Firefox 86 brings picture-in-picture number, full cookie protection

Mozilla Firefox 86 was released yesterday, and the browser is now available for download and installation for all major operating systems, including Human. Besides the usual slew of bug fixes and updates under the hood, the new design offers several unusual features – multiple image support for viewing videos, strict separation of cookies (optional), which Mozilla does. Commercial brings with full protection of cookies.

Take a Firefox 86 Tour

Firefox 86 became the default check on mozilla.org on Tuesday – but as a user of Ubuntu 20.04, I didn’t want to just leave the repositories managed by Canonical to test the new version. This is a unique scenario to really excel – to provide you with a container version of an application, which can be easily installed but ensures that your “real” operating system is not disturbed.

In the end, the Firefox snap channel did not receive a notification that the default was 86 – the new default. latest/default snap is still in frame 85. To get the new version I had to snap refresh firefox --channel=latest/candidate.

When the new version was installed as a binary, the next step was to get it to work, which could be much easier. The binary produces separate Firefox code in the Ubuntu launcher, but I don’t know of any way to easily differentiate the system code. firefox And the newly installed duo firefox. After my frustration and failure I finally fell into the station and turned it straight on giving full command /snap/firefox/current/firefox.

Multiple photo mode

In December 2019, Firefox introduced frame-by-frame mode – an additional coverage control for videos from the built-in browser that allows the user to separate the video from the browser. After logging out, no video window – no title bar, minimum / maximum / closed, etc.

PiP mode allows users who aggregate windows – automatically or manually – to watch said video while consuming minimal screen space.

The Firefox 86 concept introduces multiple PIP instances simultaneously. Before the 86 was built, damaging the PiP controller in a second video would reconnect the first video to its Home tab and disconnect the second. Now you can have as many floating and separated video windows as you want, which can turn any screen into something reminiscent of a security DVR screen.

The main thing to understand about Multi-PiP is that the main tabs should stay open – if you switch from the main tab to an existing PiP window, the PiP window itself will also close. Once I found out, I had no problem surrounding my Firefox 86 window with five separate video windows simultaneously.

Complete protection of cookies

In December, we reported the introduction of Firefox 85 Cache Sharing – a program that prevents third parties from understanding where you are when you are not connected to the Internet. Firefox 86 has raised the bar again, with a program Mozilla calls “Complete Cookie Protection.”

In short, Total Cookie Protection limits the ability of third parties to monitor Internet traffic through embedded elements such as scripts or iframes. This prevents cookies from Facebook, Amazon and others. From “I am following you on the web.”

In theory, cookies were really strict per site – so contoso.com was unable to identify or read which cookies belonged to facebook.com, and vice versa. In practice, however, if contoso.com incorporates active Facebook elements into its site, the user’s browser treats those elements as belonging to Facebook itself. This means that Facebook can determine the value of the cookie while browsing contoso.com, then replay the value later when you are already on Facebook (or when you are on other completely independent sites, which also include Facebook content). .

Absolute cookie protection corrects this flaw by creating separate “cookie jars” based on the identity of the URL already in the address bar. When this feature is enabled, a Facebook script running on contoso.com can still set and read a Facebook cookie, but that cookie is only found in the contoso.com cookies jar file. When the user himself browses directly to facebook.com, later on, Facebook cannot read, write or even detect the presence of the Facebook cookie inside the contoso.com cookie jar, or vice versa.

This is by no means a miracle cure – for example, it does nothing to block scripts from Facebook, Amazon, etc. To download data about your trips on the Internet for him The servers for your profile are there. But it at least prevents them from using your computer’s storage to do the dirty work for them.

No, other TCP

If you want to enable full cookie protection (and we really want Mozilla to choose a name that doesn’t start TCP), you must first set Enhanced Tracking Protection to a strict profile. To do this, click on the security icon to the left of the address bar (it appears when browsing a physical website, not visible on the blank New Tab screen) and click Security Settings. From here you can change your ETP profile from Standard to Strict.

Total Cookie Protection has several exceptions (possibly encryption software) for third-party login providers – for example, logging into YouTube with a personal Gmail account still allows visiting Gmail.com in another tab to instantly download incoming mail unnecessarily . separately.

Mozilla warns that the enhanced tracking profile can completely break some sites – and we believe Mozilla is – but in our brief review, we didn’t encounter any issues. We had no problem downloading and accessing Gmail, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and a number of other important sites.

Saving images from AirDog / Flickr