Mozilla Firefox

About Mozilla Firefox

Firefox runs its own rendering engine rather than the one nearly everything else is built on, which is the reason it is worth having installed even on a machine where it is not the default. A page that behaves differently here is telling you something real about the page, and for anyone building for the web that second engine is a testing requirement rather than a preference.

Privacy is configured out of the box instead of being an options page nobody opens. Enhanced tracking protection blocks cross site trackers, social trackers, fingerprinting scripts and cryptominers by default, and total cookie protection keeps each site's cookies in its own container so a tracker on one site cannot read what it wrote on another. A shield in the address bar shows exactly what was blocked on the current page.

The container model goes further than the defaults. Multi account containers keep separate sets of cookies per container, so two accounts on the same service stay logged in at once and work browsing does not mix with personal browsing. Private windows discard everything on close, and the clear on shutdown settings are granular rather than all or nothing.

Day to day it is a comfortable browser. Tabs can be pinned, grouped and searched, the profile syncs bookmarks, history, passwords and open tabs between machines, the reader view strips a page down to text, the built in developer tools are strong, and the extension model still supports the deeper add-ons that other browsers have narrowed away. Ninety interface languages ship in the same installer.

What is included in this build

• Independent rendering engine, useful as a second engine for testing
• Enhanced tracking protection blocking trackers, fingerprinting and cryptominers by default
• Total cookie protection isolating each site's cookies from every other site
• Multi account containers for keeping separate logins and browsing contexts
• Private windows plus granular clear on shutdown settings
• Profile sync for bookmarks, history, passwords and open tabs
• Full developer tools including a responsive design mode and network inspector
• Deep extension support with a large add-on library

Changed in version 153.0.4

• Faster page load times on script heavy sites
• Improved memory use with very large numbers of open tabs
• Additional fingerprinting protections enabled by default
• Better hardware video decoding coverage on current graphics hardware
• Reduced startup time on machines with large profiles

Installation walkthrough

These steps assume a clean machine. If a previous release of the same application is present, deal with that first, since an overlapping install is the most common cause of a setup that stops halfway.

1. Run the offline installer as administrator, or extract it for a portable style install.
2. Choose the interface language during setup if the automatic selection is wrong.
3. Import bookmarks and saved passwords from the previous browser when prompted.
4. Set enhanced tracking protection to strict if site breakage is acceptable.
5. Sign the profile in to sync only if bookmarks and tabs should follow to another machine.

System requirements and file details

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