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Firefox 66 Arrives With Autoplaying Blocked by Default, Smoother Scrolling, and Better Search (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the browser-updates dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 66 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The release includes autoplaying content (audio and video) blocked by default, smoother scrolling, better search, revamped security warnings, WebAuthn support for Windows Hello, and improved extensions. The company says its main goal with this release is to reduce irritating experiences such as auto-playing videos, pop-ups, and page jumps. Firefox 66 for desktop is available for download now on Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. The Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play.

4 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I'm so torn by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Honestly curious: in what ways do you find Chrome's user experience to be better than Opera's? I just recently switched to Opera after finally getting annoyed at all of the privacy invasiveness of Chrome, and I found that it's indistinguishable from Chrome in the vast majority of cases once I installed Install Chrome Extensions and added all of my important Chrome extensions back that I had been missing.

  2. Still autoplays silent video by tepples · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I saw "autoplaying content (audio and video) blocked by default" in the summary and jumped into the usual test suite. All still played. To learn why, I read the featured article and found this:

    Mozilla's main goal is to remove the annoyance of sound blaring from your speakers. On sites that automatically mute the sound, the Block Autoplay feature will not stop the video from playing.

    This means autoplaying video in floating ads will continue to drain your computer's battery and your monthly Internet cap.

  3. Re: I'm so torn by caution+live+frogs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I keep hearing this from people ad nauseum but I’ve been using Firefox since Phoenix and there are exactly zero add-ones I use that are “broken”. What exactly is “broken” for you?

  4. Re:a reason I don't use Chrome by Curupira · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dude, Firefox has a good password manager. If you have an Firefox account, you can access your password in your desktop and your mobile device, without having to install extensions. With a good random password generator (Lastpass has one at their website, you're good to go.