Firefox 48 Released With Multi-Process Support, Mandatory Add-On Signing (softpedia.com)

Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox v48, touted as one of the most important updates the browser has ever received. With the new version, Firefox starts migrating users to using mullti-process threads (e10s, Electrolysis), and it is also the first version to ship with Rust component. In addition, Firefox is now also making add-on signing mandatory. From a Softpedia article: Announced last year, Electrolysis, e10s, or multi-process support is Firefox's ability to process core browser operations separately from the content viewed on a Web page. Multi-process support allows a page to crash without bringing the entire browser down with it and improves the browser's overall performance. e10s rollout will take place in two phases, first in Firefox 48, and it will finish in Firefox 49, set for release on September 13, 2016. Mandatory add-on signing refers to Firefox preventing users from installing any add-ons that have not been approved by Mozilla's testers. This is something similar to what Chrome employs, but Firefox users have been spoiled all these years, always having the capability of installing any add-on they've desired. Rust is a programming language that's a revamped and improved version of C++ but that protects developers from accidentally including dangerous memory bugs in their code. It achieves this by how the language was constructed and by how developers write the code.

Comments

Mozilla's starting to get back in shape

[LichtSpektren]

I've been on Nightly for awhile now and the performance with e10s is now almost as good as Chrome's. Firefox Hello is thankfully going to get axed in a future release, and if Mozilla continues to fine-tune the performance a bit more and rips out Pocket, I think Firefox will be back on top.

Re:Mozilla's starting to get back in shape

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox has been the better browser for the past 2-3 years and nobody knows it. Just wait until they deploy WebExtensions in September. Firefox is now much more stable than Chrome, at both a low and higher number of tabs opened. Just wait until everyone realizes this and have the option to use Chrome extensions on Firefox.

Multi-process not available for most users?

[trawg]

I was kind of excited by this so updated immediately instead of my usual process of waiting a couple days.

While it was updating I did another unsual thing - clicked through to the article - where I read the following:

e10s rollout will take place in two phases, first in Firefox 48, and it will finish in Firefox 49, set for release on September 13, 2016.

Firefox with multi-process support will first reach 1 percent of the users who don't have any add-ons installed in their browser, and in ten days' time, Mozilla will activate e10s for 50 percent of the same users.

Full e10s support for Firefox instances using extensions or running on older versions of Windows will be available in the fall, during the second rollout phase scheduled for Firefox 49.

So, at a glance (and from what I can see from my now-updated install), multi-process is not /really/ included in this release except in certain cases like users who don't have any add-ons.

Re:can we please

[Joce640k]

That's probably going to drop a bit it they break all the add-ons.

(Again...)

Re:for a minute there i thought i had freedom.

[ewhac]

The point of signing the extensions is so that some compromised or malicious developer doesn't put malware into an extension's update stream; which can be (and has been) a huge problem, [ ... ]

[ Citation required ]