14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox continues to be one of the most powerful alternatives to Chromium browsers, so every new update that gets the go-ahead is supposed to improve its feature arsenal and further polish the experience with the app on all supported platforms.
Mozilla rolled out Firefox 77 today, and just as expected, there are several notable changes, including a bunch of new features.
First and foremost, Mozilla says there are three different new features in this release.
The first new feature concerns Pocket recommendations, which will now show up in new tabs for Firefox users in the UK. However, while the feature is supposed to help highlight stores that users can find online, Mozilla also includes an option to disable the whole thing if you just want to stick with the original approach.
The Pocket recommendations are currently available only in the United States, Canada, Germany, and starting today, in the United Kingdom. Disabling recommendations is possible from Firefox > Menu > options > Home > Firefox Home content.
Firefox 77 also comes with improvements for WebRender, which is now available for more users running Firefox on Windows. Mozilla explains the following:
“WebRender continues its roll out to more Firefox for Windows users, now available by default on Windows 10 laptops running on Nvidia GPUs with medium (<= 3440x1440) and large screens (> 3440x1440).”
Today’s update also refines the about:certificate page with options to view and manage web certificates, so it’s easier to work with all the data displayed in this screen.
There are seven different security fixes in this update:
- CVE-2020-12399: Timing attack on DSA signatures in NSS library
- CVE-2020-12405: Use-after-free in SharedWorkerService
- CVE-2020-12406: JavaScript type confusion with NativeTypes
- CVE-2020-12407: WebRender leaking GPU memory when using border-image CSS
- CVE-2020-12408: URL spoofing when using IP addresses
- CVE-2020-12409: Memory safety bugs fixed in Firefox 77 and Firefox ESR 68.9
- CVE-2020-12411: Memory safety bugs fixed in Firefox 77
Out of these security flaws, a total of 5 are rated with a high severity rating, while one comes with a moderate rating. Only one has been flagged a low severity rating.
There are also changes concerning developers, and Mozilla explains there are two different improvements specifically made in this regard, as it follows:
- Significant improvements to JavaScript debugging make loading and stepping through sources faster and with less memory being used over time. Source map support also got a lot more reliable and will just work for a lot more cases.
- Added support for the JavaScript API String.prototype.replaceAll() which allows developers to return a new string with all matches to the provided pattern while preserving the original string.
Firefox 77 is now available on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and users are recommended to install the new version as soon as possible, especially because it comes with so many security fixes. As said, some of these issues have been given a high severity rating and patching is the only way to go.
Firefox 78, which is the next major version of the browser is projected to launch on June 30. And this is because Mozilla has switched from six-week release cycle for major browser updates to four weeks, which means that new versions of Firefox are supposed to land much more often now.
Needless to say, beginning today, the company has also started testing the next versions of the browsers as part of the other channels. The Nightly build, for example, currently previews Firefox 79, so if you want to try out in advance everything coming to users two versions from the one released today, this is the browser that lets you do this regardless of the platform you’re using.