Firefox 142 ships with Tracking Protection, Tab Groups, and Extensions improvements

Mozilla released Firefox 142 Stable as well as various supported Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) updates today. Mozilla introduces quite a few changes in Firefox 142 that improve the usability. Highlights include new options for tab groups, tracking protection, and new features for extensions.

Firefox 142: the major changes and new features

Tracking Protection Exceptions

Tracking Protection is a privacy feature that blocks certain forms of tracking and may also improve the page loading time. However, issues on certain websites may be experienced at times when the feature is enabled.

Mozilla is introducing a new exceptions feature for Firefox’s Tracking Protection to avoid “major website breakage”. Note that this applies only to the strict level of Tracking Protection in Firefox.

Here is how you configure it:

1. Load about:preferences#privacy in the Firefox address bar.
2. Scroll down until you come to the Tracking Protection section.
3. With Strict enabled, check or uncheck “Allow Firefox to automatically apply exceptions required to avoid major website breakage”
4. Optional: Check “Also apply exceptions automatically that are only required to fix minor issues and make convenience features available”.
5. Activate the “Reload all tabs” button to apply the changes.

The active tab stays visible in Tab Groups, even if you collapse the group

Tab Groups are a recent addition to Firefox. They improve management of tabs. Starting in Firefox 142, Firefox keeps the active tab visible in a Tab Group, even if you collapse it. The tab shows the active tab as usual in the group while the other tabs of the group are hidden.

Firefox displays a number next to the active tab to indicate the number of hidden tabs.

Other changes and fixes

• Link Previews is rolling out. Long-press a link or right-click on it and select Preview Link, to get a preview of the linked resource, without opening it directly. The feature is rolling out to the locales en-US, en-CA, en-GB, and en-AU only at this point. Also, Mozilla notes that it is only available of more than 3 GB of RAM is available.
• Extensions can be removed from the sidebar now by right-clicking on them and selecting “Remove from Sidebar”.
• Extensions may access local AI models. This allows developers to integrate AI features using local models going forward.
• Users from the United States will see article suggestions grouped by topics such as science, health, or travel on the browser’s new tab page. Options to follow or block certain topics are also available.
• Mozilla improved search results from the browsing history. This should reduce “the likelihood of duplicate results” according to the release notes.
• Clicking a persistent notification on Windows while Firefox is closed/restarted will open Firefox with the relevant webpage properly now instead of the main page of the website.

Developer changes

• The <object> element no longer supports the deprecated codebase attribute. Use the data attribute instead.
• The URL Pattern API is fully supported.
• The Selection.getComposedRanges() method is now supported.
• The Animation.overallProgress property is now supported.
• The Animation.commitStyles() method no longer requires fill to be set on an animation to commit the computed styles after the animation has finished.
• The Prioritized Task Scheduling API is now supported, providing a standardized mechanism to assign and manage task priorities for an application.
• The currentRoundTripTime, totalRoundTripTime, and responsesReceived properties of the RTCIceCandidatePairStats dictionary are now supported.
• The setParameters() and getParameters() methods of the RTCRtpSender interface now support setting and getting the specific codec used for each encoding.
• The estimatedPlayoutTimestamp, framesAssembledFromMultiplePackets, freezeCount, jitterBufferMinimumDelay, jitterBufferTargetDelay, keyFramesDecoded, pauseCount, totalAssemblyTime, totalFreezesDuration and totalPausesDuration properties of the RTCInboundRtpStreamStats interface are now supported..
• Cookies created with cookies.set() in Nightly are now validated, and invalid cookies are rejected.

Enterprise changes

• Permissions policy was updated to allow the configuration of permissions for screen sharing.
• The EnableTrackingProtection policy supports setting the feature to strict or standard. When set, users can’t change it. Also, you may use it to control Suspected Fingerprinters.

Security updates / fixes

Mozilla patched a total of nine security vulnerabilities or potential security issues in Firefox 142.0. The aggregate severity rating is high and Mozilla makes no mention of exploits in the wild.

Firefox 142.0 download and update

Most Firefox installations should be updated automatically today and in the coming days. You can check the installed version by selecting Menu > Help > About Firefox.

Manual downloads are also provided on Mozilla’s official website for desktop operating systems.

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