Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances(blog.mozilla.org)
blog.mozilla.org
Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/03/19/todays-firefox-aims-to-reduce-your-online-annoyances/
573 comments
> With this update, Firefox is introducing scroll anchoring, which ensures that you’re not going to bounce around on the page as these slow-loading ads load.
While I love the idea of videos not automatically playing, I'm almost more excited for the scroll anchoring feature.
While I love the idea of videos not automatically playing, I'm almost more excited for the scroll anchoring feature.
Same. Have you ever tried to click a link only to accidentally click something else because the page won't stop loading? It's infuriating.
This happens to me every single day on the Windows 10 start menu and on my iPhone using the swipe-down search on the Home screen.
Why in God's green Earth the developers who implemented these don't cache obvious local results (like app names) to quickly return them is beyond me, and why the position of the results has to move after the fact is even more maddening
I typed "Arro" for an app I use last night, it took a moment to show up and when I went to click it, the web results populated so I accidentally clicked on "arroz con gandules". Sounds lovely, but I am certainly not expecting that to be the autocomplete...
Why in God's green Earth the developers who implemented these don't cache obvious local results (like app names) to quickly return them is beyond me, and why the position of the results has to move after the fact is even more maddening
I typed "Arro" for an app I use last night, it took a moment to show up and when I went to click it, the web results populated so I accidentally clicked on "arroz con gandules". Sounds lovely, but I am certainly not expecting that to be the autocomplete...
Had the same problem on my iPhone. I turned off Siri for app search (Settings / Siri & Search / Suggestions for Search) and now the results are instant. (And local to my phone, so no internet-sourced results, but I’m fine with that.)
How Microsoft managed to ruin the Start Menu, on the other hand, is amazing. I had to reinstall a computer because some Cortana corruption had made it impossible to launch apps from the Start Menu’s search results. Even though I disabled Cortana. Incredible.
How Microsoft managed to ruin the Start Menu, on the other hand, is amazing. I had to reinstall a computer because some Cortana corruption had made it impossible to launch apps from the Start Menu’s search results. Even though I disabled Cortana. Incredible.
How Microsoft managed to ruin the Start Menu, on the other hand, is amazing.
My Windows 10 start menu lags. Press windows key or click on it, no response for a good ten seconds or more.
I have this on my work machine, a previous install, my home machine, a Surface Book, a remote desktop server on Windows 2016.
And yet, I've never seen anyone else talking about it. I can't believe I'm the only one who has this "my start menu has paged out to 5400rpm disk, then powered the disk down" experience.
My Windows 10 start menu lags. Press windows key or click on it, no response for a good ten seconds or more.
I have this on my work machine, a previous install, my home machine, a Surface Book, a remote desktop server on Windows 2016.
And yet, I've never seen anyone else talking about it. I can't believe I'm the only one who has this "my start menu has paged out to 5400rpm disk, then powered the disk down" experience.
Same here. Sometimes I’ll click on it a good five or eight times before it comes up. When people say Windows 10 is good, I feel like they’re living in an alternate dimension.
I think you guys are the exceptions to the norm here, and not the norm.
I have too many computers at home, some verrry slow ones, and they all pop up the start menu within a second or two unless I've just booted the PC.
I work with a lot of people who use Windows 10 all day long, and I've never heard one of them ever complain about a slow start menu. Complaints about search results? Absolutely.
I suspect it's something you're installing, and I'm sure you'll deny that (and you very well could be right, I don't know) and these things are time consuming to diagnose, unfortunately.
I have too many computers at home, some verrry slow ones, and they all pop up the start menu within a second or two unless I've just booted the PC.
I work with a lot of people who use Windows 10 all day long, and I've never heard one of them ever complain about a slow start menu. Complaints about search results? Absolutely.
I suspect it's something you're installing, and I'm sure you'll deny that (and you very well could be right, I don't know) and these things are time consuming to diagnose, unfortunately.
Any sufficiently popular OS is probably going to suck for ~tens of thousands of users while at least hundreds of thousands more wonder what the fuss is about.
A quick search yielded:
https://www.tenforums.com/performance-maintenance/12860-wind... https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3doydz/windows_1... https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/windows-10-start-men... https://bradshacks.com/fix-start-menu-lag/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-10-second-fix-for-sluggish...
Maybe not the norm, but we're not the only ones. It's obviously an issue that exists.
A quick search yielded:
https://www.tenforums.com/performance-maintenance/12860-wind... https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3doydz/windows_1... https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/windows-10-start-men... https://bradshacks.com/fix-start-menu-lag/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-10-second-fix-for-sluggish...
Maybe not the norm, but we're not the only ones. It's obviously an issue that exists.
I think we need a full reset of user expectations. Menus taking 1-2 seconds is not okay!!
> I had to reinstall a computer because some Cortana corruption had made it impossible to launch apps from the Start Menu’s search results.
Microsoft is actually uncoupling Cortana to Windows Search/Start Menu in the next major release, so this should be less of a problem.
Microsoft is actually uncoupling Cortana to Windows Search/Start Menu in the next major release, so this should be less of a problem.
Try slowly typing in "Performance" in the Windows 10 start menu and watch the top result flip around pretty much at each key press...
Thank you for the Siri protip, that was one of my biggest frustrations with iOS (that + inability to take scrolling screenshots natively, similarly to how you can on Samsung Galaxy phones). For complete peace, I just wish there was a way to turn off all app suggestions in search at once, instead of flipping that switch in settings for every single app.
Better yet is when you type "Ar" looking for "Arrow" and get
1) Arrow
2) Arboles
3) Area
And then type another 'r' before you realize your result is there ("Arr") and as you go to select "Arrow" the auto-suggest results turn into
1) Array
2) Arrogant
3) Arrow
Like, how does adding the second 'r' make "Array" higher probability than "Arrow"?!
1) Arrow
2) Arboles
3) Area
And then type another 'r' before you realize your result is there ("Arr") and as you go to select "Arrow" the auto-suggest results turn into
1) Array
2) Arrogant
3) Arrow
Like, how does adding the second 'r' make "Array" higher probability than "Arrow"?!
Every time I click the share button in Android, the icons are in completely different order. Not last recently used, not alphabetically. Completely random.
Lol, I've noticed this as well.
Also it seems to use a very slow random number generator because it always takes a long time to populate the random list.
So stupid.
Also it seems to use a very slow random number generator because it always takes a long time to populate the random list.
So stupid.
That will teach you to pay attention. Heh!
Your not accepting the 1st suggestion (Arrow) when you typed "Ar" decreased the probability that that was the term you intended. The next suggestion factored in that you were probably looking for something else and bumped up other suggestions.
That’s a bad assumption. People often type faster than they can respond to changes on screen. Typing speed & muscle memory means I’m more likely to type “arr” than just “ar”. But I’m also likely to be thrown off by the search reshuffling as it expands.
Once an item matches the search, it should stay in place unless it’s invalidated by further typing. Reshuffling just adds needless friction.
Once an item matches the search, it should stay in place unless it’s invalidated by further typing. Reshuffling just adds needless friction.
This actually made me laugh with how tone-deaf it appears to be about how users normally interact with a search field. Is this response based on industry "knowledge"? How did this sort of thinking come about?
That would be such a stupid way to implement a search.
When you search you don't type letter by letter and inspect the suggestions after each keystroke. You type many letters and only then you inspect the suggestions/results.
When you search you don't type letter by letter and inspect the suggestions after each keystroke. You type many letters and only then you inspect the suggestions/results.
Machine learning
I can relate to this so much... It's just egregiously bad design
The iPhone search has been driving me crazy as well. Another one that always gets me is pressing a number in the recent calls list just after another call was ended.
You're absolutely right. The recent calls issue happens way too often. Nothing worse than calling your boss at 2am when you meant to call your wife or vice-versa...
This has happened too many times to me.
I often put the phone in my pocket after a call without pressing the sleep button, so the screen stays active, causing me to unknowingly "butt dial" random numbers, sometimes talking to other people while a confused/mischievous person on the call is listening in...
I often put the phone in my pocket after a call without pressing the sleep button, so the screen stays active, causing me to unknowingly "butt dial" random numbers, sometimes talking to other people while a confused/mischievous person on the call is listening in...
On iOS I randomly get this weird lag when I swipe down and start typing an app name. Sometimes it shows LOCAL apps and sometimes it... doesn't. For a while. WHY, Apple, WHY? You used to "JUST WORK"
On Android, whenever I want to copy something I have to wait a few seconds for the menu to fully load. Otherwise I end up tapping on the wrong icon. Quite irritating.
This is a good argument for empty place holders when loading dynamic content. Although some people don't like them, it is an easy way to prevent UX issues like this.
I'm pretty sure that A/B-testing shows an increase in ad engagement. Clearly, jumpy layouts must put users in a more positive, open mindset!
Oh my god. Sad thing is that I'm almost sure that mist have happened somewhere. Not that they came to the "jumpy layout is good" conclusion, but that maybe an accidentally slower version of the page lead to that result and they ended up with "hey this version makes users want to click ads more"!
[deleted]
Or all of the sites that have adopted a 'card' view. Gannett sites all have this terrible UX that if you click in the white space around an article, it closes the article and takes you to the home page. [0] Accidental clicks on white space shouldn't do anything!
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/tourney/2019/03/...
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/tourney/2019/03/...
Accidental clicks on white space shouldn't do anything!
They are racking up click-throughs.
Advertisers pay just as much for accidental clicks as intentional ones, so the site operator is incentivized to generate as many as possible. Being the dumbest morons ever to mo a ron, the advertisers don't understand that they're the marks in this particular con game.
Eventually they will get tired of paying for worthless clicks, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
They are racking up click-throughs.
Advertisers pay just as much for accidental clicks as intentional ones, so the site operator is incentivized to generate as many as possible. Being the dumbest morons ever to mo a ron, the advertisers don't understand that they're the marks in this particular con game.
Eventually they will get tired of paying for worthless clicks, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
>Eventually they will get tired of paying for worthless clicks
They'll just start paying less per click. A worse outcome for everyone, not just the bad players.
They'll just start paying less per click. A worse outcome for everyone, not just the bad players.
this has been happening to me recently on Google search, as cards load with info about the top results.
Anyone on Google reading this -- please either cut that out, or include css placeholders for content you expect your JS to load.
Both waiting longer for content to load and having to go back from clicking the wrong thing detract from the raison d'etre of fast and relevant search.
Anyone on Google reading this -- please either cut that out, or include css placeholders for content you expect your JS to load.
Both waiting longer for content to load and having to go back from clicking the wrong thing detract from the raison d'etre of fast and relevant search.
I was hoping to find someone else who mentioned this.
This catches me out regularly. I would not be surprised if a team at Google implemented this and immediately saw “increased engagement” from users in an AB test, so they locked it in permanently and considered it case closed, the science is in.
Scientism at its worst.
This catches me out regularly. I would not be surprised if a team at Google implemented this and immediately saw “increased engagement” from users in an AB test, so they locked it in permanently and considered it case closed, the science is in.
Scientism at its worst.
I'm constantly annoyed by that horrible feature too. It usually doesn't cause a misclick anymore, but it's really annoying that every time I go back to look a the next search result, the result moves once I've moved my cursor to the result I want to click.
I think I solved it by removing it in stylus:
#eobc_1,.r-i4KASL__ToPM,.r-iGs8q6iiSUas{ display:none !important; }
I think it was something like "other people also search for..." thing which poped up unexepectedly.
#eobc_1,.r-i4KASL__ToPM,.r-iGs8q6iiSUas{ display:none !important; }
I think it was something like "other people also search for..." thing which poped up unexepectedly.
Is there any use in removing these automatically-generated tags? They seem like something that might change the second Google's deployment pipeline pushes a new build (or even sooner).
Ublock origin has the :has and :xpath operators for cases like this.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Procedural-cosmetic-f...
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Procedural-cosmetic-f...
Do you mean like this? [0]
[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/OaQDY
[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/OaQDY
That whole series provided some great anti-patterns:
https://imgur.com/gallery/YU6EA
https://imgur.com/gallery/YU6EA
Using the NYT iPhone app on the subway is maddening. Every time you go in and out of cell coverage the whole app pauses while it waits to load ads that will never come. It is so frustrating that I am close to giving up on it entirely.
Newegg has been particularly bad with this in the past. Looks like they have fixed it now, but used to be that it would take a 0.5-2 seconds for their advertisement to load above the "search within", "only show newegg products, I'm not looking for an amazon experience", and "sort by" fields. Go to click on those (I always prefer "only newegg" instead of the default "all sellers"), and half the time I'd end up clicking on the advertisement when it loaded.
Makes me wish there was some sort of an understanding that: The thing I just clicked was somewhere else within the last 400ms, so click on what used to be there."
Makes me wish there was some sort of an understanding that: The thing I just clicked was somewhere else within the last 400ms, so click on what used to be there."
>and half the time I'd end up clicking on the advertisement when it loaded.
Just as planned
Just as planned
To be fair I find it with the web in general.
That site that you're about to reload because it isn't doing anything? Suddenly loads just as your finger is depressing the mouse button to reload. That JavaScript heavy site that has brought your pc to its knees? Works just as you've elected to kill the process.
I assume its a variant of Sods Law.
That site that you're about to reload because it isn't doing anything? Suddenly loads just as your finger is depressing the mouse button to reload. That JavaScript heavy site that has brought your pc to its knees? Works just as you've elected to kill the process.
I assume its a variant of Sods Law.
> That site that you're about to reload because it isn't doing anything? Suddenly loads just as your finger is depressing the mouse button to reload.
I dont think thats coincidence. More likely, the browser already has downloaded the page itself but is waiting for some resource before rendering it. If you reload, it renders what it has immediately.
I dont think thats coincidence. More likely, the browser already has downloaded the page itself but is waiting for some resource before rendering it. If you reload, it renders what it has immediately.
How does it know my finger is swiftly moving towards the "R" part of ctl-shift-R? :-) I swear that I sometimes see it render right as my finger is getting ready to contact R.
I don't think it's likely to have been "planned" deliberately, as the result is an annoyed user. I think it's the result of naive A/B testing, without examining the deeper reasons for the results. "Oh wow, clicks are up 50% with the new layout!"
Of course, if you did discover the true reason for the increase in your click rates, you'd probably stay quiet about it. So maybe it's a bit of both.
Of course, if you did discover the true reason for the increase in your click rates, you'd probably stay quiet about it. So maybe it's a bit of both.
It might be the result of developing it on a fast internet connection in the office where the ad loads up straight away.
> I'm almost more excited for the scroll anchoring feature.
If we could get this feature on mobile and desktop operating systems, I would be soo happy. I probably click/tap on something just before it moves about fifty times a day. Having the fastest devices only helps a little.
If we could get this feature on mobile and desktop operating systems, I would be soo happy. I probably click/tap on something just before it moves about fifty times a day. Having the fastest devices only helps a little.
A similar annoyance: the browser insisting on switching focus once the page loads.
It happens nearly daily that I'll be typing in to an input field while the page is still loading, and Firefox will switch focus away from that input field when the page finishes loading.
The consequences of this are even worse for me, as I use the Tridactyl extension, which acts on vim-keystrokes when the focus is not in an input field. So if I'm in the middle of typing something in an input field and Firefox in its infinite wisdom chooses to switch focus out of the input field, what I type from then on will be acted on as commands to Tridactyl, which could do things like open, close, or reload a page.
Super, super annoying!
It happens nearly daily that I'll be typing in to an input field while the page is still loading, and Firefox will switch focus away from that input field when the page finishes loading.
The consequences of this are even worse for me, as I use the Tridactyl extension, which acts on vim-keystrokes when the focus is not in an input field. So if I'm in the middle of typing something in an input field and Firefox in its infinite wisdom chooses to switch focus out of the input field, what I type from then on will be acted on as commands to Tridactyl, which could do things like open, close, or reload a page.
Super, super annoying!
That's actually the reason I stopped using VIM bindings in FF. The small amount of niceness from VIM bindings did not make up for the random annoyances.
Have you tried `set allowautofocus false`? It breaks some fancy editors like CodeMirror but you can always re-enable it on certain pages with `seturl`.
I'm on Windows 7 and losing focus is a continuous annoyance.
I really hate taking my hands off the keyboard.
I really hate taking my hands off the keyboard.
> I'm almost more excited for the scroll anchoring feature.
This has been my #1 gripe with web sites since pretty much the dawn of time. Finally!
This has been my #1 gripe with web sites since pretty much the dawn of time. Finally!
It appears to already be in Chrome. I have a site that I hate because their slider at the top always scrolls the site around, but that has recently stopped, and I've noticed that the page knows where I've scrolled to and adjust the scroll when the page changes above where I'm reading.
It's one of those features that you'd think must be inherent in everything since forever but can't believe that we still don't have it by now.
I switched back to Firefox about six months ago, and this issue was the only thing that ever made me consider switching back to Chrome; there's one forum I frequent where the "latest unread post" button was basically useless because of this.
Excellent news! Next step: TWitter and Facebook streams do not reorganize themselves by an algorithm on a Back button. You can click Back and comment the post that gave you the linked article in the first place.
I don't know what this is, but I recently got an option on the Twitter mobile site to sort the feed latest-first. I wonder if that's some A/B test.
Sad this is even necessary. Progressive loading is a relic of a bygone 28.8 kbps era. Connections are fast enough is where you should be able to draw everything into an off-screen buffer and display the completed page in one go.
People on lower quality connections (high packet loss/roundtrip) eat a lot of delay on page loads because the average site connects to like 20+ servers and the browser has to spin up a bunch of http connections. Then you have to wait for javascript to load... this is unavoidable.
> Then you have to wait for javascript to load... this is unavoidable.
JavaScript is not “unavoidable,” it’s a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
JavaScript is not “unavoidable,” it’s a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
> Scroll anchoring keeps content from jumping as images and ads load at the top of the page
That's a nice little quality-of-life improvement. It's a little annoyance that you don't really consciously notice because you're so used to it, but I recall reading about Chrome adding a similar feature and suddenly realising how annoying it is when you're reading something, and then suddenly it jumps out of your view due to a large image above the viewport loading.
That's a nice little quality-of-life improvement. It's a little annoyance that you don't really consciously notice because you're so used to it, but I recall reading about Chrome adding a similar feature and suddenly realising how annoying it is when you're reading something, and then suddenly it jumps out of your view due to a large image above the viewport loading.
Wouldn't it be nice if browsers or servers could reserve that space even if it's not loaded? Like "this is going to be a 500x200 image so let's load 500x200 pixels worth of empty space until it's fully loaded" and avoid jumping.
I think you're being sarcastic, but if not and for anyone who isn't aware, setting the width and height on an <img> tag (or it's associated style) will do this.
I think you're also being sarcastic :) Websites did this 15 years ago (miss the HTMLX compliant button at the bottom of the page), and now in large part do not.
I made my first website 22½ years ago. Even as a raw beginner, I knew it was considered sloth and Very Bad Form Indeed not to specify image size in my markup.
"Oh wow, 22 years ago! This guy must be... my... age... Shit."
Everything that is standard recommended practice in modern web design is Very Bad From, whether or not it is sloth.
This would be a great solution, if everybody used the same screen size.
The width and height of an image set in a CSS file can be in any valid CSS unit. That's pixels, or em, or a percentage, or viewport units (vw and vh for 1% of the width or height, vmin or vmax for 1% of the shortest or longest side), or real world units like mm (only works on high DPI screens). Support varies.
Eg setting an image to be "width: 100vw; height: 100vh;" means it'll be squished to fill the user's viewport. "width: 100vw; height: auto;" will fill the viewport horizontally and scale the image vertically as per it's aspect ratio. And so on. Generally that'll look bad though because browsers scale things fast rather than well.
And then there's the options for background images. "background-size: cover" is quite useful.
CSS is fun.
Eg setting an image to be "width: 100vw; height: 100vh;" means it'll be squished to fill the user's viewport. "width: 100vw; height: auto;" will fill the viewport horizontally and scale the image vertically as per it's aspect ratio. And so on. Generally that'll look bad though because browsers scale things fast rather than well.
And then there's the options for background images. "background-size: cover" is quite useful.
CSS is fun.
In many cases you want to set one size and let the other calculate itself based on the aspect ratio of an image. And this is not know prior to loading and can't be specified in any other way. So you get jumpy behavior during load on most responsive websites and slow connections. It's hard to fix in JS too.
If only there was a way to know the aspect ratio of an image at the time of website authoring...
There are such things as dynamically sourced, or generated, images. On-the-fly-computed SVG data visualisations might be such a case.
Generally, I'd agree that authoring time is some 9X% solution, though there remain edge cases.
Generally, I'd agree that authoring time is some 9X% solution, though there remain edge cases.
You'd still want those at a fixed size though?
I can't think of a good use case for auto generating arbitrarily large images, and as a user I wouldn't want to visit websites where the web designer thinks that's a good idea either.
I can't think of a good use case for auto generating arbitrarily large images, and as a user I wouldn't want to visit websites where the web designer thinks that's a good idea either.
Usually, yes, though posibly not in all cases. With SVG and CSS/JS, the size could be dynamic as the paage is being viewed, depending on user behaviour or other conditions
What thos cases are is ... a good question, and my point is more thaat this can be done than to say why or that it's a good idea.
Upshot again is that image size need not be deterministic at authoring time.
What thos cases are is ... a good question, and my point is more thaat this can be done than to say why or that it's a good idea.
Upshot again is that image size need not be deterministic at authoring time.
Doesn't help if you try to do max-width: 100% in CSS. You'll get an image with a height you set in HTML and a smaller width.
But wouldn't that require people to know what they're putting on their web site?
I personally dislike the complexity of having to use the server-side calculated dimensions.
``` object-fit: cover ```
comes to mind as a client-side solution I used in the past for this problem
``` object-fit: cover ```
comes to mind as a client-side solution I used in the past for this problem
Yes, and that's exactly what Firefox's new scrolling anchoring tries to fix.
Not sure why you're downvoted. It's a real problem. It would help if it would be possible to set an aspect ratio on the img tag, so that when it's scaled via CSS or whatever, it would maintain the aspect ratio of the loaded image despite it not being loaded yet.
It's possible and well-known: https://css-tricks.com/aspect-ratio-boxes/. Also, for images, there is the simpler solution of specifying real width/height in the img tag, then use CSS with "max-width: 100%; height: auto" or anything similar.
It doesn't work in chrome. Try (test.png doesn't exist):
<img width="100" height="100" style="width:100%;height:auto;" src=test.png>
It would be nice if we could have a ratio rule in CSS for all block elements, so adjusting one dimension would automatically alter the other, preserving the ratio at all screen sizes. e.g.:
Edit to add: Or maybe it would be better to just have the ability to lock the ratio, such as:
width: 2000px;
max-width: 100%;
ratio: 16/9;
Edit to add: Or maybe it would be better to just have the ability to lock the ratio, such as:
ratio: fixed;You (or others) may or may not know it is already possible in CSS as it is. To force 16:9:
(The ::before element isn't stricly necessary; the padding can go on the .DamnInteresting element directly - just make sure .DamnInteresting is wrapped in a containing element of your desired width and you can even use inline styles for the padding shim.)
(Edit: a word)
.DamnInteresting {
position: relative;
display: block;
}
.DamnInteresting::before {
content: '';
display: block;
/* 16:9 shim! */
padding-bottom: 56.25%;
}
.DamnInteresting img {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}
(The ::before element isn't stricly necessary; the padding can go on the .DamnInteresting element directly - just make sure .DamnInteresting is wrapped in a containing element of your desired width and you can even use inline styles for the padding shim.)
(Edit: a word)
Aspect Ratio is coming in CSS4. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/03/aspect-ratio-unit-c...
This pleases me.
To be honest, if you know one dimension and the aspect ratio, you're more likely to know both dimensions.
Well, the thing is with `width: 9000px; max-width: 100%;` is that you know neither. And it forces people to use silly things like `padding` to maintain aspect ratio in e.g. embedded videos.
Another solution is just to wait until computers and networks are 100 times faster than they were 10 years ago, so that a page and its pieces load instantly. Oh, wait. That speed-up already happened, and yet websites are actually slower than they were 10 years ago. I guess there is no advance in hardware that software cannot overcome.
Networks are thousands of times faster in bandwidth, but they don't have thousands of times less latency. Software is actively working to overcome the limitations of latency, such as with HTTP/2, HTTP/3, and TLS 1.3.
For a page load, why should latency matter once you get below 50 ms? The problem isn’t latency, the problem is that the software stack makes tons of round-trip requests to display some text and images. The modern web makes X11 seem like it was designed by a demoscene coder.
> The problem isn’t latency, the problem is that the software stack makes tons of round-trip requests to display some text and images.
From the post you replied to:
> Software is actively working to overcome the limitations of latency, such as with HTTP/2, HTTP/3, and TLS 1.3.
The whole point is to eliminate those round-trips, and just stream content to the browser at the limit of its available bandwidth.
From the post you replied to:
> Software is actively working to overcome the limitations of latency, such as with HTTP/2, HTTP/3, and TLS 1.3.
The whole point is to eliminate those round-trips, and just stream content to the browser at the limit of its available bandwidth.
X11 doesn't even do any image compression. X11 seems fast because everyone uses the DRI and/or MIT-SHM extensions to hack around the fundamental brokenness of the protocol, at the cost of network transparency. :)
`ssh -X` generally disagrees with you.
> For a page load, why should latency matter
> he problem is that the software stack makes tons of round-trip requests
Latency matters because of all of those round-trip requests. Each individual request incurs at least 2x the network latency value (one network latency trip out to the server, another network latency trip back). If browsers did not try to run parallel requests, then all those round trips would sum up to a substantial overall delay.
> he problem is that the software stack makes tons of round-trip requests
Latency matters because of all of those round-trip requests. Each individual request incurs at least 2x the network latency value (one network latency trip out to the server, another network latency trip back). If browsers did not try to run parallel requests, then all those round trips would sum up to a substantial overall delay.
> If browsers did not try to run parallel requests, then all those round trips would sum up to a substantial overall delay.
That describes zero browsers. And "it's not loading parallel enough" is very much a software stack problem and not a network problem.
We could shove full pages over the wire in 200ms if we tried harder.
That describes zero browsers. And "it's not loading parallel enough" is very much a software stack problem and not a network problem.
We could shove full pages over the wire in 200ms if we tried harder.
> Latency matters because of all of those round-trip requests.
Well then, since it's a physical impossibility to do away with them, we'd better start working on improving the speed of light.
Well then, since it's a physical impossibility to do away with them, we'd better start working on improving the speed of light.
If the browser only knew...but in many cases it doesn't, especially for a fluid width, responsive website. An image may have a near infinite number of potential dimensions depending on the user's viewport.
> responsive website
This theme is discussed here often, but really, this is what HTML was designed for. Load https://thebestmotherfucking.website/ in a browser and scale it at will, it will always look good. The fact that people put a ton of often useless stuff and complain it looks bad in some browser doesn't mean media queries are theonly way.
This theme is discussed here often, but really, this is what HTML was designed for. Load https://thebestmotherfucking.website/ in a browser and scale it at will, it will always look good. The fact that people put a ton of often useless stuff and complain it looks bad in some browser doesn't mean media queries are theonly way.
Great. Now if only all websites used one or two static images with a known size and nothing else.
Frankly, for 99% of them, I wouldn't mind.
From your mouth to God's ears.
It could still be wrapped in a div which also has the same responsive constraints, no?
This drove me insane with the WSJ mobile app. I stopped using it because I would continuously lose my place in the article as the various advertisement blocks loaded in.
Plenty of sites already do that with images.
The problem is mainly with ads, when 1) there may or may not be an ad available, and 2) you're allowing the ad height to be dynamic, to allow for greater possible inventory.
The problem is mainly with ads, when 1) there may or may not be an ad available, and 2) you're allowing the ad height to be dynamic, to allow for greater possible inventory.
Then the page won't be responsive. The image width and height changes depending on your viewport size.
The client can reserve the space with a CSS media query, then. But it should be the client making that rendering decision, not the loaded asset—i.e. if you have an async-loaded iframe, the iframe shouldn't be able to resize itself on load, but rather should be sized correctly when first created (either by JS or CSS) and then the contents of the iframe should accomodate the dimensions they're loaded into. (Which can be assisted by just sending those dimensions as part of the iframe's URL—though this is bad for privacy reasons.)
> Then the page won't be responsive
That's a benefit, in my view.
That's a benefit, in my view.
>if browsers or servers could reserve that space even if it's not loaded
I believe opera 12 could do this?
I believe opera 12 could do this?
It's even worse on mobile, with variable load times. It's in fact maddening that it has to jolt you while reading an article - because ads and images are very very important (more important than the content). I love reader mode on FF mobile, I click it as soon as the icon appears next to the URL.
It's also a nice bonus that you get to read the article before the obnoxious Oath pop-ups begin.
Especially with the everything-below-the-fold-except-an-irrelevant-image trend.
On mobile I feel this constantly, mostly due to the lack of adblock. Somehow like 70% of any news site I get linked to by hn feature constantly loading ads that stop me from being able to read anything...
Firefox Focus was a godsend to me for this exact reason. I genuinely did not use any mobile devices to browse the web because it was just a hostile experience, but since Focus has come out I can join the rest of the world.
Firefox for Android allows for extensions and hence an adblocker, so you might want to check that out too if you're on Android :)
Oh wow, new Twitter is actually usable now.
I've switched over to Firefox on all devices. It's especially useful on Android because I can use uBlock and other useful extensions, where Chrome doesn't have any.
The only feature I hope for is "hit tab to search" after typing a domain name in the search bar. For example in Chrome I can type "youtube.com" and then hit tab, and then type in a search query.
The only feature I hope for is "hit tab to search" after typing a domain name in the search bar. For example in Chrome I can type "youtube.com" and then hit tab, and then type in a search query.
I know it's not the same, but if you bookmark "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s" and put in a keyword like "yt". You can type "yt whatever" in the addressbar and it will do a search on youtube.
You can also use https://www.reddit.com/r/%S with a capital `%S` to avoid escaping the slashes, so you can type "r all/top" or with GitHub "g Zren/reponame"
This is exactly what I needed. I set up this exact shortcut years ago, in Chrome, and have been slightly annoyed for months that "r sub/top" didn't work on Firefox. Thank you stranger.
And if you set DuckDuckGo or Qwant or a different search engine that supports !bangs as your default search engine, you can use those in your address bar - so no need to configure !yt, !w, !s etc manually.
https://www.givero.com has the full range of DDG bangs - and shares its revenue with good causes.
If you use DDG as your default search engine you can use bangs to get something kind of similar, typing "!yt search query" for example
> uBlock and other useful extensions, where Chrome doesn't have any.
The most underrated and undermarketed to the average user Firefox feature.
The most underrated and undermarketed to the average user Firefox feature.
I too have switched on both mobile (Android) and PC. The only thing I would really need now is that the sync is automatic and I don't have to manually trigger it.
The main benefit would be to browse something on your phone then be able to access it on your desktop via Library > Synced Tabs - no need to send it or sync it manually (which require additional steps/taps).
I just wish FF Focus would let you sync your browsing history :(
But Focus doesn't store your browsing history.
Yeah I know, I'm just expressing my desire that it would.
It's nice, clean, simple and nowhere near as "bloaty" (for lack of a better word) as normal FF on android. I use it as my default browser on my phone, but (for some reason[1]) every now and again it dumps articles I leave open and then I am no longer able to find and read them :/
[1] I have a feeling it happens after every update.
It's nice, clean, simple and nowhere near as "bloaty" (for lack of a better word) as normal FF on android. I use it as my default browser on my phone, but (for some reason[1]) every now and again it dumps articles I leave open and then I am no longer able to find and read them :/
[1] I have a feeling it happens after every update.
I'm on iOS using firefox and I had no idea you can install extensions on the Android version of firefox, that's very cool!
I agree. I would absolutely love tab to search in Firefox. The bookmark keyword is inferior
By far the biggest annoyance with firefox on mobile is that when you open the browser, are presented with all your tabs, and a toolbar which only searches your open tabs rather than just being a toolbar that you can type in a website, or a search term, or also search amongst your open tabs.
From the last 3 or so versions Firefox performance on my retina mac is indistinguishable from chrome (from a humam perspective not looking at ram cpu usage), so I'm very happy to be using firefox full time once again. At some point I knew it was time to close firefox when the fans started blowing at max speed. Does not happen any more.
> At some point I knew it was time to close firefox when the fans started blowing at max speed.
In my experience on Mac the guilty party has consistently been the plugin container (or rather something inside it, presumably a bad video codec). `killall plugin-container` fixes the problem without having to restart Firefox, but unfortunately also crashes many if not most tabs (appears everything wants to use a multimedia plugin or another these days...)
In my experience on Mac the guilty party has consistently been the plugin container (or rather something inside it, presumably a bad video codec). `killall plugin-container` fixes the problem without having to restart Firefox, but unfortunately also crashes many if not most tabs (appears everything wants to use a multimedia plugin or another these days...)
The "plugin-container" executable is used for all sandboxed processes on Windows. That started out as plug-ins, but now includes web renderers.
So the "something inside it" could be script on a web page, or part of Gecko's rendering pipeline, or pretty much anything. And killig it crashes tabs because it's the thing rendering those tabs.
It might make sense to rename the executable to make things clearer, but there are some problems: there is Windows software that hardcodes the executable name and does things based on it, and changing the name would break various things for users....
On Mac and Linux, where this problem doesn't exist, the process naming is much saner...
So the "something inside it" could be script on a web page, or part of Gecko's rendering pipeline, or pretty much anything. And killig it crashes tabs because it's the thing rendering those tabs.
It might make sense to rename the executable to make things clearer, but there are some problems: there is Windows software that hardcodes the executable name and does things based on it, and changing the name would break various things for users....
On Mac and Linux, where this problem doesn't exist, the process naming is much saner...
Oh, my experience was on Mac like the GP’s. Edited to clarify. On Windows or Linux I haven’t encountered a similar 100% CPU use problem, which has led me to suspect it’s specifically the Mac version of some plugin that’s the problem.
Interesting. On Mac, the process is called "plugin-container" if you use something like "ps", but Activity Monitor shows it as "FirefoxCP Web Content", which is a lot clearer...
[deleted]
Performance has improved considerably. However, there is still a major outstanding bug, due to the rendering of window transparency[1].
Window transparency can be turned off by setting "gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque" to true in about:config. This will cause a minor degradation in appearance of the window frame and tabs, but it will improve performance and extend battery life.
I have had it set for over 6 months and am anticipating the resolution of this outstanding bug.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522
Window transparency can be turned off by setting "gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque" to true in about:config. This will cause a minor degradation in appearance of the window frame and tabs, but it will improve performance and extend battery life.
I have had it set for over 6 months and am anticipating the resolution of this outstanding bug.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522
Firefox is very slow on 2014 macs and causes fans to spin up to mad speed. This tends to happen with html5 video players. Chrome seems to not have this issue.
I love that we continue to refer to private/ incognito browsing as something mainly used "when you’re planning a surprise party or gift".
My main use of incognito mode is to prevent my YouTube recommendations from being filled with music videos or fringe news bullshit
I’m saddened by this aspect of YouTube whereby you’re afraid to explore the site without tanking your recommendations. I wish there was a site that focused on finding YouTube videos in a more focused way rather than some rogue ML algorithm that decides to spam you with weird topics. I don’t feel like I have any control over my YouTube account anymore.
Sadly this feeling is only going to get more common
If you forget to enter incognito mode, you can just clear cookies for the day as well.
recommendations are not driven by cookies.
What are they driven by then? My youtube recommendations reset completely every time I clear my cookies.
Only if you use Youtube without logging in. Otherwise, your watch history is stored in your account so the cleaning of the cookies does nothing.
Your user account, if you're logged in to google
I use Incognito mainly to let my friends log into their accounts for a minute on my computer, if they desperately need to e.g. make a bank transaction or an Amazon purchase or something using some combination of my information and theirs, where I can type stuff in (e.g. my shipping address) and they can type stuff in (e.g. their login credentials.)
Porn browsing, meanwhile, is much better done with a secondary dedicated Chrome profile.
Porn browsing, meanwhile, is much better done with a secondary dedicated Chrome profile.
Probably a better idea to use `firefox --ProfileManager` for that. That way you don't risk exposing your bookmarks, history, active logins, etc
Chrome profiles don't require you to log into them. They pop up a login prompt on the welcome screen, but you don't have to use it.
I would recommend actually using it, though—with a dedicated porn-browsing Google Account, that you created once upon a time in an internet cafe, using Mailinator or the like as the recovery email. After all, nothing gets people to keep digging more than a layer of anonymity; and nothing gets people to stop digging more than finding what seems to be a real person who "uses" a bunch of services like Google, Facebook, etc. all with the same email.
I would recommend actually using it, though—with a dedicated porn-browsing Google Account, that you created once upon a time in an internet cafe, using Mailinator or the like as the recovery email. After all, nothing gets people to keep digging more than a layer of anonymity; and nothing gets people to stop digging more than finding what seems to be a real person who "uses" a bunch of services like Google, Facebook, etc. all with the same email.
It's slightly amusing, but it's sad that we still have to act taboo around sexual subjects.
The couple of times i've actually used incognito mode for planning a surprise or buying a gift it's definitely put a smile on my face to realize i'm being a euphamism.
I use incognito when logging into my banks because I don't 100% trust the ad blockers and other extensions.
That said now that I know banks have google analytics in them, I really wonder whether I'm better off trusting the extensions.......
That said now that I know banks have google analytics in them, I really wonder whether I'm better off trusting the extensions.......
I mean I use it for personal stuff at work, for disposable browser environments for testing frontend content and bugs and for quickly handling AWS environments ... By far my use of incognito for mundane tasks outstrips its use for porn.
I used to do that but now I mainly use firefox container tabs. My main usecase being able to use the website as an admin and as a regular user at the same time.
I kind of wonder if it is even that private.
I use little snitch on mac, and I still continue to get Firefox connect dialogs for private tabs long after they were closed.
Safari on mac does not exhibit that behavior.
I use little snitch on mac, and I still continue to get Firefox connect dialogs for private tabs long after they were closed.
Safari on mac does not exhibit that behavior.
thought bubble: "Heyy, you could use porn mode for that!"
> Searching within Multiple Tabs – Did you know that if you enter a ‘%’ in your Awesome Bar, you can search the tabs on your computer?
This will be a big help for me. Makes me wonder how many more there are that are just too cumbersome to discover.
This will be a big help for me. Makes me wonder how many more there are that are just too cumbersome to discover.
You know the other modifiers for history (^), favourites (*), and tag search (+), page title (#), url($), and suggestions (?) too.
I use the first 3, they compound too (in a slightly strange way, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-fire..., see last few paras.).
I use the first 3, they compound too (in a slightly strange way, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-fire..., see last few paras.).
I always forget them, so I have this bookmarked: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-fire...
TL;DR:
Add ^ to search for matches in your browsing history.
Add * to search for matches in your bookmarks.
Add + to search for matches in pages you've tagged.
Add % to search for matches in your currently open tabs.
Add # to search for matches in page titles.
Add $ to search for matches in web addresses (URLs).
Add ? to search for matches in suggestions.
TL;DR:
Add ^ to search for matches in your browsing history.
Add * to search for matches in your bookmarks.
Add + to search for matches in pages you've tagged.
Add % to search for matches in your currently open tabs.
Add # to search for matches in page titles.
Add $ to search for matches in web addresses (URLs).
Add ? to search for matches in suggestions.
What would be even better is if they let me add arbitrary keyboard shortcuts that don't need to wait until the document has loaded, like they did up to 2016.
Honestly, Reader Mode, in built ad blocker, tree tabs, and containers make Firefox so streamlined for me.
I think that Google sites must not be thoroughly tested on firefox though! Vanilla Gmail (no add-ons or theme, but not the basic HTML version) isn't too fast. Not as fast as it used to be a year ago on Chrome either, but not as bad as FF.
I think that Google sites must not be thoroughly tested on firefox though! Vanilla Gmail (no add-ons or theme, but not the basic HTML version) isn't too fast. Not as fast as it used to be a year ago on Chrome either, but not as bad as FF.
I haven't tried this with gmail yet, but I know that if you use a user agent switcher on the google search page to set your useragent to chrome the search page will have more features (summaries, etc). This is especially noticeable on mobile, where Chrome will have a ton more legibility (IMO) unless you do this.
It's always been a little surprising that this isn't grounds for a huge fine, but apparently they get away with it by saying something vague and corporate like "we can't be sure this works".
It's always been a little surprising that this isn't grounds for a huge fine, but apparently they get away with it by saying something vague and corporate like "we can't be sure this works".
or bad on purpose. chrome doesn't let you block ads on mobile after all, and Google is an ad company.
Whenever Firefox is automatically updated through my package manager, any open instances refuse to load any new pages or tabs until I restart Firefox . Needless to say, this is absolutely infuriating when I'm in the middle of something important. Does anyone know how to disable this feature?
This change was made because opening a new tab or loading a new page can start a new renderer process. The way things work right now is that this is started by running the on-disk renderer process executable.
If you've updated your installation, the new renderer will be the new version, but the parent (ui) process is still the old version. The protocol the two use to talk to each other is not fixed, and messages will start looking malformed. Malformed messages are handled by immediately terminating the process, because otherwise security guarantees go out the window.
So the upshot was that you'd get various crashes in the "I updated Firefox and then kept using it" situation. I've run into a bunch personally, and there is _lots_ of crash reporting data on this. The crashes are not OS-specific; they just have to do with whether changes happened to the IPC protocol.
A "proper" solution would be for the parent process to not use the on-disk version of the renderer to launch new renderers. There's work ongoing to make that possible, but in the meantime the crash volume due to this problem was high enough that the mitigation you see was put in place.
If you've updated your installation, the new renderer will be the new version, but the parent (ui) process is still the old version. The protocol the two use to talk to each other is not fixed, and messages will start looking malformed. Malformed messages are handled by immediately terminating the process, because otherwise security guarantees go out the window.
So the upshot was that you'd get various crashes in the "I updated Firefox and then kept using it" situation. I've run into a bunch personally, and there is _lots_ of crash reporting data on this. The crashes are not OS-specific; they just have to do with whether changes happened to the IPC protocol.
A "proper" solution would be for the parent process to not use the on-disk version of the renderer to launch new renderers. There's work ongoing to make that possible, but in the meantime the crash volume due to this problem was high enough that the mitigation you see was put in place.
Couple things.
1. Why update an app when you're in the middle of using the app? I dunno, I use Fedora, so I don't execute 'dnf update' until I'm ready to reboot the system, usually because I'm anticipating a kernel update. 2. Firefox has a pretty reliable "Restore Previous Session" feature that works well. I have also been known to throw a SIGTERM at Firefox and just let it prompt me when I start it again for the "Something went wrong, should we restore your session?". Seems to always work for me.
1. Why update an app when you're in the middle of using the app? I dunno, I use Fedora, so I don't execute 'dnf update' until I'm ready to reboot the system, usually because I'm anticipating a kernel update. 2. Firefox has a pretty reliable "Restore Previous Session" feature that works well. I have also been known to throw a SIGTERM at Firefox and just let it prompt me when I start it again for the "Something went wrong, should we restore your session?". Seems to always work for me.
>Why update an app when you're in the middle of using the app?
Updates are automatic every day.
>I use Fedora, so I don't execute 'dnf update' until I'm ready to reboot the system, usually because I'm anticipating a kernel update
How often does that happen? It doesn't seem reasonable to put off security updates that have already been fixed and are simply waiting to install.
Firefox is the only program I've run into where automatic updates have led to a negative experience. Every single other program handles them just fine.
Updates are automatic every day.
>I use Fedora, so I don't execute 'dnf update' until I'm ready to reboot the system, usually because I'm anticipating a kernel update
How often does that happen? It doesn't seem reasonable to put off security updates that have already been fixed and are simply waiting to install.
Firefox is the only program I've run into where automatic updates have led to a negative experience. Every single other program handles them just fine.
The reason it’s different is that it (like Chromium) runs a multi-process sandbox to try to isolate your system from vulnerabilities in the JS runtime or renderer. It’s possible to handle updates while new tabs are created gracefully in that case, but far from trivial.
Some people prefer automatic updates. It didn't used to criple the running browser process after an update, that change is very recent.
Restore session doesn't help if you're in a private session.
Also you may be in the middle of actually using your browser for thing that you don't want to interrupt, a game, an online application, anything really..
Restore session doesn't help if you're in a private session.
Also you may be in the middle of actually using your browser for thing that you don't want to interrupt, a game, an online application, anything really..
It's only in parts recent. Updating Firefox did not have this enforcing message telling you to restart, but before Firefox would just randomly break when updated via the package manager. Preventing that is better now.
Don't do automatic updates if you do not want automatic updates. Automatic updates just absolutely can cause you to have to restart stuff, depending on what got updated exactly.
Don't do automatic updates if you do not want automatic updates. Automatic updates just absolutely can cause you to have to restart stuff, depending on what got updated exactly.
> I use Fedora, so I don't execute 'dnf update' until I'm ready to reboot the system
I haven't rebooted my system in days, and I make updates twice a day...
I haven't rebooted my system in days, and I make updates twice a day...
Uninstall the distro provided Firefox and use the binary produced by Mozilla. It downloads its own updates in the background and applies the next time you quit and relaunch.
Snap and Flatpak apps I think can do this as well, because they aren't stepping on the running binaries during the update. And you get the updated version when you relaunch.
Firefox isn't special in this regard. 100% of my applications on Windows and macOS expect to be quit before they can be updated, and is enforced either by the application, the OS, or the updater. I suspect that distro package managers don't really have a way to do an out of band update, all they can do is step all over in-use libraries and that inevitably causes the application to go a little crazy.
Snap and Flatpak apps I think can do this as well, because they aren't stepping on the running binaries during the update. And you get the updated version when you relaunch.
Firefox isn't special in this regard. 100% of my applications on Windows and macOS expect to be quit before they can be updated, and is enforced either by the application, the OS, or the updater. I suspect that distro package managers don't really have a way to do an out of band update, all they can do is step all over in-use libraries and that inevitably causes the application to go a little crazy.
It's not a feature and you can't disable it, previously it'd just crash. I think it's to do with the content workers being `exec`d from disk each time instead of forking from a master.
It's never crashed on unix for me after an update. Sounds like a Windows problem however.
It used to crash under Linux, when you updated it while it was running, and then opened new window or a tab. Now it shows a message that you need to restart.
Has never crashed on update for me, at least that I can remember after ten years. I have seen the warning message, that arrived years ago however.
I'll add the caveat that I typically restart my browser at least once a day, perhaps avoids the problem.
I'll add the caveat that I typically restart my browser at least once a day, perhaps avoids the problem.
It wasn't immediately after update. It was after you updated it while it was running and then you tried something, that triggered the crash (like opening a new tab).
Later it stopped to crash, but acted weirdly (clicks on links didn't work, etc).
Nowadays we have the notice to restart the browser. It didn't arrive years ago, just a few releases ago.
This was only under Linux, and only with the distro package managers. Under Windows or MacOS, the updater updates the browser on next restart, so this didn't happen.
Later it stopped to crash, but acted weirdly (clicks on links didn't work, etc).
Nowadays we have the notice to restart the browser. It didn't arrive years ago, just a few releases ago.
This was only under Linux, and only with the distro package managers. Under Windows or MacOS, the updater updates the browser on next restart, so this didn't happen.
Yep, understand that.
I restart my browser at most once per week and Firefox has never crashed for me after an update. I do not doubt that there was a risk that it could happen, but it cannot have been that common unless I was very lucky.
It was sometimes worse than crashing, and silently going unresponsive after an update. Only a SIGKILL would close that instance.
As mentioned, never happened to me, or colleagues within earshot.
Maybe there was some edge case where it could crash, but for me it always used to work.
Also a little stumped by this choice. It didn't used to be this way even just a month or two ago.
Quite inconvenient.
Quite inconvenient.
Finally I find another person getting annoyed at this. It baffles me how this is acceptable...
My browser is open when my computer is running. I do updates at random times through-out the day, for example before installing new packages. Having to close my browser leads to dead sessions and text being lost from input fields and whatever other state there might be.
My guess is that this is some per-tab isolation/process stuff that would result in a mismatch between tabs from before the update and tabs after the update.
My browser is open when my computer is running. I do updates at random times through-out the day, for example before installing new packages. Having to close my browser leads to dead sessions and text being lost from input fields and whatever other state there might be.
My guess is that this is some per-tab isolation/process stuff that would result in a mismatch between tabs from before the update and tabs after the update.
I always ran into this, but I noticed yesterday when I upgraded Firefox (from 64 to 65, bit behind I guess), it didn't do the crashing on new tabs thing. Maybe they sorted that out finally.
As others may have mentioned, it's because the binaries are overwritten. But Ubuntu used to ship a plugin with their builds, xul-ext-ubufox, that would detect this and prompt for restart on upgrade, but for some reason it's disabled now according to the package description:
This package currently ships no functionality, but may be used again in
the future to display a restart notification after upgrading Firefox.Which OS / package manager are you using? I haven't noticed this behaviour on my Linux (Kubuntu) or macOS installs -- both Firefox Dev Edition though.
Under linux with apt/dnf. These package managers update Firefox while it is running.
On MacOS or Windows (maybe even Linux with the Mozilla updater, never tried it), the updater does the update on the next restart.
On MacOS or Windows (maybe even Linux with the Mozilla updater, never tried it), the updater does the update on the next restart.
Exactly. The package manager method of updating stomps on the in-use libraries for the running application. The built-in Mozilla updater knows better, downloads an update payload but doesn't apply it until the user relaunches and on "first run" it actually does the update rather than launching, and after that completes it launches the updated application. It's the same on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Chrome on macOS and Windows keeps itself up to date; for whatever reason Chrome on Linux installs a google.chrome repository, uses the distro package manager, and clobbers the running binary. shrug
Chrome on macOS and Windows keeps itself up to date; for whatever reason Chrome on Linux installs a google.chrome repository, uses the distro package manager, and clobbers the running binary. shrug
> The package manager method of updating stomps on the in-use libraries for the running application.
This is not a problem on Unix-like systems, actually. Any running process, that has some file open, will keep the original file open, even if the filename points to another file now. Only processes that open the file after the change will get the new version.
I suspect that the protocol that multiple processes of Firefox used to communicate together could change between version and the mismatch between old and newly launched processes caused the problem. So it is versioned now, and if the versions are mismatched, warning is being shown.
> for whatever reason Chrome on Linux installs a google.chrome repository, uses the distro package manager, and clobbers the running binary
As others have said, it is actually the right approach. The custom updaters for Firefox and Chrome under Windows and MacOS are there, because they are lacking any system for centralized package management.
Flatpak solves this in a third way: it doesn't clobber the current tree, it creates a new, separate one and signals the application, that it was updated, and can restart into a new version, when it is convenient. It gets the best of the custom windows/mac updaters (not overwriting running apps), together with the best of linux package managers (centralized management).
This is not a problem on Unix-like systems, actually. Any running process, that has some file open, will keep the original file open, even if the filename points to another file now. Only processes that open the file after the change will get the new version.
I suspect that the protocol that multiple processes of Firefox used to communicate together could change between version and the mismatch between old and newly launched processes caused the problem. So it is versioned now, and if the versions are mismatched, warning is being shown.
> for whatever reason Chrome on Linux installs a google.chrome repository, uses the distro package manager, and clobbers the running binary
As others have said, it is actually the right approach. The custom updaters for Firefox and Chrome under Windows and MacOS are there, because they are lacking any system for centralized package management.
Flatpak solves this in a third way: it doesn't clobber the current tree, it creates a new, separate one and signals the application, that it was updated, and can restart into a new version, when it is convenient. It gets the best of the custom windows/mac updaters (not overwriting running apps), together with the best of linux package managers (centralized management).
> for whatever reason Chrome on Linux installs a google.chrome repository, uses the distro package manager
Because that's the proper way to do things instead of each application bypassing the package manager and downloading updates and whatever else behind your back. How would you track and control updates if each application you use decided to do its own thing? Secondly, if installed to system directories, applications cannot write there without superuser privileges.
Because that's the proper way to do things instead of each application bypassing the package manager and downloading updates and whatever else behind your back. How would you track and control updates if each application you use decided to do its own thing? Secondly, if installed to system directories, applications cannot write there without superuser privileges.
Ubuntu 18.10 using APT.
Unlike Chrome, Firefox makes it easy to disable automatic updates.
They removed the "never check for updates" option and nag nag nag to update.
I unintentionally updated multiple times when the nag menu conveniently appeared while I was pressing the keyboard.
The last accident made me firewall Firefox's update program.
They removed the "never check for updates" option and nag nag nag to update.
I unintentionally updated multiple times when the nag menu conveniently appeared while I was pressing the keyboard.
The last accident made me firewall Firefox's update program.
Does this include Netflix? It's been getting really annoying to have random videos your mouse is on, as you scroll, start playing automatically.
Netflix is horrible for this. It's even worse on a smart TV, where navigation is already cumbersome enough without auto-play videos starting every time I'm on a menu item for more than a second.
I've noticed buffering and locking issues on Roku as well. There's too much crap going on when you're trying to browse, to the point where my TV misses lags on user interaction while it tries to load a video for autoplay, making it impossible to even navigate the app. Sometimes I can't even use the app at all.
I've pretty much entirely gone back to pirating because of those fucking auto-play trailers they have now (and this is on the Roku app, where Firefox wont' help me).
~~I've~~ A friend of mine has done the same, but only because they require him to install surveillance software on his machine, turn off his VPN, switch to a different browser, and at the end of it all they refuse to serve him video at more than 720p...
Two clicks and he's watching the same episode at 4K on any platform he well likes, with no spyware running on his machine.
Two clicks and he's watching the same episode at 4K on any platform he well likes, with no spyware running on his machine.
> turn off his VPN
I just gave up on Netflix because of this, but not because I actually use a "VPN." It's because my ISP doesn't provide native IPv6 support so I use a tunnel from Hurricane Electric's TunnelBroker service. A couple of years ago, Netflix published AAAA records in DNS and decided that HE's IPv6 service is a "VPN" so they block it.
I made do with forwarding *.netflix.com in my usual DNS server to another DNS server configured to not return any AAAA records but that only works about 80% of the time now and I've had to do even more drastic things (like forcing a DNAT rule for anything heading out on port 53 to be rewritten to my own DNS server to avoid the apps getting "clever" and just querying whomever they like in spite of my DHCP server's config) to the point that I gave up. Hulu and iTunes don't give me crap so I just use them.
I just gave up on Netflix because of this, but not because I actually use a "VPN." It's because my ISP doesn't provide native IPv6 support so I use a tunnel from Hurricane Electric's TunnelBroker service. A couple of years ago, Netflix published AAAA records in DNS and decided that HE's IPv6 service is a "VPN" so they block it.
I made do with forwarding *.netflix.com in my usual DNS server to another DNS server configured to not return any AAAA records but that only works about 80% of the time now and I've had to do even more drastic things (like forcing a DNAT rule for anything heading out on port 53 to be rewritten to my own DNS server to avoid the apps getting "clever" and just querying whomever they like in spite of my DHCP server's config) to the point that I gave up. Hulu and iTunes don't give me crap so I just use them.
That's one approach! I took the lazier route -- I just stopped using Netflix.
Looking for a specific thing is such a pain. Is it on netflix? Nope. 2 minutes loading the prime video app. Is it on there? Yeah, 3.99 for the privilege of streaming for a couple days. 2 minutes checking hulu. Nope. 2 minutes loading the HBOGO app. Not there either. Turns out, it was on showtime, the one service I don't have access to.
If its not there I'll pirate without hesitation. The only inconvenience is the time it takes to drag my laptop to the HDMI cable on the TV.
If its not there I'll pirate without hesitation. The only inconvenience is the time it takes to drag my laptop to the HDMI cable on the TV.
If you use Roku the main search on the Roku home screen will search for content on all Roku services (installed or not) and sort them by price. It is an amazing little tool. Also Plex works on Roku and will stream pirated content as happily as it streams anything else.
I have my computer streaming to my TV (minidlna), so no more HDMI cables for me :)
Something like Plex might help with the HDMI cable issue.
https://www.justwatch.com/
I use it on occasion instead of doing the 2 minute search dance.
I use it on occasion instead of doing the 2 minute search dance.
Indeed, the autoplay feature of Netflix is insanely intrusive. How are you supposed to let menus sit while you do something else, or even just read details.
I noticed something that struck me as an extremely dark pattern the other day. I was in the Netflix menu on my TV, and I loaded a show and was hovering over the "play" button, but figured I'd leave it there and not start it yet.
A few seconds later, the video fades in and the episode starts playing! I didn't even notice it and kind of started watching the episode, but then realized that I hadn't actually started it myself!
Netflix almost roped me into watching an episode even though I didn't explicitly ask them to, and that seems very manipulative to me.
A few seconds later, the video fades in and the episode starts playing! I didn't even notice it and kind of started watching the episode, but then realized that I hadn't actually started it myself!
Netflix almost roped me into watching an episode even though I didn't explicitly ask them to, and that seems very manipulative to me.
This only just started happening? I use a PS4 to watch Netflix and the auto-play has been happening for months. I find it so irritating that now I don't go to Netflix to browse anymore, because I don't have long enough to consider an option before it involuntarily begins happening to me. Now I only open the interface if I already know what I want to watch, which means I'm no longer exposed to anything new they add. That single feature has single-handedly driven me into being almost entirely a Hulu watcher, because I can browse their app and not be blasted by whatever the algorithm wants to force on me. If my fiance didn't watch a number of Netflix Originals specifically, I would've cancelled my account by now, and not out of principle or something, just because I cannot stand the autoplay interface. It's completely killed Netflix for me. I used to go to Netflix by default to browse, when I didn't know what I wanted to watch. Not anymore..
I wonder if Netflix has overoptimized this for their metrics. I realize "the plural of anecdote is not data", but I've had the same problems with it lately; it's impossible to "browse" anything before the UI starts yelling at you. I'm sure their metrics look awesome, though, with engagement up in all sorts of ways, but I question if it's "real" engagement.
If I’m ever willing to make the time, I think I’ll complain to Netflix about this while framing it as an accessibility problem.
They must know by now how many people hate this, but they refuse to let users disable it. If you CC their general counsel and point out that it raises access barriers for users with attention or anxiety disorders, they might actually do something.
They must know by now how many people hate this, but they refuse to let users disable it. If you CC their general counsel and point out that it raises access barriers for users with attention or anxiety disorders, they might actually do something.
Netflix keeps making their UI worse, to the point where its unbearable now.
You would think by the comments here from Netflix employees that one or two of them would appreciate our feedback and pass some of it on to higher-ups.
Or perhaps management already knows and deliberately makes these decisions based on internal metrics and HN folks are essentially a non-existent blip on their radar...
EDIT: I also regularly leave feedback using the ? button (only available in Watch mode) but it seems to go unread. I don't even get an email "we take your feedback seriously and will look into this" which other sites tend to provide.
Or perhaps management already knows and deliberately makes these decisions based on internal metrics and HN folks are essentially a non-existent blip on their radar...
EDIT: I also regularly leave feedback using the ? button (only available in Watch mode) but it seems to go unread. I don't even get an email "we take your feedback seriously and will look into this" which other sites tend to provide.
Couple of points
1. It struck me at some point that Netflix UI is carefully designed to hide the fact on how little content they really have now. If you go into different genres at times there are barely 40-50 things you can watch (sometimes much lesser). They have lost a ton of items from their catalog (A queue I had which had ~85 items has dropped to 3 items without me removing anything because of shows / movies being removed). If you think of content that in the past would be > 4 stars, you will see most categories have <5 titles that fall under this criteria.
2. Netflix UI is now optimized only for surfacing the 3-4 new shows they launched this month.
3. The autoplay feature (with an impossibly short hover timeout ) appears to be an output of a quantitative metric based engagement maximization process. I suspect they have some charts internally which measure engagement and this specific design hits some local optimum there.
4. Lastly, as a world cinema movie buff I do not think I am the audience anymore. The long tail of delightful movies from across the world is long gone.
I wish them well, they were immensely educational when I first moved to the US. Growing up in India I never had the means to see cinema from across the world, so a service that would allow me to go through various best movies lists and see them two movies a week at a time was magical.
1. It struck me at some point that Netflix UI is carefully designed to hide the fact on how little content they really have now. If you go into different genres at times there are barely 40-50 things you can watch (sometimes much lesser). They have lost a ton of items from their catalog (A queue I had which had ~85 items has dropped to 3 items without me removing anything because of shows / movies being removed). If you think of content that in the past would be > 4 stars, you will see most categories have <5 titles that fall under this criteria.
2. Netflix UI is now optimized only for surfacing the 3-4 new shows they launched this month.
3. The autoplay feature (with an impossibly short hover timeout ) appears to be an output of a quantitative metric based engagement maximization process. I suspect they have some charts internally which measure engagement and this specific design hits some local optimum there.
4. Lastly, as a world cinema movie buff I do not think I am the audience anymore. The long tail of delightful movies from across the world is long gone.
I wish them well, they were immensely educational when I first moved to the US. Growing up in India I never had the means to see cinema from across the world, so a service that would allow me to go through various best movies lists and see them two movies a week at a time was magical.
> You would think by the comments here from Netflix employees that one or two of them would appreciate our feedback and pass some of it on to higher-ups.
I'm sure they are. And as long as Netflix posts above-estimated profits and/or revenues, it doesn't matter one wit. (whit?)
I'm sure they are. And as long as Netflix posts above-estimated profits and/or revenues, it doesn't matter one wit. (whit?)
I have heard that the strongest signal that you can send about Netflix UI changes which degrade your Netflix experience is to call customer support and complain. If you cancel your service for that reason, complain when cancelling.
Metric: Stuff that techies like deliberately leaves money on the table
Fortunatley Kodi now can play netflix and it doesn't use the netflix interface; only issue I have is that searching netflix in Kodi is not great, but I can just search on my phone, add it to my list and then see it in my list on Kodi.
I remember how much excitement Netflix created in the data science community when they used to run their recommendation competition. There was so much optimism that big data would bring big benefits for consumers. How naive we were. Of course the data is used to extract maximum value for the data owner, not consumers. I guess we used to think their interests were aligned; the dream of the free market: that companies will compete on who makes customers' lives better. So so wrong.
There is no free market if there is copyright.
Absolutely terrible on the xbox. It seems like the trailers they shove down my throat are playing at explosion-level volume rather than voice-level volume; back to the blaring TV ad problem again. I have to frantically hit the search bar just to have a few moments to take a deep breath and actually think about what I want to watch.
[deleted]
This bit is also somewhat surprising/interesting:
> Improved performance and reduced crash rates by [doubling web content loading processes from 4 to 8 [1]
From personal experience, I believe that things usually get more buggy, not less, as you add more parallelism/concurrency. I think there's supposed to be a link to more explanation or the relevant ticket, but it looks like they forgot to actually add the link. Can somebody fill it in here?
> Improved performance and reduced crash rates by [doubling web content loading processes from 4 to 8 [1]
From personal experience, I believe that things usually get more buggy, not less, as you add more parallelism/concurrency. I think there's supposed to be a link to more explanation or the relevant ticket, but it looks like they forgot to actually add the link. Can somebody fill it in here?
Thanks!
While that post addresses the reason why we can double the number of processes, I think I'm still missing the reason why we should double the number of processes (aside from performance reasons).
I mean, the release notes made it sound like more processes is more stable than fewer processes (unless I'm misreading it). How does doubling the number of processes result in fewer crashes? If we manually force FF 66 to use 4 processes only, would it result in more crashes than using 8 processes?
While that post addresses the reason why we can double the number of processes, I think I'm still missing the reason why we should double the number of processes (aside from performance reasons).
I mean, the release notes made it sound like more processes is more stable than fewer processes (unless I'm misreading it). How does doubling the number of processes result in fewer crashes? If we manually force FF 66 to use 4 processes only, would it result in more crashes than using 8 processes?
Fewer tabs running in more processes reduces the likelihood of OOM crashes, increases security (because less likely a security vulnerability will allow JavaScript on one page to read memory from another page in the same process), and might improve responsiveness because Firefox can lower the OS priority of processes that only contain background tabs.
That does not really explain why it would be more stable, or did I miss it?
Increasing the number of processes decreases the number of tabs sharing each process. So if a process crashes it will bring down fewer tabs.
That would mean smaller impact per crash, not fewer crashes though.
Yes, technically. But the user experience is fewer tabs crashing, which I'd argue is what user's care about. You notice a crash because of the tab's "oh no" screen, not by watching `ps`.
I see. That starts to make sense if you explain it that way. Users who don't think about the multiprocessing model will just see fewer dead tabs when a FF process crashes, and that could feel like "fewer crashes".
Which is to say, about 99.9% of them. "Crash" in common parlance is understood to mean a glitch, that is, user-visible unintended behavior. If fewer user tabs glitch in that way, that means fewer crashes. User experience is what matters first and foremost.
Could reduce out-of-memory crashes if fewer sites are sharing the same process.
I don't quite understand how that can be possible.
At the end of the day, you're still aiming to load, in FF 66, just as many tabs as in FF pre-66. FF's total memory usage should be about the same whether you're using 4 processes or 8. Sure, if each FF process now takes care of fewer tabs, then when OOM does happen, the FF processes have a lower OOM score and are less likely to get killed. But something will get killed regardless, just maybe not FF. That's like trying to avoid punishment after a prison brawl by keeping your head low: someone will get punished regardless, just maybe not you.
At the end of the day, you're still aiming to load, in FF 66, just as many tabs as in FF pre-66. FF's total memory usage should be about the same whether you're using 4 processes or 8. Sure, if each FF process now takes care of fewer tabs, then when OOM does happen, the FF processes have a lower OOM score and are less likely to get killed. But something will get killed regardless, just maybe not FF. That's like trying to avoid punishment after a prison brawl by keeping your head low: someone will get punished regardless, just maybe not you.
You have to keep in mind that a large fraction of Firefox users are still using 32-bit builds on Windows.
For those users, the memory a process can use is capped at 2-4GB (depending on whether the OS itself is 32-bit or 64-bit and a few other things).
The most common OOM crashes on Windows are running out of virtual address space, not running out of actual physical RAM.
In that context, having more processes in fact gives you more address space and reduces the chance that you will run out.
For those users, the memory a process can use is capped at 2-4GB (depending on whether the OS itself is 32-bit or 64-bit and a few other things).
The most common OOM crashes on Windows are running out of virtual address space, not running out of actual physical RAM.
In that context, having more processes in fact gives you more address space and reduces the chance that you will run out.
On 32-bit Windows, processes have maximum address space limitations which can be easily hit by web browsers. Having more content processes makes it less likely that any particular one will hit that limit. Note that content process OOM crashes are the #1 source of crash reports Firefox gets (and you can see plenty of other OOM crashes in that list further down too):
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrashers/?product=Firefox...
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrashers/?product=Firefox...
Oh, so you mean that on 32-bit Windows, processes (can) have an address space that is smaller than the sum of physical RAM + page file? I didn't know that.
It makes sense then.
It makes sense then.
On any 32-bit OS, processes have at most 4GB of address space, because that's how much you can address with 32 bits.
In practice some of that is reserved for the kernel, so you get less for use by the process itself. Historically 2GB on Windows, though there were some non-default compilation/linking options you could set to get 3GB.
A 32-bit process running on a 64-bit kernel can get 4GB of address space.
And yes, lots of computers have >4GB physical RAM, even if you don't count swap/page files.
In practice some of that is reserved for the kernel, so you get less for use by the process itself. Historically 2GB on Windows, though there were some non-default compilation/linking options you could set to get 3GB.
A 32-bit process running on a 64-bit kernel can get 4GB of address space.
And yes, lots of computers have >4GB physical RAM, even if you don't count swap/page files.
Just spitballing: maybe there's a race condition for some kind of resource handle used in those shared content-loader workers, such that the longer a worker's lifetime, the higher the probability of some kind of resource leak or deadlock. More workers = less lifetime per worker = less probability of triggering it.
>> From personal experience, I believe that things usually get more buggy, not less, as you add more parallelism/concurrency.
Mozilla/Firefox is writing more stuff in Rust, where concurrency is easier to do right. I'm not sure how much that effort has improved the reliability so far but it's happening:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation
Mozilla/Firefox is writing more stuff in Rust, where concurrency is easier to do right. I'm not sure how much that effort has improved the reliability so far but it's happening:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation
Thanks for catching this - the link is in the notes correctly now.
Gotta love the constant battle between marketing and common sense. We implement something, marketing learns of it, abuses it, we tweak or kill the thing into a pale shadow of its former self.
This is also why we can't have nice things by the way.
This is also why we can't have nice things by the way.
I think the core problem is still tab clutter. Every time I hop onto my iPad to do some light browsing, I have less anxiety. I don't keep many tabs open on mobile/tablet, but I'm already counting 8 opened here as I'm typing on my laptop.
Sure, almost everything mentioned in the article is problematic. Then again, maybe it's just us programmed to hit Ctrl-T too much over a decade...
Sure, almost everything mentioned in the article is problematic. Then again, maybe it's just us programmed to hit Ctrl-T too much over a decade...
There needs to be a complete overhaul of "how i got here, back/forward, where i want to go, things i want to read, things i want to flip between, things i want cached so when i click they dont load, i want to purge the tab from my current workspace, i want to purge this site from the history."
Navigation (forward/back), history, tabs, bookmarks et all are all trying to do various forms of the same thing, and their overall relationship to each other is fundamentally broken, because each individual component is too rigidly defined and isolated.
I should be able to click between a couple buttons to see how tabs are 1) related to each other from a time/clicked/navigation history perspective 2) workspace perspective 3) topic perspective
Navigation (forward/back), history, tabs, bookmarks et all are all trying to do various forms of the same thing, and their overall relationship to each other is fundamentally broken, because each individual component is too rigidly defined and isolated.
I should be able to click between a couple buttons to see how tabs are 1) related to each other from a time/clicked/navigation history perspective 2) workspace perspective 3) topic perspective
Even in current browsers you can do pretty well closing tabs whenever you want and looking them up in history. The situation could be way better.
Except in chrome for example, where history clears after so many days, so you have to bookmark.
Firefox had some experiment that merged a visual history with tabs, I didnt like the idea at all, but at least they were thinking about change.
Firefox had some experiment that merged a visual history with tabs, I didnt like the idea at all, but at least they were thinking about change.
I agree with this.
I've come to the conclusion that the bottom line is that I don't need more than a few tabs open, and that if I do, my attention is probably too fractured.
Solution is to change my habits and be a little bit more deliberate with how I'm using the browser.
I've come to the conclusion that the bottom line is that I don't need more than a few tabs open, and that if I do, my attention is probably too fractured.
Solution is to change my habits and be a little bit more deliberate with how I'm using the browser.
Can't think of the browser but there is a hobby browser designed for modal --vim-- usage that displays history as a tree similar to a file structure rather than as a flat back and forward. I wish I could remember the name of it... I do recall it was listed on qutebrowser's github page under similar projects but I can't look right now.
Heh, I've got the exact opposite problem. On the desktop I manage to have "only" 10-40 tabs open at the same time, but on mobile it's usually 200-300.
I just open new tabs whenever I think something might be worth reading, but only have time every now and then to actually read part of the stack.
I just open new tabs whenever I think something might be worth reading, but only have time every now and then to actually read part of the stack.
I like the experiment Chrome is running with "switch to tab" [0]. For most content, I would say it's probably faster to find the content again than search for it in a hay of tabs. I also like extensions like SimpleUndoClose [1] which let you search your recently closed tabs. This way, use my closed tabs as a way of "storing" tabs I may want to access in the near future again, rather than keeping them open.
I would definitely love to see more experimentation around this area.
[0] https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/07/24/chrome-experimentin...
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simpleundoclose/em...
I would definitely love to see more experimentation around this area.
[0] https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/07/24/chrome-experimentin...
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simpleundoclose/em...
Firefox has had switch-to-tab for awhile, go try it out!
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I've been using an extension called TabWrangler for years–it automatically closes tabs you haven't looked at (or pinned) for a specified period of time.
The closed tabs are saved in a searchable list so if something actually important gets closed you can find it again, but I find that 99% of the time I don't even notice that it has auto-closed hundreds of tabs I've opened over the course of the day.
I think I used to tell myself that leaving tabs open was sort of a 'soft bookmark', but now I just bookmark stuff that I genuinely want to come back to, and let the rest of the unimportant stuff I stumble across just disappear.
The closed tabs are saved in a searchable list so if something actually important gets closed you can find it again, but I find that 99% of the time I don't even notice that it has auto-closed hundreds of tabs I've opened over the course of the day.
I think I used to tell myself that leaving tabs open was sort of a 'soft bookmark', but now I just bookmark stuff that I genuinely want to come back to, and let the rest of the unimportant stuff I stumble across just disappear.
I have a huge problem with tab clutter; every computer I have, every browser, has lots of open tabs, long-term.
I have no idea what to do with them. Even something as simple as "read them" is .. and then what, close and forget them?
No idea what I even want to achieve - integrate them into my life in some hoarder kind of "this will make me a better, more knowledgeable person" way?
I have no idea what to do with them. Even something as simple as "read them" is .. and then what, close and forget them?
No idea what I even want to achieve - integrate them into my life in some hoarder kind of "this will make me a better, more knowledgeable person" way?
OneTab on Chrome has been pretty nice for this. If it's something I want to keep, I'll close out a couple tabs that aren't useful and then OneTab the whole thing and put a lid on it. Ironically, despite saving everything, I've found that I rarely return to OneTab saves...
100 tabs open on my iPad. Probably a similar on my iPhone. Far more on my desktop. The problem is that nobody has come up with a decent way to handle tabs.
Opera's tab groups and save browsing sessions made the interface a lot more convenient for me... I tend towards the high end of open tabs.
I have about 30 open on my phone.
I wish they made the macOS version more of a priority. There are two bugs in Bugzilla (window doesn't use CoreAnimation[1], h264/video isn't properly accelerated since quantum[2]) that together cut battery life in half compared to using Chrome or Safari. These have been in there for two years (!) and have varingly been either priority 2 or fix-optional (!!). I understand that there are limited resources but making your browser nigh unusable for on-the-go should mean these bugs get priority 1 or priority critical.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1400787#c4
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1400787#c4
No. Linux should always be the priority!!
Let the war begin!!
Let the war begin!!
If Firefox had treated TabMixPlus (TMP) and other extensions as first-class citizens when they introduced quantum, I can guarantee I'd be using Firefox today (along with all the less technical people in my extended network, who I'd install it for).
Unfortunately, during the transition to quantum and WebExtensions the developers blocked add-ons making changes to the Firefox interface, which crippled TMP and a variety of other add-ons. To suddenly have your favorite add-on crippled is a little painful but what made me walk away was the tone of responses from Mozilla people on the boards and the bug reports. It ranged from dismissive, to arrogant, to angry which, particularly given how quickly the transition took place, just added insult to injury.
It seemed like Mozilla did get the message by the end of 2017 that their approach and response to add-ons had alienated many users. One of their 2018 visions included a statement that 'In 2018, extensions will be one of the reasons why people choose and use Firefox.' Unfortunately, when I looked at the TMP message boards last year I still saw very little in the way of signs of cooperation and encouragement from Mozilla. The TMP developer, onemen, still seems to be trying his best to produce a suite of extensions to reproduce the lost functionality and to be fair to Mozilla they have been moving obstacles out of the way but the pace is glacial.
Chrome may be creepy and invasive but right now it's far more flexible and remains a smoother experience. I'd really love to switch away from Chrome but I won't trade it for an inflexible Firefox UI. If Mozilla could loosen up on the UI restrictions, demonstrate that they're doing everything possible to make the product friendly for add-on developers, and somehow get themselves around to replicating, or helping to replicate, TMP and other crippled add-ons then I would enthusiastically consider switching.
Unfortunately, during the transition to quantum and WebExtensions the developers blocked add-ons making changes to the Firefox interface, which crippled TMP and a variety of other add-ons. To suddenly have your favorite add-on crippled is a little painful but what made me walk away was the tone of responses from Mozilla people on the boards and the bug reports. It ranged from dismissive, to arrogant, to angry which, particularly given how quickly the transition took place, just added insult to injury.
It seemed like Mozilla did get the message by the end of 2017 that their approach and response to add-ons had alienated many users. One of their 2018 visions included a statement that 'In 2018, extensions will be one of the reasons why people choose and use Firefox.' Unfortunately, when I looked at the TMP message boards last year I still saw very little in the way of signs of cooperation and encouragement from Mozilla. The TMP developer, onemen, still seems to be trying his best to produce a suite of extensions to reproduce the lost functionality and to be fair to Mozilla they have been moving obstacles out of the way but the pace is glacial.
Chrome may be creepy and invasive but right now it's far more flexible and remains a smoother experience. I'd really love to switch away from Chrome but I won't trade it for an inflexible Firefox UI. If Mozilla could loosen up on the UI restrictions, demonstrate that they're doing everything possible to make the product friendly for add-on developers, and somehow get themselves around to replicating, or helping to replicate, TMP and other crippled add-ons then I would enthusiastically consider switching.
The XUL "let you do anything you want to the browser UI DOM" extensions model had to die in order to solve a host of problems, most importantly Firefox performance issues. If that had happened later than it did, Mozilla would be in a much worse position now.
The real failure was that WebExtensions should have been started several years earlier, but for various reasons that can was kicked down the road. That is an interesting untold story.
The real failure was that WebExtensions should have been started several years earlier, but for various reasons that can was kicked down the road. That is an interesting untold story.
That's a fair assessment.
the chrome UI is vastly more restrictive than the Firefox one (addons effectively can not modify it in any way), so i'm not sure what you are saying here.
Looks like the current target for feature parity with FF56 may be around 2020 or later, based on projected fixes of critical bugs.
Toolbar:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215064
Session managers:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1427928 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1474130
It shouldn't take three plus years to fix an upgrade. The goal was good, WebExtensions are a significant step forward as a concept. Planning, execution and post-transition management sucked.
Toolbar:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215064
Session managers:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1427928 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1474130
It shouldn't take three plus years to fix an upgrade. The goal was good, WebExtensions are a significant step forward as a concept. Planning, execution and post-transition management sucked.
I'm using Mac OS and the scroll using conventional optical mouse with segmented wheel is really jumpy basically in every other browser. Out of the Firefox, Chrome and Safari only FF scrolls a page really smooth, with no micro jumping as I turn the wheel. Anyone know how to fix this in other browsers?
There's two things to this. One is an option usually called "smooth scrolling" which was historically disabled in Firefox or Chrome (and it was really annoying). It was an on/off switch that either animated the movement between two points in page or it just jumped. I believe all browsers have this enabled now.
The second issue, what you are probably referring to is how the page is animated between those two points. Firefox now uses something old Opera used to have, a really gradual scroll. All chromium-based browser I just tried have this rather jumpy scroll. It's different, but it is not nearly as bad as it used to be in FF.
In short, I don't know, but "smooth scrolling" is something you might want to search for.
The second issue, what you are probably referring to is how the page is animated between those two points. Firefox now uses something old Opera used to have, a really gradual scroll. All chromium-based browser I just tried have this rather jumpy scroll. It's different, but it is not nearly as bad as it used to be in FF.
In short, I don't know, but "smooth scrolling" is something you might want to search for.
I think it's just a question of which algorithm the browsers use to translate the mouse wheel input into an animation.
The other browsers are probably mostly tested with Apple's high precision mouse/trackpad devices that report scroll distance in very small steps instead of the coarse distance reporting of standard mice.
The other browsers are probably mostly tested with Apple's high precision mouse/trackpad devices that report scroll distance in very small steps instead of the coarse distance reporting of standard mice.
I think that's what you're looking for:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smoothscroll/nbokb...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smoothscroll/nbokb...
I have been using Firefox on macOS for a while but firefox is not well-integrated with the OS. Scrolling, downloading files, playing video/audio and many more have different convention from Safari/Chrome.
Also, I am trying to avoid using Firefox on battery because it is a killer.
I've been using FF on macOS for the past year and haven't noticed any problems with the battery. I'm not sure what the problems are with scrolling, downloading, or playing media are either to be honest.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=909760 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1104146 are the issues for downloading which are 4 and 6 years old.
Chrome and Safari support keyboard multimedia keys to play/pause video and audio which firefox does not. Picture in Picture is not available on Firefox.
Pinch and double tap gestures to zoom are not available. Scrolling does not follow system conventions like overflow kinetic scrolling.
https://pcwalton.github.io/2018/12/07/plans-for-2019.html mentions about excessive power consumption on webrender.
Chrome and Safari support keyboard multimedia keys to play/pause video and audio which firefox does not. Picture in Picture is not available on Firefox.
Pinch and double tap gestures to zoom are not available. Scrolling does not follow system conventions like overflow kinetic scrolling.
https://pcwalton.github.io/2018/12/07/plans-for-2019.html mentions about excessive power consumption on webrender.
Ah I see, I guess I don't use any of that stuff myself. I tend to move between macOS and Linux, so I don't get too attached to system specific shortcuts. That said, I really don't see any of these problems as being show stoppers, and I haven't noticed much difference in battery usage between Chrome and FF.
> Pinch and double tap gestures to zoom are not available. Scrolling does not follow system conventions like overflow kinetic scrolling.
I find this hugely annoying as well on MacOS when using the touchpad. This is also the reason why I stick to iOS instead of going for Android. All of these details are great on my laptop and phone, though they're not what I really need on my desktop.
I find this hugely annoying as well on MacOS when using the touchpad. This is also the reason why I stick to iOS instead of going for Android. All of these details are great on my laptop and phone, though they're not what I really need on my desktop.
2015-01-25 Support elastic overscroll (rubberbanding) on macOS:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1124108
I’ve commented about this before, specifically about Firefox on OS X, but the sentiment seems to be that “you’re using it wrong”.
Truly in the Steve Jobs spirit.
Some (most?) people have no eye for design and simply don't notice stuff like that.
Until recently Firefox's URL bar had a THICK blue glow when it was in focus, instead of the more subtle one the rest of Mac OS has. It infuriated me. They didn't fix it for years. Why? Because nobody noticed it or cared enough, I guess.
Until recently Firefox's URL bar had a THICK blue glow when it was in focus, instead of the more subtle one the rest of Mac OS has. It infuriated me. They didn't fix it for years. Why? Because nobody noticed it or cared enough, I guess.
> Added basic support for macOS Touch Bar
This was actually one of my major annoyances, since I use this feature often. I'm glad they added it, chances are others use it too.
This was actually one of my major annoyances, since I use this feature often. I'm glad they added it, chances are others use it too.
Silly question... what do you do with Firefox and the touch bar?
I use it to accidentally mute my computer and accidentally cancel loading web pages.
I've had to remove a lot of the stuff from mine because, turns out, when I hit certain modifier'd key combos with my left hand I tend to rest my right ring finger at the top of one of the number keys... close enough to the touchbar to trigger it. Didn't know that about myself, but now I do, and I've had to clear out about half my touchbar to keep it from being a problem. Turns out if you press "play/pause" on there, it opens iTunes. Took me a while to figure out why that kept opening for "no reason".
yeah I removed the entire left side of the touchbar but the escape key can't be moved.
What's funny is that if escape was a real button I would probably really like the touchbar!
What's funny is that if escape was a real button I would probably really like the touchbar!
I just remap Caps Lock to escape. You can do it now in the vanilla MacOS settings.
Gotta love users working around selling points. Now what could that say, Apple? Could it be?! No! The users are doing it wrong.
Yeah, it's been a net-negative for me. I never use it for touchbary-stuff (I don't even know why I would) and it's worse than real buttons for everything else. The fingerprint reader's OK I guess but is far enough out of the way that it's barely faster than typing my password—it needs to be toward the bottom. I think the whole thing would have made more sense as an iOS/watchOS companion app for MacBooks. Would have addressed the "so... what do I do if I get used to touchbar stuff then am using an external keyboard for a while?" Though I'd probably still not have used it.
I use it to accidentally open Siri.
I've removed the Siri button and put launchpad there instead. Somewhat less annoying.
It's occurred to me that I should find out how to make a placebo button and put there, but I haven't prioritized it.
It's occurred to me that I should find out how to make a placebo button and put there, but I haven't prioritized it.
Actually, mine was a silly comment. What I use is the force touch, which now also works, not the touch bar.
Apologies for the mistake.
Apologies for the mistake.
I won't be surprised if at some point we'll have Force Touch Bar.
Changing and creating new tabs. I really don’t like to use the alt-shortcuts as I never get to the tab I want.
control video/audio playback. At least thats what I do in Safari with it
This is rather surprising to me, as they still don't correctly support all the native Mac keyboard editing commands which have been part of the OS (and every physical keyboard) since 10.0.
I really don't understand the priorities of the Mozilla/Firefox project.
Yes, there are bugs filed on the other keyboard issues -- some more than 10 year old, e.g., 433966 or 429043. I could probably fix them myself, with enough effort, but Mozilla has the weirdest architecture so all my Mac programming knowledge won't help much. The last time I filed a minor bug against Firefox (context menus appear in the wrong place by a couple pixels), it was tagged "[good first bug]" -- and it ended up taking some poor soul 7 months and 790 lines to fix, and I still don't think it's correct.
I think it's time for someone to out-Firefox Firefox. The free and open nature is great, but the UI is collapsing under its own weight.
I really don't understand the priorities of the Mozilla/Firefox project.
Yes, there are bugs filed on the other keyboard issues -- some more than 10 year old, e.g., 433966 or 429043. I could probably fix them myself, with enough effort, but Mozilla has the weirdest architecture so all my Mac programming knowledge won't help much. The last time I filed a minor bug against Firefox (context menus appear in the wrong place by a couple pixels), it was tagged "[good first bug]" -- and it ended up taking some poor soul 7 months and 790 lines to fix, and I still don't think it's correct.
I think it's time for someone to out-Firefox Firefox. The free and open nature is great, but the UI is collapsing under its own weight.
For me the only reason I'd want this is actually touch-id with webauthn, but it's not supported :(
Works on Chrome as I found out today.
Works on Chrome as I found out today.
"System title bar is hidden by default to match Gnome guideline for Linux users" - which part of the UI does this refer to exactly? Does this mean that Firefox will now be hiding the page title?
So that it looks like the Windows version: title bar and tabs are together. The close and minimise buttons are to the side of the tabs.
I believe this isn’t enabled for KDE Plasma.
If you like a separate title bar like the old version of Firefox, then use the hamburger menu, choose “customise” and check the box for the title bar.
I believe this isn’t enabled for KDE Plasma.
If you like a separate title bar like the old version of Firefox, then use the hamburger menu, choose “customise” and check the box for the title bar.
Unfortunately, it doesn't pick up the actions associated, for example, to the "double-click" or "middle-click" or at least not on my desktop.
Someone knows if it's customizable in the config menu, searching the obvious "titlebar" reports only two not useful entries?
Someone knows if it's customizable in the config menu, searching the obvious "titlebar" reports only two not useful entries?
It is, it's a checkbox at the bottom left of the "Customize" panel.
I should have explained it better, I was asking about associating actions to the "compact" titlebar (or what's called). I guess I need to wait for a proper GTK3 "header bar", if it's planned at all...
Anyway thanks.
Edit: in Chrome/Chromium works as I expected, I think I should file a bug then.
Anyway thanks.
Edit: in Chrome/Chromium works as I expected, I think I should file a bug then.
Odd, Firefox 65 already appears to do this under Gnome, unless I'm misunderstanding.
Could be that Ubuntu were already doing this and it has now made it upstream, I suppose.
Could be that Ubuntu were already doing this and it has now made it upstream, I suppose.
I believe it's non-default behavior. There's a keyboard shortcut to hide it.
I think it was behind a flag before.
It's visible in the tab: https://i.imgur.com/UOvz505.png
That seems problematic; even in your screenshot with just one tab, the title gets cut off after just a couple words.
It looks like Windows. If it behaves like it, then you can read the full title by hovering over the tab.
I haven't used gnome in quite a while, so I'm not totally certain of what was before this change, but I wouldn't consider it problematic. I find that saving the extra 20 pixels at the top is good for the widescreen aspect ratio of most monitors.
I haven't used gnome in quite a while, so I'm not totally certain of what was before this change, but I wouldn't consider it problematic. I find that saving the extra 20 pixels at the top is good for the widescreen aspect ratio of most monitors.
IMO, the title isn't really helpful anyway. I did a userChrome.css thing a while back to make it just show favicons in the tab bar with one or two pixels of space and it works great. The tabs don't jump around when you switch tabs and you can fit a bunch more of them in the same space (I keep favicon bookmarks on the right side of the tab bar).
This is useless for sites that don't have favicons.
For what it's worth, you can see the entire title by hovering over the truncated text in the tab.
I assume they mean the application window title bar which simply says Firefox on Gnome.
Slowly but surely the creative potential of the web is eroded until nothing is left but plain text and ads, to thunderous applause. Gross overreaction after gross overreaction and now we're in a state where extensions are a shallow husk of their former glory, you need to jump through legally vague ridiculous hoops to do anything involving user data, a vast trove of great Flash content is no longer accessible to the average user, web apps with sound and video aren't allowed to work seamlessly without an obnoxious "click here to let the webpage do what it should be able to do anyway" button, and various other unnecessary restrictions. How soon until it's the default that you need to give a website permission to display images and you need a license to make a webpage? That's the direction it feels like we're heading in. I'm saddened that the golden age of the web is probably behind me, but at least I was alive for it.
I went over the subject here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087332
I went over the subject here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087332
Staying on the subject at hand, do you not find it annoying trying to find which tab, and where on the tab a video is playing?
"I'm saddened that the golden age of the web is probably behind me"
Funny, I'd place the golden age before all these things you cite.
Out of curiosity what's your favourite website, what most sums up your golden age?
"I'm saddened that the golden age of the web is probably behind me"
Funny, I'd place the golden age before all these things you cite.
Out of curiosity what's your favourite website, what most sums up your golden age?
I'm not sure if I'd call it my favorite anymore but I probably use reddit the most.
I'm thinking of golden age in terms of the power available to webpages/browsers. This would be when HTML5/webgl/etc features had just gotten implemented, plugins like Flash and Java were still supported, and Firefox used the old extension system. All of the old web was still there alongside the cool new stuff. Now the old stuff is gone and the new stuff is getting ruined.
I'm thinking of golden age in terms of the power available to webpages/browsers. This would be when HTML5/webgl/etc features had just gotten implemented, plugins like Flash and Java were still supported, and Firefox used the old extension system. All of the old web was still there alongside the cool new stuff. Now the old stuff is gone and the new stuff is getting ruined.
Reddit, I can see that.
Would you want a reddit where every embedded video in a thread auto played though?
I'm guessing our disagreement is over who has final say over display of content? I would say the client, you would say the server (or creator)? Is that fair?
Would you want a reddit where every embedded video in a thread auto played though?
I'm guessing our disagreement is over who has final say over display of content? I would say the client, you would say the server (or creator)? Is that fair?
The user should be able to make the client do whatever they want, but a blacklist for autoplay sounds a lot better to me than a whitelist. It harms the creative potential of things when they're limited by default and most users aren't going to manually add your site to a whitelist. It wouldn't even be so bad if the website could just request autoplay permissions the same as it requests permission to know your location etc. Better would be if the browser heuristically detected the site potentially abusing autoplay and then asked the user if they want to block the site from doing so in the future - at least giving webpages a chance by default instead of being guilty until proven innocent. As a web user I've never been so bothered by autoplaying news videos etc. that I felt it would be fair to stick a wrench in the entire web over them.
On the subject of Reddit I do find it unnecessarily burdensome that I have to give Reddit Enhancement Suite permission for every individual domain that it wants to embed stuff from, another place where I feel like browsers went too far locking themselves down.
On the subject of Reddit I do find it unnecessarily burdensome that I have to give Reddit Enhancement Suite permission for every individual domain that it wants to embed stuff from, another place where I feel like browsers went too far locking themselves down.
What about banning autoplay on background tabs, with a blacklist for abusers on the focused tab?
The problem with blacklists is that they default to letting bad things through if not maintained. But yeah it would be nice to think that we still have a web where the blacklist would be less unwieldy than the whitelist.
The problem with blacklists is that they default to letting bad things through if not maintained. But yeah it would be nice to think that we still have a web where the blacklist would be less unwieldy than the whitelist.
I sort of get where you are coming from, and i miss all the geocitys weirdness, and the home build blogs (before everyone used wordpress with the same 5 themes).
But web is also a tool (and a necessary one for many jobs). And advertisers have abused web to such degree, that there had to be a push back.
As far as white listing vs black listing goes, white listing is always better option. Especially for things like this, because i know that i don't want ads/videos/sound from 99% of websites I visit.
But web is also a tool (and a necessary one for many jobs). And advertisers have abused web to such degree, that there had to be a push back.
As far as white listing vs black listing goes, white listing is always better option. Especially for things like this, because i know that i don't want ads/videos/sound from 99% of websites I visit.
On macOS: still waiting for interactions with the address bar to be smooth and fast. It's frustratingly laggy in my opinion. Does anyone else feel this way? For me it's the only reason I still gravitate towards Chrome on a Mac.
AIUI, Mozilla is rewriting the address bar ("QuantumBar"), and you can now toggle it on in Nightly by setting browser.urlbar.quantumbar to true in about:config. I've only tried it on Linux, but it seems smoother.
Thanks for the pointer, the toggle works in stable too but the smoothness you describe just isn't there yet :)
Appears performant to me on a 2015 MBP. What's the use case in which you see problems?
Have this same problem. 2015 rMBP. The FF UI feels so much more laggy than Chrome/Safari.
have this exact same problem on my 2015 rMBP, switching between tabs quickly is hideous.
Firefox needs to be the browser OF something, something super simple: privacy, security, convenience, etc. "Reduce Your Online Annoyances" is a bit of a mouthful. Being the browser of "Support Us Or Google Will Own Everything" is likewise not compelling for the vast majority of users.
Firefox has the functionality, now it needs to cement its narrative.
Firefox has the functionality, now it needs to cement its narrative.
Saying it's the browser that brings "No-ads experience to your Android smartphone" would be pretty powerful message to get a share on average users market.
Well it's obvious they're positioned to be the browser "of privacy," but they could probably stand to hype that a bit more.
“Firefox, the browser without shitware”?
A start page without my bookmarks... "main websites" and "in evidence"
https://support.mozilla.org/it/questions/1185996 https://support.mozilla.org/it/questions/1185347
https://support.mozilla.org/it/questions/1185996 https://support.mozilla.org/it/questions/1185347
I would love a browser, or extension that would prevent sites from hijacking or munging my clipboard.
It's infuriating that a page can dictate what gets placed in my clipboard against my will.
It's infuriating that a page can dictate what gets placed in my clipboard against my will.
There's a setting in about:config to turn it off. The problem is that it messes up copying text in some tools like Google Docs and Sheets. Even if you turn it off Google hijacks the shortcut keys and right click. For some reason selecting Copy from the Edit menu doesn't work either.
I use Firefox and I've never noticed this. On Google Docs, when you use the copy menu, it suggests that you use the keystroke combination, making me think it's unable to copy via JS. I haven't tested it specifically but I think FF already does this.
Not sure if the tab search is entirely new or simply made more accessible in FF 66, but it certainly seems to make the All Tabs Helper add-on mostly obsolete for me now.
In previous versions if you typed in the name of tab in the url bar it would offer you the option of a tab you already had open (on any of your computers using FF sync) among the search options.
The feature has been there for years, i.e. you could always enter a magic character to restrict awesomebar searches to tabs. Problem is, people didn't know the magic character, so hardly anybody used this feature. It's more accessible now.
Once Firefox will be able to handle https://theannoyingsite.com/ properly, it will have achieved that. (I suggest opening the most annoying site in incognito mode.)
I had to tweak my Firefox quite a lot to pass that "benchmark".
I had to tweak my Firefox quite a lot to pass that "benchmark".
Considering the recent "Spectre is here to stay" paper [1], can anyone comment on whether Firefox should be considered secure until the work on process-per-site lands (I believe they are working on it)?
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05178
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05178
We don't see Spectre vulnerabilities in the wild, and in any case Firefox has mitigations for it such as lowering timer resolution.
The ongoing Fission work is basically defense in depth against future potential Spectre-like vulnerabilities.
The ongoing Fission work is basically defense in depth against future potential Spectre-like vulnerabilities.
> can anyone comment on whether Firefox should be considered secure until the work on process-per-site lands
No and Yes.
No, theoretically there could be spectre vulns. Practically we have seen zero spectre-based attacks in the wild. It's not a big deal.
No and Yes.
No, theoretically there could be spectre vulns. Practically we have seen zero spectre-based attacks in the wild. It's not a big deal.
[deleted]
These are the features still on my wishlist:
- First-class portable password manager and built-in support for pkcs11 SC
- security device that's not buggy,
- fingerprinting protection,
- first party isolation,
- default fonts,
- better zoom behavior,
- built-in ublock origin ad-blocker.
So what's the list of browsers now that have autoplaying blocked or have that feature planned?
I've started to make a list:
- Firefox -
- Firefox -
Safari does that too.
https://www.howtogeek.com/326532/safari-now-disables-auto-pl...
https://www.howtogeek.com/326532/safari-now-disables-auto-pl...
Elinks and dillo have autoplay blocked :p
Chrome won't autoplay videos having audio. Unless you've already interacted with the site.
Safari has it and is doing it much better, because it blocks both video and audio autoplay. I just tested it on Firefox 66 and I'm very disappointed. It blocks only audio and... it's broken anyway. On one page the first video was audio muted (great!), but then the second video came after the first one finished playing and it was suddenly unmuted! The tab was inactive and suddenly the sound came from it. Until fixed, I'm still going to use Safari for this solely reason.
Which site?
Generally this is good.
But I wonder, lets say you want to allow autoplay on Netflix. Do you need to enable it on all subdomains and CDNs - that could be tedious. (I don't know if Netflix has subdomains, CDN, just an example)
I think it doesn't matter where the media is but rather from what website it is played.
My company makes pluggable chat software. I'm sad about this development, because it means that we can't audibly notify users anymore when someone writes a message to them.
I wonder whether there's a way around that, but I don't see it.
I wonder whether there's a way around that, but I don't see it.
Some of your competitors have been using it for a fake "ding" sound and a generic message when you visit a site. So while I sympathize a little, it is for the greater good.
True! That really sucks.
I was thinking something like a browser could allow audio in response to, say, a push notification (akin to how they allow popups to be created after user click events) but that'd be easily gameable for the situation you describe. There's no way a browser can distinguish between a legitimate message from a human and robospam.
Thanks for the clarification.
I was thinking something like a browser could allow audio in response to, say, a push notification (akin to how they allow popups to be created after user click events) but that'd be easily gameable for the situation you describe. There's no way a browser can distinguish between a legitimate message from a human and robospam.
Thanks for the clarification.
GoToMeeting is now doing this, even when you are loading their site for the purpose of launching a meeting, so you get the pleasantry of an obnoxious sales support bot "notification" ding blaring through your speakerphone system.
I've been messing around with the Web Audio API lately and the message Firefox leaves is that it will still work as long as the user initiates the sounds loading, not the page. So if the user opens your chat or maybe interacts with your page in a way that indicates they've given you permission to play sounds then you're good.
That is a bit annoying for my usecase (playing a sound whenever a team scores a goal) where the users enable it manually but it is remembered with a cookie. Right now we just do not remember their sound preferences in Safari, which just like Firefox requires user interaction.
So some responsible users are affected by this change, but it is also a necessary change due to too many abusers. This is why we cannot have nice things.
So some responsible users are affected by this change, but it is also a necessary change due to too many abusers. This is why we cannot have nice things.
It pops up a window when you visit the site, asking if you want to allow sounds. You just click "allow".
Yeah, it is a bit annoying (I have also been using autoplay responsibly, i.e. the customer will only get autoplay if they have enabled it which is remember with a cookie) but way too many sites abused autoplay.
What about using the notifications API? Seems a cleaner way than autoplaying sound in any case.
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...
You can whitelist.
Is there a whitelist though? Because while I dislike an unexpected video autoplaying in a news article, there are sites where I want and expect a video to start without pressing anything, such as Youtube
Yes.
Options -> Privacy & Security -> Block Websites from automatically playing sound -> Exceptions (Allow/Block)
Options -> Privacy & Security -> Block Websites from automatically playing sound -> Exceptions (Allow/Block)
The little (i) in the top left of the address bar, then under permissions click allow. The article has a screen shot and details on this
I wonder how was the Wayland support improved. I'm running Firefox 65 with GTK_BACKEND=wayland and it works quite well but there are still some minor issues where and there.
"Lowered priority of setTimeout and setInterval during page load to improve overall page load performance" , how will this improve performane? im askin to learn .
One web annoyance I have recently discovered is moving the current tab. So far only one website I know uses it, but that is really annoying... when you click on specific links on that site, it suddenly moves the ative tab to the very right of all open tabs. I don't understand the reasoning there, but it made me ponder learning Firefox addon development several times already... or is something like that also easily fixed in Firefox?
This should help for a few months, and then web developers will come up with some other terrible anti-pattern, and we will need yet another line of defense.
Oh thank God, Windows hello support. I had to give up Firefox at work because all our sites authenticate via Hello. Now I can kick Chrome to the curb.
I love the page anchoring there is nothing more annoying, imo, then page jumping. More so on mobile but still am glad to see this addressed. I always felt like it was intentional on mobile, timed perfectly to when the average user would be expected to click the certain location then bam an ad pops up in it's place. Good riddance.
[deleted]
> Scroll anchoring keeps content from jumping as images and ads load at the top of the page
How well does this work in practice?
How well does this work in practice?
One of my primary online annoyances is having to maintain two Firefox installations because most of my favored extensions can't or won't be rewritten for WebExtensions and I find the practice of forcing users to keep currently open tabs above the bookmarks bar contemptuous.
This it's great and I'm looking forward to trying it. I'm currently in Europe and every webpage now pops up a message about using cookies. If they could work out a way to say accept to all these automatically too that would be awesome as well.
There is an addon for firefox: "i don't care about cookies" which removes such popups. I think it works well, because I can't remember cookie-popups on desktop.
The IDCAC extension just has a filter list for cookie popups and removes them the same way that ad blockers do.
In the uBlock Origin settings you can go to the 'Filter lists' tab and enable more filter lists, including ones that delete cookie popups.
Here are a few good ones:
Built In => uBlock filters - I have enabled all except experimental
Ads => Adblock Warning Removal List (messages asking you to disable adblocker)
Annoyances => Fanboy's Cookie, Annoyance, and Social Blocking Lists (social blocking deletes like/share buttons)
In the uBlock Origin settings you can go to the 'Filter lists' tab and enable more filter lists, including ones that delete cookie popups.
Here are a few good ones:
Built In => uBlock filters - I have enabled all except experimental
Ads => Adblock Warning Removal List (messages asking you to disable adblocker)
Annoyances => Fanboy's Cookie, Annoyance, and Social Blocking Lists (social blocking deletes like/share buttons)
> The min-content and max-content keywords are now available unprefixed
very good, thanks for the hard work!
very good, thanks for the hard work!
When will they get rid of their own biggest annoyance, namely this "Firefox is installing updates and will start in a moment" popup? Why not install updates just before shutting down? Or be decent and ask user permission ?
This is a great update. However, it still doesn't fix the long-standing YouTube micro-stutters on Linux. I have to resort to using Chrome to watch any videos, and I have tried all the workarounds.
Does anyone else have the problem that firefox denies acces to `navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition` even if the user clicks "allow"?
I hoped it was fixed in the release but seems to be not the case.
I hoped it was fixed in the release but seems to be not the case.
I tried https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Geolocation... in Firefox 66 on macOS and Windows. I got "Unable to retrieve your location" on macOS (though it worked in Chrome on macOS). It worked on Windows, though.
On macOS, does setting about:config "geo.provider.use_corelocation" = false and restarting Firefox fix the geolocation error? Firefox 65 or 66 recently changed from always using Google Location Service to first check the operating system's local location service (CoreLocation on macOS, which might have a local location cache for faster lookups).
If disabling CoreLocation fixes the problem, you might look in macOS System Preferences for location permissions. The first time an application tries to use the local location service, macOS prompts the user to grant permission to the application. If you accidentally click "deny", then macOS will automatically deny all future Firefox location requests.
If disabling CoreLocation fixes the problem, you might look in macOS System Preferences for location permissions. The first time an application tries to use the local location service, macOS prompts the user to grant permission to the application. If you accidentally click "deny", then macOS will automatically deny all future Firefox location requests.
I reported this as https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536481 - please comment there if you have more information or if you want to follow the discussion.
I'd like the option to disable checking for updates back, please.
Why not just block the audio by default?
I don't care about the video, because any hostile website could still generate video by using gifs, or by playing a sequence of image frames using JavaScript.
I don't care about the video, because any hostile website could still generate video by using gifs, or by playing a sequence of image frames using JavaScript.
Video tends to eat deeply into the metered data plans of many Internet users.
the alternatives (gifs, frames advanced by JS) are even more bandwidth-heavy
If sites escalate to gifs or frames advanced by JS, I'll escalate to blocking gifs or JS.
Autoplaying video is not acceptable.
Autoplaying video is not acceptable.
I like what Slack does for GIFs: there's some (not sure if configurable) size threshold above which the GIF won't auto-expand. This is something browsers could do in general.
That assumes the browser can know the image's content-length before loading the whole image, which unfortunately isn't always possible.
Yeah, that's fair, but is likely a corner case. How often do you see a finitely sized resource that doesn't get returned with a Content-Length response header? If push came to shove, a browser could simply stop reading & close the connection after consuming a certain number of bytes. GIFs are sequential things anyway, aren't they? I don't remember that detail.
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The auto mute extension for Firefox does that petty well. New tabs can be at to open muted by default and you only need to use the standard ctrl m shortcut to unmute them.
> Why not just block the audio by default?
If the objective is to stop autoplaying sound, why solve a more general problem rather than solve the actual problem?
If the objective is to stop autoplaying sound, why solve a more general problem rather than solve the actual problem?
Because breaking sites like Soundcloud and Youtube by default seems like an overreaction to the abuse of auto-playing sound
This change will already do that; Firefox doesn't whitelist sites by default.
My personal preference would have been to mute tabs by default rather than blocking autoplay:
- Sites can't detect a muted tab with JS, so they can't use it for tracking or block services behind it.
- Nothing would break. Firefox did a pretty good job of minimizing the potential breakage from this change, but there are still edge cases and some weird logic that's required to address them. A muted tab is no different than you unplugging the speakers from your computer. It'll never cause a Javascript error.
- It's simpler from a user perspective. You can already mute a tab. Why do we need another control that's meant to fulfill the same purpose?
The counter-argument is that blocking autoplay is actually about saving data, but in reality:
- The restrictions are trivial to bypass, since you can just start playing after the first user gesture/action.
- Muted videos are still allowed to autoplay.
So if you're trying to save data, it would still be a lot better to just have an option to block audio/video entirely, not just of the autoplaying variety.
As far as I can tell, Mozilla basically got kind of railroaded into this implementation because that's what Google did, and that set the general narrative. Mozilla ended up with a better implementation than Google, but this is still one of those restrictions where I feel like 2-3 years from now we're going to look back and say, "yeah, this wasn't really thought through all the way."
My personal preference would have been to mute tabs by default rather than blocking autoplay:
- Sites can't detect a muted tab with JS, so they can't use it for tracking or block services behind it.
- Nothing would break. Firefox did a pretty good job of minimizing the potential breakage from this change, but there are still edge cases and some weird logic that's required to address them. A muted tab is no different than you unplugging the speakers from your computer. It'll never cause a Javascript error.
- It's simpler from a user perspective. You can already mute a tab. Why do we need another control that's meant to fulfill the same purpose?
The counter-argument is that blocking autoplay is actually about saving data, but in reality:
- The restrictions are trivial to bypass, since you can just start playing after the first user gesture/action.
- Muted videos are still allowed to autoplay.
So if you're trying to save data, it would still be a lot better to just have an option to block audio/video entirely, not just of the autoplaying variety.
As far as I can tell, Mozilla basically got kind of railroaded into this implementation because that's what Google did, and that set the general narrative. Mozilla ended up with a better implementation than Google, but this is still one of those restrictions where I feel like 2-3 years from now we're going to look back and say, "yeah, this wasn't really thought through all the way."
To me it seems to be a very reasonable reaction to a terrible situation. As long as it's easy to whitelist a domain, I'm very happy about this development.
They should also block sites that load data from more then 3 sources ... that would almost be the whole web... too bad mozilla doesnt have a large market share anymore...
That’s all nice but is there any update on battery improvements? I can’t see any for a long time. That’s about the last reason left why I’m still using Chrome on Mac.
Edge spent a lot of time and focus on this but it seems Firefox is not actively pursuing it or marketing it.
Been using Firefox nightly on Android and it's on par with chrome (even faster with ublock running since FF can run extensions on mobile), but the battery drain feels higher than with chrome.
Been using Firefox nightly on Android and it's on par with chrome (even faster with ublock running since FF can run extensions on mobile), but the battery drain feels higher than with chrome.
Could someone in the know please dilate on this claim?
"Fixed: <button> element is no longer special cased in event dispatch, per latest specifications"
"Fixed: <button> element is no longer special cased in event dispatch, per latest specifications"
It's probably referring to this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1089326
Firefox has so many great features and yet I find myself not using it as my main browser for a simple reason: New windows open twice as fast in Safari and Chrome.
I'm opening a lot of windows because I'm not a fan of tabs. So Firefox feels extremely sluggish to me even though the actual rendering and JavaScript execution is anything but sluggish.
I'm not even sure if Firefox windows open so slowly for a reason or if it's just a really badly designed animation.
I'm opening a lot of windows because I'm not a fan of tabs. So Firefox feels extremely sluggish to me even though the actual rendering and JavaScript execution is anything but sluggish.
I'm not even sure if Firefox windows open so slowly for a reason or if it's just a really badly designed animation.
Hey did anybody try the autoplay off feature with Twitter ? Videos in my feed still seem to be playing
If Firefox automatically got rid of cookie banners for me I’d consider switching back
This extension will do that for you: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...
Firefox also automatically blocks users from installing or editing their own add-ons.
I have never seen this, so citation needed.
I think the GP is referring to not being able to install non-signed add-ons in non-developer versions of Firefox.
Yes. You have to have mozilla sign your add-ons after every little edit you make or use the beta/dev with bugs.
I want to see “disable websites asking to send you notifications on bu default” !
please add 'pull down to reload' feature on android browser
Please don't. Otherwise I'm going to end up accidentally reloading many pages. :)
Is this any different that what Safari has been doing?
No, but it’s available one Windows and Linux.
Yes, it's different - it only mutes audio and video is still autoplaying. Safari blocks both audio and video.
My online annoyances mostly come from having too many open tabs. That's why i use a Chrome add-on (Great Suspender) to automatically kill inactive tabs, which killed my RAM in a long run.
Finally! Please roll this out to Firefox Android!
Now please ship ublock origin by default.
Why? What would be better about uBlock Origin if it was integrated? Furthermore, it wasn't that long ago that we all used AdBlock Plus, and then uBlock. If we integrate the current flavor of ad blocker, what happens when we want/need to move to something else?
Didn't the whole creative coding community pitch a fit when Chrome did this?
Because Chrome had bugs in how it worked, and didn't make it trivial for people to re-enable when they want audio.
I wouldn't say "bugs". It was deliberate behavior.
Chrome simply broke a lot of content on the Web, while Firefox just mutes it and lets you unmute.
Chrome simply broke a lot of content on the Web, while Firefox just mutes it and lets you unmute.
[this thread is not for bug reports; sorry everyone]
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but how is there still no pinch-to-zoom on mac?
https://i.imgur.com/mzmsdzt.png
They added this to my home page, despite the fact that my default search provider is DDG.
Mozilla, could you STOP bundling advertisements into my browser?
They added this to my home page, despite the fact that my default search provider is DDG.
Mozilla, could you STOP bundling advertisements into my browser?
To be fair, that's their entire business model outside of donations.
The default is the default and this UI doesn't change that. It allows you to have a default, yet still use the other engines on a one-off basis. It's not limited to google either, e.g. I believe amazon is offered by default as well.
Why does it only block videos with sound?
I would like one prominent check box in the settings that says, "Never, ever auto-play videos. Ever."
I cannot imagine thinking, "You know what this site needs? A video that starts playing by itself!"
I would like one prominent check box in the settings that says, "Never, ever auto-play videos. Ever."
I cannot imagine thinking, "You know what this site needs? A video that starts playing by itself!"
Does this mean that custom emacs/vim keybindings can work again?
I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/ and it works well for me.
I thought that when only web extension plugins were allowed shortcut extensions no longer worked. I was using keysnail. I was following https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061 but didn't know if it had been resolved. Thanks I'll check that out
I would expect those plugins to work once it's mentioned in the release notes
Ceheck out saka keys
At the end unless Firefox doesn't block JavaScript, it won't have much effect.
Actually it's also time to ban JavaScript after horrendous front end frameworks made simple page loads slow, energy and time consuming.
Actually it's also time to ban JavaScript after horrendous front end frameworks made simple page loads slow, energy and time consuming.
That is the most pessimist comment on this thread.
Javascript is useful, it is just a shame most people dont use it for good.
Javascript is useful, it is just a shame most people dont use it for good.
We cant ban just the bad Javascript, a browser cannot distinguish it from the good. And overall, Javascript does more harm than good.
Citation needed. I dont believe gmail would be as useful eithout javascript, docs wouldnt really be possible, i dont think i could video chat with my family without extensions, and so on.
Installing apps is really not aomething i want. I am trying to keep apps on my phone low for a reason, browser is actually perfect for most of what i do.
Installing apps is really not aomething i want. I am trying to keep apps on my phone low for a reason, browser is actually perfect for most of what i do.
Email clients, word processors and video chat would be very much possible without Javascript.
Email clients, sure.
Word processors? Only if you're requiring something like Markdown.
Video chat seems right out, unless you're permitting a Flash solution, which would be severely cheating.
Word processors? Only if you're requiring something like Markdown.
Video chat seems right out, unless you're permitting a Flash solution, which would be severely cheating.
He's not talking about cancerous in-browser webapps. He's talking about actual clients.
You mean clients i can hardly update, and most often clunky as well? I dont see the improvement.
I can use web apps on any platform without waiting for the company to do it.
I refuse to install apps on my devices.
I can use web apps on any platform without waiting for the company to do it.
I refuse to install apps on my devices.
> You mean clients i can hardly update
Yes! You dont have to update if you dont want to. Thats a feature. Of course, the rise of proprietary APIs over interoperable protocols has lessened that advantage.
Yes! You dont have to update if you dont want to. Thats a feature. Of course, the rise of proprietary APIs over interoperable protocols has lessened that advantage.
> You mean clients i can hardly update, and most often clunky as well? I dont see the improvement.
Is better performance and more features not an improvement to you?
Is better performance and more features not an improvement to you?
What more features? All can be done in javascript, without making users install garbage, without spending extra resources. I prefer companies spend their resources on improving the product instead of implementing same thing thrice.
What most people dont realize is web apps are a boon to linux people. Most companies would not develop for linux at all.
What most people dont realize is web apps are a boon to linux people. Most companies would not develop for linux at all.
> What more features?
Support for most platform APIs?
> I prefer companies spend their resources on improving the product instead of implementing same thing thrice.
Funny, this is exactly my issue with web apps. I don't want to use software where the engineers have done a poor job reimplementing things the system provides for free.
Support for most platform APIs?
> I prefer companies spend their resources on improving the product instead of implementing same thing thrice.
Funny, this is exactly my issue with web apps. I don't want to use software where the engineers have done a poor job reimplementing things the system provides for free.
Build the tools to enable them. Dont blame engineers lack of experience on the language. I used libreoffice early on, was not impressed. Same story.
> Word processors? Only if you're requiring something like Markdown.
You havent heard of LibreOffice?
You havent heard of LibreOffice?
Everything old is new again.
'offline' apps, 'local' cloud. Its the future!
'offline' apps, 'local' cloud. Its the future!
Web apps are boon to linux people. Most companies would not even bother developing for linux first
personally I havent found a webapp that I need, or even doesn't just make me think a normal app would be better.
That's not to say I disagree though. The tech world is very good at creating monopolies.
That's not to say I disagree though. The tech world is very good at creating monopolies.
Why would i install some hundreds of mbs of apps when i am complaining about javascript.
Because you don't have the redownload libreoffice everytime you want to write something?
Theres Ted if you cant stretch to libreoffice though. https://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/
Theres Ted if you cant stretch to libreoffice though. https://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/
The main Gmail app would not work. There is an html only Gmail and I use it all the time!
We'll probably just have to agree to disagree re: "JS does more harm than good".
I have at least 5 progressive webapps open right now, none of which could work without javascript. Of the other 20 websites I have open in other tabs, none are being annoying or aggressive, and I'm not even using an adblocker.
I have at least 5 progressive webapps open right now, none of which could work without javascript. Of the other 20 websites I have open in other tabs, none are being annoying or aggressive, and I'm not even using an adblocker.
They could be proper applications instead.
Having them be proper applications would be a huge problem for the security and therefore the computing autonomy of the average person. The fact that you don't generally download unsandboxed, unsigned apps from the internets any more (and don't run shrink-wrapped apps from the local CompUSA that are full of C string parsing vulnerabilities, either) is one of the most meaningful accomplishments in computer security in the last decade. If you want to throw it out, you personally can clean up the Bonzi Buddies on every Windows user's computer. The most malicious JavaScript web page still can't install Bonzi Buddy. We've even gotten to an era where most people don't need to install anti-virus, because moving everything to the web has fixed the fundamental problems with desktop OS design that required a quasi-snake-oil, theoretically-untenable approach to maintain a semblance of integrity.
There's another alternative, which is curated and audited app stores à la iOS, but the fact that you can't use applications unless they're approved by a megacorporation would also be bad for people's computing autonomy.
(Also, what makes you think that the developers of bloated JS apps won't make bloated desktop apps?)
There's another alternative, which is curated and audited app stores à la iOS, but the fact that you can't use applications unless they're approved by a megacorporation would also be bad for people's computing autonomy.
(Also, what makes you think that the developers of bloated JS apps won't make bloated desktop apps?)
Thats a false dilemma. You can have sandboxing without running pseudo-applications in a document viewer and without walled gardens.
> (Also, what makes you think that the developers of bloated JS apps won't make bloated desktop apps?)
Nothing. Its possible to create garbage desktop apps. But its impossible to create non-garbage web apps.
> (Also, what makes you think that the developers of bloated JS apps won't make bloated desktop apps?)
Nothing. Its possible to create garbage desktop apps. But its impossible to create non-garbage web apps.
> You can have sandboxing without running pseudo-applications in a document viewer and without walled gardens.
Please expand on this claim. What is a "pseudo-application" and what is a "document viewer"? In particular, how does having an app runtime outside a "document viewer" accomplish the goals you would like to see?
> Its possible to create garbage desktop apps. But its impossible to create non-garbage web apps.
Please expand on this claim. I've seen tons of non-garbage web apps.
Please expand on this claim. What is a "pseudo-application" and what is a "document viewer"? In particular, how does having an app runtime outside a "document viewer" accomplish the goals you would like to see?
> Its possible to create garbage desktop apps. But its impossible to create non-garbage web apps.
Please expand on this claim. I've seen tons of non-garbage web apps.
> What is a "pseudo-application" and what is a "document viewer"?
Presumably, a webpage in a browser.
> In particular, how does having an app runtime outside a "document viewer" accomplish the goals you would like to see?
> I've seen tons of non-garbage web apps.
Good web software can't compete with good native software in things like performance and platform features, so this is my guess as to what is considered to be non-"garbage".
Presumably, a webpage in a browser.
> In particular, how does having an app runtime outside a "document viewer" accomplish the goals you would like to see?
> I've seen tons of non-garbage web apps.
Good web software can't compete with good native software in things like performance and platform features, so this is my guess as to what is considered to be non-"garbage".
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They are applications. They run in a safe sandbox in the browser, rather than being all-powerful programs running directly on the system. They allow nuances of trust ("I trust this application with the data I'm giving it") rather than absolute trust ("I trust this application with access to my entire system and all my data").
Proper applications follow OS UI conventions, they appear in the task bar, are launched from the application launcher etc. Proper applications can also be sandboxed, though Spectre makes it a bad idea to run untrusted code anyway.
> Proper applications follow OS UI conventions
(I'm going to ignore the use of "proper application" instead of "native (non-web) application"; it isn't helping your argument.)
Native applications can choose whether they follow UI conventions or not; many games don't, for instance. Web applications have the same choice; they can use native controls provided by the browser, and I certainly agree that well-behaved web applications should if they don't have a good reason to do otherwise (e.g. use standard form controls for native look-and-feel and better integration/interaction).
> they appear in the task bar
So do progressive web apps (PWAs).
> are launched from the application launcher
PWAs are as well. (Likewise for many other aspects of integration with the rest of the system.)
> Proper applications can also be sandboxed
But there aren't yet standard mechanisms for that (outside of mobile platforms), and you can't necessarily trust that an application will sandbox itself. Current sandbox mechanisms mostly get used by applications to protect against exploits, not for users to protect themselves against applications.
(I'm going to ignore the use of "proper application" instead of "native (non-web) application"; it isn't helping your argument.)
Native applications can choose whether they follow UI conventions or not; many games don't, for instance. Web applications have the same choice; they can use native controls provided by the browser, and I certainly agree that well-behaved web applications should if they don't have a good reason to do otherwise (e.g. use standard form controls for native look-and-feel and better integration/interaction).
> they appear in the task bar
So do progressive web apps (PWAs).
> are launched from the application launcher
PWAs are as well. (Likewise for many other aspects of integration with the rest of the system.)
> Proper applications can also be sandboxed
But there aren't yet standard mechanisms for that (outside of mobile platforms), and you can't necessarily trust that an application will sandbox itself. Current sandbox mechanisms mostly get used by applications to protect against exploits, not for users to protect themselves against applications.
> there aren't yet standard mechanisms for that (outside of mobile platforms)
macOS certainly has one.
macOS certainly has one.
That has downsides of its own.
For example, url sharing / deep linking goes out the window. I can't share what I'm looking at in macOS' Maps.app like I can on the Google Maps website, pure downgrade.
I also don't want to download an application for everything. Very few things deserve a permanent spot on my computer. I have much less control over desktop apps than I do a website.
Or look at macOS' News.app. Another downgrade from reading news in a browser tab. It has no tabs. There's no right-click. It implemented its own back button. It only supports the few news sources that come preinstalled on it. I can't add my own. Why would I prefer this?
Obviously native applications have their place, but let's not suggest there aren't trade-offs.
What's odd about your posts is that you suggest it's an inconvenience that you might have to disable Javascript. Maybe you have to use NoScript or uMatrix or uBlock. But at least you have the option and this sort of control over the web browser. If a native application does something that you don't like, you have basically zero recourse beyond uninstalling it or begging the developer to change something you could've done in the browser with a quick browser extension or CSS tweak.
For example, url sharing / deep linking goes out the window. I can't share what I'm looking at in macOS' Maps.app like I can on the Google Maps website, pure downgrade.
I also don't want to download an application for everything. Very few things deserve a permanent spot on my computer. I have much less control over desktop apps than I do a website.
Or look at macOS' News.app. Another downgrade from reading news in a browser tab. It has no tabs. There's no right-click. It implemented its own back button. It only supports the few news sources that come preinstalled on it. I can't add my own. Why would I prefer this?
Obviously native applications have their place, but let's not suggest there aren't trade-offs.
What's odd about your posts is that you suggest it's an inconvenience that you might have to disable Javascript. Maybe you have to use NoScript or uMatrix or uBlock. But at least you have the option and this sort of control over the web browser. If a native application does something that you don't like, you have basically zero recourse beyond uninstalling it or begging the developer to change something you could've done in the browser with a quick browser extension or CSS tweak.
> I can't share what I'm looking at in macOS' Maps.app like I can on the Google Maps website, pure downgrade.
But you can? For example, https://maps.apple.com/?ll=36.103117,-103.901438&spn=0.00098...
> Or look at macOS' News.app. Another downgrade from reading news in a browser tab. It has no tabs. There's no right-click. It implemented its own back button. It only supports the few news sources that come preinstalled on it. I can't add my own. Why would I prefer this?
You shouldn't; you should be annoyed that Apple shipped this and demand that they give you better.
But you can? For example, https://maps.apple.com/?ll=36.103117,-103.901438&spn=0.00098...
> Or look at macOS' News.app. Another downgrade from reading news in a browser tab. It has no tabs. There's no right-click. It implemented its own back button. It only supports the few news sources that come preinstalled on it. I can't add my own. Why would I prefer this?
You shouldn't; you should be annoyed that Apple shipped this and demand that they give you better.
Your maps.apple.com example is perfect: the recipient needs to have an Apple device and Maps.app to see the link. It's like a peek into how things might've been in a dismal alternate reality.
Now try this: https://goo.gl/maps/dvhDpd93gJs
Now try this: https://goo.gl/maps/dvhDpd93gJs
Did you try clicking on the link I posted? On my Linux machine, it redirects to Google Maps.
> For example, url sharing / deep linking goes out the window.
Yes, thats the one good thing about the web. But there is no reason proper applications cannot support this.
> Or look at macOS' News.app.
Im not familiar with that app but I guess its some sort of reader for hypertext documents (published by news organizations)? The one thing a browser is good at?
Yes, thats the one good thing about the web. But there is no reason proper applications cannot support this.
> Or look at macOS' News.app.
Im not familiar with that app but I guess its some sort of reader for hypertext documents (published by news organizations)? The one thing a browser is good at?
Not really. It's way harder (and therefore the barrier is higher, they'd be less likely to exist, etc) to develop cross platform native applications than it is to just implement them as webapps.
If it was just as easy to write and distribute native applications, we'd be doing that, instead of bolting it onto the web. But it's pretty clearly not.
If it was just as easy to write and distribute native applications, we'd be doing that, instead of bolting it onto the web. But it's pretty clearly not.
Its the other way round. If web apps didnt exist, there would be more pressure to develop tools that make it easy to write and distribute proper applications.
Serious question: do you remember the late '90s and early '00s? Have you used Visual Basic, or Qt, or anything? There was an era before web apps existed, and there were tools that made it easy to write and distribute proper applications - are you claiming that that didn't happen, or what?
Under what circumstances would webapps not exist in some form or another? It's a system for deploying applications via the web, and JavaScript is primarily the language that they're implemented in.
I will bet you that in 99% of alternative timelines, we'd end up with something incredibly similar to what we've got today, and you'd still be complaining that applications aren't "native" enough, because practically nobody cares that a taskbar or button isn't a native OS component. They care that their application works, and can be quickly deployed and updated.
I will bet you that in 99% of alternative timelines, we'd end up with something incredibly similar to what we've got today, and you'd still be complaining that applications aren't "native" enough, because practically nobody cares that a taskbar or button isn't a native OS component. They care that their application works, and can be quickly deployed and updated.
> Under what circumstances would webapps not exist in some form or another?
Browsers not supporting nonsense like Javascript.
Browsers not supporting nonsense like Javascript.
Fair enough. Personally, I avoid PWAs entirely due to (in part) security concerns. But I'm also one of those who views client-side scripting as a threat vector, and prevent it when at all possible.
> We cant ban just the bad Javascript
Well, technically it's possible, and even some parts of the script could be allowed to run or not.
> a browser cannot distinguish it from the good
But the user can. And the machine could help, thanks to machine learning.
Well, technically it's possible, and even some parts of the script could be allowed to run or not.
> a browser cannot distinguish it from the good
But the user can. And the machine could help, thanks to machine learning.
> But the user can.
How? I don't think that users even agree what consists of "good" and "bad" JavaScript.
How? I don't think that users even agree what consists of "good" and "bad" JavaScript.
For the simplest possible example, ask any Noscript extension user.
For the more advanced things, like identifying the part of Javascript code that brings e.g. 'the fancy eating 40% of the CPU scrollbar' user want to disable, some automation is needed.
For the more advanced things, like identifying the part of Javascript code that brings e.g. 'the fancy eating 40% of the CPU scrollbar' user want to disable, some automation is needed.
I am a NoScript user. I use it to block all JS by default. If a web site won't work properly that way, and the site is somehow really important, I'll work out what the minimum scripts necessary to let the site do what I need is, and just allow those. If the site isn't somehow critical, I just don't use the site.
I have to do it that way because it's very difficult to determine which scripts are bad and which aren't without actually reviewing the JS itself. In my view, "bad" usually means that the script is phoning home in some way.
I have to do it that way because it's very difficult to determine which scripts are bad and which aren't without actually reviewing the JS itself. In my view, "bad" usually means that the script is phoning home in some way.
Consider Javascript that replaces native browser functions. Web pages that are essentially static documents, but still dont work without Javascript.
Is this good Javascript? I dont think so. Does disabling it on an individual level help? No.
Is this good Javascript? I dont think so. Does disabling it on an individual level help? No.
Much effect for what? If the claim is "much effect for not autoplaying audio," citation needed - the usual ways of blocking autoplaying audio work perfectly fine if the autoplay is triggered from JavaScript instead of from pure HTML.
I already use noscript. So many websites work at 100% and load 2x as fast with only 1/3rd of scripts allowed.
I wish there were browser extension to exchange the lists of allowed scripts for sites between the users. So Noscript could automatically preset this for you and you don't need to tune the list for every site by yourself.
I recently discovered that Umatrix has something like this. One of the buttons gives you the ability to click to enable common subsets e.g. "GitHub" , "reCAPTCHA" etc.
Unfortunately many silently break, ok for news sites etc, not so good for your bank website.
Agreed. I have yet to find a single use-case that can't be done without JavaScript, with the exception of chat. Like audio and video, chat could have easily been another HTML widget provided by the browser (imagine, standard declarative chat across the web!).
I built my last webapp entirely without JavaScript. Users constantly praise how fast it is. There's no bugs with the back button. It's accessible out-of-the-box. Form inputs work correctly out-of-the-box. It's clear when data is being loaded/submitted and when it's not (since that's already built into the browser). And on and on and on...
JavaScript is the worst thing to happen to UX, privacy, speed, caching, and accessibility. So much of the web's UX is broken because of JS. It's depressing because it was all unnecessary. We went from a standard declarative interface shared by all websites to an "anything goes" black box runtime.
I built my last webapp entirely without JavaScript. Users constantly praise how fast it is. There's no bugs with the back button. It's accessible out-of-the-box. Form inputs work correctly out-of-the-box. It's clear when data is being loaded/submitted and when it's not (since that's already built into the browser). And on and on and on...
JavaScript is the worst thing to happen to UX, privacy, speed, caching, and accessibility. So much of the web's UX is broken because of JS. It's depressing because it was all unnecessary. We went from a standard declarative interface shared by all websites to an "anything goes" black box runtime.
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Reposting from the other thread:
Slowly but surely the creative potential of the web is eroded until nothing is left but plain text and ads, to thunderous applause. Gross overreaction after gross overreaction and now we're in a state where extensions are a shallow husk of their former glory, you need to jump through legally vague ridiculous hoops to do anything involving user data, a vast trove of great Flash content is no longer accessible to the average user, web apps with sound and video aren't allowed to work seamlessly without an obnoxious "click here to let the webpage do what it should be able to do anyway" button, and various other unnecessary restrictions. How soon until it's the default that you need to give a website permission to display images and you need a license to make a webpage? That's the direction it feels like we're heading in. I'm saddened that the golden age of the web is probably behind me, but at least I was alive for it.
I went over the subject here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087332
Slowly but surely the creative potential of the web is eroded until nothing is left but plain text and ads, to thunderous applause. Gross overreaction after gross overreaction and now we're in a state where extensions are a shallow husk of their former glory, you need to jump through legally vague ridiculous hoops to do anything involving user data, a vast trove of great Flash content is no longer accessible to the average user, web apps with sound and video aren't allowed to work seamlessly without an obnoxious "click here to let the webpage do what it should be able to do anyway" button, and various other unnecessary restrictions. How soon until it's the default that you need to give a website permission to display images and you need a license to make a webpage? That's the direction it feels like we're heading in. I'm saddened that the golden age of the web is probably behind me, but at least I was alive for it.
I went over the subject here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087332
You're advocating for auto-playing videos and sound, proprietary resource-gobbling flash content, and the nonconsensual abuse of user data? Yes, what a golden age that was.
It is a much more persuasive argument that the new controls are simply a reaction to bad actors who corrupted the value the original web provided. Sure, when the internet was a smaller village, nobody needed to lock their door: but then the village turned into the city, and locks became necessary. It seems strange to blame the locks for the reason they are needed.
It is a much more persuasive argument that the new controls are simply a reaction to bad actors who corrupted the value the original web provided. Sure, when the internet was a smaller village, nobody needed to lock their door: but then the village turned into the city, and locks became necessary. It seems strange to blame the locks for the reason they are needed.
I find GDPR overreaching enough to be worse than its absence.
What negative impacts have you seen from GDPR?
How soon until it's the default that you need to give a website permission to display images
I know you're being facetious, but I liked the internet so much better when I used to browse with images off by default. It could be that I was an optimistic 14 year old, or even simple nostalgia, but the internet felt like a cool friendly place back then.
I know you're being facetious, but I liked the internet so much better when I used to browse with images off by default. It could be that I was an optimistic 14 year old, or even simple nostalgia, but the internet felt like a cool friendly place back then.
You can still do that and it's fully usable. I used to do that in Firefox with a nice extension that gave some buttons on the extension bar to toggle things when I was tethering to my phone data. Unfortunately not available on the new extension system.
Its a bit late for this .... not sure if it will make any difference... the people still using firefox are using addons to do that... but sure its a step in the right direction
We need to eradicate this myth that only power users use Firefox anymore. There are plenty of laypeople still using it that never switched to Chrome, or recently switched to Firefox for privacy or other reasons, and those people generally don't use many addons (if any at all) or change the settings from the defaults. I don't know what the actual percentage is, but I'm sure Mozilla knows the answer, and I'd be willing to bet that it's much more than half.
The nice thing is that Mozilla makes this data easily available. You can see from the "Latest Version" graph on https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity that a) about 75% of Firefox users are getting updates to the latest version and b) that number did not appear to change with the release of Firefox 57. So there are approximately zero users staying on pre-Quantum versions of Firefox.
(Perhaps there are users of Pale Moon or other pre-Quantum forks?)
(Perhaps there are users of Pale Moon or other pre-Quantum forks?)
So far I'm seeing very few people using my app in Firefox... they're mostly chrome. By about 80%... and a ton are from Hacker News... Makes it hard to justify coding for Firefox but I'm trying.
RIP IE6
Is it?
Chrome is moving more and more towards controling their browser experience, and monetizing their existing web properties (example, there are now ads in the Gmail iOS App)
Apple is focusing more and more on privacy, especially for Safari.This is the best way that can fight back against Google's market share. They've definitely done their market research, so Firefox doing the same is probably in step with market needs.
I think longer term this is going to pay off big for Firefox
Chrome is moving more and more towards controling their browser experience, and monetizing their existing web properties (example, there are now ads in the Gmail iOS App)
Apple is focusing more and more on privacy, especially for Safari.This is the best way that can fight back against Google's market share. They've definitely done their market research, so Firefox doing the same is probably in step with market needs.
I think longer term this is going to pay off big for Firefox
Looking at the news cycle, it seems like the amount of changes is pretty low for this new version. Are they using version numbers for marketing purposes now?
About 3500 bugs were fixed for the Firefox 66 cycle; they aren't all in the release notes though. If you are curious about the full list, you can take a look! The query will take a few moments to run: https://mzl.la/2G1l6Ld
They have time-based releases.
Ok I was not aware of that. Has it always been the case?
Since version 5 in 2011. For a while it was a monthly release, but since version 22/23 in June/August 2013 it's slowed down to every other month.
Well more or less, except the time was 1 year or more for "major" releases.
After Chrome went out and incremented major version with every release, firefox went after them.
Chrome doesn't have super huge list of new features either.
Anyway, here's the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_version_history#Releas...
Chrome doesn't have super huge list of new features either.
Anyway, here's the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_version_history#Releas...
After chrome started a policy of version number inflation, firefox, firefox did the same for marketing reasons, else'd we'd be on like... version 6.6 instead of 66.0
No, it would be 5.10. Because, 1 to 4 are non-rapid releases, 5 would be the Servo epoch.
This comment has been posted on every Firefox release for the past 8 years.
Another article on this: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/firefox-now-automatically-..., deduped from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19432362.