Firefox 68.0.1 will be released today
Mozilla plans to release a minor update for the stable version of the organization's Firefox web browser that brings the version to 68.0.1 on July 18, 2019. Note that there will also be a Firefox ESR update to 68.01 ESR.
Firefox 68.0.1 is a bug fix release for the most part but it does introduce new functionality for Firefox on Mac systems specifically. Mozilla released Firefox 68.0 on July 9, 2019.
Mozilla started to sign Firefox releases for Apple's Mac OS X operating system using the Apple notary service to ensure that Firefox runs properly on Mac OS X 10.15 Beta releases.
Firefox 68.0.1 features four additional changes that apply to all desktop versions of the web browser:
- Firefox users who watch HBO GO content may have noticed that the full screen button was not displayed anymore after the upgrade to version 68.0 of the browser. The new release fixes this; it restores the full screen button so that videos may be watched in full screen mode on HBO GO again.
- Mozilla noticed that Firefox in some locales would sometimes display incorrect messages if sites requested permission to the Storage Access API. The default message "Will you give 'string' access to track your browsing activity on 'string'" was not be displayed correctly for affected locales. The new Firefox releases fixes the issue.
- A bug in Firefox 68 may have changed the default search engine for users in Russia without any user interaction.
- Search engines that are included in Firefox by default did not work properly for some locales. Mozilla notes in the bug report that some search engines were using the wrong encoding after the switch to WebExtensions.
Please note that these are preliminary release notes. It is certainly possible that additional issues get fixed in the final Firefox 68.0.1 release or that some issues won't be fixed if last minute bugs are discovered.
The official release notes are not up yet; you can check them here once Firefox 68.0.1 has been released to find out if there have been any last minute changes not mentioned in this article.
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Released : https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/68.0.1/
Waterfox just updated to 56.2.12 to include the same fixes specified in https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2019-22/
Something weird happened to me with this. I thought that I had the latest version of Firefox ESR, which was listed on my Windows 8.1 computer as 60.8.0 ESR. I wondered why Martin called it 68.0.This version did not update to 68.0.1 ESR. Upon checking, I found that Martin was correct with the version number. After waiting to see if Firefox ESR would eventually update (it didn’t), I updated manually to the correct updated ESR version number.
On my Ubuntu computer, I have Firefox 68.0. I would like to have Firefox ESR but Ubuntu Software insists on downloading the regular version as a security update. I guess it is possible to install Firefox ESR on Ubuntu but I think that I would get two versions of Firefox.
The current version still has not updated to the 68.0.1, but this may happen if I wait.
Sometimes it takes a week, sometimes I have to wait until the next major release.
@Mark Hazard: “Ubuntu Software insists on downloading the regular version as a security update.”
In any distro, if you are using the package manager to install and manage applications, then your “up to date” version will be whichever one is currently in the repository. This may or may not be the actual current version of the software.
Personally, I think this is a good thing — but there are cases where you might prefer software that is more up-to-date than what is in the repository. If you want to switch, the thing to do is to uninstall the software using your package manager (make a backup of the application’s data first), then download and install the software yourself without using the package manager.
Note that doing so means that your package manager will no longer be involved with that software — so services it may provide such as automatically installing updates will no longer happen for that software. With Firefox, this isn’t a big deal as the non-repository Firefox will automatically update anyway.
Also note that distro repositories often build the applications using nonstandard configurations (to include or exclude certain features, for instance), so if you switch you may see certain behavior changes. Don’t be alarmed.
Since Firefox did this last update, FF has been royally screwed up. YouTube text is now grayed out completely. The only visible thing on the page is the primary video. The title and all the other sidebar videos are blocked out. Worked just fine before this update. Furthermore, now other sites are experiencing trouble with playing videos. The play rolls and continues to but no video plays. There’s no rhyme or reason to this, just constant problems. Am wondering if a 5-year old did the last update. Having to switch to IE which is a pain also because it doesn’t acknowledge IE as the primary browser even when the settings are switched to IE. Dislike Edge for reasons I won’t go into here. Frustrated beyond belief. Don’t care to try Brave because it’s so new and has its own issues.