Firefox/Roadmap/Updates

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2019-05-13

2019-05-06

  • On Friday evening we started receiving feedback that extensions were failing for Firefox users and the Firefox team quickly identified that we had a certificate chain issue. We are extremely sorry to all Firefox users affected by this issue. The TL;DR is that one of the certificates used to authenticate add-ons expired, causing the signatures on all add-ons to break. The fix was to deploy a new certificate to Firefox users. A fix was developed Friday night and initially pushed out to desktop Firefox users through the Normandy infrastructure on Saturday. The fix was rolled out in a full QA'd dot release to both Desktop and Android users on Sunday. There are still some outstanding issues actively being worked on and a list of those unresolved issues can be found in the Firefox 66.0.4 release notes. We will providing a full post mortem on the incident as soon as possible and for now you can also learn more about it at blog dot mozilla dot org slash addons.
  • Firefox 67 is in the Beta channel and ships to our stable release a week from tomorrow on May 14th.
  • Firefox 68 is in the Nightly channel and ships to our stable release on July 9th. Over the last week there have been approximately 475 bugs resolved as fixed. There was one notable change this week:

2019-04-29

  • Firefox 66.0.3 is our currently stable release and came out on April 10th.
  • Firefox 67 is in the Beta channel and moves to Stable on May 14th, two weeks from tomorrow. Beta 15 and 16 go out this week. These are our final betas.
  • Firefox 68 is in the Nightly channel and ships to Stable on July 9th. 68 is the next ESR base. Next week we begin the Nightly soft code freeze. Last week saw about 500 bug fixes land on Nightly including these notable changes:
  • From mozilla.dev.platform "Fennec will be following the 68 train to ESR68-based release. We want to provide users with a secure and supported legacy Firefox for Android until Fenix has matured enough for users to migrate to it. Therefore, starting from Gecko 68, we plan to use the ESR68 repository as a stable base for managing Fennec engineering, testing, and release of builds going forward."

2019-04-22

  • Firefox 66.0.3 is our currently stable release.
  • Firefox 67 is in the Beta channel and moves to Stable on May 14th. Beta 13 and 14 go out this week. Our final betas go out next week.
  • Firefox 68 is in the Nightly channel and ships to Stable on July 9th. Last week saw about 500 bug fixes land on Nightly including these notable changes:
    • An early version of picture in picture mode for video has been enabled. On hover, videos now have a small button labeled "Picture-In-Picture" and when clicked, the video pops out to an always-on-top video docked on the lower corner of the screen.
    • Firefox now pins its shortcut on the taskbar for Windows 10 users. Before we would put an icon on the Desktop and in the Start Menu. Now we also put an icon on the Taskbar.
    • Dev Tools now has a full-page color contrast audit feature. This helps you quickly identify any contrast shortcomings, with badging and filtering of the accessibility tree. Simply click the contrast button in the Accessibility toolbar to run the audit.
    • Don't miss These Weeks In Firefox: Issue 57 for an in-depth look at what's happening with Firefox development. These Weeks In Firefox offers details from across the Firefox development effort for the last couple of weeks.

2019-04-15

  • Firefox 66.0.3 is our currently stable release. It shipped last Wednesday and fixes several minor issues.
  • Firefox 67 is in the Beta channel and ships to our stable release users on May 14th. Beta 11 and 12 go out this week.
  • Firefox 68 is in the Nightly channel and ships to our stable release on July 9th. Over the last week there have been about 535 bugs resolved as Fixed including these notable changes.

2019-04-08

2019-04-01

  • Firefox 66.0.2 is our currently stable release. This second dot release shipped last Wednesday to fix a web compatibility issues with Office 365, iCloud and IBM WebMail caused by recent changes to the handling of keyboard events (Bug 1538966)
  • Firefox 67 is in the Beta channel and moves to the stable release on May 14th. Beta 7 and 8 (of 16 planned) ship this week so we're coming up on the half way mark for this cycle. Over the last week we've uplifted about 60 fixes to the Beta channel including the new Accounts toolbar button.
  • Firefox 68 is in the Nightly channel and ships to the stable release on July 9th. Over the last week there have been 525 fixes landed on Nightly including these notable changes:

2019-03-25

2019-03-18

2019-03-11

2019-03-04

2019-02-25

2019-02-11

2019-01-28

2019-01-14

  • Firefox 64.02 is our current stable release. This point release came out on January 9th and addresses several issues including:
  • Firefox 65 is in the Beta channel and moves to Stable on January 29th. We're currently in our 10th Beta with Beta 11 coming out tomorrow. We only have 12 Betas planned so we're in the end game now. If you've got bug fixes that need to make Firefox 65, time is short so get those uplift requests in today!
  • Firefox 66 is in the Nightly channel and moves to Stable on March 19th. Over the last week there have been 500 bugs resolved as fixed including these notable ones:
    • We implemented Scroll anchoring. As a page is loading, new elements can show up above the scrolled to part of the screen and that causes the page to shift creating a poor user experience. Scroll anchoring attempts to mitigate this and prevent thescreen from shifting when new elements are added above the scroll position.
    • We now have main process crash reporting on ARM64 Windows builds. We don't have content process crash reporting yet. That's being worked on in bug 1517729
    • We also have stub installer support for ARM64 Windows builds. The standard stub installer now recognizes Windows on Snapdragon and downloads and installs the appropriate bits.
    • WebRender has been moved to mozilla-central. Before, WebRender was developed on Github and work was transferred to mozilla-central. Now the canonical home for WebRender is in mozilla-central's gfx/wr directory. WebRender's Github is now a downstream mirror of mozilla-central. This also means that WebRender bugs and patches should be filed in Bugzilla rather than Github.
    • The en-US dictionary got and update and now includes the word "hooptie" among several other additions.
    • Last but not least, a 15 year old layout bug was fixed. The bug, Deeply nested elements are not rendered was fixed by Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)
  • In other Firefox news:
    • We are now scheduled to disable Flash in Firefox 69 which moves to the Stable release on August 3rd. The change will land in the 69 Nightly cycle and ride the trains.
    • If you haven't yet, check out the great Hacks blog post on the design and development of the Flexbox Inspector. The Flexbox inspector is available in the Dev Edition and hits our stable release with Firefox 65 next month.

2019-01-07

2018-12-17

  • The Firefox 64 Stable release came out last week. 64 includes the feature recommender, multi-tab operations, a new task manager, and various other features and fixes. Check it out!
    • The ability to select multiple tabs and then move them, re-window them, close them, bookmark, send to device, etc. was a hit with the press, making appearances in the titles of most articles about 64. This feature was made possible because of Google Summer of Code, mentoring from Mozilla's Jared Wein (:jaws) and the hard work of a student named Abdoulaye O. Ly. If you haven't tried this out, it's really cool for reordering tabs, de-cluttering your tab strip, or sending off a group of tabs to your mobile Firefox.
    • You can read more about Firefox 64 at the hacks blog, which covers just about everything you'd want to know about the release, and at MDN which deep dives on changes that web developers and add-on developers will care about.
  • Firefox 65 is in the Beta channel and moves to the stable Release on January 29th. If you're on the Beta channel, you're probably using the 4th beta and the 5th beta is due tomorrow. Over the last week, we've uplifted about 40 bugs to Beta, including several crash fixes, enabling the AV1 video format, and fixing selection color visibility on dark backgrounds on macOS
  • Firefox 66 is in the Nightly channel and moves to the Stable release on March 19th. Over the last two weeks we've resolved about 600 issues including these notable ones:

2018-12-03

2018-11-26

2018-11-19

2018-11-12

2018-11-05

2018-10-29

  • Firefox 63 is our current Stable release. It shipped last week and contains opt-in content blocking for all users and improved performance and energy efficiency on Mac.
  • Firefox 64 is in the Beta channel and moves to Stable release on December 11th. We're in our 5th of 14 planned betas.
  • Firefox 65 is now the Nightly channel. Over the last week, we've resolved more than 460 bug reports in Nightly including these notable changes:

2018-10-22

2018-10-15

2018-10-01

2018-09-24

2018-09-17

  • Firefox 62.0 is our current Stable release.
  • Firefox 63 is our current Beta release. There have been about 43 fixes uplifted to Beta in the last week.
  • Firefox 64 is in the Nightly channel and over the last week there have been about 420 fixes including these notable ones:

2018-09-10

2018-08-27

  • Firefox 61.0.2 is our current Stable release.
  • Firefox 62 is in the Beta channel and hits Stable release on September 5th. There have been about 20 fixes uplifted to Beta in the last week.
  • Firefox 63 is in the Nightly channel and graduates to Stable release on October 23. In the last week there have been about 425 fixes including these notable ones:

2018-08-20

2018-08-06

2018-07-30

  • Firefox 61.0.1 is our current Stable release. 61 was first offered on June 26. Users on this release are enjoying faster page rendering thanks to Quantum CSS improvements and the new retained display list feature, and Faster switching between tabs thanks to the "tab warming" feature.
  • Firefox 62 is in the Beta channel and goes to release on September 5th. Beta users are helping test improvements to the bookmarks panel, the three pane inspector in developer tools, and a new Tracking Protection button in the hamburger menu. Over the last week, the Beta channel has seen 26 bugs uplifted from Nightly.
  • Firefox 63 is in the Nightly channel and moves to Stable on October 23. Over the last week, there have been about 400 bugs resolved as fixed including these notable changes:
    • Firefox now supports the CSS prefers-reduced-motion media feature on Windows. This makes it possible to disable motion effects for those with vestibular disorders or those who simply prefer their experiences without motion effects.
    • Firefox now supports switching to installed locales from the Options/Preferences window.
    • Out of process extensions for Linux has been enabled. Mac got this feature in Firefox 61 and Windows got it in 56.
    • About:profiles "launch profile in new browser" now works for Windows users thanks to the addition of the -no-remote option. Before, for most users, the button would simply launch another window from the current profile.
    • Time Travel Debugging has landed behind the devtools.recordreplay.enabled pref. Once enabled, it is accessed via the 'Tools -> Web Developer' menu. Time Travel Debugging allows Firefox content processes to record their behavior, replay it later, and rewind to earlier states. Replaying processes preserve all the same JS behavior, DOM structures, graphical updates, and most other behaviors that occurred while recording. The browser's JS debugger can be used to inspect and control the replay. This is Mac-only for now.
    • Web developers get a new feature with Clear Site Data to allow web developers more control over the data stored locally by a user agent for their origins. This was implemented in Firefox 62 but behind a pref. Now it's enabled.
    • For new profiles, Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order is the new default. Instead of tabbing through the tabs on your tab strip in that order, you'll get a pop-up with tiles for the the most recently used 6 tabs. This more closely mirrors the operating system's window switching interface.
    • Firefox has a new and improved about:performance that's behind the about:config pref dom.performance.enable_scheduler_timing (Be sure to restart after the pref change to avoid a crash).
    • Last but not least, Firefox Certificate Error Pages got new copy that should be more helpful to users encountering the errors.

2018-07-23

2018-07-16

2018-07-09

2018-07-02

2018-06-25

  • Firefox 60.0.2 is our current release.
  • Firefox 61 goes to release tomorrow and includes these notable improvements.
    • Faster page rendering thanks to parallel CSS parsing and the new retained display list feature
    • Faster tab switching thanks to tab warming on Windows and Linux
    • You can now add new search engines from the Page Actions menu.
    • On Mac you can now share the URL of an active tab from the Page Actions menu.
    • TLS 1.3 is enabled by default.
    • The Dark theme is darker in more places.
    • Web Extensions can now hide tabs and control the order in which new tabs open.

2018-06-04

  • Firefox 60.0.1 is our current release.
  • Firefox 61 is in the Beta channel and goes to release on June 26th. We're in our 10th Beta with Beta 11 going out tomorrow. In the last week there have been about 40 bugs uplifted to Beta.
  • Firefox 62 is in our Nightly channel and goes to release on September 5. In the last week there have been about 360 bugs fixed including these notable changes:
    • Users can now set the number of rows for all sections of the New Tab Page. (bug 1400536)
    • Users can now toggle Tracking Protection from the Firefox menu. (bug 1462468)
    • Shadow DOM support has landed in Nightly. (bug 1460069)
    • Race Cache With Network (RCWN) is enabled on Android when cellular data isn't used. (bug 1377570)

2018-05-14

2018-05-07

  • Firefox 59.0.3 is our current release. The latest point release shipped last Monday for compatibility with the Windows 10 April 2018 update.
  • Firefox 60 is wrapping up in the Beta channel and releases this Wednesday. New to 60 are these features:
    • Support for enterprise environments, with a policy engine that allows customized Firefox deployments using Windows Group Policy or a cross-platform JSON file.
    • Several enhancements to New Tab/Firefox Home page
      • A responsive layout that shows more content for users with wide-screen displays
      • The Highlights section includes web pages saved to Pocket
      • There are more options to reorder sections and content on the page
      • Pocket Sponsored Stories will appear for a percentage of en-US users
    • A faster browser UI thanks to Quantum CSS
    • Support for the Web Authentication API, which allows USB tokens for website authentication
    • TLS certificates issued by Symantec before June 1st, 2016 are no longer trusted by Firefox
    • And, last but not least, Firefox for Android gets Quantum CSS for faster web page rendering.
  • Firefox 61 was in the Nightly channel under soft code freeze until this morning. It's now in the Beta channel. In the last week we've seen about 350 bugs fixes including these:
  • And finally, the Nightly channel is now Firefox 62.

2018-04-30

  • Firefox 59.0.2 is our current release.
  • Firefox 60 is in the Beta channel and releases on May 9th. Our Release Candidate build happens tomorrow so we're basically wrapped up with Firefox 60. Over the last week, we've seen about 20 fixes uplifted to the Beta channel. A reminder, Firefox 60 is an ESR release. Finally, with Firefox 60 we're going to see Pocket sponsored stories coming to the new tab page. You can read all about that here
  • Firefox 61 is in the Nightly channel and goes to release on June 26th. mozilla-central is currently in a soft freeze until after the version bump to 62 on May 7th. Over the last week we've fixed about 480 bugs including these:

2018-04-23

2018-04-16

  • Firefox 59.0.2 is our current release.
  • Firefox 60 is in the Beta channel and goes to release on May 9th. This is an ESR release.
  • Firefox 61 is in the Nightly channel and goes to release on June 26th. In the last week we've seen about 460 bugs resolved, including these notable fixes:

2018-04-09

  • Firefox 59.0.2 is our current released version.
  • Firefox 60 is in Beta and is scheduled to hit release May 9th, a month from today. A reminder that Firefox 60 is our next ESR release so it's going to be supported for a while. In the last week Firefox 60 Beta has seen about 50 fixes including uplifts for the memory leak I mentioned last week and a couple of additional policies for the enterprise-facing policy engine.
  • Firefox 61 is in the Nightly channel and is due for release on June 26th. In the last week the Nightly channel has seen approximately 460 bugs fixed including a fix for a scroll painting regression. replacing our Emojione implementation with Twitter Emoji (Twemoji) and the addition of about a half a dozen more enterprise policies.
  • Mozilla and Firefox have been in the news a lot the last few weeks. Yesterday Mozilla and Firefox were on NBC's Sunday TODAY Show. Check it out. The segment features Mitchell Baker and Amy Tsay.

2018-04-02

  • Firefox 59.0.2 is our in-market release. It fixes a couple of significant issues:
    • A fix for page rendering problems for Windows users with ClearType disabled, (Bug 1435472)
    • A temporary fix for a Windows 7 touchscreen crasher, (bug 1424505)
    • A security issue fixed. Use-after-free in compositor, (10th advisory of 2018)
  • Firefox 60 Beta 8 is the latest Beta with Beta 9 due tomorrow. A reminder: Firefox 60 is our next ESR. In the last week we've uplifted about 50 bugs.
  • Firefox 61 is in the Nightly channel. Over the last week we've seen 475 bugs fixed including:
  • Off the trains, the Facebook Container extension, which isolates your Facebook identity from the rest of your web activity, has seen some dramatic uptake by users (200K downloads in first 3 days,) and garnered great reviews and press. We're working on updates expected soon.

2018-03-26

2018-03-19

  • Firefox 59 shipped last Tuesday.
    • Firefox 59.01 shipped on Friday to fix a security bug that came out of the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest.
    • We've got one significant regression in this release that causes rendering problems for people who have turned off ClearType font rendering on Windows. The workaround is to re-enable ClearType in Windows or to disable Hardware Acceleration in Firefox. Top people are working on it.
  • Firefox 60 is in the Beta channel. Our 5th Beta is scheduled for tomorrow. In the last week, we've uplifted approximately 15 fixes.
  • Firefox 61 is in the Nightly channel. Over the last week there have been approximately 475 fixes landed including these performance improvements:

2018-03-12

  • Firefox 59 ships tomorrow, March 13th and includes these changes
    • Option to stop websites from asking to send notifications or access your device’s camera, microphone, and location
    • Users can choose in Options whether search suggestions or history suggestions come first in the address bar
    • Activity Stream is faster and now has drag and drop support for top sites
    • Screenshots now has a Copy to Clipboard button and annotations.
    • Off Main Thread Paint (OMTP) (MAC) improves main thread responsiveness
    • Race Cache with Network to improve page loading time

2018-03-05

  • Firefox 58.0.2 is our latest security and stability update.
  • Firefox 59 is in it's 14th Beta with the first Release Candidate scheduled to ship tomorrow. In the last week we've uplifted about 15 bugs to Firefox 59.
  • Firefox 60 is in the Nightly channel and is scheduled to hit release on May 9th. (Previously scheduled for May 8th). Over the last week the Nightly channel has seen 510 fixes including these:

2018-02-12

2018-02-05

2018-01-29

  • Firefox 58, featuring faster site loading and improved Screenshots, is in the release channel. We're preparing 58.0.1 security update for release today.
  • Firefox 59 is in the Beta channel and is due to ship on March 13th.
    • During the last few days of 59 on Beta, we've had 14 bugs uplifted
  • Firefox 60 is in the Nightly channel and is due to ship to release on May 8th
    • Over the last week Nightly has seen over 450 changes and fixes including these notable ones:
      • Firefox now protects the path of HTTP Referer Header when in Private Browsing mode
      • There's now a pref to disable ftp:// in Firefox
      • There's a prototype enterprise policy manager and a few specific enterprise policies implemented.

2018-01-22

  • Firefox 58 releases tomorrow, January 23rd, with nearly 5,000 changes including these notable improvements:
    • Firefox on Windows has faster page render speed thanks to Off-Main-Thread Painting (OMTP)
    • Firefox now has faster overall page loading speed with the new JavaScript Start-up Bytecode Cache (JSBC)
    • Faster WebAssembly performance running in the new streaming and tiering compiler
    • Firefox has a more responsive active tab thanks to budget-based background timeout throttling
    • Tabs scrolling with mouse wheel is now very smooth and fast
    • Firefox Screenshots can copy directly to the clipboard and Screenshots now also works in Private Browsing mode
    • The new tab page has faster startup loading, personalized stories, collapsible sections and tippy top rich icons
    • Firefox now supports credit card autofill
    • There are preferences to block specific sites from overriding browser keyboard shortcuts
    • Firefox informs users when an extension has changed the search engine or the new tab page
    • The stub installer got resume download support to mitigate connection failures
    • Firefox now has horizontal Scrolling with Shift+Mouse wheel (a 15 year old bug fixed)
    • There is a Nepali (ne-NP) localized version of Firefox
    • Firefox for Android supports Progressive Web Apps, full screen bookmark management with folders, FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) playback, wicked fast CSS thanks to Stylo, an option to sync only over wifi, and v4 of the Safe Browsing service

2018-01-08

  • Firefox 57.0.4 is the current shipping release. A big thank you to the people that made 57.0.3 happen during the holiday break to fix a problem with wrongly collected crash reports and also thanks to the security team and others who shipped 57.0.4 to address the Meltdown and Spectre timing attacks.
  • Firefox 58 is in the Beta channel and goes to release on January 23rd.
  • Firefox 59 is in the Nightly channel and will be released on March 13th.
    • In the weeks since my last update, Nightly has seen over 1500 changes and fixes including those mentioned for Beta as well as these notable features.

2017-11-26

2017-11-13

  • Firefox 57 Quantum ships tomorrow!
    • This is our biggest release in years with new features, dramatically improved performance, and a great new look. Mostly, though, it's fast! It's really fast.
  • The Firefox 58 Nightly cycle has wrapped up and the next Nightly builds will be 59. 58 hits the Beta channel on Wednesday.

2017-11-06

  • Firefox 57 Quantum is in the Beta channel. 57 will be released on November 14th, one week from tomorrow.
    • We're on our 14th beta with the first release candidate build coming tomorrow. The pace of change continues to slow with just about 20 changes uplifted from Nightly to Beta in the last week.
  • Firefox 58 is in the Nightly channel. It releases January 16th.
    • In the last week, Nightly has had nearly 500 fixes including this notable change:

2017-10-30

  • Firefox 57 Quantum is in the Beta channel. It releases November 14th, two weeks from tomorrow.
    • We're on our 12th of 14 betas with Beta 13 coming tomorrow. In the last week we've seen 40 changes uplifted from Nightly to Beta.
  • Firefox 58 is in the Nightly channel. 58 will be released on January 16th.
    • In the last week, Nightly has had over 400 fixes:
      • The Awesomebar has been reverted to previous behavior of history first.
      • We now use Visual Studio 2017 as the compiler for official Firefox builds on Windows.

2017-10-23

  • Firefox 57 Quantum is in the Beta channel. It releases on November 14, about three weeks away.
    • We're on our 10th Beta with #11 released tomorrow. We have 14 total betas scheduled. In the last week, we've seen about 40 bug fixes uplifted from Nightly to Beta. The pace of change is about half that of last week which was about half that of the week before. As we get even closer to release, the number of changes will continue to drop.
  • Firefox 58 is in the Nightly channel. We'll ship it to release users January 16th.
    • In the last week we've fixed more than 500 issues including these notable ones:
      • Browser pop-up panels are now all aligned to the same height on the toolbar.
      • Horizontal Scrolling with Shift+ Mouse wheel is now supported. (a 15 year old request)

2017-10-16

  • Firefox 57 Quantum is in the Beta channel. It releases on November 14th, less than a month away.
    • We're on our 8th Beta, out of a scheduled 14. In the last week we've seen about 110 fixes uplifted from Nightly to Beta. The pace of change has slowed considerably as we get closer to release. The kinds of changes that will now be accepted into Beta are for the kinds of bugs that would cause a dot release if unfixed.
  • Firefox 58 is in the Nightly channel. It releases January 16th.
    • In the last week, Nightly has seen over 600 changes including these notable fixes: a fix for a long-standing JavaScript timezone bug, a Quantum DOM performance improvement called budget based background timeout throttling has been enabled by default, a problem where you'd lose your YouTube buffer if you moved forward or backward in playback has been fixed, the stub installer now has resume support so if a connection is temporarily lost the installer doesn't have to start over from the beginning, and the `browser.tabs.tabMinWidth` setting now defaults to 76 pixels. (You can change this in about:config to suit your preference.)

2017-10-09

  • Firefox 57 Quantum is in the Beta channel and ships to Release on November 14th -- that's just about 5 weeks away.
    • We're up to our 5th Beta, out of a scheduled 14 and we've seen over 250 changes on the Beta branch so far. To give you some sense of what's changed, about half of the fixes are to the front end and half to the backend. We've taken over 75 fixes to the main browser UI, 25 fixes for Activity Stream, 35 fixes to Quantum CSS, and we've taken about 30 crash fixes so far. This is quite a lot of change for a Beta so we really appreciate your help testing everything and encourage you to use Firefox 57 Beta as your daily driver.
    • If you'd like to help with specific areas of testing, the Foxfooding program is running for one more week with test plans covering Onboarding, Customization, Extensions, and Activity Stream.
  • Firefox 58 is in the Nightly channel and ships to release on January 16th.
    • Since we branched, Nightly has seen nearly 1200 changes landed including support for the Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) JavaScript API, off-main-thread paint (OMTP) on Windows, quite a bit of old code removal, some new Web Extension APIs, and a change to the tab width. We're experimenting with some different values for the tab width to determine if we can get more tabs visible before tab scrolling kicks in, while maintaining some readability. You can experiment for yourself by changing the value of browser.tabs.tabMinWidth in about:config. Early indicators are that we're going to settle on something wider than the tabs have been for the last few nighty updates but not as wide as previous releases.

2017-10-02

  • Firefox 56 released last Thursday with Firefox Screenshots, an overhauled preferences system, and paused media in background tabs. The press reception has been positive but limited because ...
  • Firefox 57 Beta (Quantum) shipped last Tuesday and received volumes of overwhelmingly positive reviews from the press and from users.
    • 57 is currently in its 4th beta build with Beta 5 coming out tomorrow.
    • This week's Beta Foxfooding opportunity is Activity Stream
  • Firefox 58 is in the Nightly channel.

2017-09-25

  • Firefox 56 is going to be released to the world this Thursday, September 28th.
    • Firefox 56 features a reorganized preferences window that makes finding the most common preferences much easier and offers a new search feature for those harder to reach preferences. Firefox 56 will pause media in background tabs so that video won't start playing until you switch to its tab. Firefox 56 includes some early Quantum Flow work so things should feel really snappy too.
  • Firefox 57 moves to Beta tomorrow, September 26th.
    • This is the big release with new features, dramatically improved performance, and a great new look. Mostly, though, it's fast! It's really fast. It even looks fast.
    • We know Firefox 57 is fast because the benchmarks tell us and now we need to know if it's also stable and works like it's supposed to. In support of that effort, this week the Firefox 57 Foxfooding testing program is looking at toolbar customization. We've overhauled the entire customization process making it really easy to change up your toolbars and you can help make sure it works by volunteering this week to run some simple test cases. The Foxfooding program will transition to testing Beta builds tomorrow. If you have any questions about this, you can find me in #foxfooding on IRC and Slack.

2017-09-18

  • Firefox 56 is our current Beta version. It will be released on September 28.
  • Firefox 57 hits the release channel on November 14th.
    • With about a week left before 57 becomes Beta, feature work is pretty much wrapped up and the major efforts have moved to stabilization and regression finding and fixing.
    • Thanks again for all your help testing Nightly these many weeks. And thank you to everyone that spent some time doing focused testing of the Onboarding experience last week. This week's Firefox 57 Foxfooding area is extensions. The entire extension system has been overhauled with a brand new set of APIs and thousands of updated or new extensions available at addons.mozilla.org. This is an area that should be fun to test and it's extremely important for the 57 release that these basic parts of the extension system work really well. As with last week, I'm available to help in #foxfooding on IRC and Slack.

2017-09-11

  • Firefox 56 continues in Beta for a couple more weeks and will be released on September 26th.
  • That means that Firefox 57 has about two weeks left in Nightly. Thank you all for being Nightly users these many weeks. You've helped us find and fix significant issues all through the tumultuous Nightly cycle. Now that most of the 57 feature work is complete, I want to introduce you all to another way you can help ensure that Firefox 57 rocks, an easy feature testing program called Foxfooding. This is your opportunity to run some quick and easy formal tests to help us ensure that our newest and highest profile features are functioning as expected. This week's testing area is the all new Onboarding feature. Each week we'll have a new area to test and we'll continue this to the end of the Beta cycle. If you need help or just want to learn more, you can find me in #foxfooding on IRC or Slack.

2017-08-28

  • Firefox 56 is in Beta and will be released on September 26th. The major feature that you can help us test is searching in the new preferences organization. Also, if you're one of the lucky 10% who have the new Activity Stream-powered New Tab page in beta, please try to break it and report any bugs you find.
  • Firefox 57 is in Nightly and will be released on November 14th. All Nightly users should see the new Activity Stream-powered New Tab page and are encouraged to test drive its features. For each Top Site, you should be able to pin to or remove from Top Sites, open in a new window or new private window, and remove the item completely from your history. All Nightly users should also have the nearly complete Photon UI which you all are encouraged to customize through the Customize menu where you can add or remove buttons, and rearrange them across the toolbars. Finally, you can help us test the three themes, default, light and dark, and the three densities, default, touch, and compact. These are also accessed from the Customize menu.
  • If you find bugs and need help reporting them, I'm almost always available on #nightly on IRC and #nightly-newbies on Slack. Also, new throbber!

2017-08-21

  • Firefox 56 is our current Beta version. It will be released on September 26.
    • If you're using Beta, the features that need your testing are the reorganized preferences and searching preferences, paused auto-play in background tabs, and out of process web extensions on Windows. If you haven't yet, please poke around these features and help us make sure they're working as expected before we ship them to hundreds of millions of users.
  • Nightly is Firefox 57 which will be release on November 14th. That's about 12 weeks away.
    • For those of you all using Nightly, we could use your eyes all across the new Photon UI, the new application menu and all its panels, Customization options including the new toolbar overflow menu, the three built in themes and the three UI densities, the page action menu and addressbar customization, the various sidebars, the Library button and panels, and the Activity Stream powered New Tab Page are some good areas to test. The more of you who put these new pieces of UI through their paces, the more likely we'll find all the bugs and be able to fix them before we ship.

2017-08-14

  • Firefox 56, currently in Beta, will be released on September 26th.
    • Major features coming in Firefox 56 include Preferences searching in an all new Preferences organization, paused auto-play in background tabs, out of process web extensions on Windows, Quantum features and fixes, and a smaller and more secure update download.
  • Firefox 57, currently in Nightly ships to release on November 14th.
    • The major front end changes in 57 are the Photon UI refresh and Activity Stream. You can see progress on both in the latest nightly builds. Other changes coming to 57 include performance enhancing Quantum features and bug fixes, and the sun-setting of legacy extensions.

2017-08-07

  • Firefox 55 ships to release tomorrow!
    • Firefox Screenshots is the major front end feature shipping in Firefox 55. It's going to be a gradual roll-out so not everyone will see it on release day.
    • WebVR is the big platform feature shipping in Firefox 55. Firefox users with an HTC VIVE or Oculus Rift can experience VR content on the Web.
    • Other Firefox 55 features include a dramatic performance improvement in session restore with large numbers of tabs, an option to fine-tune browser performance with e10s multi settings, a click to activate Flash Player, search suggestions in the Awesomebar enabled by default, a modernized update system, and a streamlined Windows stub installer that installs Firefox 64 bit by default for users on 64 bit systems.
  • Firefox 56 ships to release on September 26th.
    • Major features coming in Firefox 56 include searching in an all new Preferences organization, paused auto-play in background tabs, out of process web extensions, Quantum features and fixes, and a smaller and more secure update download.
  • Firefox 57 ships to release on November 14th. This is the big one.
    • The major front end change in 57 is the Photon UI refresh. You can see Photon progress in the latest nightly builds. Other changes coming to 57 include performance enhancing Quantum features and bug fixes, and the sun-setting of legacy extensions.

2017-07-31

  • Firefox 55, now in Beta, ships to release on August 8th, a week from tomorrow.
    • Firefox Screenshots is the major front end feature shipping with 55. It's going to be a gradual roll-out so not everyone will see it on release day. Firefox Screenshots lets you take, save, and share screenshots without leaving Firefox. With Firefox Screenshots, you can easily capture an element on screen, an arbitrary region, the visible page, or the complete page including parts scrolled off screen.
    • WebVR is the major platform feature shipping in Firefox 55. Firefox users with an HTC VIVE or Oculus Rift headset will be able to experience VR content on the Web and can explore some exciting demos at vrlist.io.
  • Firefox 56, now in Nightly, ships to release on September 26.
    • Major features coming in Firefox 56 include a new Preferences organization with searching, out of process extensions on Windows, and a new New Tab page powered by Activity Stream.

2017-07-24

  • Firefox 55, now in Beta, ships to Release on August 8th -- just about two weeks away.
    • Firefox Screenshots is active for 20% of Beta users and will be gradually rolled out to Release users to ensure our servers and processes are keeping up.
    • Firefox 55 also includes a streamlined Installer that ensures 64-bit Firefox gets delivered to 64-bit Windows users. Also in 55 are Web VR, Search Suggestions enabled by default in the Awesomebar, Ask to Activate Flash, and blazing fast Session Restore. (Check out Dietrich's post on Session Restore for the many tabs use case.)
  • Firefox 56, now in Nightly, ships to Release on September 26.
    • While there are a lot of changes happening on Nightly during the 56 cycle, many of them are part of the Photon interface update and those won't ship in 56 -- we're holding them for the big 57 release. Features that we believe will ride the trains to Release are the new Preferences reorganization including Preference Searching and migrating 64-bit capable Windows users to a 64-bit Firefox.
    • Other changes in Nightly that are worth your attention are out of process extensions for Windows users and a new New Tab Page powered by Activity Stream.

2017-07-10

  • Firefox 54.0.1 is our currently released version. The dot release was primarily to fix Netflix for Linux Firefox users.
  • Firefox 55, now in beta, ships to release on August 8th.
    • The major front end feature of 55 is Firefox Screenshots. Screenshots will be gradually rolled out so not all users will see it on the day 55 ships. This is because we need to gauge usage and ensure our servers and processes are keeping up. Right now, Screenshots are enabled for 10% of Beta users.
    • Other Firefox 55 front end features include a radically streamlined stub installer that makes installing Firefox a breeze and ensures 64-bit Windows users get a 64-bit Firefox. We also have search suggestions in the Awesomebar enabled by default for ease of use, ask to activate Flash for security and performance improvements, and session restore performance improvements that make restoring lots of tabs blazing fast.
    • The major web platform feature for Firefox 55 is WebVR.
  • Firefox 56, now in nightly, ships to release on September 26.
    • The major front end changes in 56 are for the Photon UI in preparation for Firefox 57. Most of these Photon features will *not* ship in 56 though you can test them there now.
    • Other nightly features include a new preferences organization, search in preferences, small tiles on the New Tab Page in preparation for Activity Stream, form auto-fill, background tab throttling, paused media in background tabs, on-boarding tours, web extensions in their own process, and migration of 64-bit capable users to 64-bit Firefox.

2017-06-19

  • Firefox 54 with E10S multi shipped last week and users are impressed.
    • "@firefox as someone who previously switched to Chrome, I'm glad to be back for the only modern independent browser on earth :) #firefox54"
    • "I am really impressed with the latest Firefox beta. Fast, multiprocess and taking less memory than Chrome, for about the same performance."
    • "If you use #Firefox as a web browser, you should update to version 54 just out today. The speed & memory usage improvements are amazing."
    • "@firefox The new version is incredibly smooth, fast, and sexy. Congrats for this amazing achievement!
  • Firefox 55, now in beta, ships to release on August 8th
    • The major front end feature of 55 is Firefox Screenshots. Also in 55 are a refreshed updater experience, default to on search suggestions, one-click search buttons in the Awesomebar, ask to activate Flash, the new form autofill, a performance preference section for tuning e10s and hardware acceleration, super-fast session restore with lots of tabs, a streamlined Windows installer, improved printing from Reader Mode, and WebVR.
  • Firefox 56, now in Nightly, ships to release on September 26th
    • In Firefox 56 nightly, but not going to release until 57, you can see the beginning of the Photon UI. I've got a few slides to show you some of that work. Photon Slides

2017-06-12

  • Firefox 54, currently in beta, releases tomorrow, June 13th.
    • The major feature shipping in 54 is E10S-multi with 4 content processes for improved responsiveness and reliability.
  • Firefox 55, currently in nightly, goes to release on August 8th.
    • Major new features and changes in nightly include Firefox Screenshots, a refreshed updater experience, an updated preferences organization, default to on search suggestions, one-click search buttons in the Awesomebar, ask to activate Flash, the new form autofill, a performance preference section for tuning e10s and hardware acceleration, super-fast session restore with lots of tabs, a streamlined Windows installer, improved printing from Reader Mode, WebVR, and significant pieces of the Photon UI have landed. Finally, all locales are now available on nightly.

2017-05-22

  • Firefox 54 goes to release on June 13th.
    • With Firefox Screenshots slipping to Firefox 55, what we have now in 54 is an upgraded sandbox, E10S-multi with 4 content processes, a downloads panel and badging redesign, and a whole gang of new WebExtension APIs including a Sidebar API, Proxy API, Privacy API, DevTools Panel API, and Protocol Handler API.
  • Firefox 55 goes to release on August 8th.
    • Major new features planned for Firefox 55 include Firefox Screenshots, a refreshed updater experience, an updated preferences organization, default to on search suggestions, one-click search buttons in the Awesomebar, and ask to activate Flash.

2017-05-15

  • Firefox 54 release is about a month away, June 13th.
    • Last week, and for several weeks I've been highlighting Firefox Screenshots as a 54 feature. That's changed and Screenshots is now targeted at Firefox 55. Still on track for 54 is E10S-muli with 4 content processes for improved reliability and responsiveness.
  • Firefox 55, now in Nightly, moves to Beta on June 13th and then to release on August 8th.
    • Major new features in Firefox 55 include Firefox Screenshots, a refreshed updater UI, an updated preferences organization, default to on search suggestions, one-click search buttons in the Awesomebar, and Flash click-to-play

2017-05-08

  • Firefox 54 release is in about 5 weeks.
    • The Major front-end feature coming with 54 is Firefox Screenshots. Screenshots will be a gradual roll-out so not everyone will get it on day one. We'll be shipping it to a subset of release users, looking at all of our quality measures, and rolling it out more broadly assuming all looks good with the metrics.
    • The major back-end change coming to 54 is E10S-muli with 4 content processes for improved reliability and responsiveness.
  • Firefox 55, now in Nightly, moves to Beta on June 13th and then to release on August 8th.
    • Major new features in Firefox 55 include a refreshed updater UI, an updated preferences organization, default to on search suggestions, one-click search buttons in the Awesomebar, and Flash click-to-play.

2017-05-01

  • Firefox 54, now in Beta, ships to release June 13th. If all the testing goes well it will include two exciting new features, Firefox Screenshots and E10S-multi with 4 content processes. Screenshots is preffed off in Beta while the team works out some details around testing. E10S-multi is going through A/B testing in Beta comparing the stability of different numbers of content processes.
  • Firefox 55, now in Nightly, ships to release on August 8th. Nightly currently includes a refreshed updater UI that's modernized, less "in your face" than the big dialog, but persistent so hopefully better at keeping users up to date. Nightly also includes a new and simplified, easier to use preferences organization -- including a performance preferences section for controlling e10s multi and hardware acceleration (located at the bottom of the General section). Finally, Nightly now includes a "legacy" badge on XUL/XPCOM add-ons in the Add-ons manager. This is the start of the plan for showing users what add-ons won't make the cut for Firefox 57.

2017-04-24

  • Firefox 53 shipped last Wednesday.
  • Firefox 54, currently in Beta, is scheduled to ship to release on June 13th.
    • 54 should include Firefox Screenshots, an upgraded sandbox, 4 content processes, downloads panel redesign, a gang of new WebExtension APIs, the ability to create your own custom devices in Responsive Device Mode, and a "Mobile Bookmarks” folder for easier access to bookmarks synced from mobile devices.
  • Firefox 55, currently in Nightly, is scheduled to ship to release on August 8th.
    • 55 has a refreshed update UI, a new preferences organization, default to on search suggestions, Flash click to play, geolocation powered by Mozilla Location Service, a performance panel for controlling e10s multi, out of process WebExtensions, localizations, and more.
    • As a reminder, Firefox 55 is staying in nightly for an extra cycle as a consequence of removing the Aurora channel. You can read more about the new release process at http://release.mozilla.org/firefox/release/2017/04/17/Dawn-Project-FAQ.html
  • A quick note about these Firefox updates: if you have items you'd like me to announce, new features or changes coming to Firefox, or if you've got questions about the Firefox roadmap that you'd like addressed in a Firefox update, please let me know. I'm looking into whether we can use Moderator for this but in the mean time, you can email me at asa@mozilla.com.

2017-04-17

  • Firefox 53 ships on Wednesday, April 19th. That's a one day slip from what I told y'all last week.
    • 53 includes two new themes, a separate compositor process for stability, support for lightweight themes in private browsing mode, estimated reading time in reader mode, a 64-bit choice in the Windows installer, a visual refresh of the media controls, updated privacy and security permission prompts, better readability for page titles in tabs, support for WebM alpha, and a reduced download and update size on Mac.
  • Firefox 54 ships on June 13
    • The major front-end addition in 54 is Firefox Screenshots, the feature formerly known as pageshots from Test Pilot.
    • The major back-end change is that our security sandbox has been upgraded (to level 2)
  • Firefox 55 ships on August 8
    • The big changes coming to 55 include a refreshed preferences system, a refreshed update UI, default to on search suggestions, one-click search buttons in the Awesomebar, and Flash click-to-play.

2017-04-10

  • Firefox 53 ships next week, on April 18th.
    • The major front end change in Firefox 53 is the inclusion of two alternate themes, Compact Light and Compact Dark. These "compact" themes offer more space for the web page by shrinking the height of the Firefox toolbars. And as you can guess from the theme names, they come in a light and a dark look.
    • The most significant back end change is the addition of a compositor (GPU) process which reduces overall crashes by 4% and makes recovering from GPU crashes mostly seamless to the user.
    • Other changes in 53 include an option in the Firefox for Windows Installer to pick a 64-bit build, a visual refresh of the media controls, updated privacy and security permission prompts, estimated reading time added to Reader Mode, a dramatically reduced download and update size for Mac builds, better readability of page titles in tabs, and support for WebM alpha.

2017-03-27

  • Firefox 53, now in Beta, ships on April 18th and will include the compact dark and light themes which provide a bit more real estate for content. If you're on Beta, please give these new themes a try and let us know if you find anything not working.
  • Firefox 54 ships on June 13th and should include Firefox Screenshots -- that's the new name for the Page Shot feature that debuted in Test Pilot. Firefox Screenshots lets you capture, save, and share screenshots right in the browser.
  • Firefox 55 ships on August 8th. Right now it's in nightly and includes e10s multi. We're testing 4 content processes but we've got some bugs to get fixed before this will be uplifted to Aurora/Dev Edition.

2017-03-20

  • Firefox 52.0.1 shipped on Friday to fix a security issue that was reported through the Pwn2Own security contest. The fix, in both mainline and ESR, on both Desktop and Mobile, was release less than 24 hours from disclosure.
  • Firefox 53, coming up in about a month, includes the light and dark compact themes and a separate compositor process to gracefully recover from GPU crashes. 53 will see AMO policy updated to only accept Web Extensions for new extensions. Updates to classic extensions will still be accepted. And last but not least, 53 will have compact tabs and tab re-ordering on Android.

2017-03-13

  • Firefox 53, now in Beta, ships to release on April 18th
    • The most visible change coming to Firefox 53, and available for you to test in Beta, Aurora, and Nightly, is the addition of two new themes. The themes are called "Compact Light" and "Compact Dark" and offer as you'd expect, a light and a dark theme that use less space for the UI giving you more space for content.
  • Firefox 54, now in Aurora, ships to release on June 13th
    • 54 should include a level 2 (of 3) sandbox for browsing security. It will also enable E10s for Windows accessibility users. 54 gets a handful of new WebExtension APIs including a sidebar API, custom protocol handlers API, privacy API, DevTools panel API, and about:home/about:newtab overrides. Also in 54 we hope to see the Page Shots feature shipping.
  • Firefox 55, now in Nightly, ships to release on August 8th.
    • If all goes well, we'll be enabling e10s multi with four content processes for this release. We'll be shipping a stub installer that will install 64-bit Firefox for users with 64-bit Windows systems. We'll have a new Themeing API. Flash will become click to play. WebExtensions will run in their own process. And, last but definitely not least, we'll launch Activity Stream on desktop.

2017-03-06

  • Firefox 52 releases tomorrow, March 7th.
    • 52 includes Captive Portal Detection, insecure password warnings in-form, and send tab/link/page to another device using push. 52 is the vehicle for CSS Grid and Web Assembly, two of the hottest platform features anyone has shipped in a long time. 52 also brings e10s to Windows users with touchscreens, and all extension users except those with extensions labeled as mpc=false. 52 is the release that Vista and XP users will be transitioned to the ESR channel. It's also the release we disable all plug-ins except Flash.

2017-02-27

  • Firefox 52 ships to release on March 7th, a week from tomorrow.
    • Visible front end changes include captive portal detection, disabling of all NPAPI plugins except Flash, and an in-content warning when submitting login information over an insecure connection.
    • The major Web platform changes for Firefox 52 are Web Assembly and CSS Grid. Along with the CSS grid platform capabilities, we're also shipping Grid Inspector with the Firefox developer tools.

2017-02-06

  • Firefox 52, accompanied by Firefox 52 ESR, will be released in about a month. A major change coming to mainline Firefox 52 is the deprecation the plug-ins API which will disable all plug-ins except Flash. NPAPI Plug-ins will continue to work in the ESR release. Firefox 52 will be the release where Windows XP and Vista users are transferred from mainline Firefox to ESR. The Firefox web platform, on both desktop and mobile, will see the addition of Web Assembly and CSS Grid
  • Firefox 53, now in Aurora / Dev Edition, will be shipping to release on April 18th. The major visible change in 53 is the addition of two new "compact" themes. The Dev Edition themes are riding the trains to release! Firefox 53 also marks the end of AMO accepting old-API extensions. From here on out it's all Web Extensions all of the time.

2017-01-30

  • Firefox 51 shipped last Tuesday. Yay! with broken geolocation on Windows. Boo!. 51.0.1 shipped the following day to fix this.
  • Firefox Focus 3 shipped last week with changeable search engines, 27 languages, and more. If you haven't given it a try on your iDevice, head over to the App Store and get it today.
  • Firefox 52, now in Beta, will be released March 7th. Firefox 52 will include a bunch of great new features like CSS Grid, Web Assembly, captive portal detection, and more users getting multi-process Firefox. 52 will also see Windows XP/Vista transition to the ESR train.

2017-01-23

  • Firefox 51 ships to release tomorrow, January 24th.
    • Visible front end changes include an insecure password warning in the addressbar on a login pages that do not have a secure connection, a toggle to view passwords from the prompt before saving them, and a zoom level indicator in the addressbar.
    • The major Web platform change for Firefox 51 is WebGL2.
    • On the reliability and responsiveness front, even more users will be getting multi-process Firefox as it's enabled for another large group of extensions and our users in Russia who had seen it disabled because of a top crash.

2017-01-09

  • Firefox 51, now in Beta, ships to release on January 24th and will include some nice improvements. First is a feature that will warn users when they're on pages that submit passwords insecurely. Second, WebGL 2! Firefox for android will be shipping various security fixes.
  • Firefox 52, now in Dev Edition / Aurora, releases on March 9th and should include captive portal detection, our first OS X sandbox, multi-process enabled for Windows touchscreens, WebAssembly and CSS Grid support! Android Firefox will be seeing improvements to Sync and a 5+mb reduction in APK size. Firefox 52 will also see us transition our Windows XP and Vista users over to our Extended Support Release. Finally, with 52, Firefox will stop supporting all NPAPI plug-ins except Flash.
  • Firefox 53, the nightly channel, ships to release on April 18th and will hopefully include a new site permission interface, E10s multi, the compositor process, and an installer update that will help 64-bit windows users get the 64-bit Firefox version.
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