14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla has released a new version of Firefox only a few days after the company shipped Firefox 76, so the new update obviously takes many by surprise.
According to Mozilla’s new release schedule for the browser, major Firefox updates are shipped every four weeks, while further refinements land as soon as needed.
And as it turns out, a small revision of Firefox 76 was needed only a few days after this major update shipped.
Mozilla says it resolved two different issues in the browser, and this is the reason the company shipped a new update so fast. More specifically, the company announced Firefox 76.0.1 on all supported desktop platforms in order to resolve critical problems discovered in the original version 76 that shipped this week.
There are two different improvements in Firefox 76.0.1, and the first one concerns a crash that happens on Windows systems. This may actually be the thing that triggered the fast update of the browser, as Firefox 76 encountered issues on devices running Microsoft’s operating system.
More specifically, Mozilla says it discovered an issue that caused the browser to crash on 32-bit Windows systems when NVIDIA drivers are installed.
The company claims only a small number of devices are actually impacted.
“This content crash signature is reappearing in Firefox 76 for 32bit users on windows 7. It's currently accounting for 7% of all tab crashes in the early phase of the 76.0 release,” it’s explained in a bug report.
“It seems Nvidia assigns a different name to 32bit and 64bit. We've implemented a workaround for nvd3d9wrapx.dll which is for 64bit. This time the name is nvd3d9wrap.dll (no trailing X in the name!) which is apparently for 32bit. Let me prepare a simple patch to solve this naming rule,” a Mozilla engineer explained.
Then, Firefox 76.0.1 also comes with a second fix that resolves a problem causing some add-ons to see multiple onConnect events, thus breaking them down. One of the them is believed to be the Amazon Assistant extension, but others could be affected too.
This time, however, the issue is more widespread, and Mozilla explains that it received plenty of complaints from users after installing Firefox 76.
“The loading icon continues for a couple of seconds, followed by the message "Sorry about this, I'm having trouble loading". The issue was 100% reproducible on a variety of machines. We have gotten multiple customer complaints so far after the release today, and given the reproducibility, it seems like it may become a widespread issue as more customers get the latest update,” Mozilla explains.
“Our extension makes heavy use of IFrames and IFrame post-messaging for feature components. Nothing in particular looked especially related from the release note summary for version 76, but the issue may be related to some change that can affect IFrame communication. Another possibility is anything that specifically affects browser action APIs, which is how this feature is generated.”
This time, however, Windows isn’t the only one affected, as similar problems have also been confirmed on Linux.
The issue has been fixed in this new Firefox update, so if you previously experienced problems with extensions after installing Firefox 76, make sure you deploy this build as soon as possible.
Mozilla has also suspended background updates to version 76 of Firefox until the patch was developed to make sure the number of affected devices did not increase.
Needless to say, everyone is recommended to install the new Firefox version as soon as possible, especially if the aforementioned issues have been encountered, regardless of the platform you are using.