A new version of Mozilla Firefox is rolling out across Windows, macOS and, more importantly to us, Linux.
Firefox 113 is an interesting update that enhances the browser’s capabilities in a number of areas. While none are singular upsells that might convince someone to switch browser wholesale they are, nonetheless, further finesse that faithful fans of this FOSS browser are sure to enjoy.
So what’s got me most excited?
You know how Firefox has a nifty picture-in-picture mode (PIP) that lets you “pop out” videos on select streaming sites (like YouTube) so you can watch content while you’re doing other stuff, be it in another tab or with the browser minimised entirely?
Well, PIP mode is now 10x more useful[citation needed].
In Firefox 113, PIP windows are now able to show (service depending) a scrubbable progress bar; display video length (including time elapsed); surface rewind/forward player controls; and add a toggle to take whatever you’re watching full-screen for like-so-totally-immersive-viewing-dude:
For me, this is a big addition. It means I no longer have to keep closing YouTube PIP windows when I want to skip back a few seconds, or jump to a different part of a video. I can do it all from the PIP window itself.
Just to show you I’m not imagining these are new — it’s easy to think they’ve always been there — here’s the same YouTube video as above, still playing in PIP mode on the same OS, but in Firefox 112:
Not there. Instantly more useful. Headline qualified. Clickbait 0.
Sticking with moving images (tenuous link, I know) Firefox 113 intros support for animated AV1 Image Format files. I’ll be honest: I’m not sure I’ve ever come across one of these in the wild (and since they didn’t work before, I think I’d have noticed) but it’s great to see Firefox continue to support them.
Mozilla also tout a “…a redesigned accessibility engine” in Firefox 113.
It says this “…improves the speed, responsiveness and stability of Firefox for users of screen readers, as well as certain other accessibility software, east Asian input methods,[…] and other applications which use accessibility frameworks to access information.”
Hard to find fault with any of that.
Elsewhere, Firefox’s built-in password generator now includes special characters to make generated passwords more secure — the @#%& it didn’t already?! — and now lets you remove history results and dismiss sponsored Firefox Suggest results from the “Awesomebar”, which is handy (if whatever).
Beyond Linux there are further buffs.
Devs have “tightened” Firefox’s Windows GPU sandbox to enhance the security benefits it provides; Windows users get to enjoy elastic ‘overscroll’ effects in scroll containers; and Firefox for Android now supports hardware accelerated AV1 video decoding.
Get Firefox 113
You can download Mozilla Firefox 113 for Windows, macOS, and Linux from the official Mozilla website.
Ubuntu ships with Firefox out-of-the-box (so you don’t need to download it) as a snap build which updates automatically in the background (though you can run sudo snap refresh to check, if you’re impatient).
If you want to use Firefox on Ubuntu but don’t want to use the snap package, we have a guide that walks though how to use Firefox deb not snap.