Mozilla Releases Firefox 131 With Tab Preview and Text-Specific Links

Mozilla has released Firefox 131 for multiple platforms, addressing security vulnerabilities and introducing some new features. The update fixes at least seven high-risk security issues, none reportedly exploited in the wild. New features include Tab Preview, which displays thumbnails and details when hovering over background tabs, and temporary location permission storage. Firefox now also supports URL fragment text directives, allowing users to link to specific text passages on web pages.

The actual stuff which was fixed.

[Seven Spirals]

Here is a more detailed description of the fixes. This story abstract was too ... abstract:

• CVE-2024-9391: Users could be prevented from exiting full-screen mode in Firefox Focus for Android, potentially allowing address bar spoofing.
• CVE-2024-9392: A compromised content process could bypass site isolation, allowing the arbitrary loading of cross-origin pages.
• CVE-2024-9393: Cross-origin access to PDF contents was possible through multipart responses, particularly affecting Android users.
• CVE-2024-9395:

going to give Firefox a spin

[FudRucker]

on my android phone, i hate chrome and never use it, vivaldi is a little better but has some annoyances so the fox gets a turn

Re:

[FudRucker]

due to network slowness the downloading of Firefox will have to wait

Re: going to give Firefox a spin

[drinkypoo]

They probably haven't fixed their massive memory leak that has me restarting FF multiple times a day with any heavy use

Re:

[Tool Man]

They probably haven't fixed their massive memory leak that has me restarting FF multiple times a day with any heavy use

What bletcherous, stone-age version are you using? I've had it open constantly for ages at a time, on Linux and Mac anyway, with no issues. (Could also be something in add-ons, or you're just trolling)

Disabling tab previews

[fahrbot-bot]

New features include Tab Preview, which displays thumbnails and details when hovering over background tabs, ...

There are 2 about:config setting for this and changes to both take effect immediately w/o restarting.

browser.tabs.hoverPreview.enabled
-- Display/Hide (completely disable) General-Tabs preference: "Show an image preview when you hover on a tab"
-- Note: If disabled (hidden) will still show title bar text on tab hover.

browser.tabs.hoverPreview.showThumbnails
-- Enable/Disable General->Tabs preference: "Show an image preview when you hover on a tab"
-- Note: If disabled will still show title bar text and URL on tab hover.

I have both disabled as I find them annoying.

Re: Disabling tab previews

[devslash0]

As fuck.

Re:

[nmb3000]

I actually like hoverPreview enabled but showThumbnails disabled. The formatted popup is more pleasant than the native OS tooltip.

Re:

[Mousit]

New features include Tab Preview, which displays thumbnails and details when hovering over background tabs, ...

I have both disabled as I find them annoying.

What's particularly sad is they don't even follow standard UI practices in regards to timing. While I immediately disabled thumbnail views, I actually like the look of the hoverPreview, the text. However, the pop-up is INSTANT upon mouseover, rather than waiting the customary ~1 second before pop-up occurs. The classic info pop-up (what FF does when hoverPreview.enabled is turned off) actually follows this convention of short delay, so Mozilla is inconsistent in implementation even within this single fun

"List all Tabs" is back

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

Just underneath the "close" button in Windows. I'd love to get rid of that...again, but it doesn't seem as easy as last time it surfaced. Anyone know how to get rid of it?

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

Just underneath the "close" button in Windows. I'd love to get rid of that...again, but it doesn't seem as easy as last time it surfaced. Anyone know how to get rid of it?

Have tried this from How to remove the "List all tabs" button introduced in Firefox v131.0 [reddit.com] and it works.

Add to "userChrome.css":

#alltabs-button { display: none !important; }

Tab Preview is an annoying Gimmick

[devslash0]

When I hover over a tab I just want to switch to it. I know what the tab has in it based on the favicon and text. Hover tooltip is just a needless gimmick that gets in the way, makes me waste time trying to dismiss it and annoys the hell out of me every single time.

Text Fragments

[nmb3000]

I'm actually most excited for Firefox adding support for Text Fragments [web.dev] in this release. It seems like a small thing, but I very often find myself wanting to link to a specific part of a webpage that doesn't have any convenient document fragments. Chrome has had the feature for a while now, so glad to see it in Firefox as well.

There's no built-in easy way to create a text fragment (hopefully coming), but there is a Google Labs addon for Firefox which adds it to the context menu: Link to Text Fragment [mozilla.org].