It was a posibility for some time now, but with Firefox 121 Wayland is already used by default on Linux. It is probably the most notable novelty of the latest version of the Mozilla web browser, and if it is not, we will take care of highlighting it because it is for Linux users. We rarely have the opportunity to talk about something that is only for us, and even if it is not something new that is going to change things too much, we take advantage of it.
Another notable novelty is for macOS (fucking you, Windows 😜), and support for voice control has been added to the apple's desktop operating system. What you have below is the list with news that have arrived with Firefox 121.
Highlights of Firefox 121
- Firefox now prompts Windows users to install Microsoft's AV1 Video Extension to enable hardware decoding of the AV1 video codec from the page about: support if it is not already installed.
- Firefox now supports Voice Control Commands on macOS systems.
- On Linux, Firefox now defaults to using the Wayland composer when available instead of XWayland. This brings support for touchpad and touchscreen gestures, swipe to navigate, over-monitor DPI adjustments, better graphics performance, and much more. Mozilla advises that due to the limitations of the Wayland protocol, Picture-in-Picture windows require extra user interaction (usually right-clicking on the window) or an adjustment of the graphical environment .
- Firefox can now force links to always appear underlined. This option can be activated in the Navigation section of the Firefox Settings menu.
- The PDF viewer now includes a floating button to simplify removing drawings, text, and images added to PDFs.
- The :has() selector is now supported. This allows authors to match an element that has, or "anchor", at least one element that matches its relative selector.
- The “hanginh” and “each-line” keywords are now supported by the text-indent CSS property, providing more practical paragraph layout options for styles such as bibliographies, poetry, etc.
- The “balance” keyword now supports the text-wrap CSS property, which can improve the appearance of short, multi-line blocks of text, such as titles or long subtitles, by harmonizing the length of the lines.
- Lazy loading iframes () are now supported. Lazy loading iframes only load when they are visible, so non-critical iframes can be loaded later when needed to speed up the initial page load and reduce initial network usage.
- Added dequeue support to the WebAssembly language to improve support for functional languages.
- The Firefox debugger now includes a new feature: an option to disable the “debugger;” keyword. on the current page. This feature can be accessed via a new checkbox in the Breakpoints side panel called “Pause on Debugger Statement,” located next to the existing “Pause on Exceptions” checkbox. By default, this option is enabled, meaning that debugger statements are active unless manually disabled.
- To improve the accessibility of Firefox Developer Tools, Mozilla has unified the focus indicator across the toolbox. The focus indicator is now larger and has improved contrast, with a white shadow to improve visibility on blue backgrounds. Adjustments have also been made to ensure clear visibility on shared components and frequently used panels, avoiding overlapping with element borders or backgrounds.
- Various bug fixes and security patches.
Now available
Firefox 121 can now be downloaded from the developer website. In the next few hours, the snap and flatpak packages will be updated and the new version will begin to appear in the official repositories of the different Linux distributions.