Firefox 88 Is Now Available for Download, Enables WebRender for KDE/Xfce Intel/AMD Users

Firefox 88

If you’re waiting for the next major Firefox release, the wait is finally over as Mozilla just uploaded the final Firefox 88 build on its FTP servers ahead of today’s official launch.

While it still doesn’t enable AVIF image format support by default, despite the fact that the beta version shipped with AVIF enabled by default, Firefox 88 promises to enable the WebRender feature by default for users using the KDE Plasma and Xfce desktop environments on Intel/AMD machines.

As you can imagine, this makes your web browsing experience faster and more reliable. Mozilla already shipped WebRender by default for GNOME/X11 users with the Firefox 84 release, but now they are expanding it to more Linux configurations where they believe it’s ready for production use.

If WebRender is not enabled for you by default despite the fact that you are meeting all the requirements mentioned above, you can manually enable it by opening a new tab, typing about:config in the address bar, searching for the gfx.webrender.all option, and setting it to true by double clicking on it.

Also for Linux users, the Firefox 88 release makes pinch-zooming using a touchpad smoother on Wayland. Pinch-zooming in Firefox works by holding down the Ctrl key on your laptop’s keyboard and pinching with two fingers on the touchpad to zoom in or out.

Among other changes, Firefox 88 further improves support for PDF forms that use JavaScript for validation and other interactive features by implementing JavaScript embedded in PDF files, and turns the “Take a Screenshot” feature from the address bar’s Page Actions menu into a regular icon that can be added to the toolbar from the Overflow Menu.

Moreover, this release improves printing by localizing margin units, isolates window.name data on websites to protect users against cross-site privacy leaks, improves screen reader support to correctly read visually hidden content from websites, and no longer prompt for access to the microphone or camera if the user already granted access to the same device/website/tab within the past 50 seconds.

Firefox is joining other popular web browsers in dropping FTP support. With Firefox 88, Mozilla has disabled FTP support by default and they the Open Source company plans to completely remove the implementation starting with the Firefox 90 release this summer.

“Addressing this security risk reduces the likelihood of an attack while also removing support for a non-encrypted protocol,” said Mozilla.

For Android users, Firefox 88 addresses an issue where full-screen or picture-in-picture video playback won’t display correctly on websites using a desktop viewport.

Mozilla plans to officially release Firefox 88 later today, when it will start rolling out to Linux, macOS, and Windows systems via OTA updates. Linux users who have Firefox installed from their distro’s repositories won’t receive it via OTA (Over-the-Air) updates, so you can download the binaries right now from Mozilla’s servers.

Last updated 3 years ago

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