Firefox Lite 2.1 and Firefox Preview 3.1.0 mobile browsers available

Took place issue web browser Firefox Lite 2.1, which is positioned as a lightweight option Firefox Focus, adapted to work on systems with limited resources and on low-speed communication channels. Project develops by the Mozilla development team based in Taiwan and is aimed primarily at deliveries to India, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, China and developing countries.

The key difference between Firefox Lite and Firefox Focus is the use of Android's built-in WebView engine instead of Gecko, which reduced the size of the APK package from 38 to 5.8 MB, and also made it possible to use the browser on low-power smartphones based on the platform. Android Go. Like Firefox Focus, Firefox Lite has a built-in inappropriate content blocker that cuts out ads, social media widgets, and external JavaScript to track movement. The use of a blocker can significantly reduce the size of downloaded data and reduce page loading time by an average of 20%.

Firefox Lite supports features such as bookmarking favorite sites, browsing history, tabs for working with multiple pages at the same time, a download manager, quick search for text on pages, private browsing mode (Cookies, history and data in the cache are not saved). Advanced features include Turbo mode to speed up downloads by cutting out ads and third-party content (enabled by default), image blocking mode, a cache clear button to increase free memory, and support for changing the color scheme of the interface.

Firefox Lite 2.1 and Firefox Preview 3.1.0 mobile browsers available

The new version on the start page offers a specialized interface for travel planning, which allows you to quickly find information about a place of interest, get a selection of materials about attractions (an article from Wikipedia and links to photos and videos from Instagram and YouTube) and immediately view information about free hotels ( information is retrieved through the booking.com service). It is possible to compile a list of places that you would like to visit, with a quick transition to the collections of information associated with them.

Firefox Lite 2.1 and Firefox Preview 3.1.0 mobile browsers available

Additionally, took place release of the experimental browser Firefox Preview 3.1, developed under the code name Fenix as a replacement for the Firefox edition for Android. In the near future the issue will be published in the catalog Google Play (requires Android 5 or later to work). The code is available at GitHub. Firefox Preview uses GeckoView engine built on Firefox Quantum technologies and a set of libraries Mozilla Android Components, which are already used to build browsers Firefox Focus ΠΈ Firefox lite. GeckoView is a variant of the Gecko engine that is packaged as a standalone library that can be updated independently, while Android Components includes libraries with generic components that provide tabs, input completion, search suggestions, and other browser features.

In the new version added locale settings that allow you to change the interface language. Default disabled access to the about:config page, since inaccurate changes to low-level settings could render the browser inoperable.

21 January is planned replace nightly builds of Firefox for Android with Firefox Preview. Nightly build users will be upgraded to Firefox Preview automatically. In the spring, Firefox Preview will replace the beta branch of Firefox for Android. The complete replacement of Firefox for Android with a new browser is scheduled to be completed in the first half of this year. Recall that Firefox 68 was the last release for which an update to the classic edition of Firefox for Android was generated. Starting with Firefox 69, major new releases of Firefox for Android have been discontinued, and patches are only shipped for the ESR branch of Firefox 68.

Firefox Lite 2.1 and Firefox Preview 3.1.0 mobile browsers availableFirefox Lite 2.1 and Firefox Preview 3.1.0 mobile browsers available

Additionally, it can be noted intention implement image format support in Firefox 76 AVIF (AV1 Image Format), which uses intra-frame compression technologies from the AV1 video encoding format, which has been supported since Firefox 55. The container for distributing compressed data in AVIF is completely similar to HEIF. AVIF supports both images in HDR (High Dynamic Range) and Wide-gamut color space, as well as in standard dynamic range (SDR). Enabling AVIF support also expected in Chrome.

Source: opennet.ru