web browser , which is positioned as a lightweight alternative , optimized for operation on systems with limited resources and low-speed communication channels. The project is developed by a team of Mozilla developers from Taiwan and is primarily aimed at deployment in India, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, China, and developing countries.
The key difference between Firefox Lite and Firefox Focus is the use of the built-in Android WebView engine instead of Gecko, which reduced the APK size from 38 MB to 5.8 MB and allows the browser to run on low-powered smartphones. . Like in Firefox Focus, Firefox Lite includes a content blocker that removes ads, social media widgets, and external JavaScript tracking code. The use of the blocker significantly reduces the size of downloaded data and decreases page loading time on average by 20%.
Firefox Lite supports features such as bookmarks for favorite sites, browsing history, tabs for multitasking, download manager, quick text search on pages, and private browsing mode (which does not save cookies, history, or cache data). Among its advanced features is the Turbo mode for faster loading by removing ads and third-party content (enabled by default), image blocking mode, a cache-clearing button to free up space, and support for changing the interface color scheme.
The new version offers a specialized interface on the start page for planning trips, allowing users to quickly find information about their destination, get a collection of materials about attractions (including articles from Wikipedia and links to photos and videos from Instagram and YouTube), and immediately view information about available hotels (extracted via booking.com). It is possible to create a list of places to visit with quick access to related information collections.
Additionally, the release of the experimental browser Firefox Preview 3.1, developed under the codename as a replacement for the Firefox edition for Android. The release will be published in the catalog soon. (requires Android 5 or newer). The code is available on Firefox Preview. The GeckoView engine, built on Firefox Quantum technologies, and the set of libraries , which are already being used to build browsers and . GeckoView is a variant of the Gecko engine presented as a separate library that can be updated independently, and Android Components includes libraries with standard components that ensure the operation of tabs, input autocompletion, search suggestions, and other browser features.
In the new version locale settings that allow you to change the interface language. By default, access to the about:config page, as careless modification of low-level settings could render the browser non-functional.
January 21. replace the nightly builds of Firefox for Android with Firefox Preview. Users of nightly builds will be automatically transitioned to Firefox Preview. In the spring, Firefox Preview will take over the beta branch of Firefox for Android. The complete transition from Firefox for Android to the new browser is planned to be completed in the first half of this year. Note that Firefox 68 was the last release for which an update of the classic version of Firefox for Android was created. Starting with Firefox 69, the development of new significant releases of Firefox for Android has ceased, and fixes are only provided for the ESR branch of Firefox 68.
Additionally, it can be noted implement support for image format (AV1 Image Format), which utilizes in-frame compression technologies from the AV1 video encoding format, supported since Firefox 55. The container for distributing compressed data in AVIF is entirely analogous to HEIF. AVIF supports both HDR (High Dynamic Range) images and wide-gamut color spaces, as well as standard dynamic range (SDR). Enabling support for AVIF also in Chrome.
Source: opennet.ru
