Available now for GNU/Linux, macOS & Microsoft Windows OSes

Mar 7, 2017 02:52 GMT  ·  By

Back in January, we told you that the development of the Mozilla Firefox 52.0 kicked off with the first Beta release and promised to let users send and open tabs from one device to another, among numerous other improvements and new features.

Nine Beta builds later, Mozilla has pushed today, March 7, 2016, the final binary and source packages of the Mozilla Firefox 52.0 web browser for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows. The good news is that Firefox 52 is an ESR (Extended Support Release) branch that will be supported until March-April 2018.

There are now two ESR branches available, namely Mozilla Firefox 52.0 and 45.x. The latter was updated today as well, to version 45.8.0, and will get one more security update, versioned 45.9.0, next month, when the new 52.0 series will receive its first point release, versioned 52.1, giving system integrators enough time to move to Firefox 52 ESR.

What's new in Firefox 52.0 ESR

Prominent features of the Mozilla Firefox 52.0 ESR release include support for the emerging WebAssembly standard to boost the performance of Web-based games and apps without relying on plugins, the ability to send and open tabs from one device to another, as well as multi-process for Windows users with touchscreens.

With each new Firefox release, Mozilla's developers attempt to offer new ways to improve the security of the widely-used web browser across all supported platforms. Firefox 52.0 ESR implements a "This connection is not secure" warning for non-secure pages that require user logins, along with a new Strict Secure Cookies specification.

"Implemented the Strict Secure Cookies specification which forbids insecure HTTP sites from setting cookies with the 'secure' attribute. In some cases, this will prevent an insecure site from setting a cookie with the same name as an existing 'secure' cookie from the same base domain," explain the Mozilla developers in the release notes.

Firefox 52.0 also improves the downloads experience by adding notifications for failed downloads, bigger buttons for restarting or canceling a download, and access to up to five of the most recent downloaded files. Other than that, it improves the text input for third-party keyboard layouts on Windows OSes.

Additionally, it removes support for NPAPI (Netscape Plugin API) plugins except for Adobe Flash Player, which means that Microsoft's Silverlight, Oracle's Java or Adobe's Acrobat plugins are no longer supported. Mozilla Firefox 52.0 also removes the Battery Status API reducing browser fingerprinting by various trackers.

For developers, Firefox 52.0 improves security for screen sharing, which no longer requires a whitelisted domain and displays a preview, enables CSS Grid Layout, and redesigns the Responsive Design Mode with network throttling, device selection, and other goodies. Download Firefox 52.0 for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.