A new stable version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser is available to download.
Mozilla Firefox 123 buffs the browser’s privacy-respecting translation. When translating a web page the browser now also translates text shown in tooltips (i.e. titles) and placeholder text shown in form controls/fields/search boxes.
A clutch of address bar settings are now listed in the Settings > Search section. From there, you can choose what kinds of results the address bar ‘suggests’ for queries, you enter, e.g., browsing history, bookmarks, open tabs, shortcuts, and search engines.
Linux gamer? You’ll be pleased to hear Firefox 123 adopts evdev for gamepads on Linux. This major change improves the sorts of controllers you can use with the browser. Lots of testing was done using Playstation 4 (Dualshock 4) and Xbox 360/One controllers.
A few rogue theming bugs are resolved when using Firefox in Ubuntu, including better ‘visual distinction’ in the password list when high-contrast dark mode is enabled, and ensuring the menu bar colour is the correct one under the standard theme in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
Users of Firefox on 64-bit ARM Linux distros can (if their hardware supports it) enjoy 2K and 4K video on YouTube. Firefox 123 modifies its user-agent string for ARM64 platforms to workaround a YouTube issue that caps video resolution @ 1080p.
Firefox 123 also implements VideoEncoder on Linux desktops (only for now apparently but coming to other platforms soon). This isn’t something we (as users) will see or benefit from just yet; it’s part of a backend push to support the WebCodecs standard.
Web dev? You’ll be interested to know Firefox 123 adds:
- linearRGB interpolation for SVG gradients
- SVG feImage elements render if non-percentage dimensions specified
- Early Hints are now ‘fully supported’
- Audio echo cancellation can be applied to microphone inputs
- Declarative ShadowDOM is supported
Finally, Mozilla say computers using older AMD CPUs might see black image thumbnails in file dialogs. To resolve this they suggest updating the underlying graphics driver, if possible. They don’t say whether that issue affects Linux users but figured I’d mention it incase!
See the official change-log for more details.
Get Firefox 123
Getting the Firefox 123 update will, in most cases, be automatic. Windows and macOS versions of the browser update in-app, as do Linux binary builds. The Snap, Flatpak, and Deb versions will roll out through package managers from Feb 20.
If you want/need to download Mozilla Firefox head over to the Mozilla website and get it from there.
