Mozilla has released Firefox 17, which debuts technology that lets developers integrate social networks -- for now, Facebook -- with the browser.
The company also patched 29 security vulnerabilities, two-thirds of them marked "critical," Mozilla's highest threat ranking.
The main thrust of Mozilla's trumpeting of Firefox 17, however, was what it called "Social API," an application programming interface (API) that allows developers to bake connections to social media services into the browser.
The first result of the API, Facebook Messenger for Firefox, displays a sidebar that shows Facebook chat sessions and updates, including new comments, without requiring the user to steer to Facebook's website. Additional tools range from message notifications to friend requests, accessible through new icons in the browser's toolbar.
