14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is now seeding the final release of the Firefox 58.0 "Quantum" web browser on its official mirrors, for Windows, Linux, and macOS platforms, ahead of next week's launch.
The company plans to make Firefox 58.0 official next week on January 23, but it looks like the open-source web browser is now available for download from Mozilla's official download servers. Users can grab the new release right now for Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems, and update their installations.
Firefox 58.0 has been in development for the past two months, during which Mozilla's engineers managed to add streaming compilation and a new two-tiered baseline compiler to make WebAssembly even faster, enable WebVR by default for Mac OS X users, as well as to add support for credit card info on form autofill.
They also optimized the page load by implementing a technique to cache JavaScript internal representation, and improved page render speed for Windows users by integrating the Off-Main-Thread Painting functionality. Other than that, Firefox 58.0 comes with support for the Nepali (ne-NP) locale.
Firefox 58 ships with security fixes for Meltdown and Spectre
While Mozilla patched the Firefox 57 "Quantum" release of the web browser against the severe Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities earlier this month with the 57.0.4 maintenance update, it would appear that Firefox 58 is the first release to come with security fixes for Meltdown and Spectre by default, but not without issue for older Intel CPUs.
"On Windows and Linux, Firefox crashes occasionally on Intel Broadwell-U processors with old microcode. Windows users should ensure Windows Update is set to install updates. Linux users should ensure that the distribution package for Intel microcode is installed," said Mozilla.
This release also blocks profile downgrading to a previous version, and Mozilla now recommends users to use a new profile in case of a downgrade. A crash reporting issue was fixed as well because it accidentally sent background tab crash reports to Mozilla without user's knowledge.
Again, Firefox 58.0 "Quantum" will be officially released next week, on Tuesday, January 23, 2018, when Mozilla will seed it to all supported platforms via OTA (Over-the-Air) updates. You can wait until then to update, or install it right now by downloading the binaries for your operating system using the links above.