As expected, the Mozilla Project has officially announced the release of version 8.0 of its open source Firefox web browser. Based on the Gecko 8 engine, Firefox 8 adds Twitter as a new default search option for select locales (more locales will be added in the future) and improves how add-ons are controlled.

From version 8, when Firefox launches and detects that a new third-party add-on has been installed, the add-on will be disabled by default until approved by the user. When users upgrade to Firefox 8, they will be presented with a one-time dialog for approving previously installed add-ons.

Users upgrading from a previous version of Firefox will be asked to confirm third-party add-ons Zoom The "restore tabs on demand" feature allows users to choose to load the content of tabs only when they are selected, improving overall start-up times when loading windows with many tabs. This option can be found in the Firefox Menu > Options > General under Windows, and in the Firefox Menu > Preferences > General on Mac OS X. Other changes include the addition of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for WebGL textures, support for HTML5 context menus, updates to WebSockets and fixes for hundreds of bugs.