After Delay, Firefox 11 Arrives With Add-on Sync, Dev Tools

After a delay caused by an investigation into a Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) vulnerabilty report and concerns about conflicts with Microsoft's Patch Tuesday security updates, Firefox 11 has finally seen the light of day.

The new browser version was scheduled for launch on March 12, and was indeed available as a manual update, but now Firefox users will be automatically updated to version 11, which adds a minor end user feature and two innovative developer tools.

The release of Firefox 11 was announced last night on the Mozilla Blog, which also detailed the new end user and developer features.

Long the darling of Web developers, Firefox's latest update is sure to please that group. Firefox 11 includes an innovative visual layout tool called Tilt, which lets coders see their pages in layers of related content. A new live Style Editor, meanwhile, lets them make changes to CSS style sheets and see the results instantly.

But not everything new in Firefox 11 is just for developers: End users now get the ability to sync their add-ons, including the ever-popular extensions, or browser customizations. Previously, Firefox users could sync bookmarks, passwords, preferences, history, and open tabs. Google's competing Chrome browser has been able to sync its extensions for over a year, while Internet Explorer 9 doesn't offer syncing. The feature in Firefox works not only with other computers running the browser, but with Android devices running that OS's version of Firefox, and iOS devices running Firefox Home.

We'll still have to wait a while before the browser catches up with all its competitors in one anticipated feature. A helpful "new tab" page like that in IE, Chrome, and Opera should appear in Firefox 12.

The new Tilt tool uses WebGL to create a 3D view of a website's component structures. According to Mozilla, "The 3D View more clearly illustrates how the parts of a website are structured. After selecting '3D' View in Page Inspector, just hover your mouse over the elements to get more information about each piece you select."

The new Style Editor, according to Mozilla, "allows developers to edit CSS stylesheets like a text editor and see changes instantly, entirely within the browser. It's a quick and easy way to iterate and test designs on a website. Once changes are made, the Firefox Style Editor provides a simple way to save the file to your computer."

Mozilla is the first third-party software developer to announce work on an upcoming browser for Windows 8's streamlined Metro desktop. Mozilla for Boot to Gecko (B2G), which will focus on the development of a "complete, standalone operating system for the open Web."

Mozilla has also recently embraced more socially responsible initiatives, including the Living Docs project, which offers independent documentary filmmakers events and support for creating open-standard Web videos. Another recent effort has been Knight-Mozilla OpenNews—"a partnership aimed at driving open source innovation in news."

Despite all this innovation, Firefox continues to lose market share to Chrome. According to the most recent numbers from Net Applications, Firefox fell from 22.7 percent in February 2011 to 20.9 percent last month, while Chrome rose from 11.4 percent to 18.9 percent during the same time period. Microsoft's Internet Explorer continues to lead the pack, with a 59.2 percent worldwide share on the desktop as of last month. Firefox at one point was threatening to capture a quarter of all internet users, a goal it never attained but just barely missed.

Download Firefox 11 for yourself from Firefox.com. For an in-depth evaluation, read PCMag's review of Firefox, which will be updated shortly with details about this newest version.

For more from Michael, follow him on Twitter @mikemuch.