Mozilla Firefox

[Zema Bus]

I hate when they do that too. I encountered one of those sites a few days ago, I went to a site that I thought might have what I was searching for only to find it wasn't even a good site and I immediately went to go back but my back button was grayed out, so I couldn't back out to my carefully thought out search query.

[Grogan]

There's a Firefox 141.0.2 today. They skipped .1 again. No release notes yet, but all the bits are available here:

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/141.0.2/

[Grogan]

I see there's a Firefox 141.0.3 now:
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/141.0.3/

No idea what it's about (no release notes yet).

P.S.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

Fixed a regression that caused issues on sites built with the Svelte framework. (Bug 1980081)

Fixed an issue where cryptominers were not listed as blocked in Strict Tracking Protection. (Bug 1977066)

[Grogan]

Firefox 142.0 is out today, but of course, no release notes
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/142.0/

Apparently a new feature is that the extensions API now has AI language model support. Oh boy.

P.S. Firefox 142.0 Release Notes:
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

Best to just see the link v.s. a paste, as there are graphics depicting major feature changes.

[Grogan]

Firefox 142.0.1 now, with release notes:
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

Dragging multiple non-adjacent tabs in horizontal tab strip mode now correctly moves them together as a group. (Bug 1982933)

Dragging multiple tabs no longer causes toolbar unresponsiveness or visual glitches. (Bug 1984342)

Fixed an issue where the text cursor appeared in the wrong location.. (Bug 1984045)

Fixed a crash related to gamepad use, particularly on macOS. (Bug 1870379)

Fixed an issue where the expand on hover feature in the sidebar would sometimes stop working. (Bug 1982129)

Fixed a crash in KDE Plasma when using certain custom window decorations. (Bug 1984823)

[Zema Bus]

Microsoft Copilot has been added to Firefox Nightly, in the sidebar.

Microsoft CoPilot chatbot support has added in the latest Firefox Nightly builds.

As the testing bed for features Mozilla wants to add to stable builds (though not all make it – eh, rounded bottom window corners?), this is something you can expect to find in a future stable update.

Firefox’s sidebar already offers access to popular chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Le Chat’s Mistral and Google’s Gemini. It previously offered HuggingChat too.

The latest Firefox Nightly builds add Microsoft’s CoPilot to the mix

From omgubuntu.co.uk

firefoxNightlyCoPilot.jpg

At least it's only in the sidebar.

[Grogan]

Well, as long as they keep the about:config directives so I can completely disable that silly shit (and don't even see the checkbox in the sidebar UI to enable it), I don't care

I have no interest in AI generated results at this time.

[Grogan]

Firefox 143.0 is out now
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/143.0/

No release notes yet.

[Grogan]

So that Microsoft Copilot shit made it into Firefox 143.0. I don't see that AI stuff because of my about:config but

Release notes:
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

On Windows, Firefox now supports running websites as web apps pinned directly to the taskbar. These are sites that you can pin and run as simplified windows directly from the taskbar without losing access to your installed add-ons. This feature is not currently available for Firefox installs from the Microsoft Store.

Tabs can now be pinned by dragging them to the start of the tab strip, making it easier to keep important sites within reach.

Copilot from Microsoft can now be chosen as a chatbot to use in the sidebar for quick access without leaving your main view.

When a site asks for camera access, it can now be previewed inside the permission dialog. This is especially helpful when switching between multiple cameras.

The Firefox address bar can now show you important dates and events. This feature supports displaying events (e.g. “Mother’s Day”) in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy regions.

Firefox has expanded its Fingerprinting Protection by reporting constant values for several more attributes of user's computers.

When downloading a file in Private Browsing mode, Firefox now asks whether to keep or delete it after that session ends. You can adjust this behavior in Settings.

Firefox now supports Windows UI Automation, which improves support for accessibility tools such as Windows Voice Access, Text Cursor Indicator and Narrator.

Various security fixes.

Always shiny new crap and security/privacy, but never performance improvements.

[Zema Bus]

I've found that the sidebar is only enabled by default on new Firefox installs, it's disabled by default on all my existing installs that predate the sidebar introduction.

[Grogan]

Yes, I don't use it (I don't like "sidebars"), but I used to have a checkbox to enable AI on it.

[Zema Bus]

143.0.1

[Grogan]

Always a few days after a .0 release. At least in the 142 cycle there was only one.

Ahh well, I have to head out for supplies, I'll just run my script and it will be downloaded and built when I get back. (takes 40 minutes in total... probably 15 minutes of that is the profiling step)

P.S. Actually it's nothing for us, it's a fix for Windows and Trend Micro dlls
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

Fixed a tab crash experienced by some users caused by DLL injection. (Bug 1872261)

[Grogan]

There's a Firefox 143.0.3 now (they skipped .0.2)

No release notes yet, but the bits are here
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/143.0.3/

I have to test the toolchains anyway.

[Grogan]

Firefox 143.0.3 release notes:
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

Adjusted the timing of the new drag-to-pin interaction cue for better reliability. (Bug 1989344)

Fixed an issue that prevented some extensions from updating via the Add-ons Manager. (Bug 1984724)

Fixed a regression that prevented Firefox View sections from collapsing/expanding as expected. (Bug 1989200)

Addressed a WebExtensions storage issue that could cause Firefox to crash on startup with certain extensions installed. (Bug 1989840)

Fixed an issue where opening an add-on's "Extension settings" from the post-install prompt could break the Customize tab and some keyboard shortcuts until restart. (Bug 1983869)

Reduced long delays when loading certain websites while connected to networks that block UDP connections. (Bug 1980812)

Various stability and security fixes.

That last bug, "Reduced long delays..." is interesting. When blocking UDP, it was causing delays (timeouts) because of failures to negotiate http3

Based on the log, here’s what happens:

1. Firefox first tries to connect to the site using h3, but that fails—likely because UDP is blocked.
2. It then attempts to fallback to h2.
3. The transaction’s NPN token is set to h2, but the server doesn’t negotiate h2.
4. As a result, Firefox can only wait for the h3 connection to time out (30s) before trying the next connection attempt.

For the fallback, it might not be correct to assume that the server will accept h2, even if the HTTPS record indicates it could. Due to load balancers or other configuration issues, the server may only accept HTTP/1.1 at the moment. A possible fix would be to avoid forcing the NPN token to h2 during fallback, and instead let the server decide which protocol to use.

(Umm, what fucking genius decided it was OK for a firewall/gateway to block UDP? That's the real problem)

[Grogan]

Bloody Hell... there's a Firefox 143.0.4 now already
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/143.0.4/

WITH release notes

https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

Improved Firefox' connection fallback behavior to mitigate sporadic slow/failed loads on some Google sites on systems with certain third-party software installed. ([url=https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1990699Bug 1990699[/url])

It looks like once again, it's related to http3 -> http2 fallback.

[Grogan]

Firefox 144.0 is available now, with no release notes yet

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/144.0/

I guess I'll get started on it.

[Grogan]

Firefox 144.0 Release Notes
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

Focus on just one tab in a group without the clutter. Your active tab now stays in view, keeping things tidy even with the group collapsed.

We’re excited to share another tab groups update that addresses a top request from our community! You can now drag a tab into a collapsed group without automatically expanding it. It’s a quick way to stay organized while minimizing visual distractions.

Profile management, now rolling out gradually to users globally over the next few weeks, helps you protect your privacy and stay focused by separating your online life into distinct profiles for work, school, vacation planning, or whatever you choose. You can name your profiles and customize them with avatars and color themes for easy recognition, then quickly switch between them while keeping bookmarks, tabs, and browsing history completely separate. The new Profiles feature is available for Windows 11, Mac, and Linux users, with Windows 10 support coming soon.

You can now close a Picture-in-Picture window without pausing the video. Press Shift + Click on the close button or use Shift + Esc to exit while keeping playback uninterrupted.

Logins stored in the Firefox Password Manager are now encrypted on disk using a modern encryption scheme (AES-256-CBC), replacing the older 3DES-CBC. This change improves local data protection. Logins synced through Firefox Sync remain end-to-end encrypted and already use AES-256-GCM.

Visual search powered by Google Lens

With just a right-click on any image, you can now:
Find similar products, places, or objects
Copy, translate, or search text from images
Get inspiration for learning, travel, or shopping

Look for the new “Search Image with Google Lens” option in your right-click menu (highlighted with a NEW badge at first).
This is a desktop-only feature, rolling out worldwide. Your default search engine must be set to Google in order to use it.

Perplexity AI Search in Firefox

On desktop, Firefox now includes Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine built into the browser. Perplexity delivers direct, conversational answers to complex questions, helping you get quick summaries, accurate references, or creative inspiration without digging through multiple sources. It’s rolling out worldwide from the address bar via the unified search button.

Various security fixes.

With the exception of security fixes, I don't give a flying fuck about all this crap (and Google will never be set as my search engine again). I would rather see performance improvements before gimmicks.

[Grogan]

Bloody Hell, Phoronix never fails to irk me. I really should stop even going to that site, because I always come away annoyed.

He doesn't care about the Firefox 144 release (and no other coverage of it), he thinks 145 Beta is more significant because they are removing 32 bit support. Even within that, 145 isn't very interesting to him except for gloating about deprecating shit that other people are using.

Firefox 144.0 is now available but it's not a particularly exciting browser release. But with Firefox 144 stable now comes Firefox 145 beta and that is a bit more noteworthy as it ditches 32-bit Linux support.

You'd think the big thing he'd be crowing about is Matroska (.mkv) support, but no... he knows gloating over removing 32 bit Linux support will stoke his peanut gallery.

Aside from ending 32-bit Linux support, Firefox 145 Beta isn't too exciting but does make horizontal tabs now slightly more round, a few JavaScript additions, and then Firefox finally enabling Matroska support for commonly used codecs. The Matroska support covers the AVC, HEVC, VP8, VP9, AV1, AAC, Opus, and Vorbis codecs.

Deliberately not posting a link. I don't want to be the one promoting that claptrap.

[Zema Bus]

The comments aren't so great either, just about every one of them turns into a flame war, and now that he has those thumbs down, thumbs up buttons under posts the members are abusing the thumbs down button. People with legitimate perfectly fine posts will get multiple thumbs down. I never joined that site and never will.

Here's another Linux news site, I've read some of their articles before. This is their coverage of Firefox 144.

[Grogan]

I posted there for a brief period several years ago, but I soon realized what a pissy little peanut gallery it had become, and deleted everything I could from my profile and never logged in again. I take a look at the forum comments sometimes and it's always the same pontificating pricks.

I'll spend some time at that 9to5linux site. It's got to be better reading than that.

[Grogan]

Just when I thought we had a perfect Firefox release (it stayed at 144.0 for some time) we have a Firefox 144.0.2 today (and they skipped .0.1)

With release notes:
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

Fixed an issue where the list of available locales in about:settings contained more locales than were downloaded or currently supported. (Bug 1994642)

Fixed an issue where using the keyboard to open the Unified Search dropdown was inconsistent. The dropdown now expands properly, allowing users to select a search engine using the keyboard. (Bug 1979826)

Fixed an issue where curated photo collections on Microsoft OneDrive's Photos “For You” page failed to load, showing a gray screen instead of content. Collections now display as expected. (Bug 1986533)

Fixed a startup crash affecting Windows users with Avast or other security software installed. (Bug 1992678)

Fixed an issue on macOS where the emoji picker shortcut and menu entry stopped working after switching between apps. (Bug 1980815)

Fixed an issue on macOS where dragging images from Firefox into third-party apps like Preview could fail or behave unexpectedly. (Bug 1995345)

Fixed performance and video playback issues on macOS 26 (Tahoe) that occurred when the system was under heavy load. (Bug 1995638)

Fixed a browser hang on macOS 26 (Tahoe) that could occur when bookmark folders contained loops or repeated references to themselves. (Bug 1995621)

Security fix.

A startup crash with antivirus software... say it isn't so. AV software is such a fucking nuisance, I wouldn't use it even on Windows nowadays. Even Windows Defender causes problems. From reading threads in the Steam forum, it often prevents games from saving and shit and people have to add exclusions.

[Zema Bus]

I sure don't miss the Windows days, or the gaming in Windows days I'll never forget back when I used to use those Windows local activation utilities, I kept them stored on my NAS drive, and if I happened to go to my NAS drive in Windows to get something Windows Defender or whatever they called it back then would scan my NAS drive and pull off anything it didn't like, falsely claiming it was a virus, especially those utilities.

[Grogan]

Yeah, I learned to disable antivirus when inserting my stick in people's computers. One time that asshole Bitdefender deleted the very programs from my stick that I was going to use. I remember one of them being a password decryptor I needed to recover their mail password but there was something else too that I needed. Not quarantined, deleted (I was incredulous that it did that). I had to buzz home and reload my stick.

[Grogan]

Firefox 145.0 now, but no release notes.

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/145.0/

We already know they've added MKV container support for most video codecs in this release.

[Grogan]

Firefox 145.0 Release Notes:
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

There's actually quite a bit of shit here

New

Add, edit, and delete comments to make your own notes in PDFs (summaries, questions, tasks, etc.). The comment sidebar helps you scan all your comments and quickly jump to them, which is handy for long or heavily marked-up PDFs.

This version introduces a new phase of privacy protections, building on our research on reducing browser fingerprinting. These new defenses cut the percentage of users seen as unique almost in half, ensuring a safer and more private browsing experience in Private Browsing or when using Enhanced Tracking Protection set to Strict.

Need a reminder of what tabs are in a group? Hover over the tab group name to get a preview of the tabs inside without opening it.

You can now access and manage your saved passwords right from the sidebar—no need to open a new tab or window. Stay on the page you’re on and get to your logins faster.

Copy Link to Highlight allows users to share arbitrary sections of a page with others by copying a link through the context menu with a given selection

The Translations feature has an improved experience when translating between languages with different script directions.

New brand-inspired wallpapers are available for New Tab on desktop, with versions for both light and dark mode.

With the new Open links from apps next to your active tab setting, you can have links from other applications open next to your active tab instead of at the end of the tab strip.

A screenshot of the Open links from apps option in preferences

Enhanced Bounce Tracking Protection’s stateless mode is now enabled by default in ETP Strict, blocking more advanced tracking techniques based on redirection

For most Windows users, the existing desktop shortcut for launching Firefox has been replaced with the desktop launcher, a small program that will launch Firefox if it is installed, but if it is not installed will prompt the user to install Firefox. This will provide an easy installation point for Firefox users who acquire a new Windows device, where Firefox will not be installed by default, but the desktop launcher program may have synced via OneDrive or other cloud storage product. Learn more.

Fixed

Various security fixes.

Changed

Firefox no longer supports 32-bit Linux systems. We recommend installing the 64-bit version for continued updates and support.

Horizontal tabs are now slightly more rounded to match the look of vertical tabs. Buttons and text inputs, including the address bar, have also been updated for consistency.

When no extensions are installed, clicking the Extensions button now shows a message highlighting how extensions can enhance your browsing, with links to the Firefox Add-ons store.

Local translation models are now compressed with Zstandard, reducing download sizes and on-device storage consumption. As always, all Firefox translations happen securely and privately on your local device, unlike other browsers that translate using cloud services.

We updated default automation preferences to better support Agentic browsing, reducing the steps agents need to complete a task and chances for the agent to get stuck.

[Grogan]

There is a Firefox 145.0.1 today (usually happens whenever I forget to check earlier in the day lol)
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/145.0.1

The astonishing thing is that there are release notes already (it's only been a matter of hours since some of these changes were even approved)

https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/1 ... easenotes/

Fixed an issue causing breakage on sites using Three.js. (Bug 1995939)

Fixed a failure to open Firefox from the desktop launcher on older versions of Windows 10. (Bug 2000411)

Fixed Web compatibility issues with Rogers. Rogers customers would see a broken iframe with "Firefox Can’t Open This Page" when viewing bills, rather than the billing info. (Bug 1996823)

Fixed an issue in the Web Developer Tools preventing copy all or save all requests as HAR. (Bug 1995694)

So Firefox had to work around Rogers' shitty customer portal code, by the sounds of that. Sounds like the IE 6 situation all over again (people doing stuff that just happens to work in chrome backends). It's what they call (and it's implemented as) a "WebCompat Intervention"


P.S. Actually the "Bug 1996823" report is an interesting read, I should provide it:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1996823

This post, by Emilio Cobos Alvarez, summarizes the issue:

Ok, so I think at this point the main theory is:

They are hooking the proxy stuff on the iframe load. But they do only on one load event, so for the case where they insert the iframe, then they change source, Firefox fires only one load event (for the right page), but other browsers load both about:blank synchronously, and the right page, which doesn't get the hooks.

If so, it seems this is mostly working by chance in Chrome and WebKit. They should probably either fix their hooks, or at the very least change the code from window.location.href = "#foo" to something like:

let url = new URL(window.location.href);
url.hash = "#foo"
window.location.href = url.href;

Can we contact them about that?

The fact that window.location.href = "#foo" uses a totally different base URI seems extremely weird. I filed https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11852 about it.

[Zema Bus]

Interesting. Since most browsers these days are based on Chromium maybe that's all the web developers tested against.

[Grogan]

Yep, and it's another case of the browser setting the "standard" instead of compliance.

(same html standard github issue link as above)
https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11852

All Location setters use the entry settings object. Which I agree is bad/weird as there's a relevant document right there. But changing that seems unlikely to be web-compatible however many decades in we are now. And making #blah different from /blah or ?blah is unlikely to enthuse API consumers.

[Grogan]

So for a while now I've been seeing seccomp sandbox violations on my console. At first I wasn't sure if it was Firefox or Steam (it's BOTH... chrome and firefox both use seccomp sandboxing)

Code: Select all

[2926] Sandbox: seccomp sandbox violation: pid 2926, tid 2955, syscall 72, args 37 1027 28 139666782158872 139666782158872 0.

(Process 2926 was firefox -contentproc in this example)

I thought, shouldn't the process fail if it's violating the sandbox? I wasn't noticing any bad symptoms. So I didn't bother. Firefox is often noisy.

I read Mesa bug reports every day, and this got reported to Mesa. It's actually this (mozilla), but caused by a change in Mesa where they have started using a different method of testing file descriptors. They say only 25.3 but the commit got backported to at least 25.2.6 because I think that's where I first started seeing it (and I used that release for quite a while because 25.2.7 breaks vulkan video)

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1995035

This is F_DUPFD_QUERY, added in kernel 6.10 (2024-07-14). It's harmless and generally useful: fcntl(fd0, F_DUPFD_QUERY, fd1) tests if the two fds refer to the same file description. It's a simpler alternative to kcmp with KCMP_FILE (which we have carefully filtered to allow this use case and not others).

It's used by Mesa as of this commit that seems to be in 25.3 which hasn't been released yet. Mercifully, only EBADF is treated as a hard error, so the fact that we'll fail with ENOSYS rather than the expected EINVAL on non-Nightly shouldn't be a problem, and unpatched Firefoxes will fall back to kcmp. So this isn't urgent, but it's a simple fix and I'll look into it.

(We do still need to keep the kcmp rule around, because we'll still need to deal with all the existing Mesa versions that use it and not F_DUPFD_QUERY, or newer Mesa on older kernels, etc.)

This Mesa commit:

F_DUPFD_QUERY has been introduced in 6.10 exactly for the purpose
of telling if 2 fd points at the same file description so use it
first.

If it's not supported, we'll get r=-1 and errno=EINVAL, and we can
fallback on KCMP or epoll.

So the reason the error isn't fatal is because on Firefox stable (should be fixed in Nightly now) it falls back to the KCMP syscall after ENOSYS error (function not implemented). On Nightly it was failing with EINVAL (invalid argument) which is fatal to the firefox process.