Firefox 66 arrives with autoplay video blocking and more

mozilla-firefox

The new version of Firefox 66 was recently released which is already available for the main operating systems (Linux, Mac and Windows). This new version of the Firefox 66 web browser comes with blocking the automatic playback of videos with sound.

Mozilla knows that unsolicited volume can be a source of distraction and frustration for users. of the web. In addition, the Foundation decided to make changes to the way Firefox handles playing media with sound.

The settings can be initialized in Firefox 66 on all websites, but You can also set exceptions for sites that you visit primarily for video playback.

Mozilla had already warned developers in these terms:

We want to make sure web developers are aware of this new Firefox autoplay blocking feature.

Starting with Firefox 66 on desktop computers and Firefox for Android, Firefox will block audible video and audio files by default.

We only allow a site to play audio or video using the HTMLMediaElement API after a web page has had a user interaction to start the audio, such as when the user clicks a play button.

Blocking Autoplay of Videos

Any reading before the user has interacted with a page via mouse click, key press or touch event it is considered an automatic reading and will lock out if potentially audible.

Although the main competitor of Firefox, Chrome, started blocking some of the videos that autoplayed in version 66 last year, this feature is not as easy to use as the Mozilla solution.

By default, Chrome plays videos on over 1,000 popular sites that are whitelisted (therefore videos that are not in it are blocked if certain conditions are not met, including user interaction with the page) and silent autoplay).

There are some sites where users want audible audio and video recordings to be allowed.

When Firefox for Desktop blocks autoplay of audio or video, an icon appears in the URL bar.

Users can click the icon to access the site's information panel, where they can change the "AutoPlay" permission for this site, and change the default "Block" setting to "Allow".

Firefox will allow this site to autoplay media (video or audio) with sound on. This allows users to easily create their own whitelist of sites they trust to automatically read with sound.

In Firefox for Android, this implementation will replace the existing automatic read blocking implementation with the same behavior that will be used in the desktop version of Firefox.

Other improvements

Apart from the video features of Firefox 66, its other improvements are minor.

The Navigator now use scroll anchor to prevent a page's content from returning to the user at the beginning when the page is reloaded.

A new search field allows you to search in open tabs (accessible from the tab drop-down menu).

Finally, the latest version of Firefox also adds WebAuthn support for Windows Hello, thus taking the first step towards using Microsoft's biometric security standard to connect to compatible websites.

Mozilla indicates that fingerprints, facial recognition, PIN codes, and security keys will be supported.

As enables a simpler and more secure web-based passwordless experience.

Firefox supports web authentication for all desktop platforms since version 60, but Windows 10 is our first platform to support FIDO2's new "password-free" features for web authentication.

Mozilla is convinced that this API solves important security problems related to phishing, data breaches and attacks against text messages or other methods.s two-factor authentication, while significantly increasing usability (users don't have to manage dozens of increasingly complicated passwords).


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