Firefox 51 will be released later today, and as updates go it brings number of minor, miscellaneous improvements to the table.
Most notable, this update sees Firefox (finally) gain support for FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) playback in the browser, in both .flac and .ogg containers, as well as in MP4.
You’ll also see a warning displayed when a login page is loaded over a insecure connection; the browser now uses the 2D graphics library (Skia) for content rendering; and a new page zoom indicator shows in the URL bar when a page is not loaded at default level.
Other changes include:
- Ability to view passwords in the password prompt before saving
- Improved CPU and video performance for users without GPU acceleration
- Support saving passwords for forms without ‘submit’ events
- Added support for WebGL 2 (activated by default)
- Clipboard access for Web Extensions (the replacement for Mozilla Add-ons)
You can read a full list of the changes shipping in this release on the Mozilla website.
Download Firefox 51
Mozilla Firefox 51 is a free download available for Windows, macOS and Linux. It hasn’t been formally released at the time of writing, but it is available to download from the Mozilla FTP.
Ubuntu users receive Mozilla Firefox updates through the Update Manager. You’ll be prompted to upgrade to Firefox 51 at some point over the next few days.
If you’re running a different Linux distribution, or simple want the latest release sooner, you’ll find runtimes available from the Firefox website.