The release of the Firefox 156 web browser has taken place, and updates have been formed for previous long-term support branches — 153.3.0, 140.16.0, and 115.41.0. Within the new two-week release cycle, the Firefox 157 branch has entered beta testing, with a release date scheduled for September 29.
Key innovations in Firefox 156 (1, 2, 3):
- The built-in PDF viewer startup has been accelerated by 45%.
- Memory consumption has been reduced, and CPU load decreased when displaying large JPEG images scaled to fit the page.
- On Windows with ARM64 architecture processors, hardware acceleration for decoding H264 streams has been utilized in WebRTC video calls.
- On macOS, the ability to automatically open the browser after loading the computer has been added.
- The CSS property text-box-trim, defining the margin area around text, now calculates the trim sizes based on the metrics of the font used to render the first line of text, styled with the pseudo-element ‘::first-line’.
- In the Android version, a built-in feature has been added VPN with 50 GB of monthly traffic (activated for a portion of users). It includes the ability to change the position in browser-played video or music directly from the notification area. The Android platform-provided sharing menu has been utilized with additional options, such as sending a tab to another device and scanning a QR code.
In addition to innovations and bug fixes, Firefox 156 has resolved 74 vulnerabilities, most of which are caused by memory handling issues, such as buffer overflows and accessing already freed memory areas. These problems could potentially lead to the execution of malicious code when opening specially crafted pages.
The beta version of Firefox 157 is notable for a significant overhaul of the user interface.
Source: opennet.ru
