Firefox 77.0

[Posted June 2, 2020 by ris]

Firefox 77.0 has been released. Among the new things in this release, LWN readers may be most interested in the new about:certificate page where you can view and manage web certificates. See the release notes for details.

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Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 2, 2020 16:46 UTC (Tue) by xnor (guest, #125308) [Link] (4 responses)

My about:certificate is a little low on contrast. White text on white background is kinda hard to read or are the tables supposed to be empty?
Makes one wonder. If firefox devs cannot even get something as simple as this right...

Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 2, 2020 18:29 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (2 responses)

> My about:certificate is a little low on contrast. White text on white background is kinda hard to read or are the tables supposed to be empty?

It's black on white here; stock Firefox 77 installation.

> Makes one wonder. If firefox devs cannot even get something as simple as this right...

Duh, they could've just asked you if it works on your computer before releasing it.

Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 2, 2020 18:58 UTC (Tue) by sb (subscriber, #191) [Link] (1 responses)

> It's black on white here; stock Firefox 77 installation.

Depends on your platform and theme settings. It wouldn't be the first time that Firefox has got this wrong.

> Duh, they could've just asked you if it works on your computer before releasing it.

You snark but I'd be all for that. Asking a random LWN reader would probably raise the bar on the constant UI changes. :)

Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 2, 2020 19:20 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

> You snark but I'd be all for that.

Firefox does release Nightly and Beta.

I leave my Linux machines all on the standard packaged distro release, so I guess I'm not a good tester.

But I run my Windows systems on Nightly.

Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 3, 2020 19:14 UTC (Wed) by barryascott (subscriber, #80640) [Link]

There has been a mozilla ticket open for 2 months on this bug with a number of duplicates and lots of people confirming.

I can personally confirm this bug happens in dark mode in Windows 10 and macOS in my world.

I don't have this version in for Fedora yet to try there.

Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 2, 2020 19:43 UTC (Tue) by droundy (guest, #4559) [Link]

Much more significantly to me: Wayland support is now working. I've been running beta Firefox for a while now because XWayland apps respond poorly to my particular setup of a high dpi laptop monitor with a low dpi external monitor.

--app mode still stalled

Posted Jun 2, 2020 21:22 UTC (Tue) by Per_Bothner (subscriber, #7375) [Link] (1 responses)

Really disappointing to me was that there was finally movement on app mode (or -ssb mode) - and it stalled. Google Chrome has an --app=URL option which opens Chrome in a window without the browser-specific menus and tools bars. This opens up all kinds of possibilities of using a browser engine for the GUI of a desktop application, like a bare-bones Electron alternative but without requiring a separate Electron executable. It would be really nice to have a Firefox alternative. (Also, the Chrome version doesn't work right if you open an app window and then try to open a regular browser.)

(This isn't abstract: The DomTerm terminal can use Electron, Chrome --app mode, or a regular Firefox/Chrome browser window - but there is no way to use Firefox without all the browser "chrome". There seems to be no way to use a Firefox-based "embedded browser": Electron, Qt, JavaFX are all Chrome or WebKit-based. Before, Firefox supported XUL, which worked pretty well, but that is discontinued.)

--app mode still stalled

Posted Jun 19, 2020 14:07 UTC (Fri) by emorrp1 (guest, #99512) [Link]

There seems to be a number of options available, what's missing?: a data uri, an app profile, --kiosk mode and looks like you can set `browser.ssb.enabled` to opt into -ssb?

https://askubuntu.com/questions/487936/how-do-i-open-fixe...

Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 2, 2020 23:41 UTC (Tue) by jnahmias (subscriber, #16282) [Link] (2 responses)

Maybe it's me, but I don't see much info on Web Certificates in those release notes.

Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 3, 2020 4:02 UTC (Wed) by clopez (guest, #66009) [Link]

Me as well...

Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 19, 2020 14:15 UTC (Fri) by emorrp1 (guest, #99512) [Link]

Apparently, it's replacing the "View Certificate" pop-out window with "Certainly Something" which was previously an addon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/certainly-...

Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 3, 2020 3:13 UTC (Wed) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

Uhm, is this a new about:certificate replacing the existing about:certificate in 76?

That devtools compatibility thing sounds like a godsend though.

Firefox 77.0

Posted Jun 5, 2020 4:14 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

To answer my own question: no, it's the same. For a thing that's rarely of use and intentionally buried half a dozen menus deep so as to not scare the Firefox Target Audience, that really didn't need to be a headline feature.

What *is* different — and naturally undocumented — is that browser.urlbar.update1 no longer functions, and possibly as a side effect text selection in the url bar is no longer legible. Bravo as usual.

Firefox 77.0 - WebRender

Posted Jun 4, 2020 11:00 UTC (Thu) by swilmet (subscriber, #98424) [Link]

It's cool to see the WebRender progress. Unfortunately still not enabled by default on Linux, but there is more hope than for macOS.