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

Posted by msmash on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @02:54AM 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.

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Still autoplays silent video by tepples · 2019-03-19 04:50 · 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.