In brief: Mozilla has just released its latest version of Firefox, which is mostly a security update with a few minor improvements features sprinkled in. Furthermore, the open source browser can now interact with music instruments through Web MIDI API support.
As Mozilla seeks out new revenue streams, development on Firefox continues in an effort to make the open source browser a solid alternative to Google Chrome and the ubiquitous Chromium layout engine.
Firefox 108.0 brings a small list of new features. Import maps, which allow web pages to control the behavior of JavaScript imports, are now enabled by default. The update also introduces support for Efficiency Mode in Windows 11 to make processes for background tabs use less resources and energy, which could be useful for laptop.
There's also a new keyboard shortcut (Shift+Esc) to launch the browser's Process Manager feature, offering a way to quickly identify processes that are using too many system resources. Frame scheduling under load had additionally been improved, which should increase performance and help Firefox gain a better score in the MotionMark graphics benchmark.
Elsewhere, there is improved support for Web MIDI, a JavaScript-based API designed to build a bridge between the decades-old MIDI standard, compatible MIDI musical instruments and the web. Web MIDI was conceived to be as efficient as possible, even though Mozilla also needed to implement an experimental mechanism to avoid security issues while accessing "dangerous" (ie low-level) hardware capabilities.
The new Firefox also introduces support for proper color correction in images tagged with the ICCv4 profile and support for non-English characters when saving and printing PDF forms as well as fixes for eight security flaws ranging from "moderate" to "high."
Mozilla had to release a minor update to solve a last-minute issue after 108 went live. Firefox 108.0.1 fixes the default search engine being reset on upgrade for profiles which were previously copied from a different location.
As usual, the latest desktop download of the open source browser for Windows, Linux and macOS is available through Mozilla's official servers.