Firefox 89 Is Now Available for Download with Fresh New Look, Improved Privacy

The Mozilla Firefox 89 web browser is now available for download, bringing a fresh new look for Linux users, improved privacy settings, as well as various other changes.

Firefox 89 has been in public beta testing since April 20th, when I took it for a test drive to get an early taste of the fresh new look called “Proton,” which Mozilla prepared for us in summer 2021. It took a little longer to release this version as Mozilla extended the beta testing cycle to 6 weeks instead of 4.

But it’s finally here, and you can enjoy the fresh new look that introduces simplified browser chrome and toolbar, a new tab design with floating tabs, streamlined menus, updated infobars and modals prompts, a refined color palette, a brand-new first-run welcome page, as well as a more consistent styling and lighter iconography.

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“We took the Firefox redesign project to heart with the goal of making your life a little better so you can worry less, get more done and feel good about what’s on the horizon,” said Mozilla.

In addition, Firefox 89 comes with improved privacy settings by implementing version 2 of the SmartBlock feature introduced in Firefox 87 to enable a seamless web page experience when blocking trackers, and extending the Total Cookie Protection feature introduced in Firefox 86 to the Private Browsing mode.

For web developers, the Firefox 89 release promises support for the Event Timing API and the CSS forced-colors media query. It also improves the keyboard navigation for editable BoxModel properties in the Inspector panel.

In addition, Firefox 89 brings some improvements to the page load performance through a non-native implementation of Web form controls that features a new, modern design, moves the screenshot feature to the right-click context menu and lets you add a shortcut to the toolbar, and fixes various security issues.

Mozilla plans to officially announce the Firefox 89 release tomorrow, June 1st, 2021, when it will also start rolling out to Linux users who use the official binary version, as well as to macOS and Windows users. But, if you can’t wait until tomorrow, you can download it right now from Mozilla’s FTP server.

If you have Firefox installed from the software repositories of your GNU/Linux distribution, you’ll have to wait a little longer for the new version to appear there, depending on how fast the maintainers of your distro will compile the web browser from sources, probably later this week.

Update 01/06/21: Mozilla officially announced the Firefox 89 release of its open-source and free web browser, which you can now download directly from the official website or the release notes page.

Last updated 3 years ago