Firefox is catching up with Chrome! Last week, Chrome 88 was released and today Firefox 85 was released. Firefox is now just 3 versions away from catching Chrome. In this blog post, we'll take a look at the new Firefox features. We have also installed the new Firefox 85 version to our cross-browser testing cloud and you can already test your apps in Firefox 85.

Firefox 85 About Dialog

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Summary: New in Firefox 85

  • Protection from supercookies.
  • Bookmarks now have location history.
  • Improved password manager.
  • Removal of Adobe Flash support.
  • Added support for the CSS :focus-visible pseudo-class.
  • JavaScript prettifier in the developer console.
  • And as always - bug fixes, security fixes, and new policies.

New in Firefox 85 in Detail

Enhanced Protection From Supercookies

Firefox 85 now protects you from supercookies. Supercookies is a type of tracker that can stay hidden in your browser and track you online, even after you clear cookies. Firefox now prevents supercookies from tracking your web browsing from one site to the next by isolating them.

Improved Bookmarks

It's easier than ever to save and access your bookmarks. Firefox now remembers your preferred location for saved bookmarks, displays the bookmarks toolbar by default on new tabs, and gives you easy access to all of your bookmarks via a toolbar folder.

Improved Password Manager

The password manager now allows you to remove all of your saved logins with one click, as opposed to having to delete each login individually.

Web Developer's Corner

If you're a web developer, then you'll be interested in the next section that lists changes for developers. The most notable change is the addition of the JS expression beautifier in the Console source editor:

Firefox 85 JS Expression Editor

Developer Tools Changes

  • Developers can now use the Page Inspector to toggle the :focus-visible pseudo-class for the currently selected element.

HTML Changes

  • Link preloading via <link rel="preload"> is now enabled. The preload keyword for the rel attribute of the <link> element indicates the user is highly likely to require the target resource for the current navigation, and therefore the browser must preemptively fetch and cache the resource.
  • The <menuitem> HTML element is no longer available - it has been hidden behind the dom.menuitem.enabled flag.

CSS Changes

  • The :focus-visible pseudo-class is now enabled. The :focus-visible pseudo-class applies while an element matches the :focus pseudo-class and the UA (User-Agent) determines via heuristics that the focus should be made evident on the element.
  • The pinch-zoom value for the touch-action property is now enabled. The touch-action CSS property sets how an element's region can be manipulated by a touchscreen user. The pinch-zoom value enables multi-finger panning and zooming of the page.

JavaScript Changes

  • The collation property can now be specified in the options passed to the Intl.Collator() constructor. It creates Intl.Collator objects that enable language-sensitive string comparison.

WebDriver Changes

  • Fixed a potential page load timeout situation when WebDriver:ElementClick is called for a link with a target other than _blank.
  • Using web element references on browsing contexts other than the originating one now correctly returns a "no such element" error instead of a stale element reference error.

Adobe Flash Has Been Removed

Firefox 85 no longer supports Adobe Flash. There is no setting available to re-enable Flash support.

Security Improvements in Firefox 85

  • CVE-2021-23953: Cross-origin information leakage via redirected PDF requests.
  • CVE-2021-23954: Type confusion when using logical assignment operators in JavaScript switch statements.
  • CVE-2021-23955: Clickjacking across tabs through misusing requestPointerLock.
  • CVE-2021-23956: The file picker dialog could have been used to disclose a complete directory.
  • CVE-2021-23957: Iframe sandbox could have been bypassed on Android via the intent URL scheme.
  • CVE-2021-23958: Screen sharing permission leaked across tabs.
  • CVE-2021-23959: Cross-Site Scripting in error pages on Firefox for Android.
  • CVE-2021-23960: Use-after-poison for incorrectly redeclared JavaScript variables during GC.
  • CVE-2021-23961: More internal network hosts could have been probed by a malicious webpage.
  • CVE-2021-23962: Use-after-poison in nsTreeBodyFrame::RowCountChanged.
  • CVE-2021-23963: Permission prompt inaccessible after asking for additional permissions.
  • CVE-2021-23964, 23965: Memory safety bugs fixed in Firefox 85 and Firefox ESR 78.7.

Happy cross-browser testing in Firefox 85!