Firefox 93 adds support for the AVIF image format, makes PDF form filling more robust, and better protects against insecure downloads by blocking downloads that rely on insecure connections.
AVIF image support is especially notable as it was supposed to feature in last months’ Firefox 92 release. For those unaware, AVIF is a royalty-free image format that boasts comparable quality to JPEG but at a much reduced file size.
Eagle-eyed users may notice that the Firefox download progress bar now respects system colour scheme on Linux desktops. The browser had been applying its own CSS to the bar which, under certain GTK themes, rendered it invisible.
Using Firefox on Wayland? If so, you’ll benefit from an alternative asynchronous clipboard implementation. This previously experimental feature is said to “…fix various clipboard issues” that many experienced in earlier builds.
A ton of bugs have, as ever, been addressed in this release. Among issues ironed out some relating to Firefox’s support for the Orca screen reader app on Ubuntu; a batch of sound related bugs, including a distorted mic issue in WebRTC apps; plus more backend work to support the upcoming ‘Fission‘ site isolation feature.
Mozilla mention in the Firefox 93 release notes that “TLS ciphersuites that use 3DES have been disabled”, and that the browser’s download panel now follows Firefox’s (newish) visual styles, however the download panel looks identical to Firefox 92 on my system, so YMMV.
Other Systems
Firefox 93 on Windows can “…automatically unload some tabs based on their last access time, memory usage, and other attributes [to] reduce Firefox out-of-memory”. A similar memory-minded feature is in development for Linux system, so look out for it in a future release.
Firefox 93 on macOS shows a first-run prompt when users run Firefox from a mounted disk image (.dmg) rather than an installed location like the Applications folder. There’s a patch to let Firefox automatically restart to apply updates when no windows are open.
Download Firefox 93
Firefox 93 is free, open source software available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.
You can download Firefox 93 from the Mozilla FTP site now; download it from October 5th from the main Firefox website; or get it as an in-app upgrade on systems/packages that supports it.
On Ubuntu? You can upgrade to Firefox 93 using your software update mechanism in the coming days (though if you’re already on Ubuntu 21.10 then you already have this release). And yes: Firefox 93 is available on Ubuntu as both a regular repo version and the newly-instated Snap package.