Browse the Internet using multiple tabs, bookmark your favorite pages and use the private mode to stop websites from tracking you. Synchronize your data and your current browsing activity across all your devices.
With nearly a nine percent of the browser market share worldwide, Firefox is – as of today – the third most used Internet desktop browser, and it remains a solid alternative to the its sole open-source competitor, Chrome. Its exquisite care for the user’s privacy and security together with its highly customizable look and feel make it an excellent choice for anyone tired of being sold to advertisers every time they visit their favorite sites.
Not everything is nice and dandy with Firefox, though. It is known for being an avid resource consumer, which makes it a less suitable option for those with old or low-range computers. Likewise, you may find problems when trying to display certain pages, as not all websites are fully compatible with this browser. However, other renowned browsers are also famous for their memory hunger, but their many users do not seem to care.
What I do care about, though, and at least nearly ten percent of Internet users in the world, is privacy. And here Firefox has a lot to say. If you are not a Firefox user, just give it a try, and you’ll find that most (if not all) of those ads that seem to appear out of nowhere while browsing the Web will disappear. This browser takes the upmost care in not sending your private data to anyone you don’t want to.
Its privacy and security policies are strictly enforced – actually, unless you turn them off voluntarily, they’ll be there working for you by default since the moment you add Firefox to your desktop. Its protection against social media trackers, cross-site tracking cookies, cryptominers, and fingerprinters (among others) make your browsing time a seamless and gratifying experience, not to mention the increase that a no-ad policy adds to your browsing speed. Not exclusive to Firefox though yet useful and worth mentioning, this browser comes with a Private Browsing option that leaves no trace behind, of any kind.
Firefox is also famous for its high level of customization. Its tabbed interface can be tweaked and transformed until it looks just the way you want it. You can tell it display (or hide) a side menu and a useful Overflow Menu where you can add all those functions and settings you click on more often. Besides, its support for add-ons and extensions will let you bring in to your browser countless other features and apps.
Firefox can definitely change the way you’ve navigated the Web so far, and it will convince you that another Internet experience is possible – it may take some more memory than expected, but many other apps and programs do and we don’t take rid of them. Because we need them, because we trust them, or both. That is why so many users are so into Firefox.
v39.0.3 [Apr 18, 2015]
New
Share Hello URLs with social networks
New
Project Silk: Smoother animation and scrolling (Mac OS X)
New
Support for new Unicode 8.0 skin tone emoji
New
SafeBrowsing malware detection lookups enabled for downloads (Mac OS X and Linux)
New
Support for 'switch' role in ARIA 1.1 (web accessibility)
Changed
Removed support for insecure SSLv3 for network communications
Changed
Performance of displaying dashed lines is improved (Mac OS X)
Changed
Malware detection service for downloads now covers common Mac file types
HTML5
Added support for CSS Scroll Snap Points
HTML5
Enable the Fetch API for network requests from dedicated, shared and service workers
HTML5
Implemented <link rel="preconnect"> allowing anticipation of a future connection without revealing any information
HTML5
List-style-type now accepts a string value
HTML5
Cascading of CSS transitions and animations now matches the current spec
Developer
Drag and drop enabled for nodes in Inspector markup view
Developer
Cubic bezier tooltip now shows a gallery of timing-function presets for use with CSS animations
Developer
localhost is now available offline for WebSocket connections
Developer
Web Console input history persists even after closing the toolbox
Fixed
Fix incomplete downloads being marked as complete by detecting broken HTTP1.1 transfers
Fixed
Fixed an issue where a Hello conversation window would sometimes fail to open
Fixed
A regression that could lead to Flash not displaying has been fixed
Fixed
Improve performance of IPv6 fallback to IPv4
Fixed
Security state indicator on a page now correctly ignores loads caused by previous pages
Fixed
Various security fixes
