Mozilla Firefox 55 is now available to download.
The update “brings innovative functionality, improvements to core browser performance, and more proof that we’re committed to making Firefox better than ever”, Mozilla say.
Among new features in Firefox 55 is initial support for WebVR. Not only is WebVR ‘a thing’ but Firefox says it is the first browser to support for it. I guess all those annoying newsletter begging modal sign-ups will soon literally smack us in the face!
WebVR is not the only significant improvement baked in to the latest release. Other improvements are included that help pave the way for the bold changes planned for Firefox 57 “Quantum”, which is due to be released in November.
Better, Faster, Stronger, Firefoxier
First up, if you read my article about the Mozilla dev who tested Firefox start-up times with a mammoth 1691 open tabs, you’ll be pleased to know those benefits are included here, in this release, ready for you to abuse:
The improvements are part of an internal project called Quantum Flow that makes restoring tabs during browser start-up over 30x faster than what in Firefox 51.
Precisely how pronounced will those changes feel on your system? Depends on what you do in Firefox, I guess.
But readers who’ve toyed with various Firefox beta and nightly builds leading up to this release are adamant they can feel a difference — so once you’ve spent some time tussling with this update be sure to pop back and share your experiences in the comments!
More Changes in Firefox 55
Not everyone using Firefox 55 will get access to the new Firefox Screenshots feature. (It was called Page Shot during testing).
Mozilla is rolling out access to this snip-tastic feature as part of an A/B test.
If you don’t see the icon don’t panic; you can opt-in via Test Pilot. If you do see the new screenshot/scissors icon you are part of the cool club. You can clip any part of any webpage you visit and quickly share it with others. Images are hosted on Mozilla servers for 14 days — so don’t clip anything you wouldn’t want your the world to see!
This update lets you move the Firefox sidebar to the right. This optional pane can be used to display History, Bookmarks, or Synced Tabs. It’s also easier to switch between these within the sidebar itself, thanks to a new button menu.
When you type in the Firefox address bar you now see a handful of search suggestions (which the arrow above denotes).
These suggestions aren’t super intrusive (and are something Chrome users should be familiar with) but if you want to turn search suggestions off in Firefox 55 you can: go to Preferences > Search and uncheck the “provide search suggestions” and “show search suggestions in location bar results” options.
A new Performance section is present in the Preferences > General section. Here you can choose whether to ‘Use recommended performance settings’ (default), manually enable/disable hardware acceleration (platform dependant, mind), and/or set a multi-process content limit.
Firefox 55 is available to download for Windows, macOS and Linux from the Mozilla website right now. If you’re an Ubuntu user running a supported release (14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, and 17.04) you will get this update automatically though the Software Updater at some point in the coming days.
But be aware that some of the performance improvements won’t be enable in the repo version by default because the Ubuntu Modifications add-on that Ubuntu pre-installs with the browser is not compatible with Mozilla Firefox’s multi-process mode.
Source: Mozilla (via Ghacks)