Vivaldi 2.3 Has Arrived, Security Flaw Discovered in LibreOffice and OpenOffice, Firefox 66 to Stop Loud Videos from Playing Automatically, Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces Released and Flowblade 2.0 Is Now Available

News briefs for February 6, 2019.

Vivaldi's first release of 2019 arrived this morning. Version 2.3 introduces "a unique way to 'auto-stack' tabs that streamline your workflow even more. We've also added new ways to access websites in the Address Field and made overall improvements to navigate and interact with the Web quicker". You can download Vivaldi from here.

Security researchers have discovered a remote code execution vulnerability in LibreOffice on both Linux and Windows, Softpedia News reports. Evidently "the flaw can be exploited with just a malicious ODT document that includes code for running a macro with a mouse-hover action." Patches have been released, so update to the latest versions now (6.0.7 and 6.1.3). OpenOffice is vulnerable to the attack as well—specifically OpenOffice 4.1.6, and according to the Softpedia post, there is no fix yet.

Firefox 66 will stop videos containing audio from playing automatically. According to Ars Technica, "by default, any site that tries to play video with audio will have that video playback blocked", and "Firefox users will be able to override this block on a site-by-site basis, so those sites where autoplay is inoffensive can have it re-enabled." Mozilla plans to release Firefox 66 on March 19th.

Red Hat has released Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces, "a Kubernetes-native, browser-based IDE". ZDNet reports that "CodeReady is based on the open-source Eclipse Che IDE. It also includes formerly proprietary features from Red Hat's Codenvy acquisition." In addition, the IDE is optimized for Red Hat OpenShift, and Red Hat claims that "CodeReady Workspaces is the first IDE, which runs inside a Kubernetes cluster."

Flowblade 2.0, the open-source GTK3-based Linux video editor, was released this week. According to Phoronix, version 2.0 comes with "a new custom GTK3 theme and configurable workflow items to better cater to different users, a number of tools from keyframes to cut. Flowblade 2.0 also features better tool-tip coverage, various GUI updates, a transform compositor, and other changes." See the release notes and the GitHub repo for more information.

Jill Franklin is an editorial professional with more than 17 years experience in technical and scientific publishing, both print and digital. As Executive Editor of Linux Journal, she wrangles writers, develops content, manages projects, meets deadlines and makes sentences sparkle. She also was Managing Editor for TUX and Embedded Linux Journal, and the book Linux in the Workplace. Before entering the Linux and open-source realm, she was Managing Editor of several scientific and scholarly journals, including Veterinary Pathology, The Journal of Mammalogy, Toxicologic Pathology and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. In a previous life, she taught English literature and composition, managed a bookstore and tended bar. When she’s not bugging writers about deadlines or editing copy, she throws pots, gardens and reads.

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