Mozilla Firefox is a free open source browser available for Windows, Linux, Mac and the Android mobile operating system. The browser development started in 2003 at a time when Internet Explorer dominated the browser landscape. First versions of Firefox, originally titled Phoenix, were released in early 2004. Firefox version 1.0 was released in November 2004 and new versions of the browser were released since then in regular intervals.
Firefox is currently the number three browser in the world market share wise only trailing Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Google’s Chrome browser which appeared on the scene in 2008.
Mozilla adopted Google’s release scheme by switching to a rapid release schedule in 2011 under which new versions of the browser are released every 42 days. The browser is currently available in four different channels, namely Stable, Beta, Aurora and Nightly. The majority of users are on the stable channel which offers the best stability but is the last to receive new features which are first introduced in Nightly versions of Firefox and then moved to Aurora and Beta releases before they make their way into the stable version of the Internet browser
Below are all Firefox articles, tips and tricks, and reviews that we have published here on Ghacks. You may want to start browsing our Firefox Add-ons reviews or our selection of Firefox Tips.
When you run the Firefox web browser on a desktop system for the first time, you are prompted to import browsing data from other browsers. You may import bookmarks, passwords, and other data from browsers such as Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, and it makes sense to do so if you used one of these […]
The developers of the popular userscript extension Greasemonkey for Firefox have announced Greasemonkey 4, a new version of the browser extension. Greasemonkey 4 will be compatible with Firefox 57 as it will be released as a WebExtension. Mozilla plans to drop support for the legacy add-on system of Firefox when Firefox 57 Stable is released. […]
The Firefox web browser like any other modern web browsers uses IndexedDB to store persistent data that is associated with the browsing profile. A report on German computer magazine Heise suggests that Firefox's handling of the storage may impact user privacy on the Internet. Websites may store IndexedDB data when a user connects to the […]
Firefox Multi-Account Container is a new add-on by Mozilla that you may install in Firefox to separate sites you open into containers. Sounds familiar? The functionality of the add-on was first made available my Mozilla as part of the organization's Test Pilot program. Test Pilot showcases new Firefox features to understand better what Firefox users […]
Firefox 57 will ship with a redesigned new Tab Page that displays more content to the user when it is opened. Firefox users have full control over what is displayed on the page; Mozilla plans to launch the browser with options to turn off any module that is displayed on Firefox's New Tab page, but […]
Mozilla plans to remove the search bar of the Firefox web browser by default in Firefox 57. While the search bar will be off for new users, existing users won't notice any difference to the previous setup as the search bar remains visible when the browser is updated to Firefox 57. Mozilla revealed back in […]
Recent versions of the Firefox web browser come with a bit of whitespace on the left and right side of the browser's address bar (apparently this will launch in Firefox 57). Some Firefox users may want to recover the whitespace to make room for the address bar or other interface elements displayed on Firefox's main […]
If you use a browser that is not Google Chrome, you may get a different experience when you are using Google services. This ranges from being served an older or alter version of a product to being shut out entirely from using a product. The latter happened recently again when Google launched the new Google […]
Taborama is an experimental add-on for the Firefox web browser that combines the use of containers with Tab Groups functionality. Mozilla removed the Tab Groups functionality from the Firefox web browser some time ago. While Firefox users may install extensions such as Tab Groups or Simplified Tab Groups to reintroduce the functionality in the browser, […]
Download Star is a relatively new browser extension for Mozilla Firefox which you may use to download multiple files on web pages in one operation. DownThemAll is a long standing very popular download add-on for Firefox. The author of the extension announced some time ago that he would not port the extension to the new […]
Mozilla plans to introduce headless mode support in Firefox 55 Stable on Linux and Firefox 56 Stable on Windows and Mac devices. Headless mode is a special display mode in which the web browser's user interface elements are not shown. Since that is the case, it is used in special use cases, for instance when […]
A new WebExtension version of the popular content blocker uBlock Origin was just uploaded to Mozilla's official add-ons repository for Firefox. The new version is compatible with Firefox's new WebExtensions standard for extensions, and will as such continue to work when Firefox 57 gets released. This first official release of the WebExtensions version of uBlock […]
Mute sites by default is a new add-on for the Firefox web browser that changes the default state of all sites in Firefox to mute. Firefox, like any other modern browser, plays audio by default if a site chooses to play it. Some sites play videos with muted audio, or audio only when you interact […]
All modern web browsers leak extension information to sites if the sites run scripts to pull the information. We talked about the findings of a research term that published its findings recently in a paper. Unless scripts are blocked, sites may run scripts that check the response time of the browser as it is different […]
Mozilla plans to list all third-party accessibility tools that integrate with the Firefox web browser on about:support in Firefox 57. The developers of the Firefox web browser plan to add a new preference to the browser's privacy settings on top of that that Firefox users may enable to prevent accessibility services from accessing the web […]
Decentraleyes is a useful browser add-on for Firefox and Google Chrome -- and some other browsers based on the code of those two browsers -- that replaces popular JavaScript resources that are loaded from the Internet with local copies. The core idea behind the browser extension is to improve the page loading time of websites, […]
New Tab Override is a popular add-on for the Firefox web browser that you may install to customize the new tab page of the web browser. Mozilla removed the option to pick any page as the new tab page in Firefox 41, and users of the browser had to rely on extensions to regain the […]
Mozilla plans to collect browsing data from Firefox users in a "privacy preserving way" to help Firefox product teams improve the browser based on the data. Mozilla's Georg Fritzsche published information on the plan to collect additional data yesterday on the Mozilla Governance group. In it, he describes the issue that Mozilla engineers face currently. […]
