Firefox releases and news

[JoWa]

Firefox 68.0 has been released: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/

Latest Firefox Release Available today for iOS and Desktop

Firefox 68: BigInts, Contrast Checks, and the QuantumBar

Mozilla Add-ons Blog: Changes in Firefox 68

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/68.0/releasenotes/

Firefox ESR 68: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/68.0esr/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/68.0esr/releasenotes/

Also released today, Firefox 69 beta: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/69.0beta/releasenotes/

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/desktop/#beta

[liosant]

I am fãboy, but use icedragon

[JoWa]

Testing Picture-in-Picture for videos in Firefox 69 Beta and Developer Edition

Also new in Firefox 69: password generator. Search for signon.generation in about:config to enable it.

[EricJH]

I was looking at the releaese notes of v68 and noticed Firefox will have to resort to modify how FF works on specific sites:

Unfortunately, not all webcompat issues are as simple as implementing non-standard APIs from other browsers. Some problems can only be fixed by modifying how Firefox works on a specific site, or even telling Firefox to pretend to be something else in order to evade browser sniffing.

Screenshot of a webpage that blocks Firefox users, but which works perfectly with a webcompat intervention.

We deliver these targeted fixes as part of the webcompat system add-on that’s bundled with Firefox. This makes it easier to update our webcompat interventions as sites change, without needing to bake those fixes directly into Firefox itself. And as of Firefox 68, you can view (and disable) these interventions by visiting about:compat and toggling the relevant switches.

Our first preference is always to help developers ensure their sites work on all modern browsers, but we can only address the problems that we’re aware of. If you run into a web compatibility issue, please report it at webcompat.com.

This is reminiscent of the struggles the standards compliant Opera browser went through in the first decade of the century then with the hegemony and mono-culture caused by Internet Explorer. Opera had to resort to fixing important sites. How the tables turned. Firefox is a standards compliant browser and these days the monoculture of Chromium is making FF look inapt. 

  It's like we're learning nothing while we like to see our Western society as very advanced.  A similar thing is happening with IoT where security is an afterthought and a situation may happen again like with Windows computer in the first half of the previous decade.

[JoWa]

No matter how much something is standardised, the most used implementation(s) become the de facto standard. In this case Blink/WebCore (Chromium/Safari).

Firefox is as important today, as it was when Firefox 1.0 was released, fifteen years ago.

[EricJH]

The former is very unfortunate.

[JoWa]

Mozilla Firefox Adding a New Social Tracking Protection Feature (Bleeping Computer)

Mozilla keeps improving its tracking protection, which debuted with Firefox 35. Firefox 67 added protection against fingerprinting and cryptominers (not really tracking, but part of Enhanced Tracking Protection). Firefox 67.0.1 enabled Enhanced Tracking Protection by default in all (not only private) windows (new installations only).

And now, it seems “social” tracking is the next target. Actually, though, Mozilla has been fighting Facebook specifically for more than a year, with its Facebook Container extension. It was updated to version 2.0 a month ago.

Overall, I am very pleased to see how Firefox has evolved in recent years, from a browser which looked rather obsolete compared to Chrome. Electrolysis has made Firefox more secure, stable, and also faster. WebExtensions has brought a modern architecture for extensions. Quantum has brought speed improvements from the experimental browser engine Servo. And Enhanced Tracking Protection has brought better privacy (and speed). And none of that is done yet. (The Road goes ever on and on…) WebRender (Quantum Render) is the most recent step in the Quantum leap. Fission is a new feature of the sandbox, available in Firefox 69.

Firefox 69 Nightly: Fission can now be enabled (for testing) (gHacks Technology News)

[JoWa]

Intent to Ship: Show an indicator for insecure HTTP in the URL bar

Firefox follows in Chrome’s footsteps and will mark all HTTP pages as ‘not secure’ (ZDNet)

Finally.

[EricJH]

Mozilla Firefox Adding a New Social Tracking Protection Feature (Bleeping Computer)

Mozilla keeps improving its tracking protection, which debuted with Firefox 35. Firefox 67 added protection against fingerprinting and cryptominers (not really tracking, but part of Enhanced Tracking Protection). Firefox 67.0.1 enabled Enhanced Tracking Protection by default in all (not only private) windows (new installations only).

And now, it seems “social” tracking is the next target. Actually, though, Mozilla has been fighting Facebook specifically for more than a year, with its Facebook Container extension. It was updated to version 2.0 a month ago.

Overall, I am very pleased to see how Firefox has evolved in recent years, from a browser which looked rather obsolete compared to Chrome. Electrolysis has made Firefox more secure, stable, and also faster. WebExtensions has brought a modern architecture for extensions. Quantum has brought speed improvements from the experimental browser engine Servo. And Enhanced Tracking Protection has brought better privacy (and speed). And none of that is done yet. (The Road goes ever on and on…) WebRender (Quantum Render) is the most recent step in the Quantum leap. Fission is a new feature of the sandbox, available in Firefox 69.

Firefox 69 Nightly: Fission can now be enabled (for testing) (gHacks Technology News)

The drawing of websites when they are still loading is still slow in Firefox providing sluggish experience despite the performance improvements that were made and noticed and appreciated by yours truly. Opera Classic still beats Firefox handsdown in this respect. Do you know if there are plans on the roadmap to improve this part of Firefox's page rendering?

[EricJH]

Intent to Ship: Show an indicator for insecure HTTP in the URL bar

Firefox follows in Chrome’s footsteps and will mark all HTTP pages as ‘not secure’ (ZDNet)

Finally.

Yuck. It is disheartening to see a major player succumbing to the Anglo-Saxon Culture of Fear.

[JoWa]

The drawing of websites when they are still loading is still slow in Firefox providing sluggish experience despite the performance improvements that were made and noticed and appreciated by yours truly. Opera Classic still beats Firefox handsdown in this respect. Do you know if there are plans on the roadmap to improve this part of Firefox's page rendering?

WebRender (Quantum Render) (not yet enabled by default on all systems) improves performance, and more so in Firefox 68 and 69 than in 67.

Firefox 69 Beta On Linux Bringing Better Performance (Phoronix)

More on WebRender: The whole web at maximum FPS: How WebRender gets rid of jank

Yuck. It is disheartening to see a major player succumbing to the Anglo-Saxon Culture of Fear.

Insecure connections have been marked as not secure in Chrome for a year now, and I’m not aware of that having caused any fear amongst users. If anything, it has made users aware that an insecure connection is in fact not secure. It may also have speeded up the pace in which the web becomes encrypted. A secure connection is now the norm, an insecure one is the bad (and increasingly rare) exception.

[JoWa]

Firefox 68.0.1: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/68.0.1/releasenotes/

Firefox ESR 68.0.1: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/organizations/all/

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/68.0.1esr/releasenotes/

For those who want more tracking protection than Firefox has to offer, the extension Privacy Badger has recently been updated, and now blocks cookie sharing:

Sharpening Our Claws: Teaching Privacy Badger to Fight More Third-Party Trackers

Also a good read about tracking.

[JoWa]

The new password manager, Firefox Lockwise, is built-in and enabled by default in Firefox 70.

New Lockwise Password Manager UI now on autoland

And maybe Tor has come a step closer:

Mozilla Firefox Tor Mode Likely to Start as a Browser Addon (Bleeping Computer)

[JoWa]

New CSS Features in Firefox 68

DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) Update – Detecting Managed Networks and User Choice

DoH can be enabled in the network settings. With it enabled, one can also enable ESNI (Encrypted Server Name Indication for TLS 1.3) in about:config. Set network.security.esni.enabled to true. Not yet widely used, though.

[sAyer]

Firefox sold out. Long Live Waterfox. I'm running legacy Addons next to web extensions with No Telemetry.


Edit: no offense just my opinion.