Firefox updates amp up social side, and more

Mozilla takes another stab at social and tightens security in its desktop browser, while Firefox for Android adds more customization.

Firefox now features a share button.

Mozilla updated Firefox for desktops and Android on Tuesday with new features aimed at giving both versions of the browser a bit more pop.

Firefox for Windows, Mac, and Linux now offers a Share button. The icon looks like a paper airplane and allows people to share the Web site they're on with several services, including Facebook. It leverages the recent Social API to bring a bit of a mobile browser feature to desktops.

The browser also now comes with mixed content blocking. This means that on sites that serve both secure and insecure content, page elements that are served over standard HTTP will be blocked by default. Page elements that arrive over HTTPS will be allowed through.

The change, though small, is expected to cut down on "man-in-the-middle" attacks by preventing potentially malicious content, often added to the page by third parties, from loading.

Mozilla hopes that the Social API will get used to share everything from social network status updates to finance and to-do lists.

You can also change your default search provider or add RSS feeds to your default RSS manager from within the browser, and the browser is arguably the first Android browser to autocomplete URL locations.Firefox for Android gets more substantial updates, including a location bar that automatically hides when not in use. It's a minor change, but one that frees up precious real estate on mobile phone screens.

Firefox has been struggling to gain user attention and market share on mobile, even as it maintains steady interest on desktops, as evidenced by a flat rate of growth even as the Web increasingly add more people.

The browser's less than 1 percent market share on Android is hardly stellar, and it faces increased competition from expected sources like Google's own Chrome for Android, and the less familiar, like Dolphin Browser.