Tag: firefox

Mozilla plans to release the first Firefox 127 point update later today. Firefox 127.0.1 will be released for all supported platforms. It is a non-security update that fixes four different issues in the browser.

The release won’t include the fix for YouTube playback issues mentioned earlier this week. It will be in Firefox 127.0.2, so expect this release shortly thereafter.

Concerning Firefox 127.0.1, here is what is fixed in this release:

• Fixed an issue that could cause Firefox users to lose access to sessions of tabs during upgrades. This was caused by a bug that happened only when users would dismiss the primary password prompt.
• Fixed a slow audio speed issue on Linux that started with Firefox 127.0. It only happened if the preference accessibility.monoaudio.enable was set to TRUE.
• The loading of the full Windows installer failed “in some circumstances” when executing the stub installer.
• Firefox has been incorrectly rejecting cookies for “certain websites” since Firefox 127. One affected website is Solarwinds Papertrail.

Mozilla plans to release the new version of Firefox to all supported channels later today.

Firefox 127.0 was released last week to the public. It introduced a number of important changes, including:

• It is now possible to add another layer of protection to the passwords functionality. This is available on Windows and macOS, and adds the operating system’s authentication as the barrier.
• Firefox will upgrade HTTP media on HTTPS pages automatically, or block the media from loading.
• Improved screenshots tool, which now supports taking screenshots from certain file types.

What about you? Have you tried Firefox recently? Did you encounter any of these bugs? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

For approximately four months, some Firefox users have experienced video playback issues while playing videos on YouTube.

Affected users noted that certain videos would stop playing on the site all of a sudden. YouTube would show a loading animation and it appeared that buffering was the culprit in many cases.

When Mozilla started to analyze the issue, it quickly discovered that 1080p or higher quality videos were affected only.

In particular, Mozilla discovered that 1080p, 2k and 4k videos on YouTube were affected when played in Firefox. The issues did not occur on every video playback and not for every user.

The issue is linked to the VP9 protocol that Google uses on YouTube.

Mozilla is keeping track of the issue here, but there is no fix available yet. This has not stopped some of the affected users from trying different things to get the issue fixed on their end.

Here are three solutions that worked for some affected users, but not for all of them:

• Reduce the video quality with a click on the settings icon in the video player and the selection of quality from the menu that opens.
• Install the enhanced-h264ify extension for Firefox. The extension switches playback to H.264 by default, but you can experiment with different codecs to see if any work.
• Try setting the value of network.http.http3.enable to False on about:config.

These workarounds worked for some of the affected users, but not for everyone. Some lower the video quality, but they at least let affected users watch the videos that do not work otherwise.

Another option is to switch to a different browser for the time being, all Chromium-based browsers work, which should not surprise anyone, or third-party services such as Invidious or Freetube.

Did you experience issues on YouTube lately? Google has been cracking down on adblock users heavily in recent time.

Mozilla has launched support for Tab Previews in Firefox Nightly officially. Firefox displays a thumbnail image of the open webpage on hover once the feature is enabled.

Current versions of Firefox display just the title of the website on hover. Firefox shows just the first few characters of a title on the tab itself by default.

While the title is sufficient for some users, others may prefer to see a preview of the actual web content. This may help identify the right webpage and thus tab when switching tabs in Firefox.

Once enabled, Firefox shows a preview of the webpage on hover.

Firefox users who run the Nightly version may enable Tab Previews in the following way:

1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
2. Click on Accept the Risk and Continue.
3. Search for browser.tabs.cardPreview
4. Double-click on browser.tabs.cardPreview.enabled to set the value to True, , if it is not true already.
5. Double-click on browser.tabs.cardPreview.showThumbnails to set the value to True, if it is not true already.
6. Restart Firefox.

You should get previews now when you hover over a loaded tab in the browser.

Disable tab previews: if you do not like tab previews, you can disable them by setting browser.tabs.cardPreview.enabled to False.

A third preference determines how fast or slow previews are shown. This is browser.tabs.cardPreview.delayMs, which you may also change on about:config. The value is in milliseconds. Reduce the number and previews are shown quicker, or increase it, to get more hover time before tab previews are shown.

Bonus tip: set browser.taskbar.previews.enable to True to show up to 20 thumbnail images of open webpages in Firefox when hovering over the Firefox icon on the taskbar of the operating system. You can change that number by modifying browser.taskbar.previews.max on about:config.

Closing Words

Mozilla will enable Tab Previews in Firefox by default in the future. Good news is that users can disable the feature, if they have no use for it. Will take months before the feature lands in Firefox Stable.

Will you keep tab previews enabled or are you using them already in another browser?

Mozilla is working on improving the profile management capabilities of its Firefox web browser. While Firefox has supported profiles for a long time, managing and switching between profiles has not been exactly user friendly.

Currently, Firefox users have two main options to manage profiles. The first is accessible by loading about:profiles in the Firefox address bar.

This opens a page that lists all available profiles, contains options to create a new profile, launch a profile in a new browser instance, or switch the default profile of Firefox.

You may alternatively start Firefox with the parameter -p or -profilemanager to launch the profile manager on startup.

Profiles: profiles are entirely separate in Firefox. This means that no personal data is shared between them. This includes bookmarks, passwords, installed extensions, preferences, and customziations.

The new Firefox profile manager

The new profile manager that Mozilla is working on integrates into the Firefox main menu. A click on the menu icon displays the name of the default profile near the top.

A click on the icon displays all available profiles and management options. The menu lists the following options currently:

• Rename the current profile.
• Delete the current profile.
• Launch one of the other profiles.
• Create a new Firefox profile.
• Manage all Firefox profiles.

The new profile manager is a work in progress. Mozilla plans to launch it in 2024 and some of it is available in Firefox Nightly already.

For that, it is necessary to do the following:

1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
2. Proceed if you see a warning screen.
3. Search for browser.profiles.enabled.
4. Toggle the value of the preference to true with a click on the button on its right.
5. Restart the Firefox web browser.

Closing Words

Better profile management is a welcome addition to Firefox. Long-time users of Firefox know about profiles, but this has not been highlighted to new users in a long time. Most Firefox users are probably unaware of the browser’s profile support.

Adding support to the main menu could change that for the better. You can keep taps on the development on Bugzilla.

What about you? Do you work with different user profiles?

Mozilla’s Firefox web browser could soon block sites and services from bounce tracking Firefox users to improve privacy.

Bounce tracking is a widely used form of tracking that redirects requests. This form of tracking happens in the background, which means that users are usually not aware of it.

Here is an example. A click on Link A should lead to Destination B. With bounce tracking, Bounce C is added, so that the request goes through Bounce C before it reaches the destination.

• Without: Link A > Destination B
• With: Link A > Bounce C > Destination B

There can be multiple bounces. With a bounce server involved in the loading process, users can be identified by the operators of the bounce server.

The W3C Community Group Draft report defines Bounce Tracking in the following way:

Bounce tracking refers to the use of redirects in a top-level context (including HTTP 3xx statuses, meta elements with http-equiv=refresh attributes, and script-directed navigation that doesn’t wait for user input) along with link decoration to join user identities between sites.

Bounce Tracking Protection in Firefox

Mozilla is testing the new privacy feature in Firefox Nightly currently. It runs in dry-run mode currently, which means that it is not blocking, but only reporting.

The data that is collected during the dry run helps Mozilla test and optimize the feature.

It will be enabled fully in Firefox Nightly before it lands in Firefox Stable eventually.

Not the first browser to implement the privacy feature

Mozilla is not the first web browser developer that is adding bounce tracking protection to a browser.

Brave Software introduced the feature back in October 2021 in Brave Nightly. It is now available in Brave Stable and was improved in 2022 with a feature that Brave Software called Unlinkable Bouncing.

This feature reduces the effectiveness of bounce tracking further through the use of temporary DOM storage.

Google’s Chrome browser supports bounce tracking mitigations as well, but only if third-party cookies are blocked in the browser according to this webpage.

Closing Words

Mozilla may be a little bit late to the party, but this is still a welcome privacy addition to Firefox. There is no ETA yet for the integration in Firefox Stable. Provided that tests are successful, it is likely that the feature lands in Firefox later this year.

With the new interim CEO in charge, Mozilla has launched several user-friendly features in Firefox or is working on integrating them.

Have you tried Firefox recently?

Mozilla plans to release Firefox 125.0.3 later today. The point update fixes five non-security issues in the browser.

Here are the bugs:

• Firefox tried to load https://0.0.0.1 in a blank tab when trying to launch another instance of the browser.
• Fixed incorrect font selection for Japanese locale users in some situations.
• Fixed a unicode character text dragging issue on Linux systems.
• Fixed an issue that caused inconsistent focus handling of <select> elements.
• Fixed a correctness error when using arguments.length.

Firefox users affected by one of the issues may want to update the browser as soon as possible. Everyone else should not feel in a hurry to update to the new version.

The next major Firefox release, Firefox 126, will hit the servers on May 14, 2024.

Firefox 125 release history

Firefox 125.0.3 is the second point update for Firefox 125 already. Technically it is the third, but Mozilla decided to release Firefox 125.0.1 instead of Firefox 125 to address a “high-severity quality issue” in Firefox 125 shortly before release.

Firefox 125.0.1 introduced a number of improvements. Highlights were:

• Support for AV1 codec for Encrypted Media Extensions, which enables higher-quality video streams using the technology.
• Text highlighting in the Firefox PDF viewer.
• Proactive blocking of “more” untrustworthy downloads.
• Address saving and auto-filling for users in the United States and Canada.

Firefox 125.0.2 pulled the proactive blocking feature again from the browser as it was causing “unexpected problems”. Mozilla plans to reintroduce it in the Firefox web browser in a future version.

How to check for updates

Most Firefox installations are configured to update to new versions automatically. Users who want to install updates early may select Menu > Help > About Firefox on desktop devices to do so. Note that this works only after the official release by Mozilla.

Have you tried Firefox lately? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Mozilla’s original plan was to release Firefox 125.0. Stable today. This did not happen and Mozilla revealed that it had to postpone the release.

Now it appears that Firefox 125.0.1 has been released, on the same day. The new version of Firefox is already in distribution. Most Firefox desktop installations get updated automatically eventually.

Users who do not want to wait for that to happen may follow the top below to run a manual check for updates.

Tip: you can check your Firefox version by selecting Menu > Help > About Firefox on desktop. On mobile, you select Menu > Settings > About Firefox.

Security information: Firefox 125.0.1 addresses several security issues in the browser. The aggregate security rating is “high” and there appear to be no attacks in the wild. You can check out the security updates here.

Firefox 125.0.1: major changes

Firefox 125.0.1 is a security and feature release. As far as features are concerned, here are the major changes:

• Better media streaming — support for AV1 codec for Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) added. Means that video providers may use this codec to deliver streams to Firefox.
• Firefox PDF Viewer — supports text highlighting now. The feature is rolled out gradually.
• Firefox View — displays pinned tabs in the “open tabs” section.
• Addresses — save and autofill addresses, but only in the U.S. and Canada.
• Downloads — Firefox blocks more downloads that it considers potentially untrustworthy.
• Address Bar — clipboard URLs are now shown as suggestions at the top (but only if the site is not open already).
• Web Proxy Auto Discovery — option to enable the feature when using system proxy settings.

Closing Words

While it is still unclear why the release of Firefox 125.0. had to be cancelled, the same day release of Firefox 125.0.1 is commendable. Mozilla seems to have fixed whatever caused the retraction of Firefox 125.

Firefox 125.0.1 makes the same changes and most users probably do not even notice the release change.

What is your take on this new release? Any feature you like?

Mozilla will release another point update for Firefox 124 later today. Firefox 124.0.2 is a bug fix update that addresses four non-security issues in the browser. Apart from a crash on Linux AArch64, it is fixing a video playback issue that is causing video playback on sites such as Netflix to go blank or crash the browser.

The update is not available yet, but it will be released shortly to the public. You may check Menu > Help > About Firefox to display the current version. Firefox runs a check for updates. Once released, it will download and install the update automatically.

Firefox 124.0.2: the fixes

The main fix of the point update addresses a playback issue on video sites such as Netflix. The bug report offers a very specific example, and it is unclear how narrow the issue is based on it.

According to the report on Bugzilla, the issue was caused on Netflix when users activated the “Inuyasha” icon to play it. Firefox’s window would then flash and go blank. Mozilla reproduced the issue and found out that the issue was caused by a crash of the GPU process.

The new Firefox release fixes several other issues:

• Users with large amounts of bookmarks could not restore backups of bookmarks. This has been addressed in this release. The bug report suggests that this was caused if the bookmarks were crossing the 32766 mark.
• Fixed a crash that affected Linux AArch64 builds. Details about the patch can be found here.
• Fixed the loading of some webpages on Ubuntu 24.04 systems caused by the “changes made to the default AppArmor configuration”.

Closing words

There is no need to rush the update if you have not experienced any of the issues in Firefox. Firefox 125, expected on April 16, 2024, will include these fixes.

Do you use Firefox or another browser as your main driver?