In recent times, Mozilla seems to be busy improving Firefox in whatever way possible. Take, for instance, better support for Google's web services, or the previous Firefox 117 release.
And now we have yet another release in the form of the Firefox 118 release, that finally introduces privacy-focused translations natively, doing away with the need for workarounds.
Let's dive in and see what this release has to offer.
🆕 Firefox 118: What's New?
Firefox 118, like previous releases, has a lot to offer. Some key highlights include:
- Native In-Browser Translations
- Improvements for Google Meet
- Important Security Fixes
We will first focus on the translation feature, then the rest.
Native In-Browser Translations
Well, after some time of testing, Firefox finally has native support for in-browser translations. We checked this out in the Firefox 117 release, but it was not available by default.
Now, it's just a few clicks away, as shown in the video above. You just have to go into the hamburger menu, then click on 'Translate page', then select the translate from and to languages and click on 'Translate'.
For switching back to the original language, just click on the translation logo in the address bar, and click on 'Show original'.
In my experience, this feature runs into some issues when there are multiple languages on the same webpage, and there's no support for translating text from images or videos.
But that figures, as the translation widget still says 'Beta' on it. I am certain that the developers will push updates for improving its functionality in the coming months.
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Ankush Das
🛠️ Other Changes and Improvements
As for the rest of the under-the-hood refinements:
- Video effects and background blur are now available for Firefox users on Google Meet.
- Firefox suggest users will now be shown browser add-on suggestions in the address bar. (US Only).
- The visibility of fonts on websites has been restricted to only system fonts, to stop font fingerprinting in private browsing windows.
- Web audio in Firefox now makes use of the FDLIBM math library to improve privacy.
- Various security fixes.
You can also go through the official release notes to dive further into some technical bits.
📥 Get Mozilla Firefox 118
Firefox 118 is available to download from the official website as a .tar.bz2 package, and as a Flatpak from the Flathub store.
In either case, you can also try Firefox's Snap package.
For existing installations: You can update it by searching for 'Update', in the settings menu, and clicking on 'Check for Updates' or check for system updates to get it from the repositories.
💬 Are you excited about the new translation feature? What else do you expect from Firefox updates in the near future? Let us know in the comments below!
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