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Mozilla Releases Firefox 50 (softpedia.com)
Mozilla has begun seeding the binary and source packages of the final release of Firefox 50 web browser on all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux and macOS. From a report on Softpedia: We have to admit that we expected to see some major features and improvements, but that hasn't happened. The biggest new feature of the Firefox 50.0 release appears to be emoji for everyone. That's right, the web browser now ships with built-in emoji for GNU/Linux distributions, as well as other operating systems that don't include native emoji fonts by default, such as Windows 8.0 and previous versions. Also new, Firefox 50.0 now shows lock icon strikethrough for web pages that offer insecure password fields. Another interesting change that landed in the Mozilla Firefox 50.0 web browser is the ability to cycle through tabs in recently used order using the Ctrl+Tab keyboard shortcut. Moreover, it's now possible to search for whole words only using the "Find in page" feature. Last but not the least, printing was improved as well by using the Reader Mode, which now uses the accel-(opt/alt)-r keyboard shortcut, the Guarana (gn) locale is now supported, the rendering of dotted and dashed borders with rounded corners (border-radius) has been fixed as well.
Actual FF 50 Release notes and release tracking page, for anyone who cares to read about what all they're working on right now.
As a developer, I have to agree. Though I really don't want Google to dominate[*], and for there to be a good alternative to Chrome (and I keep using Firefox myself on principle), it's very hard to avoid recommending against using Firefox when they just don't try to keep pace with simple features. Two examples:
* Firefox still doesn't support "input type=date". There's a long thread, arguing about which UI widget would make the best native experience, but for a developer, all I care about is that there should be *some* widget, however imperfect it might be.
* Firefox on Android doesn't support "mobile-web-app-capable". That's essential for us, because it allows mobile sites to be launched full-screen from a desktop icon, without showing the URL-bar and back/forward controls. For our warehousing application (running on an android hand-held terminal with barcode-scanner), this is critical to prevent user-confusion.
On the other hand, at least Firefox isn't the terribly obsolete mobile-safari (still no WebRTC!), which will only get fixed if the a developers' lawsuit succeeds in forcing Apple to open up.
[*] Google have far too much power, and abuse of Chrome could be much more dangerous to the open internet than IE could have been back at the time.