Firefox 64 is the upcoming version of the popular browser. As of this writing, it is available to users on the Nightly channel. With recent builds, Firefox Nightly has interesting new features and improvements, but RSS and Live Bookmarks have been removed.
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Firefox 64 represents the branch built with the new Quantum engine. It comes with a refined user interface, codenamed "Photon". The browser now comes without support for XUL-based add-ons, so all of the classic add-ons are deprecated and incompatible. See
Must have add-ons for Firefox Quantum
Version 64 comes with a number of changes useful to Windows 10 users. I have already written about native Windows 10 notifications. Besides them, Firefox 64 includes integration with the system Share feature.
With a couple of clicks, you can share a page URL between installed modern (Store) apps, or copy it to the clipboard using the appropriate option of the Share pane of Windows 10. Click on the button with the three horizontal dots next to the opened web site's URL to access it.
Add-ons Manager Redesign
The add-ons manager allows managing extensions and themes in Firefox. The following screenshot shows the new design of the add-ons manager that should come with the next version of the Firefox web browser. It features a Card style, where items are shown as cards with space between them. Due to this change, the list of add-ons takes notably more space on the screen, but now it is touch-friendly.
A new about:performance page
Firefox includes a special about:performance page that can be used to figure out which tabs consume a lot of system resources. Finally, this useful page now has its own command in the main menu. It can be opened by navigating to menu - More - Task Manager.
It opens the following page.
Tab Context Menu
Firefox 64 adds a couple of new options to the tab context menu. There, you will find a new command "select all tabs", and a new "move tab" submenu that allows moving selected tabs to the start or end of the tab row, or send them to a new window.
RSS/Atom Feeds and Live Bookmarks gone
Mozilla has decided to discontinue RSS and Live Bookmarks features in the browser. There is no "Subscribe" button any more, there is no sign of RSS in the browser's UI. According to Mozilla, this change improves the security of the browser. Also, the company mentioned that this feature is not popular among Firefox users.
Personally, I find this change ridiculous. Having the ability to discover feeds from the browser was very convenient. Without it, Firefox is far less valuable. I use RSS a lot.
Interested users will have to install an extension hereafter to discover and subscribe to feeds, or use a third-party web service like Feedly.
To try Firefox 64, please refer to the following article:
Run different Firefox versions simultaneously
You'll be able to install Firefox 64 'Nightly' without making any change to your existing Firefox setup.
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I completely agree that RSS disintegration is a backward step. I don’t rely solely on native RSS support as it is. I use it partially but also use the Sage extension which one of a handful of extensions that keep me running Firefox 56.
These Firefox 64 changes, except for RSS disintegration, are the sort of little usability improvements Firefox has struggled to add whilst favouring a butchering of it’s core advantage: extensibility. They finally make these good changes but let themselves down with RSS disintegration. *sigh* Security ? LOL, decreasing code footprint should improve securty, sure. But that’s a simplistic notion. On that basis, they’ll continue to cut useful-to-a-minority features like a bunch of fascists.
About the RSS feeds & live bookmarks i agree with your point of view. I use them a lot too and that’s a pain in the a.. that they decide to throw them away from FF ! Security reason ? i’m not sure really this is a real good reason ! Every hackers has his own method to get infos of users and i think RSS feeds are not their priority ! It will be a miss but luckily the livemarks webextension is here with less easy way to use feeds. Feedly and other 3rd party feeds stuff are there but they’re not so easy to use and manage feeds…That will be another kind of way to use them aftrer all ! It makes me feel like users are only here to obey to their will. I’m always in doubt of the “so good for you” statitical way they decide to keep or leave some functions ! i’m sure lot of people will miss feeds as they were !
(sorry for my bad english, i’m french). Livemarks webextension there : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/livemarks/
Firefox becoming more and more like Windows 10, you spend more time tweaking/securing/disabling telemetry than actually installing it.
I agree. That’s very sad.
Firefox is very different from what it was and we need to accept that transferring affection for it from the past to the present is unwise. That said, I’m guilty of making the mistake myself.
It’s astonishing to think that their management doesn’t realize how removing little used features is a race to the bottom. Since most people are not experts, they will never use the majority of features so FF is becoming a browser for the exclusive use of the ignorant and indifferent. Some extension developers will push back but it’s an unhealthy situation that can never give us what we once had. It’s hard to love Firefox in its present form and of course this is a silly concept in a sense but it’s a lot nicer to like a tool that we use every day and to regard its creators as people who are doing good things for us. At least Vivaldi is in the category that FF has vacated and if Google ever makes their extensions site safe and trustworthy then so much the better.