Firefox 85 for Android released with DRM stream support and usability improvements

[harlan4096]

Mozilla released Firefox 85.0 Stable for all supported desktop operating systems last week. Firefox 85 is the first stable version of Firefox without Flash support, and Mozilla did add a number of usability features to give users better control over certain areas of the browser.

Firefox 85.0 Android is now available as well. The new version of Firefox for Android is already available via Google Play and may be pushed to user devices via the built-in updating functionality. A tap on Menu > Settings > About Firefox displays the installed version on the device.

The official release notes of Firefox 85.0 for Android lack information; the only changes listed on the official page are support for network partitioning, a feature that improves privacy, and security fixes. The Firefox 85 Security Advisory Page lists a total of 13 different vulnerabilities. The highest severity rating is high, the second-highest after critical.

Firefox 85.0 for Android includes capabilities to play DRM-protected media on sites such as Netflix or Amazon Prime. The browser uses Google Widevine and displays a prompt when a site attempts to play DRM protected media by default.

Firefox users may change the default behavior under Menu > Settings > Site permissions. The preference DRM-controlled content supports "allowed" and "blocked" besides the default "ask to allow". Blocked will block any requests outright, allow permits it without user interaction.

The latest version for Android includes a bunch of usability improvements:

• Sites added to a Collection will be loaded when they are opened. Previously, Firefox loaded the content from cache but that was problematic for sites with content that changes regularly as old content might be displayed when opened from a Collection link.
  
• Memory optimizations designed to reduce or eliminate the unwanted effect that sites are reloaded when users switch between tabs in the browser.
  
• Top sites can be selected directly, the extra click is no longer required.
  
• Supported extensions can be installed from Mozilla's official add-ons website.
  

Closing Words

Work on the new version of Firefox for Android continues. The addition of DRM-media playback closes a gap between Firefox and other browsers such as Google Chrome; users who don't want it can set its preference to block to do so.
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