Firefox 115.0, 115.0 ESR, and 102.13.0 ESR released

[German]The Mozilla developers have published the Firefox versions 115.0 (Release Channel and Extended Stable Release Channel, ESR) and 102.13.0 ESR des on July 4, 2023. The version 102.13.0 ESR is a maintenance update, which should eliminate bugs. Firefox 115 is a new development branch.

Firefox 115.0

Firefox 115 is a new development branch that, according to the release notes, is the last version of the browser that still runs with Windows 7 and Windows 8. This is because Microsoft has discontinued support for Windows 7 / 8.1 as of January 2023. Users of Firefox on these platforms will be automatically migrated to the Firefox 115 esr, so they will continue to receive security updates. According to the release notes, Firefox 115 brings new features listed below.

• Users moving from other browsers can transfer the payment types stored in Chrome-based browsers to Firefox.
• Hardware video decoding is now enabled for Intel GPUs on Linux.
• The Tab Manager drop-down menu now includes close buttons to help close tabs faster.
• The developers have revised and simplified the user interface for importing data from other browsers.
• Users without platform support for H264 video decoding can now rely on Cisco's OpenH264 plugin to play video.

Fixes noted for version 115 include the following:

• Windows Magnifier now correctly follows the text cursor when the Firefox title bar is visible.
• Windows users with low-end/USB WLAN drivers and operating system geolocation disabled can now approve geolocation on a case-by-case basis without causing system-wide network instability.

Version 115 closes several vulnerabilities described as high and moderate. The list of vulnerabilities can be found on this page. The following is noted as changes for version 115:

• Undo and Redo are now available in password fields.
• On Linux, middle mouse button clicks on the New Tab button now open clipboard content in the new tab. If the xclipboard content is a URL, that URL opens; any other text opens with your default search provider.
• For users with a Colorways theme built into Firefox, the theme will automatically migrate to the same theme hosted on addons.mozilla.org for Firefox profiles that have automatic add-on updates disabled. This allows users to keep their Colorways theme if they are later removed from the Firefox installation files.
• Some Firefox users may encounter a message in the Extensions panel stating that their add-ons are not allowed on the currently open site. We've introduced a new backend feature that allows only certain Mozilla-monitored extensions to run on certain sites for a variety of reasons, including security concerns.

For enterprise environments, there are still release notes for Firefox 115 Enterprise with descriptions of new policies.

Firefox 115.0 ESR is the long-term support (ESR) version of Firefox 115, which also still runs on Windows 7/8.1.

Firefox 102.13.0 ESR

Also the versions 102.1230 with long-term support (ESR) was released and closes security holes. Firefox should update itself automatically in all versions, but can be downloaded from this website for various platforms (the variant is to be selected via the displayed list boxes). (via)