In a blog post on CNET, Senior Editor Seth Rosenblatt wrote that Mozilla (News – Alert) has unveiled a new version of Firefox, labeled Firefox 16, with support for HTML5 technology.  The blogger indicates that these changes will help Firefox become more competitive, as it also delivers features that would be attractive to Web developers.

According to Rosenblatt, “It’s a strong endorsement of the future-Web tech.”

As described in this blog post, Mozilla has “unprefixed” a number of HTML5 code. That means, wrote Rosenblatt, the company thinks it has matured enough “to run in the browser without causing instability.” The newly unshackled HTML5 code includes CSS3 animations, transforms, transitions, image values, values and units, and IndexedDB. In addition, the two Web APIs created with Mozilla’s help, Battery API and Vibration API, which are also now unprefixed.

Furthermore, there is now another new command line for Firefox developers. It is designed to simplify keyboard control.

Concurrently, as per the CNET blog, the Android (News – Alert) version of Firefox 16 got a Reader mode, which can be used to streamline the appearance of articles as well as makes it easier to share. When the Reader Mode is available, an icon appears in the location bar. When you tap it, the story or the article you are reading will be reformatted, changing the size of the pictures, making the font bigger, and removing ads.

However, soon after the release the updated Firefox 16 was temporarily removed from Mozilla’s installer page. Reports show that apparently there was a serious security flaw in the browser’s latest version.

On company’s security blog, Mozilla’s Director of Security Assurance, Michael Coates, stated, "The vulnerability could allow a malicious site to potentially determine which websites users have visited and have access to the URL or URL parameters."  "At this time we have no indication that this vulnerability is currently being exploited in the wild," added Coates.

At this time, Mozilla is currently working on a fix for this problem and expects to ship this product to users beginning soon. In the interim, Mozilla is recommending that developers use version 15.0.1, which was unaffected by the flaw.