And "the harvest is finally here" I thought when I saw the News list de Firefox 93. And it is that Mozilla had activated the support for the AVIF image format in the beta version of its browser for several versions, but they deactivated it before the launch of the stable because a problem always appeared. Sometimes because they thought it was not fully implemented, other times because of a regression ... but it is already here.
AVIF, or AV1 Image Format, is a format for storing images or image sequences compressed with AV1 for the HEIF format. Among its benefits we have compression without loss of quality. In addition to AVIF support, Firefox 93 comes with other new arrivals, but none as prominent as this feature because we had been waiting for her for a long time.
What's new in Firefox 93
- Support for the new AVIF image format, which is based on the modern AV1 video codec, royalty free. It offers significant bandwidth savings for sites compared to existing image formats. It also supports transparency and other advanced features.
- The PDF viewer now supports the filling of more forms (XFA-based forms, used by various governments and banks).
- When available system memory is critically low, Firefox on Windows will automatically download tabs based on their last access time, memory usage, and other attributes. This should help reduce Firefox crashes due to out of memory. Switching to a downloaded tab automatically reloads it.
- To avoid loss of session for macOS users who are running Firefox from a mounted .dmg file, they will now be prompted to finish the installation. This permission notice only appears the first time these users run Firefox on their computer.
- Downloads that depend on insecure connections are now blocked, protecting against potentially malicious or insecure downloads.
- Improved web compatibility for privacy protection with SmartBlock 3.0.
- Introducing new sender tracking protection in Strict Tracking Protection and Private Browsing
- VoiceOver screen reader now correctly reports markable items in accessible tree controls as marked or unmarked.
- The Orca screen reader now works correctly with Firefox, and no longer requires users to switch to another application after launching the browser.
Now available from your website
Firefox 93 It is now available from their website for all supported systems. From there, Linux users can download the binaries, and soon the new packages will appear as an update in the different Linux distributions.