Mozilla has released Firefox version 50.0 on November 15, 2016. The stable version of the Firefox was postponed in order to integrate startup improvements in the browser.
Mozilla also identified issues in Firefox code in regards to how Firefox and its add-on SDK handle JavaScript loads.
As a result, Firefox 50 has a noticeable better startup improvement. While the time varies and depends on the number of add-ons that are installed, a test by Mozilla revealed that startup performance has improved by 35 percent on systems without add-ons installed.
With speed in mind, Mozilla also improves Find In Page functionality. The feature comes in the form of a checkbox that users can enable for searches. When done, Firefox will return only matched words.
Other Firefox 50 changes:
- Improved video playback for websites without plugins using WebM EME support for Widevine on Windows and Mac.
- Download protection for a large number of executable file types.
- Highlights special permissions with a dot next to the i-icon in the address bar.
- Highlights websites that use the camera with a new camera symbol in the tab bar.
- Tor browser security and privacy improvements integrated.
- Firefox detects if Family Safety is active on Windows 8 or newer versions of Windows.
- The multi-process architecture.
- Introducing new system add-on called Application Update Service Helper.
- Mixed content websites are shown with a green lock in the address bar instead of a green lock with an exclamation mark.
- HIghlights Lets Encrypt root certificate.
- Keyboard shortcut to load a page in Reader mode. Only on pages were Reader Mode is available.
- Improved WebGL availability to more than 98 percent on Windows 7 and newer.
- New preference under General about:preferences#general to cycle through tabs in recently used order when using Ctrl-Tab. Not enabled by default.
- Added Guarani locale.
- Built-in set of Emoji added on systems without native support (Windows 8.0 and lower, and Linux).
Other updates include security updates as well as bug fixes. And as for Firefox for Android, Mozilla simplified the interface by combining the Recent Tabs and History page. Support for HLS videos via player overlay is also added.
Multi-Process Architecture
With version 50, Firefox introduces its first slice of multi-process architecture. The feature that is still rolling out, is already being used in other browsers such as Google Chrome, Apple's Safari, Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer.
What it does is to separate the rendering engine with the process design. And by having additional features in a browser that decodes HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
This dedicated processing design should bring better stability and security to browser, as well as improving speed.
Mozilla assured that it has made a limited number of changes in the version Firefox 50, but the browser has got improvements up to 400 percent because of the separation between the shell of the browser with its renderer. As a result, the responsiveness of the browser has been optimized to 700 percent during the page loading process.
It's also capable to restore the browser at times of crashes. This is possible due to the browser creating multiple rendering process and use separate processes for each tab. This should minimize the possibility to crashing to a greater extent.
Mozilla had a hard time bringing this architecture to Firefox because the browser was never been designed to work using this process. And because the browser has a huge array of extensions, Mozilla also had difficulties in implementing the feature.
Mozilla's shift to a new extension process in 2015 was one of the ways that made it possible to have a multi-process design.
The feature was first available on Firefox 48, but only to selected users. In Firefox 49, Mozilla continued with the same limited available sections. And as of Firefox 50, the feature has been generalized. Developers can now test their extensions with multi-process compatibility. Mozilla aims to expand the more extensions on the next versions of Firefox.