Mozilla announced Firefox version 79.0, a light release that brings a "protection from unwanted first-party cookies" setting enabled by default, among others.
According to the release note, the update is not exactly a big one, considering that the main change is mostly on the Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0. But still, Mozilla isn't stopping there.
The tracking protection is also configured to deliver best compatibility with loading sites, with an option to whitelist certain sites.
To do this, Mozilla uses the Disconnect List to determine whether the cookies are wanted, and will make exceptions for sites the user has interacted with for 45 days. For everything else, cookies and site data will be deleted daily.
The Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0's settings can also be quickly changed to "strict" or "custom", but with the risk of website loading problems.
With this update, Firefox also made WebRender available to more Windows users with Intel and AMD GPUs, in order to improve graphic performance.
For Enterprise users, Firefox 79 updates the password policy to allow admins to require a primary password (formerly called master password).
On the previous policy, admins could disable the primary password, but not force a primary password. Users required to use a primary password will only be asked to create a primary password the first time they try to save a password.
For developers, Firefox 79 added asynchronous call stacks so developers can trace their async code through events, timeouts, and promises. The execution chains are shown in the Debugger’s call stack, and also on stack traces in Console errors and Network initiators.
Firefox is a fast, full-featured web browser from Mozilla that offers great security, privacy, and protection against viruses, spyware, malware. It can also easily block popup windows.
The key features that have made Firefox popular are the simple and effective user interface, speed, and Mozilla's focus on security and customization options.
In version 79, Mozilla also revealed that the browser for Android is getting "various stability and security fixes", but without explaining them in details.
Firefox 79 also comes with the following:
- Various security fixes.
- Fix to crashes that can happen while using a screen reader. This also includes a fix to the frequently encountered crash when using the JAWS screen reader.
- Firefox Developer Tools received significant fixes allowing screen reader users to benefit from some of the tools that were previously not accessible.
- SVG title and desc elements (labels and descriptions) have been tweaked to be correctly exposed to assistive technology products, like screen readers.
- Fixing erroneous network responses with 4xx/5xx status codes display as errors in the Console.
- Showing JavaScript errors not only in the Console, but also in the Debugger.
- Opening SCSS and CSS-in-JS sources from the Inspector works more reliably thanks to improved source map handling across all panels.
- Inspecting accessibility properties from the browser context menu has been made available to all users by default.
- Firefox users from Germany can see more Pocket recommendations on the browser's new tab page.
Previously, Mozilla released Firefox 78.0 and Firefox ESR 78.0 on June 30, 2020. The rollout of that release had to be paused a day after release to fix issues in the browser.