14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox has just reached another milestone, as version 100 is now available for download on all supported desktop platforms.
Needless to say, given it’s such a big release, Firefox 100 comes with lots of improvements, including support for captions or subtitles on YouTube, Prime Video, and Netflix when watching the videos in Picture-in-Picture mode.
Mozilla says that beginning with this version, when you run the browser for the first time, Firefox automatically checks the language that’s enabled on your device. And if it doesn’t match the language of the browser, the app can automatically prompt the user to choose between the two languages and therefore decide which one to use.
The built-in spell checker also does its magic in multiple languages starting with this update, and users can enable this behavior from the text field’s context menu.
Lots of other improvements
There are also additional video improvements for Windows and Mac.
“Hardware accelerated AV1 video decoding is enabled on Windows with supported GPUs (Intel Gen 11+, AMD RDNA 2 Excluding Navi 24, GeForce 30). Installing the AV1 Video Extension from the Microsoft Store may also be required,” Mozilla explains.
“HDR video is now supported in Firefox on Mac—starting with YouTube! Firefox users on macOS 11+ (with HDR-compatible screens) can enjoy higher-fidelity video content. No need to manually flip any preferences to turn HDR video support on—just make sure battery preferences are NOT set to ‘optimize video streaming while on battery.’”
As it’s the case with every new version of Firefox, this version also comes with lots of other tweaks and improvements. For instance, beginning with this update, the Firefox installer aimed at Windows versions is only signed with SHA-256, as part of Microsoft’s transition from SHA-1. Needless to say, if you want to install Firefox on a Windows 7 device, you’re going to need to update KB4474419 to enable SHA-256 on the device.