Windows Browsers Firefox V47

Firefox 47: The Synced Tabs Sidebar & Flash-Free YouTube

Released in June 2016, Firefox 47 was a milestone update that focused on making your browsing life more portable and less dependent on aging plugins. For the Chasms.com community, this version is remembered as the release that finally took "Sync" out of the menus and put it front and center in a handy new sidebar.

The Synced Tabs Sidebar

Before version 47, finding tabs you had open on your phone or your other computer was a bit of a scavenger hunt.

• One-Click Access: Firefox 47 introduced a dedicated Synced Tabs sidebar. You could open it via the View menu or the sidebar button, instantly seeing a list of every tab open across all your devices.

• Quick Search: The sidebar included a search box at the top, allowing you to filter through dozens of open tabs across multiple devices to find that one specific page you were looking for.

A Better YouTube Experience (Without Flash)

Firefox 47 took a big step toward a faster, more secure web by changing how it handled video:

• HTML5 Fallback: If you didn't have the Adobe Flash plugin installed, Firefox 47 would automatically "trick" embedded YouTube videos into playing using the much more efficient HTML5 video player.

• VP9 Codec: For users with powerful computers, this version enabled the VP9 video codec, which allowed for higher-quality video streaming with significantly less data usage.

Premium Video and Privacy

• Widevine Support: This version added support for Google’s Widevine CDM on Windows. This allowed users to stream DRM-protected content from services like Amazon Video natively in the browser without needing Microsoft Silverlight.

• No-Cache on Back/Forward: For increased security, Firefox 47 allowed "no-cache" on back and forward navigations for HTTPS resources, ensuring your private data wasn't hanging around in the browser's memory longer than necessary.

• Latgalu Locale: Diversity was a focus too, with the addition of the Latgalu [ltg] language, spoken by over 160,000 people daily.

Power User Tools: about:performance

Firefox 47 introduced the about:performance page, a precursor to the modern Task Manager. It allowed users to see exactly which tabs or add-ons were eating up their system's memory and slowing down their browsing, giving the Chasms.com community more power to optimize their machines.