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Firefox 51 is out, here’s what’s new

A new version of the popular Mozilla Firefox browser was released today. Here are the key changes you need to know about for this release.

Firefox Version 51If you already have Firefox installed, you can press the Alt key on the keyboard to show the menu and select Help - About. This will make Firefox check for updates and download the new version.

Firefox Help About Firefox Applying Update

Otherwise the browser can be downloaded from Mozilla's FTP server using the following link:

Download Firefox

The key changes of this release are as follows.

Zoom level indicator

Starting with version 51, the browser includes a new zoom level indicator in the address bar. See the following screenshot.Firefox 51 Zoom Level Indicator

Removed Battery Time report

As you may already know, the battery time precision feature can be potentially used to track your activity on the Internet. So Firefox 51 won't report this value to any web site. This prevents sites from using your battery information as a fingerprint.

A refined Save Password promptFirefox 51 Password Prompt

The Save Password dialog was updated in this release. The browser now has the ability to show the saved password. You need to tick a special checkbox under the password field.

Automatically mute inactive tabs

Firefox 51 will automatically mute inactive tabs. This can be useful if you open a tab with some embedded audio or video that plays in the background. It won't play multimedia content untill you switch to that tab.

You can learn about all the smaller changes in the full change log at the official announcement.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

2 thoughts on “Firefox 51 is out, here’s what’s new”

  1. Is it possible that Firefox will become a Chromium and therefore switch to the Blink engine that Opera and Chrome uses? Does this mean we might see a different Firefox browser in the future and Chrome extensions might be compatible with Firefox?

    1. I not sure about the engine, but they are working on WebExtensions API, which should make possible to use Chrome extensions in Firefox.

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