Less than two months after Firefox for Android got several bandwidth and security patches, Mozilla started rolling out another major update for its popular mobile Internet browser. Among other things, the latest version of Firefox should fix most issues with the app freezing up that some users have been complaining about in recent months. More specifically, the browser’s development team figured out that most freezes originate from the way its piece of mobile software handles and renders content which is why it has decided to separate the actual online content from Firefox’s user interface (UI) processes.
What this means in practice is that if a certain web page starts consuming a large part of your phone or tablet’s resources for any reason, other tabs, buttons, and menus won’t become unresponsive as has been the case so far. Even if you’re not a Firefox user, you’ve surely experienced this unfortunate phenomenon at least once while browsing the Internet with Google Chrome, Opera, or Microsoft Edge. In any case, Mozilla’s team is claiming that this update is definitely something users with ancient hardware who are often experiencing freezes wouldn’t want to miss out on. So, if you happen to be one of those people or just want to always keep your apps up-to-date, head on the Mozilla Firefox Google Play Store page and download the latest patch which should already be available worldwide. In case you’re also using the desktop version of Firefox, an identical update for the Windows, OS X, and Linux version of the popular Internet browser can also be downloaded from Mozilla’s official website.
The new, more responsive multi-process Firefox also received some design changes with the latest update. The URL bar is now better at giving suggestions to terms users started typing into it and also received the ability to show suggested website’s icons if they happen to already be locally bookmarked. The browser’s Discovery Pane also got redesigned and now allows for easier installation of add-ons. Last but not least, the latest update also comes packed with a bunch of security improvements specifically focused at download protection. The update, unfortunately, doesn’t feature any additional data usage optimizations though the developers recently revealed that they’re working on them.