Mozilla announced a few days ago the release of the new version 135 of its Firefox browser, This release comes with maintenance updates for extended support versions 115.20.0 and 128.7.0. This new release brings with it a number of significant improvements, focused on security, usability, and support for emerging technologies.
Firefox 135 fixes a total of 19 security vulnerabilities, of which 13 have been classified as serious. Most of these flaws are related to memory management issues, including buffer overflows and access after free, which could allow arbitrary code execution if maliciously crafted pages are opened.
Highlights of Firefox 135
In this new version of Firefox 135 one of the most important new features is the Introduction of a chatbot based on advanced language models, accessible from the browser sidebar. This wizard can operate through different services, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Hugging Face, among others. Users can switch between these services according to their preferences, although access requires registration on each platform.
Furthermore, Added “Ask…” option to context menu, allowing you to select text on a web page and send it to the chatbot to obtain summaries or explanations in simple language and improvements have been implemented in the integrated translator, improving the quality of the translation, eliminating errors such as the substitution of fictitious words by the artificial intelligence model.
Another of the new features that Mozilla prepared for this launch are the Firefox home page design improvements for all countries Where the Mozilla Stories recommendation service is available, notable changes include an integrated search bar and a list of recommended pages. Additionally, most visited and pinned sites are now presented in a single line instead of a grid, and the number of columns of content dynamically adjusts based on the size of the browser window.
Uno One of the most important changes in this version is the mandatory implementation of TLS certificate verification. in public Certificate Transparency registries. This mechanism prevents the use of fraudulent certificates issued without adequate controls, such as those generated by attacks on certification authorities.
To optimize TLS certificate revocation checking, Firefox has improved its integration with CRLite. This system stores a database of revoked certificate information locally, avoiding the need to perform online queries to OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol) servers, which improves privacy and prevents connectivity problems in the event of DDoS attacks against OCSP servers. The CRLite database is optimized using cascading Bloom filters, allowing information on 100 million certificates to be stored in a file of just 1 MB.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- Several improvements have been implemented to optimize the usability of the browser:
- Linux and macOS users can now close just the current tab instead of the entire browser by pressing the Alt+F4 keyboard shortcut.
- The “Copy Untracked Site” option has been renamed to “Copy Clean Link” and now allows you to remove tracking parameters from plain text links in addition to hyperlinks.
- Firefox will now mark certificates that are not listed in these logs as insecure, reducing the risk of man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks.
- The address bar now allows you to search and navigate through open, closed, and saved tab groups.
- Compatibility and performance improvements
- Firefox now uses the XZ compression format on Linux versions, which reduces download sizes by 25% and speeds up decompression by over 50% compared to bz2.
- In the PointerEvent API, pointer coordinates now support non-integer values, improving accuracy when interacting with CSS-transformed elements or in zoomed windows.
- The developer tools now warn against using “content-visibility” on elements without size restrictions and have added a “$$$” command to the web console for searching the shadow DOM.
- In the Android version, an option has been added to automatically send crash reports to Mozilla without requiring user confirmation, which will make it easier to identify and resolve bugs in the mobile browser.
Interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the release notes in the following link
How to install Firefox on Linux?
If you are already a Firefox user, you should know that you can easily update to the latest version accessing the configuration menu. Those with automatic updates enabled need not worry as they will receive the new version without manual intervention.
Alternatively, if you prefer not to wait for the automatic update, you can do it manually by going to Menu > Help > About Firefox. This will open a window showing the installed version and, if the feature is enabled, it will check for available updates.
For Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other derivatives users from Ubuntu, too It is possible to update Firefox through the official PPATo do this, open a terminal and enter the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa -y sudo apt-get update sudo apt install firefox
Another available installation option is via Flatpak. To use this method, you need to have Flatpak support on your system. Once enabled, you can install Firefox by running the following command in the terminal:
flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox
As for those who already have the browser installed, it is enough to execute the following command to not only update Firefox, but also all its applications that are in Flatpak format:
flatpack update
In the case of those who prefer the use of Snap, the installation of the browser can be done by typing the following command:
sudo snap install firefox
And to update the applications that we have installed in Snap format, just type the following in the terminal:
sudo snap refresh