A preview of the upcoming Waterfox Browser third-generation release is now available

Alex Kontos, developer of the Waterfox web browser, has published a preview of the upcoming third-generation version of the Waterfox browser for all supported operating systems.

The preview is designed for testing only and bugs are to be expected at this point in time. I could not get the Windows preview version to load any site other than internal sites at the time of writing; a tab crash was thrown regardless of site that I tried to open using the preview.

At least one other user reported the issue on the official Waterfox Reddit subreddit.

The Waterfox browser release will switch to a new release versioning, as it will be released as Waterfox G3.0.0. The scheme divides the version into three parts: Major, Minor, and Patch.

MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes,

MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards compatible manner, and

PATCH version when you make backwards compatible bug fixes.

The new version of Waterfox is based on Gecko 78.5.0, the same core that Firefox ESR will be upgraded to on November 11, 2020.

Kontos notes that users can expect the same set of features that previous versions of the Waterfox browser supported; this includes, among others, support for NPAPI plugins and privileged extensions.

Another feature highlighted by the lead developer is that Waterfox's third generation may get support for installing extensions from other add-on stores. The Chrome and Opera extension stores are mentioned specifically, but other stores will be supported as well.

Last but not least, Waterfox will support installing userChrome customizations directly in the web browser.

Users who would like to give the preview version of Waterfox's next generation version a try find download links on Reddit.

It is recommended to back up existing Waterfox installations / profiles before installing the new version to ensure that data can be restored should issues be experienced while using the new version of the browser or during migration.

Alex Kontos plans to release a full blog post and roadmap for features on the official Waterfox site.

Now You: Do you use Waterfox? Describe your recent experience with the browser.

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