.tooltipDelay

Specifies the delay, in milliseconds, between the mouse cursor beginning to hover and the display of a tooltip.

Build system changes

• The --enable-tracejit build option has been removed.

Other changes

• Add-ons that have not been updated in a long time are no longer assumed to be compatible by default; this is currently add-ons that indicate a maxVersion of 4.0.