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Scheduled for release on August 1st, 2023, the Mozilla Firefox 116 web browser is now available for download with various new features and improvements.
While the Cookie Banner Reduction and Quick Actions in address bar features are once again missing from the final release, Firefox 116 is here with an improved Picture-in-Picture mode that now features the volume slider so you can more easily change the volume while watching videos in the pop-up window.
Also new in Firefox 116 is the ability to edit existing text annotations, the ability to copy any file from your operating system and paste it into Firefox, and a new “Learn More” link in the update notification prompt that lets English locale users access the release notes.
There’s also a new “Firefox to send backlogged crash reports on your behalf” option (disabled by default) in Privacy & Security > Firefox Data Collection and Use in case you want to send crash reports to Mozilla.
Another new feature in Firefox 116 is support for keyboard users to access bookmarks, history, and synced tabs in the sidebar switcher with or without any assistive technology running. The sidebar switcher lets you quickly switch between bookmarks, history, and synced tabs panels, move the sidebar to another side of the browser window, or close the sidebar.
For Linux users, Firefox 116 appears to improve Wayland support by allowing the creation of Wayland-only builds when compiling from sources. This means that if your distro is using a Wayland session by default, you should be able to use Firefox on Wayland natively without any dependencies on X11. The same goes for X11 users, and it looks like it will also be possible to enable DMABuf and VA-API for X11 builds without including Wayland support.
Among other noteworthy changes, this release significantly improves the upload performance of HTTP/2, especially for users with a higher bandwidth-delay product, and changes the Ctrl+Shift+T keyboard shortcut to reopen the last closed tab or last closed window in the order they were closed or restore the previous session if there aren’t any tabs or windows to reopen.
For web developers, Firefox 116 brings support for CSP3 external hashes, support for the dirname attribute to pass text directionality information about input and textarea elements to the server, as well as proper support for BYOB readers on Fetch and WebTransport.
Last but not least, Firefox 116 adds hardware-accelerated H.264 video playback for Raspberry Pi 4 (AArch64) devices. You can download Firefox 116 right now from Mozilla’s download server.
Last updated 9 months ago
