Firefox 89 release with a redesigned interface

The Firefox 89 web browser has been released. In addition, an update to the long-term support branch 78.11.0 has been formed. The Firefox 90 branch, which is scheduled for release on July 13, will soon be transferred to the beta testing stage.

Main innovations:

• The interface has been significantly upgraded. Icon icons have been updated, the style of various elements has been unified, and the color palette has been redesigned.
• The appearance of the tab bar has been changed - the corners of the tab buttons are rounded and now do not merge with the panel along the bottom border (floating button effect). The visual separation of inactive tabs has been removed, but the area occupied by the button is highlighted when you hover over the tab.
• The menu has been restructured. Rarely used and obsolete elements have been removed from the main menu and context menus to focus on the most important features. The remaining elements are regrouped depending on the importance and demand by users. As part of the fight against distracting visual clutter, the icons next to the menu items have been removed and only text labels have been left. The interface for setting up the panel and tools for web developers are moved to a separate submenu “More Tools”.
• Removed the “…” (Page Actions) menu built into the address bar, through which it was possible to add a bookmark, send a link to Pocket, pin a tab, work with the clipboard, and initiate sending material by e-mail. The options available through the “…” menu have been moved to other parts of the interface, remain available in the panel settings section and can be separately placed on the panel in the form of buttons. For example, the button for calling the interface for creating screenshots is available through the context menu shown when you right-click on the page.
• Redesigned the popup sidebar to customize the page with the interface shown when opening a new tab.
• The design of information panels and modal dialogs with warnings, confirmations and requests has been changed and unified with other dialogs. Dialogs are displayed with rounded corners and centered vertically.
• After the update, a splash screen is provided, offering to use Firefox as the default browser in the system and giving the opportunity to choose a theme. There are themes to choose from: system (takes into account system settings when designing windows, menus and buttons), light, dark and Alpenglow (color).
• By default, the button for activating the compact mode of displaying panels is hidden in the interface for setting the appearance of the panel. To return the setting to about:config, the "browser.compactmode.show" parameter is implemented. For users who have compact mode enabled, the option will be enabled automatically.
• Reduced the number of elements that distract the user's attention. Removed unnecessary warnings and notifications.
• A calculator is integrated into the address bar, allowing you to calculate mathematical expressions given in any order. The calculator is currently disabled by default and requires changing the suggest.calculator setting in about:config. In one of the next releases, it is also expected (already added to en-US nightly builds) the appearance of a unit converter built into the address bar, which allows, for example, converting feet to meters.
• Linux builds enable use of the WebRender compositing engine for all Linux users, including any desktop environment, all versions of Mesa, and systems with NVIDIA drivers (previously, webRender was only enabled for GNOME, KDE, and Xfce with Intel and AMD drivers). WebRender is written in Rust and allows you to achieve a significant increase in rendering speed and reduce CPU load by offloading page content rendering operations to the GPU side, which are implemented through GPU-executed shaders. To disable WebRender in about:config, you can use the "gfx.webrender.enabled" setting or start Firefox with the MOZ_WEBRENDER=0 environment variable set.
• By default, the Total Cookie Protection method is enabled, which was previously activated only when the strict mode for blocking unwanted content (strict) was selected. Each site now uses a separate isolated storage for Cookies, which does not allow the use of Cookies to track movement between sites, since all Cookies set from third-party blocks loaded on the site are now tied to the main site and are not transmitted when accessing these blocks from other sites. As an exception, cross-site cookie transfer is reserved for services not related to user tracking, such as those used for single authentication. Information about blocked and allowed cross-site cookies is displayed in the menu shown when you click on the shield symbol in the address bar.
• The second version of the SmartBlock mechanism has been included, designed to solve problems on sites that arise due to the blocking of external scripts in private browsing mode or when enhanced blocking of unwanted content (strict) is activated. Including SmartBlock allows you to significantly increase the performance of some sites that slow down due to the inability to load the tracking script code. SmartBlock automatically replaces the scripts used for tracking with stubs that ensure the correct loading of the site. Stubs have been prepared for some popular Disconnect-listed user tracking scripts, including scripts with Facebook, Twitter, Yandex, Vkontakte, and Google widgets.
• Enabled support for the TLS extension DC (Delegated Credentials) for delegating short-lived certificates that solve the problem with certificates when accessing a site through content delivery networks. Delegated Credentials introduces an additional intermediate private key, the validity of which is limited to hours or several days (no more than 7 days). This key is generated based on the certificate issued by the certification authority and allows you to keep the private key of the original certificate secret from content delivery services. In order to avoid problems with access after the expiration of the intermediate key lifetime, an automatic update technology is provided, which is performed on the side of the original TLS server.
• A third-party (not native to the system) implementation of input form elements such as radio buttons, buttons, drop-down lists, and text input fields (input, textarea, button, select) has been introduced, featuring a more modern design. The use of a separate implementation of form elements also had a positive effect on page rendering performance.
• Provided the ability to manipulate the contents of elements And using the Document.execCommand() commands, preserving the editing history and without explicitly specifying the contentEditable property.
• Implemented the Event Timing API to measure event delays before and after page loading.
• Added the forced-colors CSS property to determine if the browser uses a user-specified, restricted color palette on a page.
• Added @font-face tag to CSS properties ascent-override, descent-override and line-gap-override to override font metrics, which can be used to unify font rendering across browsers and operating systems, and to avoid page layout shifting web fonts.
• The image-set() CSS function, which allows you to select an image from a set of options with different resolutions that is most suitable for the current screen settings and network connection bandwidth, now supports the type() function.
• By default, JavaScript allows the use of the await keyword in modules at the top level, which allows you to more smoothly integrate asynchronous calls into the module loading process and avoid wrapping in an "async function". For example, instead of (async function() { await Promise.resolve(console.log('test')); }()); now you can write await Promise.resolve(console.log('test'));
• On 64-bit systems, the creation of ArrayBuffers structures larger than 2GB (but not larger than 8GB) is allowed.
• Dropped support for the DeviceProximityEvent, UserProximityEvent, and DeviceLightEvent events, which are not supported in other browsers.
• Improved keyboard navigation in editable BoxModel properties in the Page Inspection Panel.
• In Windows packages, the appearance of context menus has been improved and browser launch has been accelerated.
• Packs for macOS implement the use of platform native context menus and scrollbars. Added support for the effect of scrolling beyond the visible area (overscroll), signaling the end of the page. Added support for smart zoom activated by double clicking. Added support for dark theme. Fixed color discrepancies between CSS and images. In full screen mode, the ability to hide panels is provided.

In addition to innovations and bug fixes, Firefox 89 fixes 16 vulnerabilities, of which 6 are marked as dangerous. 5 vulnerabilities (collected under CVE-2021-29967) are caused by memory problems, such as buffer overflows and access to already freed memory areas. These issues can potentially lead to malicious code being executed when specially designed pages are opened.

Source: opennet.ru