Mozilla Firefox 97.0: here is what is new

Mozilla released Firefox 97.0 on February 8, 2022. The new stable version of the Firefox web browser includes security fixes and just a few changes and additions.

Firefox ESR, the Extended Support Release, and all development channels received updates as well on the release day. Firefox ESR 91.6, Firefox Beta and Dev 98, and Firefox Nightly 98 have all been updated.

Executive Summary

• Firefox 97.0 and Firefox 91.6 ESR are security updates.
• Firefox supports Windows 11 style scrollbars.
• Mozilla expires current colorway themes, adds new ones.

Firefox 97.0 download and update

Firefox 97.0 can be downloaded from the official Mozilla website. Users may also update using the built-in automatic updating functionality.

Select Menu > Help > About Firefox to display the version that is installed currently and run a check for updates..

Please note that the browser may not be available yet if you are reading this on February 8, 2022. It will become available later on that day.

Here are the links to the official download repositories.

• Firefox Stable download
• Firefox Beta download
• Nightly download
• Firefox ESR download
• Firefox for Android on Google Play

Firefox 97.0 new features and improvements

Colorway themes are changing

Mozilla introduced support for colorway themes in Firefox 94. The browser displayed a "pick your palette" overlay on the first start of the browser, allowing users to select a seasonal color palette for the browser if they wanted to.

The themes that were introduced in Firefox 94 are set to expire automatically when Firefox 97 is installed on a device. An active colorway theme remains the active theme in Firefox for as long as the theme is not changed.

Firefox 97.0 introduces a new set of colorway themes for users to activate. These are found in the Themes section of the about:addons as usually.

Other changes

• Firefox supports the new scrollbar style on Windows 11 devices.
• System font loading has been improved on Mac OS devices; this should improve the opening and switching to new tabs faster "in certain situations" according to Mozilla.
• Linux users can no longer generate PostScript for printing in Linux. The option to use PostScript printers remains available.

Developer Changes

• cookieStoreId improvements for extension developers, including the ability to register container-specific content scripts.
• Improved WebDriver:NewSession and WebDriver:NewWindow stability.
• Marionette:Quit accepts the new parameter safeMode to restart Firefox in Safe Mode.
• Several SVGPathSeg APIs have been disabled by default and will be removed in future versions.
• SVG d attribute can now be used as a property in CSS.
• CSS property color-adjust was renamed to print-color-adjust.

Enterprise changes

Bug Fixes

• PDFjs that is used in Firefox ESR has been updated to the latest version.
• When Firefox ESR updates fail, a link to the Firefox ESR download is now provided.
• Firefox prioritizes authentication headers from most secure to least secure now (not backported to Firefox ESR).
• Fixed access to about pages that were blocked via policies.
• Firefox a JSON policy issue on Windows machines that prevented them from being of the type REG_SZ.
• TLS override UI was removed from certificate error pages.
• DisabledCiphers policy has been updated with additional ciphers.

Known Issues

None listed.

Security updates / fixes

Security updates are revealed after the official release of the web browser. You find the information published here after release.

Outlook

Firefox 98.0 and Firefox ESR 91.7 will be released on March 8, 2022. The developer editions Firefox Beta 99, Firefox Developer 99, and Firefox Nightly 100 will also be released at the same time.

Additional information / sources

• Firefox 97 release notes
• Firefox 97 for Developers
• Firefox for Enterprise 97 - release notes
• Firefox Security Advisories
• Firefox Release Schedule

Mozilla Firefox 97.0: here is what is new

Frontpaged: Mozilla Firefox Browser 97.0