New Update Firefox 106.0 Stable Release

silversurfer

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Firefox Version 106.0, first offered to Release channel users on October 18, 2022​


New​

  • It is now possible to edit PDFs: including writing text, drawing, and adding signatures.
  • Setting Firefox as your default browser now also makes it the default PDF application on Windows systems.
  • You can now pin private windows to your Windows taskbar on Window 10 and Windows 11 for simpler access. Also, private windows have been redesigned to increase the feeling of privacy.

    Private browsing screenshot


  • Swipe-to-navigate (two fingers on a touchpad swiped left or right to perform history back or forward) now works for Linux users on Wayland.
  • Text Recognition in images allows users on macOS 10.15 and higher to extract text from the selected image (such as a meme or screenshot).
    Extracted text is copied to the clipboard in order to share, store, or search—without needing to manually retype everything.
    • This feature is compatible with “VoiceOver,” the built-in macOS
      screen reader.
    • For more information, check out our SUMO article.

    Text Regcognition feature on macOS screenshot

  • Firefox View” helps you get back to content you previously discovered. A pinned tab allows you to find and open recently closed tabs on your current device, access tabs from other devices (via our “Tab Pickup” feature), and change the look of the browser (with Colorways).
    Firefox View screenshot


  • With the launch of the “Independent Voices” collection, Firefox is introducing 18 new “Colorways.” You can now access a “Colorways” modal experience via “Firefox View”; each new color is accompanied with a bespoke graphic and a text description that speaks to its deeper meaning. The collection will be available through Jan 16.
    Colorways screenshot

Fixed​

 

silversurfer

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Mozilla released Firefox 106 Stable yesterday. Several new features were introduced in Firefox 106, including Firefox View and basic PDF editing.

Some Firefox users here in the comments noticed that Firefox displayed the "List all Tabs" icon all the time in the new release. Previously, Firefox displayed the icon only if it could not display all tabs open in the browser in the visible area; this made sense, considering that the feature lists all open tabs of the browser window when activated and includes an option to search across all open tabs.

List all tabs is a handy feature if too many tabs are open in Firefox, as it provides quick access to all of them with a single click of the mouse button or a single tap.

firefox-list-all-tabs.png
 

Imranmt

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Mozilla has released the latest version of the leading FOSS browser for Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD and mobile OSes.

Firefox version 106 isn't a big release, but it includes some welcome new features nonetheless, with notable improvements in PDF handling and cross-device sync.

The built-in Javascript-based PDF viewer has been updated, so there's less need to rely on a local PDF viewer having these functions. Firefox has been able to display PDFs for many years, and since version 93 late last year, you can complete forms directly in the browser as well – in both AcroForms and the deprecated XFA format. That nicely obsoletes Adobe's scary warning about the older format.

Now the viewer can also annotate PDF documents, which means they can type, or hand-write, directly onto a PDF in a choice of colors, size, line thickness, opacity, and so on, then save the PDF file locally, complete with the new additions. A side-effect is that it can display comments in PDF files, something which third-party PDF viewers often struggle with.

These new abilities get rid of two problems: First, that while you can reasonably expect any random PDF reader app to at least show you the file, some of the alternative ones can't handle things like comments. Second, as malware-laden PDFs are unfortunately still a thing, the less need there is to open a PDF locally, the more it helps your system security.

The PDF viewer can also access the hidden text layer embedded in some PDFs, for example by OCR apps – and it can pass that text through, for example to screen readers such as Voiceover, for users with visual impairments. It can also extract text from images.
Source
 
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silversurfer

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Firefox 106.0.1 fixes a crash on certain AMD systems​

Firefox 106.0.1 Stable will be released later today, if you are reading this on October 20, 2022. The new release of the browser addresses a crash issue on AMD Zen 1 devices. The operating systems affected by the bug are not specified, but Windows 10 is among them.

Mozilla fixed the crash issue in record time. It was reported on Mozilla's bug tracking site yesterday (20 hours ago at the time of writing), and fixed nine hours later. Mozilla states that Firefox 102.x ESR is not affected by the issue, and that Firefox 106 is the only affected version of the Firefox browser.

The bug report includes a technical analysis of the issue and references to other bugs related to it.

Firefox 106 installations should receive the update automatically once it is released. Firefox users may download the update from Mozilla's website as well to install it manually.
 

silversurfer

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Mozilla Firefox 106.0.2 will be released later today. The second Firefox 106 point release addresses five different issues in the browser, none is security related.

Firefox 106.0.2 addresses five different bugs. Some of the bugs are found in new or improved features introduced in Firefox 106, others appear unrelated to that release.

Mozilla addressed two Firefox View issues (bugs 1792680 and 1794474) . Firefox View was introduced in Firefox 106 as a way to improve using Firefox on different devices. The feature works best if Firefox Sync is used, as it displays tabs from other Firefox instances in that case. The bugs prevented the reload button from working on the Firefox View tab and introduces sync requesting functionality on the page as well. Mozilla argues that users would expect that stale data is updated when the refresh action is selected on the Firefox View page.

Another issue that has been fixed in the new Firefox point release prevented the opening of the browser, it if was installed from the Microsoft Store (bug 1796391)

Firefox users could also run into browser freezes under certain conditions (bug 1793748). On installations with accessibility enabled, the browser could freeze on certain sites, such as Proxmox sites. Firefox freezes completely in that case and the only recourse was to kill the main Firefox process to close the browser and restart it.

The fourth issue fixed in Firefox 106.0.2 addresses a PDF document display issue. Mozilla improved Firefox's PDF reader by adding basic editing support in Firefox 106. Some PDF files with forms would not display correctly, according to the bug report (bug 1794351).

Mozilla fixed the column width of the Notification sub-panel on the Settings page as the final fix in the point release (bug 1793558)
 

silversurfer

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" Mozilla plans to release Firefox 106.0.3 Stable later today, if you are reading this on October 30, 2022. The new release for Firefox addresses a crash and a hang issue that may affect Windows users. "
Firefox 106.0.3 is an update that is relevant to Windows users only. It addresses two issues on Windows. The first fix addresses a startup crash for some users on Windows machines. The linked bug report, bug 1797464, reveals that Firefox is throwing an access violation exception on affected machines.
Enable/disable window occlusion only when compositor session exists on Windows
When compositor session exists, gfxConfig is already initialized.
If first AppWindow is destroyed in nsAppShellService::JustCreateTopWindow() because of error, the first window could be destroyed before calling gfxConfig::Init()
The bug affected Firefox 106.0, Firefox 106.0.1 and Firefox 106.0.2, and newer development builds of the browser. Firefox ESR 102 is not affected by it. The update to Firefox 106.0.3 addresses the issue, so that Windows users should not experience startup crashes anymore after updating.

The second fix addresses an issue with Windows 11 version 22H2 new Suggested Actions feature. The feature displays hover actions when users copy a date, the time, or a phone number on the operating system. The feature is controlled in the Settings of the operating system under System > Clipboard.

Mozilla noticed an incompatibility with Suggested Actions on the new Windows 11 version that could result in a hang in Firefox when copying text on webpages. The linked bug report, bug 1774285, reveals that Firefox could freeze for over 20 seconds when copying text, e.g., the URL of the address bar.
The browser freezes for a period of time (over 20 seconds), during which the entire window (chrome, viewport) is unresponsive to user input. Video and animation appears to continue playing. After a while, the browser becomes responsive again. The amount of time is variable, and seems to depend on the number of extensions loaded - my default profile can freeze for minutes.
 

sartic

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Stable :)
I am using Kubuntu 20.04 and Firefox is 105.
I move all my windows firefox users to ESR. I am playing with Librewolf. Many firefox users here are in Brave wagoon.
Personally I am stuck with Opera and using Firefox as second browser on my Linux machine.
True is almost everyone in Windows and Android are on Chrome. My policy is use Edge on Windows you do not need Google because they are almost same.
So I am fighting with wind. Who likes freedom choose your cure or poison with linux distro ;)
 
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silversurfer

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Firefox 106.0.4 addresses three non-security issues in the web browser. Two of the three issues affect media playback in Firefox. One addresses a DRM video playback issue that can lead to a crash, the other a crash that could happen during media playback.

The first issue appears to be a regression. Mozilla explains that playback of DRM videos in Firefox could "in unusual circumstances" lead to a crash; this can happen in low-memory situations and other scenarios, according to Mozilla.

The second issue may cause Firefox to crash or freeze; this happens when the browser's GPU process crashes or during a device reset.

The third and final issue addresses an issue with input elements. These stopped working after changing the type from date to datetime-local.

Interested users may check the official release notes, but they do not provide additional information on these issues.
 

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silversurfer

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With Firefox v106 and the ability to annotate PDFs, Mozilla introduced a new feature called Firefox View. The feature is a pinned tab on the tab bar by default and allows viewing recently closed and synced tabs from other devices running Firefox and changing themes via Colorways. Here is how you can disable or remove it if you didn’t like it.
 

ErzCrz

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Good tips there. My only smartphone is a work one so not one I use for personal stuff so I end up just taking it off the top bar. I like teh colorways idea but dark mode is still my preference.

Anyway, thanks for the link ;)
 

silversurfer

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How many more point relases are they going to push? Really bad QA from Mozilla..
Well, what is the problem, everyone has noticed regarding Edge, there it's common that Microsoft push weekly releases for bug fixes...
I can see on your config forums thread, you have several issues to use Firefox, but that doesn't mean same happens to everyone else 🤷‍♂️
 

Gangelo

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Well, what is the problem, everyone has noticed regarding Edge, there it's common that Microsoft push weekly releases for bug fixes...
I can see on your config forums thread, you have several issues to use Firefox, but that doesn't mean same happens to everyone else 🤷‍♂️
106 = October 18, 2022
106.1 = October 20, 2022
106.2 = October 26, 2022
106.3 = October 31, 2022
106.4 = November 3, 2022
106.5 = November 4, 2022

I don't know about you but when I see the above release dates, I can only assume that the software is either not being quality checked before release, or beta / nightly.
Obviously I am not the only one with issues, all you need to do is check the reddit page or bugzilla..
And it is a real shame because I grew up using Netscape / FF, I am 44 years old. They need to step up if they want to compete with Chromium, otherwise FF will fade into oblivion.
 

silversurfer

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106 = October 18, 2022
106.1 = October 20, 2022
106.2 = October 26, 2022
106.3 = October 31, 2022
106.4 = November 3, 2022
106.5 = November 4, 2022

I don't know about you but when I see the above release dates, I can only assume that the software is either not being quality checked before release, or beta / nightly.
Obviously I am not the only one with issues, all you need to do is check the reddit page or bugzilla..
And it is a real shame because I grew up using Netscape / FF, I am 44 years old. They need to step up if they want to compete with Chromium, otherwise FF will fade into oblivion.

I told you already before that even Edge has similar bug fixes every week again, just check release notes, so what does that mean about the quality development of Edge ;)

I am also an long time user of FF, my age is really same (year of birth: 1978), but I can't agree for feeling any kind of shame regarding Firefox nor Mozilla, IMO.
It's simple like that, just choose a different web browser and move on... No need for complaints, but feel free to start an extra thread in this forums section of Firefox.
 
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