The release of the Firefox 158 web browser has taken place, and updates for the previous long-term support branches — 153.5.0 and 115.43.0 have been formed. As part of the new two-week release cycle, the Firefox 159 branch has entered beta testing, with its release scheduled for October 27.
Key innovations in Firefox 158 (1, 2, 3):
- JPEG XL image decoding support is enabled by default. The MIME type 'image/jxl' has been added to the HTTP header Accept. Like in Chrome, the implementation of JPEG-XL in Firefox is based on the jxl-rs library, written in Rust. JPEG XL can reduce file sizes by 30-50% compared to JPEG images of comparable quality. Among the supported extended features are: HDR, animation, transparency, progressive loading mode, smooth degradation of quality when reducing bitrate, lossless JPEG compression, support for up to 4099 channels, and a wide range of color depths.
- In the 'Smart Window' mode, which provides a separate space for interaction with AI, an autofill feature has been added. When clicking on a field in a web form, AI suggests options based on open tabs and previously saved autofill data. This feature has been activated for a subset of users.
- The background settings on the page displayed when opening a new tab now ensure the preservation of the history of all uploaded background images, not just the most recent one. All images selected by the user can be viewed in the 'Your images' section.
- PDF page saving and printing output have been improved on Linux and macOS. Issues with PDF rendering, such as ignoring mathematical symbols, have been resolved.
- Translation into Belarusian has been implemented.
- By applying subpixel scrolling positioning (without rounding to whole screen pixels), scrolling smoothness on high pixel density screens or when zooming the page has been enhanced.
- Support for typed arithmetic has been added to the CSS function calc(), allowing arithmetic operations that account for specified units of measurement, for example, calc(50vw + 2rem), calc(1000px / 2), or calc(40deg + 2rad).
- In the Notification API and the ServiceWorkerRegistration.showNotification() method, an option named navigate has been added, which defines the URL to navigate to after clicking on the notification.
- For input elements with the attribute ‘autocomplete="webauthn"‘, a pop-up window for passwordless authentication via fingerprint or face recognition has been implemented.
- The PerformanceResourceTiming.deliveryType property has been updated to support the value "cache" for identifying resources retrieved from the cache.
- Support for the WebGL extension EXT_polygon_offset_clamp has been added.
- In the Android version of Firefox, users can now position the tab list panel at the top or bottom of the window.
- A new edition of Firefox Enterprise has been created, with its features described in a separate review.
In addition to new features and bug fixes, Firefox 158 has resolved 77 vulnerabilities, 30 of which are rated as high risk. Most vulnerabilities are caused by memory management issues, such as buffer overflows and accessing already freed memory areas. These issues could potentially lead to the execution of malicious code when opening specially crafted pages.
Source: opennet.ru
