Several weeks ago we shared here on the blog the news about the new redesigned user interface that the folks at Mozilla have been working on and that is being developed under the name of the Proton project, to be offered at the Firefox 89 release, scheduled for June 1 I have implemented another important change that breaks the usual way of working with the browser.
As part of the redesign, it was decided to remove the (Page Actions) menu integrated into the address bar, through which it was possible to add a bookmark, send a link to Pocket, pin a tab, work with the clipboard and start sending material by email.
The change is already included in Firefox 89 beta and within compilations nightly. The options present in the Actions menu of the page have been moved to other parts of the interface, they remain available in the panel configuration section and can be individually placed on the panel as buttons.
This menu was added in Firefox 57 and it included infrequently requested items or duplicate options from other parts of the interface. After removing the item to create screenshots in the latest version, this menu has largely lost its meaning (For example, for bookmarks, working with the clipboard and fixing tabs there are more familiar elements and the options to send to pocket and to e-mail are not options that are used and above all requested by everyone).
Other expected interface changes in Firefox 89 include hide default settings to enable compact mode of displaying panels (Mozilla originally intended to remove this mode, but users managed to defend it), new icons, new tab layout and tooltips, main menu cleanup, redesigned modal dialogs, a pop-up panel to customize the page to open one new tab.
In addition, we must also remember that another of the changes of which Mozilla has been mentioning is in connection with the decision of remove Firefox's built-in FTP implementation.
As since the launch of Firefox 88 who was recently released (on April 19) it was mentioned that FTP support was disabled by default (including the configuration of the browserSettings.ftpProtocolEnabled in read-only) and that in the launch of the next version of Firefox that is version 90 and that is scheduled for June 29, the code related to FTP will be eliminated.
After the code is removed, when trying to open links with protocol identifier "Ftp: //", the browser will call an external application in the same way that the "irc: //" and "tg: //" controllers are called.
The reason for the termination of FTP support is lack of protection of this protocol against the modification and interception of transit traffic during MITM attacks. According to the Firefox developers, today there is no reason to use FTP over HTTPS to download resources. Additionally, the FTP support code in Firefox is very old, creates maintenance issues, and has a history of identifying a large number of vulnerabilities in the past.
We must remember that previously in Firefox 61 it was already forbidden to download resources through FTP from pages opened via HTTP / HTTPS and in Firefox 70, the rendering of the content of the files downloaded via ftp was stopped (for example, when opening via ftp, images, README and html files immediately displayed the file download dialog).
Chrome discontinued FTP support in the January release of Chrome 88, as Google estimates that FTP is hardly used anymore, with an FTP user share of around 0,1%.
It should also be noted that the FTP protocol turned 50, since it was published on April 16, 1971.
Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.