A new version of the browser is now up for grabs

Aug 25, 2020 13:39 GMT  ·  By

Mozilla has just released Firefox 80 for all supported desktop platforms, including Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Just as expected since this is a major release of the browser, there are several important changes that are worth highlighting, as well as critical security fixes that make it a recommended update.

First and foremost, there’s the new feature that everybody was waiting for: beginning with Firefox 80, you can configure the browser as the default PDF viewer on the system.

As many Windows users know already, Microsoft itself has put a lot of effort into turning the legacy version of Microsoft Edge into a fully-featured PDF app. And now that the company has migrated to the Chromium engine, similar efforts are directed to the new browser, which is slowly but surely becoming an advanced PDF application too.

Mozilla doesn’t want to be left out of the fun, so it updated Firefox to double as a PDF viewer too. In other words, beginning with Firefox 80, the browser can also be configured as a default PDF viewer on the system, which means that every single PDF document would just open in Firefox.

At the same time, this new release introduces an important accessibility update. Mozilla explains:

“The name reported by accessibility tools for items in multi-tiered tree controls no longer incorrectly includes information from items at deeper levels, providing users with the correct level of content when using a screen reader.”

There are no less than ten different security patches that are included in Firefox 80, as it follows:  

  • CVE-2020-15663: Downgrade attack on the Mozilla Maintenance Service could have resulted in escalation of privilege (high severity rating)
  • CVE-2020-15664: Attacker-induced prompt for extension installation (high severity rating)
  • CVE-2020-15670: Memory safety bugs fixed in Firefox 80 and Firefox ESR 78.2 (high severity rating)
  • CVE-2020-12401: Timing-attack on ECDSA signature generation (moderate severity rating)
  • CVE-2020-6829: P-384 and P-521 vulnerable to an electro-magnetic side channel attack on signature generation (moderate severity rating)
  • CVE-2020-12400: P-384 and P-521 vulnerable to a side channel attack on modular inversion (moderate severity rating)
  • CVE-2020-15665: Address bar not reset when choosing to stay on a page after the beforeunload dialog is shown (moderate severity rating)
  • CVE-2020-15666: MediaError message property leaks cross-origin response status (low severity rating)
  • CVE-2020-15667: Heap overflow when processing an update file (low severity rating)
  • CVE-2020-15668: Data Race when reading certificate information (low severity rating)

In addition, Firefox 80 comes with several fixes, including for crashes experienced when using a screen reader. What’s more, Mozilla says it has improved the Firefox Developer Tools to allow screen readers to access more information that were previously exclusive to the desktop.

The browser also introduces two important changes on all platforms.

First and foremost, it’s the new add-ons blocklist, which now comes enabled by default in Firefox 80, and which according to Mozilla itself, should improve both the performance and scalability.

And then, it’s a tweak for the number of animations that run in the browser for users with reduced motion settings. So beginning with Firefox 80, the tab loading animations have between updated too in order to reduce motions for users who might suffer migraines and epilepsy.

Mozilla is also announcing changes for ESR users.

“Today’s release is the final scheduled for Firefox 68 ESR (68.12) unless there is a critical security issue found prior to the release of Firefox ESR 78.3 on September 22, 2020. Users of Firefox 68 ESR will be automatically upgraded to the Firefox 78 ESR series with the release of 78.3,” the company says.

As usual, the new version of Firefox is shipped through the built-in browser update system, but it can also be downloaded manually using the link in this article.