The release of Firefox 146 has taken place, and updates for the previous long-term support branches — 140.6.0 and 115.31.0 — have been formed. The Firefox 147 branch has entered beta testing, with a release scheduled for January 14.
Key innovations in Firefox 146 (1, 2, 3):
- A 'Split View' mode has been added to view two tabs side by side in one window. This mode is disabled by default and can be activated through the parameter 'browser.tabs.splitView.enabled' on the about:config page. Afterward, an 'Add Split View' option will appear in the context menu when right-clicking on tabs. When this button is clicked on a separate tab, the window will be divided into two parts, and the right part will display the new tab page. If a group of two tabs is selected, those tabs will be opened side by side. In 'Split View' mode, the size of the right and left viewing areas can be freely adjusted by dragging the divider with the mouse. The active tab is highlighted with a red border when viewed simultaneously.
- Support for fractional scaling has been implemented in Linux environments using the Wayland protocol to enhance rendering efficiency on high pixel density displays.
- The built-in Skia graphics library, used for 2D rendering with GPU, has been updated. This update has improved rendering performance and compatibility.
- All users now have access to the Firefox Labs settings section, where experimental features in testing can be activated. Previously, this section was only available in installations where users agreed to participate in experiments or enabled telemetry submission.
- When entering a search query in the address bar, the capability to display search results in a dropdown block of recommendations has been implemented. This feature is not yet enabled by default for everyone and will gradually be activated for an increasing percentage of users.
- The number of countries for which the weather forecast widget displayed on the new tab page has been activated has significantly increased. The location for displaying the forecast can be automatically detected or set manually. Among the post-Soviet countries, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are available. Others can enable the widget through the configuration setting about:config 'browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.discoverystream.region-weather-config' on the about:config page.
- The configurator has redesigned the color override dialog for viewed websites (Contrast Control/Manage Colors), where editable colors are now clearly grouped with explanatory labels.
- Support has been added for automatic backups of saved passwords, bookmarks, internal databases, and other browser data. Backups are currently only supported on the Windows platform but will eventually be available in builds for other operating systems. Backups are created daily and can be password-protected. Later, a backup can be used to restore the state after installing a fresh version of Firefox on another device.
- Support for the Direct2D API has been discontinued on the Windows platform.
- In the macOS builds, a separate process for interacting with the GPU is launched by default, in which operations related to WebGPU, WebGL, and WebRender are executed. If there are failures in the GPU interaction code, instead of crashing the browser, the GPU process will now be restarted.
- WebRTC has implemented the ability to encrypt traffic using the ML-KEM cryptographic algorithm, resilient to quantum computer attack, with the key being transmitted during the connection agreement process using the DTLS 1.3 protocol.
- The WebCrypto API has added support for compressing information about points on an elliptic curve, allowing subsequent mathematical recovery of the full point values. The compression allows for almost a twofold reduction in the size of public keys for traffic and disk space savings.
- The CSS @-rule `@scope` has been added, allowing the restriction of style application to a specified DOM subtree without the need for writing specific selectors. @scope (.article-body) { img { border: 5px solid black; background-color: goldenrod; } }
- Support for the CSS function contrast-color() has been added, which returns the opposite variant of the specified color (it returns black for white and white for black). This function can be used to match the background color to a specific text color and vice versa.
- The CSS property text-decoration-inset has been added to adjust the starting and ending points in text decoration lines (such as underlines, strikethroughs, and syntax error markings).
- Support for the deprecated keyword ‘-webkit-fill-available’, used in the CSS properties ‘width’ and ‘height’ has been added. This is analogous to the yet-to-be-activated default keyword ‘stretch’, allowing elements to stretch until they completely fill the available space in the block.
- In the web development tools, the inspector interface in the Rule sidebar hides unused CSS properties by default, reducing clutter and speeding up panel rendering. There is a ‘Show…’ button at the bottom to return hidden properties to view.
- In the Android version, the file upload interface has been simplified — if the site does not specify the file type, the browser now offers to select a file, take a photo, or record sound.
In Firefox 146, alongside new features and bug fixes, 17 vulnerabilities have been addressed. 12 of these vulnerabilities are due to memory management issues, such as buffer overflows and access to already freed memory areas. These issues could potentially allow an attacker to execute code by opening specially crafted pages.
The beta version of Firefox 147 adds the ability to use the directory ‘~/.config/mozilla’ for storing profiles, extensions, settings, and internal databases according to the Freedesktop.org XDG Base Directory specification. Video playback using hardware acceleration from AMD GPUs has been optimized. The Safe Browsing protocol has been updated to version 5. An option has been added for automatic continuation of video playback in picture-in-picture mode when switching tabs. Support for RFC 9842 (Compression Dictionary Transport) has been added. The Navigation API has been implemented.
Source: opennet.ru
