While Firefox's 50 milestone failed to introduce any major features to the open-source, free and cross-platform web browser used by millions of people worldwide, it looks like Mozilla has some big plans for the next major release.

That's right, you've probably just installed Firefox 50.0 on your personal computer or mobile device to enjoy a better web browsing experience, but Mozilla's developers struggling day and night to improve the Web have begun work on Firefox 51.0, which is now available for public testing in a Beta form.

Hoping that Mozilla's initial plans for Firefox 51.0 won't fade away before the final version hits the streets, which should happen on January 24, 2017, we'll be able to finally enjoy support for the WebGL 2 3D rendering API, as well as better video performance on platforms without GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) acceleration.

The latter means less CPU (Central Processing Unit) usage on slow PCs and a much-improved full-screen experience. Other than that, Firefox 51.0 promises to finally implement support for FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) playback and allow saving of passwords for forms that don't offer "submit" events.

Skia to be used for Web content rendering on Linux

Now, Firefox 51.0 will also be an exciting release for users of Linux-based operating systems, as Mozilla plans to use the open-source Skia 2D graphics library for content rendering, which should greatly improve our web browsing experience. Furthermore, Firefox 51.0 will display the zoom indicator in the address bar for non-default levels.

It also looks like process separation (e10s) will be supported on Windows 10 touch screen devices, as well as systems that have accessibility tools installed, and users will be able to view passwords from the prompt before saving them. Unfortunately, starting with Firefox 51.0, Mozilla plans on dropping the Belarusian (be) locale.

If all this sounds attractive, which for us it surely does, you can download the Mozilla Firefox 51.0 Beta builds for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems right now from our website. However, please try to note that this is a pre-release version and it should not be used as your daily driver.