A new interesting feature is going to be introduced in Firefox 48. It will get a Narrate option for the Reader view. Once the user enters this mode, he can enable the speech synthesizer, which will read aloud the page content for you using a computerized voice. Let's explore this feature in detail.
Category: Firefox
Everything you need to know about Firefox 45
Firefox 45 is out for Desktop PCs and for Android. This release will have long term support (ESR), which means it will get updates for the duration of an entire year. Firefox 46 will now become the beta branch and Firefox Developer Edition will get version number 47.
Firefox has got a variable release schedule
Mozilla developers have decided to switch from doing frequent planned releases of Firefox to a variable schedule. From now, Firefox will quit the version race started by Chrome and will be released less frequently.
Firefox 44 is out, here is the change log
Today, Mozilla is rolling out a new version of Firefox. The new version includes a number of changes you might be interested in knowing. The new build should be delivered to your PC tomorrow or today using the default Firefox update service. Let's see what has changed under the hood of this new build.
Mozilla has postponed add-ons signature requirement till Firefox 46
As you might be knowing, Mozilla was going to remove the option xpinstall.signatures.required from about:config in Firefox 44. Once this option would have been removed, the user would have been unable to bypass the digital signature enforcement for add-ons. Mozilla has changed their mind and decided to keep the option till the Firefox 46 release.
Firefox will get Load Temporary add-ons feature
As you may already know, Firefox 44 and above won't allow you to run unsigned add-ons. Mozilla developers decided to remove the ability to disable the signature enforcement, which can still be disabled in Firefox 43. However, it was announced that the stable branch of Firefox will get a new option which will allow the user to temporarily load unsigned extensions.
Firefox will get a new extensions API, without backward compatibility
Mozilla developers have announced that in Firefox 45, a new implementation of the API for browser extensions will be added. It is called WebExtensions and uses native HTML technology. WebExtensions will make it possible to create extensions compatible with Google Chrome and vice versa.
Force touch keyboard to appear in Firefox
With Firefox 43, Mozilla added detection of touchscreen devices. If Firefox is running on a touchscreen device, every time a text field gets focus via a touchscreen, the touch keyboard appears. If you are interested in testing this feature but you don't have a touchscreen device yet, you can force the Firefox browser to show the on-screen keyboard anyway.
How to disable and uninstall Firefox Hello add-on
Mozilla has made Firefox Hello, its WebRTC-based communication feature as a system addon. This change should come to the stable channel of Firefox with version 45. If you have no use for Firefox Hello, you might want to disable it. However, it is not clear or obvious how to do that so let me show you.
Enable unsigned add-ons disabled by Firefox 43
As I installed Firefox 43 on all my PCs, it disabled some add-ons on my laptop. This is because of the new requirement that all addons be signed by Mozilla. If any of your favorite add-ons stopped working because of this signature enforcement added to Firefox 43, here is what you can do.