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Firefox 65 Arrives With Content Blocking Controls, and Support for WebP and AV1 (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

Firefox 65, the latest version of Mozilla's web browser, is now available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android platforms. The release brings simplified Content Blocking controls for Enhanced Tracking Protection, support for WebP image support with the Windows client getting an additional feature: support for AV1 format. From a report: Across all platforms, Firefox can now handle Google's WebP image format. WebP supports both lossy and lossless compression and promises the same image quality as existing formats at smaller file sizes. Firefox 65 for desktop brings redesigned controls for the Content Blocking section to let users choose their desired level of privacy protection. You can access it by either clicking on the small "i" icon in the address bar and clicking on the gear on the right side under Content Blocking or by going to Preferences, Privacy & Security, and then Content Blocking.

Next, Firefox now supports AV1, the royalty-free video codec developed by the Alliance for Open Media. AV1 improves compression efficiency by more than 30 percent over the codec VP9, which it is meant to succeed. Lastly, Firefox's new Task Manager page (just navigate to about:performance or find it under "Other" in the main menu) is complete. Introduced in Firefox 64, Task Manager now reports memory usage for tabs and add-ons.

4 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Content Blocking, Lets just keep NoScript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sure, it's called the ESR version.

  2. Re:Yes, it misses the point of Firefox. by MinaInerz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Firefox's WebExtension API is a considerable superset of what Chrome provides, and offers much of the power of what old extensions could but without the risks.

    Previous add-ons could essentially do anything they wanted to your computer and the spaghetti code required to support them made it difficult to speed up the Gecko engine and lower the resources that it used.

  3. Even harder to compile from source? by ReneR · · Score: 4, Informative

    Let me guess, they found new creative ways to make it even harder to build from source? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  4. Re:The last free browser by fred6666 · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you're running an iPhone or iPad, you do so at the behest of Apple. They control which browers you're allowed to use. Presently there are a few choices, but that could change at any moment.

    All "browsers" on iOS are forced by Apple to use Safari as the rendering engine. Basically, alternatives browsers are themes on Safari