The first beta release is now ready for public testing

Mar 14, 2018 18:00 GMT  ·  By

While most Internet users are enjoying their brand-new Firefox 59 web browser with all of its performance improvements and new privacy features, Mozilla works hard on the next major release, Firefox 60.

Continuing the "Quantum" series, Firefox 60 promises to introduce more privacy features by automatically turning off your computer's webcam when you face-mute on sites, and the camera is in use so that the respective website won't record you. The recording will continue when you resume the streaming.

"Firefox now turns off your camera when you face-mute on websites that use your camera, turning off your camera light so you don't have to wonder if the site is still recording you. The light will come back on whenever recording resumes," said Mozilla in the preliminary release notes.

To improve the security of your logins, Firefox 60 will support Web Authentication, which lets you use a USB token to authentication to your favorite websites. Also, Firefox 60 will make it possible for IT admins to customize Firefox deployments in their enterprise environments with the new policy engine.

New developer features, other improvements

With Firefox 60, Mozilla is adding a few new developer features, including the use of promises within IndexedDB transactions, as well as explicit control over whether a certain web page should reload or not, which has been implemented through the Responsive Design Mode.

Other than that, in Firefox 60 it's no longer possible to have multiple bookmark keywords for the same URL, except if there's different POST data present, and the shortcut for entering the built-in Reader View was changed to F9 on Windows systems for improved compatibility with keyboards that use AltGr.

Mozilla Firefox 60 is expected to arrive on May 9, 2018, but it entered beta development stage today so you can download it for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems right now if you want to take it for a test drive. However, please keep in mind that you shouldn't use beta software for any production use.

Firefox 60 will also be Mozilla's next ESR (Externded Support Release) branch to replace the current Firefox 52 ESR series, which means that it will also deprecate legacy add-ons, the upcoming Firefox ESR 52.9.0 release being the last to support them. The end of life for the Firefox 52 ESR branch is currently set for August 28, 2018.