Andre Yoskowitz
13 May 2015 19:31
Mozilla has launched Firefox 38 this week for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Android, featuring a few notable updates in addition to the normal performance and stability fixes.
Firefox 38 has integrated Adobe Content Decryption Module (CDM) to add the ability to play DRM-wrapped content on Windows devices, and Mozilla explained the move to DRM: "We are enabling DRM in order to provide our users with the features they require in a browser and allow them to continue accessing premium video content. We don't believe DRM is a desirable market solution, but it's currently the only way to watch a sought-after segment of content."
In addition, all the releases are getting Ruby annotation support,, often requested in Japan where publications need the extra text to indicate a pronunciation or meaning of the sentence or characters. There were add-ons previously, but now the support is built-in natively.
The full rundown:
•New: New tab-based preferences.
•New: Ruby annotation support.
•New: Base for the next ESR release.
•Changed: autocomplete=off is no longer supported for username/password fields.
•Changed: URL parser avoids doing percent encoding when setting the Fragment part of the URL, and percent decoding when getting the Fragment in line with the URL spec.
•Changed: RegExp.prototype.source now returns "(?:)" instead of the empty string for empty regular expressions.
•Changed: Improved page load times via speculative connection warmup.
•HTML5: WebSocket now available in Web Workers.
•HTML5: BroadcastChannel API implemented.
•HTML5: Implemented srcset attribute andelement for responsive images.
•HTML5: Implemented DOM3 Events KeyboardEvent.code.
•HTML5: Mac OS X: Implemented a subset of the Media Source Extensions (MSE) API to allow native HTML5 playback on YouTube.
•HTML5: Implemented Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) API to support encrypted HTML5 video/audio playback (Windows Vista or later only).
•HTML5: Automatically download Adobe Primetime Content Decryption Module (CDM) for DRM playback through EME (Windows Vista or later only).
•Developer: Optimized-out variables are now visible in Debugger UI.
•Developer: XMLHttpRequest logs in the web console are now visually labeled and can be filtered separately from regular network requests.
•Developer: WebRTC now has multistream and renegotiation support.
•Developer: copy command added to console.
•Fixed: Various security fixes.