Mozilla announced the 102.0 release of its Firefox web browser today. It’s the new Extended Support Release (ESR) for enterprise / education use.
You may already heard about this release as Mozilla always publishes ftp downloads one day before the official announcement. And, here’s the news according to the release note.
What’s New in Firefox 102:
For those using the rapid release that got updates every month, the new Firefox release now mitigates query parameter tracking when navigating sites in ETP strict mode.
In addition to YouTube, Prime Video, and Netflix, the pop-out video (Picture-in-Picture) now supports displaying subtitles and captions for HBO Max, Funimation, Dailymotion, Tubi, Disney+ Hotstar, and SonyLIV.
When starting a download in Firefox, it opens the drop-down menu automatically indicates the downloading process. In v102, user may now right-click on the icon and un-tick “Show Panel When Download Begins” to stop this behavior.
Other changes in Firefox 102:
- Screen reader fixes on Windows
- Improv security by moving audio decoding into a separate process with stricter sandboxing
- Support Content-Security-Policy (CSP) integration with WebAssembly
- Filter style sheets in the Style Editor tab of developer tools
- Various security fixes.
What’s New in Firefox 102 ESR:
For Debian and others using Firefox ESR edition, the previous v91 release will reach end of life on September 20, 2022.
Firefox ESR gets feature updates slowly every 42 weeks. It mainly focuses on crash fixes, security fixes and policy updates. Here are a brief overview of the changes in new ESR compare to previous edition:
- More secure connections by automatically upgrade to HTTPS using HTTPS RR as Alt-Svc headers.
- Support full-range color levels for video playback.
- Mac users can now access the macOS share options from the Firefox File menu.
- Support ICC v4 profile images for macOS.
- AVIF image format support.
- The PDF viewer now supports filling more forms
- Automatically unload tabs when system memory is critically low,
- Block downloads that rely on insecure connections,
- Firefox Suggest – new website suggestion feature as you type in address bar.
- For macOS, use Apple’s low-power mode for fullscreen video on sites such as YouTube and Twitch.
- “about:unloads” to release system resources by manually unloading tabs.
- WebGL performance and power consumption improvements for Linux.
- New Snap Layouts menus for Windows 11.
- Significantly reduced main-thread load.
- Support credit card autofill and capture in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.
- Spell checking in multiple languages
- Support YouTube HDR video on macOS.
- AV1 video decoding for Windows with supported GPUs (need extension from Microsoft store).
- Enable video overlay on Windows with Intel GPU.
- Allows to use as many microphones as they want at same time during video conferencing.
Get Firefox 102:
Most Linux will publish the new browser release through their own repositories. So, just keep your system up-to-date, you’ll get Firefox 102 soon.
For Windows, macOS, and Linux portable packages, go to the link below:
