Longtime Slashdot reader williamyf writes: FireFox 153 was released today. The most important user-facing changes are improvements to PDF handling (you can now merge PDFs and add images to them), and HDR video playback (on Windows, provided HDR is active systemwide). Other under-the-hood changes include browser-wide containers and QWAC support. The full list is in the change notes. But the most important feature is that this version is an ESR and, therefore, defines the ESR feature set for the next year. Why is being an ESR so important, you ask? 1.) ESR, rather than "normal" (a.k.a. Rapid Release), Firefox is the out-of-the-box browser for many important distros, including Debian, RHEL, Kali, Tails, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Slackware, and others. 2.) Many organizations, large and small, standardize on Firefox ESR as their default browser, regardless of the default browser included with their OS. 3.) Firefox ESR is the basis for many downstream projects, such as Waterfox and KaiOS. All these projects will inherit, for a year, whatever ESR brings to the table today. 4.) Many ISVs and SaaS providers, if they certify their wares for Firefox at all, certify for the ESR version only. Please note that ESR 153 will not be offered as an automatic update until two months from now (ESR 140 will still be supported). If you want it now, you will need to download and install it manually. Also of note, ESR 115 will be supported until March 2027. If you use an unsupported version of macOS or Windows (like Windows 7 or 8.x), this is the version to get. However, even Mozilla cautions against running a supported browser on an unsupported OS: "Note that Microsoft ended official support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 in January 2023. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and have known vulnerabilities. Without official support from Microsoft, maintaining Firefox for outdated operating systems becomes costly for Mozilla and risky for users."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Extension si vous en avez marre que Google traduise tout dans YouTube.
(Permalink)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Linuxiac: Mozilla has released Firefox 152, the latest update to its popular open-source web browser, with updated settings, improved media controls, experimental JPEG XL support, and various platform-specific fixes for desktop and Android. A key update is the redesigned Firefox Settings page, which now features clearer groupings, improved navigation, and a more streamlined structure for easier customization. The release also expands built-in spellchecker support, adding dictionaries for Croatian, English (UK), Georgian, Persian, Slovenian, Tajik, Tamil, Tibetan, Turkish, Welsh, and Xhosa. [...] Importantly, Firefox now offers experimental support for JPEG XL, an image format with improved compression over WebP, JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Users can enable JPEG XL in the Firefox Labs panel within Settings.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Firefox has merged initial support for Vulkan Video decoding, giving the browser a more cross-platform path for GPU-accelerated video playback beyond Linux's long-running reliance on VA-API. Phoronix reports: Firefox on Linux has long been focused on the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) that isn't universally supported by Linux graphics drivers. This has left to efforts like NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver to layer VA-API atop NVIDIA NVDEC interfaces to enjoy GPU-accelerated video playback in Firefox. Smaller Arm/embedded graphics drivers also have been largely left out of the game in the VA-API space. But with Vulkan Video we are beginning to see more adoption and in a cross-platform manner. [...] The Firefox 153 release due out in July will have Vulkan Video decoding support available. The Vulkan Video activity in Firefox Git culminated this week with the work of NVIDIA engineer Tymur Boiko and Red Hat's Martin Stransky. Firefox 153.0 is expected for release on 21 July with this Vulkan Video support assuming no last minute issues.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Web Serial API lets websites write to (and read from) serial devices using JavaScript, including USB and Bluetooth devices with virtual serial ports. And this week's Firefox 151 release introduced support for the Web Serial API on desktop. "Most folks won't use this API," acknowledges Mozilla's blog, "but for our community of builders and tinkerers, it unlocks the ability to use Firefox to communicate directly with compatible hardware devices like microcontrollers, development boards, and other serial-connected devices..." With Firefox's browser engine, Gecko, now supporting Web Serial, users can now connect, code, configure, and control compatible hardware directly from the browser in many workflows, often without additional software or complicated setup... As part of this week's launch, Adafruit, one of the internet's most beloved open-source hardware communities, is collaborating with us to test and validate what browser-based hardware development can look like in Firefox with Web Serial support... With Web Serial support in Firefox 151, Adafruit's browser-based hardware workflows now work directly in Firefox as well, with no additional software or complicated setup required for many projects. We invite you to give it a try... We want the web to be open, flexible, and shaped by the diversity of people building on it. If you're wiring up your first board, experimenting with hardware projects, or dusting off an old electronics kit, give Adafruit and Web Serial in Firefox a try. Build something amazing. Make something useful. Tell us what works. Tell us what breaks. Most of all, make it your own. Mozilla's "Hacks" blog demonstrates with an Adafruit ESP32-S2 based board "where messages sent from web code can be directly displayed on the device over Web Serial." And Mozilla engineer Alex Franchuk even built a handheld device that changes a web page's CSS properties.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.