The Firefox 90 web browser has been released. In addition, an update to the long-term support branch 78.12.0 has been formed. The Firefox 91 branch, which is scheduled for release on August 10, will soon be transferred to the beta testing stage.
Main innovations:
- In the “Privacy and Security” settings section, additional settings for the “HTTPS Only” mode have been added, when enabled, all requests made without encryption are automatically redirected to secure page options (“http://” is replaced by “https://”). An interface for maintaining a list of exclusions is proposed, for sites from which the ability to use "http://" is retained without forced replacement with "https://".
- Implementation of the SmartBlock mechanism has been improved, which is designed to solve problems on sites that arise due to blocking external scripts in private browsing mode or when strict blocking of unwanted content (strict) is activated. 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. The new version includes adaptive blocking of Facebook widgets hosted on third-party sites - scripts are blocked by default, but blocking is disabled if the user is logged into a Facebook account.
- The built-in implementation of the FTP protocol has been removed. When trying to open links with the protocol identifier "ftp://", the browser will now try to call the external application in the same way as the "irc://" and "tg://" handlers are called. The reason for the termination of FTP support is the insecurity of this protocol from modification and interception of transit traffic during MITM attacks. According to the developers of Firefox, in today's environment there is no reason to use FTP instead of HTTPS to download resources. In addition, Firefox's FTP support code is very old, creates maintenance problems, and has a history of finding a large number of vulnerabilities in the past.
- When saving a page in PDF format ("Print to PDF" option), working hyperlinks are saved in the document.
- The “Open Image in New Tab” button in the context menu has been redesigned to open an image in the background tab (previously, after clicking, it immediately went to a new tab with an image, but now the old tab remains active).
- Work has been done to improve the performance of software rendering in the WebRender compositing system, which uses shaders to perform summary rendering operations on page elements. For most systems with older graphics cards or problematic graphics drivers, the WebRender compositing system has software rendering enabled (gfx.webrender.software=true in about:config).
- Builds for the Windows platform ensure that updates are applied in the background even when Firefox is not running.
- Implemented the ability to use client certificates stored in hardware tokens or operating system certificate stores for authentication.
- Implemented support for a group of HTTP headers Fetch Metadata (Sec-Fetch-Dest, Sec-Fetch-Mode, Sec-Fetch-Site and Sec-Fetch-User), allowing you to send additional metadata about the nature of the request (cross-site request, request via the img tag, a request initiated without user action, etc.) in order to take measures on the server to protect against certain types of attacks. For example, it is unlikely that a handler for transferring money will be referenced via an img tag, so such requests can be blocked without being passed to the application.
- JavaScript implements support for marking methods and fields of a class as private, after which access to them will be open only within the class. For marking, precede the name with a "#" sign: class ClassWithPrivateField { #privateField; static #PRIVATE_STATIC_FIELD; #privateMethod() { return 'hello world'; } }
- The dayPeriod property has been added to the Intl.DateTimeFormat constructor, which allows you to display the approximate time of the day (morning, evening, afternoon, night).
- In JavaScript, the at() method is implemented in the Array, String, and TypedArray objects, which allows using relative indexing (the relative position is specified as the array index), including specifying negative values relative to the end (for example, "arr.at(-1)" will return the last element of the array).
- Added support for deprecated WheelEvent properties - WheelEvent.wheelDelta, WheelEvent.wheelDeltaX and WheelEvent.wheelDeltaY, which will bring back compatibility with some old pages that was lost after the recent WheelEvent rework.
- The Canvas API in the CanvasRenderingContext2D interface implements the createConicGradient() method, which allows you to create gradients around a point at given coordinates (in addition to the previously available linear and radial gradients).
- Added support for the "matrix" protocol URI scheme, which can be used in the Navigator.registerProtocolHandler() and protocol_handlers handlers.
- In the tools for web developers in the panel for tracking server network responses (Response), a preview of downloaded fonts is implemented.
Source: opennet.ru