Firefox Releases Articles
-
Shipping a security update of Firefox in less than a day
One of Mozilla’s top priorities is to keep our users safe; this commitment is written into our mission. As soon as we discover a critical issue in Firefox, we plan a rapid mitigation. This post describes how we fixed a Pwn2Own exploit discovery and released new builds of the browser in less than 22 hours, through the collaborative and well-coordinated efforts of a global cross-functional team.
-
Forging Better Tools for the Web
2017 was a big year for Firefox DevTools. We updated and refined the UI, refactored three of the panels, squashed countless bugs, and shipped several new features. This work not only provides a faster and better DevTools experience, but lays the groundwork for some exciting new features and improvements for 2018 and beyond.
-
Firefox 58: The Quantum Era Continues
2017 was a big year for Mozilla, culminating in the release of Firefox Quantum, a massive multi-year re-tooling of the browser focused on speed, and laying the groundwork for 2018 releases. Here's a roundup of some of the goodies in Firefox 58: including Off-Main-Thread Painting (OTMP) and other Gecko engine performance improvements, new support for CSS `font-display`, new Add to Home screen support in Firefox for Android, and more.
-
Making WebAssembly even faster: Firefox’s new streaming and tiering compiler
People call WebAssembly a game changer because it makes it possible to run code on the web faster. Some speedups are already present, and some are yet to come. With streaming compilation, the browser compiles the code while the code is still being downloaded. Up until now, this was just a potential future speedup. But with the release of Firefox 58 next week, it becomes a reality. Firefox 58 also includes a new 2-tiered compiler. The new baseline compiler compiles code 10–15 times faster than the optimizing compiler. Combined, these two changes mean we compile code faster than it comes in from the network.
-
Using the new theming API in Firefox
Explore the new theming API for Firefox Quantum, and see what you can do with lightweight theming, dynamic themes, per-window themes, and a quick look at what's next for themes in 2018.
-
New in Firefox 58: Developer Edition
Dive into the changes coming in Firefox 58, currently available to preview in Firefox Developer Edition. Highlights include more control for CSS authors, an even better Debugger, added support for WebVR and FLAC, WebExtension API additions, and more.
-
Comparing Browser Page Load Time: An Introduction to Methodology
On blog.mozilla.org, we shared results of a speed comparison study to show how fast Firefox Quantum with Tracking Protection enabled is compared to other browsers. In this companion post, we share some insights into the methodology behind these page load time comparison studies and benchmarks. Our study focused on news web sites, which tend to come with an abundance of trackers, and uses the Navigation Timing API as a data source.
-
Entering the Quantum Era—How Firefox got fast again and where it’s going to get faster
Over the past seven months, we’ve been rapidly replacing major parts of the engine, introducing Rust and parts of Servo to Firefox. Plus, we’ve had a browser performance strike force scouring the codebase for performance issues, both obvious and non-obvious. We call this Project Quantum, and the first general release of the reborn Firefox Quantum comes out tomorrow.
-
Go beyond console.log with the Firefox Debugger
console.log is no debugger. It’s great for figuring out what your JavaScript app is up to, but it’s limited to spitting out a minimal amount of information. If your code is complex, you’ll need a proper debugger. That’s why we’ve added a new section to the Firefox Devtools Playground that’s all about debugging, with four basic lessons that use the Firefox Debugger to examine and repair a simple JavaScript to-do app.
-
Async Pan/Zoom (APZ) lands in Firefox Quantum
Asynchronous pan and zoom (APZ) is landing in Firefox Quantum, which means jank-free, smooth scrolling for all! Until now, scrolling was part of the main JavaScript thread. This meant that when JavaScript code was being executed, the user could not scroll the page. With APZ, scrolling is decoupled from the JavaScript thread, leading to a smoother scrolling experience, especially in slower devices, like mobile phones.
