Firefox 84 release

The web browser has been released Firefox 84 . In addition, an update branches with long-term support 78.6.0 . To the stage beta testing in the next few hours will move the Firefox 85 branch, slated for release on January 26th.

General innovations :

  • On the Linux platform for GNOME and X11, the WebRender compositing engine written by in the Rust language and allows to achieve a significant increase in the rendering speed and reduce the load on the CPU due to the transfer of page content rendering operations to the GPU side, which are implemented through shaders executed in the GPU. The blocking list for WebRender remains proprietary NVIDIA drivers, as well as Intel drivers when using screen resolutions of 3440×1440 and higher. To force the inclusion in about: config, activate the “gfx.webrender.all” and “gfx.webrender.enabled” settings or start Firefox with the MOZ_WEBRENDER = 1 environment variable set. On the Android platform, the WebRender engine is enabled for devices with Mali-G GPUs, in addition to the previously supported Adreno 5xx (Google Pixel, Google Pixel 2 / XL, Oneplus 5), Adreno 6xx (Google Pixel 3, Google Pixel 4, Oneplus 6), and Pixel 2 and Pixel 3 smartphones. For Windows, WebRender support is enabled for 5 and 6 generations of Intel GPUs, for macOS for Big Sur release.
  • Using the framework Remote Settings implemented proactive loading of certificates of intermediate certification authorities, which allowed to reduce the number of error messages when viewing incorrectly configured sites.
  • The addons manager (about: addons) has the ability to grant and revoke optional additional rights required for the implementation in the add-on of extended functionality, which is included through separate settings oyki. Previously, these extended rights were requested dynamically when extended features were enabled and were not reflected in the about: addons interface. For example, the Simple Tab Groups add-on has an additional bookmarking feature, which by default disabled, and when enabled requires permission to access bookmarks.
  • Added the ability to zoom pop-ups, sidebars and add-ons by rotating the mouse wheel while holding down the Ctrl key.
  • Accessing localhost (URL http: // localhost /, http: //dev.localhost/, etc.) is no longer marked as mixed content and downloading resources from localhost does not affect the secure connection label.
/Release. View in full here.