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Firefox 112, the next major release of the popular open-source and cross-platform web browser, is currently available for public beta testing promising some exciting changes for Linux users.
With the upcoming Firefox 112 release, Mozilla promises to let Ubuntu Linux users import their browser data from the Chromium Snap package. However, Mozilla says that this feature currently works only when Firefox is not installed as a Snap package too.
I’ve tested this feature with the latest Firefox 112 beta release using the official binary package and it works, as you can see from the screenshot below.
Chromium appears in the list of supported web browsers when trying to import browser data using the Import and Backup feature under Bookmarks > Manage bookmarks (Ctrl+Shift+O).
Mozilla doesn’t say if this feature will work if Firefox is installed as a Flatpak app or as a native DEB package, but they promise to make it work with the Firefox Snap package since this is a feature for Ubuntu users.
Mozilla also promises to bring support for FIDO2 / WebAuthn authenticators over USB on Linux in Firefox 112, noting the fact that advanced features like fully passwordless logins will require users to set a PIN on the authenticator.
Other noteworthy changes in Firefox 112 include the ability to reveal the password on password fields by right-clicking on them, the ability to close tabs in the tab list panel in the tab bar by middle-clicking items in that list, as well as the ability to restore the previous session by using Ctrl+Shift+T if there are no more closed tabs to re-open.
Other than that, Firefox 112 updates the “Clear” button on the date picker panel to allow users to quickly clear the input with type “date“ or “datetime-local” and provides a familiar experience across browsers, and disables the deprecated U2F Javascript API by default.
Mozilla plans to release the final version of Firefox 112 on April 11th, 2023. Until then, you can test drive the new features and improvements yourself by downloading the latest beta version from the official website.
Last updated 1 year ago
