Mozilla Firefox 109 Is Available for Download with New Unified Extensions Button

The new feature lets users manage installed and enabled browser extension permissions (origin controls) and other options.
Marius Nestorby Marius Nestor0
Mozilla Firefox 109

Mozilla promoted today the Firefox 109 release to the stable channel as the browser’s first release in 2023, bringing a handful of new features and lots of improvements.

As I reported during the beta stage, Mozilla Firefox 109 implements a new Unified Extensions button in the toolbar that acts as a container for all your installed (and enabled) add-ons, making your toolbar tidier and easier to manage add-ons from one place.

All the add-ons that are listed in the new Unified Extensions button will have a settings icon next to them so you can more easily access their options, pin them on the toolbar, remove or report them, as well as to manage them in the built-in Add-Ons Manager.

Under the hood, the implementation of the new Unified Extensions button was possible thanks to the enablement of Manifest Version 3 (MV3) by default. This gives users access and persistent control over which add-ons can access any web page, at any time.

Users are free to grant ongoing access to a website or make a choice per visit. To enable this, MV3 treats host permissions (listed in the extension manifest) as opt-in,” said Mozilla. Manifest V2 (MV2) extensions will also display in the panel; however, users can’t take actions for MV2 host permissions since those were granted at installation and this choice cannot be reversed in MV2 without uninstalling the extension and starting again.

Firefox 109 also introduces a built-in dictionary for Spanish from Spain (es-ES) and Spanish from Argentina (es-AR) builds. The built-in dictionary can be used with Firefox’s spellchecker feature. More changes will be revealed tomorrow, January 17th, when Mozilla will officially announce the Firefox 109 release.

In the meantime, you can download the binaries for 64-bit or 32-bit GNU/Linux distributions right now from the official download server here.

Update 17/01/23: Mozilla officially announced Firefox 109 and revealed more of the changes included in this release, such as improved accessibility for screen reader users due to the ability to use the native HTML date picker for date and datetime inputs only with a keyboard, as well as an improved Firefox View feature that now lets users to manually close and remove links from the Recently Closed list and an overall improved user experience.

On top of that, Firefox 109 also enables the scrollend event by default and permanently partitions Storage in third-party contexts independent of Storage Access to align with other web browsers and provide better Web compatibility.

Last updated 1 year ago

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