Firefox 126: Telemetry, privacy feature, and security fixes

Mozilla plans to release Firefox 126.0 Stable later today. The new version of Firefox is a smaller release, as it makes just a few changes. Noteworthy are improvements to the browser's copy without site tracking feature, support for AV2 hardware decode acceleration on M3 Macs, and new search Telemetry.

Tip: To check the installed Firefox version, select Menu > Help > About Firefox on desktop systems.

Mozilla updates all development editions and Firefox ESR at the same time. Here are the new versions:

• Firefox 115.11 ESR
• Firefox 127 Beta and Dev
• Firefox 128 Nightly
• Firefox 126 for Android

Executive Summary

• Firefox 126 addresses security issues in the browser.
• Support for zstandard compression content encoding, which should improve performance on sites such as Facebook.
• New Telemetry to aggregate searches based on "20 high-level content types" such as sports or business.
• Mozilla pulled the URL Paste feature introduced in Firefox 125 because of performance issues.

Firefox 126.0 download and update

Updates are installed automatically by default. The new Firefox 126 update will therefore be installed automatically on most systems. Firefox users may speed up the installation by opening Firefox Menu > Help > Firefox, but only after the official release later today.

Here are the official download locations:

• Firefox Stable download
• Firefox Beta download
• Nightly download
• Firefox ESR download
• Firefox for Android on Google Play

Firefox 126.0 changes

Copy (Link) Without Site Tracking

Copy Without Site Tracking and Copy Link Without Site Tracking enable users to copy URLs without tracking parameters. This feature has been available for a while. The update introduces support for nested URLs and extends support, so that over 300 additional tracking parameters are now stripped when copying links using this feature in Firefox.

New Search Telemetry

Mozilla Firefox creates aggregate counts of broad category searches to "broadly inform search feature development". The 'categories are based on 20 high-level content types, such as "sports", "business", and "travel"'.

Mozilla notes that the data is not associated with individual users and that it is collected using OHTTP to remove IP addresses. Furthermore, profiling will not be performed and data won't be shared with third-parties.

Tip: Firefox users who do not want this can se browser.search.serpEventTelemetryCategorization.enabled to False on about:config.

Other changes and fixes

• Firefox Translations supports Catalan now.
• AV1 hardware decode acceleration supported on M3 Macs.

Developer changes

• The zstd directive of the Content-Encoding HTTP header is now supported, allowing decoding of server-sent content encoded with the Zstandard compression algorithm.
• IDBFactory.databases() is now supported for enumerating available IndexedDB API databases
• IDBTransaction.durability can now be used for querying the transaction durability hint that the transaction was created with
• The URL.parse() static method is now supported for creating URL objects.
• The Screen Wake Lock API is now supported. This allows web apps to request that the screen is not dimmed or locked.
• All RTCIceCandidate properties and methods are now supported and match the specification, with the exception of unimplemented properties: relayProtocol and url.
• The Element.currentCSSZoom read only property is now supported for getting the effective CSS zoom of an element.
• The ability to define states for custom elements and match them using CSS selectors is now available by default.
• The Selection.direction property is now supported for indicating the direction of a range.
• The marquee events bounce, finish, and start have been removed from HTMLMarqueeElement
• The commands.onCommand event now passes the tab argument to the event listener.
• The runtime.MessageSender type now includes the origin property.
• The "webRequestAuthProvider" permission is now supported.
• The options_page manifest key is provided as an alias of the options_ui key.

Enterprise changes

• TranslateEnabled policy is now available.
• Preferences policy was update to allow setting privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled, which handle Containers functionality.
• Locking the Proxy policy locks all options, even if no values are changed.
• Tabs from other devices no longer shows in Firefox View if Accounts are disabled.

Security updates / fixes

• Firefox 126 addresses 16 unique security issues rated high or lower. No exploits in the wild.
• Firefox 115.11 ESR fixes 6 unique security issues rated high or lower. No exploits in the wild.

Outlook

Firefox 127 and Firefox 115.12 ESR will be released on. The next Firefox ESR version is Firefox 128 ESR, which will be released on July 9, 2024.

Recent Firefox news and tips

How to enable Tab Previews in Firefox

Additional information / resources

• Firefox 126 release notes
• Firefox 126 for Developers
• Firefox 126 for Enterprise
• Firefox Security Advisories
• Firefox Release Schedule

Closing Words

Firefox 126 is a smaller release. It is still an important update, as it addresses security issues in the browser. Mozilla had to pull two features that it introduced in recent versions of Firefox. Firefox 127 will see the introduction of bounce tracking protection.

Now you: what is your take on this release?

Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Firefox 126: Telemetry, privacy feature, and security fixes appeared first on gHacks Technology News.