Mozilla released Firefox 97.0 on February 8, 2022. The new stable version of the Firefox web browser includes security fixes and some changes and additions.

Firefox ESR, the Extended Support release, and all dev channels also received release day updates. Firefox ESR 91.6, Firefox Beta and Dev 98, and Firefox Nightly 98 have all been updated.

Summary

• Firefox 97.0 and Firefox 91.6 ESR are security updates.
• Firefox supports Windows 11 style scrollbars.
• Mozilla expires current color themes and adds new ones.

Firefox 97.0 Download and Update

Firefox 97.0 can be downloaded from the official Mozilla website. Users can also update using the built-in auto-update feature.

Select Menu > Help > About Firefox to view the currently installed version and start an update check.

Please note that the browser may not be available yet if you are reading this on February 8, 2022. It will be available later that day.

Here are the links to the official download repositories.

New features and improvements in Firefox 97.0

Color themes change

Mozilla introduced support for color themes in Firefox 94. The browser displayed a “choose your palette” overlay on first browser launch, allowing users to select a seasonal color scheme for the browser if they so desired.

Themes that were introduced in Firefox 94 are set to automatically expire when Firefox 97 is installed on a device. An active color theme remains the active theme in Firefox until the theme is changed.

Firefox 97.0 introduces a new set of color themes that users can enable. These can be found in the Themes section of the about: addons as usual.

Other Changes

• Firefox supports the new scrollbar style on Windows 11 devices.
• System font loading has been improved on Mac OS devices; this should improve opening and switching to new tabs faster “in certain situations” according to Mozilla.
• Linux users can no longer generate PostScript for printing in Linux. The option to use PostScript printers remains available.

Developer Changes

• CookieStoreId improvements for extension developers, including the ability to register container-specific content scripts.
• Improved stability of WebDriver:NewSession and WebDriver:NewWindow.
• Marionette:Quit accepts the new safeMode parameter to restart Firefox in safe mode.
• Several SVGPathSeg APIs have been disabled by default and will be removed in future releases.
• The SVG d attribute can now be used as a property in CSS.
• The CSS color-adjust property has been renamed print-color-adjust.

Company changes

Bug fixes

• PDFjs used in Firefox ESR has been updated to the latest version.
• When Firefox ESR updates fail, a link to the Firefox ESR download is now provided.
• Firefox prioritizes authentication headers from most secure to least secure now (not backported to Firefox ESR).
• Fixed access to about pages being blocked via policies.
• Firefox a JSON policy issue on Windows machines that prevented them from being of type REG_SZ.
• Removed TLS replacement UI from certificate error pages.
• The DisabledCiphers policy has been updated with additional ciphers.

Known issues

None listed.

Security updates/patches

Security updates are revealed after the official release of the web browser. You find the information published here after release.

Outlook

Firefox 98.0 and Firefox ESR 91.7 will be released on March 8, 2022. Firefox Beta 99 Developer Editions, Firefox Developer 99, and Firefox Nightly 100 will also be released at the same time.

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Additional information/sources

Summary

Article name

Mozilla Firefox 97.0: here’s what’s new

The description

Mozilla released Firefox 97.0 on February 8, 2022. The new stable version of the Firefox web browser includes security fixes and some changes and additions.

Author

Martin Brinkman

Editor

Ghacks Technology News

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