Firefox 108 Is Now Available for Download, This Is What’s New
Firefox 108 entered public beta testing on November 15th, when Mozilla promoted the Firefox 107 release to the stable channel. During the beta testing phase, it received a total of nine beta versions, similar to all the previous releases since Firefox hit the 100 version number.
Firefox 108 isn’t a big update, but it does bring a few interesting enhancements, starting with support for the WebMIDI API, which makes it easier for musicians to interact with MIDI musical instruments using the Web.
Update (by Rianne Schestowitz)
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Mozilla Firefox 108 is Now Available to Download
A new version of the Firefox web browser is available to download.
Mozilla Firefox 108 is the last release planned for this year. It features a small set of modest improvements designed to improve the usability, security, and stability of the browser when used access all major desktop platforms.
LWN:
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Firefox 108 released [LWN.net]
Version 108 of the Firefox browser has been released. The headline feature this time around appears to be the enabling of import maps by default, along with support for the Web MIDI API and the usual set of security fixes.
Liam Proven:
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Firefox 108 brings improved Web MIDI support • The Register
The last new version of Firefox for 2022 is out on Mozilla's FTP server, with a more widespread release to follow soon.
Mozilla has released Firefox version 108. Amusingly, for the first time since Mozilla sped up its release cycle in 2015 (and presumably for the last time, too) the current version numbers for Firefox and Google Chrome line up: the current stable version of Chrome is also version 108.
Truth be told, the 108th fox is not an especially big specimen. We rather like the task manager: it's been present for a while, but it's easier than ever to get to – just press Shift+Esc and a new "Process Manager" tab will open. Prepare to be aghast at how much RAM it takes to render a single web page nowawadays.
A new feature that may please musicians is the improved support for the Web MIDI API. The MIDI standard is very close to a remarkable 40 years old, and Web MIDI does just what the name implies: it allows web apps to send and receive MIDI signals to and from musical instruments. In principle this will allow sequencer apps to be implemented in Javascript.
Now on POWER:
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Firefox 108 on POWER
Now that the Talos II is back in order and the Fedora 37 upgrade is largely behind me, it's now time to upgrade Firefox to version 108. There's some nice performance improvements here plus a hotkey for about:processes with Shift-Escape. Support for WebMIDI seems a little gratuitous, but what the hey (haven't tried it yet, the Macs mostly handle my music stuff), and there are also new CSS features. As before linking still requires Dan Horák's patch from bug 1775202 or the browser won't link on 64-bit Power ISA (alternatively put --disable-webrtc in your .mozconfig if you don't need WebRTC). Otherwise, we were able to eliminate one of our patches from the PGO-LTO diff, so use the new one for Firefox 108 and the .mozconfigs from Firefox 105.