Firefox Release Notes

Release Notes tell you what’s new in Firefox. As always, we welcome your feedback. You can also file a bug in Bugzilla or see the system requirements of this release.

59.0 Firefox Release

March 13, 2018

Version 59.0, first offered to Release channel users on March 13, 2018

If you’re a regular reader of Firefox release notes (and thank you if you are!) you’re probably aware of just how much we’ve invested in the performance of Firefox Quantum. We launched an entirely new engine in November, made significant improvements to graphics rendering in January, and are continuing to post performance gains and add features with this release. On Firefox for desktop, we’ve improved page load times, added tools to annotate and crop your Firefox Screenshots, and made it easier to arrange your Top Sites on the Firefox Home page. On Firefox for Android, we’ve added support for sites that stream video using the HLS protocol.

As always, this is made possible by Mozillians around the world, including the new Mozillians who contributed to this release of Firefox.

New

  • Performance enhancements:
    - Faster load times for content on the Firefox Home page
    - Faster page load times by loading either from the networked cache or the cache on the user’s hard drive (Race Cache With Network)
    - Improved graphics rendering using Off-Main-Thread Painting (OMTP) for Mac users (OMTP for Windows was released in Firefox 58)

  • Drag-and-drop to rearrange Top Sites on the Firefox Home page, and customize new windows and tabs in other ways

  • Added features for Firefox Screenshots:
    - Basic annotation lets the user draw on and highlight saved screenshots
    - Recropping to change the viewable area of saved screenshots

  • Enhanced WebExtensions API including better support for decentralized protocols and the ability to dynamically register content scripts

  • Improved Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities.
    - Implemented RTP Transceiver to give pages more fine grained control over calls
    - Implemented features to support large scale conferences

  • Added support for W3C specs for pointer events and improved platform integration with added device support for mouse, pen, and touch screen pointer input

  • Added the Ecosia search engine as an option for German Firefox

  • Added the Qwant search engine as an option for French Firefox

  • Added settings in about:preferences to stop websites from asking to send notifications or access your device’s camera, microphone, and location, while still allowing trusted websites to use these features

Fixed

Changed

  • Firefox Private Browsing Mode will remove path information from referrers to prevent cross-site tracking

Developer

Unresolved

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