by Martin Brinkmann on October 31, 2018 in Firefox – No comments
Mozilla releases one or multiple minor updates usually after a major release; the release of Firefox 63 is no exception to the rule as Firefox 63.0.1 will be rolled out today to the stable channel population of the Firefox web browser.
Firefox 63.0.1 is a minor bug fix release that addresses three issues in total that affect part of the userbase.
The new version of Firefox is not available through the browser’s automatic updating functionality or on the Mozilla website as Firefox 63.0 is offered through these channels currently.
Firefox installations configured to check for updates automatically will pick up the new version later today or tomorrow at the latest.
Firefox 63.0.1
Firefox 63.0.1 is a bug fix release the corrects three issues in the stable version of the web browser. The first issue affects snippets on Firefox’s New Tab page.
Snippets refers to information from Mozilla and the Firefox team that Mozilla may push to the browser’s new tab page. It is a news section for Mozilla and Firefox related information that Mozilla uses heavily.
Snippets including onboarding messages for new users who open the New Tab page for the first time and announcements for existing users.
Michele Warther notes on Bugzilla that Mozilla is losing tens of millions of impressions each day because of the bug and that the organization was prepared to launch several new campaigns each week.
It means that new users don’t get any onboarding messages in the 9 languages we support and existing users aren’t getting any announcements (Monitor, Lockbox, US Elections, Referral Programs etc.) and that’s just this week. We are losing 10’s of millions of impressions each day and have an average of 5-7 new campaigns launching each week, it’s a very big issue for us.
Firefox users who don’t want to see snippets on the New Tab Page can disable the feature on about:preferences#home.
The second issue that is fixed in Firefox 63.0.1 is printing related. More precisely, Firefox’s print preview feature highlighted to users that it showed the printout in 30% of the original size when it was using shrink to fit instead.
The third and final issue that is fixed in the new release addresses an issue in Japanese versions of Firefox. Firefox displayed placeholders in the message that it displays when the user attempts to exit Firefox.
The release notes are already live but the downloads are not, or at least not for everyone at the time of writing.