Firefox is an open source web browser developed for different platforms, it is coordinated by Mozilla and the Mozilla Foundation.
Few days ago the release of the new version was announced from the popular web browser “firefox 113” along with which an update to the Firefox 102.11.0 long-term support branch was formed.
In addition to innovations and bug fixes, 41 vulnerabilities have been fixed in Firefox 113. 33 vulnerabilities are marked as dangerous, of which 30 vulnerabilities (collected under CVE-2023-32215 and CVE-2023-32216) are caused by memory problems, such as buffer overflows and access to already freed memory areas.
Main new features of Firefox 113
In this new version of Firefox 113 presented enabled the display of the entered search query in the address bar, instead of displaying the search engine URL (i.e. keys are displayed in the address bar not only during the input process, but also after accessing the search engine and displaying the search results associated with the keys entered). The change is only effective when accessing browsers from the address bar. If the query is entered into a search engine site, the URL is displayed in the address bar.
Another change that stands out is that added a context menu to the suggestions dropdown list search box, which is displayed when you click on the “…” button. The menu provides the ability to remove the search query from the visit history and disable the display of sponsored links.
Besides that, an improved implementation of the picture-in-picture video display mode is proposed (Picture-in-Picture), adding 5-second forward and backward buttons, a button to quickly expand the window to full screen, and a Fast Forward Slider with a position and duration indicator of the video.
When browsing in private browsing mode, third-party cookie blocking and browser storage isolation have been strengthened used in the visit tracking code. When filling in passwords on registration forms, the reliability of automatically generated passwords has been increased and special characters are now used when generating them.
It is also highlighted that the isolation of the sandbox from processes that interact with the GPU has been strengthened, which is used on the Windows platform. For Windows systems, you can now drag and drop content from Microsoft Outlook. On Windows, the stretch visual effect is enabled by default when you try to scroll past the bottom of the page.
Added support for animated images (AVIS) to the implementation of the AVIF image format (AV1 Image Format), which uses intra-frame compression technologies of the AV1 video coding format, in addition to the engine that implements technological support for people with disabilities has been redesigned (accessibility engine). Significantly improved performance, responsiveness, and stability for screen readers, single sign-on interfaces, and accessibility frameworks.
In the version of Android by default, hardware acceleration of video decoding in format AV1 is enabled, in the absence of which a software decoder is used.
It is also highlighted that sEnabled the use of GPU to speed up Canvas2D rasterization, The interface of the built-in PDF viewer has been improved, saving of open PDF files has been simplified, and the problem with video playback in landscape screen mode has been fixed.
Of the other changes that stand out from this new version:
- When importing bookmarks from Safari and Chromium engine-based browsers, support for importing favicons associated with bookmarks has been implemented.
- Builds for the macOS platform provide access to the Services submenu directly from the Firefox context menu.
- In scripts that use the Worklet interface (a simplified version of Web Workers that provides access to low-level stages of rendering and sound processing), support has been added for importing JavaScript modules using the "import" statement.
Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it of this new version of the browser, you can check the details In the following link.
How to install or update the new version of Firefox in Ubuntu and derivatives?
As always, for those who already use firefox, they can simply access the menu to update to the latest version, that is, Firefox users who have not disabled automatic updates will receive the update automatically.
While for those who do not want to wait for that to happen they can select Menu> Help> About Firefox after the official launch to initiate a manual update of the web browser.
The screen that opens displays the currently installed version of the web browser and runs a check for updates, provided the functionality is enabled.
Another option to update, is if you are a user of Ubuntu, Linux Mint or some other derivative of Ubuntu, you can install or update to this new version with the help of the browser's PPA.
This can be added to the system by opening a terminal and executing the following command in it:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa -y sudo apt-get update sudo apt install firefox
The last installation method that was added «Flatpak». To do this, they must have support for this type of package.
Installation is done by typing:
flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox