Firefox 100 Is Now Available for Download, Enables GTK Overlay Scrollbars on Linux

Firefox 100

Yes, Firefox 100 is finally here, and it looks like it was approved for release by Mozilla on May 3rd, 2022, but you can download it right now from the official channels if you can’t wait to enjoy the new features and improvements.

Firefox 100 has some interesting new features since it’s version 100 and all that. For Linux users, it enables GTK overlay scrollbars by default, which means that you’ll now see sleek and thin scrollbars on web pages when scrolling instead of those old and thick scrollbars, which will still appear on mouseover.

Another cool thing about the new GTK overlay scrollbars is that they will automatically disappear after a few seconds if no scroll is detected, which makes reading easier on some websites.

The GTK overlay scrollbars were enabled in the previous release, Firefox 99, but not enabled by default. Mozilla added a new option in Settings > General called “Always show scrollbars”, which lets you enable or disable the GTK overlay scrollbars.

Another cool new feature in Firefox 100 is a new “Website appearance” sub-section under the Language and Appearance section in Settings > General, which lets you choose a preferred color scheme for websites that adapt to color schemes. You can choose from four options: Firefox theme, System theme, Light, or Dark.

Among some of the improvements implemented in Firefox 100, there’s support for captions or subtitles on YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix videos for the Picture-in-Picture (PiP) feature, along with support for video captions on websites that use the WebVTT (Web Video Text Track) format.

Moreover, the web browser now features offers support for multiple language dictionaries in the built-in spellchecker, support for credit card autofill and capture in the United Kingdom, as well as the usual bug fixes and security patches to keep your Internet surfing sessions more secure and reliable.

As mentioned before, Mozilla plans to officially announce the Firefox 100 release on May 3rd, 2022, but if you want to download it right now you can do just that by visiting the official download server.

If you have Firefox installed from other places, such as your distro’s repositories, wait until it lands there to update, which should happen later this week. More details about the Firefox 100 release should be unveiled tomorrow, so expect an article update with the complete changes.

Update: I forgot to mention the fact that Firefox 100 will automatically enable the dark style of websites that feature both light and dark styles if you have dark mode enabled on your desktop.

Update 2: Mozilla officially announced Firefox 100 today and published the full release notes.

It looks like Firefox 100 also implements a new language detection mechanims that warns users when Firefox’s default language doesn’t match the operating system’s language and offers a choice between the two languages, improves fairness between painting and handling of other events, and ignores less restricted referrer policies.

In addition, it adds support for profiling multiple Java threads and for the WritableStream API, improves soft-reloading a web pages to no longer cause revalidation for all resources, improves support for Twitch and Google Docs sites.

Firefox 100 also implements the Geckoview APIs to control the start/stop time of capturing a profile, adds support for setting Firefox as the default PDF handler, and implements a new focus indicator for links, replacing the old dotted outline with a solid blue outline.

Last updated 2 years ago

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