It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of Mozilla Corporation.
- I don't like the way they take and spend money.
- I don't like how they are pivoting to become an Aritifical Intelligence company.
- And I don't like their commitment to censorship of those they disagree with.
But I've gotta give credit where credit is due: Their latest release of Firefox (version 120) has some pretty cool little features.
Case in point, the new "Copy Link Without Site Tracking" feature:
Right click on a link, and copy it... without including any of the site tracking URL additions.
Brilliant. Simple and obvious... but brilliant. Can't wait for other browsers to copy this feature.
A few other features that jump out as interesting... that are, weirdly, only for Germans.
- "Firefox has enabled Cookie Banner Blocker by default in private windows for all users in Germany. Firefox will now auto-refuse cookies and dismiss annoying cookie banners for supported sites."
- "Firefox has enabled URL Tracking Protection by default in private windows for all users in Germany."
Those are weird... because they're only in Germany. Turns out Germany some weird laws relating to cookies and popups on web pages. Which means the Firefox experience for Germans is growing distinctly different from the experience of... everyone else. Which is funky.
In "this applies to people outside of Germany" news...
- "Firefox now supports a setting (in Preferences → Privacy & Security) to enable Global Privacy Control. With this opt-in feature, Firefox informs the websites that the user doesn’t want their data to be shared or sold."
This one is kind of adorable. It basically is a feature that tells websites to be nice and not track you. Which, of course, websites will mostly just ignore... thus rendering this feature all but pointless. It's a nice sentiment, at any rate.
All-in-all Firefox 120.0 is, despite having an absolutely ridiculous version number, a fairly decent release of the once-popular web browser which is slowly heading towards the trashbin of history (with less than 3% marketshare and the stated goal of Mozilla becoming an AI company).
That "Copy Link Without Site Tracking" feature alone makes this a worthwhile upgrade.
Heck. If Mozilla keeps adding useful new features like that? At some point Firefox marketshare might rise to 4%. Maybe even 4.1%!
Snarkiness aside... seriously. Good job to the Firefox team on this one!
It should be noted that Firefox is not the first to implement this sort of feature. Brave added a "Copy Clean Link" contextual feature nearly a year ago. Just the same... when Mozilla does something right, it's worth calling out.
