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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Firefox 65 Delivers New Features

January 30, 2019

As I wrote yesterday, if Google breaks my ad blocker, I’ll be looking to shift to Firefox as my default browser. The new release of Firefox 65 has several new features. The new version gives you control over how the browser manages content like tracker software and cookies. You can tune the privacy settings (standard, strict and custom) by selecting the “I” icon in the address bar. Standard mode blocks trackers in private tabs. Strict blocks tracking in all windows and will probably break some websites. Custom lets you pick specific controls for the blocking action. CNET has a post that identifies the additional features of Firefox 65 to include:

  • Support for the new AV1 video compression technology Mozilla helped develop along with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco and others
  • Support for Google's WebP image format, which is useful for shrinking some files more than is possible with its main alternatives, JPEG and PNG, so websites load faster and don't use as much network capacity.
  • Support for Apple's Handoff technology so that, when you move from a Mac to an iPhone or iPad, you can bring along the websites you were browsing. Handoff works with both Firefox and Safari on iOS, Mozilla said.
  • A new Firefox task manager, similar to the one Google builds into Chrome, that lets you see how much memory or energy different websites and browser extensions are consuming.

All in all, some good improvements for Firefox.

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