Move over Google, Firefox is now leveraging all of that Twitter content you’ve been so eager to recapture. Sure, you can get real time Twitter search results on Bing, but then again, Bing’s user base isn’t anywhere near Google’s.
Considering the new Firefox update, and its market share for browser users, compared to Bing’s market share in regards to search users, it’s hard not to wonder if there are more people using Firefox than there are Bing searchers. Whatever the case, Firefox users no longer have to navigate to a search engine to query Twitter’s never-ending amount of content.
With a quick drop-down menu selection, those who update to Firefox 8, according to the Firefox blog, will have the capability to:
Twitter search in Firefox makes it easier to discover new topics, #hashtags and @usernames. Twitter search is currently available in English, Portuguese, Slovenian and Japanese versions of Firefox, with more languages to come in future releases.
The latest Firefox update is not just for Windows users either. The browser update has been made available to Mac users, Linux users and to Android owners. Unfortunately, however, it doesn’t appear as if the Twitter search feature is available for Android owners, as, “Twitter is now included as a search option in Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux.”
Other features include improved WebGL support, something Mozilla is awfully proud of:
Mozilla pioneered WebGL and introduced it in Firefox earlier this year. WebGL is a new Web standard that allows websites and Web apps to display hardware-accelerated 3D graphics without third-party software. Firefox adds support for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), which lets developers load WebGL textures from other domains in a secure way.
As well as better third-party app control. No longer will these apps be able to install themselves without the user’s permission. While more security is always a good thing, the main feature of Firefox 8 is the inclusion of a functional Twitter search.
When a query is entered, in this case, “Joe Paterno,” users are taken to the Twitter search results page of the query that was entered. While this may not be exactly groundbreaking in terms of execution, the fact that this search feature is part of the new Firefox can only be considered a good thing.
You can get the newest version of Firefox here.
