Firefox Has Turned 100: See What's New

Mozilla has delivered quite a lot in the 100th version of their famous web browser.

It's been over a month since (March 2022) Google released Chrome 100, and now Mozilla has followed suit. Firefox 100 is finally here with some interesting new features and enhancements. The latest version of Firefox has been rolled out across Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS platforms.

Below are some of the most notable features Firefox users might find worth checking out.

Subtitles Support for Picture-in-Picture

Firefox now supports video subtitles in Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode. If you don't know by now, PiP is the in-page video player that lets you watch videos inside a floating window, on top of other windows. This feature is unique since Chrome still lacks support for it.

As of now, subtitles support is available on YouTube, Prime Video, and Netflix. Additionally, any website that uses WebVTT (Web Video Text Track) format will also get this feature. It includes the likes of Coursera.org, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and many more.

Language and Spell Checking

When you install and run Firefox for the first time, it will detect if the browser and operating system language match. If not, Firefox will prompt users to choose which language they want for their browser.

Firefox can also check spelling from multiple language dictionaries now. So, if you're like me and use more than one language on your system, you're in luck. Use the text field's context menu to enable additional language support for the spell checker.

Improved Video Playback

Firefox 100 brings HDR support to Mac for the first time. Users who are on macOS 11+ can immerse in high-fidelity video playbacks. Of course, you'll still need an HDR-compatible device. Plus, you won't have to adjust any settings to enable HDR. But make sure battery preference has "optimize video streaming while on battery" disabled.

Moreover, this version also enables hardware-accelerated AV1 video decoding on Windows. Though this feature is limited to a few supported GPUs(Intel Gen 11+, AMD RDNA 2 Excluding Navi 24, GeForce 30). Finally, video overlay has been enabled for Windows on Intel GPUs, resulting in low battery usage during playbacks.

Color Scheme Adjustments

The latest version of Firefox allows users to choose preferred color schemes for websites. There is a new "website appearance" section accessible in the system settings menu. Users can set their dark mode preference for websites here. You can choose from four options: system setting, Firefox setting, light, or dark.

Starting from macOS 11, Firefox only rasterizes fonts once per window. This results in faster tab opening and increases the speed of switching between tabs. Version 100 also improves the performance of deeply nested grid elements.

General Improvements and Fixes

By default, the scrollbars on Windows and Linux don't take up space anymore. Linux users can change this behavior in the Settings, whereas Firefox will follow the system settings on Windows. But you can always customize the scrollbar style in Firefox.

Mozilla has also improved the fairness between painting and event handling, which improves performance in some scenarios like handling the volume slider in Twitch.

Firefox now enables credit card autofill and capture for users residing in the United Kingdom. It also ignores less restricted referrer policies for preventing privacy leaks. In terms of security fixes, Firefox 100 rolls out patches to several high-impact flaws that could give attackers access to user data.

Firefox Catches Chrome, in Version Number

Firefox 100 comes amidst a new era for web browsers. Google's Chrome and Microsoft Edge have already rolled out their 100th versions. So, it's time to see if the latest version works in favor of Firefox, which is already losing users due to Chrome's meteoric rise.

Plus, there's growing concern that three-digit version numbers for browsers could break some of your favorite websites. So, it'll be interesting to see how Mozilla handles this issue.