The release of the new version of Firefox 81 was recently announced , which comes with some very interesting changes focused on the user environment, as well as improvements to the PDF file reader integrated into the browser.
In addition to innovations and bug fixes, this new version of Firefox 81 has corrected 10 vulnerabilities , 7 of which are marked as dangerous.
Main new features of Firefox 81
This new version of the browser proposes a new interface for previewing before printing, which is notable for opening in the current tab and replacing the existing content (the previous preview interface led to the opening of a new window).
Tools for adjusting page layout and print settings have been moved from the top panel to the right, which also includes additional options like controlling whether headers and backgrounds are printed, and the ability to select a printer.
The interface of the integrated PDF document viewer has been modernized (icons have been replaced, and a light background has been used for the toolbar). Support has been added for the AcroForm mechanism to fill out input forms and save the resulting PDF with user-entered data.
Additionally, Firefox now allows users to pause audio and video playback using dedicated multimedia buttons on the keyboard or audio headphones without mouse clicks. Playback can also be controlled by sending commands via the MPRIS protocol and resumes even if the screen is locked or another program is running.
In addition to the basic light and dark masks, a new Alpenglow theme with colored buttons, menus, and windows has been added.
For mobile devices with Adreno 5xx GPUs, with the exception of Adreno 505 and 506, the WebRender compositing engine is included, which is written in the Rust language and allows you to significantly increase rendering speed and reduce CPU load due to outsourcing page content rendering operations to the GPU, which are implemented through shaders running on the GPU.
Of the other changes that stand out in this new version:
- New icons have been proposed for the Picture-in-Picture video view.
- Make sure the bookmarks bar with the most important sites is automatically enabled after importing external bookmarks into Firefox.
- Added the ability to view previously downloaded xml, svg and webp files in Firefox.
- Fixed issue with resetting default language to English after updating browsers with language pack installed.
- Added support for the "allow-downloads" flag in the element's sandbox attribute to block automatic downloads started from an iframe.
- Added support for non-standard content layout HTTP headers with filenames with spaces without quotes.
- For the visually impaired, improved support for screen readers and content playback control in HTML5 audio / video tags.
- The JavaScript debugger implements the correct definition of files in the TypeScript language and the selection of these files from the general list.
How to install the new version of Firefox 80 on Linux?
Users of Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or any other Ubuntu derivative can install or upgrade to this new version using the browser's PPA.
This can be added to the system by opening a terminal and executing the following command in it:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa -y
sudo apt-get update
Having done this, now you just need to install with:
sudo apt install firefox
For Arch Linux users and derivatives, just run in a terminal:
sudo pacman -S firefox
Now, for those who are users of Fedora or any other distribution derived from it:
sudo dnf install firefox
Finally, if you are an openSUSE user , you can take advantage of the community repositories, from which you can add the Mozilla repository to your system.
This can be done with a terminal and in it by typing:
su -
zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/mozilla/openSUSE_Leap_15.1/ mozilla
zypper ref
zypper dup --from mozilla
For all other Linux distributions, you can download the binary packages from the following link.