Firefox 96 It is the first version of the year of Mozilla’s web browser for PC, a release that, in fact, has already received its first maintenance update correcting errors, but which is still a must-see for those of us who follow the latest news in the segment, even when the novelties it brings are rather scarce in quantity and quality.
Or, to put it another way, Firefox 96 is an important update for browser users, despite the fact that its new features do not include any outstanding features. On the contrary, this version improves basic aspects such as security and the general user experience, in addition to some relevant improvements, but restricted by platform.
Thus, the first novelty that should be noted is the default assignment of the “SameSite=lax” attribute in the cookies, thus improving the protection against cross-site request forgery attacks. This policy of cookies It is the same as the one implemented for a long time by Chrome and now also present in Android 12.
As far as browser security is concerned, Firefox 96, like any other version, applies different fixes, about twenty in total, half of them critical.
Other new features in Firefox 96 include “significant improvements to noise suppression and automatic gain control, as well as slight improvements to echo cancellation to give you a better overall experience,” the release notes for this version note; and also related to multimedia, corrections around WebRTC and improvements to the quality of video playback.
In terms of performance, a “significant reduction” in main thread load that would also favor the stability of the browser; and when it comes to various touch-ups, it is now possible to print only even or odd pages, as needed.
But Firefox 96 also has exclusive news for some of the platforms on which it is available. For example, macOS users will notice from this version that Gmail links open accordingly; and as far as Linux is concerned, two are better than one:
- First, Firefox 96 for Linux finally enables “low memory detection” which puts unused background tabs to sleep when the browser detects that resources are limited.
- Second, consistency and compatibility are enforced and the keyboard shortcut to select all is changed from “Alt+a” to “Ctrl+a”.
Firefox 96 does not bring much, but less gives a stone, which is often said. And since we have just started the year, there is plenty of time for surprises.
