Firefox Release Notes

Release Notes tell you what’s new in Firefox. As always, we welcome your feedback. You can also file a bug in Bugzilla or see the system requirements of this release.

57.0 Firefox Release

November 14, 2017

Version 57.0, first offered to Release channel users on November 14, 2017

Brace yourself for an all-new Firefox. It’s fast. Really fast. It’s over twice as fast as Firefox from 6 months ago, built on a completely overhauled core engine with brand new technology from our advanced research group, and graced with a clean, modern interface. Today is the first of several releases we’re calling Firefox Quantum, all designed to get to the things you love and the stuff you need faster than ever before. Experience the difference on desktops running Windows, macOS, and Linux; on Android, speed improvements are landing as well, and both Android and iOS have a new look and feel. To learn more about Firefox Quantum, visit the Mozilla Blog.

Making Firefox look, feel and perform faster was no small feat. Employees and volunteers from around the world worked in record time to create the best Firefox yet. We'd like to extend a special thank you to all of the new Mozillians who contributed to this release of Firefox!

New

  • A completely new browsing engine, designed to take full advantage of the processing power in modern devices

  • A redesigned interface with a clean, modern appearance, consistent visual elements, and optimizations for touch screens

  • A unified address and search bar. New installs will see this unified bar. Learn how to add the stand-alone search bar to the toolbar

  • A revamped new tab page that includes top visited sites, recently visited pages, and recommendations from Pocket (in the US, Canada, and Germany)

  • An updated product tour to orient new and returning Firefox users

  • Video decoding is shut down when the tab playing the media is sent to the background or the video is not visible on the screen. Video resumes when the media tab is in the foreground and the player is visible on the screen. Audio will not be affected.

  • AMD VP9 hardware video decoder support for improved video playback with lower power consumption

  • An expanded section in preferences to manage all website permissions

  • In case you missed it—57 Release privacy and performance feature:
    Users can enable Tracking Protection at all times. Learn how to turn Tracking Protection on.

Fixed

Changed

  • Firefox now exclusively supports extensions built using the WebExtension API, and unsupported legacy extensions will no longer work. Learn more about our efforts to improve the performance and security of extensions

  • The browser's autoscroll feature, as well as scrolling by keyboard input and touch-dragging of scrollbars, now use asynchronous scrolling. These scrolling methods are now similar to other input methods like mousewheel, and provide a smoother scrolling experience

  • The content process now has a stricter security sandbox that blocks filesystem reading and writing on Linux, similar to the protections for Windows and macOS that shipped in Firefox 56

  • Middle mouse paste in the content area no longer navigates to URLs by default on Unix systems

  • Removed the toolbar Share button. If you relied on this feature, you can install the Share Backported extension instead.

  • Some older versions of the ATOK IME, including ATOK 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010, can cause crashes and are therefore disabled on the Windows 64-bit version of Firefox Quantum. To fix those incompatibility issues, please use a newer version of ATOK or one of other IMEs.

  • The default font for Japanese text is now Meiryo

Developer

  • Developer Information

  • Complete visual refresh of both the Light and Dark DevTools themes, matching the new visual style of Firefox Quantum

  • The Inspector shows the values of CSS variables on hover

  • Completely new and re-designed Console panel. Joining the Debugger and the Network Monitor, the Console has been rewritten using modern web technologies such as React and Redux. It now also allows inspection of objects in context.

Unresolved

  • Users running Firefox for Windows over a Remote Desktop Connection (RDP) may find that audio playback is disabled due to increased security restrictions. Learn how to mitigate this issue until it is corrected in an upcoming release.

  • Users running screen readers may experience performance issues and are advised to use Firefox ESR until performance issues are resolved in an upcoming future release

  • On Windows and Linux, Firefox crashes occasionally on Intel Broadwell-U processors with old microcode. Windows users should ensure Windows Update is set to install updates. Linux users should ensure that the distribution package for Intel microcode is installed.

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