The wait is over for the Firefox OS developers, who have been awaiting the latest version of the Firefox OS Simulator. Mozilla has officially announced the release of Firefox OS Simulator 4.0.

Aside from allowing developers to make money with apps in the Marketplace, several new features have been introduced in Firefox OS Simulator 4.0, such as the new Dashboard. It installs as an extension in Firefox, so you’ll need Mozilla’s browser to use it. Once installed, it will be available in Firefox under the Tools => Web Developer menu.

Let’s take a look at the features.

Connect Button

This is a new Connect button which opens a developer toolbox connected to a specific app. This makes easy to find app information, without having to search through messages in the Console or filter through scripts in the Debugger.

Testing Receipts for Paid Apps

Firefox OS Simulator 4.0 supports test receipts for paid apps. There is a dropdown menu in each app’s dashboard, where you can select a receipt type. Once you choose the receipt type from the drop-down menu, these will have the simulator add-on downloading a test receipt from a Marketplace receipt service and reinstalling the app using it. This way you can test receipt verification with the various types of receipts that you may require – valid, invalid, and refunded.

Remote CSS Styling

With newly added Remote CSS styling, you can edit the style sheets for your app and apply changes instantly using the Style Editor tool. The best part is that the changes are done right away.

Simulated Touch Events

Firefox OS Simulator 4.0 has Gaia’s touch events simulation integrated that allows interacting with the simulator using a mouse now generates real touch events, fixing various issues in core Gaia apps that assume touch interactions and for third-party apps that rely on them too.

Shift-Ctrl/Cmd-R Shortcut

If you also hold down the Shift key, the simulator will clear persistent data such as AppCache, localStorage, sessionStorage, and IndexedDB as well.

You can get the Firefox OS Simulator 4.0 here.