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Waterfox

6.5.0 Beta 1

The first beta of the ESR 128 branch is now available. The underlying architecture for how Waterfox is developed is being overhauled and, as such, warrants a major version number increase to 7.0; therefore, this release branch will be 6.5.x. The ‘G’ is also being dropped from the version number.

Changes

  • A re-jig of the system requirements to run Waterfox. We now expect the same minimum as Windows 10. For posterity, that essentially means for our x86 builds, any CPU that supports SSE31.
  • We have now bumped the “tuned” CPU code generation to match Skylake2 processor instruction sets. If you have an Intel Skylake (or equivalent AMD processor) or better, there should be better performance for you.

New Features

  • You should now see a Table of Contents in the Preferences page, for easier navigation of settings.
  • You can now set any URL as the new tab page by setting the browser.newtab.url preference in about:config3.
  • We have now re-implemented the old school password manager, available at chrome://browser/content/passwordManager.xhtml. This will eventually be available at about:passwords.

Planned features

  • Re-implementation of Live Bookmarks (RSS feed support).
  • Rework of the onboarding, in collaboration with black7375.
  • Rework of some preference pages, in collaboration with black7375.

Known Issues

  • Setting Waterfox as the default browser on Windows does not work.
  • “Autohide” behaviour of the Waterfox vertical tabs does not work for F11 fullscreen mode.
  • An error is reported when the vertical tabs options page is opened.
  • “Bookmark Selected Tabs” command in the menu of the sidebar header does not work.
  • Items in the menu of the vertical tabs header are shown with the same “gear” icon - this is due to missing Waterfox specific icon resources.
  • Tab preview on vertical tabs does not work with browser.tabs.hoverPreview.enabled=true.
  • F1 key does not toggle the Waterfox vertical tabs.
  • “Reset to default” operation in the toolbar customisation sometimes produces missing “Waterfox vertical tabs” button problem.

Footnotes

  1. The specific hardware instruction sets required are CMPXCHG16B, LAHF/SAHF, and PrefetchW. ↩

  2. If you do not have an Intel Skylake (or equivalent or lesser) processor, you will still be able to run Waterfox. ↩

  3. Please note, if using a root domain, make sure to append a trailing slash /; otherwise, the address bar will be focused when opening a new tab. ↩