Category: Firefox

Google regularly pays other companies to be the default search engine, including Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox browser. For that, a US federal judge has ruled that such deals have a "significant effect" on maintaining Google's search monopoly, preventing other search engines from competing fairly and entrenching Google's dominance. Google is officially recognized as a monopolist with its search market share about 95%.

Firefox 129.0, a stable version, is now available with improvements to Reader View and HTTPS as the default protocol in the address bar for non-local sites. Mozilla has released installers and binaries browser for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Firefox 130, which is currently in Nightly and is expected to be released on September 3, will be able to automatically open picture-in-picture when switching from the tab where the video is displayed. So if you were watching something, but switched the tab, the video will open in a flyout. After returning to the original tab with the video, the picture-in-picture mode will be automatically disabled.

Firefox 128 stable is now available for everyone. The release is notable for bringing with it an option to translate selection only, a new dialog to clear browsing data, JPEG-XL image support, and more.

Starting in Firefox 129, you can enable vertical tabs and free up vertical space. This actual on wide screen displays which are common these days. While several browsers on the market already offer such an option, it took Mozilla quite a long to implement vertical tabs. Despite having a number of extensions for the same in the own add-on store, Firefox's implementation is a core feature.

Mozilla has announced that they are experimenting with integrating a chatbot into Firefox. It uses advanced language models to communicate with users using the natural language. The company starts testing the new feature this week in nightly builds of Firefox.

A couple of days ago Mozilla released the Firefox 127 web browser, and its long-term support branch counterpart, version 115.12.0 . Firefox 127 includes a new option to close duplicate tabs from the all tabs list, HTTPS is now force enabled for images, audio, and video embedded via HTTP, and a minor user agent change on 32-bit devices. In addition, on Windows, Firefox now supports preloading. Similar to Edge, it will run in the background to start instantly when you need it.

Firefox has taken the path of using artificial intelligence features. With the upcoming release of Firefox 130 on September 3, the browser will introduce a feature that automatically creates text descriptions for images, known as the ALT tag. Nightly builds of Firefox already include this feature in the inbox PDF viewer. Initially, the option will generate descriptions only for newly added images, but the plan is to eventually extend this functionality to any image visible in the browser.

Nightly builds of Firefox, which represent Firefox 128, now include a weather widget. It appears every time you open a new tab page, and has a few options.

Without fanfare, Mozilla closed a bug in Firefox discovered 23 years ago. This was due to the fact that passwords in GET requests were stored in the browsing history and could subsequently be stolen without much effort.