Following the marked roadmap, Mozilla released Firefox 68 today. This is a major update, or so it should be when changing the first number, but the reality is different. It includes few important new features, among which I would highlight that WebRender will be activated on more devices. But the truth is that this particular novelty will be important only for a "small" group of users, those who use Windows operating system with AMD graphics card.
Among the novelties of Firefox 68, which we will detail more extensively after the cut, we also have a AwesomeBar rewritten to make it more reliable and offer better performance, but the visual changes to it have not yet reached this version. The designs are rumored to be ready, but Mozilla has yet to pick the best one and polish it up in order to add it to Firefox 69 or a future release.
What's New in Firefox 68
- Support for accessing the Firefox account from the hamburger menu (the three horizontal lines).
- Implement a full page color contrast audit capable of identifying all elements on a web page that fail color contrast checks.
- Enabled WebRender for Windows 10 users with AMD graphics cards.
- New extension recommendation program.
- New keyboard shortcuts for Windows 10.
- Ability to view the tabs of other Firefox installations connected to the same Firefox account (without entering the "%" symbol).
- Removed some unmaintained translations.
- La AwesomeBar has been rewritten to improve its performance and operation.
- New dark mode in the reader's view.
- A new feature has been added to report security and performance issues with extensions and themes in about: addons.
- The extensions dashboard in about: addons has been redesigned to provide simplified access to information about extensions.
- Protection against crypto mining and fingerprinting has been added to the strict content blocking settings in the privacy and security preferences.
- Updated download support for Windows BITS (Windows Background Intelligent Transfer), allowing Firefox to update downloads to continue when the browser is closed.
- Local files can no longer access other files in the same directory.
- When an HTTPS error caused by an antivirus is detected, Firefox will try to repair it automatically.
- Microphone and camera access now require an HTTPS connection.
Firefox 68 is here available for download from the official website browser (here in different languages) for Linux, macOS and Windows. Linux users also have another option, the most widespread, which is the official repositories, where it will appear at any time. Have you already managed to update to Firefox 68?