More security, more updates, more everything!
📝 What’s new in Waterfox 56.2.10?
- Latest security fixes up to Firefox ESR 60.7
- Added new Mozilla certificates to be able to install add-ons from AMO again
- Waterfox has now updated its user agent to
Mozilla/5.0 (platform; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0 Waterfox/waterfoxversion- This will fix issues related to aggressive Google reCAPTCHA. (VPNs, Proxies and extensions may still have an effect though).
- This should also fix issues with Google doing A/B testing on YouTube that breaks for Waterfox.
- Certain websites require a standard Firefox user agent. If you find a website isn’t working, please request a standard user agent to be added for it here.
⚠️ If you find that websites aren’t working properly after upgrading to 56.2.10 (such as from 56.2.8), PLEASE delete your browser cache, this will resolve a lot of website issues.
Waterfox Alpha
The first Waterfox Alpha for v68 is ready! You can download it from the releases page. Please note it is an alpha and it is subject to heavy change. Support for legacy add-ons is still alive and well on this branch.
What is the future development of Waterfox going to be like?
Waterfox will be maintained as two different branches, Waterfox “Classic” and Waterfox. Waterfox Classic will remain on the v56 branch and receive security and bug fixes as much as possible, for as long as possible. It will be for users who want to use legacy systems and older add-ons that may not be updated to v68.
Users will not be forced to update to v68 if they are on v56, but may receive a notification saying it is available when v68 reaches stable. (Still looking into a way of doing this that is privacy friendly - most likely an offline message that will appear on a future v56 release that releases the same time).
What’s coming up?
For Waterfox v56
I am going to be using a more modern build system, moving away from Visual Studio 2015 to Clang (and Visual Studio 2017 where necessary). This will net a good amount of performance improvements. I will also be investigating updating related DRM code to be inline with ESR releases as I’m worried at some point in the future it will no longer be supported and will break websites that require it, such as Netflix.
For the Website
There are a few things I am not happy about with the website, one being the use of Google Analytics. It’s currently used as an easy way to get anonymous metrics, but it’s not ideal. Instead I’ll be looking at migrating over to Matomo and have it read the server logs instead, which should remove any extra JavaScript code from the website.
Another issue is Disqus. On both GA and Disqus I have combed throughout the settings and disabled as much tracking and enabled as much anonymisation as possible, but relying on 3rd party service isn’t ideal. I’ll be looking at self-hosting a system similar to Commento.
I am still working on getting an AMO like system ready as well, as add-ons have already started to be updated to be compatible with v68 and that will require a place for them to be easily accessible for users.
Support Waterfox
I’d really like to thank everyone who has donated so far, it’s so incredible seeing how supportive everyone is! I should have some time now to go through all the messages and reply :-)
If you’d really like to help Waterfox out, please consider using the default search (Bing) with adblock disabled on it, it would be such a huge show of support! The default search is fairly privacy friendly.
Enjoy the latest releases and have a wonderful weekend!
Alex is the founder and lead developer of Waterfox.