Firefox 140 Arrives With ESR Status 21
Longtime Slashdot reader williamyf writes: Firefox 140 just landed. Some user-facing features include:
Vertical Tabs: You can now keep more -- or fewer -- pinned tabs in view for quicker access to important windows. Just drag the divider to resize your pinned tabs section.
Unload Tabs: You can now unload tabs by right-clicking on a tab (or multiple selected tabs) and selecting "Unload Tab." This can speed up performance by reducing Firefox's memory and CPU usage.
But the most important feature? This release is an Extended Support Release (ESR). Why are ESRs so important? ESR is the Firefox version that ships as the default with many Linux distributions. Some downstream projects (like Waterfox) depend on the ESR version. Many enterprise software systems are tested only against ESR. When features are dropped -- like support for older operating systems or Flash -- ESR keeps that functionality around for longer.
And speaking of old operating systems: If you are using Windows 7, 8.1, or macOS 10.12~10.15, note that FireFox ESR 115 (the last version supporting these OSs) will continue to receive patches until at least September 2025.
So one can see why ESR is very important for some people. The release notes are available here.
Vertical Tabs: You can now keep more -- or fewer -- pinned tabs in view for quicker access to important windows. Just drag the divider to resize your pinned tabs section.
Unload Tabs: You can now unload tabs by right-clicking on a tab (or multiple selected tabs) and selecting "Unload Tab." This can speed up performance by reducing Firefox's memory and CPU usage.
But the most important feature? This release is an Extended Support Release (ESR). Why are ESRs so important? ESR is the Firefox version that ships as the default with many Linux distributions. Some downstream projects (like Waterfox) depend on the ESR version. Many enterprise software systems are tested only against ESR. When features are dropped -- like support for older operating systems or Flash -- ESR keeps that functionality around for longer.
And speaking of old operating systems: If you are using Windows 7, 8.1, or macOS 10.12~10.15, note that FireFox ESR 115 (the last version supporting these OSs) will continue to receive patches until at least September 2025.
So one can see why ESR is very important for some people. The release notes are available here.
The ESR release is 128.12.0 (Score:1)
Today's ESR update was 128.12.0, not 140.0.
What am I missing?
Re: (Score:1)
Re:The ESR release is 128.12.0 (Score:5, Informative)
They haven't got all of the links working.
The ESR notes page says "Version 140.0esr, first offered to ESR channel users on June 24, 2025," but the link that the page provides goes to a 128.12.0 installer.
I just tried updating a copy of Firefox 128.11.0esr and it went to 128.12.0esr.
However, you can get the v140.0esr from the Mozilla FTP server:
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/fi... [mozilla.org]
Vertical tabs, how about tabs on bottom? (Score:3)
And they finally give us the option as to whether we want our tabs under the address bar or over, right? Right? It's not that hard to provide an option. Floorp does it. Come to that I'd like the option to have real tabs again.
It gets a little bit tiresome to have to beat firefox into submission with ever-changing CSS to get the UI to look the way I want it to. So far, though I've been able to do it, so I am able to continue to use enjoy firefox, and recommend it still since it's one of the few major browsers that can still block ads and other malware.
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Vertical tabs? Vertical smile!
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I don't have to think much about it since Pale Moon doesn't muck about with the UI each time, but with the Tab Mix Plus extention one can do with tabs whatever.
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It gets a little bit tiresome to have to beat firefox into submission with ever-changing CSS to get the UI to look the way I want it to.
UIs are created by developers, not by users. Be happy you can still "beat it into submission". Most software in the world is used as is without any customisation not explicitly granted by the developer.
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They implemented them basically as a secondy sidebar. They also have a redesign of the sidebar that gets activated when you use vertical tabs and it sucks from an UI design point of view. Even when you disable vertical tabs again it stays the way (until you disable it in about:config) and you have one sidebar with buttons to toggle the different sidebars and then a second sidebar that looks like glued to the first one.
I'd with they would hire some people who know actual UI/UX and not like in "That UI has a
Tabs or bookmarks? (Score:2)
Maybe in the future we are going to see a shift to a UI where the two concepts are merged; exactly like in mobile OSes we don't have a separate concept for the icon of a running app.
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I mix it up by having a few windows open with (related) often used (more than once per day) pages available in tabs (which auto-unload with Suspender on Pale Moon) and less used (once per day to monthly or longer) but useful pages as bookmarks.
This way I found a balance for ease of access and clutter limitation.
You can tell the kids are running the joint now... (Score:4, Funny)
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... when they call something "ESR" unironically and Slashdot doesn't pick up on it.
Original poster here. I downloaded the Cathedran and the baazar over 14K dialup, and read it in full in the mid '90s. But I agree that mozilla calling the long term support version ESR leads to some lame jokes.
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Dammit, and here I was about to make one of those lame jokes...
Re:You can tell the kids are running the joint now (Score:4, Informative)
When starting a career intending to publish, it is wise to check if the name isn't already used, or the potential for the name to be chosen by others later, in particular when the name elements are very common like "Eric" and "Raymond".
There is
* an Eric Raymond with 300+ papers on cancer treatment (Paris, France) (here his latest: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esmo... [doi.org] ),
* an Eric S. Raymond on pandemic preparedness (University of Georgia, USA) ( https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540... [doi.org] ),
* an Eric Raymond publishing on schizophrenia (U. Laval, Canada) ( https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul... [doi.org] )
* There is also another one publishing on cartilage issues (Virginia Commonwealth University, USA) ( https://doi.org/10.1148/radiol... [doi.org] )
Two problems
1. We cannot determine if some of them are the same person doing internships in other hospitals in early career, or separate students.
2. Name searches for Eric Raymond are drowned in hundreds of papers
As of today, thing a graduate student does when publishing first time is still to look up his/her own name and finding out homonyms.
If you're John Smith, you need to consider John. X. Smith or even John X.Y. Smith. Think there is a separate Eric S. Raymond publishing on influenza pandemic. I know someone with a birth name like John X.Y.Z. Smith who decided to do away with the John Smith altogether and goes by X.Y.Z. in publications.
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Why type an extra 'S' when you could substitute this [wikipedia.org] for this [wikipedia.org]? Using this method, Eric could have saved his wrists by typing his name 33.33% less often around the Internet!
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I know that our English friend John Ronald Reuel Tolkien would agree.
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Came to comment on this as well. Left satisfied. For years, ESR meant something completely different. Now that the kids are taking over, we can see how clueless they really are.
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To be fair, almost none of the ideas from ESR's CatB really apply in the modern world. Open Source / Free software just doesn't work like that anymore.
The basic idea of the model descibed by ESR's opus was that small scale software was open to all, could be worked on by all, could be forked by any, and could be customised to whatever quirky needs a group might have. This would lead to both cooperation and competition between projects, to the benefit of all.
This doesn't really apply to a lot of the most comm
Re: You can tell the kids are running the joint no (Score:3)
The additional sad fact is that open-source not working that way anymore works to almost nobody's benefit. That projects have gotten unnecessarily complicated and baroque make enshittification inevitable and vendor lock-in just as large a problem as it is in the closed source world.
Too late (Score:2)
For Trixie though I think