Various new features, bugs fix and enterprise improvements with Firefox 80 release

Mozilla Firefox 80 has released today (25^th Aug, 2020) with new features, bug fixes, enterprise improvements and several security patches.

This release enables new add-ons blocklist for the browser that enhance the browser’s performance. This will also enhance the scalability of the browsing application by lowering the time required to parse the list the problematic firebox extensions automatically disable.

Firefox 80 will also allow users to see their system’s default system PDF viewer and fix several crashes. This makes the browsers more stable for reader users. Windows, Mac and Linux desktop users can upgrade to this release through Options > Help > About Firefox – the browser will automatically check for the new update and install it when available.

With this release, all other Firefox development have moved up a version bringing Firefox Beta to version 81 and Nightly builds for version 82. Firefox 81.0 Beta, next to release, will promote the stable branch and also add support for “control media playback via hardware media keys on a keyboard or headset or virtual media control interface” and “smoother video playback and improved AV sync of 60 fps videos on macOS.”

You can download the Firefox 80 manually through Mozilla’s FTP release directory. Below, major changes and improvements in Firefox 80 are highlighted, read it if you are interested.

Firefox’s new add-ons blocklist

The browser will use a new and more scrable version of blocklist that will lower the time the browser needs to parse it.

Stuart Colville, Engineering Manager for Firefox Add-on, said, “When we become aware of add-ons that go against user expectations or risk user privacy and security, we take steps to block them from running in Firefox using a mechanism called the add-ons blocklist,”

“One of the constraints of the previous blocklist was that it required parsing of a large number of regular expressions. Each Firefox instance would need to check if any of its user’s installed add-ons matched any of the regular expressions in the blocklist.”

“As the number of blocks increased, the overhead of loading and parsing the blocklist in Firefox became greater. In late 2019, we began looking into a more efficient way for Firefox to determine if an add-on is blocked.”

Firefox disables the extensions using three blocks namely Hard, Soft and Click to activate. This classification is based on severity of issues it causes. Hard blocks disable an extension making users not able to override the block. Soft blocks disable extension by default. Here, users can override and continue to use the add-on. Click-to-activate blocks disable a plug-in by default. But allow users to enable the plug-in for particular sites.

Bug fixes Improvements and development changes

New

You can set the Firefox as the default system PDF viewer from now
The name reported by accessibility tools for items in multi-tiered tree will now provide users with the correct level of content when using a screen reader

Fixes

Frequent encountered crash when using JAWS screen reader and several other crashes related to screen reader are fixed
Fixes the issues making users previously inaccessible to some of the Firefox developer tools
SVG title and desc elements are now correctly exposed to assistive products as screen readers

Changed

A number of animations like tab loading has reduced to reduce motion for migraines and epilepsy users
A new add-on blocklist enhances the performance and scalability

Enterprise

Several Bug fixes plus new policies have been implemented in the latest Firefox 80
This release will be the final release for Firefox 68 ESR (68.12) if no any critical issue would found before the next release Firefox ESP 78.3 scheduled on September 22, 2020. With the release of 78.3, the users of Firefox 68 ESP will be automatically upgraded to the Firefox 78 ESR series

Developer

An experimental sldebar panel is shipped in the inspector to Firefox Developer Edition that would help the developers’ identity any compatibility issues related to MDN data more quickly.
A turtle icon is shown for slow request in the Network Monitor request list
RTX and Transport-cc are added that improve the call quality in poor network conditions and better bandwidth estimation. These will also provide better compatibility with WebRTC using websites.

Security Fixes

CVE-2020-15663: Downgrade attack on the Mozilla Maintenance Service
CVE-2020-15664: Attacker-induced prompt for extension installation
CVE-2020-12401: ECDSA signature generation timing-attack
CVE-2020-6829: P-384 and P-521 vulnerable to an electro-magnetic side channel attack on signature generation
CVE-2020-12400: P-384 and P-521 vulnerable to a side channel attack on modular inversion
CVE-2020-15665: Address bar not reset when choosing to stay on a page after the beforeunload dialog is shown
CVE-2020-15666: MediaError message property leaks cross-origin response status
CVE-2020-15667: Heap overflow when processing an update file
CVE-2020-15668: Data Race when reading certificate information
CVE-2020-15670: fixes the bug in Memory safety Firefox 80 and Firefox ESR 78.2