Download Firefox 45 for Linux, Mac OS X & Microsoft Windows

Mar 8, 2016 14:25 GMT  ·  By

Just a few minutes ago, Mozilla started seeding the binary and source packages of the Firefox 45.0 web browser on its FTP servers, allowing users to get a head start with upgrading before the official announcement gets out later today.

Yes, that's right, Mozilla will officially unveil Firefox 45.0 today, March 8, 2016, but right now there's no announcement on the website or any download links. However, you can grab the official builds for Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems from the FTP channel.

Regarding the features implemented by Mozilla in the Firefox 45.0 release of one of the world's most popular web browsers, we can't say that they are all that impressive; in fact, Linux users will be disappointed (again) to find out that the GTK3 integration has been disabled.

Release highlights include a new Synced Tabs button, which has been added to the button bar, instant browser tab sharing via the "Hello" feature, along with the addition of a new preference called "network.dns.blockDotOnion" to let users block .onion at the Domain Name System (DNS) level.

Panorama feature removed

Firefox 45.0 also updates the Awesome Bar's drop-down area to display tabs that have been opened on other synced devices where the user has Firefox installed and signed into his/her Firefox Account, which will be visible during searches. The Tab Groups (Panorama) feature has been removed.

Other than the above, Firefox 45.0 will now correctly redirect URLs that contain a Unicode-format IDN (Internationalized Domain Name). As usual, web developers will get a bunch of new features as well, and the HTML5 support has been improved with ES6 classes, a Web Speech synthesis API, and Push API support.