Mozilla’s new Firefox browser
Mozilla launches a new Firefox browser, Firefox 57, on coming week. The new version rebuilt with a browser engine core, user interface, settings panel, and with a new add-ons API.
The new Firefox 57 is the end of the road of a few Mozilla internal projects that aimed to fix most of Firefox’s previous problems, such as speed and frequent crashes that have driven users to other browsers.
But all these changes will also create some controversy and problems for some Firefox users.
The Firefox’s new add-ons system, WebExtensions API is compatible with the WebExtensions standard support by all browsers.
The Firefox 57 will only support add-ons built on this new API and drops all support for the old XUL-based add-ons technology.
Firefox 57 support Quantum engine
Firefox 57 will also support the new Quantum engine. The Quantum engine replaces some parts of the old Gecko engine with new components written in a mixture of Rust and C++.
Mozilla Firefox 57
Firefox 57 will include more Project Quantum code, such as Quantum Render, a brand new, GPU-optimized rendering pipeline based on Servo’s WebRender project. Quantum DOM Scheduler, a new technique that ensures that tabs in the background can’t slow down the user’s active tabs.
Mozilla claims, these changes resulted in considerable speed boosts to Firefox’s boot-up and browsing behavior.
Firefox 57 will also support a new user interface. This new UI is the product of Project Photon, a project started about the same time with Project Quantum.
The new Photon UI has a new browser UI, settings panels, tab page, and new sidebar panel UIs. The Firefox installations will disable the search widget that used to appear in the top right corner of the old Firefox UI. The users can also re-enable the old search widget from the settings panel.
The planned UI changes are most likely to irritate some Firefox users because the Classic Theme Restorer Firefox add-on stops working.
Mozilla added security improvements in Firefox 57, which prevent malicious apps from spying on Firefox users via accessibility services.
More information: [Mozilla]
