Mozilla Firefox receives major updates roughly every four weeks, giving the web browser a steady stream of bug fixes, security enhancements, and new functionality. Firefox 136 is rolling out today with video playback improvements, automatic HTTPS upgrades, and more.
Hardware decoding on Linux and macOS
Firefox 136 includes the long-awaited rollout of hardware video decoding support for AMD graphics cards on Linux, using the same Video Acceleration API (VA-API) as VLC Media Player and other similar applications. Some builds of Firefox may have already enabled this functionality—the Fedora Wiki says it has been turned on for Intel and AMD graphics since Firefox 101, across both X11 and Wayland desktops. You can check the current status on your machine by opening Firefox, navigating to the about:support page, and checking the HARDWARE_VIDEO_DECODING row.
This update also enables hardware-accelerated playback of HEVC/H.265 video on macOS. Most websites still use H.264, VP8/VP9, or AV1 video, but it’s nice that HEVC is another supported option. On a related note, Mozilla also said, “On macOS, some background tasks will be moved to lower power cores resulting in less energy use.”
Hardware-accelerated video decoding reduces CPU usage by moving the playback to your system’s graphics, so these changes could help Firefox reduce power and CPU usage during typical web browsing.
HTTPS upgrades
Starting with Firefox 136, the browser now tries to load all resources using an encrypted HTTPS connection first, even if you click on a link or type in a page that starts with the “http://” protocol. If the connection fails—usually an indicator that the web server is not set up for HTTPS pages—the browser will fall back to a standard non-encrypted HTTPS page. Mozilla is calling this HTTPS-First.
Firefox has already been upgrading some page resources from HTTP to HTTPS for a while now, but now it will try to load everything over HTTPS first. Google announced a similar feature for Chrome in 2023, but it’s not clear if it has been enabled for everyone yet. When I open a website in HTTP mode on Chrome Canary 135 that supports HTTPS, it’s not automatically redirected.
More New Features
Firefox on Android now has a ‘Report broken site’ option in the main overflow menu, where you can tell Mozilla about sites that are broken in Firefox but working in other browsers. Mozilla has maintained a web compatibility project for years that fixes websites in Firefox, involving both browser-level changes and working with website owners.
Firefox 136 also now uses PNG format when copying images, which should preserve transparency layers in images that have them.
Changes for Developers
Most Firefox updates include new APIs and features for more useful and powerful web experiences, and Firefox 136 is no different. Here are all the new changes for websites and web apps, according to Mozilla’s release notes:
- New support for the Intl.DurationFormat object, this enables language-sensitive duration formatting.
- New support for the CSS :open pseudo-class for styling elements that can be toggled “open” to display more content.
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New support for the :has-slotted pseudo-class, allowing authors to style the contents of a
element when it is not empty or not using the default value. - The value plaintext-only can now be specified for the contenteditable attribute, making the raw text of an element editable but without supporting rich text formatting.
- New support for the CookieStore API, an asynchronous cookie API for scripts running in HTML documents and service workers.
- Firefox now sends a referrer from meta refreshes and Refresh headers.
- Firefox now supports sending multiple simultaneous versions of the same source over WebRTC, so called simulcast, with the H264 video codec. H264 is the second video codec after VP8 to be supported for sending simulcast.
- Firefox can now handle sending and receiving the AV1 video codec over WebRTC. Both singlecast and simulcast are supported for sending.
- Added support for ARIA elements reflection.
You can learn more about these changes on their MDN pages.
How to Update Firefox
Firefox will automatically install the update on your computer, phone, or tablet when it’s available. To immediately check for and install any available updates, click the menu icon at the top-right of the browser toolbar and select “About Firefox.”
You can download Firefox from Mozilla’s official website, the Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and Microsoft Store.
Source: Firefox Release Notes, Phoronix
