Firefox 21 for Android arrives with new fonts

Firefox 21 on Android is now using Open Sans to render text

Accompanying the release of the desktop version of Firefox 21, Mozilla has shipped the latest mobile version of the browser. Firefox 21 for Android introduces new font faces and includes HTML5 compatibility improvements and some smaller user interface tweaks.

Firefox 21 for Android ships with Open Sans and Charis SIL to replace Android's default interface fonts. The Mozilla developers investigated a number of open and commercial alternatives and settled on these two fonts because of their good coverage across Latin, Greek and Cyrillic character sets and their pleasing aesthetics. The fonts have been included for testing in the Firefox for Android Nightly builds since March and gained the approval of the developers and test users.

As a result of HTML5 compatibility improvements, Firefox for Android now achieves a score of 412 (plus 14 bonus points) out of a total of 500 points in the HTML5test.com benchmark. Other improvements with this update are minor changes to the browser's theme and some graphics performance improvements. Users can now save media files with a long tap and can gain access to their browsing history through back and forward buttons. As with the desktop version of Firefox 21, the mobile version has also removed E4X (the XML extension for JavaScript) support from the SpiderMonkey engine.

Firefox 21 for Android is available from Google Play and instructions on how to obtain and build its source code are available on the Mozilla Wiki. More details about the new features can be found in the Release Notes.

(fab)