Mozilla Firefox 122 has been officially released, with an official Deb package debuting alongside it.
Yes: there’s now an official Firefox Deb package for Debian-based distros, including Ubuntu. This gives users a safe, reliable way to get the latest version of their browser should they (for whatever reason) not want to use a repo build, Snap, Flatpak, PPA, etc.
Last year Mozilla launched their own dedicated apt repo to make it easier for Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc users to install Firefox Nightly builds and, more recently, Developer Edition and Beta versions. Then adding a stable build feels like a logical end point to the effort.
Does this mean Ubuntu users shouldn’t use the Firefox Snap?
No.
Mozilla continues to recommend that users of Debian-based distros opt for the Firefox build in their distro’s package manager (in Ubuntu that’s the Snap). But the choice to not use that will please many — now I have to go update my install Firefox Deb not Snap tutorial!
Mozilla Firefox 112 New Features & Changes
When making a search query from the address Firefox is able to display images and descriptions for search suggestions (if provided by the search engine. Google does). Depending on what you’re searching for this can speed up selecting the correct result.
Do you use Firefox’s privacy-respecting translations feature? You’ll be pleased to hear there’s a big improvement to the quality of translated webpages.
“The results should be much more stable,” Mozilla says, adding the update “…fixes issues where the content of a page could disappear when translated, or interactive widgets could break.”
Other tweaks:
- Firefox 122 can create and use passkeys in iCloud Keychain (macOS)
- MDN Web Docs article suggestions from Firefox Suggest available in address bar
- Line breaking rules of web content now match the Unicode Standard
Finally, web devs should know that keyboard navigation in the Inspector Rules view has been adjusted (some say fixed).
When editing a selector/property name/value the Enter key no longer moves focus to the next input but validates the entry and focuses the matching element.
To validate and move focus hit Tab or ctrl + enter.
