Firefox 89.0.1 Released to Improve WebRender Performance, Fix Scrollbars on GTK Themes

Firefox 89

Mozilla published today Firefox 89.0.1 as the first minor point release to the latest Firefox 89.0 web browser to fix various bugs and regressions affecting Linux systems.

Firefox 89.0.1 is here only two weeks after the release of Firefox 89, which introduced the awesome Proton redesign, as well as new privacy features and various other improvements, and improves the performance and stability of the WebRender feature, and fixes the broken scrollbars on some GTK themes.

In detail, it appears that some users reported missing scrollbar indicator on some websites with the new Proton interface. On the other hand, WebRender was plagued by a couple of regressions that may affect the overall performance of the web browser when enabled.

Other than that, the Firefox 89.0.1 release fixes various regressions related to fonts, updates and improves some translations, including full Spanish (Mexico) localization, and addresses an issue with the DisableDeveloperTools policy for Enterprise users, which dosen’t have effect anymore.

For macOS users, Firefox 89.0.1 fixes a screen flickering issue that could occur when scrolling a web page on an external monitor, and for Windows users it addresses an issue that caused some screen readers to no longer interact correctly with the web browser.

Last but not least, this point release patches a security vulnerability reported by Pascal Chevrel, which affects only Windows platforms. We’re talking about CVE-2021-29968, an out-of-bounds read issue that occurred when drawing text characters onto a Canvas with WebRender disabled.

Firefox 89.0.1 is available for download right now from the official website, but most probably you’ll have to wait for it to arrive in the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution. This is a highly recommended update for all users!

Update 23/06/21: Firefox 89.0.2 is now available for download to fix occasional hangs with Software WebRender on Linux systems. You can grab the new version from the link above!

Last updated 3 years ago

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