Firefox 119 arrives with import improvements, PDF viewer improvements and more

Mozilla recently announced the launch of the new version of your Firefox 119 web browser, version in which one of its most important changes the improved PDF viewer in which you cane add text and images when editing PDF files and even allows you to add alt text to images, ensuring that the PDF remains readable for people using screen readers or other accessibility tools.

Another change that stands out in Firefox 119 is the Firefox View update, well now list all tabs open all windows, and if you sync tabs with other connected devices to the same Mozilla account. Browsing history now also appears in the Firefox view and can be sorted by date or by site.

For users of the protection mechanism enhanced tracking protection (ETP, Enhanced Tracking Protection), additional protection against indirect user identification is enabled via font analysis: Fonts visible to sites are limited to system fonts and standard language set fonts.

The package Firefox snap provides support for using the file selection dialog native to Ubuntu when accessing data from other browsers, as well as support for determining available features based on the installed version of xdg-desktop-portal.

In addition to this, we can also find that added support for selecting a monitor to place a browser window running in internet kiosk mode. The monitor is selected using the “–kiosk-monitor” command line option. The browser switches to full screen mode immediately after launching in kiosk mode.

In preparation for the inclusion of third-party cookie blocking in Firefox, updated storage access API implementation to request permission from the user to access cookie storage from an iframe if third-party cookies are blocked by default. The new implementation has improved protection and added changes to prevent problems with sites.

Firefox 119 also has a new feature when migrating data from Google Chrome to Firefox, since it now has the ability to import some extensions to Firefox. Notably, this feature doesn't actually copy the extensions or their data to Firefox. Mozilla has a database of Chrome extensions with their Firefox equivalents and will automatically install matching results. The transference involves a list of 72 complements, which compares the identical add-on identifiers that exist for Chrome and Firefox. If there are add-ons listed when importing data from Chrome, Firefox installs the native Firefox version instead of the Chrome version of the add-on.

Of the other changes that stand out:

• The CSS attr() function now has the ability to specify a second argument, the value of which will be used in situations where the specified attribute is missing or has an invalid value. For example, attr(foobar, "Default value").
• Added Object.groupBy and Map.groupBy methods to group array elements using the string value returned by the callback function, which is called for each array element, as the grouping key.
• The WebTransport.createBidirectionalStream() and WebTransport.createUnidirectionalStream() methods now support the “sendOrder” property to set the relative priority of sent streams.
• The AuthenticatorAttestationResponse API offers new getPublicKey(), getPublicKeyAlgorithm(), and getAuthenticatorData() methods.

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 packages and the browser installation is done by typing the following command in the terminal:

flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox

As for those who already have the browser installed, it is enough to execute the following command to not only update Firefox, but also all its applications that are in Flatpak format:

flatpak update

In the case of those who prefer the use of Snap, the installation of the browser can be done by typing the following command:

sudo snap install firefox

And to update the applications that we have installed in Snap format, just type the following in the terminal:

sudo snap refresh