Google goes private in new Firefox

The green lock icon on the left is how you can tell when you're on a site with the highest level of security.

(Credit: Mozilla)

The latest update to Firefox brings better security to search and to the URL bar, as the browser gets OS X and HTML5 tweaks, too.

The biggest change to Firefox 14 (download for Windows | Mac | Linux,) is that it runs HTTPS for all Google searches. This means that prying eyes, especially over public networks, won't be able to intercept your queries. Though Firefox currently supports this only for Google, Mozilla said in a blog post announcing the update that it hopes to extend HTTPS to other search engines in the near future.

A small interface design change also affects your security. This tweak makes it easier to see the "verified secure" lock icon to the left of your location bar.

If you're using OS X 10.7 Lion, you'll now get native full-screen support. All versions of Firefox will autocomplete URLs, and they support more hardware APIs. These include Wa... [Read more]