Firefox 76.0.1 fixes a Windows crash and a bug in extensions

Martin Brinkmann
May 8, 2020
Firefox
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38

Mozilla is currently working on publishing Firefox 76.0.1 Stable to the public. The new version of the Firefox web browser is a bug fix release that addresses two issues found in previous versions of the web browser.

Firefox 76.0.1 is a minor release. Mozilla plans to release it on May 8, 2020 to the public. The release is not yet available officially. Once it is available, users may download the new version from the official Mozilla website or use the built-in updating feature of the Firefox web browser to get the update installed automatically on the device it is run on.

Firefox 76.0.1

Firefox 76.0.1 addresses two bugs. The new version of Firefox is released just days after the release of Firefox 76.0 Stable; this happens usually when major issues, e.g. security issues, crashes, or compatibility issues, are discovered.

Firefox 76.0.1 fixes a crash that occurs in earlier versions on 32-bit Windows devices if certain nVidia drivers are installed on the device. The bug report reveals that the issue accounted for about 7% of all tab crashes since the release of Firefox 76.0.

Mozilla notes:

This patch switches string literals depending on the platform. No logic change. More specifically, we take care of nvd3d9wrap.dll and nvinit.dll for x86, keeping nvd3d9wrapx.dll and nvinitx.dll for x64, to align with Nvidia's naming rule.

The second bug impacts the functionality of some add-ons. Mozilla mentions the Amazon Assistant extension for Firefox specifically but mentions that the issue impacted other extensions as well.

The bug report focuses on Amazon's extension for Firefox. The reporter notes that the extension would not load the information (Amazon Home feed) when activated, and the issue appeared only in Firefox 76 and not Firefox 75 but affected Firefox on all supported desktop platforms.

Mozilla found the bug quickly:

This bug is caused by runtime.onConnect unexpectedly triggering in the browser action popup panel. (EDIT: not just browser action popups but any other extension page, such as extension tabs and background pages).
This should not happen, the runtime.onConnect event should not be triggered when the event is registered in the same location as runtime.connect.

The official release notes of Firefox 76.0.1 will be published here.

Now You: did you notice any issues while using Firefox 76?

 

Summary
Firefox 76.0.1 fixes a Windows crash and a bug in extensions
Article Name
Firefox 76.0.1 fixes a Windows crash and a bug in extensions
Description
Mozilla is currently working on publishing Firefox 76.0.1 Stable to the public to fix a crash on some Windows systems and an issue affecting some add-ons.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Sebastian said on May 17, 2020 at 12:53 pm
    Reply

    just got 76.0.1. Now, Firefox Always crashes about 30 seconds after start :-(

  2. Anonymous said on May 13, 2020 at 11:57 pm
    Reply

    Just got 76.0.1 today on Ubuntu 18.04. I haven’t noticed any problems with the previous version.

  3. Yuliyas_Wifes_Boyfriend said on May 13, 2020 at 10:15 pm
    Reply

    Mozilla probably made the crash and bugs as a false flag for making a bad product.

  4. rich said on May 12, 2020 at 7:28 pm
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    This really sucks. Previously for one site when reading a message board a pop up window would occur with the messages for that topic and I could right click on interesting messages and send them to a new tab. That is now removed/broken.

    Also on the pop up window I can no longer edit the url. That also sucks.

    Maybe security stuff improved but usability for my use case gets a F.

  5. Stan said on May 11, 2020 at 4:40 pm
    Reply

    It wants your OS sign in password, next up your inside leg measurement.

    1. BuggyBloatzNotz said on May 11, 2020 at 10:53 pm
      Reply

      It’s never getting that, and more than likely it’s getting FF uninstalled and now to look for another browser. That and I’d like my Browser to not be moving in the direction of becoming an OS as I’ll already have the OS in mind and am trying to move away from Redmond’s offerings if possible.

  6. Tim said on May 11, 2020 at 12:06 am
    Reply

    With 76.0.1 it is now requiring me to enter a FF user name and password to view my saved passwords. I don’t have the option to require it turned on and, as best as I can remember, I never set up a FF account.

    1. C. Bidon said on May 13, 2020 at 1:39 am
      Reply

      That’s strange. I just updated to version 76.0.1 and can still view my saved passwords without having to log in to my FF account (at least, I THINK I have one ;)

    2. Anonymous said on May 13, 2020 at 1:03 am
      Reply

      That’s strange. I just updated to version 76.0.1 and can still view my saved passwords without having to log in to my FF account (at least, I THINK I have one ;)

  7. Waleed Bin Wasa’b Bin Rayaz said on May 10, 2020 at 6:37 pm
    Reply

    Kudos to mozzarella for turning a browser into this mess.

  8. Jamie said on May 10, 2020 at 8:51 am
    Reply

    I have been using FF for many years, but would like a browser that isn’t made by mozilla any suggestions?

    1. Yuliya said on May 10, 2020 at 7:44 pm
      Reply

      This is a good place if you want to go away from mozilla and their malicious tactics:
      https://chromium.woolyss.com/

  9. John-Paul said on May 10, 2020 at 5:31 am
    Reply

    Modular intel ghost hades canyon cpus/gpus can prevent this here as it will run still if it crashes in a separate running cpu element inside the same computer here as ai can kill bugs in the apps to prevent crashes and even update the os without need of restart in theory while a also scanning for viruses and killing them and auto fixing rootkits in the OS itself once deepmind ai is good and cheap enough for that to happen for the retail market of prebuilt desktops and laptops regardless of running OS or in theory multiple running OSes at once using a iPhone like swipe gesture on a touchpad or a Logitech master MX like swipe mouse gesture to switch between OSes on the same computer on the fly .

  10. ULBoom said on May 10, 2020 at 12:23 am
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    The reason I moved to ESR a few years ago was Mozilla’s series of very botched updates. Now ESR is hosed, too. If I shut down a VPN session without closing FF ESR, occasionally the browser window disappears and freezes. Access is denied, task can’t be closed, completely stuck. VPN client works fine. Only a reboot fixes it. This may be a side effect of Windows latest very badly botched updates, IDK.

    I could try using only Ungoogled Chromium or Linux FF’s for a few weeks or de-Onion Tor and see if any of those are better but screw these people, if ESR goes bad, Mozilla’s network business evaporates. Fools!

  11. Robert G. said on May 9, 2020 at 5:14 pm
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    Like Kincaid, Mozilla in Task Scheduler + default-browser-agent.exe, are back. :(

    1. point said on May 11, 2020 at 2:23 pm
      Reply

      Only the exe has returned, the scheduled task has not. If you’ve followed the suggestions after 75 was dropped to have everything under Options | Privacy and Security | Firefox Data Collection and Use unticked and to delete the task from the task scheduler then the later won’t regenerate.

  12. million said on May 9, 2020 at 4:28 pm
    Reply

    I was having several issues with FF in the past. Since FF 75, long YouTube videos at 1080p played at 2x speed stutter like crazy. FF seriously struggles handling media heavy websites. Scrolling reddit for ~20 minutes will make the browser dog slow. The addon I consciously interact with most often, bitwarden, doesn’t work in Private Window. etc. etc.

    I have been using Chromium Edge for the last 1 month. but I used FF extensively yesterday after updating. It is still the inferior browser when it comes to youtube and reddit.

    Turns out I have just Stockholm Syndromed myself for more than a decade using FireFox. Edge absolutely smokes Firefox in performance. Everything is snappy and seamless. I am glad I got disenchanted from FF’s privacy, superiority high horse.

  13. i like purple said on May 9, 2020 at 10:54 am
    Reply

    Firefox Telemetry Slice & Dice, in Linux:

    https://pastebin.com/raw/anZCprac

    1. ULBoom said on May 10, 2020 at 12:08 am
      Reply

      Everyone knows Linux is pure; no tracking, no daily update checks, all fluffy clouds and bunnies. Then there are the installed programs…which do the same.

      Well, at least the Ubuntu Server and Manjaro I have remain functional. They may constantly look for updates, have bloatware and require that nutty terminal to change some important settings but neither has been hijacked by Short Attention Span Marketing as has Windows.

      Re: Firefox, I found that if you’ve created a privacy profile in the Windows version, you can plop it into the Linux version and FF works. Keep the Linux profile name, delete everything under it and replace with Windows innards. If the profile name is changed, probably won’t work. Takes a long time to put together a profile, nice to be able to move it. (Can’t mix ESR and Release versions, though, darn!)
      :)

    2. Kubrick said on May 9, 2020 at 7:23 pm
      Reply

      @i like purple.
      Shame there is no extension for doing that..it needs one.

  14. Kincaid said on May 9, 2020 at 7:27 am
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    Good for Mozilla for a quick fix, even if those issues were not very common.

    Bad for Mozilla for recreating default-browser-agent.exe on every update. Take a hint, Mozilla, if we deleted that file, we meant to delete it.

    1. galaxy dump said on May 9, 2020 at 2:01 pm
      Reply

      So I take it that Mozilla simply wants that file there. After all, it is their software, where you’re just along for the ride.

      TIP: read the EULA for Firefox.

  15. Anonymous said on May 9, 2020 at 1:43 am
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    I just discovered that the new horrible navigation bar is automatically centered and due to that I can’t keep the search bar resized at left anymore, as I like, it is too long now. Ok, enough is enough, I switch to Ungoogled Chromium. ADIEU MozillaCorp.

    1. ShintoPlasm said on May 11, 2020 at 9:45 am
      Reply

      What do you mean, navigation bar centred? Can’t you remove the ‘flexible spaces’ when you click on ‘Customise…’? That’s still totally customisable here.

      1. Stan said on May 11, 2020 at 4:12 pm
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        Can you read?
        With any button between the bars the Search Bar is drastically reduced in size.

    2. matthiew said on May 11, 2020 at 3:48 am
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      How does installing Ungoogled Chromium solve that problem? It has less customisation than Firefox. I don’t think a separate search bar is even possible in Ungoogled Chromium.

    3. Stan said on May 9, 2020 at 4:58 pm
      Reply

      Yep, more customization taken away, I noticed this in the 76 release, do you have a button between them? If not the resizing sticks here.
      Me thinks this could be a pre remove the search bar ‘nudge’…at which point I’m gone..deal breaker.
      @ If MozCo were a F1 team, because the clock says so, they’d be letting the car out of the pits with three wheels.

  16. Gareth said on May 8, 2020 at 8:46 pm
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    Gosh. I resorted to installing an older NVidia driver and changed from Spotify web to desktop app to address consistent freezing and mouse hitching, mostly with the Spotify website. I was convinced it was the latest NV driver to blame (probably is anyway). Win7 SP1 64-bit here.

    1. Gareth said on May 9, 2020 at 1:51 pm
      Reply

      So now https://open.spotify.com/ no longer freezes when loading, but I still get mouse cursor hitching, which goes away when I install a much older nvidia driver. So there’s still something NV-related going on.

  17. Haakon said on May 8, 2020 at 8:15 pm
    Reply

    In the many, many, many years I’ve used Firefox, early on I quickly learned to never install a .0 release and let the auto-update crowd do the testing for me. Shortly thereafter the inevitable .0.1 rolls out and I wait a few days to install it as a panic .0.2 is a rare exception.

    This is the fastest panic .0.1 I can remember.

    One cannot have this kind of fun with all those other rock solid, bug free, totally private, lightning fast browsers out there. [/SARC]

    1. Tom Hawack said on May 9, 2020 at 11:35 am
      Reply

      @Haakon, “the inevitable 0.1”? Not always, even if often. For instance there’s been but a 75.0 version, which would mean, according to your policy, that you’ve updated from ver. 74.0..1 to 76.0.1 and never installed 75.0?

      It’s no big problem to update. Personally I always install updates the “clean” way, that is I uninstall then install (Firefox profiles are never removed when Firefox itself is uninstalled). I have a quick protocol I refer to and it takes no longer than 10 minutes.

      Let’s not forget that updates include before all security fixes, waiting for a minor .0.x update before installing .0 is risky, IMO.

      Had I noticed any issues while using Firefox 76.0? No. 50+ extensions (none related to Amazon which I avoid as [far more easily than] the COVID-19), no plugins. Never encountered whatever issue even if I happen to disagree on this or that of the core, this or that of innovations, this or that of CSS modifications, but a user’s prerogatives, those enabling him to tweak settings and interface, are accessible, for the very most of them, to a point found nowhere else, and this participates to a user’s freedom.

    2. RSS Feeds said on May 8, 2020 at 8:44 pm
      Reply

      Its by design. To be talked about and to show how incredibly fast and competent everyone are fixing bugs. Marketing bs.

  18. SpywareFan said on May 8, 2020 at 7:09 pm
    Reply

    Temporary Containers warning: not all data deleted when container closes.
    https://github.com/stoically/temporary-containers/issues/405
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1636187

    With the latest version they have fixed the printing issues (css)? (I’m still on 68.7 ESR)

  19. kubrick said on May 8, 2020 at 6:26 pm
    Reply

    Kudos to mozilla for finding the bugs and releasing a patch in quick time.

  20. Anonymous said on May 8, 2020 at 5:38 pm
    Reply

    On my side in 2019, blocking auto-update with that browser was the best idea I have had.

  21. John G. said on May 8, 2020 at 4:26 pm
    Reply

    It seems that Firefox has decided to follow the new Windows 10 standards of quality. ;]

    1. Reply said on May 8, 2020 at 8:34 pm
      Reply

      M$ has proven that such avant-garde and futuristic approach works with great success, so it would be foolish to not follow the lead.

      1. John G. said on May 11, 2020 at 5:47 pm
        Reply

        Sorry, I was trying to be ironic so I beg your pardon. :[

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