14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla has just released Firefox 74 for all supported desktop platforms, with the new installers now published on the company’s servers and an official announcement expected any minute now.
You can download Firefox 74 using the links at the end of the article.
Since the release notes aren’t yet available, what we do know about Firefox 74 is that it’s the first release to disable TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1, as Mozilla forces the switch to newer releases. More specifically, this means that if you update to Firefox 74 and you try to load a website that still uses these two old versions, you should get an error reading “Secure connection failed” on page load.
This migration doesn’t come as a big surprise, as tech giants, including Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, and Apple, first announced the switch to newer TLS versions nearly two years ago in an attempt to make the migration as smooth as possible for developers.
Faster releases
Firefox 74 also introduces a key change regarding the release calendar. Beginning with this new version, Mozilla will ship new major releases every four weeks, as compared to six weeks in the case of older versions.
“Shorter release cycles provide greater flexibility to support product planning and priority changes due to business or market requirements. With four-week cycles, we can be more agile and ship features faster, while applying the same rigor and due diligence needed for a high-quality and stable release,” Mozilla said in an announcement last September.
This means the next update, which is Firefox 75, is now projected to launch on April 7, followed by Firefox 76 on May 5.
We will update the article with more information about the new update when the changelog is published, but in the meantime, you can download Firefox 74 for Windows, Linux, and Mac using these links.