Firefox 36.0.1 fixes a number of critical issues

Mozilla has just released Firefox 36.0.1 to which fixes nine issues in the browser. The new version is already distributed via the browser's automatic updating system and also available on the official website from where it can be downloaded to upgrade Firefox manually instead.

To make sure Firefox picks up the update right away, tap on the Alt-key and select Help > About Firefox from the menu.

This initiates a check for updates which should pick up the new version right away. To test which version of the browser you are running, type about:support and look there under application basics.

The new version of Firefox fixes several issues among them a top crash and a startup crash on systems with Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit running.

The new version on top of that fixes the following issues / restores the following functionality in Firefox Stable:

• The -remote option that Mozilla removed in Firefox 36 is available again. The reason for bringing it back appears to be that the removal affected more users and software products than Mozilla thought it would. According to the Bugzilla listing, it affected Python, Emacs, any add-on or software working with multi-profiles, and also Eclipse.
• The use of ANY DNS has been disabled. It disables the use of ANY DNS to get the TTL on Windows. There is a lengthy discussion about this on Bugzilla but it appears that DNS ANY was used in contexts where it should not be used.
• Fix of a massive memory leak. More information about that here.
• Fixed a issue where print preferences would not be saved from print job to print job. Firefox 36 reset print preferences for jobs and this bug fixes the issue. More information here.
• Fixed hostname with underscore rejections in Firefox. Firefox displayed an untrusted connection warning if a subdomain used an underscore in its name. Bugzilla has more information about the bug.
• Two Hello issues were fixed. The first resolves an issue where contacts were not loaded when you sign in with a Firefox Account (Bug 1137141), the second that Hello might become inactive after a restart (Bug 1137469)

You find more information about the fixes in the official release notes. The memory leak fix and the two crash related fixes should be reason enough to install the update as soon as possible. Obviously, if you have been affected by the other issues fixed in Firefox 36.0.1 then you may want to install the new version as well right away.

For information about Firefox 36, check out our overview of that here.