[October 20] Mozilla Corporation’s free & open-source web browser, Mozilla Firefox gets a new stable release, Firefox version 49.0.2, which includes new features, fixes and more.
Firefox is a fast, full-featured Web browser, which includes pop-up blocking, tab-browsing, integrated Google search, simplified privacy controls, and many additional features.
Overview:
Made with a mission to put you first
We’ve always designed Firefox to protect and respect your private information. That’s why we’re proud to be voted the Most Trusted Internet Company for Privacy.
Works the way you do
How you use the Web is unique. Firefox lets you change it to match. Remove what you don’t use, keep what you do and put it just about anywhere you want.
Faster at what you do most
Firefox was named the ”speed king” in independent benchmark and performance tests against other browsers. Save time and do just about anything quicker than before.
New
- Asynchronous rendering of the Flash plugins is now enabled by default. This should improve performance and reduce crashes for sites that use the Flash plugin. (Bug 1307108)
Fixed
- Change D3D9 default fallback preference to prevent graphical artifacts (Bug 1306465)
- Network issue prevents some users from seeing the Firefox UI on startup (Bug 1305436)
- Web compatibility issue with Array.prototype.values (Bug 1299593)
- Various security fixes
- Web compatibility issue with file uploads (Bug 1306472)
Changed
- Diagnostic information on timing for tab switching (Bug 1304113)
Downloads:
Firefox 49.0.2 for Windows | Firefox 64-bit | 46 MB
Firefox 49.0.2 for Linux | 52.8 MB
Firefox 49.0.2 for MacOS | 81.3 MB
Fixed
- Mitigate a startup crash issue caused by Websense (Windows only) (Bug 1304783)
New
- Updated Firefox Login Manager to allow HTTPS pages to use saved HTTP logins. It’s one more way Firefox is supporting Let’s Encrypt and helping users transition to a more secure web.
- Added features to Reader Mode that make it easier on the eyes and the ears
- Controls that allow users to adjust the width and line spacing of text
- Narrate, which reads the content of a page out loud
- Improved video performance for users on systems that support SSSE3 without hardware acceleration
- Added context menu controls to HTML5 audio and video that let users loops files or play files at 1.25x speed
- Enhancements for Mac users
- Improved performance on OS X systems without hardware acceleration
- Improved appearance of anti-aliased OS X fonts
- Improvements in about:memory reports for tracking font memory usage
- Improve performance on Windows systems without hardware acceleration
Fixed
- Fixed an issue that prevented users from updating Firefox for Mac unless they originally installed Firefox. Now, those users as well as any user with administrative credentials can update Firefox
- Various security fixes
Changed
- Ended Firefox for Mac support for OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8.
- Ended Firefox for Windows support for SSE processors
- Removed Firefox Hello
- Re-enabled the default for Graphite2 font shaping
Developer
- Added a Cause column to the Network Monitor to show what caused each network request
- Introduced web speech synthesis API