Mozilla Firefox Version 78.0 Released

Mozilla sent Firefox Version 78.0 to the release channel today.  The update reportedly includes security updates but no information has been provided as of the time of this post.

Also released was Firefox ESR Version 68.10.0.


New

• The Protections Dashboard includes consolidated reports about tracking protection, data breaches, and password management. New features let you:
  
  • Track how many breaches you’ve resolved right from the dashboard
  • See if any of your saved passwords may have been exposed in a data breach
  To view your dashboard, type about:protections into the address bar, or select “Protections Dashboard” from the main menu.
  
• Because we know people try to fix problems by reinstalling Firefox when a simple refresh is more likely to solve the issue, we’ve added a Refresh button to the Uninstaller.
• With this release, your screen saver will no longer interrupt WebRTC calls on Firefox, making conference and video calling in Firefox better.
• We’ve rolled out WebRender to Windows users with Intel GPUs, bringing improved graphics performance to an even larger audience.
• Firefox 78 is also our Extended Support Release (ESR), where the changes made over the course of the previous 10 releases will now roll out to our ESR users. Some of the highlights are:
  • Kiosk mode
  • Client certificates
  • Service Worker and Push APIs are now enabled
  • The Block Autoplay feature is enabled
  • Picture-in-picture support
  • View and manage web certificates in about:certificate
• Pocket recommendations, featuring some of the best stories on the web, will now appear on the Firefox new tab for 100% of our users in the UK. If you don’t see them, you can turn on Pocket articles in your new tab, follow these steps.

Fixed

• We fixed bugs in the search results quality composition and improved search result texts based on recommendations by our partners.

Changed

• The minimal system requirements on Linux have been updated. Firefox now needs GNU libc 2.17, libstdc++ 4.8.1 and GTK+ 3.14 or newer versions.
• As part of our ongoing effort to deprecate obsolete cryptography, we have disabled all remaining DHE-based TLS ciphersuites by default.
  • To mitigate web compatibility issues from disabling DHE-based TLS ciphersuites, Firefox 78 enables two more AES-GCM SHA2-based ciphersuites.
• We have disabled TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 to improve your website connections. Sites that don't support TLS version 1.2 will now show an error page.
• The context menu (accessed by right clicking on a tab) lets you undo multiple tab closings with a single click and places Close Tabs to the Right and Close Other Tabs in a submenu.
• A number of accessibility improvements have been made with this release.
  
  • When using the JAWS screen reader, pressing the down arrow in an HTML input control with a datalist no longer incorrectly moves the cursor to the next element after the input control.
  • Screen readers no longer severely lag or freeze when focusing the microphone/camera/screen sharing indicator.
  • Large tables with thousands of rows now load much faster for screen reader users.
  • Text input controls with custom styling now correctly show the focus outline when appropriate.
  • Screen readers no longer sometimes incorrectly switch to document browsing mode unexpectedly when the user enters the main Developer Tools window.
  • We reduced a number of animations such as tab hover, search bar expansion, and others to reduce motion for users with migraines and epilepsy.

References

• Common questions after updating Firefox
• Security Updates
• Release Notes
• Rapid Release Calendar

Remember - "A day without laughter is a day wasted."
May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart...