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.
The developer of the popular All-in-One Sidebar extension for the Firefox web browser announced the end of life of the Firefox add-on today. All-in-One Sidebar is a popular Firefox add-on that lets users open Firefox specific pages in the browser's sidebar. The extension has more than 123000 users right now and the highest possible rating […]
If you open multiple websites in the Firefox web browser -- and most Firefox users probably do -- you may run into situations where Firefox slows down at one point or the other. Firefox handles semi-large numbers of tabs quite well, both when it comes to memory use and CPU utilization, but there is still […]
If you are using Firefox Nightly right now, you may have noticed that the latest update of the web browser disabled all legacy add-ons. Firefox Nightly is the first version of the Firefox web browser that hit version 57, the version of Firefox that drops support for so-called legacy add-ons in favor of WebExtensions. Nightly […]
If your Firefox browser updated to version 55.0 recently, you may have noticed the new "Page Shot" icon in the browser's toolbar. This icon powers the native screenshot capturing functionality of Firefox. It is being rolled out to users gradually which means that you may not see the icon yet in the browser's toolbar. This […]
Firefox 55 and the coming Firefox 56 and 57 releases mark an important point in the history of the browser. Mozilla plans to switch off the Firefox legacy add-on system in Firefox 57 for the bulk of the user base -- those on Stable and Beta versions -- and along with the change come changes […]
The following guide lists all options that you have to continue running so-called legacy add-ons when Firefox 57 is released in November. Mozilla plans to disable the legacy add-on system in Firefox 57 Stable. This means that any extension for Firefox that is not a WebExtension, the new format that Mozilla focuses on, will stop […]
Mozilla Firefox 55.0 has been released by Mozilla. The official release date of Firefox 55.0 is August 8, 2017. The new version of the web browser is already available, and will be offered on August 8 to existing users of the web browser provided that they have turned updates on. Firefox 55.0 breaks compatibility with […]
The author of the Firefox security add-on NoScript, Giorgio Maone, answered questions about the WebExtensions migration of the NoScript add-on recently. NoScript is my number one must have add-on for the Firefox web browser; in fact, it is one of the few things that keeps me from switching my main web browser as it cannot […]
Mozilla plans to add a new opt-out profile clean-up option to the Firefox installation process that will clean up the user profile. The planned target for the new feature is the release of Firefox 57, and the reasoning behind the decision is to provide returning users with an option to clean up the profile to […]
If you have upgraded a version of Firefox to version 55 or newer, you won't be able to downgrade that version of the browser later on to an older version. While Mozilla never really supported downgrades of the browser before, it was usually no problem to downgrade a particular version of the Firefox browser. There […]
Mozilla plans to switch the legacy add-ons system of the Firefox browser off in the Firefox 57 release which will be out in November. The organization focuses on WebExtensions instead, and adds new APIs and improvements to Firefox to extend the capabilities of WebExtension add-ons. Mozilla wants feature parity with Chrome when it comes to […]
Play/Pause is a useful browser extension for the Firefox web browser that adds a pause option to Firefox tabs that have HTML5 media playing in them. Firefox, like most modern browsers, displays an option in its tab bar to mute audio that plays in a tab in the browser. That's quite handy on its own, […]
Some time ago part of development for Firefox shifted from integrating new features and experiments in the core browser directly to using system add-ons for that. Mozilla did integrated Pocket in Firefox natively first for instance, but changed that by removing the code from Firefox to distribute Pocket as a system add-on instead. System add-ons […]
Mozilla plans to launch the three new Test Pilot experiments Voice Fill, Notes and Send for the Firefox web browser soon. Voice Fill adds voice commands for running searches on search engines to Firefox, Notes adds notepad functionality, and Send an option to transfer files securely by using encryption. Mozilla launched the first wave of […]
If you are using the Mozilla Firefox web browser right now to download releases hosted on the project hosting website Github, you will notice that you cannot do so directly anymore. For instance, if you try to download the latest Atom editor builds, you get the warning message. The browser displays a "deceptive site!" warning […]
Mozilla plans to launch a new feature in Firefox soon which will preload autocomplete URLs in the Firefox browser when users type in the address bar. Designed to give the connection to these sites a boost by doing some initial connecting before the user activates those links, some users may prefer to disable this feature […]
Starting with Firefox 55, scheduled for an August 8th, 2017 release, unloaded tab handling in the Firefox web browser got a whole lot better. This should have a positive impact on all Firefox users who restore the last browsing session on start of the browser. It improves the time it takes to load the browser […]
Mozilla plans to upgrade Firefox 32-bit installations to the 64-bit version of the web browser when it releases Firefox 56 later this year. While stable 64-bit versions of the browser have been available for Linux and Mac OS X for a long time, the same cannot be said for the Firefox 64-bit version for Windows. […]
