Mozilla has just made official the launch of a new update to its web browser. Firefox 123 has arrived four weeks after the previous version with new features, but the option in DEB package. This package for Debian-based distributions can be downloaded from their FTP, but at the moment they do not offer it as a download in the same way that we can obtain, for example, Visual Studio Code or Vivaldi.
Although this is not the best place or time to talk about the DEB package that arrived last month, I think it doesn't hurt to do so. It is possible that Mozilla has not done like Microsoft or Vivaldi Technologies and does not add the repository automatically due to the problems this could cause in Ubuntu. Canonical imposes the snap package version, and to undo the path you have to write several commands. What follows now is the list with the most outstanding news that Firefox 123 has introduced.
What's new in Firefox 123
- Mozilla has integrated search into Firefox View. It is now possible to search all the tabs of each of the subpages in the section: Recent Browsing, Open Tabs, Recently Closed Tabs, Tabs from Other Devices or History.
- For cases where we experience problems with a website in Firefox, but the site appears to work correctly in another browser, it is now possible to let you know through the web compatibility reporting tool.
- The address bar settings are now located in the search section of Firefox settings.
- LinearRGB interpolation for SVG gradients is now implemented, as well as the existing sRGB interpolation. It is possible to choose which one to use using the color interpolation property.
- Previously, SVG feImage elements pointing to SVG content required the SVG document to have a root element with non-percent width and height values. The content will now revert to the replaced element's default values of 300px width and 150px height and the feImage will no longer fail to render.
- By enabling Preload and Module Preload support, Early Hints are now fully supported.
- Audio echo cancellation can now be applied to microphone inputs when the audio output is redirected to another device with setSinkId().
- Firefox now supports declarative ShadowDOM, providing developers with greater flexibility and improved ergonomics when working with ShadowDOMs directly within HTML.
- Network Monitor now supports saving a response body to disk via the Save Response As context menu item. This replaces the Save Image context menu, which only allowed saving images.
- When translating web pages, text in tooltips (i.e. titles) and text displayed in form controls (i.e. placeholders) are now also translated.
- Various security fixes.
New tool to report incompatibility with websites
In a network largely dominated by the Chromium engine, it is easy for other options, such as Firefox itself, to not be taken into account as much. The new one tool will help you improve in every sense. If we go to the hamburger menu and choose “Report problems on a site”, a window like the one in the previous image will be displayed on the right. The website populates automatically (can be edited), and below there is a dropdown to choose the reason for the failure. At the bottom there is a text area that we can use to give more details.
The first thing that occurs to me is that we can let you know when a web page does not display things correctly due to CSS support, although there may also be issues with the Firefox engine that we can report. They will be aware and possibly fix it in a future version of the browser.
Firefox 123 It is now available from their website and also from the Mozilla repository for Debian-based distributions. Their flatpak and snap packages will be updated soon.