Mozilla Firefox 53 has been released, and is now available to download right now.
The latest release of the popular open-source web-browser ships with two new compact themes, reader mode improvements, and updated site permission requests.
‘In Firefox 53 NPAPI plugin support is gone entirely’
Mozilla Firefox 52 began the process of removing support for Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI) plugins, disabling them by default but letting users to dive in to the browser’s settings to manually re-enable them.
But with this release of Firefox 53 NPAPI plugin support is gone entirely. You can’t force enable NPAPI plugins in Firefox 53 like you could in Firefox 52.
If you really can’t live without them you can switch to Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR).
We previewed the new themes in Firefox 53 last month. ‘Compact Dark’ and ‘Compact Light’, as you might be able to tell form their names, reduce the amount of wasted space and padding for a more compact, clean feel.
Video and audio controls sport a new look, while tab titles now fade out instead of appending ellipses to the end.
The usual set of security improvements also feature.
Download Firefox
Firefox 53 is free, open-source software. If you’re running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, 16.10 or 17.04 you’ll receive this latest update through the Software Updater tool in the next few days.
Users on other systems (as well as the impatient) can download Firefox direct from Mozilla’s website.