Firefox 131 ships with Tab Previews, Temporary Permissions, and other usability improvements

Mozilla released a new version of the Firefox web browser today. Firefox 131.0 is the new stable version of the browser. It is available for all supported operating systems and introduces several new features and improvements.

The details:

• Site permissions may now be granted temporarily to sites.
• Firefox displays previews when hovering over tabs.
• Firefox Translate supports Swedish.
• Links to text snippets on websites can now be shared.
• Security fixes.

Firefox 131.0: new features

Temporary permissions

Firefox is not the first web browser to support temporary permissions, but it is still a welcome feature. The main idea here is to allow sites access to certain features only for the session by default.

You can still enable permanent permissions. This can be useful if you use a website or app regularly and do not want to be bothered by permission prompts each time you open it.

Firefox revokes the permission automatically after one hour or when the tab is closed. A click on the site icon reveals whether permissions are temporary or permanent.

Tab Previews

Tab previews have finally arrived in Firefox 131.0. Just hover over any open tab in the Firefox web browser and you will get a visual preview of the site or app.

You also see the page title and domain name in the preview. Previews work for local and public pages in Firefox.

Firefox users who do not like the feature can turn it off easily:

1. Load about:preferences#general in the address bar.
2. Scroll down to the Tabs section on the page that opens.
3. Uncheck “Show an image preview when you hover on a tab”.

Firefox will only show the page title and domain name from now on.

Linking to text fragments

This feature allows you to link to specific text on a webpage. There does not seem to be a context menu option yet for this, which makes it a bit hard to create this type of links.

To link to text, append #:~:text=TEXT to the address and replace TEXT with text that you want to link to on the page.

Note: Firefox will always pick the first instance of that text on the page. You may need to be specific, if multiple instances of the text are on the page.

Example: https://chipp.in/software/qbittorrent-5-0-is-now-available-with-a-massive-list-of-changes/#:~:text=qBittorrent%205.0

This address highlights the first instance of qBittorrent 5.0 on the linked page.

Check out Mozilla’s detailed instructions for using the feature here.

You can check out the full release notes here.

What is your take on these features? Feel free to leave a comment down below.