VR support and a new screenshot sharing tool come to Firefox 55

Firefox 55, due out today, will finally bring support for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets to Mozilla's popular browser. Support comes via a Javascript API named WebVR, which allows the browser and its content to interact with a connected VR headset (Google Cardboard). Currently, there are a limited number of basic VR browser based games and interactive videos which take advantage of this API.

WebVR started life at Mozilla and had several of their developers working on it, so it is a bit funny that it is only just coming to the mainstream release of Firefox now — it has been available in the nightly builds for a while. Support was added to competing browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Chromium/Google Chrome earlier this year.

In addition to WebVR and performance improvements, Firefox 55 also introduces a new screenshot tool embedded in the browser. If your intention is just to save some screenshots to your computer, then there isn't much incentive to use it over a program such as Snipping Tool. Where the new screenshot tool shines is its ability to upload the screenshot to your Firefox account portal, automatically providing you a share link which reduces the number of steps usually needed to do this. By default, screenshots are saved for two weeks, but this can be adjusted by the user.

These upcoming changes fit well with ones already made to the browser this year and hopefully help it compete with the more successful Google Chrome browser.

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