'Improved' Mozilla Firefox 33.0.3 Web Browser now Available for Download: What's New?

Mozilla's latest web browser iteration, the Firefox 33.0.3, is now officially available for download, and incorporates multiple new features and enhancements, apart from the regular bug fixes and performance enhancements.

Firefox 33.0.3 is available for users running Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac and the open source Linux operating platforms.

What's New in Firefox 33.0.3?

One major enhancement that users should experience is an improved search experience through the Location Bar.

Users of Firefox 33.0.1 should get to experience rapid searching from the location bar. Previously, when a single word was typed in to the location bar and Enter was pressed (or the Go button clicked), Firefox would look for a website at http://867-5309/. After the look-up timed out, Firefox would redirect to a search for "867-5309". If the hyphen was removed and "8675309" was entered, Firefox would immediately go to an error page saying that it was unable to connect to the server at 8675309.

Some users may have become accustomed to placing a '?' at the beginning of the location bar to subvert this behaviour. With Firefox 33.0.3 web browser, this is no longer necessary.

"Now, in both of these cases Firefox will kick off the search request immediately. In the background, Firefox will look for locally-hosted sites that have a hostname matching the value that was typed in. Most people will see search results on average 5 seconds quicker!" states Mozilla.

In cases where there is a potential match, Firefox will show a notification bar asking if the locally-hosted site was the intended destination. Clicking "Yes, take me to 8675309″ will navigate to the matched site and white-list it for future.

Along with the above aspect, users should also notice new 'Suggestions' on the Firefox Start (about:home) and new tab (about:newtab) web pages.

Finally, Firefox 33.0.3 supports HTTP proxy connection over HTTPS.

What's Fixed?

Apart from the conventional security fixes, Firefox 33.0.3 now incorporates fixes for the reported 'black screen display' during start up with certain graphics drivers. This issue was noticed in the earlier iteration viz the Firefox 33.0.1.

Also, an issue found in Firefox 33.0.2 has also been fixed. This issue earlier resulted in start up crashes.

Along with the above, Firefox 33.0.03 incorporates various developer-specific enhancements. Click here to find out what these enhancements are.