Here is what is new and changed in Firefox 85.0

Martin Brinkmann
Jan 26, 2021
Updated • Jan 26, 2021
Firefox
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126

Mozilla will release Firefox 85.0 Stable and Firefox 78.7 ESR later today to the public (if you are reading this on January 26, 2021). The new Firefox versions are distributed via the web browser's built-in automatic updating system and as a direct download on Mozilla's main website.

Stable and ESR releases go hand in hand with development build releases. Firefox Beta and Firefox Developer are upgraded to version 86, and Firefox Nightly to version 87. Firefox Android uses the same versioning scheme as Firefox Stable for the desktop, which means that it will be upgrade to Firefox 85.0.

Check out the Firefox 84.0 release notes in case you missed them.

Executive Summary

  • Firefox 85.0 is the first major Firefox release of 2021.
  • Flash support is removed from Firefox.
  • Firefox 85 and Firefox 78.7 fix security issues. The highest severity rating is high (second-highest after critical).

Firefox 85.0 download and update

firefox 85 stable release

Most Firefox installations will be updated automatically once the new version is released officially thanks to the browser's built-in updating functionality. Firefox users may run a manual check for updates to speed up the updating process by selecting Menu > Help > About Firefox.

The current version is displayed on the page that opens, and a check for updates is performed.

Manual downloads are also available. The following pages list direct downloads for supported Firefox channels (will be available later on January 26, 2020)

New features and improvements

Firefox remembers the previous bookmarks folder

firefox hide other bookmarks

Firefox remembers the last folder that was used to store bookmarks in, and suggests it when the user wants to save another bookmark. Previously, the default folder was always the "Other Bookmarks" folder, even if users saved bookmarks regularly to other folders.

Bookmarking has received a number of improvements. The "Other Bookmarks" folder, if it is not empty, is now displayed on the Bookmarks Bar of the browser. Additionally, it is possible to show the bookmarks bar only on the New Tab Page and not elsewhere.

You can check out my full review of the new bookmarking features of Firefox 85 here.

Better Firefox Home and New Tab controls

firefox home new tab controls

Firefox 85 introduces improved Home and New Tab page controls. In particular, users get to select the defaults or any extension that could take over the Home or New Tab page of the browser.

Previously, if users installed multiple extensions that did so, the last was picked by the browser with no option to change it (other than re-installing the preferred extension).

Check out my full review of the new Home and New Tab page controls in Firefox.

Other changes

Firefox for Android

Coming later.

Developer Changes

  • <link rel="preload"> is now enabled. Site owners may declare it to specify resources that should be loaded as early as possible by the browser.
  • browsingData API is available on Android. It may be used, among other things, to remove certain types of browsing data, e.g. downloads or cookies.

Known Issues

  • The release notes list no known issues.

Security updates / fixes

Security updates are revealed after the official release of the web browser. You find the information published here after release.

Outlook

Recently Reviewed Firefox extensions

Recent Firefox news and tips

Additional information / sources

Summary
Here is what is new and changed in Firefox 85.0
Article Name
Here is what is new and changed in Firefox 85.0
Description
Information about the Firefox 85.0 and Firefox 78.7 ESR releases that Mozilla released on January 26, 2021 to the public.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Bill said on February 3, 2021 at 9:04 pm
    Reply

    @Martin Brinkmann I would like to see an ability for users to block any poster they choose? This would work for both or any side. One doesn’t like the poster, temp or perma block’em.

    I choose no sides, as I use different browsers for different situations, but having to try and scroll through the same ole bickering really sucks.

  2. Hank in Tennessee said on February 1, 2021 at 8:49 am
    Reply

    I Trust Martin!

    I’ve been reading Ghacks heavily for 5 or 6 Years.
    Including in the early days many Older Articles. Because I tend to always have older, outdated hardware and software and the OS (Windows :). I also found it helpful to see the info in earlier articles, or if course when newer ones didn’t exist.

    And I have Never seen a website with comments and posts that had such a Healthy Respect for Freedom of Speech as on Ghacks!
    That’s Martin Brinkmann for you!

    I don’t think I ever even saw one post edited or removed until a few years ago when some guy made a couple inappropriate comments about a female poster. Most likely of a sexual or salacious nature, etc.

    As for the idea of a swarm of corporate hired, business orientated, uncaring, moderators swooping in with heavy handed deletions…
    I don’t think so!

    If you think back, or now read, Martin’s Article on Selling to Softonic you will see that he said he would Retain Full Editorial Control!

    And towards that, I’ve noticed a few things in the Editorial Deletions…
    “Please”!
    How the heck often does a moderator on any other message board or comment system say “Please”?!

    Further, as moderation became more and more necessary recently on Ghacks you would still see it was many times only small parts and sections of a post removed.
    Not just removing the whole post.

    Lastly you will noticed that for this article several Long Time (and by many beloved :o) Ghacks posters were edited! Even fully deleted!
    Namely Pants and Tom Hawack!
    I think this clearly shows impartiality, objectivity, and fairness!

    Things just got completely out of hand! Out of control!
    Off topic to the max!
    Ad hominems. Bickering. Etc.
    It was no longer serving any purpose.
    Certainly not relevant to the subject to any significant degree.
    Do you really think posts, or sections within, containing any shred of technical information were removed?!
    I don’t.

    The fact that over the years Martin has always allowed a significant amount of good natured off topic, and semi related, even barely related, posts to stay up just demonstrates to me that this huge amount of, I count 51, deletions were reasonable, was necessary, because it was out of control!

    I admit to a certain curiosity over what was said.
    But why am I here?
    For drama?
    Or tech info!

    So everyone, is it possible we could all just get back to the good things that we liked about Ghacks in the first place?
    I hope so.

    It’s not just that I like and respect Martin…
    I Trust Martin!

    Sincerely,
    Hank, in Tennessee

  3. sure said on January 31, 2021 at 5:49 pm
    Reply

    Shame, would’ve liked to read through all this. In agreement with Jody’s last 2 points, 75% reason i come. The editorial, semi random software news out of nowhere, and ‘vibrant difference of opinions and egagement’ LOL. I do enjoy some rants or rebuttals equally when theyre of opposite opinion, so im wondering who could not tollerate that. A lot of us im sure handled the disqus sections of tech blogs or other wild west incarnations of forums and channels way back, before they locked and flatlined. Static 1 way relevancy outlets for established corpos serving the latest [backdoored] lenovo or microsoft cloud package is just not engaging (arguably harmful in some ways).

    1. Jody Thornton said on February 1, 2021 at 2:39 pm
      Reply

      See what I think should be excised from conversation is when there used to be the aligning of the big browser makers with socioeconomic models like fascism. I really don’t think there is any political motivation behind Google trying to gain market control. That’s just Google throwing it’s weight around, no differently than Microsoft in the 1990s.

      I really like Iron Heart’s contributions to the forum. He has a blunt sense of reality that lends a clarity to issues. Yes, he triumphs Brave and Ungoogled Chromium, but is that any different than how I counteract those that equate Vista and Windows 8 with crap? Like Iron Heart, I’m not a fan of bandwagon or pack groupthink. Yes I find that Iron Heart can be a tad contrarian. I’m sure he was formerly Appster and Sun Glasses before that. You can always identify him on Reddit because he’ll expouse his views on Cliqz and Mozilla telemetry gathering. But I do enjoy his writing.

      I will say, it does indeed seem that Mozilla is resigning to the position of appearing as competition to Chrome. They receive monies from Google, and keep questionably deprecating features that leave one scratching their heads. Initially, the move from Australis to Photon, and the move to WebExtensions seemed to make sense . The new extensions environment was more secure, stable and attractive to Blink developers wishing to port their extensions. It seemed understandable that Mozilla stakeholders would want the company to attract modern, mobile friendly users en masse, since they are steering the path of IT development – and not desktop users. So moving away from customization and creating an “image” made sense.

      However, the disabling of userChrome customization seems odd. Customization via that method isn’t obvious to most browser users. The expanding address bar animation looks bloody awful. Little annoying changes make users wonder what the long term objective is for Mozilla. It seems more and more like the self-deprecation of their browser in exchange for Google money is the key.

      1. Iron Heart said on February 2, 2021 at 8:07 am
        Reply

        @Jody Thornton

        Please do not make assumption regarding who I am on other platforms. For example, I haven’t had a Reddit account for ages, and never had Facebook and / or Twitter accounts, either. I see the Cliqz and telemetry stuff mentioned at times when Mozilla is being discussed and someone dares to look at them realistically. It happens. All it takes is a sense of realism, it doesn’t have to be “me” all the time (hopefully).

        I agree with the rest, and thank you for the kind words – I really think that on gHacks, being a general tech website and not a Firefox fan blog, a certain diversity of opinion is to be expected. People should learn to deal with that in a cordial manner.

  4. Rush said on January 29, 2021 at 9:56 pm
    Reply

    @ Martin, sorry for all the [eÌ·dÌ·iÌ·tÌ·iÌ·nÌ·gÌ· Ì· ] order restoring, you had to do on this topic….

    I’ll do better.

    1. Jody Thornton said on January 30, 2021 at 8:07 pm
      Reply

      Wow! This has become officially worse than ANY Pale Moon topic on Ghacks I have ever seen. It’s almost not worth reading comments, because they’re all edited and removed.

      I have to wonder if the new ownership of Ghacks has anything to do with this. I’m usually of the mind that free speech can be limited if it actually hurts or harms someone. But I used to become more engaged with Ghacks articles and comments.

      1. ShintoPlasm said on January 31, 2021 at 10:19 am
        Reply

        @Jody:

        The edited/removed comments were basically a flamefest between the Firefox and Brave camps (you-know-who). Not really a free speech thing, just non-stop bickering and ad hominems.

      2. bob said on February 1, 2021 at 8:25 am
        Reply

        “a flamefest between the Firefox and Brave camps”
        tell it like it really is – a number of regular users getting fed up with the useless drivel from one person – it had nothing to do with browsers

      3. ShintoPlasm said on February 1, 2021 at 1:12 pm
        Reply

        @bob: the tone of your response is precisely why all the other ones were edited.

      4. Iron Heart said on February 1, 2021 at 10:12 am
        Reply

        @bob

        Perhaps the “regular users” should refrain from forming a mob and putting the most vicious insults out. My comments (“useless drivel” – presumably including the healthy support I lend to many users here all the time, thank you very much) never sink to such lows, but you need to be objective (i.e. not one-sided) to see that, and you are NOT. Your post totally fails to see, and makes up excuses – “got fed up” – for stuff as heavy as outright Nazi comparisons! How can you possibly defend this?

        I know that I am automatically in the wrong because I dare voicing a different opinion, not the one of the swarm. People who love conformity hate me for it, but that’s expected – I don’t care.

        Deletions were fair in so far as the whole thing certainly was very much off-topic.

      5. Jody Thornton said on January 31, 2021 at 7:39 pm
        Reply

        10-4 :)

  5. Allwynd said on January 29, 2021 at 6:24 pm
    Reply

    You guys still arguing who has the bigger e-peen?

  6. binocry said on January 29, 2021 at 6:03 am
    Reply

    I don’t know why people still defend this sinking ship

    1. Iron Heart said on January 29, 2021 at 7:18 am
      Reply

      @binocry

      You’ll find that it’s always the same 5 – 7 people.

      1. Carl Gustav said on January 29, 2021 at 9:32 am
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

  7. Yuliya said on January 28, 2021 at 6:37 pm
    Reply

    don’t deplatform me bro :DDDd
    given their market share trajectory it seems they’re about to deplatform themselves before they get to deplatform anyone else. people still use and get upset about this pile of garbage of a browser and comany?

  8. Anonymous said on January 28, 2021 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    I had the same problem. I’ve removed the add in and then added it back. Now it works.

  9. Zooks said on January 28, 2021 at 1:18 am
    Reply

    Darn. This update seems to have broken Evernote Web Clipper 6.13.

    When I try to log in, an error box pops up saying third-party cookies are being blocked. Even if I disable cookie blocking.

    I tried 6.13 in a Firefox ESR Portable and it still works fine, so I think some of this new supercookie stuff finally did it in.

  10. Joe said on January 27, 2021 at 10:22 pm
    Reply

    I used to come and look at the comments for good information, but now all I see are children fighting…to bad…the trolls are everywhere….

    1. neophilot said on January 28, 2021 at 3:58 pm
      Reply

      This is precisely what I was thinking. Very sad. and because I am a spelling nasi, must correct your “to” to “too”. Cheers!

  11. Jim Vanderbilt said on January 27, 2021 at 5:46 pm
    Reply

    @Iron Heart

    I went from Netscape to IE to Chrome, and I don’t even know what “networking partitioning” means. But if I read

    “for the Firefox fans … who think that Mozilla …: Nope, they didn’t.”

    then I’m pretty sure the author dislikes Mozilla, and he didn’t come here to praise Firefox.

    Regarding your ongoing troll-battle:
    Without understanding the issues being discussed I can often anticipate the replies to your comments.
    Because you make yourself such an easy target.

    1. Carl Gustav said on January 28, 2021 at 10:55 am
      Reply

      * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      1. Pants said on January 28, 2021 at 1:56 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [offtopic]

      2. ShintoPlasm said on January 28, 2021 at 6:08 pm
        Reply

        @Pants: Not going to address your points, not my beef, but I do miss Sören H’s contributions here… :(

      3. Iron Heart said on January 29, 2021 at 7:17 am
        Reply

        @ShintoPlasm

        > Sören H

        Who the hell is this? Must have been before my time here… I genuinely can’t remember having met anyone writing under that pseudonym here.

      4. ShintoPlasm said on January 29, 2021 at 2:08 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart:

        Sören Hentzschel: https://www.soeren-hentzschel.at

      5. T said on January 28, 2021 at 4:59 pm
        Reply

        @ Pants.

        Good to see you posting here.

        Your statements were excellently made and to the point.

        I hope that it will keep IH off ghacks for a while.

        @ Gustav

        Your analysis of IH is excellent.

      6. Carl Gustav said on January 28, 2021 at 5:37 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      7. Iron Heart said on January 28, 2021 at 7:06 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      8. Carl Gustav said on January 29, 2021 at 9:26 am
        Reply

        @ Iron Heart

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      9. Pants said on January 29, 2021 at 7:12 am
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      10. Iron Heart said on January 29, 2021 at 8:10 am
        Reply

        @Pants

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      11. Lukash said on January 28, 2021 at 5:19 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: no politics please]

      12. Jim Vanderbilt said on January 29, 2021 at 5:50 am
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      13. Iron Heart said on January 28, 2021 at 4:40 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      14. Pants said on January 29, 2021 at 8:39 am
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      15. Pants said on January 28, 2021 at 7:07 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      16. Iron Heart said on January 29, 2021 at 7:05 am
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      17. Gary D said on January 28, 2021 at 5:12 pm
        Reply

        @ Iron Heart

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      18. Iron Heart said on January 28, 2021 at 8:15 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      19. Lukash said on January 28, 2021 at 6:16 pm
        Reply

        @gary d

        * Removed [Please no personal insults, keep politics out of it]

      20. Lukash said on January 28, 2021 at 4:36 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      21. Iron Heart said on January 28, 2021 at 5:08 pm
        Reply

        @Lukash

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      22. Lukash said on January 28, 2021 at 6:39 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart Wait what? Girl? Sounds more like an extremely bitter example of the kind progressive+LGBTABC123+-! crowd to me *laugh*

        On a more serious note – I have tons of Liberal/Centrist/Conservative Trans friends who are the most awesome persons one ever could meet.. But if you are meeting one of the progressive kind… Oh boy… Then you are facing the most radical persons of your worst possible nightmares…

      23. Lukash said on January 28, 2021 at 5:28 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      24. Jim Vanderbilt said on January 29, 2021 at 5:05 am
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

    2. Iron Heart said on January 28, 2021 at 9:42 am
      Reply

      @Jim Vanderbilt

      * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

  12. studdertted said on January 27, 2021 at 5:03 pm
    Reply

    Hardware acceleration can be disabled on FF 85.0 as YouTube videos do not work properly(freeze stutter) on my Mint 20.0(HWE Linux Kernel 5.8 installed) laptop when that’s using FF 84.0.2 with hardware acceleration enabled.

    So as long as I can disable hardware acceleration I can probably install FF 85.0.

  13. Minkya said on January 27, 2021 at 4:03 pm
    Reply

    Hows that WebExtensions API coming alone Mozilla, still a flop and sitting in the shadows of its predecessor? Yes?? I think so!!

    I look at many of the extensions available for the newest version of firefox and many are a poor substitute for the extensions they are trying to imitate and just look like the same poorly designed and ugly (not to mention broken) extensions available for Chrome.
    Case in point session manager… there is nothing that comes close to what that extension offered. The closest thing to that is Tab session manager which is terrible, not even close and completely unreliable not to mention clunky.

    3 years and no relief in sight… Poor Mozilla!! very Poor!!

    Mozilla wins the award for worst transition in history! They couldn’t have worked on this in the background whilst supporting the older system but no they just forced this down our gullets and moved on with their hands over their eyes, ears and mouths.
    The currant Firefox is a perpetual Alpha stage browser just plugging along like a useless slug. Its okay if you are a 60+ year old man just wanting to read your emails but if you know better and have experienced better and come to expect better from then you would know that its less than adequate for most things.

    Don’t get me wrong if any of these updates help then great but if the webextension API is still just another stupidly simple derivative of the chrome system then it negates anything the browser stood for.

    1. aaaaaaaa said on January 27, 2021 at 8:35 pm
      Reply

      Nice try but Firefox actually has better extension support than Chrome. :-)

      Oh and I better not talk about the Manifest V3 fiasco…

      1. Minkya said on January 28, 2021 at 1:10 pm
        Reply

        I’m not trying to troll people but being slightly better than chrome is no real victory. It’s like saying oh don’t worry our system is less worse than chrome.
        It’s still terrible and needs a lot of work. It’s been at least 3 years now and I haven’t seen any improvements in this regard much to the same as chrome which still is an abysmal failure at tab management and the addons are equally bad.

        Also I am absolutely not a fan of Chrome or its many derivatives. I actually feel like google is responsible for spawning the hipster movement at Mozilla that lead them to believe that going down the same path as chrome was a great idea and the way forward.

        Fact is that the webextension API is terrible and about a decade behind the previous system in terms of power and flexibility.

        I personally hope Manifest V3 is the absolute downfall of google chrome. Chrome deserve to be filed in the toy chest where it belongs.

        For the record I haven’t read all the replies above me and am merely annoyed at how badly mozilla has handled things and where the browser is at now. Sure they may toss a little feature here and there but they effed up a lot to get there which was needless and also its far from a flexible browser. They are doing their darnedest to prevent people from disabling or enabling things in a similar way that google chrome does. That may be the basis of chrome but mozilla and firefox was built on a different set of ideas and ethics.

        Everyone is entitled to their opinions and I feel like everyone here brings merit to the community and conversation. We aren’t all going to agree on everything and that’s fine.

      2. Minkya said on January 28, 2021 at 1:34 pm
        Reply

        I’m probably getting too passionately angry about this all and not making much sense but its sad that things are the way they are and there has not been any improvements to the webextension API, its still decades behind where it should have been right now and I have seen little evidence of Mozilla actually making changes to bring webextensions to the point where addons/extensions like session manager, tabmix plus, downloadthemall etc etc but lets not also forget the potential for other great addons/extensions that could have been and never will now. I highly doubt that after so many years these addon/extension developers are just waiting for Mozilla to get their shit together.

  14. Derek Clements said on January 27, 2021 at 1:08 pm
    Reply

    Yet still no consolidated documentation detailing every “about:config” (or its newer incarnation) setting …
    … continues on as the usual configuration headache.

  15. m3city said on January 27, 2021 at 11:13 am
    Reply

    A nice ending to a blog entry about supercookies. No negativity, no puns, not putting FF as best of best.
    “We also want to acknowledge past and ongoing efforts carried out by colleagues in the Brave, Chrome, Safari and Tor Browser teams to combat supercookies in their own browsers.”

    https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/01/26/supercookie-protections/

  16. binocry said on January 26, 2021 at 9:12 pm
    Reply

    ah i wait waterfox update then

    1. Waterfox is scam said on January 26, 2021 at 11:43 pm
      Reply

      Waterfox is Firefox. Some shit tweaked (could be done with user.js) and that’s almost all. Last thing is that it was sold to ad company.

      1. Anonymous said on January 28, 2021 at 7:30 pm
        Reply

        “Some shit tweaked (could be done with user.js) and that’s almost all.”

        Lies. For example classic add-on support cannot be restored with user.js, and Firefox telemetry cannot be *reliably* fully disabled even with a user.js . In fact past experience suggests that nothing can be reliably disabled when Mozilla is involved. They follow the Google way, not the free sofware way.

        Even if what you said was true: bad defaults are wrong, they target those who don’t know. No-one should have to understand how a user.js works not to be spied on. It’s satisfying the techies to silence them while the large majority of more basic users will be unknowingly abused. It’s the Google way, not the free software way.

        “Last thing is that it was sold to ad company.”

        A search syndicator that is only here to manage the search deal with Bing, with the same developer still being fully in charge, and nothing changing for worse even a year after that happened. And you have to point the huge hypocrisy of Mozillians blaming Waterfox for allegedly being too ad-friendly when in fact Waterfox *removes the ads* that Mozilla added to Firefox (Pocket ads, ad snippets, remote code channel that Mozilla used to install the Mr Robot add-on…) and does not collect any data.

        Firefox is the scam and you are a lies spreading shill.

      2. binocry said on January 29, 2021 at 9:12 am
        Reply

        @Waterfox is scam @Anonymous

        I change my mind. Now i switched to brave, both PC and Android

        I can’t stand with Mozilla BS anymore

  17. Anonymous said on January 26, 2021 at 7:42 pm
    Reply

    @hg

    Right mouse button and untick it?

    Too hard? ;)

  18. ULBoom said on January 26, 2021 at 7:07 pm
    Reply

    Deep comment.

    It works.

  19. hg said on January 26, 2021 at 5:48 pm
    Reply

    I wish they would allow me to delete or hide “Other Bookmarks”

  20. Aegir said on January 26, 2021 at 5:09 pm
    Reply

    I updated Firefox to version 85.0 and tested it again with Jetstream, Kraken and Octane benchmarks and the results are VERY slow. By the way, I also tested Opera, Edge, Chrome and Vivaldi on the same PC and the results were normal. Firefox is struggling with JavaScript.

    1. Curtis said on January 30, 2021 at 12:24 am
      Reply

      Firefox admitted these synthetics got worse because of their Warp implementation. However, their assessment of real world websites showed improvements in javascripts/frameworks. They talk in length on their blog about why synthetic benchmarks are not realistic.

      Saying “Firefox is struggling with javascript” is a bit of a misstatement. Unless you are talking about web page loading performance, which you have carefully tested?

      Nothing I hate more than fan boys and the haters. Let’s stick to facts and have a real discussion here.

    2. look-ma-no-hands said on January 27, 2021 at 9:40 am
      Reply

      anecdotal evidence is not scientific

    3. Carl Gustav said on January 26, 2021 at 8:25 pm
      Reply

      Benchmarks don’t reflect reality, unless of course your use case is browser testing. Jetstream in particular is a pathetic consolation toy for kids. Just get yourself some decent hardware—Firefox is the browser of well-off people who don’t need to rush and can afford to use the internet with dignified calm.

    4. Aesop2 said on January 26, 2021 at 8:06 pm
      Reply

      THEN DON’T USE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
      Don’t even install it.
      Ignore it.
      gawd.

      1. Aegir said on January 26, 2021 at 9:00 pm
        Reply

        wish for a speedy recovery

    5. ULBoom said on January 26, 2021 at 6:58 pm
      Reply

      ESR still works fine. I gave up on the main version a few years ago when Mozilla wrecked so many updates.

  21. Aegir said on January 26, 2021 at 4:53 pm
    Reply

    I wonder if the Javascript-machine is being fixed. I tested Firefox 54.0.2 with Jetstream, Kraken and Octane benchmark and the performance is VERY slow.

  22. Anonymous said on January 26, 2021 at 4:29 pm
    Reply

    “The changes we’re making in Firefox 85 greatly reduce the effectiveness of cache-based supercookies by eliminating a tracker’s ability to use them across websites.”

    Only across websites, so that for example Google can still in principle use some supercookies to keep a cross-session profile of your Google Search or Youtube activity even if you’re not logged in and have cleared normal cookies/storage.

    In fact thanks to another years old browser bug that was conveniently never solved, Firefox does not reliably clear local storage on exit even when instructed to, so for example Google can even track you across sessions without having to rely on supercookies after you think you’ve opted out of normal tracking by clearing your local storage.

    “We also want to acknowledge past and ongoing efforts carried out by colleagues in the Brave, Chrome, Safari and Tor Browser teams to combat supercookies in their own browsers.”

    Yes, we can’t really expect more from Mozilla than the pathetic crumbs of privacy that the Big Brothers twins Google and Apple already deigned to drop for us.

  23. Carl Gustav said on January 26, 2021 at 4:27 pm
    Reply

    @Iron Heart [Editor: corrected the nickname, please address users with their correct nickname]

    Have a little empathy. Just imagine if you had to fill your life by constantly belittling some company (whose products you don’t even use) and arguing with its imaginary “fans.” I would give all my BATs not to live in such a hell.

    1. Iron Heart said on January 26, 2021 at 5:26 pm
      Reply

      @Carl Gustav [Editor: edited nickname, please address users with their chosen nickname]

      I do not belittle them by pointing out that they are seven years late. They ARE seven years late. Facts cannot be insults or belittlement.

      This feature will be advertised as the best thing since sliced bread, even though others had it years ago. Just wait. Only on gHacks, the party of ignorants is over before it even begun.

      1. Karl said on January 27, 2021 at 3:17 am
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        Keep your comments coming. I enjoy them, often good counter arguments/tips/alternatives instead of a flock of sheep walking the same direction where everybody agrees with each other. I probably will leave FF for something else, if I find some good alternative, hopefully sooner rather than later, but there are many browsers to pick from. The best mozilla can do is to at least kick out their current CEO and get someone with full focus on the browser and mozilla, only.

      2. Iron Heart said on January 27, 2021 at 9:15 am
        Reply

        @Karl

        The odd part about all the * Removed [Editor: no personal attacks] replies I am getting is the following: Nowhere in my original comment did I say that Firefox was bad or that network partitioning itself is a bad concept. Literally nowhere. I just dared to point out the fact that Mozilla was late to the party, and that I don’t understand why some of the stuff they partition now isn’t just outright disabled – because the web compatibility loss would be low anyway. That was literally the content of my main post.

        * Removed [Editor: please keep off-topic remarks to a minimum]

        I was using Firefox 2006 – 2017, so it’s not like I am hating the product. I am a long time user whom they’ve lost thanks to a lack of focus, lack of care for privacy, and their horribly greedy management and the opinions they sometimes spew, opinions that nobody has ever asked for. If there was a turnaround with a new management and a change of direction in terms of where the project is headed, I’d have no reason not to give it a fair chance again. But that doesn’t seem to be happening so far, I doubt it ever will, and in the meantime, I have no reason whatsoever to swallow all the dirt they throw my way as a user just because I am somehow in love with the brand, like the people trolling me here are.

        Thank you for the kind words, it’s good to hear someone not hating on me or overreacting in response to my original comment.

      3. Gary D said on January 27, 2021 at 1:58 pm
        Reply

        @ Iron Heart

        TL:DR

      4. Iron Heart said on January 27, 2021 at 4:39 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      5. RusH said on January 28, 2021 at 8:28 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      6. Iron Heart said on January 29, 2021 at 7:15 am
        Reply

        @RusH

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      7. Resistance said on January 28, 2021 at 11:19 am
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      8. Iron Heart said on January 28, 2021 at 8:35 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      9. Tom Hawack said on January 28, 2021 at 2:56 pm
        Reply

        @Resistance, most of us, here as elsewhere, are not complaining about opinions but about logorrhoea, moreover when systematically aimed at discrediting to the point of emphasizing on bad news and diminishing good ones about whoever or whatever, Mozilla and Firefox at this time and for some time now. Free speech has nothing to do with it. Diversity, pluralism are the very core of life (and conservatives are not the leaders of the band to proclaim it), but when the same attitude, the same rhetoric is served again and again… we all get fed up.

      10. Lukash said on January 28, 2021 at 5:05 pm
        Reply

        @Tom Hawack

        * Removed [Editor: please no politics]

      11. Resistance said on January 28, 2021 at 4:19 pm
        Reply

        @Tom Hawack Wrong.

        * Removed [Editor: please no politics]

      12. Tom Hawack said on January 28, 2021 at 5:22 pm
        Reply

        @Resistance, it has nothing to do with politics either. We’re in plain psychology. Everyone says his truth and whoever does it aggressively is wrong, at least in the manner. You see, what happens sometimes in life is that exasperated quiet people become loud and aggressive because another, calmly, is practicing what I called logorrhoea, which gets on the nerves of anyone except those who consider that any man/woman pointed by the group deserves to speak/write. It’s far less complicated in fact : consider facts. Also, it’s not because it’s my right that I should use it if we consider, I’d say, plain old politeness. Here we can share freely seems to me (the trouble-maker isn’t censored, is he?) but maybe is it up to each of us to consider “intellectual honesty” because there ain’t any when a speech systematically condemns : systematically. “Either he’s dishonest either he’s sick”. I have no reason to consider sickness.

      13. Lukash said on January 28, 2021 at 6:22 pm
        Reply

        @Tom Hawack one more forced to hijack your discussion – Iron Heart just uses his right to talk about malice and shameful actions of a once serious and respectable developer.

        This is important that others learn the truth and abandon that Losers. But even more important is the moral adpect/Political aspect.

        * Removed [Editor: please leave politics out of it]

      14. Lukash said on January 28, 2021 at 12:18 pm
        Reply

        @resistance 100% agree with this – my reason for no longer using Firefox.

        * Removed [Editor: please no politics]

      15. Carl Gustav said on January 27, 2021 at 8:29 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      16. Iron Heart said on January 28, 2021 at 9:47 am
        Reply

        @Carl Gustav

        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      17. Carl Gustav said on January 28, 2021 at 2:03 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      18. Resistance said on January 28, 2021 at 4:23 pm
        Reply

        @Carl Gustav

        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      19. Iron Heart said on January 28, 2021 at 5:20 pm
        Reply

        @Resistance

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      20. Lukash said on January 28, 2021 at 1:27 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [Editor: please no politics]

      21. m3city said on January 27, 2021 at 11:19 am
        Reply

        @Iron Heart,

        * Remover [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      22. Iron Heart said on January 27, 2021 at 12:09 pm
        Reply

        @Carl Gustav, m3city

        Guys, give it a rest. You are spewing nonsense, my posts are not hate, my posts are critical. Not quite the same thing. Hate is irrational and unfounded, criticism is not.

        * Removed, please no personal attacks]

      23. Carl Gustav said on January 27, 2021 at 2:11 pm
        Reply

        @m3city

        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

        @Iron Heart

        Wow, man, I’m sorry I didn’t notice this brilliant moment. Apparently I was blinded by the divine light of your mighty expertise. You are just a life saver! Who else could handle the situation with cookies like that! Surely it justifies the other few million words wasted here over the years.

        By the way, what about publishing the “Criticizing the software I don’t use” book series? Could make some good comedy fiction.

      24. Iron Heart said on January 27, 2021 at 12:39 pm
        Reply

        @Carl Gustav

        * Removed [Please stop making assumptions about the moderation here on this site]

      25. Carl Gustav said on January 27, 2021 at 10:30 am
        Reply

        > I was using Firefox 2006 – 2017

        Of course, the typical rejected trauma screams out of every comment. For four years since then, he has been following his former beloved fox to prove to himself what a trash she is.

        > if I wasn’t here giving a valid counter-opinion

        Wow what a noble mission he invented for himself. But let’s not forget that all these so called “counter-arguments” are nothing more than empty quibbles and endless streams of demagoguery. Over the years, not a single useful advice has been seen from you, except for pain, bitterness of loss and betrayal.

        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      26. ULBoom said on January 26, 2021 at 6:56 pm
        Reply

        * Removed [please no personal attacks]

      27. Iron Heart said on January 26, 2021 at 8:32 pm
        Reply

        @ULBoom
        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

      28. Gary D said on January 27, 2021 at 12:33 am
        Reply

        @ Iron Heart

        ” It is you guys who troll ME relentlessly. ”
        ” The faint of heart fanboys should just leave me alone, instead of spewing bullshit. ”

        You DO NOT use Firefox.
        You use Brave and, according to you, ungoogled chromium.

        HOWEVER, every time Martin posts an article about FF, up you pop with your “enlightened” opinions.
        IF you kept your comments short and to the point, it might be interesting to read them.
        The problem is that you DO NOT.
        Many of your comments are so long that when I see your name at the top of one of your posts, which is equivalent in length of ” War and Peace ” I switch off. TL:DR

        * Removed [Editor: please no personal attacks]

        FGS give it rest, sit in front of your computer, admire your wonderful Brave browser search engine and bask in your superiority over the unenlightened FF users !

        NOTE Do not post a response. It will be ignored.

      29. ShintoPlasm said on January 27, 2021 at 10:36 am
        Reply

        @Gary D:

        * Removed [Editor: editor the source of the reply]

      30. Iron Heart said on January 27, 2021 at 12:44 pm
        Reply

        @ShintoPlasm

        * Removed [Please stop making assumptions about the moderation here on this site]

      31. Carl Gustav said on January 26, 2021 at 11:46 pm
        Reply

        His modus operandi delights with its primeval simplicity: first he comes to the empty comments section and shouts “hey fanboys you know your browser is crap.”

        The funniest part of the performance is of course phase 2: reverse, playing the victim, when he begins to whine that he is being trolled and demands to be left alone. This helps him to justify his subsequent attacks of people: “fanboys,” “ignorant,” “whining,” “bullshit” and so on and so forth. Abundant streams of dirt erupt instantly, because this is his main desire—to devalue and humiliate. Under the guise of a funny local fool, the fangs of a cruel sadist actually shine.

      32. Bronze Buttbreeze said on January 26, 2021 at 11:38 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart [Editor: please address users with their correct nickname]

        What is your goal of “pointing out”, “drawing attention”, etc here about FF? Moar BAT? Or them voices?
        Can’t wrap my head around that some dude is so dedicated into that “thing” …

        Of course it could be Martin himself or some of his sockpuppets to drive up traffic and engagements. That’s what agent-provocateurs are for.

      33. m3city said on January 27, 2021 at 11:22 am
        Reply

        @Bronze Buttbreeze
        Mr Brinkmann being Iron Heart ?! Thats a NICE conspiracy theory. I pronounce it alive until proven otherwise!
        ;)

      34. Tom Hawack said on January 27, 2021 at 7:39 pm
        Reply

        Indeed, totally impossible

        * Editor [removed this part, please no Nazi comparisons]

        Otherwise, our ‘Iron Heart’ here is like noise, you get used to it and quickly don’t ever realize he is writing his own war.

  24. Mike said on January 26, 2021 at 4:17 pm
    Reply

    Your infatuation with the brave browser is scary.The better browser is Firefox,you really seem to hate this so you take every opportunity to discredit it.It’s very sad.

    1. Iron Heart said on January 26, 2021 at 5:39 pm
      Reply

      @Mike

      * Removed [Editor: unsubstantiated claim]

      Bad privacy standards, bad security standards, in the future also bad (childish) design. What should I be envious of, objectively? I really want to know, so you can be the first to tell me here.

      And again, saying that they are late to the game is not “discrediting” FF. It just means that they are late to the game, not that it’s bad. You can find all of this in my main comment if you had any kind of reading comprehension.

  25. Anonymous said on January 26, 2021 at 4:15 pm
    Reply

    Martin, your “Firefox can set itself as the default PDF viewer on Windows 7 again.” should probably be changed to “Firefox no longer sets itself as the default PDF viewer on Windows 7.” as reported here https://support.mozilla.org/it/kb/firefox-enterprise-85-release-notes
    Indeed it was a bug the fact that the installation of Firefox changed the default pdf viewer on Win7.

  26. Finnegan said on January 26, 2021 at 3:45 pm
    Reply

    I swear.

  27. Iron Heart said on January 26, 2021 at 2:00 pm
    Reply

    Quick fact check for the Firefox fans in this comment section who think that Mozilla pioneered the idea of networking partitioning: Nope, they didn’t. It’s a carbon copy of what Apple already does in Safari since 2013… Point in case:

    https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/

    They are currently applying this to even more resources (although they were late in respect to the resources that were already partitioned by Safari years ago), but generally, all browsers are moving in this direction. Chromium has partitioned cache since v.86, two versions ago. This is a general development really.

    Partitioning can be useful in relation to resources that are absolutely essential / without which the browser can’t work correctly, or would be less secure. But when I see that the following resources are also being partitioned in Firefox…

    – Alt-Svc
    – Preconnect
    – Speculative connections
    – Prefetch
    – TLS session identifiers
    – Service workers

    …then I really have to ask myself why those things are even enabled by default. Mozilla could just disable them (like e.g. Brave does for most of those, except SW ’cause Push notifications), without much web compatibility loss. Instead they partition them – holy moly, just turn them off.

    1. mo said on January 29, 2021 at 12:29 pm
      Reply

      Makes sense, that technology that Apple implemented in Safari is used by GNOME Web 3.38 as well.
      https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2020/09/16/epiphany-3-38-and-webkitgtk-2-30/

    2. ULBoom said on January 26, 2021 at 6:47 pm
      Reply

      Never stops.

      “Quick fact check for the Firefox fans in this comment section who think that Mozilla pioneered the idea of networking partitioning…”

      Split hairs with pioneered vs. invented.

      One can pioneer another’s invention or invent what another pioneers or answer questions no one asks or ask questions no one answers or cast a wide net or pick fly shit out of pepper. Internal dialogue’s a bitch.

    3. Someone said on January 26, 2021 at 3:26 pm
      Reply

      Apparently you’re the first one to think about it.

    4. Iron Loser said on January 26, 2021 at 3:14 pm
      Reply

      No one said they invented this, but you just had to somehow spin some good news for Firefox into “others have done this first, Mozilla is late as usual, blah blah blah, “, as usual.

      1. Iron Heart said on January 26, 2021 at 5:27 pm
        Reply

        @Carl Gustav [Editor: edited nickname, please address users with their chosen nickname]

        Read my comment again. I didn’t say network partitioning is something bad, I merely said that Mozilla is late to the game (provably true). Improve your reading skills before you attempt to troll me.

  28. some1 said on January 26, 2021 at 1:29 pm
    Reply

    Looks like a significant release. definitely waiting for 85.0.1 or 2 or ….

  29. Anonymous said on January 26, 2021 at 1:27 pm
    Reply

    Network partitioning is something i waited for. A great thing for privacy.
    Also preload is welcomed. although i know lot of website owners abused it too much.
    But as concern to good website implementation – that a good thing.
    Waiting now till the update will arrive to my system.

    1. thebrowser said on January 27, 2021 at 4:40 pm
      Reply

      1. Create a new bookmark in your browser, choose whatever title you want.
      2. For the location paste the following:

      javascript:(function(){document.querySelectorAll(‘.comment’).forEach(c=>{if(c.querySelector(‘strong’).textContent.toLowerCase()===’iron heart’){c.style.display=’none’}});})()

      3. Next time you come to Ghacks and the comment section is a gigantic mess filled with kids whining about their favorite browsers, just click on it.
      4. Enjoy the reading in peace.

      @Iron Heart, I hope you understand this is not an attack to you personally. I just don’t want to constantly skim through the comments in search of something useful only to find useless and mostly repetitive discussions.

      1. Emma said on February 8, 2021 at 1:31 pm
        Reply

        @thebrowser

        Thanks for posting that bookmarklet tip, your code snippet. Very interesting.

        Question 1 : can it be conveniently parameterized, per-page input of the chosen $TargetToBeStripped string, without having to go in and edit the hard-coded text in the Location field of the bookmark’s properties?

        Question 2 : And even how about multiple $Targets in the same bookmarklet?

        Thanks in advance for any hints.

        Worth mentioning too, perhaps, in case others try this, I found that on highlighting then drag-n-dropping your snippet text to my bookmarks bar, it auto-translated your smart-quote/single-quote/ticks to the webcodes %E2%80%98 and %E2%80%99 so I just manually edited them to regular single-quotes in the Location field.

        Thanks,
        Emma. x

      2. Peterc said on January 27, 2021 at 9:21 pm
        Reply

        @thebrowser:

        Will that script work if I replace ‘iron heart’ with, say, ‘thebrowser’? ;-)

        More seriously, I’ve actually picked up some good Brave tips from Iron Heart. But then again, what you expect a Pale Moon user to say? ;-)

      3. Peterc said on January 27, 2021 at 9:27 pm
        Reply

        Corrigendum: … what *would* you expect …

        PS: I’m just as capable of scrolling past flame wars as anyone else. I do prefer they not go on forever, though.

      4. Iron Heart said on January 28, 2021 at 9:52 am
        Reply

        @Peterc

        * Removed [Editor: offtopic]

      5. thebrowser said on January 28, 2021 at 12:22 pm
        Reply

        > More seriously, I’ve actually picked up some good Brave tips from Iron Heart.

        That is the whole point: there is useful and interesting information that is being buried under a pile of ridicule. It’s almost as if people can’t handle the reality that opinions other than their own exist. It’s okay to disagree and everyone has made their point, now grow up and move on.

      6. Iron Heart said on January 27, 2021 at 5:09 pm
        Reply

        @thebrowser

        Please understand, I can do very little about that. I don’t consider my initial comment in any way offensive (January 26th, 2:00 p.m.), yet I am still getting all these asinine replies. I cannot do anything to prevent that, I’ve already asked them to leave me alone for good, to no avail. That’s all I can do.

        I do not like these exchanges either, and yes, they are both repetitive and unnecessary.

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