Mozilla Firefox Test Pilot Three Experiments

One of the great services Mozilla provides to Firefox users is Examination Pilot, a plan that allows anyone to test new features earlier they are baked into the browser. To participate, users simply install Mozilla’s costless Test Pilot plugin, hit the little spaceship button located in the superlative-right corner, and enable “experiments” such as Activity Stream, Tab Center, No More 404s, and Universal Search.

At present Mozilla has added iii more experiments for lab rats to play with, and nosotros got an early superlative at them.

Folio Shot

First up is Page Shot, a Firefox tool for taking screenshots within the browser. A pair of scissors push will announced next to the Test Pilot spaceship icon, and when clicked, the main browser window dims and a “My Shots” button appears in the upper right-manus corner. Users then simply click on the darkened page to take a screenshot of a large region, or click and elevate the mouse cursor to select a custom window.

The region-based function doesn’t seem like information technology should piece of work, but information technology does. Click on a general area, and the feature will automatically create a box effectually a large space on the page. Click near a specific paragraph, and the feature will simply box in those words. The box can actually be contradistinct using a mouse, thus users could essentially pick anywhere on the folio and shrink or expand the box accordingly to cover what they desire to save. Within the box is a Salve push (along with Abolish) that brings upwards a separate tab for sharing the image, downloading information technology to the difficult drive, or sending information technology to the trash.

The click-and-elevate option is rather straightforward. Create a custom selection box anywhere within the browser. Again, the image can be shared (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and email), or stored locally on the hard drive. If users don’t manually salve the image, Firefox will concur onto it for 14 days by default, or upwards to one month, depending on the user’s preference. Saved images can exist accessed by hitting the “My Shots” push after clicking on the scissors push, or by going to the Downloads folder in File Explorer.

Min Vid

Adjacent upwards we have Min Vid, a feature that mimics a picture-in-picture manner by playing a video in the foreground while users continue to browse the Spider web. This doesn’t install a button on the browser’s toolbar, appears when moving the mouse over a video, such as a replay of Monday dark’s Presidential Debate residing on YouTube.

After moving the cursor over a video, a motion picture-in-picture button appears in the meridian-left corner. This will load a minor window in the bottom-left of the screen, assuasive viewers to move on from the source page and visit other websites while the video continues to play. Move the mouse over this little window to reveal a Play button, a book slider, a Move button to reposition the window anywhere on the desktop, a Minimize push, a Shut push button, and a “Send To” button that takes the viewer back to the source page.

What’s really keen about this feature is that Firefox users visiting the likes of YouTube tin head to the main page, move the cursor over one of the video thumbnails, and click the picture-in-picture icon to load upwards the associated video without having to launch the video’south source page. It’s an awesome manner to preview earlier you dive into the whole matter.

Tracking Protection

Finally, nosotros have the new Tracking Protection feature. Because it’s experimental, information technology won’t work with all sites. In fact, Mozilla provides means for users to tell the company whether a specific page works well or breaks with Tracking Protection switched on.

The service appears as a shield icon on the right side of the Awesome Bar, provided in purple when toggled on, and crossed out when turned off.

Tracking Protection substantially removes ads from the page. The feature originally appeared in Firefox 42 for desktop, and Firefox for Android, but just in the Private Browsing manner. Now, information technology’south available for apply in regular tabs.

The feature blocks web page content that is loaded up from other domains that rails users across multiple sites. Sometimes this can be problematic, given a folio layout may require an advertisement’southward presence on-screen to keep the overall structure intact.

“Firefox will ship with a list of sites which have been identified as engaging in cantankerous-site tracking of users. When tracking protection is enabled, Firefox will block content from sites in the list,” Mozilla states. “Sites that runway users are well-nigh commonly third-party advertising and analytics sites.”

On the bright side, Firefox test subjects volition have less to load, and won’t see advertisements tailored to their browsing habits that are spread out beyond the internet.

And More…

There are 4 additional Firefox features to exam if you’re in the experimental mood. The No More than 404s characteristic is powered past the Wayback Car, and volition pull up a saved version of a website if the current one is unavailable. Tab Eye shoves all the browser tabs to the side, and Universal Search will showtime throwing in suggestions when users type into the Awesome Bar.

As for the Action Stream experiment, Firefox will store all top sites, bookmarks, and the user’s recent history in each new tab. Even more than, these pages will provide this information in a timeline so that users can visually bank check out where they recently trolled on the net. If users need to comprehend their tracks, they tin can only click on the Activity Stream button in the toolbar and manually delete each unwanted detail from the history.

All seven experiments are bachelor now for Firefox users participating in the Exam Airplane pilot program. Unwanted experiments can exist disabled by clicking on the Exam Pilot button, clicking on the experiment, and and then clicking the “Disable” push on the resulting page.

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