The boys at the Mozilla Foundation must be pretty busy these days, considering that recently they released Firefox 17, a special version of the browser with improvements specifically for its mobile version to make it compatible with low-end devices, and then later released Firefox 18 beta with even more new features. Now they have released an official Facebook Messenger extension, which allows you to access Facebook chat from within the browser without having to open the social network’s website. Do they ever rest?
Once it is installed, this add-on appears as a dropdown menu on the right side of the screen, and it looks almost identical to the web version of chat itself. It allows you to view and interact with your Facebook friends, in addition to allowing you to receive notifications about interactions that you are involved in, such as a friend request, a comment, a Like, or a photo tag–all your basic Facebook functions immediately at your disposal.
Of course, this add-on doesn’t provide any new advance in the way we access Facebook, or anything of the like. In fact, similar extensions have been available for Chrome for a while now. The only difference is that this is an official application, with the same levels of quality and security that you can expect from Facebook. You can always just download Facebook Messenger for Windows as an app that is independent from the browser, which allows you to do all the same stuff as with the Firefox add-on.
If we compared this Firefox extension with its equivalents on Google Chrome, you would see that they offer the same features that we have been discussing, although the interface isn’t as appealing, and they aren’t official.
It’s basically an app for Facebook addicts, which has been designed as a strategy that hopes to give Firefox a more social aspect. It is likely that other similar extensions soon will be made available for accessing other popular social networks from within the browser.
To activate Facebook Messenger on Firefox, you have to have the latest version of the browser installed. Next, go to the following Facebook page and click on the activate button, and you’re all set!
Download Firefox 17 on Uptodown | http://firefox.en.uptodown.com/
