Firefox 81 Arrives with a New Theme

Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 81 today, which a colorful new theme called Alpenglow that works with both dark and light modes. Alpenglow isn’t installed by default, but you can switch to it by navigating to Menu > Options > Extensions & Themes > Themes.

Other new features and changes include:

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Audio and video playback improvements. You can now pause and play any audio and video in Firefox using your keyboard or headset, even if you’re viewing a different tab.

Credit card management. I’m surprised this is new, but you can now save, manage, and auto-fill credit card information in Firefox, assuming you live in the U.S. or Canada. But Mozilla says it will roll out this feature to users gradually.

PDF improvements. Firefox 81 uses AcroForm to let you fill in, print, and save supported PDF forms. And the built-in PDF viewer also has a new fresh look, Mozilla says.

Pocket improvements. Firefox users in Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland using the German version of Firefox will now see Pocket recommendations in their new tab.

You can download Firefox for Windows or Mac from the Firefox website. Firefox for Android is available from the Google Play Store. And Firefox for iOS is available from the Apple App Store.

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Conversation 13 comments

  • Username

    22 September, 2020 - 5:48 pm

    <p><em>&gt; <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">AcroForm to let you fill in, print, and save supported PDF forms.&nbsp;</span></em></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">why, when there are half a dozen free PDF viewers, including Acrobat, that do same? People I know get confused when they see PDF document in browser – they think it’s a webpage instead of a standalone document file that can be downloaded and kept.</span></p><p>On the other hand, Firefox doesn’t have what (I) really need – webpage to PDF renderer like Chrome or Acrobat Pro (“create from webpage”) does. I’ve asked on Mozilla’s developer forum, and told to print to PDF printer driver, but results aren’t comparable. First world problem, sure, but it forces me to keep Chrome installed.</p>

  • waethorn

    22 September, 2020 - 7:54 pm

    <p>Ooooh look: Malibu Stacy has a new hat!</p>

  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    22 September, 2020 - 9:28 pm

    <p>It looks great in both light and dark modes in Windows and on Mac. I like that it gives the light/dark themes some color, something that really makes Windows dark mode kinda dry.</p><p><br></p><p>Makes almost all dark modes dry.</p>

  • stevek

    22 September, 2020 - 11:34 pm

    <p>Look at all those chairs being rearranged on the Titanic!</p>

  • winner

    23 September, 2020 - 12:07 am

    <p>I use Firefox for my primary browser for the following reasons:</p><p>1 – Monoculture is a bad thing, let's support the minority player</p><p>2 – FF tab handling doesn't shrink tabs to unreadability if you have too many. Instead you can sidescroll.</p><p>3 – FF allows me to kill autoplaying videos and sound</p>

    • miamimauler

      23 September, 2020 - 12:52 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#578040">In reply to Winner:</a></em></blockquote><p>I use Google Chrome but like Firefox on my desktop and use it as my secondary browser. Unfortunately though I fear FF will struggle to survive given MS have adopted Chromium and now also have a quality browser along with Google Chrome.</p><p><br></p><p>FF was the browser people used when they didn't want to use Google. For many users they will now use Chromium Edge for that.</p><p>I feel some of the Edge growth will be FF users.</p><p><br></p><p>I fear FF's future may also be in adopting Chromium.</p>

    • Nischi

      23 September, 2020 - 6:44 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#578040">In reply to Winner:</a></em></blockquote><p>It's pretty funny, your second reason is the reason I don't use Firefox, I just hate the scrolling through tabs because it slows down my workflow…. 🙂 I looked into making the tab bar for firefox 2 rows with some css code, but I really don't want to rely on such things as it might break(and have) at any update.</p>

      • winner

        23 September, 2020 - 3:12 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#578114">In reply to Nischi:</a></em></blockquote><p>I routinely have say 50 tabs. In Chrome you can't read what each tab is. You could put them in multiple windows but that's a pain. If you don't have a lot of tabs it wouldn't be a problem. Do you use a lot of tabs, and if so, how do you identify them if they shrink to too narrow?</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    23 September, 2020 - 4:47 am

    <p>The theme isn't really for me. It looks very Windows 3 16-colour mode…</p><p>Why would you store credit card details in the browser?</p>

  • TigerTom

    23 September, 2020 - 5:24 am

    <p>I stick with firefox as the new edge doesn't have a sidebar for your favourites any more.</p><p><br></p><p>Given most websites don't even take up the full width of the screen anyway it seems pointless not to include one.</p><p><br></p><p>Like others have said I fear chromium has become so dominant now that web developers are going to focus most of their efforts there.</p>

  • roho

    Premium Member
    23 September, 2020 - 10:44 am

    <p>It still won't log me in to Lasspass like Brave does. I'm so sick of entering my user name and password every time I want to use Firefox. meh</p>

  • SYNERDATA

    27 September, 2020 - 12:26 pm

    <p>I would use Edge if it would only switch to a new tab automatically when I ask for something to be opened in one.</p>

  • epguy40

    05 October, 2020 - 6:32 pm

    <p>well a point 0.1 release of Firefox 81 came out several days later making it version 81.0.1 which included several reliability bug fixes</p><p>www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/81.0.1/releasenotes/</p>

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