Mozilla has released Firefox 71 as the last stable release of this year, 2019. It is a major release and comes with a lot of new and improved features.
New features like Kiosk mode for businesses, picture in picture mode and native MP3 encoding will keep Firefox in the competition. Firefox enables blocking trackers by default which improves security and overall browsing performance.
Updating to the latest version of Firefox
If you are a regular Firefox user and have already installed Firefox on your system, you can upgrade Firefox to the latest version by going to Menu –> Help –> About Firefox. This will open the About window and Firefox will automatically check for a new version.
If a new version is available, it will be downloaded and installed automatically and you will get a button “Restart to update Firefox“.
Press [skey k=”Alt + R”] to restart Firefox.
After restarting, you will get the new version of Firefox 71.
How to download Firefox 71 Offline Installers (All languages)
To download the offline installer of Firefox 71 in any language, follow the steps below:
- Go to the Firefox download page.
- Make sure the first option is selected as Firefox.
- Select your preferred installer. Options include Windows 32-bit and 64-bit(Exe or MSI), Linux 32-bit and 64-bit and macOS.
- Select your preferred language. The default is English (US).
- Press the Download Now button.
This will download Firefox 71 offline installer. You can install it by running the setup file.
What’s new in Firefox 71
Now that you are running Firefox 71, let’s quickly go through the new and improved features in this version so that you can use them to their fullest.
New kiosk mode for presentations
Kiosk mode is the full-screen mode of Firefox without any keyboard controls. This is like running Firefox as PowerPoint in presentation mode.
Firefox already has a full-screen mode which can be activated by pressing the [skey k=”F11″] key. But kiosk mode is different from the full-screen mode in the sense that kiosk mode does not display the header controls window which is available for display in full-screen mode.
Kiosk mode is disabled by default. You can enable it by running Firefox with additional parameters:
"C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe" --kiosk
New viewer for encryption certificates
Configuration page changes
The latest version of Firefox comes with a revamped about:config page. The new layout is easier to navigate and update. But some people are still not finding it very helpful.
To open the configuration page, go to Firefox and write about:config on the address bar.
If you don’t like the new configuration page, you can use the old version by opening the following from Firefox address bar:
chrome://global/content/config.xul
Lockwise password manager improvements
Firefox comes with its built-in password manager called Lockwise. From Firefox 71, Lockwise will also detect subdomains and fill in the credentials of the main domain as it is the case with most cloud service providers.
Some people will not like this feature. If it’s not what you want, you can disable it with the following steps:
- Go to Firefox address bar and enter about:config. This will open Firefox’s advanced configuration.
- Search for the value signon.includeOtherSubdomainsInLookup
- Set the value to False to disable this sub-domain to domain linking behavior.
Native mp3 decoding in Windows, Mac, and Linux
Now Firefox 71 supports playing of mp3 files natively. Earlier, Firefox had to rely on the Operating System for supporting playing mp3 files. This was problematic especially for Linux users who don’t have mp3 support out of the box.
Now users will be able to play audio in Firefox even if the base Operating System doesn’t support it.
Picture in Picture mode
Picture in Picture mode finally comes to Firefox which is neat. Google Chrome has supported this feature for ages. Firefox 71 comes with picture in picture mode for Windows only. macOS and Linux support will be added to Firefox 72. If you are a macOS or Linux user, you will need to wait for a few more months to use this feature.
If you want to read more about the new and improved features in Firefox 71, you can read the Firefox 71 release notes here.
If you are a developer, you can read more about Firefox 71 for developers documentation.
What are your thoughts about Firefox 71? Please share your experiences with us in the comments below.
1 comment
Win10Geek
Firefox 71 comes packaged with ffvpx which is part of ffmpeg. They include code of libvpx within Firefox 71 which enables native audio. I thought someone would be interested in the tech details :-)