Firefox's latest browser gets built-in instant Messenger

Mozilla on Tuesday has rolled out Firefox 41 to desktop and Android users, and the browser web now sports a built-in instant messaging feature called Firefox Hello feature.

The feature was introduced
previous October which lets you make free video or audio chats with the other Firefox users, and now the new feature which works on the desktop version, lets you send and receive instant messages whether you're on Windows, Mac or Linux. Since the Firefox Hello is WebRTC powered, it allows you to chat with Chrome or Opera users, once it’s supported on those browsers.

Hello User can set their profile photo, letting you see whom you’re chatting with on the desktop browser. Firefox has fixed the numerous bugs for this latest version of the browser for both the desktop and Android, and now the Firefox for Android now will play the apt MP3 files. The other features in Firefox v41 for desktop include support for SVG images as favicons, improved box-shadow rendering performance, and enhanced IME support on Windows (Vista +) using Text Services Framework. For Android users, the other enhanced features include swipe gesture to close tabs on tablets, overlay to manually search and copy/ paste login credentials from login manager, improved bookmark management with duplicate bookmark detection and quick search with different search engines from search panel.

The latest version of this Firefox is currently being rolled out, and depending on your browser settings, you can access it either automatically or be flagged that it's available.

You will be able to see a smiley icon in the upper right corner of the Firefox Navigation bar on the top, for accessing Firefox Hello Messenger. Click on the icon, where it opens a conversation Window and you can invite your friend to chat. But if the icon doesn’t appear, then browse the Firefox Hello page and Tap on Try Firefox Hello option. The browser also gives an option to add the Firefox Hello button to the Toolbar. Now, you can start the audio or video chat and exchange messages with the other party.

With each of its new version release, Mozilla has been continuously trying enhance the user-experience with improved features. But Firefox share of browser traffic for August has been only 11.6 percent placing it far behind the Google Chrome with a cut of almost 30 percent.

Mozilla has set its focus to grab the users by introducing a Windows 10 version in August and announcing on how to switch to Firefox as the default browser. The company has also come up with the Firefox versions for iPhone and iPad challenging Apple's Safari and Chrome. And now, with the latest feature like built-in instant Messenger, let’s see if Mozilla can increase ts browser traffic by winning the users away from such top rivals.