The Tor Project releases Tor Browser 9.0 with several UX improvements

[zanderthunder]

 

The Tor Project has announced the release of Tor Browser 9.0, the new update brings several updates to the user experience, integrating more features into the browser directly and scrapping the onion button. Additionally, localisation has been improved with support added for the Macedonian and Romanian languages, bringing the total amount of supported languages to 27.

 

With Tor Browser 9.0, Firefox 68.2.0 is used as the foundation. In order to scrap the onion button that came with old releases, the Tor Project has altered the actual interface of Firefox adding circuit information to the ‘i’ button in the address bar, adding more Tor settings into about:preferences, and including a new identity button in the toolbar and in the menu.

 

One of the ways that Tor users can be identified by websites is by the size of the browser window. For several releases now, when the user maximises the Tor Browser window a notification would appear warning users not to do that. In order to make things simpler for users, a new feature called letterboxing has been added, this essentially restricts the amount of space a webpage can use; even if the browser is maximised, the user will just see a grey border around the webpage.

 

In order to get the new update, either download a fresh copy of the browser from the official website or if you have Tor already installed just continue using the browser and it should update automatically.

 

Source: The Tor Project releases Tor Browser 9.0 with several UX improvements (via Neowin)

[Karlston]

Tor Browser 9.0 is out with important changes

Tor Browser 9.0 has been released this week; it is the first version of Tor Browser that is based on Firefox 68 ESR (opposed to Firefox 60.x which previous versions of Tor Browser were based on).

 

The new version of Tor Browser is already available for download on the official project website at Tor Project. The browser is available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh computer systems as well as Android devices.

 

Existing users may update Tor Browser automatically or manually. A click on Menu > Help > About Tor Browser runs a manual check for updates within the browser's interface.

 

Tor Browser 9.0 loads the default New Tab Page on first start. There you find the "See what's new" link to display information about major changes in the new browser version.

 

 

The Onion Button is no longer available in Tor Browser 9.0. The team wanted to integrated Tor fully into the browser and added Tor Circuit information to the browser's i-icon in the URL bar.

 

A click on the icon displays the usual connection and permissions settings known from the Firefox web browser and Tor Circuit information that provides connection information.

 

 

There is also a new toolbar button called New Identity that allows users to reset the identity (which requires the restarting of the Tor browser). The feature is now easily accessible from within the Tor Browser interface.

 

The team has integrated Tor settings into the browser's preferences. Tor users may load about:preferences#tor directly in the browser's address bar to open the settings or go to Menu > Options > Tor manually.

 

 

Options to configure Bridges, proxy settings, and allowed ports are configurable on the page. All it takes is to check the main box to enable a preference and use the fields and menus to configure it. If the firewall is very restrictive, you may configure the browser to use ports 80 and 443 exclusively for connections as these are the most likely ports that are not blocked by the firewall.

 

The browser window is configured to use letterboxing by default. The technique adds white margins to the browser's frame to let users resize the browser window while still prevent fingerprinting using screen dimensions.

 

Tor users who dislike the feature can turn it off in the following way:

1. Load privacy.resistFingerprinting.letterboxing in the browser's address bar.
2. Set the preference to False.

Tor Browser 9.0 comes with support for two additional languages, Macedonian and Romanian, which brings the total number of supported languages to 32.

Interested users find the full changelog on the official Tor Project website.

 

 

Source: Tor Browser 9.0 is out with important changes (gHacks - Martin Brinkmann)