New changes in test versions of Firefox. Bookmarks in the Browser. Collecting ideas New changes in test versions of Firefox

Aug 24 2016

New changes in test versions of Firefox

A few months ago, we already talked about various innovations that await the Firefox browser in the foreseeable future. However, since then, thanks to the constant release of new test versions, information has significantly increased, so today we want to return to this topic, talking about what was not mentioned the previous time.

Recently added bookmarks

As already mentioned in that very last article about, the highlight of the 49th version will be the updated reading mode with adjustment of text width, distance between lines, as well as the ability to read text in an electronic voice. However, this is not all; some changes will also occur in other corners of the browser.

For example, some things will be different in the bookmarks menu. There, the five most recently added favorites will now be displayed by default:

Apparently, Mozilla thought that this would be more convenient from a usability point of view and the user would not have to spend an extra click to access recent bookmarks. For those who are starting to feel sad about the menu because it is bloated, let us remind you of the excellent Simple bookmarks menu extension, which will help remove from the bookmarks menu all the items that you think are unnecessary.

Ctrl+Tab

In current versions of Firefox, pressing Ctrl+Tab on the keyboard allows you to sequentially switch tabs one after another. However, recently the developers decided that it would be nice to give this switch some functionality that is more useful in practice, and starting with Firefox 50, a new option appears in the browser that allows you to use Ctrl+Tab to return to recently viewed tabs:

Of course, for users of the Tab Mix Plus extension or even something simpler, this is not new at all, but everyone else should certainly pay attention to the new option.

Emoji in Firefox

If you are a regular Firefox user, then we bet you’ve come across such strange icons at least a couple of times on web pages and especially in various comments:

Behind them are special pictograms, the so-called emoji. These can be not only various emoticons expressing mood or emotions, but sometimes something else. For example, country flags.

In Windows 8 and below, as well as in Linux, Firefox currently cannot display emojis and instead substitutes the same incomprehensible icon from the screenshot above. However, starting with Firefox 50 the situation should improve:

Improved page search

In the previous article, we wrote in great detail about improving page search through the dimming effect, as well as using the default “highlight all” option. Unfortunately, for some reason Mozilla has disabled these changes for now. You can turn them back on by activating the findbar.modalHighlight and findbar.highlightAll parameters in about:config.

Of the changes described last time, only the expanded counter of what was found on the page moved to Firefox Developer Edition. Let us remind you that the counter is now limited to accurately indicating the number of results found not within a hundred, but within a thousand.

Something new has also appeared. On the page search panel, you can now see a “only whole words” button, which will allow you to better navigate if there are too many results:

Displaying the scale in the address bar

The Firefox developers decided to adopt a rather convenient feature with displaying the page scale in the address bar if this scale had previously been accidentally or intentionally adjusted manually by the user.

Simply put, as soon as the page has been reduced or enlarged, any zoom value other than the base 100% will be displayed in the address bar. In turn, clicking on the new button will immediately return the scale to the default value.

This will help find a way out of the situation for completely “green” users who do not understand what suddenly happened to the page. For experienced users, this feature will also be useful, as it will allow them not to open the main menu again and, accordingly, not to make an extra click. Unfortunately, this small feature, as well as almost everything we will talk about below, will appear no earlier than Firefox 51.

Switching search engines in the address bar

Many users use the address bar not only to enter an address, but also to search, even though the search field in Firefox is located next to the address field. Therefore, Mozilla decided to add buttons to the drop-down address bar interface to quickly switch search engines:

Of course, no one has canceled the short name function, which has been in Firefox for a long time, but it is not very obvious to the average user, and sometimes requires additional configuration. So such a change is also quite justified, especially since the order and display of search engine icons can be customized, and the innovation itself can be disabled if desired using the new parameter browser.urlbar.oneOffSearches.

Restore default search

Another innovation noticed in the nightly builds of Firefox is the about:searchreset service page, which is responsible for restoring the search to the one that was originally used. How this feature differs from those already available in the browser, however, we find it difficult to say for now. It is quite possible that in nightly builds this is still just a sketch or part of something more serious that the developers are working on:

Containers for tabs

Containers for tabs are one of the most serious and interesting new features that have been running for the second month in the same nightly builds of Firefox.

Fire Fox, as well as some other browsers, have long had such a feature as profiles. Thanks to them, several people can comfortably work on the same browser without fear that their personal data will overlap.

However, profiles can also be useful for one user who is concerned about his privacy, since some sites and services sometimes strive to use the information accumulated by the browser about the user’s preferences without asking. It would be logical to give them a clean profile.

Unfortunately, creating and working with profiles in Firefox is not the most visual, nor the most convenient operation, especially for a novice user. And now Mozilla is working on tab containers, a special feature that will allow individual tabs and groups of tabs to open as if in a separate profile. The new feature icon in current test builds must be manually dragged to the toolbar or to the main menu:

When this is done, you will see that the browser will offer to create a separate group of tabs and give you a choice of four preset categories, responsible for something personal, something for work, as well as money transfers and online purchases:

Probably in the future there will be more such groups and the user will be able to create new ones. But for now there are only these four. Most likely, there are no fundamental differences between them and they are designated with the appropriate words only conditionally for greater clarity.

After clicking, for example, on the Work category, a new tab will open. The name of the category will be written in the address bar, and a barely noticeable orange stripe will appear at the top of the tab itself. This color is set by the developers as corresponding to this category.

As soon as you open a site in this tab and start opening links from it, then just because of the colored stripe at the top you will notice that they open within the same Work category:

In turn, other categories are marked in a different color. It is noteworthy that in one window on one panel tabs in all four of these categories can coexist, as well as regular tabs that are not assigned to any of the groups:

The bottom line is that the internal data accumulated by the browser for each such category will be located in a kind of separate container. Hence the name of the function. This will increase your privacy, since sites/services opened in one category will not be able to poke their noses further than its container.

In addition, this approach will allow you to comfortably work with several accounts within one service. For example, one Gmail account for personal correspondence and another for work can be opened simultaneously in tabs marked Personal and Work. And the color indication itself can be a convenient solution so as not to get confused in a large number of tabs.

Note that this function is not a 100% alternative to profiles. In addition, it still has experimental status. We hope that Mozilla will not give up on the idea and will bring it to fruition.

Removing unnecessary things, multi-process mode, Firefox x64

Another change will be the removal of the Hello communication client from the browser starting from version 49. Obviously, it failed to gain even a little popularity among users, which is why the developers decided to cut out this mechanism so as not to burden the program with components that were not in demand among users.

Work continues on the implementation of multi-process mode. Already in the current release of Firefox 48, it was enabled by default for the small percentage of users who do not use add-ons. In FF 49 and 50, this percentage will gradually increase, and multi-process mode will become available for users with extensions, if the latter are on a special compatibility white list:

Mozilla continues to work on the x64 version. By January, the option to install this version should appear in the Firefox network installer. FF 49 will further improve performance on systems that do not support hardware acceleration.

This concludes the review of upcoming changes for now, but we note that various innovations appear in test builds of Firefox quite often. For example, when this review was being prepared in nightly builds, a drop-down submenu appeared in the downloads menu with a suggestion to clear the list of recently downloaded files and open the downloads folder:

Firefox release schedule

If in previous years everything was more or less clear with the release schedule: versions were released approximately every six weeks, then in recent years Mozilla has slightly complicated this process. The fact is that now developers have more free time during the summer season, as well as during the winter holidays.

As a result, sometimes instead of six weeks there will be eight between releases. And in some cases, as, for example, in December of this year, instead of a new major version, only a minor update will be released. As a result, in order not to get confused, it’s easier to look at the official schedule, which the creators of Firefox strictly adhere to:

suggested experimenting

they proposed replacing the bookmarks with the Express panel and Moneybox, but in the end they returned to the classic list. Or how Chrome experimented with visual bookmarks, but never implemented them into the browser.

We would like bookmarks to be useful and convenient not only for those who are used to them, but also for new users. And first we turn to you, the readers of our blog. Help us understand your preferences by sharing the following:

1. What do you find inconvenient when working with bookmarks? Describe all the problems you encountered both in Yandex.Browser and in any other browser.

2. If you find some bookmarking service particularly convenient, then tell us about it.

P.S. We want to reassure those who are now being bookmarked. It’s too early to talk about any plans, and this post does not mean that tomorrow the bookmarks will suddenly change.

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Bookmarks are one of the required elements for any browser. Moreover, unlike the address bar or a new tab, changes to bookmarks do not take root so easily. You may remember how Opera proposed replacing bookmarks with the Express panel and Moneybox, but in the end they returned to the classic list. Or how Chrome experimented with visual bookmarks, but never implemented them into the browser.

1. What do you find inconvenient when working with bookmarks? Describe all the problems you encountered both in Yandex.Browser and in any other browser.

2. If you find some bookmarking service particularly convenient, then tell us about it.

Moreover, you don’t need to limit yourself to describing browsers for your computer - your impressions of mobile bookmarks interest us no less.

P.S. We want to reassure those who are now being bookmarked. It’s too early to talk about any plans, and this post does not mean that tomorrow the bookmarks will suddenly change.

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