Firefox is cooking again

Today’s issue: The Alexander Supertramp of git, the Baby Driver of accessibility, and the AI-induced psychosis of Rust.

Welcome to #458.

The Main Thing

All those unused AI features getting ready to crash my browser again

Firefox is cooking again

Mozilla shipped Firefox 147 two weeks ago, and it’s easily one of their biggest web-platform releases in years.

It’s particularly refreshing after last month, when Mozilla’s CEO surprised everyone by announcing his threat vision for Firefox to evolve into “a modern AI browser that will support a portfolio of new and safe software additions.”

Turns out approximately zero Firefox users asked for this. But thankfully, old-fashioned cyberbullying still works in our modern times. So after taking a lot of flak from their most passionate users, Firefox backtracked and promised to build an “AI kill switch” that would let users disable all AI features entirely.

And one month later, they shipped Firefox 147 with a bunch of long-awaited platform features and zero mention of AI. Coincidence? You tell me. Here are the three biggest upgrades:

• Navigation API – A modern successor to the history API that lets apps initiate, intercept, and manage navigations without relying on fragile popstate hacks. Great news for frameworks, routers, and SPAs.

• CSS Anchor Positioning – This means all modern browsers now support tethering elements like tooltips, popovers, and menus to anchor elements, using only CSS.

• View Transition upgrades – New selectors like :active-view-transition-type, better devtools visibility, and APIs to introspect active transitions. It’s another big step towards smooth, app-like UX on the web without relying on framework magic.

Bottom Line: I know that most of this work was underway long before the “AI browser” fallout, but it’s nice to at least pretend that a company listened to its users, slowed down the AI hype train, and shipped a bunch of features that developers actually want.

Hopefully other software companies follow Firefox’s lead.