Firefox 136 launches with vertical tabs, but one requested feature is still missing
Mozilla published a new version of its open source browser Firefox today. Firefox 136 is a big update that ships with a few highly requested features.
Highlights include support for vertical tabs out of the box, a new Smartblock Embeds feature (more about that later), redesigned sidebar, and HTTPS-First policy.
Good to know: Firefox 128.8 ESR and 115.21 ESR are also available. These extended support releases focus on bug fixes and security updates.
Firefox 134: the major changes
Vertical Tabs
Love it or hate it. There seems to be little middle-ground when it comes to the position of tabs in browsers. One group likes the traditional horizontal layout for tabs, the other prefers them vertical.
Vertical tabs offer some advantages, especially on widescreen displays. More tabs and more of a page title can be displayed at the same time with vertical tabs. They do also pave the way for advanced organization features, such as hierarchic tabs that display in a tree-layout.
Firefox 136 users can give this a try with just a few clicks:
- Load about:preferences#general in the address bar. You may also click on Menu > Settings > General to get there.
- Scroll down until you come to the Browser Layout section.
- Check "Show sidebar".
- Activate the settings icon at the bottom of the sidebar.
- Check "vertical tabs" to enable the feature.
Uncheck the option to return to horizontal tabs. The change is immediate and does not require a restart of the browser.
The equally long-awaited tab groups feature is not part of this release.
Firefox SmartBlock Embeds explained
SmartBlock is a privacy and security feature that is integrated into Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection feature. Introduced in Firefox 87, the main goal was to address issues on webpages that were caused by the browser's tracking protection feature.
The core idea is to replace the tracking script with wannabees. They act enough like the original to keep everything on the webpage intact, but do not compromise user privacy as nothing is reported.
The upgrade gives Firefox users options to unblock certain social media embeds that are blocked by Firefox in strict and private browsing modes. Mozilla says that support is limited at the moment but that additional embeds with be added in the future.
So, if you want to see a social media embed that is blocked by default, you can do so now in Firefox.
Other changes and fixes
- You can now also enable the new sidebar layout for Firefox to access various tools and features from the sidebar.
- Mozilla switched Firefox to a HTTPS-First model. Means, Firefox tries to upgrade any non-HTTPS page by default to HTTPS. If that fails, it will fall back to HTTP to allow the connection.
- Clear browsing data and cookies dialog now supports deleting saved form info,
- Firefox will move some background tabs on macOS to "lower power cores" to reduce energy usage.
- Hardware-accelerated HEVC playback is now supported on macOS.
- Firefox on Linux systems with AMD GPUs now has hardware video decoding enabled by default.
- Firefox is now available on ARM64 on Linux.
- The integrated weather forecasts supports Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile now.
- Address auto-fill is enabled for users in the UK.
Developer changes
- The autocorrect global attribute allows autocorrection in editable text elements.
- Intl.DurationFormat is now supported, enabling locale-sensitive formatting of durations.
- The Referer HTTP header is now sent in requests following a page refresh that redirects to a new page.
- The maximum size of Data URLs has been increased from 32MB to 512MB, matching the limit for Chromium browsers.
- A subset of the Cookie Store API has been implemented.
- WebRTC can now send and receive video encoded using the AV1 codec.
- WebRTC simulcast of screen-shared video with the H264 codec is also supported (AV1, H264, and VP8 can now be used for simulcast).
Enterprise changes
- Fixed Microsoft Entra SSO failing due to missing headers.
- New preference network.http.basic_http_auth.enabled allows admins to disable Basic HTTP authentication
- ExtensionSettings policy updated to allow extensions in private windows.
Security updates / fixes
Mozilla fixed a total of 15 security issues and bugs in Firefox. The aggregate severity rating is high and Mozilla makes no mentions of exploits in the wild. Some of the security issues are bugs that could have been exploited in the future.
You can check the full list of patches here.
Firefox 136.0 download and update
Mozilla Firefox 136 is available already. The ESR-versions are also available. Most Firefox installations should receive the updates automatically. Administrators who want the updates right away can force-check for them.
This is done by selecting Menu > Help > About Firefox in the browser. Firefox checks for updates and will install the latest version, if there is one.
Downloads are also provided on Mozilla's official website.
Outlook
Firefox 137 is scheduled for a release on April 1, 2025. The two ESR versions, 115.22 and 128.9, will also be released on the day.
Additional information / resources
- Firefox 136 release notes
- Firefox 136 for Developers
- Firefox 136 for Enterprise
- Firefox Security Advisories
- Firefox Release Schedule
Closing Words
Mozilla is integrating features into Firefox that a vocal minority of users have requested for a long time. Now that vertical tabs are supported, it is tab groups that all eyes are set on.
What is your take on the direction that Mozilla is heading with Firefox? Leave a comment to join the discussion below.
You can put those tabs on the right, right? That’s where they belong: bookmarks on the left, tabs on the right. That’s how I used to arrange them back in the day** when you could do this with an addon.
(**you know, back when Mozilla cared about its Firefox users and what they wanted, back when Firefox had more than a quarter market share & was approaching a third)
@anon
going by the talk coming out of a mozilla head, the “no sell” is going away because… wait for it… in some parts of the world ‘sell’ is interpreted differently.
Basically, they are and have been selling/renting access/and so on and they can not cover their ass any longer and would have to get into talking about what and how much they are really doing with it.
Go look at https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/
then CTRL-F to: the reason
Really short take: they were risking getting sued in California over the mismatch between the “no sell” claim and what is really happening.
Even so, just consider an obvious example many can relate to because it is out it the open.
Consider why Cloudflare is their “DOH” supplier (and pays them). Because despite the (small) operating cost of that service, having access to all that data is valuable, directly or otherwise.
Is that selling? I would say so, and (disgusting as it is to agree with that state) so does California.
You can easily add to the list yourself. ‘Pocket’ for example.
There is lots more, just not out here where we mere users can see it.
Hence, since they want to avoid getting into explaining what they sell/rent/give away for money or otherwise, the “no sell” wording had to go to avoid potential litigation for clear case of false advertising, at least in California and to avoid the shitstorm of bad pr when people see how much is revealed about them and monetized by their favorite ‘I am all about privacy’ browser.
It’ll turn out that while it is not like that other one, you know, the one made by the largest advertizing business on the internet, it is not all that private after all, by more sane standards than merely comparing to the (trojan) henhouse made by a fox.
Just like you don’t see MS eager to advertise the what/howmuch/howoften of their “telemetry” datagrabs and cloudharvesting and that “replay” thing they want to push. They make no such promises. They do the opposite, demand as part of usage that you grant them rights to do it.
Sure, those demands are illegal in many countries (having, in order to protect people, laws against devil-deals, like giving up rights and freedoms, extortionate conditions etc.) but who dares outlaw e.g. ms windows or ‘office’ or ‘Oracle’ in their country over that. Except perhaps China. They are big enough to make their own CPU and are doing it.
For those who don’t want to read entire rant. Firefox bad. Chinese CCP social credit system good.
@Anonymous
Or a more realistic and unbiased interpretation – Firefox bad, China independent so they can do whatever they want. Firefox also have some freedom to do what they want and they have decided to publicly disclose they are harvesting and selling their users’ data and have for many years, just now they are admitting it.
If you are indoctrinated by the western system to hate and fear China for no apparent reason, and you like it, good for you.
I was also indoctrinated to praise everything western and hate and fear everything non-western, but when I started questioning things and doing my own research, I learned that the picture is not the same – both sides are equally bad and they work together on a certain level against all the population. I just now dislike the west more so I buy Chinese Android phones now, they are cheaper and have more powerful hardware for the price.
@allwynd
Using a Chinese phone and simping for a communist dictatorship is not the same thing, just like eating at McDonalds doesn’t mean you support America.
I understand communism may fit with your far left beliefs, but embrace the fact you are allowed to be woke as you want to be. In communist countries you would not have that luxury.
@Anonymous
You are free to whine as much as you want, throwing insults only means you have no arguments to back up your claims. Game over. xD
100% this. Regarding phones, my last few phones have all been Chinese with either Unisoc or Mediatek chips. This is important as many Chinese phones still unfortunately use Qualcomm so have to try to be as thorough as possible.
Regarding Mozilla and the new ToS policy……
You can always build it yourself and remove the offending code, or fork it!
AFAIK the “Debian” version will not include spyware.
Yes, great feature, it will negate the fact of how incompatible the browser is with web standards or that it keeps losing users or that it steals and sells users’ data.
What Firefox does is they just refresh their UI and icon every few years and think this is enough to trick gullible people that the browser is changing and evolving. When underneath it’s still the same outdated archaic mess of code. They can change the UI 68 times if they want or add diagonal tabs that span from the upper left corner of the screen to the lower right corner if they want to… but they won’t be bothered to move History and Bookmarks into tabs and not that stupid-@ss sidebar that they have since the year 1999 or whenever. This is a testament of how short-sighted and incompetent Firefox developers are.
Oh, and let’s not forget how years ago, before version 4, it was possible to customize the UI much more and move elements around, themes were real themes, not just a texture. All of that is gone and the ability to customize the browser are shrinking. I’m not talking about installing CSS files or whatever, I’m talking about easily customizing the UI like it was in the past, same is with Windows – more and more restrictions on customization. I’m starting to think that people who willingly use both are pathologically mentally unfit for life.
@Allwynd
“but they won’t be bothered to move History and Bookmarks into tabs and not that stupid-@ss sidebar that they have since the year 1999 or whenever.”
My god – I couldnt agree with this more! I’ve grown to like the bookmark mechanism (I can paste many dozens of URLs from Excel cells into it, and then drag and drop into the browser! major time saver), but the history management is garbage! Chrome just has a simple .db file, very easy to backup and parse without a browser.
“underneath it’s still the same outdated archaic mess of code” Correction: WORKING mess of code. Know the difference.
Chromium based browsers include a biblical amount of spying code. You go your way, I go mine.
@Bobo
Right, everyone has the freedom to do what they want. Chromium has some good sides and some bad ones, but I think the good ones outweigh the bad, with Firefox it’s the opposite – the bad outweigh the good.
I use Brave and other non-Google Chromium browsers, because some years back, Google decided that they will make Chrome automatically block downloads that it determined are “unsafe” and make it impossible to download – you click the DOWNLOAD button and nothing happens, you don’t even get some kind of message saying it’s blocked, you assume it’s just not working. That’s when I moved to Brave and others.
Firefox had the one thing that made it popular for many years – it maintained the lie that it doesn’t sell their users’ data, but now it admitted to it. Now Firefox has literally nothing going for itself. As the main Firefox/Gecko will now lose market share, so will the forks that Firefox fans now praise so much will also decline.
Soon, hopefully, we will see the end of Firefox. I hope another alternative rises and challenges Chromium pretty soon. I like Chromium better than Firefox, but I wouldn’t mind using something even better, preferably not created by Google. And Firefox is not a viable alternative. They had their chance around 2010 when Chrome released and they wasted it by doing absolutely nothing to improve their browser – they only copied the UI of Chrome with tabs on top and thought that will make their browser more relevant. And I have to say, I liked Firefox the most when it was in version 3.6 with the tabs below the address bar and the freedom to move all elements around. Tabs on top should have been optional, but Firefox seems to be ready to take away freedom from their users if that means for them more money, which is a good enough reason for me to not like Firefox at all, since they don’t care about their users at all. I’m surprised there are still Firefox fans who refuse to see this and understand it, but maybe that’s why they are called “fans”, because they have deluded views, detached from reality and will probably sink with the ship in the end, which I’m starting to see.
@Allwynd
A whole novel full of pointless drama, when the only thing that even matters is: Does it show webpages or not? With the added bonus of good adblocking. This is what 99.9999999999% of the users care about.
@Allwynd,
> “Soon, hopefully, we will see the end of Firefox.”
Why hopefully? Maybe likely, but why hopefully? There’s no obligation, use it or not, what harm is there to keep an outsider? Competition, diversity are healthy If the idea is to eradicate nonsense on planet Earth then let us agree that this is the very spirit of totalitarianism. Nonsense, good and bad are subjective topics. Live and let live or live and let die?
@Tom Hawack
He has openly stated his support for communism. Communists do not believe in choice, competition, or diversity. They believe in one party rule, so the idea outsiders is seen as a threat to them. That is why he prefers Firefox to be ended, rather than simply not using it.
@Anonymous
Again, humorous powerless jabs without any facts, more evidence of someone resorting to insults due to sever lack of arguments.
The moment you start insulting your opponents, is the moment where you invalidate yourself 100%.
@allwynd
There is nothing wrong with being a communist, you may prefer to be called a tankie, but really it’s the same thing. Just understand that most people living in Western Democracies have no desire to be communist, and will disagree with you as a result. Don’t take it as an insult, you don’t want look like the stereotypical liberal snowflake.
@Anonymous, no extremism believes in choice, competition or diversity, but do we remain non-extremists by refusing extremist ideas to be expressed, are we to forbid that and those who’d refuse what we accept if they had the means?
This said, a browser is not the support of an ideology, it’s plain code. Anyone using the argument that what he considers as fallacious in the philosophy of the company developing the browser is a valid one to ambition the disappearance of the browser is, IMO, thinking with his brains somewhere between his feet and his stomach, to put it mildly.
When is Mozilla rolling out the new terms of service?
Bryan Lunduke has videos on YouTube about the change in the terms, and they are very shocking.
Mozilla deletes their promise to never sell your data.
He also thinks https is bad.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/7x61cm/bryan_lunduke_ranting_about_why_https_is_bad/
>Lunduke
Lol Brave employers are desperate
Lunduke hated Firefox since the Internet Explorer days. His rants about open source projects like Linux and Firefox often don’t make any sense, so it’s easy to dismiss him. However the change in TOS is concerning.
Firefox Corp needs to address this in a serious way.
TBH, I think they know, that their Google contract and thus their sole relevant stream of income is likely going to vanish in the not too distant future and they get desperate. They laid off a lot of staff because of that (which is not a nice thing to do, but makes sense for a corporation in survival mode) and simply try to survive by any means. So their behavior is actually pretty reasonable, but 5 years too late. Had they used those 5 years for a proper market positioning and building up a USP (more than just (Open Source / Not Google), instead of doing lots of weird stuff like pocket and whatelse, things might look (at least a little bit) rosier.
@Martin, that’s “Firefox 136: the major changes”, not 134 :)
Updated 115 ESR Branch to 115.21.0 accordingly, with only security modifications of course. Gives me the feeling of eating in the kitchen while others are (al) in the dining room, lol …
Dear @Tom, please note this old french saying,
“À cheval donné on ne regarde pas les dents”.
An old friend.
@Neighbour, dear old friend I presume :)
I didn’t know that old french saying, looked it up, means that you always have to be happy with a gift received; we should not criticize a gift, even if he would have a defect; do not criticize what is offered as a gift; it is ungrateful to criticize a gift; regardless of its value, a gift must always be appreciated.
Hum, not sure it really applies here :) One may appreciate a gem yet regret it be offered in a sandwich bag rather than in its jewelry case :) This said, a typo mistake is not a bag and Martin masters English better than I, not to mention German which I hardly understand; no idea though about who understands what of the french language, here and around, and that includes French youngsters themselves who are crucifying their native language like never before. Said.
Read you later, alligator :)
@Tom
to improve your German, there’s also a (very) old German saying, which you might be interested in, not sure if you have heard it before:
“Einem geschenkten Gaul schaut man nicht ins Maul”.
You may also want to look that up.
CU
Ghacks dot net, the United Nations of techies :)
Some sayings are universal as it seems. To take this one (“À cheval donné on ne regarde pas les dents”) / ““Einem geschenkten Gaul schaut man nicht ins Maul”), universal is the idea that you must not adopt a precious attitude in the face of a gift ; as I see it that includes selling or exchanging it as we observe nowadays this rude behavior particularly after Christmas : Santa Claus must feel deeply affected.
Far from Firefox 136 vertical tabs :)
CU later, alligator :)
Just gonna mention Mozilla changed tabs so that tabs that have media content will auto-collapse regardless of your settings. There is no way to reverse this outside userchrome.css.