Firefox 42 also comes with better Private Browsing features

Nov 2, 2015 16:54 GMT  ·  By

Mozilla has made Firefox 42 available for download, and despite an official announcement still being in the works, you should definitely not wait any longer and manually download and install the browser right now.

While most of the changes in the Firefox codebase are bug-related, the browser comes with some eye-catching features to make the browser stand out.

Mute individual tabs with the push of a button

Probably the most important new feature introduced in the browser's core is the user's ability to mute individual tabs via a speaker icon added to each Firefox tab from where audio is being played back.

The indicator is shown regardless if audio is coming from Flash or HTML5 apps, and will allow users to mute auto-playing movies, YouTube or Vimeo videos playing in the background, and above all, annoying ads that start out of nowhere and scare the bejesus out of you or anybody near your computer.

While the tab audio muting indicator is the cherry that sits atop the Firefox 42 pie, there are other notable new additions as well.

Better control over who can track you online

One of those is represented by the improvements made to Firefox's Private Browsing feature, which now features special Tracking Protection tools that have the ability to block certain Web elements that could be used to record user behavior across sites.

On top of this, Mozilla's engineers also added a new Control Center that contains site security and privacy controls, much easier to manage and navigate for newbies or non-technical users.

If you want to learn more, we already wrote a longer and more in-depth article on this new Control Center while it was added to the Developer Edition (Firefox alpha) back in August.

Other less flashy additions, but useful nevertheless, include newly added support for debugging websites in Firefox via WiFi connections, IPv6 support in WebRTC, better support for the latest JavaScript features (ES6), and Media Source Extension support for HTML5 video on all sites.

As usual, you can download Firefox 42 for Mac, Windows, and Linux from Softpedia.

Firefox 42 now provides a new Private Browsing Control Center
Firefox 42 now provides a new Private Browsing Control Center
Firefox 42 Changelog

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Firefox 42 adds tab muting capabilities
Firefox 42 now provides a new Private Browsing Control Center
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