Mozilla will be rolling out the Firefox 24 for Windows, Mac, and Linux today as well as for Android.

The updated Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux has new features such as support for new scrollbar style in Mac OS X 10.7 and newer, implemented Close tabs to the right, and ability to tear-off chat windows to view separately by simply dragging them out.  There were also some aspects that were changed for the sake of developers, such as accessibility related improvements on using pinned tabs (see 577727), major SVG rendering improvements around Image tiling and scaling (see 600207), improved and unified Browser console for enhanced debugging experience, replacing existing Error console, removed support for sherlock files that are loaded from application or profile directory, and support for W3C touch events disabled (see 888304).

Firefox for Android also saw new features and some changes, such as enabled support for WebRTC, the ability to share open tabs between NFC-enabled phones, easy access to your favourite sharing application from the main menu, added support for Braille, Popup announcements, Door hangers retain focus and a lot more for TalkBack users. Other improvements included a better nighttime reading experience with Night mode functionality in Reader, added Swedish, British and Catalan to Android multi-locale builds, Baidu set as the default search engine for the Chinese locale, and removed support for sherlock files that are loaded from application or profile directory.

As for Mozilla’s hope of releasing a Metrofied Firefox for Windows 8, that dream is seeing more bumps in the road and won’t likely become available until Firefox 26, which is set for a December launch.  According to Mozilla, the reason for the delay is due to “slower than expected” progress.

Mozilla has three public build channels for Firefox, namely; Aurora, Beta and Release.  Right now, Firefox 26 is in the Aurora channel which will be released in December.  As for the Metro features, it is unlikely that these will be released with Firefox 26 – Mozilla says that they’re far more likely to appear in Firefox 27, which is slated for a January 21, 2014 release. Mozilla encourages people to try out Firefox 26 and send them feedback as to how the version can be improved.

“The goal of the Metro Preview Release is to gather feedback and defects from the larger Aurora community,” Mozilla said in notes published on its website from a planning meeting.

“Whether or not the Metro Preview Release will graduate from Aurora to Beta and Release channels is still to be determined. At a minimum, it should significantly increase the number of testers and feedback.”