Firefox 80 released

Firefox 80 released
4 min read
27 August 2020

Web browser Firefox 80  has been released. In addition, the update is formed from branches with long-term support 68.12.0 and 78.2.0. Firefox 68.12 ESR is the latest in its series, and Firefox 68 users will be offered an automatic upgrade to release 78.3 in a month. Version of Firefox 80 for Android is delayed. In the near future, the Firefox 81 branch will enter beta testing, the release of which is scheduled for September 22.

Major changes :

  • New backend implemented on Linux platformfor X11 based on DMABUF, which is prepared by splitting the DMABUF backend previously proposed for Wayland. The new backend made it possible to implement for systems using the X11 protocol, support for hardware video acceleration via VA-API (previously, such acceleration was only enabled for Wayland), as well as the ability to work with WebGL via EGL. To activate work through EGL, you must activate the settings "gfx.webrender.all" "media.ffmpeg.dmabuf-textures.enabled", "media.ffmpeg.vaapi-drm-display.enabled" and "media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled" in about: config, and also set the MOZ_X11_EGL environment variable, after setting which Webrender and OpenGL compositing components switch to use EGL instead of GLX. VA-API support is not fully stabilized yet and will be enabled by default in the next release.
  • A new implementation of the blocking list for add - ons that are experiencing security, stability, and performance issues has been included. The new implementation notable for improved block list performance and scalability issues through the use of cascading Bloom filters.
  • TLS certificates issued starting from September 1, 2020 will be subject to a new expiration date - the lifetime of these certificates will not exceed 398 days (13 months). Similar restrictions apply in Chrome and Safari. For certificates received before September 1, the trust will be maintained, but limited to 825 days (2.2 years).
  • For users with migraine and epilepsy in the "Reduce motion" mode, some animation effects when opening tabs have been removed. In addition, an hourglass icon is now displayed instead of a dot moving back and forth when the contents of a tab are loading.
  • Provided the ability to set Firefox as the default PDF viewer on the system.
  • Added support for displaying a warning when sending web form content from a page opened via HTTPS without using encryption. The "security.warn_submit_secure_to_insecure" setting is provided to control the warning in about: config.
  • Various improvements and fixes have been made to the operation of screen readers and support for tools for people with disabilities.
  • Added support for RTX and Transport-cc mechanisms to improve the quality of WebRTC calls on poor communication channels and improve the forecast of available bandwidth.
  • The "export " JavaScript expression provides support for the new "export * as namespace" syntax proposed in the ECMAScript 2021 specification.
  • The Animations API includes the KeyframeEffect.composite and KeyframeEffect.iterationComposite compositing operations.
  • The Media Session API has added support for defining handlers for changing the position in the stream: seekto to go to the specified position and skipad to skip ads that come before the main content.
  • The KHR_parallel_shader_compile extension is implemented in WebGL, which allows you to run several shader compilation threads at once.
  • Window.open () has dropped support for the outerHeight and outerWidth parameters.
  • In WebAssembly, the use of atomic operations is no longer limited to shared memory regions.
  • An experimental dashboard has been proposed in Tools for Web Developers to make it easier to identify cross-browser incompatibilities.
  • Firefox 80 releasedFirefox 80 released
  • In the network activity monitoring interface, visual labels (an icon with a turtle) have been added to highlight slow requests, the execution time of which exceeds 500 ms (the limit can be changed through the devtools.netmonitor.audits.slow setting in about: config).Firefox 80 released
  • The ": block" and ": unblock" commands are implemented in the web console to block and unblock network requests.
  • When the JavaScript debugger interrupts in the event of an exception, the code bar now displays a tooltip with a stack trace.

In addition to bug fixes and new features in Firefox 80 eliminated 13 vulnerabilities, of which 6 are labeled as hazardous. 4 vulnerabilities (compiled for CVE-2020-15670) are caused by memory problems, such as buffer overflows and access to already freed memory areas. These problems could potentially lead to the execution of attacker code when opening specially designed pages.

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Alex 9.8K
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