Mozilla has launched Firefox 73. It’s not a particularly big update this time around, however, if you like to adjust the page zoom on websites you’ll appreciate the fact that this version allows you set a global default zoom level setting. It also improves High Contrast Mode handling on Windows.
For more than a decade, users have been able to choose the page zoom level for each website that they visit, but it was never possible to set the global default zoom level without the aid of extensions. With Firefox 73, users can go to about:preferences and adjust the global zoom level under Language and Appearance. Per-site zoom is still available for those of you that want to adjust just a handful of websites.
To help those with sight issues further, Mozilla has adjusted the way Firefox displays webpages when High Contrast Mode is enabled. In the past, Firefox used to disable background images when in High Contrast Mode. With Firefox 73, the browser places a block of background colour between the text and the background image – this makes the page more readable while maintaining the presence of background images.
Some other changes in this release include:
- Improved audio quality when playing back audio at a faster or slower speed.
- The presence of a save login prompt only if a field in a login form has been modified.
- The rollout of WebRender to laptops with Nvidia graphics cards with drivers newer than 432.00, and screen sizes smaller than 1920x1200.
Unfortunately, this version of Firefox does ship with an unresolved issue. Mozilla said that users with the 0patch security software may encounter crashes at start-up after updating to Firefox 73. While this will be fixed in future, users can workaround the issue by making an exclusion for firefox.exe in the 0patch settings.
The new update will be applied to your browser automatically if you’re on Windows or macOS. Those on Linux should wait for the update to be pushed via the package manager as tweaks may need to be made. If you don’t have Firefox installed but want to try it, you can find the download here.