Firefox 45: Find out what is new
Firefox 45 has been released on March 8, 2016 to the stable channel. The release overview lists all major changes of the release for Firefox desktop and mobile versions.
All Firefox channels get updated at the same time which means that Beta, Developer Edition, Nightly and Firefox ESR releases are also updated on the same day.
This moves Firefox Beta to version 46, the Developer Edition to version 47, Nightly to version 48, and Firefox ESR to 45.0 (with 38.7 offered as well).
The new version marks the beginning of a new Firefox Extended Release Cycle giving companies and individuals 12 weeks to upgrade from version 38.x to the new 45.x branch before version 38.8 is retired.
Executive Summary
- Firefox ESR 45.0 is available. Firefox Hello and Service Workers are both disabled in Firefox ESR 45.0.
- Tab Groups are removed in Firefox 45. We recommend the Tab Groups add-on to keep on using the feature in Firefox 45 and beyond.
- Add-on signing is enforced in Firefox 45 Stable, but it can be disabled in this version but that preference is to be removed with Firefox 46.
Firefox 45 download and update
Firefox 45 has been released and is currently distributed to systems running older versions of the web browser if update checks and automatic updates are enabled on those systems.
You can run a manual check for updates in the following way to speed things up:
- Tap on the Alt-key on your keyboard, and select Help > About Firefox.
- This opens information about Firefox and will run a check for updates automatically.
- If the Firefox 45 update is found, it is either downloaded and installed automatically or on user request.
You may download Firefox directly from Mozilla to install the new version on a system or upgrade existing versions to Firefox 45 or in the case of other Firefox channels their new versions respectively.
- Firefox Stable download
- Firefox Beta download
- Firefox Developer download
- Nightly download
- Firefox ESR download
Firefox 45 Changes
Firefox 45 ships with only a few visible changes. Add-on signing is still enforced in the stable version, but it can still be disabled.
Tab Groups removed
Mozilla removed the Tab Groups / Panorama feature from Firefox. It allowed you to create group of tabs and switch between them.
Firefox users who have used the feature may want to check out one of the following extensions for the browser that brings back the feature:
Tab Groups is closest to the original functionality while Optimal Access re-envisions the feature.
Firefox Hello
The decision to change Firefox Hello from a chat service supporting anonymous audio, video and text chat with contacts to one that puts a focus on tab-sharing has been made in December 2015.
Contacts have been removed from Firefox Hello, and tab sharing is enabled by default. What this means is that you share the active tab with others when you use Firefox Hello.
While you can disable the tab sharing, there does not appear to be an option currently in the settings or about:config to disable tab sharing by default.
Synced Tabs
Mozilla added a new Synced Tabs icon to Firefox 45 which you can use to display tabs open on other devices running the browser.
If the button is not displayed by default, click on the Firefox menu button and select customize from the context menu that opens up.
Locate the Synced Tabs button and drag and drop it to the Firefox toolbar.
In addition, Synced Tabs are shown automatically in the list of suggestions when you type in Firefox's address bar.
Other changes
- Fixed a bug that caused audio playback to stutter "due to duration time rounding errors". (see bug 1222866 for additional information)
- A preference has been added to Firefox to block .onion resources at the DNS level. To disable the blocking, set network.dns.blockDotOnion to false.
Developer Changes
- jar protocol support to directly link to files in ZIP archives has been disabled by default. It can be re-enabled by setting the value network.jar.block-remote-files to false on about:config. (see 1215235 for additional information)
- EV certs valid for more than 27 months will be treated as DV certs. The previous period was 39 months. (see 1222903 for more information)
- Page Inspector supports full-text search (document and iframes). (see Page Inspector documentation)
- WebGL implementation extended with support for programs, shaders, uniforms and attributes, Framebuffer and Renderbuffer. (see bugs 1048743, 1048745, 1048732 and 1048733)
- Web Speech Synthesis API implemented for Firefox on desktop. (see bug 1003439 for additional information)
Firefox for Android
The following list of changes are unique to Firefox for Android. Most changes are shared with the desktop version of Firefox.
Image loading control
Firefox for Android 45 features a new option to control when images get loaded in the browser. Set to always load images by default, it can be set to only load images over Wi-Fi, or never.
To configure the preference do the following:
- Tap on the three-dots menu at the top and select Settings from the menu.
- Select Advanced on the main Settings page.
- Tap on "show images", and select one of the three options: always, only over Wi-Fi, blocked.
The feature can be used to reduce data usage while using the browser which can be useful especially if you are on a tight data plan, or in an area with bad reception.
Camera & Microphone setting for Family accounts
Firefox for Android supports family-friendly profiles on systems running the mobile operating system. It allows an admin to define features that restricted family members have access to. A new addition in Firefox 45 is a control to allow or block the use of camera or microphone on websites that allow real-time communication.
Other Firefox 45 for Android changes
- The url is no longer included when selected text on web pages is shared.
- Super Toasts have been replaced with Snackbar, the latter supporting actions in notifications.
- The app settings were optimized and re-organized.
Firefox 45.0.1
Mozilla released Firefox 45.0.1 on March 16, 2016.It is considered a bug fix release. The browser update made the following changes or fixes:
- Fix a regression causing search engine settings to be lost in some context (1254694)
- Bring back non-standard jar: URIs to fix a regression in IBM iNotes (1255139)
- XSLTProcessor.importStylesheet was failing when <import>was used (1249572)
- Fix an issue which could cause the list of search provider to be empty (1255605)
- Fix a regression when using the location bar (1254503)
- Fix some loading issues when Accept third-party cookies: was set to Never (1254856)
- Disabled Graphite font shaping library
Firefox 45.0.2
Mozilla released Firefox 45.0.2 on April 11, 2016 to the stable channel. The company announced earlier that it would postpone the release of Firefox 46 by a week, and push out this bug fix release instead to fix several bugs in older versions of the browser.
- Fix an issue impacting the cookie header when third-party cookies are blocked (1257861)
- Fix a web compatibility regression impacting the srcset attribute of the image tag (1259482)
- Fix a crash impacting the video playback with Media Source Extension (1258562)
- Fix a regression impacting some specific uploads (1255735)
- Fix a regression with the copy and paste with some old versions of some Gecko applications like Thunderbird (1254980)
Security updates / fixes
Security updates are disclosed after the official release. We update the article as soon as they become available.
2016-38 Out-of-bounds write with malicious font in Graphite 2
2016-37 Font vulnerabilities in the Graphite 2 library
2016-36 Use-after-free during processing of DER encoded keys in NSS
2016-35 Buffer overflow during ASN.1 decoding in NSS
2016-34 Out-of-bounds read in HTML parser following a failed allocation
2016-33 Use-after-free in GetStaticInstance in WebRTC
2016-32 WebRTC and LibVPX vulnerabilities found through code inspection
2016-31 Memory corruption with malicious NPAPI plugin
2016-30 Buffer overflow in Brotli decompression
2016-29 Same-origin policy violation using performance.getEntries and history navigation with session restore
2016-28 Addressbar spoofing though history navigation and Location protocol property
2016-27 Use-after-free during XML transformations
2016-26 Memory corruption when modifying a file being read by FileReader
2016-25 Use-after-free when using multiple WebRTC data channels
2016-24 Use-after-free in SetBody
2016-23 Use-after-free in HTML5 string parser
2016-22 Service Worker Manager out-of-bounds read in Service Worker Manager
2016-21 Displayed page address can be overridden
2016-20 Memory leak in libstagefright when deleting an array during MP4 processing
2016-19 Linux video memory DOS with Intel drivers
2016-18 CSP reports fail to strip location information for embedded iframe pages
2016-17 Local file overwriting and potential privilege escalation through CSP reports
2016-16 Miscellaneous memory safety hazards (rv:45.0 / rv:38.7)
2016-13 Same-origin-policy violation using Service Workers with plugins (Fixed in Firefox 44.0.2)
Additional information / sources
- Firefox 45 release notes
- Firefox 45 Android release notes
- Add-on compatibility for Firefox 45
- Firefox 45 for developers
- Site compatibility for Firefox 45
- Firefox Security Advisories
I can not access the “Help” Menu (on the toolbar menu bar) on FF 45. I am not a super duper advanced FF user but I never considered myself a retard. Could someone suggest a way for me to check where the issue for this comes from please? I thought FF had a restart without addons feature but I can’t seem to find it. (maybe in the help menu?lol)
Any help is appreciated. Thank you.
https://medium.com/project-tofino/browsers-innovators-dilemma-and-project-tofino-ef634c6164f0#.yqzsihmor – Mozilla and a full Chrome clone…. after reading this, this horrible vision does not feel so unrealistic anymore. Oh how ironic!
That’s interesting if it is all about experimentation. We’ll probably end up someday with just Chromium or whatever it will be called by then.
I would say more scary. Because we are heading faster and faster into a direction where only one engine tells what is right and what is wrong and how things should be done.
And that engine will be Blink from Google Chrome. Not at all wrong to say we are almost there. While i dislike Mozilla for all their Chrome ambitions, i do just hope they are clever enough to avoid a new monopoly and have at least have that healthy amount of good common sense to not fall into that trap. Developing with Electron would be for sure the lazy and more simple way to develop a new browser, but as it is basically Chromium, a step like that would be highly counter productive for the freedom of the web.
Sure it is experimentation, but at the same time they say also the same about Servo. Hopefully they make at least one good decision when the time is coming to decide what is the next step for Firefox (which will be no matter how it turns out not a happy future for power users who want built inside customization features into the browser core).
Another month, another loss of market share: http://www.techworm.net/2016/04/internet-explorer-used-browser-lose-google-chrome.html
Now i wonder what happens when Xul and full themes are really going away.
I have a weird “symptom” with Firefox 45 (OS X 10.9.5; NoScript; updates set to “never”).
The “date modified” flag keeps changing. That is, you look at “/applications/Firefox” in the Finder and date modified is no longer the install date. I added the latest OS X security update recently, but I don’t think that’s the problem; other applications aren’t doing the same thing. If you control click on FF to see the package contents, the mod date on the MacOS folder changes as well, but the dates on the contents of the folder do not. Very odd. HAS ANYONE ELSE SEEN THIS?
BTW: I had to manually install this update since it wouldn’t auto install on request. The application seems correctly signed by Mozilla. Firefox appears to be running fine other than the date issue.
Gunner March 12, 2016 at 2:42 pm #
Hi Martin
Is there any way to disable or remove “Hello” completely via about:config? Thank you.
–> you can delete the .xpi in a subfolder of the program installation path.
—->> something like %programfiles%\Mozilla Firefox\browser\features\loop@mozilla.org.xpi
That should do it until you update to a new version of FF.
I just got firefox v 45.0.1 and it still seems to be a memory hog…
The Firefox 45 and Hulu not recognizing ones account when trying to watch a show is now fixed in Firefox 45.0.1.
Apparently it was something to do with https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1254856
I tried 45ESR today. Performance was terrible. It always took more than TEN seconds to start, tabs loaded very slowly, and it would freeze several times a minute.
…I’m guessing something major changed? Maybe that multicore thing?
On the plus side a number of small issues seem to have been fixed, and some pointless things I never liked are gone. However, since this version is completely unusable I restored the last version, which is pretty great.
Hi Martin
Is there any way to disable or remove “Hello” completely via about:config? Thank you.
Install Configuration Mania addon. It provides a nice GUI for manipulating about:config settings. The option to disable Hello is in the Browser/Other section.
Yes, check out this article (search for Hello): https://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/18/a-comprehensive-list-of-firefox-privacy-and-security-settings/
Thank you, Martin, but with the release of v45, those methods don’t work anymore.
Could they have changed the related preferences? Anything else we can do?
Thank you, Martin, but setting “loop.enabled” to false no longer works starting with the release of v45.
Could they have changed the related preferences for that?
Whenever I try Firefox again (Im using Chrome since 2 years) I notice how terribly inefficient it is. Just typing in the bar you notice how searching through cached search history I get noticeable lags. Then I load up 20 tabs, and using CTRL-W to close a random tab gives me another noticeable lag while Firefox closes the tab and displays the next tab in line.
It just feels like terrible software design, probably weighted down by old software components from Firefox 1-3 releases. They need to burn down this ancient foundation and start from scratch. Releasing Firefox 45 or even Firefox 55 won’t make it any better because at the end of the day its still old, slow Firefox.
Always back up your profile and add-ons, especially if you upgrade so soon after the release.
There were no comments on this article, you are the first. Desperate for some attention? Bad trolls are just bad xD
I have two odd issues since upgrading to Firefox 45.
– Noscript no longer seems able to work with Flash and click to play as it acts like one clicked on a url link versus allowing the blocked content. Opening the Noscript options menu can be iffy on occassion also.
– On Hulu. It will no longer recognize my being logged in whenever I try to watch a show even though it is logged in (says my name, queue, favorities, account info, shows you watch etc). It instead acts like I do not have an account at all so I am stuck not having access to any paid content, have commercials, no HD, etc.
Anyone know how to fix those issues on my end or is this strictly something with Firefox 45?
Yes, I had similar problems with Firefox 45 and Hulu. Also my Hulu videos started playing with adds, even though I subscribe to their add free package. I called Hulu and after trying various steps to no avail I reverted back to the FF 44 and it solved all the problems. Hopefully either FF or Hulu will fix the incompatibility issue soon.
mine as well Pete— 3 addon’s not allowed & the theme, home page changed as well as certain tick boxes in Options
no bookmarks tabmix plus settings removed , download status bar gone
its like a new install :(
Warning to everyone! My Firefox broke down in many ways after updating to 45.0 (right mouse click context menu / etc.). I have no strength to do a deep investigation now. Tomorrow I’ll report back. Fuck. I’m starting to hate computers more and more, everything is broken nowadays and once you figure out & solve one problem, 2 new problems have risen.
Well, here’s what I have found so far:
– 3 addons broke in some way:
– Omnibar (search and everything else doesn’t work from URL bar)
– SearchIMDB (no context menu item, only a blank line.. additionally there’s more problems with context menu)
– Super Start (doesn’t show speed dials in new tab page)
– I can’t access FF “options->search” page at all!!
I have a suspicion that this change in FF is to blame: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1203167 “Store user-installed search plugins in a JSON file and stop loading [profile]/searchplugins/*.xml”
I have had a “google verbatim” search installed from http://mycroftproject.com/google-search-plugins.html
I tried removing “google-verbatim.xml” from “C:\Users\-USERNAME-\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\-RANDOM-.default\searchplugins” but it didn’t work. :(
Fuck Firefox.
PLEASE HELP.
I use Super Start too.. I don’t see any problem with Super Start after upgrading to 45.0 !!
Check whether you are using latest Super Start version..
FINALLY. Solved. It’s clearly the “Store user-installed search plugins in a JSON file and stop loading [profile]/searchplugins/*.xml” change in FF that caused this.
I followed the these instructions:
“Try to delete the search.json file and possible search-metadata.json and search.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder to reset the search engines to the default.”
And everything works again. Even after installing again “google verbatim” search from http://mycroftproject.com/google-search-plugins.html
It’s clear that FF handled the transition badly and that caused all my FF troubles.
Do a system restore.
Before every update, I make a quick local copy of my portable firefox (I also have backups on external, but they’re like once a week or when I feel like it – big arsed batch of stuff using FreeFileSync). If you’re not portable, just make a quick copy of your profile, that way you can roll back (i.e reinstall the older version, replace profile folder). I’ve had FF go a bit weird on me a couple of times (eg drag & drop to explorer stopped working), so I just usually grab a new install and replace the profile folder and the issues are resolved. That’s not to say that a profile can’t get corrupt.
tl;dr: reminder to back shit up
Yes exactly! I can’t believe so many of you didn’t!???
Maybe some of you need to go see my man Leo: https://askleo.com/a-peek-behind-my-backup-curtain/.
The refresh button don’t work any more.
Sometimes I do not understand the logic behind some of the decisions shaping Firefox. They removed Panorama but included Pocket in the native code.
I’ll wait for Firefox 45.0.2 before I update… You lemmings can go ahead of me… :)
The about:permissions page has been removed. Weirdly though, if you go there, the address bar says that it is a secure Firefox page. I guess there are a few vestiges of it left.
Wow, this is kind of surprising (and a little frustrating)… I wonder what motivated them to remove a useful feature like this.
I suppose you could use the Permissions tab of the Page Info box, but this isn’t nearly as useful. Permissions for all sites can’t be set in one centralized location.
I had the same reaction. I’m not sure where all the functionality has gone, if it is even still there.
Thanks for the news Martin.
“Contacts have been removed from Firefox Hello”
Under the contacts mechanism, each time you initiate a call, how can STUN/ICE server know how to route your call? Both you and the person you’re calling had to 1) have fxaccount and 2) currently be logged into fxaccount (so that the STUN server knows the current IP address or both parties and can route the call).
The changeover, to a “send a link” mechanism, removes barriers-to-adoption. It is also more privacy-friendly — the connecting server only knows/logs “IP#1 connected to IP#2 at suchandsuch datetime”.
webrtc was (and is) billed as an “open standard”, a part of HTML5 spec.
Can a firefox user, via Hello, now send a link to, and connect with, a Chrome or Chromium user?
If so, mozilla is approaching their stated goal of providing an alternative, opensource, Skype killer.
If not, considering firefox’s paltry marketshare, is Hello is still a failure? Toward projecting the degree of adoption, consider that both users would need to have Skype installed… so the necessity for both to have firefox installed instead probably won’t hamper adoption.
Hopefully the new contact-less mechanism opens the door ~~ users will be able to install an extension (eventually a plethora of extensions to choose from) which utilizes an alternate STUN/ICE server and provides overlaid “contacts” functionality along with various other features. Connected via your workplace STUN server, you’re free of the prospect of friends/kin calling… and various private servers will be able to scale up, ala google hangouts, to accommodate larger conference calls.
Other browsers support WebRTC too
The last Firefox ESR 38.7.0 is out aswell….. Probably my last Firefox version that I’ll use w/o that nagging unsigned add-on detected. Or some other unneeded nuisance bloat for a couple of months before I’ll completely drop Firefox on all my systems.
You can update to Firefox 45 ESR. This is how I got around the Mozilla-crap:
1.) Disable Signing Check:
I. Update to Firefox 45 ESR.
II. Type “about:config” into the address bar.
III. Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!”
IV. Type “xpinstall.signatures.required” into the bar on top of the site.
V. Set this preference to ‘false’ via double click.
> You are done, the Signing Check is disabled from now on.
2.) Disable Hello and Pocket:
I. Set “loop.enabled” to ‘false” in about:config. Hello is now disabled.
II. Set ‘browser.pocket.enabled’ to “false’ in about:config. Pocket is now disabled.
You are done. All the crap is turned off. Firefox 38.8 will be the last version of Firefox 38, so you should really consider an upgrade.
@Dave: If I remember corrrectly unsigned Add-Ons are blocked in Firefox ESR by default as well. This means you have to disable it, contrary to your statement. The only difference to the release channel is that Firefox ESR offers an actual about:config option to disable it. As Firefox 45 ESR is nearly identical with the normal Firefox 45 nobody knows whether Mozilla will still keep this option in Firefox 52 ESR, seeing that it will removed in the release channel from Firefox 46 on.
Anyway, 3rd Party Builds like Cyberfox, Waterfox or Pale Moon don’t require Add-On Signing, so the questioner might also want to try those.
You don’t need to do that in ESR because it doesn’t enforce add-on signing. That’s one of the defining features of ESR.
Well, it should be there. It is supposed to be removed in Firefox 46 or higher. Wonder why it isn’t present in your browser… anyway, if you don’t need any unsigned Add-Ons it probably won’t matter. If you need unsigned Add-Ons in the future you might also want to try Waterfox/Cyberfox/Pale Moon, all of which do allow these. I can totally see Mozilla removing about:config as simple users are their new target group now. A bad development indeed… When Firefox 45 ESR is killed I will have Pale Moon as my main browser.
That option isn’t present in the one I downloaded (45.0). “xpinstall.signatures.required” is not in about:config and even if you create it and set it to false it has no effect. Unsigned add-ons will not install.
I’ll probably never need to use unsigned add-ons, but them always erring on the side of overriding user choice is a death spiral. About:permissions is gone, how long until they remove about:config because “it only confuses the average user”?
Actually 45.0 ESR is supposed to remove some of the rubbish that was added recently, and because it’s ESR branch, the add-on signing requirement should not be there either. I’m looking forward to 45.0 ESR. It was supposed to be released today alongside 38.7 ESR.
ESR FTW :D
And don’t forget to remove the system add-ons (crap features) yourself after updating. Martin has articles about this stuff somewhere.
I clicked to get 45ESR and it disabled an add-on saying that it wasn’t signed. ESR isn’t supposed to do that, it’s supposed to be exempt.
I think that the ESR links are pointing to the Release channel version of 45.
You can disable Add-On Signing in Firefox 45 as well as in Firefox 45 ESR.
To do so follow these steps:
I. Update to Firefox 45 ESR.
II. Type “about:config” into the address bar.
III. Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!”
IV. Type “xpinstall.signatures.required” into the bar on top of the site.
V. Set this preference to ‘false’ via double click.
> You are done, the Signing Check is disabled from now on.
However, please note that Firefox 46 will be the first release with mandatory Add-On-Signing as this about:config option is going to be removed. Whether Firefox 52 ESR will keep this option or not is currently unknown.
That option isn’t present in the one I downloaded. “xpinstall.signatures.required” is not in about:config and even if you create it and set it to false it has no effect. Unsigned add-ons will not install.
I’ll probably never need to use unsigned add-ons, but them always erring on the side of overriding user choice is a death spiral. About:permissions is gone, how long until they remove about:config because “it only confuses the average user”?
Well, Firefox 45 is available now: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/45.0/
What are the real improvements in this version? Frankly. Unfortunately, firefox started as innovative browser is now a pathetic dead duck… I’m using presently Chromium 51.0.2669.0 (64-bit). I switched to Chromium since the Firefox version 35 and I never regret this decision and no “Firefox nostalgia” will change this.
After all the release schedule is 6 weeks (bound to change I think) which means that you have to propose a toe even if the foot ain’t ready.
Who cares, Claude? Your expectations were bigger than the piece of bread you got. Thats all.
Right. Because chromium is soooo innovative by comparison. What’s the last real innovation chromium/chrome brought into the table? Nowadays they just fix some bugs here and there and bump the version number. I’m not saying firefox is super innovative but chromium/chrome is not either.
Don’t you find think firefox logo is like stylized crescent crouching over the earth? Pale moon could also be reference to that islam symbol thing (which by the way has nothing to do with islam just like star of david has nothing to do with jews or judaism).
lol, that was random.
Yes
Firefox is Halal
The truth about the Firefox logo is quite funny.
It all happened in 1931 on a rainy afternoon. Aldous Huxley, author of the famous “A Brave New World” had that day been slightly too generous with Brandy and, between heaven and hell, scrawled a mysterious symbol. His grand-children found the drawing many years later in the middle of a Dick Tracy cartoon magazine, gave it to the sister-in-law of a close friend, whom offered it later on to a charity business. From there on no one knows how it landed at Mozilla. Quite an odyssey.
This is the plain truth and I don’t endorse it.
I think that the logo actually indicates that an alien invasion is imminent :))))
That’s 3 seconds of my life wasted reading this retarded comment.
Just delete it Martin and save other readers the pain.
You are retarded.
Thanks.
Waiting for the Portable Firefox ESR 45.
Just now Firefox 45 isn’t out yet. Desperate to be the first to publish the story?
It makes sense to publish the information before the release. Think about it..
Thanks for the information, Martin!