Firefox 127 Released: Here's What's New and Improved

Firefox 127 introduces a range of new features and improvements, including automatic replacement of the HTTP protocol with HTTPS, proactive DNS prefetching, and improved user privacy

Firefox 127 has been released, and with it comes a host of new features and improvements that make this one of the most exciting updates yet. Alongside the release of Firefox 127, a long-term support branch update has also been created, version 115.12.0. Meanwhile, the Firefox 128 branch has moved to the beta testing stage, with an expected release date of July 9.

So, what’s new in Firefox 127? Here are some of the key features that you can look forward to.

Firefox 127: What’s new

Duplicate Tab Closing: Firefox 127 introduces a new button in the “V” menu that lists all open tabs. You can also find this button in the tab’s context menu, which allows you to close all duplicate tabs in the current window. This feature is particularly useful for decluttering your browsing experience and freeing up resources.
HTTPS by Default: This version now automatically replaces the HTTP protocol with HTTPS for resources in the <audio>, <video> and image tags. If downloaded resources are not available via HTTPS, they will no longer be displayed from pages opened via HTTPS.
Proactive DNS Prefetching: The version 127 now supports proactively determining host IP addresses without waiting for the user to follow a link or request a resource specified on the page. This feature improves page load times and reduces latency.
Improved User Privacy: Firefox 127 now indicates the x86_64 architecture for 32-bit x86 systems in the User-Agent header, navigator.platform, and navigator.oscpu JavaScript APIs. This improvement reduces information that can be used to indirectly identify users.
Enhanced Screenshot Tool: The screenshot tool in Firefox 127 now supports creating screenshots for SVG and XML files, as well as for service “about:” pages. Additionally, the tool now supports keyboard shortcuts, display mode with high contrast, and improved performance for saving large areas of the screen.
New Settings for Page Scrolling: Firefox 127 introduces new settings for changing the page scroll offset in percentages and lines. These settings can be found in about:config under toolkit.scrollbox.pagescroll.maxOverlapPercent and toolkit.scrollbox.pagescroll.maxOverlapLines.
Automatic Login on Windows: Firefox 127 now supports automatic login on the Windows platform. This feature enables preloading, so the browser is ready to use instantly when launched.
Additional Access Protection on macOS and Windows: Firefox 127 now provides additional access protection when using AutoFill for saved passwords or when viewing password information in a password manager. This feature requires confirmation of authentication on the system.
Improved WebVTT Support: Firefox 127 now supports characters allowed in HTML markup in WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks Format) format. This improvement enhances the organization of text output at certain points in time, such as displaying subtitles.
Clipboard API Improvements: Firefox 127 now includes the ClipboardItem interface and support for the navigator.clipboard.read() and navigator.clipboard.write() methods by default. This feature allows a web application to read and write data to the clipboard.
Experimental Letter Spacing: Firefox 127 now supports setting symmetrical letter spacing via the letter-spacing CSS property. This feature is enabled via the layout.css.letter-spacing.model setting in about:config.
Security Improvements: Firefox 127 includes several security improvements, including the prohibition of installation of add-ons whose XPI files are signed using unsafe algorithms and support for the DTLS 1.3 protocol in WebRTC.

In addition to these new features, Firefox 127 has fixed 22 vulnerabilities, including 11 marked as dangerous. These vulnerabilities were caused by memory problems, such as buffer overflows and access to already freed memory areas.

Download

To get these awesome updates, visit the official Mozilla website for a fresh installation or download the pre-compiled binaries using the below link. If you’re already using Firefox, watch for the update in your Linux distribution’s repositories: it should arrive in the following days.

Note: The below link has a pre-compiled .deb package as well. So, you can use that and install it using “dpkg -i” or “gdebi” in your Debian-based distributions.

Download Firefox 127

Via changelog

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