Firefox 94(mozilla.org)
mozilla.org
Firefox 94
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/94.0/releasenotes/
339 comments
there already is an extension for specifying different proxies per containers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-pro...
I recently switched from Chrome back to Firefox after the news about Google forcing people to stay logged-in to Chrome for tracking purposes. I’ve switched in the past but always ended up switching back for one reason or another. This time I’ve actually been very happy with it and don’t think I’ll switch back soon.
Better in Firefox:
* Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently-used order. Just like Cmd+Tab. This feature is wonderful and is easier to access than Chrome’s Shift+Cmd+A.
* In Firefox the two-finger swipe forward/back works much better. Three-finger swipe works well in both.
* Built-in reader mode that’s instantaneous and works well. In Chrome you need an add-on.
Better in Chrome:
* Has tab groups. There doesn’t seem to be a tab group add-on for Firefox that works like Chrome’s tab groups.
* Google Docs dictation works. But I never use that.
* Printing lets you scale up past the page size (useful for printing my AYSO team’s lineup).
Better in Firefox:
* Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently-used order. Just like Cmd+Tab. This feature is wonderful and is easier to access than Chrome’s Shift+Cmd+A.
* In Firefox the two-finger swipe forward/back works much better. Three-finger swipe works well in both.
* Built-in reader mode that’s instantaneous and works well. In Chrome you need an add-on.
Better in Chrome:
* Has tab groups. There doesn’t seem to be a tab group add-on for Firefox that works like Chrome’s tab groups.
* Google Docs dictation works. But I never use that.
* Printing lets you scale up past the page size (useful for printing my AYSO team’s lineup).
No mention of the Multiaccounts Containers addon?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
How about the fact that ublock origin is more effective on Firefox?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24212176
Then there are the other features like TRR, first party isolation, ECH, actual video hw decoding support on Linux...
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
How about the fact that ublock origin is more effective on Firefox?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24212176
Then there are the other features like TRR, first party isolation, ECH, actual video hw decoding support on Linux...
My comparison list was based on things I care about / have noticed so far, not based on a full feature comparison. Multiaccounts Containers addon isn’t something I care much about. I do kind of like the Facebook container addon but would be fine without it.
Funny you mention uBlock Origin being more effective on Firefox. As I mentioned, it seems to block things I don’t want it to block when I’m using Firefox.
Funny you mention uBlock Origin being more effective on Firefox. As I mentioned, it seems to block things I don’t want it to block when I’m using Firefox.
I'm not familiar with Chrome's tab groups, but I use tree style tabs [0] on Firefox which allows physical grouping of tabs, albeit after a significant layout change.
[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
Thanks, I looked at that one but I’m not looking for something that takes up more space, either horizontally or vertically. I like how Chrome’s tab groups just collapse your tabs along the top tab bar.
Maybe then this is more to your liking? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-...
(I too don't know how Chrome tab groups work)
(I too don't know how Chrome tab groups work)
No, I’ve looked at every tab group addon I can find. None works to my liking.
> Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently-used order. Just like Cmd+Tab. This feature is wonderful and is easier to access than Chrome’s Shift+Cmd+A.
This is one of the main reasons why I still use Firefox. Also in my experience Firefox address bar does a better job pulling urls from history based on the words you typed.
This is one of the main reasons why I still use Firefox. Also in my experience Firefox address bar does a better job pulling urls from history based on the words you typed.
Much much better. I think Chrome is intentionally bad at this, to force you to do a search.
> * Has tab groups. There doesn’t seem to be a tab group add-on for Firefox that works like Chrome’s tab groups.
Have you tried Tree Style Tabs? Presents your tabs as a collapsible, hierarchical sidebar tree. Even when Chrome was kicking Firefox's ass in every other aspect, I stuck with FF because of TST. It's so much better than any other UI for tab management I've ever seen.
If you go through the steps of disabling the top tab bar and sidebar padding elements in user chrome CSS, it's more space effective than anything else too.
Have you tried Tree Style Tabs? Presents your tabs as a collapsible, hierarchical sidebar tree. Even when Chrome was kicking Firefox's ass in every other aspect, I stuck with FF because of TST. It's so much better than any other UI for tab management I've ever seen.
If you go through the steps of disabling the top tab bar and sidebar padding elements in user chrome CSS, it's more space effective than anything else too.
I switched to Firefox from Chrome on mobile because Chrome forced me to use tab groups which I do not wish to use.
I live in hope FF will catch up with Chrome on printing functionality.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@page
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@page
Ctrl+Tab recent order is an options in the settings in firefox. Not sure if this is on be default. I got used to this feature from VS Code. Lovely to have it in Firefox!
It's on by default, but only for new users. For those who were using it since before it was introduced, it's still set to the other value.
Heads up, you may lose your tabs when you update. It seems normal tab restoring procedures apply, but if you collect many like me, it means an initial shock of reloading all of them.
"I lost my tabs after the update — What can I do?
You may notice that after updating Firefox to version 94, the tabs from your previous session were closed. To learn how to restore a previous session, visit How do I restore my tabs from last time? Alternatively, following the prompts in the Open previous tabs? one-time notification that will appear after the update will also allow you to restore the tabs from your previous session. "
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-configure-close-tab...
"I lost my tabs after the update — What can I do?
You may notice that after updating Firefox to version 94, the tabs from your previous session were closed. To learn how to restore a previous session, visit How do I restore my tabs from last time? Alternatively, following the prompts in the Open previous tabs? one-time notification that will appear after the update will also allow you to restore the tabs from your previous session. "
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-configure-close-tab...
It would be so, so easy to guard against this if they would just give people:
about:tabs
... which would be a plain text listing of all the URLs of all the tabs you have open.
You could just copy and paste it to a file or whatever.
Instead, we need to dig several directories deep into /Library (or whatever, depending on OS) and then use JSON tools to export ... I've already lost most people.
Go search for "how can I export tabs" or "how can I save tab urls" and you'll see thousands of people trying (usually in vain) to achieve this very, very simple thing.
Here is our $500 bounty for this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28129829
... and no, I don't want to install an extension. This should be built into the browser.
about:tabs
... which would be a plain text listing of all the URLs of all the tabs you have open.
You could just copy and paste it to a file or whatever.
Instead, we need to dig several directories deep into /Library (or whatever, depending on OS) and then use JSON tools to export ... I've already lost most people.
Go search for "how can I export tabs" or "how can I save tab urls" and you'll see thousands of people trying (usually in vain) to achieve this very, very simple thing.
Here is our $500 bounty for this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28129829
... and no, I don't want to install an extension. This should be built into the browser.
but but but, you have "SIX FUN SEASONAL COLORWAYS" !!
I know you don’t want to install an extension but for the benefit of others, my solution was to install the Copy as Markdown extension¹ which provides all tabs in current window as a list of Markdown links. It suits me because I often like to take notes and save them as Markdown – as well as providing a backup list of open tabs (one list per window).
¹ https://github.com/yorkxin/copy-as-markdown
¹ https://github.com/yorkxin/copy-as-markdown
I just did the update with about 20 tabs open. They all restored fine but they were sort of "unloaded". That didn't cause any issues for me though.
Successfully updated on Linux Mint through Apt and experienced no issues with 359 tabs.
I expect tabs to be unloaded (I start and stop Firefox frequently). I may not be seeing what you mention.
I expect tabs to be unloaded (I start and stop Firefox frequently). I may not be seeing what you mention.
> On Windows, there will now be fewer interruptions because Firefox won’t prompt you for updates. Instead, a background agent will download and install updates even if Firefox is closed.
I rather they didn't.
EDIT: Ah good, they have an option in the General Settings to disable the background updater.
I rather they didn't.
EDIT: Ah good, they have an option in the General Settings to disable the background updater.
Why hasn't Microsoft created a system service for this?
It's just inefficient to have each and every installed app run a service… I suppose they take care of it for Windows Store apps, but I don't see why they couldn't make a service for other apps too.
Same on the Mac, of course.
It's just inefficient to have each and every installed app run a service… I suppose they take care of it for Windows Store apps, but I don't see why they couldn't make a service for other apps too.
Same on the Mac, of course.
Yep... just standardize a data format for updates (eg. json with the newest stable and beta version numbers and links directly to the upgrade exe), and each app would just add the json url to the service, and the service would check all the updatable software periodically and just primpt the user to update.
They promised a proper package manager and repositories way back in the day before Windows 8 was released. You probably know the crap you got instead.
winget
They have sort of started to do it. But it seems to be very adhoc in how it is supported. A couple of packages I use are 2-3 versions behind in that system.
They have sort of started to do it. But it seems to be very adhoc in how it is supported. A couple of packages I use are 2-3 versions behind in that system.
They do with Windows Store. Anyone remember when Firefox was actually available in the Windows Store as either an alpha or beta with Windows 8? I still wish this were so because my most used apps I use the store versions.
The "de-siloing" of some of the Microsoft Store in Windows 11 is currently in beta for Windows 10 (and partly for Windows 7) allows a lot more app distribution schemes into the store (including "give us the URL for your existing EXE/MSI Installer and we can even check it for updates") and I hope that will bring more apps back to the Store. I also would love to standardize on just a single update agent with an easy to manage GUI versus the bad old XP days of every app under the sun thinking it needs a Windows Service just to annoy you with update prompts.
Microsoft's solution would be terrible for 3rd party vendors.
Both vendors want you to use their preferred “store” system instead, unfortunately.
Windows Store?
There should be something like /etc/cron.daily in windows. The jobs run sequentially so don't overload bandwidth and other resource (hopefully).
Windows Task Scheduler
It's still a nasty old MMC snap-in in Windows 11 from its legacy as an old, classic NT component for advanced admins only. Maybe one day it will get a bit more love and UI polish. (Though it's not like cron has ever had a good UI.)
It's still a nasty old MMC snap-in in Windows 11 from its legacy as an old, classic NT component for advanced admins only. Maybe one day it will get a bit more love and UI polish. (Though it's not like cron has ever had a good UI.)
That just instantly makes me think 'what are the attack surfaces, and vulnerabilities of such a service and how can I abuse it?'
I assume they're going to use the Task Scheduler like Google, Dropbox, Microsoft, etc, etc use for updates.
I'm really glad they added this.
Congrats to the team on shipping site isolation. This required a lot of work on very fundamental parts like frame/page loading.
To clarify, Fission site isolation is not enabled by default in Firefox 94. Since this is a huge change, it's being slowly rolled out to all Firefox 94 users over the next four weeks to watch for bugs. It's already been enabled for 60% of Firefox Nightly users and 40% of Firefox Beta users for a few release cycles.
My daily driver is a 2014 MacBook Pro and I just recently switched to Firefox from Safari. It's so much faster it's not even a fair comparison – I feel like I've gotten a whole new computer. Even compared to Chrome it loads pages so much faster on old hardware. Props to Mozilla!!!
I have a 2015 Pro and even if Safari uses less battery, I feel the same thing about Firefox. It is fast and smooth and has less bugs than Safari. However the thing that made my laptop feel cool again is the overwhelming amount of extensions available. There are so many of them and they really improved the ux. Safari has way less and most of them are commercial projects by big techs that collect datas or paid extensions by indie devs that I still can’t 100% trust because they’re closed source. Most of the extensions you find with the search bar on firefox is open source.
Safari was also buggy for me for some of our service web pages like Ambari - for some reason Safari took 1 core to 100% and internet stopped working everywhere. Only solution was to kill the process. With Firefox, everything seems to be working perfectly (albeit Youtube loads slower). I also find the redesign delightful and visually appealing.
For such a dramatic page-loading difference, I wonder if your Mac is using a not very good DNS that Firefox is avoiding because it defaults to DNS over HTTPS.
Good point, but I just checked and DoH has been disabled this whole time. The difference isn't that dramatic, but shaving off around 100ms on every page load really adds up in the end.
I wish they'd just give me an ability to delete address bar suggestions/favorites like in the old days. One of their worst old bugs if you upgraded from a previous release.
Is this distinct from keyboard-navigating to it and pressing Shift+Del?
Yeah doesn't work. That's the bug
I just tried it. It worked. Are we doing different things?
1. Clicked in the URL bar. 2. Started typing something. 3. Arrow-keyed down to one of the entries under “Firefox suggest.” 4. Tapped Shift+Del.
The entry was gone and didn’t come back next time I typed the same thing in the URL bar.
1. Clicked in the URL bar. 2. Started typing something. 3. Arrow-keyed down to one of the entries under “Firefox suggest.” 4. Tapped Shift+Del.
The entry was gone and didn’t come back next time I typed the same thing in the URL bar.
its a bug for people who have upgraded in the past (Im not sure how many upgrades I have gone through but its been years worth). The issue is not with URLs when you start to type (those I can shift+del) but rather when you have a new tab (or empty URL bar) and you click into the address bar, it prepopulates with a list of URLs from somewhere, probably an internal db. It is these suggestions that I cannot shift+del on. FWIW my Settings > Privacy > Address bar settings Browsing History selected & Shortcuts selected. The remainder are unselected.
It wasn't mentioned in the release notes but for Linux users EGL is enabled by default now.
I've been manually turning this feature on so this is a welcome improvement.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29047339
I've been manually turning this feature on so this is a welcome improvement.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29047339
They've mentioned it without saying directly that that's what they've done.
> And on Linux, we’ve improved WebGL performance and reduced power consumption for many users.
It links to a page with some more info[0]. Exiting stuff.
[0] https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/switching-the-li...
> And on Linux, we’ve improved WebGL performance and reduced power consumption for many users.
It links to a page with some more info[0]. Exiting stuff.
[0] https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/switching-the-li...
Thanks for this!
I found another article by Martin Stransky who worked on this feature and gives more technical details: https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/firefox-94-comes...
I found another article by Martin Stransky who worked on this feature and gives more technical details: https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/firefox-94-comes...
I am typing this from Firefox, which I switched back to right after Quantum.
I don't want to give an impression that I'm a shill, but I'm getting more and more intrigued by Brave every day. I think they made the right call by focusing on crypto, their search indexing technique is very unique (and it works!), as is their BAT attention token. They are _trying_ to doing something different, Firefox is not.
What I instead get from Firefox for trying to support their monetization, is seductive-looking spammy ads on their New Tab page that come back even after I dismiss them. Brave ads vs Firefox ads would be a tough comparison - the former is more annoying and intrusive, but I definitely think I prefer them. And long term, I think I would bet on Brave _over_ Firefox, unless something changes.
I don't want to give an impression that I'm a shill, but I'm getting more and more intrigued by Brave every day. I think they made the right call by focusing on crypto, their search indexing technique is very unique (and it works!), as is their BAT attention token. They are _trying_ to doing something different, Firefox is not.
What I instead get from Firefox for trying to support their monetization, is seductive-looking spammy ads on their New Tab page that come back even after I dismiss them. Brave ads vs Firefox ads would be a tough comparison - the former is more annoying and intrusive, but I definitely think I prefer them. And long term, I think I would bet on Brave _over_ Firefox, unless something changes.
I donate every month instead of dealing with the ads. $20 per month is a lot more money than they'd get by me looking at ads, and I can afford to pay that towards something that makes a big difference for the long-term health of the web!
Just remember that Mozilla gets over 90% of its revenue from Google.
https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
In 2018 Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."
By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic.
https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
In 2018 Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."
By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic.
Donations go to the foundation, not moz corp which builds Firefox.
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/
EDIT: At this point either pocket or their vpn seem to be the only way to get money to the corporation, even then may not be a lot.
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/
EDIT: At this point either pocket or their vpn seem to be the only way to get money to the corporation, even then may not be a lot.
Click the gear icon on the New Tab page and turn off Sponsored Shortcuts.
> more intrigued by Brave every day
My long term question is - will there end up being one browser implementation of the virtual machine? Browser rendering engines are basically that these days, a big virtual machine for web apps. Is there value having a separate implementation? Some languages that run inside a virtual machine only have a single implementation. Is that bad?
Would it be bad if Mozilla used the internet-vm (why even call it Blink at this point?)
My long term question is - will there end up being one browser implementation of the virtual machine? Browser rendering engines are basically that these days, a big virtual machine for web apps. Is there value having a separate implementation? Some languages that run inside a virtual machine only have a single implementation. Is that bad?
Would it be bad if Mozilla used the internet-vm (why even call it Blink at this point?)
Others may disagree on philosophical grounds, but I don't think it's inherently bad to have only one implementation of the core web browser technologies. That's similar to what we have with Linux, where the kernel has one canonical implementation, and OSes based on Linux use that, modify it, switch configurations, and build the OS that they need on that core.
The problem here and the difficulty, is that upstream Linux is coordinated and controlled by a non-profit consortium and community, and the implementation is developed and controlled by community efforts and the joined efforts of hundreds of companies and thousands of hobbyists. The upstream Blink browser implementation is coordinated, develped, and controlled by one giant advertising corporation, and no control or input is ever in the hands of anybody else.
I don't believe that there's harm in having "one implementation", but there is harm in that implementation being completely centralized by a single for-profit entity.
The problem here and the difficulty, is that upstream Linux is coordinated and controlled by a non-profit consortium and community, and the implementation is developed and controlled by community efforts and the joined efforts of hundreds of companies and thousands of hobbyists. The upstream Blink browser implementation is coordinated, develped, and controlled by one giant advertising corporation, and no control or input is ever in the hands of anybody else.
I don't believe that there's harm in having "one implementation", but there is harm in that implementation being completely centralized by a single for-profit entity.
And the entity has massive incentive to be user hostile because that's how they make their money.
If Mozilla switched to Blink, they'd be maintaining their own version, and it could diverge from Google's. That would be the "trustworthy, community Blink". But they'd also be able to much more easily benefit from Blink's security (already had site isolation for years, apparently a better sandbox, etc) and the contributions thousands of other companies make to Blink (Intel, Samsung, etc), companies that don't contribute to Gecko and Webkit as much if at all. They'd also have better webcompat, and take away one reason to switch to Chrome (i.e., sites that break in Firefox that render fine in Chrome; and sites that rely on cutting edge draft standards that Firefox won't implement for a few months/years).
I argued this before[0], and I still stand by it:
> I can see that being an issue if the web is centralising around one proprietary engine, but why does that apply to Blink? If Google turns completely evil that won't take away from all the webcompat, optimisations, and security in Blink, and any bad feature (ManifestV3) can be patched out easily. Mozilla could switch to Blink (and I think they should, and Apple too, they clearly don't have the manpower to maintain a whole engine and keep it modern and secure, see my other comment in this thread; there are many more 0days with Safari and Firefox than Chrome) and it wouldn't harm the web in any way, because they can just swap out bad components with their own, and still reduce their dev time requirements by orders of magnitude compared to today. You have Intel, Samsung, tons of companies contributing to Blink, to a much, much greater extent than Gecko or WebKit.
> If every browser switched to Blink, that would actually benefit consumers, because right now Chrome basically has the enterprise market on lock, since nobody cares to test internal webpages on other browsers, and Chrome has better enterprise features (though I don't know how much of that is to do with the engine); and many consumers also just switch to Chrome as the first thing they do, because they've run into compatibility issues with Firefox or Safari and they just want to access the web without issues. If every browser used Blink, you'd have a lot more people using Safari and Firefox, just because most people don't want to keep two browsers around (Firefox + Chrome or Safari + Chrome) when websites break (which is not often, but often enough, trust me). I really hope we see this.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28941866
I argued this before[0], and I still stand by it:
> I can see that being an issue if the web is centralising around one proprietary engine, but why does that apply to Blink? If Google turns completely evil that won't take away from all the webcompat, optimisations, and security in Blink, and any bad feature (ManifestV3) can be patched out easily. Mozilla could switch to Blink (and I think they should, and Apple too, they clearly don't have the manpower to maintain a whole engine and keep it modern and secure, see my other comment in this thread; there are many more 0days with Safari and Firefox than Chrome) and it wouldn't harm the web in any way, because they can just swap out bad components with their own, and still reduce their dev time requirements by orders of magnitude compared to today. You have Intel, Samsung, tons of companies contributing to Blink, to a much, much greater extent than Gecko or WebKit.
> If every browser switched to Blink, that would actually benefit consumers, because right now Chrome basically has the enterprise market on lock, since nobody cares to test internal webpages on other browsers, and Chrome has better enterprise features (though I don't know how much of that is to do with the engine); and many consumers also just switch to Chrome as the first thing they do, because they've run into compatibility issues with Firefox or Safari and they just want to access the web without issues. If every browser used Blink, you'd have a lot more people using Safari and Firefox, just because most people don't want to keep two browsers around (Firefox + Chrome or Safari + Chrome) when websites break (which is not often, but often enough, trust me). I really hope we see this.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28941866
Every time this discussion appears on HN, the argument is that Gecko needs to exist because otherwise Blink will dominate, and Blink is overwhelmingly controlled by Google.
But I think that's the wrong solution, it just means that we need to decouple Blink from Google and put it in the hands of a neutral, nonprofit third-party. This is arguably what the Mozilla Foundation should have been.
But I think that's the wrong solution, it just means that we need to decouple Blink from Google and put it in the hands of a neutral, nonprofit third-party. This is arguably what the Mozilla Foundation should have been.
Both Gecko and KHTML were already in the hands of neutral, nonprofit third parties from the start. But Apple wanted control to be entirely in their hands, so they forked WebKit from KHTML, and Google wanted control in their hands, so they forked Blink from WebKit.
If someone wants to make this argument, it is actually WebKit, not Gecko, that is currently the balancing act on the web. WebKit is about 18% and Gecko around 3% browser share (mostly thanks to iOS). Also WebKit is currently trending up (thanks to success of M1) and Gecko is trending lower.
FWIW you are absolutely free to change your new tab page to something else
> Firefox no longer warns you by default when you exit the browser or close a window using a menu, button, or three-key command. This should cut back on unwelcome notifications which is always nice--however, if you prefer a bit of notice, you’ll still have full control over the quit/close modal behavior. All warnings can be managed within Firefox Settings.
I'm going to re-enable that. I appreciate choice, but just because I use three-key commands, doesn't mean I'm infallible. That dialog has saved me several times from having the wrong window in focus and accidentally trying to kill the whole browser.
One could argue the only controversial decision here was changing existing user's settings without post-update warning. Since in the previous version this warning was always "on" and now it is "off" after update, and you aren't notified of this unless you're in the demographic that reads Firefox release notes.
In general though still appreciate more choice/control.
[0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-configure-close-tab...
I'm going to re-enable that. I appreciate choice, but just because I use three-key commands, doesn't mean I'm infallible. That dialog has saved me several times from having the wrong window in focus and accidentally trying to kill the whole browser.
One could argue the only controversial decision here was changing existing user's settings without post-update warning. Since in the previous version this warning was always "on" and now it is "off" after update, and you aren't notified of this unless you're in the demographic that reads Firefox release notes.
In general though still appreciate more choice/control.
[0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-configure-close-tab...
Does this release actually enable Fission (process separation) by default? [1] I see it's still turned off in about:config
[1]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/05/introducing-firefox-new-si...
[1]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/05/introducing-firefox-new-si...
Fission site isolation is not enabled by default in Firefox 94. Since this is a huge change, it's being slowly rolled out to all Firefox 94 users over the next four weeks to watch for bugs. It's already been enabled for 60% of Firefox Nightly users and 40% of Firefox Beta users for a few release cycles.
To answer my own question: it doesn't, at least not on my system.
I can see the Firefox child process count maxing at around 10 processes with the default fission.autostart set to false:
> ps aux | grep "firefox.*childID" | wc -l
> 10
Also the about:processes page shows some processes containing 'Shared tabs'.
As soon as I flip fission.autostart to true it creates proper separate processes for each tab with the above ps aux command increasing the count as I open up tabs.
I can see the Firefox child process count maxing at around 10 processes with the default fission.autostart set to false:
> ps aux | grep "firefox.*childID" | wc -l
> 10
Also the about:processes page shows some processes containing 'Shared tabs'.
As soon as I flip fission.autostart to true it creates proper separate processes for each tab with the above ps aux command increasing the count as I open up tabs.
Quick question (and a bit of an aside): let's say I'm interested in a specific feature being implemented (profile switcher like in chrome, built in feature as in [1], not an add-on as in [2]). How do I go about getting more attention to potentially have this prioritized?
Making an account in their bug tracker and spamming the threads sounds annoying, I'd personally get upset if someone did that to my repos or issue trackers so I don't want to do it to others. Also I'm not capable of contributing that feature myself so I'm kind of stuck.
Still, version after version of Firefox gets released and posted here, highlighting new things that get developed, and I see no progress there and the more time goes by it gets frustrating. I am using the profile functionality right now, it does work, and does what it's supposed to, just wish it was exposed to me via the same UX as in chrome and from the basic, default install, without needing extra add-ons or config.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1542189
[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
Making an account in their bug tracker and spamming the threads sounds annoying, I'd personally get upset if someone did that to my repos or issue trackers so I don't want to do it to others. Also I'm not capable of contributing that feature myself so I'm kind of stuck.
Still, version after version of Firefox gets released and posted here, highlighting new things that get developed, and I see no progress there and the more time goes by it gets frustrating. I am using the profile functionality right now, it does work, and does what it's supposed to, just wish it was exposed to me via the same UX as in chrome and from the basic, default install, without needing extra add-ons or config.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1542189
[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
(I work for Mozilla. Speaking unofficially.)
I don't have a good answer to that question. I guess the straightforward answer would be to make an account on the bug tracker and vote (it's under Details), but my impression is that votes usually don't carry much weight.
Oh, and for the reasons you gave, please don't post bug comments in support, unless you really do have additional information or perspective to contribute. (And "there's one more person who wants this, and I suspect many more" is not additional information.)
I know Mozilla has had various iterations of tools for collecting input, all of them ending up abandoned eventually. The current iteration is https://ideas.mozilla.org -- which, given that it's a fairly recent introduction, might actually be paid attention to. At least for a while. (Yeah, I'm cynical.)
A more effective but higher effort and noisier mechanism would be https://chat.mozilla.org where you could try to dig up the right channel and discuss it directly with people, but that seems like it's probably not appropriate for your example.
I'd really like a better mechanism for this. I think it's one of our bigger gaps, personally.
As to your specific request, it seems like right now the current answer to that need is about:profiles for full-on profiles, and container tabs for the lighter-weight, integrated within a single session mechanism. It may be that the latter has sucked energy out of improving the multiple profile support? (Multiple profiles have been supported forever and are unlikely to go away, but I agree that they're not getting much UX love.)
But I'm not involved in that area, nor do I know how Chrome's profile switcher works other than that people seem to like it. I'm happy with container tabs, myself, but I recognize that they fulfill a slightly different need.
I don't have a good answer to that question. I guess the straightforward answer would be to make an account on the bug tracker and vote (it's under Details), but my impression is that votes usually don't carry much weight.
Oh, and for the reasons you gave, please don't post bug comments in support, unless you really do have additional information or perspective to contribute. (And "there's one more person who wants this, and I suspect many more" is not additional information.)
I know Mozilla has had various iterations of tools for collecting input, all of them ending up abandoned eventually. The current iteration is https://ideas.mozilla.org -- which, given that it's a fairly recent introduction, might actually be paid attention to. At least for a while. (Yeah, I'm cynical.)
A more effective but higher effort and noisier mechanism would be https://chat.mozilla.org where you could try to dig up the right channel and discuss it directly with people, but that seems like it's probably not appropriate for your example.
I'd really like a better mechanism for this. I think it's one of our bigger gaps, personally.
As to your specific request, it seems like right now the current answer to that need is about:profiles for full-on profiles, and container tabs for the lighter-weight, integrated within a single session mechanism. It may be that the latter has sucked energy out of improving the multiple profile support? (Multiple profiles have been supported forever and are unlikely to go away, but I agree that they're not getting much UX love.)
But I'm not involved in that area, nor do I know how Chrome's profile switcher works other than that people seem to like it. I'm happy with container tabs, myself, but I recognize that they fulfill a slightly different need.
Thank you for your reply!
I've managed to dig up these (that's where https://ideas.mozilla.org redirects me):
- https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/719914
- https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/724883
Guess it's just a matter of making an account and voting/commenting on these now. The thing is, most people don't go through the trouble of leaving feedback like this. What they do is install Firefox, look into the available functionality, see that there's no profile button, assume the functionality does not exist and call it quits.
I've managed to dig up these (that's where https://ideas.mozilla.org redirects me):
- https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/719914
- https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/724883
Guess it's just a matter of making an account and voting/commenting on these now. The thing is, most people don't go through the trouble of leaving feedback like this. What they do is install Firefox, look into the available functionality, see that there's no profile button, assume the functionality does not exist and call it quits.
Out of curiosity, why do you need it? Isn't this simply solved by user accounts of the operating system? What's wrong with having it as an addon?
Also did you know that you can launch firefox with -p switch and do it that way?
Also did you know that you can launch firefox with -p switch and do it that way?
TL:DR: don't waste your time. There are literally security features not implemented since 2017.
E.G: no proper support for webauthn (CTAP2) in firefox on macos (abysymal situation shown here: https://fidoalliance.org/fido2/fido2-web-authentication-weba...) linux not much better. Safari, Chrome, even Edge have it, while firefox is stagnating since 2017 (bug report: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1530373 ) :-(
When I hear about features like Colorways being prioritized over things like proper webauthn support on important platform (4 years now) it makes me sad.
Would have helped personally, but moving parts of firefox to rust not even decimated the contributors margin, but probably reduced it 100x. and here we are with rs_webauthn lib lacking necessary fixes in security important area :(
p.s. I knot how my post sounds, but I'm frustrated with (some) mozilla decisions.
E.G: no proper support for webauthn (CTAP2) in firefox on macos (abysymal situation shown here: https://fidoalliance.org/fido2/fido2-web-authentication-weba...) linux not much better. Safari, Chrome, even Edge have it, while firefox is stagnating since 2017 (bug report: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1530373 ) :-(
When I hear about features like Colorways being prioritized over things like proper webauthn support on important platform (4 years now) it makes me sad.
Would have helped personally, but moving parts of firefox to rust not even decimated the contributors margin, but probably reduced it 100x. and here we are with rs_webauthn lib lacking necessary fixes in security important area :(
p.s. I knot how my post sounds, but I'm frustrated with (some) mozilla decisions.
Firefox may not be perfect, but I'm glad they exist and are making continuous improvements.
> And on Linux, we’ve improved WebGL performance and reduced power consumption for many users.
All right!
> Users of the proprietary Nvidia driver will need to wait a little bit longer as the currently released drivers lack an important extension. [1]
Oh no :(
[1]: https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/switching-the-li...
All right!
> Users of the proprietary Nvidia driver will need to wait a little bit longer as the currently released drivers lack an important extension. [1]
Oh no :(
[1]: https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/switching-the-li...
The bug tracker link: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1731172
I'm still waiting for Touch ID support on Macs
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536482
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536482
The lack of any work whatsoever on Webauthn is infuriating. Nobody seems to be actively working on implementing the spec at all.
WebAuthn with a YubiKey, using Firefox on Linux, works perfectly for me.
They only implement ctap1/u2f .
CTAP2/FIDO2 part is completely unimplemented. And that's why e.g. TouchID doesn't work. Or newer devices that don't support the old u2f standard.
CTAP2 gives fancy features like enforcing a pin (which Firefox doesn't implement) or fingerprint (which Firefox doesn't implement).
CTAP2/FIDO2 part is completely unimplemented. And that's why e.g. TouchID doesn't work. Or newer devices that don't support the old u2f standard.
CTAP2 gives fancy features like enforcing a pin (which Firefox doesn't implement) or fingerprint (which Firefox doesn't implement).
Yep, this is enough friction that it keeps me from using Firefox as my daily-driver on MacOS.
> Firefox no longer warns you by default when you exit the browser or close a window using a menu, button, or three-key command.
Why would anyone want this? On macOS it is infuriantingly easy to press CMD + Q by accident. Why would you not want to confirm that you actually want to close ALL your tabs?
Why would anyone want this? On macOS it is infuriantingly easy to press CMD + Q by accident. Why would you not want to confirm that you actually want to close ALL your tabs?
On the flip side, this has always been an infuriating default for me. If I hit CMD+Q, that means I want the program to quit. Not prompt me or make me hold it down or use a different command. CMD+Q = Quit on Mac. Overriding that behavior is annoying and one of the first things I disable on nearly every program I install.
Do you also use CMD+W to close tabs/modal windows? Because I do, and it's very easy to accidentally press Q instead of W.
Losing dozens of tabs because of that is so damn infuriating that it ruins my entire day when it happens.
Losing dozens of tabs because of that is so damn infuriating that it ruins my entire day when it happens.
When you do that, open your browser, and either hit the hamburger menu on the right and go to History or Alt and go to History, and then click "Restore Previous Session".
It's not perfect (sites lose unsaved state usually), but I know that pain and it's not so bad when you know you can just recall all the tabs.
It's not perfect (sites lose unsaved state usually), but I know that pain and it's not so bad when you know you can just recall all the tabs.
Or worse, you just want to use literally any other shortcut (Ctrl+Tab/Ctrl+Shift+Tab/Ctrl+1/Ctrl+A).
Yes, I use CMD+W and CMD+# and CMD+A and CMD+~ and CMD+Tab all day long. I rarely (once every few months) miss and hit CMD+Q. I also have it set up so that my tabs restore on restart, which makes it a minor annoyance at best. I quit Firefox purposefully once or twice a day, so overriding the default Mac behavior is a much more significant pain for me.
I recommend having “Startup: Restore previous session” checked in your settings.
CMD + Q is a two-key command, so presumably the warning will still be present.
Correct. According to
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-configure-close-tab...
> The only instance in which a close modal is on by default is for two-key quit shortcuts on macOS and Linux. The risk of accidental closure is higher in this context since the quit shortcut (⌘+Q) is adjacent to the switch-application shortcut (⌘+Tab).
Also:
> you will still have full control over the quit/close modal behavior. All warnings can be managed within Firefox Settings.
I’m happy with this change. I regularly use Ctrl-Shift-W and Ctrl-Shift-Q – and never inadvertently – so I don’t need a confirmation prompt. I was – and still am – delighted when Firefox introduced the confirmation prompt for Ctrl-Q (which is too easy to hit instead of of Ctrl-W).
> The only instance in which a close modal is on by default is for two-key quit shortcuts on macOS and Linux. The risk of accidental closure is higher in this context since the quit shortcut (⌘+Q) is adjacent to the switch-application shortcut (⌘+Tab).
Also:
> you will still have full control over the quit/close modal behavior. All warnings can be managed within Firefox Settings.
I’m happy with this change. I regularly use Ctrl-Shift-W and Ctrl-Shift-Q – and never inadvertently – so I don’t need a confirmation prompt. I was – and still am – delighted when Firefox introduced the confirmation prompt for Ctrl-Q (which is too easy to hit instead of of Ctrl-W).
I frequently press cmd+W to close the current tab. Unfortunately pressing one key to the left by mistake has happened too many times.
Why wouldn't you set the browser to save all tabs between sessions?
I like having the warning, period. Misclicks and accidental keystrokes happen. It is so much nicer to have the warning dialog than to have to restore the closed window.
Restoring the window doesn't preserve the data on pages with infinite scroll and it is a crap-shoot on whether or not the progress of a video I was watching gets restored.
Restoring the window doesn't preserve the data on pages with infinite scroll and it is a crap-shoot on whether or not the progress of a video I was watching gets restored.
Then simply enable the warnings after you upgrade to 94.
This is going to sound glib, but based on Mozilla's track record I expect the setting for this to disappear within one or two releases.
For one thing, incognito windows aren't saved.
> On macOS it is infuriantingly easy to press CMD + Q by accident.
Particularly if you use a Dvorak keyboard layout where "Q" is mapped to the key directly above CMD. I think I fat finger that at least every week or so. :D
Particularly if you use a Dvorak keyboard layout where "Q" is mapped to the key directly above CMD. I think I fat finger that at least every week or so. :D
It still asks for confirmation on Command+Q - and provides a way to disable that behaviour if you're not prone to that typo
I override this at a system level for some apps (e.g. Firefox, VS Code) by taking the following steps:
1. Open System Prefs and go to Keyboard > Shortcuts
2. Select "App Shortcuts", then press the + Button
3. Choose "Firefox" (or other relevant app) from the dropdown
4. Type *exactly* the name of the menu option that has the CMD + Q shortcut next to it, in this case "Quit Firefox"
5. Focus on the Keyboard Shortuct input and choose whatever new key combination you want to be used for quitting the app. I usually use CTRL + CMD + SHIFT + Q
6. Press the Add button
People complained about not having a warning message for years, and then they finally added it... and now they're taking it away again.
> however, if you prefer a bit of notice, you’ll still have full control over the quit/close modal behavior. All warnings can be managed within Firefox Settings. No worries!
For now at least it's possible to disable the CMD+Q shortcut entirely by setting the option "browser.quitShortcut.disabled" to true in about:config. This disables the keyboard shortcut and makes it so that the only way to quit is to select the Quit option from the File menu which is hard to do by accident.
Signed: a fellow Mac user who pressed CMD+Q by accident one too many times.
Signed: a fellow Mac user who pressed CMD+Q by accident one too many times.
I think it's because "restore tabs on startup" is also the default now. So you won't lose your tabs and this will generally do the right thing.
Why is there so much argument among power users about a default setting that you can easily change?
[deleted]
just upgraded to Firefox 94 and they do warn for CMD + Q. Maybe they are talking about a three-key command that we are not aware of.
I'm not enthusiastic these days. Which aspect of the UI will they change this time? Is there an about:config hack to get it back? And how long is that gonna work?
I think i'll have to ship a userchrome.css with my dotfiles soon.
I think i'll have to ship a userchrome.css with my dotfiles soon.
So, uh, how do I undo my colorways selection? On opening after the new update it gave me a little panel to choose from, and I picked one, but I don't like it now... but I can't see anything in the settings to revert, or to try a different one? I don't see anything about it in the "Colors" section of the Settings, and searching at the top for "colorways" doesn't return anything.
edit: Found it! In the settings on the bottom left you can choose "Extension & Themes", and then you click "Themes" in the new sidebar, and scroll down a bit.
edit: Found it! In the settings on the bottom left you can choose "Extension & Themes", and then you click "Themes" in the new sidebar, and scroll down a bit.
Glad you found it. If anyone else goes looking it is a bitr down on the about:addons settings page.
I am wondering what it would take to seriously fork Firefox (like the MySQL/MariaDB fork), if there is so much discontent with Firefox in the HN community?
There are complainers and there are doers. Seldom both. Put all the HN complainers in a room, and they would spend the next year arguing about their browser's new name, not ever doing any actual work on it.
There is Waterfox and Palemoon forks. I think there are some very vocal complainers on HN, but most of us who use Firefox are probably happy enough with it.
> With 94, you’ll find a selection of six fun seasonal Colorways (available for a limited time only).
For a limited time only? What the heck? Feels like Starbucks.
Otherwise great release of course.
For a limited time only? What the heck? Feels like Starbucks.
Otherwise great release of course.
To be competitive with Chrome and Safari, Firefox needs the following table stakes:
- Excellent performance and reliability. Quantum delivered a lot of performance wins, and work continues at a rapid rate on reliability. Unfortunately, to be competitive on performance and reliability given Mozilla's funding required dropping XUL :(
- A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority.
Then, to out-compete the other browsers, Firefox needs exceed the other browsers in those areas, or use marketing tactics on non-technical axes to grow the userbase.
Chrome has tons of first-party themes (see https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/themes), so it makes sense for Firefox to try to drive some engagement here too
- Excellent performance and reliability. Quantum delivered a lot of performance wins, and work continues at a rapid rate on reliability. Unfortunately, to be competitive on performance and reliability given Mozilla's funding required dropping XUL :(
- A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority.
Then, to out-compete the other browsers, Firefox needs exceed the other browsers in those areas, or use marketing tactics on non-technical axes to grow the userbase.
Chrome has tons of first-party themes (see https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/themes), so it makes sense for Firefox to try to drive some engagement here too
> - A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority.
1) Being amazing for power users and also everyone else is why power users did all their marketing work for them in the Phoenix/Firebird days and installed it on every computer they were allowed access to for more than two minutes. We did that because having people in our support-sphere using Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox made our lives much easier, and those users happier. Maybe try something bold like building in ad-blocking? Blocking pop-ups by default was basically exactly that, back in the day, and was a huge part of why we evangelized it so readily.
2) How many users do they still have who aren't power users, or didn't have their browser installed by their friendly neighborhood power user?
1) Being amazing for power users and also everyone else is why power users did all their marketing work for them in the Phoenix/Firebird days and installed it on every computer they were allowed access to for more than two minutes. We did that because having people in our support-sphere using Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox made our lives much easier, and those users happier. Maybe try something bold like building in ad-blocking? Blocking pop-ups by default was basically exactly that, back in the day, and was a huge part of why we evangelized it so readily.
2) How many users do they still have who aren't power users, or didn't have their browser installed by their friendly neighborhood power user?
I started installing Firefox on relative's computers because it was more secure than IE6. I switched to installing Chrome on relative's computers because it was more secure than Firefox. With this release's changes to auto-update policy, I think Firefox is once again the most responsible choice to install for users who aren't interesting in making that kind of choice for themselves.
It is dead trivial to out-compete Chrome by focusing on power users and their needs for privacy-respecting software that doesn't ship with pointless UI changes every second release.
Initial comment: I guess that tactic played out well enough for Debian versus Windows.
Edit: Sorry, that was snarky of me. Firefox is regularly releasing new privacy-focused, power-user features like tab containers. Can't they spent a little time addressing non-power users too?
Edit: Sorry, that was snarky of me. Firefox is regularly releasing new privacy-focused, power-user features like tab containers. Can't they spent a little time addressing non-power users too?
> It is dead trivial to out-compete Chrome by focusing on power users
If that was true I would expect power-user browsers with unchanging UIs to have a larger market share than they do.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
If that was true I would expect power-user browsers with unchanging UIs to have a larger market share than they do.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
>Excellent performance and reliability. Quantum delivered a lot of performance wins, and work continues at a rapid rate on reliability. Unfortunately, to be competitive on performance and reliability given Mozilla's funding required dropping XUL :(
Not really true. For starters, they did not drop XUL with Quantum. In fact, they did not drop XUL to this very day[1].
The thing they did drop was XUL and low level access for extensions, copying the "well-defined" extension API from chrome[2]. This was largely a political decision, not a technical one. The aim here was to make extensions more secure by limiting their capabilities, to provide a common stable API to piggy-back on the success of Chrome and get more Chrome-only extensions on board by providing a largely compatible API, and to polish up Firefox reputation by removing the "Firefox breaks some of my extensions with every update" problem[3]. Of course, it kinda backfired, as it largely removed one of Firefox competitive features other browser lacked (extreme combustibility and very powerful add-ons), and people, especially the power users who drove the word-of-mouth, wondered why they still should use Firefox if it just feels like another Chrome. From my vantage point, it didn't polish the reputation, quite the opposite, it destroyed a lot of reputation and goodwill.
>- Excellent performance and reliability.
Firefox performs better for me in general[4], and it eats fewer of my system resources doing so. But YMMV, of course.
>A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority.
I do like the current UI, even tho I was rather skeptical at first. It's not perfect of course (when is something ever), but I like it a lot better than say Chrome's UI.
Of course, given mozilla's track record in this regard, it probably will be reinvented soon :P
[1] E.g. while the main UI file is now browser.xhtml not browser.xul, it's actually a mix of (x)html and xul in there, with a lot of the UI still implemented in XUL. They did remove some XUL widgets (especially those that were not actually in use by Firefox anymore, only used by either extensions before the WebExtension forced migration or by third party projects like Seamonkey), and IIRC they killed XBL (which was basically WebComponents for XUL, long before WebComponents was a thing), as XBL was particularly finicky, old and unmaintained and riddled with bugs.
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/base/co...
[2] Implementing the chrome-API badly, I might add. There is still a ton of bugs years later where behavior differs significantly from Chrome. And quite a few APIs that aren't implemented at all. In effect, every reasonably complex extension has to have browser specific code, or avoid certain APIs entirely and come up with creative work arounds that hopefully work consistently in different browser. I am not blaming the team which implemented this stuff; they did the best with the very limited resources mozilla gave them to get an initial implementation going, and then after the initial roll out from what I saw the team was effectively largely disbanded and reassigned, leaving only enough resources to kinda-maintain the existing implementation but not really enough resources to fix all the glaring parity bugs and missing features, instead hoping that volunteers would fill the gap here (and some gaps were indeed filled that way, but not too many).
[3] Which was a bit of a problem, indeed, as extensions did not really have a stable API to use. While mozilla largely tried avoiding major breaking changes by e.g. providing a compat-layer if they changed something or carefully announcing such changes in advance meaning features relying on these changes were often delayed in favor of giving extensions a grace period to adopt to the upcoming stuff, this wasn't always possible and it wasn't always known in advance what change would actually break (a lot, or at least important) extensions. And such compat-layers added to the maintenance cost, and delaying features added to the impression that mozilla was slow-moving.
Providing a chrome-compatible API was probably a good idea, providing only a chrome-compatible API probably not.
[4] Except notoriously on youtube, where it still performs well enough, but worse than Chrome.
Not really true. For starters, they did not drop XUL with Quantum. In fact, they did not drop XUL to this very day[1].
The thing they did drop was XUL and low level access for extensions, copying the "well-defined" extension API from chrome[2]. This was largely a political decision, not a technical one. The aim here was to make extensions more secure by limiting their capabilities, to provide a common stable API to piggy-back on the success of Chrome and get more Chrome-only extensions on board by providing a largely compatible API, and to polish up Firefox reputation by removing the "Firefox breaks some of my extensions with every update" problem[3]. Of course, it kinda backfired, as it largely removed one of Firefox competitive features other browser lacked (extreme combustibility and very powerful add-ons), and people, especially the power users who drove the word-of-mouth, wondered why they still should use Firefox if it just feels like another Chrome. From my vantage point, it didn't polish the reputation, quite the opposite, it destroyed a lot of reputation and goodwill.
>- Excellent performance and reliability.
Firefox performs better for me in general[4], and it eats fewer of my system resources doing so. But YMMV, of course.
>A simplified, modern UI. It's fair to argue about specifics here like "tabs as buttons", but not about simplification overall. This may frustrate power users, but power users are the vast minority.
I do like the current UI, even tho I was rather skeptical at first. It's not perfect of course (when is something ever), but I like it a lot better than say Chrome's UI.
Of course, given mozilla's track record in this regard, it probably will be reinvented soon :P
[1] E.g. while the main UI file is now browser.xhtml not browser.xul, it's actually a mix of (x)html and xul in there, with a lot of the UI still implemented in XUL. They did remove some XUL widgets (especially those that were not actually in use by Firefox anymore, only used by either extensions before the WebExtension forced migration or by third party projects like Seamonkey), and IIRC they killed XBL (which was basically WebComponents for XUL, long before WebComponents was a thing), as XBL was particularly finicky, old and unmaintained and riddled with bugs.
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/base/co...
[2] Implementing the chrome-API badly, I might add. There is still a ton of bugs years later where behavior differs significantly from Chrome. And quite a few APIs that aren't implemented at all. In effect, every reasonably complex extension has to have browser specific code, or avoid certain APIs entirely and come up with creative work arounds that hopefully work consistently in different browser. I am not blaming the team which implemented this stuff; they did the best with the very limited resources mozilla gave them to get an initial implementation going, and then after the initial roll out from what I saw the team was effectively largely disbanded and reassigned, leaving only enough resources to kinda-maintain the existing implementation but not really enough resources to fix all the glaring parity bugs and missing features, instead hoping that volunteers would fill the gap here (and some gaps were indeed filled that way, but not too many).
[3] Which was a bit of a problem, indeed, as extensions did not really have a stable API to use. While mozilla largely tried avoiding major breaking changes by e.g. providing a compat-layer if they changed something or carefully announcing such changes in advance meaning features relying on these changes were often delayed in favor of giving extensions a grace period to adopt to the upcoming stuff, this wasn't always possible and it wasn't always known in advance what change would actually break (a lot, or at least important) extensions. And such compat-layers added to the maintenance cost, and delaying features added to the impression that mozilla was slow-moving.
Providing a chrome-compatible API was probably a good idea, providing only a chrome-compatible API probably not.
[4] Except notoriously on youtube, where it still performs well enough, but worse than Chrome.
> Firefox performs better for me in general
This is genuinely surprising for me. Would you mind showing me what your JetStream[1] numbers are?
[1] https://browserbench.org/JetStream/
This is genuinely surprising for me. Would you mind showing me what your JetStream[1] numbers are?
[1] https://browserbench.org/JetStream/
I don't care about synthetic benchmarks. And this one essentially only tracks js (and webasm) performance, not the overall performance, not even just web performance as this would entail DOM manipulation, layouting and rendering, which this thing doesn't really do. It may have some meaning when all you do every day is use websites that are mostly compute instead of mostly idle. Only very few users will do that, while most users will use mostly idle websites, me included, and then it doesn't really matter if Firefox or Chrome can execute a piece of code 5ms faster than the other. It mattered back in the sunspider days, when js perf was really bad, and Firefox 3 outperformed the IE of the time by a factor of something like 20. But we're at a state right now of highly optimized js engines, so a benchmark difference saying V8 is marginally faster than Spidermonkey isn't really meaningful over all to me and how I am using the browser.
I care a lot more about "lived" performance, and that's where Firefox performs better for me. YMMV.
E.g. I regularly have noticeable stalls in Chrome e.g. when doing page navigation or just switching already loaded tabs. Nothing massive, but I do not have the same thing in Firefox. I didn't mean to imply there is a real major difference. Firefox is just a little better.
But anyway, since you asked: I just very unscientificially ran the benchmark in Firefox and Chrome just now, wasn't motivated enough to make it entirely fair by shutting down other processes which may "steal" CPU time, etc, and the grand result was... Chrome's score was 1.103x the score of Firefox[0]. Chrome is faster in raw js perf, but at the same time, this is still misleading, I would say, considering the context I provided.
[0] I know that on more high-end systems than this shitty laptop I am writing on right now, e.g. systems like my actual desktop, the difference might be larger[1], but even then it still holds true for me that js perf differences are mostly noise in my daily use, and Firefox edges out Chrome in other areas that I actually notice.
[1] e.g. mozilla's own arewefastyet have Chrome at about 1.4x as fast in JetStream2, and they aren't running this on a shitty laptop like mine. V8 is a terrific js engine, I am not denying that. But js perf is only a small part of the entire picture.
https://arewefastyet.com/win10/benchmarks/raptor-desktop-jet...
I care a lot more about "lived" performance, and that's where Firefox performs better for me. YMMV.
E.g. I regularly have noticeable stalls in Chrome e.g. when doing page navigation or just switching already loaded tabs. Nothing massive, but I do not have the same thing in Firefox. I didn't mean to imply there is a real major difference. Firefox is just a little better.
But anyway, since you asked: I just very unscientificially ran the benchmark in Firefox and Chrome just now, wasn't motivated enough to make it entirely fair by shutting down other processes which may "steal" CPU time, etc, and the grand result was... Chrome's score was 1.103x the score of Firefox[0]. Chrome is faster in raw js perf, but at the same time, this is still misleading, I would say, considering the context I provided.
[0] I know that on more high-end systems than this shitty laptop I am writing on right now, e.g. systems like my actual desktop, the difference might be larger[1], but even then it still holds true for me that js perf differences are mostly noise in my daily use, and Firefox edges out Chrome in other areas that I actually notice.
[1] e.g. mozilla's own arewefastyet have Chrome at about 1.4x as fast in JetStream2, and they aren't running this on a shitty laptop like mine. V8 is a terrific js engine, I am not denying that. But js perf is only a small part of the entire picture.
https://arewefastyet.com/win10/benchmarks/raptor-desktop-jet...
Gotta keep the designers on the payroll somehow
[deleted]
"Colorways"? Like what everyone else calls "themes"? Yeah, you don't actually need to make up your own word for that.
That, plus the fact that this is the lead bullet point for their new release makes me think "way too many marketers, not enough engineers".
That, plus the fact that this is the lead bullet point for their new release makes me think "way too many marketers, not enough engineers".
'Colourways' is a fairly standard term to describe different colour options on various different product types. Mozilla haven't made this up for themselves.
'Theme', to me, suggests ye olde browser customisation wherein you could have animated gifs of Homer Simpson barking D'OH as your 'Home' button, &c. I'm assuming that's not the case here?
'Theme', to me, suggests ye olde browser customisation wherein you could have animated gifs of Homer Simpson barking D'OH as your 'Home' button, &c. I'm assuming that's not the case here?
Yeah, these are “colorways” in the manufacturing sense - they don’t change layout, patterns, etc, only swap out what colors are present. I’ve tried them out, they’re nice. You pick a (curated) colour, and choose nether you want a dark/light/mixed theme based on it. It’s not the most complex feature ever, but it’s well done.
It's a completely nonstandard term to descripe color schemes for UI themes. That the word is used in an unrelated industry is irrelevant.
For you, perhaps - I've come across it a lot in similar contexts and all the people who upvoted my comment seem to disagree with you too.
I'm not saying I like it necessarily, but it's quite clear what it means in context and language does have a tendency to evolve despite our best efforts.
shrug
I'm not saying I like it necessarily, but it's quite clear what it means in context and language does have a tendency to evolve despite our best efforts.
shrug
> 'Colourways' is a fairly standard term
Not in software it isn't. It appears to be a marketing term, just as I said.
Not in software it isn't. It appears to be a marketing term, just as I said.
> way too many marketers
The writing was on the wall when they started publishing different white papers about different UI tweaks almost a decade ago. Does anyone remember that video of a collaborative web browsing session?
It’s like train fans drawing fantasy subway maps: “Now that the colour for the new subway line is settled, let’s hire a construction firm to figure out how we can get this thing built”.
The writing was on the wall when they started publishing different white papers about different UI tweaks almost a decade ago. Does anyone remember that video of a collaborative web browsing session?
It’s like train fans drawing fantasy subway maps: “Now that the colour for the new subway line is settled, let’s hire a construction firm to figure out how we can get this thing built”.
> Instead, a background agent will download and install updates even if Firefox is closed.
I hope that can be disabled. If I kill Firefox, I want it to be completely dead. I deplore background "download agents".
> Plus, closing devtools now reclaims more memory than ever before.
Perhaps reducing devtools memory usage might have been more useful; more than once it has brought my machine to a standstill, and forced me to reboot.
I hope that can be disabled. If I kill Firefox, I want it to be completely dead. I deplore background "download agents".
> Plus, closing devtools now reclaims more memory than ever before.
Perhaps reducing devtools memory usage might have been more useful; more than once it has brought my machine to a standstill, and forced me to reboot.
You close Firefox?
Gods, just might as well restart the computer while you're at it.
Gods, just might as well restart the computer while you're at it.
It seems the update messed with some (randomly) of my settings (homepage, default search engine...). You might want to check yours just in case.
As always, it's available in portable format for folks who'd like to try it out on Windows without installing: https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
> With this release, power users can use about:unloads to release system resources by manually unloading tabs without closing them.
That should be nice, I'm looking forward to poking around in there.
That should be nice, I'm looking forward to poking around in there.
I fully recommend the Auto Tab Discard add-on for more controlled tab unloading. It's especially useful if you're a tab hoarder like me.
It's nice to see that there's supposed to be some performance improvements. I still miss support for FTP though. And playback of flac files with id3 headers.
[deleted]
Does Firefox now allow users to whitelist/blacklist extensions on per domain basis?
[deleted]
I wish they would fix multitouch on Mac, it's been bad for ages and it acts like you're on a phone rather than a computer.
>On Windows, there will now be fewer interruptions because Firefox won’t prompt you for updates. Instead, a background agent will download and install updates even if Firefox is closed.
How considerate of them, I felt I didn't have enough auto-updating background agents yet.
How considerate of them, I felt I didn't have enough auto-updating background agents yet.
"Don't be snarky."
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
IMO this is the correct behavior. Programs should never bother the user with prompts or interruptions of any sort unless absolutely necessary. "Do you want to install this security-critical update to your computer's largest attack surface?" does not rise to that level. The answer is obviously yes, so just do it and don't bother the user.
There's probably an advanced setting buried somewhere if you _really_ want to turn that behavior off, but why would you?
There's probably an advanced setting buried somewhere if you _really_ want to turn that behavior off, but why would you?
There are many reasons why someone would not want this behavior, including:
- Browser updates often carry more than just security fixes, which may or may not be wanted by the user
- Background updates make it less likely for the user to know why their software is being updated
- The user may have a legitimate reason for sticking with an older version of a piece of software
- Most browsers already show the user when a new update is available. For users interested in all of the latest security updates, they can read about what these are and simply download the update right away
- Browser updates often carry more than just security fixes, which may or may not be wanted by the user
- Background updates make it less likely for the user to know why their software is being updated
- The user may have a legitimate reason for sticking with an older version of a piece of software
- Most browsers already show the user when a new update is available. For users interested in all of the latest security updates, they can read about what these are and simply download the update right away
Unfortunately, the realities of modern software development make it very difficult to separate feature patches from security patches. Maintaining an ever-increasing number of older versions of the same software indefinitely just isn't feasible.
"Bother the user with a dialog that lets them shoot themselves in the foot every time there's an update." isn't a good solution to that problem. Firefox's Extended Support Release[1] is a better one, but even with that users will need to accept a feature update eventually.
There may be legitimate situations where it does make sense to turn off automatic updates (that's why the option is there), but they're very niche and require a lot of expertise to pull off without compromising security. Well designed software should intentionally make it hard to disable critical security features without knowing what you're doing.
I also don't think informing users about the contents of an update usually meets the bar where it is "absolutely necessary" to interrupt them just for that. Unless your update is about to break something important (which you should certainly avoid if at all possible) patch notes shouldn't be required reading.
[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/
"Bother the user with a dialog that lets them shoot themselves in the foot every time there's an update." isn't a good solution to that problem. Firefox's Extended Support Release[1] is a better one, but even with that users will need to accept a feature update eventually.
There may be legitimate situations where it does make sense to turn off automatic updates (that's why the option is there), but they're very niche and require a lot of expertise to pull off without compromising security. Well designed software should intentionally make it hard to disable critical security features without knowing what you're doing.
I also don't think informing users about the contents of an update usually meets the bar where it is "absolutely necessary" to interrupt them just for that. Unless your update is about to break something important (which you should certainly avoid if at all possible) patch notes shouldn't be required reading.
[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/
> There are many reasons why someone would not want this behavior
It's a good thing that this feature can be configured.
https://www.ghacks.net/2021/04/28/mozilla-is-working-on-fire...
It's a good thing that this feature can be configured.
https://www.ghacks.net/2021/04/28/mozilla-is-working-on-fire...
Indeed it is, though this wasn't what Ajedi32 was arguing
> There's probably an advanced setting buried somewhere if you _really_ want to turn that behavior off, but why would you?
You can create a policy for it
Not sure why you want to do that, as updates are essential for security. Apparently it's for 'enterprise organizations' who probably want to limit the chatiness of their network and reduce latency.
You could also install Firefox ESR which doesn't ping Mozilla for updates nearly every 10 seconds.
You can create a policy for it
{
"policies": {
"DisableAppUpdate": true
}
}
Not sure why you want to do that, as updates are essential for security. Apparently it's for 'enterprise organizations' who probably want to limit the chatiness of their network and reduce latency.
You could also install Firefox ESR which doesn't ping Mozilla for updates nearly every 10 seconds.
One reason---rare but existent---for disabling these update agents and background services is if someone is using their mobile hotspot to connect their computer and wants to limit all unnecessary data transfer.
There's an economically powerful EU country that has a lot of train travel and not so many trains having great internet access. This was my commute life for a few years.
There's an economically powerful EU country that has a lot of train travel and not so many trains having great internet access. This was my commute life for a few years.
Usually these kinds of things are configured to not run on metered connections. Some times of course the API can’t detect it but it works the vast majority of the time.
typically because its possible these "security" updates will break something unintended. IT teams usually locally test any updates before deploying to an entire infrastructure
I don't buy the claim that "Programs should never bother the user with prompts or interruptions of any sort unless absolutely necessary." because there are many different ways that you can spin "absolutely necessary" that end up being harmful to the user, and lots of things that aren't "absolutely necessary" that I still want my computer to interrupt me for.
I'd stop right at "auto-installation of updates with security fixes is the correct default", because that's very solid.
I'd stop right at "auto-installation of updates with security fixes is the correct default", because that's very solid.
The key annoyance is FTUEs for updates. Mobile apps are terrible about this.
And updates that don't install until you open the program. Sparkle apps on macOS do this and it drives me nuts.
If you're going to update or want my attention about a new thing, have a red dot somewhere that is not conspicuous. Don't get in the way of a user trying to be a user. This is one thing that the Slack app gets absolutely right.
Firefox toes the line. New versions occasionally pop up a new window. It's easy to close but jarring. At least the updates happen mostly transparently and tend to not radically change appearance or behavior. They're bringing this experience to Windows now.
And updates that don't install until you open the program. Sparkle apps on macOS do this and it drives me nuts.
If you're going to update or want my attention about a new thing, have a red dot somewhere that is not conspicuous. Don't get in the way of a user trying to be a user. This is one thing that the Slack app gets absolutely right.
Firefox toes the line. New versions occasionally pop up a new window. It's easy to close but jarring. At least the updates happen mostly transparently and tend to not radically change appearance or behavior. They're bringing this experience to Windows now.
> but why would you?
Because updates can introduce breaking changes. And potentially new security vulnerabilities.
Because updates can introduce breaking changes. And potentially new security vulnerabilities.
while technically true, updates seem to introduce fixing changes and close confirmed security vulnerabilities at a much higher rate.
but you can flip the switch if you really must.
but you can flip the switch if you really must.
So you prefer old and known/already exploited security vulnerabilities?
Yes!
Linus calls this trading old bugs for new bugs, and is vehemently against introducing commits that may introduce new bugs, no matter the severity of the bug that the commit squashes.
Linus calls this trading old bugs for new bugs, and is vehemently against introducing commits that may introduce new bugs, no matter the severity of the bug that the commit squashes.
Linus is known to have strong opinions and he can be often very wrong. Also, linux is not the epitome of security, so I don’t see how it applies here — I would much prefer if half of all computers wouldn’t turn into a giant bot net.
Foregoing security updates to avoid breaking changes and severe functionality regressions is a completely valid choice that should be wholly left up to the user.
It is left up to the user—you can disable auto-updates if you so wish. But it seems completely reasonable to have them be enabled by default.
Do you want to install this backdoor ? No, installing the so called updates in background will not be alowed.
How do you validate Firefox updates?
Did you validate Firefox updates before?
Most people don't.
For the rare people that do (probably 100 on the entire planet), they can disable the automatic updates and do it manually.
I have no problem with automatic updates I can disable.
Most people don't.
For the rare people that do (probably 100 on the entire planet), they can disable the automatic updates and do it manually.
I have no problem with automatic updates I can disable.
[deleted]
I'm sympathetic to this, and usually find these sorts of things annoying, but in this case I'm not so sure.
If there is any application I want to autoupdate, it's my web-browser. It's a giant bundle of security vulnerabilities whose main purpose in life is to hit untrusted servers that might be sending me malware, and when an update is available to me, the list of security fixes is also available to attackers.
If there is any application I want to autoupdate, it's my web-browser. It's a giant bundle of security vulnerabilities whose main purpose in life is to hit untrusted servers that might be sending me malware, and when an update is available to me, the list of security fixes is also available to attackers.
If you already read HN, why would you need an update reminder? Using HN I was able to find out about a new Firefox release sometimes even before "Check updates" feature was able to find one ;)
"To ensure optimal security in your computing experience, make sure to keep checking social media often enough that it not only becomes a productivity hindering distraction, but also a borderline addiction."
Not every patch-level security update makes it to the front page of HN, for one thing
It's only a vulnerability when you have the browser open though.
If that were the case, then people would complain about how stupid it was that the browser updated and needed to be restarted every time you opened it.
Applications that feel entitled to resources after you tell them to go away lead me to move them into a VM just to contain all the crap and sprawl and bullshit. The number of apps in this category just keeps on growing.
I'm starting to feel like I should just run Qubes.
I'm starting to feel like I should just run Qubes.
This is just for Windows. On Linux, Firefox doesn't self-update because distros already handle updates.
When Firefox releases to Windows Store (https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/web-browsers/mozilla-firefox/...) they will probably let Windows update it, and use this self-updater only for standalone installs.
When Firefox releases to Windows Store (https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/web-browsers/mozilla-firefox/...) they will probably let Windows update it, and use this self-updater only for standalone installs.
I'm also planning to make the switch. Do you know anyone who's tried Qubes? The finicky hardware requirements are intimidating.
I've used Qubes at home and at work for about a year now. I like it.
It definitely requires thinking differently and sometimes simple things are less simple, but overall I feel it's worth it. It's rewarding to feel that you're in control.
Some things I like:
- Having password manager in a Qube(/VM) that cannot access the internet (and the VMs that can, are of course isolated from the password VM).
- Logging out of your bank, and when they tell you to "clear your cache and cookies", you do one better and actually destroy the whole OS, because you opened the browser in a disposable VM.
- Needing to attach the microphone (or camera) to a VM before it can be used.
- Ability to have specific VMs' network go through a VPN/Tor.
edit: oh yeah, and consider trying Qubes 4.1 release candidate, which could possibly have better hardware compatibility.
It definitely requires thinking differently and sometimes simple things are less simple, but overall I feel it's worth it. It's rewarding to feel that you're in control.
Some things I like:
- Having password manager in a Qube(/VM) that cannot access the internet (and the VMs that can, are of course isolated from the password VM).
- Logging out of your bank, and when they tell you to "clear your cache and cookies", you do one better and actually destroy the whole OS, because you opened the browser in a disposable VM.
- Needing to attach the microphone (or camera) to a VM before it can be used.
- Ability to have specific VMs' network go through a VPN/Tor.
edit: oh yeah, and consider trying Qubes 4.1 release candidate, which could possibly have better hardware compatibility.
I use qubes for work. I don't like it.
What don't you like about it? I'd like to experience the drawbacks firsthand, but I don't have the hardware yet and Qubes can't be demoed in a VM.
I ran qubes for a while. I found it to be slow and inconvenient. The idea is nice, but practically it's like running fedora except everything takes twice as long to start up.
It's inconvenient as fuck with a very specific security model that makes sense for my use case, but doesn't for most.
But generally it's just annoying.
But generally it's just annoying.
I am glad Windows is moving to a package manager esque system.
It would be nice if rather than reinventing the wheel for the billionth time, apps could just use the OS based update mechanisms where possible. (i.e. App calls apt, or snap, or winget, or windows store, which updates Firefox).
Whether that be store based or packaged based. It really sucks both in resources and UX when apps bundle their own update/install mechanism.
It would be nice if rather than reinventing the wheel for the billionth time, apps could just use the OS based update mechanisms where possible. (i.e. App calls apt, or snap, or winget, or windows store, which updates Firefox).
Whether that be store based or packaged based. It really sucks both in resources and UX when apps bundle their own update/install mechanism.
For a probably over a year now I've been using Edge because I was making a half-hearted attempt to de-Google myself where possible (yes I know it's Chromium, but it's a start)
Finally yesterday I got so sick of Microsoft's incessant prompts to try Bing, and shoving news and ads in the new tab page, and integrating Bing rewards, etc. that I said I was done and moved back to Chrome.
First thing I did when I opened Chrome was to go into the settings and update it since I hadn't opened it in I-don't-know-how-long and I was surprised to see it was already on the latest version. Great to know it was wasting system resources to update itself without me knowing even though I wasn't using it, and don't even have a process indicator for Chrome in my system tray
Finally yesterday I got so sick of Microsoft's incessant prompts to try Bing, and shoving news and ads in the new tab page, and integrating Bing rewards, etc. that I said I was done and moved back to Chrome.
First thing I did when I opened Chrome was to go into the settings and update it since I hadn't opened it in I-don't-know-how-long and I was surprised to see it was already on the latest version. Great to know it was wasting system resources to update itself without me knowing even though I wasn't using it, and don't even have a process indicator for Chrome in my system tray
Firefox has had a Mozilla Maintenance Service[1] (essentially a daemon) on Windows since 2012 or so.
I'm guessing they are improving it so the UX for updates involves even less effort for users.
[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Windows_Service_Silent_Update
I'm guessing they are improving it so the UX for updates involves even less effort for users.
[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Windows_Service_Silent_Update
They've had the MozillaMaintenance service for several years on Windows already, what has changed now?
Based on my reading of https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-mozilla-maintenanc..., the current behavior is that Firefox checks for updates only when the app is open, and then only briefly starts the MozillaMaintenance service to avoid the UAC dialog. The MozillaMaintenance service isn't what is responsible for checking for updates.
It's not clear to me if MozillaMaintenance is the service that will be checking for updates, or if there is a new service.
It's not clear to me if MozillaMaintenance is the service that will be checking for updates, or if there is a new service.
I don't know about this version but at least one could uninstall the maintenance service.
It was the first thing I'd nuke before allowing my PC to reconnect to the internet, the second was to nuke every talk-home-Mozilla link that about:config would allow to either be changed or deleted. This worked, as updates wouldn't even work when clicking 'updates' in the menu.
Mozilla has a damned hide to automate updates, not to mention gathering data about users' habits without telling them what's been gathered, and also not allowing users to turn off that collection if they wished.
(BTW, we know the depth of this surveillance just by looking at Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage. There's no way Mozilla would know that data unless Firefox's surveillance of its users had been all-pervasive.)
By going the way of the rest of the industry, Mozilla is shooting itself in the foot. People who've used Firefox in the past have done so because they want an alterative - not more of the same.
I expect Mozilla will go defunct soon, it's now been on its self-destruct path for too long for it to be rescued.
It was the first thing I'd nuke before allowing my PC to reconnect to the internet, the second was to nuke every talk-home-Mozilla link that about:config would allow to either be changed or deleted. This worked, as updates wouldn't even work when clicking 'updates' in the menu.
Mozilla has a damned hide to automate updates, not to mention gathering data about users' habits without telling them what's been gathered, and also not allowing users to turn off that collection if they wished.
(BTW, we know the depth of this surveillance just by looking at Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage. There's no way Mozilla would know that data unless Firefox's surveillance of its users had been all-pervasive.)
By going the way of the rest of the industry, Mozilla is shooting itself in the foot. People who've used Firefox in the past have done so because they want an alterative - not more of the same.
I expect Mozilla will go defunct soon, it's now been on its self-destruct path for too long for it to be rescued.
Mozilla "inside agent" here. (Not really, but I work for Mozilla. Don't speak for them etc.) I didn't consider downvoting, but since you mentioned it below it would kind of make sense, since much of what you say here is objectively false. But you're raising legitimate concerns, so I have no reason to prevent your post from being seen.
Mozilla is very open about what is collected, and all of it can be turned off. We'd really rather you not lock in insecure versions; until you've worked on a browser, you won't believe how active and pervasive the attacks are. As a developer, I'll also say that the internal process for adding any additional collection is pretty heavyweight. Even if you're just collecting the distribution of garbage collection time slices, you need to go through a privacy data review.
Mozilla spells out its data collection policies at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ (first DDG hit for "mozilla privacy", which is how I found it). If something there is unclear, or you have reason to believe we're a bunch of scheming liars and you have the receipts to prove it, please let me know.
Firefox Suggest is a calculated tradeoff to provide more functionality in exchange for sending more data, but again it's totally configurable if you disagree with the tradeoff.
I honestly don't know what you're going on about with "Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage", so I can't respond to that.
I will assert that Mozilla is very much not going the way of the rest of the industry, and we are in fact being very conscious to carve out a different path. Which isn't easy. But if you have the degree of distrust conveyed by your message, then please don't use Firefox. It's not doing you or us any favors.
It's fine to call out specific problems and gaps though. Feedback is good, and anyone interested enough to seriously look at this is welcome to get involved with the Mozilla project and contribute to improving this stuff.
Mozilla is very open about what is collected, and all of it can be turned off. We'd really rather you not lock in insecure versions; until you've worked on a browser, you won't believe how active and pervasive the attacks are. As a developer, I'll also say that the internal process for adding any additional collection is pretty heavyweight. Even if you're just collecting the distribution of garbage collection time slices, you need to go through a privacy data review.
Mozilla spells out its data collection policies at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ (first DDG hit for "mozilla privacy", which is how I found it). If something there is unclear, or you have reason to believe we're a bunch of scheming liars and you have the receipts to prove it, please let me know.
Firefox Suggest is a calculated tradeoff to provide more functionality in exchange for sending more data, but again it's totally configurable if you disagree with the tradeoff.
I honestly don't know what you're going on about with "Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage", so I can't respond to that.
I will assert that Mozilla is very much not going the way of the rest of the industry, and we are in fact being very conscious to carve out a different path. Which isn't easy. But if you have the degree of distrust conveyed by your message, then please don't use Firefox. It's not doing you or us any favors.
It's fine to call out specific problems and gaps though. Feedback is good, and anyone interested enough to seriously look at this is welcome to get involved with the Mozilla project and contribute to improving this stuff.
First, I actually do respect your views and I'm pleased you've had the fortitude to responded as such.
To respond adequately to your post would require me to start detailing what I (and many others) reckon what's wrong with Firefox (and similarly so with Thunderbird). Clearly that's not very practical here, as to do so we'd be bogged down in detail and the key points of the argument would be lost.
That said and not wanting to let anyone assume I'm avoiding your points, I've divided an overview of the key objections into the following groups.
1. Features that by their intrinsic nature should be in both Firefox and Thunderbird but which are missing. These are left to be picked by add-on developers who eventually give up after Mozilla breaks the compatibility model once too often. Thus a useful feature we'd gotten used to via an add-on literally disappears with an upgrade (more about this in point 2.)
2. The single biggest fiasco with Firefox from a user's perspective is Mozilla's perennial breaking of its add-ons. Not only is this disrespectful to third-party developers who develop them, and it often turns them off from doing further development work, but also it infuriates users whenever their add-ons no longer work.
In essence, when an add-on no longer works after an upgrade, users consider such an upgrade as actually a downgrade in terms of performance and user ergonomics. Whilst Mozilla may have done this for noble reasons such as improved security it's of very little concern or comfort to the average user (myself included) whose facility no longer works. As far as he/she is concerned, Mozilla has fucked up yet again - and I'm not exaggerating here, it's been a constant theme for Mozilla to blatantly ignore compatibility from the early 2000s until today. Just go to Mozilla's add-ons site and check the huge number of incompatibility issues one finds even with the items that are still listed (many are not).
For the record, I'll mention just one add-on that should have been in the core program that was fixed by an add-on which was later busted by a 'retrograde' Mozilla 'upgrade' and that was Lazarus, it very usefully allowed undos in dialogue boxes etc. which often get lost for nefarious reasons after one has typed much text. If just about every text editor and wordprocessor has multiple levels of undo then why doesn't Firefox?
[Edit, Firefox's not alone here, I just lost many edits whilst editing typos in this post from my mobile. Had undo worked then there'd had been no problem. Thus it's a problem with many browsers. No, I'm not using Firefox or Chrome here.]
As stated, whilst there may be many reasonable excuses for why Mozilla acted the way it did, the user isn't interested in hearing any of them - all he/she knows is that a useful feature that once worked now doesn't and Mozilla's actions are the reason. Many of us remember those failures and it's why so many of us go to inordinate lengths to nuke automatic updates, as they're likely to backfire just when we least expect it (inconviently in the middle of an important job etc.).
The picture that such actions (and there's been many of them) engender in many of us users is that Mozilla programers primarily program out of self-interest rather than that of users' actual needs. Naturally, you programmers prefer simpler, cleaner code that doesn't support legacy features - similarly, it seems none of you are prepared to do the extra yard work - the extra coding - need to keep old-API add-ons safe. I know, it's boring shit, and no one will do so willingly, they have to be compelled to do so, and no one in authority at Mozilla has made that call (and that alone speaks a great deal about the ethos/culture at Mozilla).
Again, just get it into your heads that no one other than you Mozilla programmers care a damn about the reasons why you nuked XUL/NPAPI as laudable as you at Mozilla deem their nuking to be. Morever, many of us aren't interested in DRM or pandering to the tech giants. Include new features if you must but at least provide us users with the option to let us turn them off.
As you've seen with Firefox, sticking to some moral highgound, or overdoing security above all else - not to mention overly pandering to new web standards forced on us by the new owners of the Internet, Google Facebook et all, has its heavy penalties. Provide these features by all means but stop taking full responsibility for a user's security. If he/she wants to deliberately downgrade his/her security from the default then so be it, you've no right or ultimate authority to dictate that. Moreover, if you want to pander to the security mob, then I'd again point to the fact that such righteousness has cost Mozilla dearly in market share.
For instance, the first of these forced annoyances was the removal of the switch to turn JavaScript off. Right, default it to 'on' for the majority who wish to use it but it's down outright authoritarian programming to insist that you programers know best - especially when you seemingly haven't a clue about user ergonomics or what actually annoys users (and I've a damned good idea having run an IT department for years only to find myself continually falling foul of users who blame me and or my staff as they hold us directly responsible for your 'irresponsible' programming changes).
Why you programers want to be on such a power kick is something that only psychologists can figure out if that's at all possible. Of course, it's not only Mozilla programmers here, Microsoft's are possibly the worst. It's the sheer arrogance that you programners display when you think you know what's best for users when you often don't have a clue which is so annoying (I'm not aiming specifically at Mozilla programmers here, rather that inflated ego is characteristic of breed). BTW, I've done a considerable amount of programming in my time but I don't consider myself a professional programer.
3. Similarly, instead of fixing boring bugs such as those longstanding ones in the printer routine and the overall outdatedness of the printer routine per se, not to mention that other first-class annoyance - the failure of text selected by the mouse to be copied from the context menu thus it requires a full highlight followed by CTRL-C then CTRL-V to actually work - you Mozilla programers simply ignore them year after year. Right, fixing bugs is boring, but adding new features obviosly isn't - even if many users deem them unnecessary or of secondary importance to rectifying problems with the more utilitarian features of the program. I mention Australis here. As it's clear it annoyed the hell out of many users, thus it's fitting to ask why Mozilla didn't include an optional fallback to the older UI. Right, I've already answered that point.
4. If Mozilla's programmers genuinely claim they're trying to do the right thing by users then it's almost impossible to conclude that they actually understand users - or what features users actually want from a browser. (Who do you ask and why doesn't Mozilla respond to the many thousands of complaints just like mine?) Yes, it's a restatement of what I've already said, but it has to be true or otherwise Firefox's usage ratings wouldn't be nosediving off the graph. An adjunct to that is that Mozilla never fully levels with its users concerning the real reasons for why its takes certain actions - that is other than to dress up changes with PR-speak and spin. If Mozilla's leveled with users more honesty then users would likely reciprocate. Moreover, you would have fewer users like me upping hyperbole to critical levels out of sheer frustration.
Finally, likewise, I don't understand why you can't see my reasoning for why the Firefox 94 webpage contains said info you mentioned. I'll get the quote and post it here when I've a moment.
Again, what I've said hurts and I know it. Please understand it's no vendetta and it hurts me to be so negative (especially when there's so much negativity about these days); and it also hurts to see the only essentially independent browser going down the gurgler when it ought not to be. You should spare a thought for people like me who insist that the corporate browser should be Firefox only to find us between a rock and a hard place when it all goes belly-up for the many reasons mentioned. Defending Firefox against Chrome is no easy task these days.
To respond adequately to your post would require me to start detailing what I (and many others) reckon what's wrong with Firefox (and similarly so with Thunderbird). Clearly that's not very practical here, as to do so we'd be bogged down in detail and the key points of the argument would be lost.
That said and not wanting to let anyone assume I'm avoiding your points, I've divided an overview of the key objections into the following groups.
1. Features that by their intrinsic nature should be in both Firefox and Thunderbird but which are missing. These are left to be picked by add-on developers who eventually give up after Mozilla breaks the compatibility model once too often. Thus a useful feature we'd gotten used to via an add-on literally disappears with an upgrade (more about this in point 2.)
2. The single biggest fiasco with Firefox from a user's perspective is Mozilla's perennial breaking of its add-ons. Not only is this disrespectful to third-party developers who develop them, and it often turns them off from doing further development work, but also it infuriates users whenever their add-ons no longer work.
In essence, when an add-on no longer works after an upgrade, users consider such an upgrade as actually a downgrade in terms of performance and user ergonomics. Whilst Mozilla may have done this for noble reasons such as improved security it's of very little concern or comfort to the average user (myself included) whose facility no longer works. As far as he/she is concerned, Mozilla has fucked up yet again - and I'm not exaggerating here, it's been a constant theme for Mozilla to blatantly ignore compatibility from the early 2000s until today. Just go to Mozilla's add-ons site and check the huge number of incompatibility issues one finds even with the items that are still listed (many are not).
For the record, I'll mention just one add-on that should have been in the core program that was fixed by an add-on which was later busted by a 'retrograde' Mozilla 'upgrade' and that was Lazarus, it very usefully allowed undos in dialogue boxes etc. which often get lost for nefarious reasons after one has typed much text. If just about every text editor and wordprocessor has multiple levels of undo then why doesn't Firefox?
[Edit, Firefox's not alone here, I just lost many edits whilst editing typos in this post from my mobile. Had undo worked then there'd had been no problem. Thus it's a problem with many browsers. No, I'm not using Firefox or Chrome here.]
As stated, whilst there may be many reasonable excuses for why Mozilla acted the way it did, the user isn't interested in hearing any of them - all he/she knows is that a useful feature that once worked now doesn't and Mozilla's actions are the reason. Many of us remember those failures and it's why so many of us go to inordinate lengths to nuke automatic updates, as they're likely to backfire just when we least expect it (inconviently in the middle of an important job etc.).
The picture that such actions (and there's been many of them) engender in many of us users is that Mozilla programers primarily program out of self-interest rather than that of users' actual needs. Naturally, you programmers prefer simpler, cleaner code that doesn't support legacy features - similarly, it seems none of you are prepared to do the extra yard work - the extra coding - need to keep old-API add-ons safe. I know, it's boring shit, and no one will do so willingly, they have to be compelled to do so, and no one in authority at Mozilla has made that call (and that alone speaks a great deal about the ethos/culture at Mozilla).
Again, just get it into your heads that no one other than you Mozilla programmers care a damn about the reasons why you nuked XUL/NPAPI as laudable as you at Mozilla deem their nuking to be. Morever, many of us aren't interested in DRM or pandering to the tech giants. Include new features if you must but at least provide us users with the option to let us turn them off.
As you've seen with Firefox, sticking to some moral highgound, or overdoing security above all else - not to mention overly pandering to new web standards forced on us by the new owners of the Internet, Google Facebook et all, has its heavy penalties. Provide these features by all means but stop taking full responsibility for a user's security. If he/she wants to deliberately downgrade his/her security from the default then so be it, you've no right or ultimate authority to dictate that. Moreover, if you want to pander to the security mob, then I'd again point to the fact that such righteousness has cost Mozilla dearly in market share.
For instance, the first of these forced annoyances was the removal of the switch to turn JavaScript off. Right, default it to 'on' for the majority who wish to use it but it's down outright authoritarian programming to insist that you programers know best - especially when you seemingly haven't a clue about user ergonomics or what actually annoys users (and I've a damned good idea having run an IT department for years only to find myself continually falling foul of users who blame me and or my staff as they hold us directly responsible for your 'irresponsible' programming changes).
Why you programers want to be on such a power kick is something that only psychologists can figure out if that's at all possible. Of course, it's not only Mozilla programmers here, Microsoft's are possibly the worst. It's the sheer arrogance that you programners display when you think you know what's best for users when you often don't have a clue which is so annoying (I'm not aiming specifically at Mozilla programmers here, rather that inflated ego is characteristic of breed). BTW, I've done a considerable amount of programming in my time but I don't consider myself a professional programer.
3. Similarly, instead of fixing boring bugs such as those longstanding ones in the printer routine and the overall outdatedness of the printer routine per se, not to mention that other first-class annoyance - the failure of text selected by the mouse to be copied from the context menu thus it requires a full highlight followed by CTRL-C then CTRL-V to actually work - you Mozilla programers simply ignore them year after year. Right, fixing bugs is boring, but adding new features obviosly isn't - even if many users deem them unnecessary or of secondary importance to rectifying problems with the more utilitarian features of the program. I mention Australis here. As it's clear it annoyed the hell out of many users, thus it's fitting to ask why Mozilla didn't include an optional fallback to the older UI. Right, I've already answered that point.
4. If Mozilla's programmers genuinely claim they're trying to do the right thing by users then it's almost impossible to conclude that they actually understand users - or what features users actually want from a browser. (Who do you ask and why doesn't Mozilla respond to the many thousands of complaints just like mine?) Yes, it's a restatement of what I've already said, but it has to be true or otherwise Firefox's usage ratings wouldn't be nosediving off the graph. An adjunct to that is that Mozilla never fully levels with its users concerning the real reasons for why its takes certain actions - that is other than to dress up changes with PR-speak and spin. If Mozilla's leveled with users more honesty then users would likely reciprocate. Moreover, you would have fewer users like me upping hyperbole to critical levels out of sheer frustration.
Finally, likewise, I don't understand why you can't see my reasoning for why the Firefox 94 webpage contains said info you mentioned. I'll get the quote and post it here when I've a moment.
Again, what I've said hurts and I know it. Please understand it's no vendetta and it hurts me to be so negative (especially when there's so much negativity about these days); and it also hurts to see the only essentially independent browser going down the gurgler when it ought not to be. You should spare a thought for people like me who insist that the corporate browser should be Firefox only to find us between a rock and a hard place when it all goes belly-up for the many reasons mentioned. Defending Firefox against Chrome is no easy task these days.
This may be too short a response to be satisfying. I agree with some of your points, disagree with others, and end up coming from a somewhat different place. And my salary comes from Mozilla, so I will freely admit to being biased.
Ironically, constant add-on breakage is exactly why we broke all the addons. The situation really was as bad as you describe; every release broke large numbers of addons because the addon architectural was far too invasive. It was unsustainable. Bug fixes, security fixes, and new features all required changes that broke addons.
That doesn't happen anymore. (Or at least, it is now rare instead of ridiculously common.) Addons are much more limited, they break very rarely, and we have been able to make some changes necessary for some survival-threatening shortcomings (eg Spectre vulnerabilities that the competitors do not have). I miss Lazarus too.
We have not done as good a job as we liked at implementing the new extension model. The massive layoffs made that much harder.
Arguing over what users want is a losing proposition. I know I've often been surprised (and disappointed) by the data. And I freely admit that there are some major deficiencies still present. Often, though, I find that results are different in different environments. The context menu thing works here, for example. Please file a bug if there isn't already one. I have other cut & paste bugs that irritate the hell out of me, though, so I'm not surprised by another one.
The printer stuff was completely ignored and abandoned for a very, very long time. It has dramatically improved in the last few versions.
Supporting older UX is always a hard one. I feel it too, I generally don't see the point in most changes, but I'm not going to second-guess the people who say that UX refreshes make more people happy than sad. And maintenance of past stuff has a surprisingly high cost that can't be waved away as devs being lazy. Especially in the face of mass layoffs.
> ...Mozilla never fully levels with its users concerning the real reasons for why it takes certain actions - that is other than to dress up changes with PR-speak and spin. If Mozilla's leveled with users more honesty then users would likely reciprocate.
I tend to agree. I don't think it's as bad as you say, but I do think it's an area of weakness.
----
Anyway, not meant to be a comprehensive answer. I don't think you're completely wrong about all this, but it does look a lot different from the inside.
Ironically, constant add-on breakage is exactly why we broke all the addons. The situation really was as bad as you describe; every release broke large numbers of addons because the addon architectural was far too invasive. It was unsustainable. Bug fixes, security fixes, and new features all required changes that broke addons.
That doesn't happen anymore. (Or at least, it is now rare instead of ridiculously common.) Addons are much more limited, they break very rarely, and we have been able to make some changes necessary for some survival-threatening shortcomings (eg Spectre vulnerabilities that the competitors do not have). I miss Lazarus too.
We have not done as good a job as we liked at implementing the new extension model. The massive layoffs made that much harder.
Arguing over what users want is a losing proposition. I know I've often been surprised (and disappointed) by the data. And I freely admit that there are some major deficiencies still present. Often, though, I find that results are different in different environments. The context menu thing works here, for example. Please file a bug if there isn't already one. I have other cut & paste bugs that irritate the hell out of me, though, so I'm not surprised by another one.
The printer stuff was completely ignored and abandoned for a very, very long time. It has dramatically improved in the last few versions.
Supporting older UX is always a hard one. I feel it too, I generally don't see the point in most changes, but I'm not going to second-guess the people who say that UX refreshes make more people happy than sad. And maintenance of past stuff has a surprisingly high cost that can't be waved away as devs being lazy. Especially in the face of mass layoffs.
> ...Mozilla never fully levels with its users concerning the real reasons for why it takes certain actions - that is other than to dress up changes with PR-speak and spin. If Mozilla's leveled with users more honesty then users would likely reciprocate.
I tend to agree. I don't think it's as bad as you say, but I do think it's an area of weakness.
----
Anyway, not meant to be a comprehensive answer. I don't think you're completely wrong about all this, but it does look a lot different from the inside.
First, I actually do respect your views and I'm pleased you've had the fortitude to responded as such.
To respond adequately to your post would require me to start detailing what I (and many others) reckon what's wrong with Firefox (and similarly so with Thunderbird). Clearly that's not very practical here, as to do so we'd be bogged down in detail and the key points of the argument would be lost.
That said and not wanting to let anyone assume I'm avoiding your points, I've divided the key objections into the following groups.
1. Features that by their intrinsic nature should be in both Firefox and Thunderbird but which are missing. These are left to be picked by add-on developers who eventually give up after Mozilla broke the compatibility model once too often. Thus a useful feature we'd gotten used to via an add-on literally disappeared with an upgrade (more about this in point 2.)
2. The single biggest fiasco with Firefox from a user's perspective is Mozilla's perennial breaking of its add-ons. Not only is this disrespectful to third-party developers who develop them, and it often it turns them off from doing further development work, but also it infuriates users whenever their add-ons no longer work.
In essence, to them an upgrade is actually a downgrade in terms of user ergonomics. Whilst Mozilla may have done this for noble reasons such as improved security it's of very little concern to the the average user (myself included) whose facility no longer works. As far as he/she is concerned, Mozilla has fucked up yet again - I'm not exaggerating here, it's been a constant theme for Mozilla to blatantly ignore compatibility from the early 2000s until today. Just go to Mozilla's add-ons site and check the huge number of incompatibility issues one finds even with the items that are still listed (many are not).
For the record, I'll mention one add-on that should have been in the core program that was fixed by an add-on which was later busted by a 'retrograde' Mozilla 'upgrade' and that was Lazarus, it very usefully allowed undos in dialogue boxes etc. which often get lost for nefarious reasons after one has typed much text. If just about every text editor and wordprocessor has multiple levels of undo then why doesn't Firefox?
Whilst there may be many reasonable excuses for why Mozilla acted the way it did, the user isn't interested in hearing any of them - all he/she knows is that a useful feature that once worked now doesn't and Mozilla's actions are the reason. Many of us remember those failures and it's why so many of us go to inordinate lengths to nuke automatic updates, as they're likely to backfire just when we least expect it (inconviently in the middle of an important job etc.).
(The picture that such actions (and there's been many of them) engender in many of us users is that Mozilla programers primarily program out of self-interest rather than that of users' actual needs. Naturally, you programmers prefer simpler, cleaner code that doesn't support legacy features - similarly, it seems none of you are prepared to do the extra yard work - the extra coding - need to keep old-API add-ons safe. I know, it's boring shit, and no one will do so willingly, they have to be compelled to do so, and no one in authority at Mozilla has made that call (and that alone speaks a great deal about the ethos/culture at Mozilla).
Again, just get it into your heads that no one other than you Mozilla programmers care a damn about the reasons why you nuked XUL/NPAPI as laudable as you at Mozilla deem nuking them to be. Morever, many of us aren't interested in DRM or pandering to the tech giants. Right, include new features if you have to but at least provide us users with the option to let us turn them off. For instance, the first of these annoyances was the removal of the switch to turn JavaScript off. Right, default it to 'on' for the majority who wish to use it but it's down outright authoritarian programming to insist that you programers know best - especially when you haven't a clue about user ergonomics or what actually annoys users (and I've a damned good idea having run an IT department for years only to find myself continually falling foul and being blamed and held responsible by users for your programming changes.
Why you programers want to be on such a power kick is something that only psychologists can figure out if that's at all possible. Of course, it's not only Mozilla programmers here, Microsoft's are possibly the worst. It's the sheer arrogance that you programners diaplay when you think you know what's best for users when you often don't have a clue which is so annoying (I'm not aiming specifically at Mozilla programmers here, rather that inflated ego is characteristic of breed. BTW, I've done a considerable amount of programming in my time but I don't consider myself a professional programer.)
3. Similarly, instead of fixing boring bugs such as those longstanding ones in the printer routine and the overall outdatedness of the printer routine per se, not to mention that other first-class annoyance - the failure of text selected by the mouse to be copied from the context menu thus requiring a full highlight followed by CTRL-C then CTRL-V to actually work - you Mozilla programers simply ignore them year after year. Right, fixing bugs is boring, but adding new features obviosly isn't - even if many users deem them unnecessary or of secondary importance to rectifying the more utilitarian features of the program. I mention Australis here. As it's clear it annoyed the hell out of many users, thus it's fitting to ask why Mozilla didn't include an optional fallback to the older UI? Right, I've already answered that point.
4. If Mozilla's programmers genuinely claim they're trying to do the right thing by users then it's almost impossible to conclude that they actually understand users - or what features they actually want from a browser. Yes, it's a restatement of what I've already said, but it has to be true otherwise Firefox's usage ratings wouldn't be nosediving off the graph. An adjunct to that is that Mozilla never fully levels with its users concerning the real reasons for why its takes certain actions - that is other than to dress up changes with PR-speak and spin. If Mozilla's leveled with users more honesty then users would likely reciprocate. Moreover, you would have fewer users like me upping critical hyperbole out of sheer frustration.
Finally, likewise, I don't understand why you can't see my reasoning for why the Firefox 94 webpage contains said info you mentioned. I'll get the quote and post it here when I've a moment.
Again, what I've said hurts and I know it. Please understand it's no vendetta and it hurts me to be so negative (especially when there's so much negativity about these days); and it also hurts to see the only essentially independent browser going down the gurgler when it ought not to be. You should spare a thought for people like me who insist that the corporate browser should be Firefox only to find us between a rock and a hard place when it all goes belly-up for the many reasons mentioned. Defending Firefox against Chrome is no easy task these days.
To respond adequately to your post would require me to start detailing what I (and many others) reckon what's wrong with Firefox (and similarly so with Thunderbird). Clearly that's not very practical here, as to do so we'd be bogged down in detail and the key points of the argument would be lost.
That said and not wanting to let anyone assume I'm avoiding your points, I've divided the key objections into the following groups.
1. Features that by their intrinsic nature should be in both Firefox and Thunderbird but which are missing. These are left to be picked by add-on developers who eventually give up after Mozilla broke the compatibility model once too often. Thus a useful feature we'd gotten used to via an add-on literally disappeared with an upgrade (more about this in point 2.)
2. The single biggest fiasco with Firefox from a user's perspective is Mozilla's perennial breaking of its add-ons. Not only is this disrespectful to third-party developers who develop them, and it often it turns them off from doing further development work, but also it infuriates users whenever their add-ons no longer work.
In essence, to them an upgrade is actually a downgrade in terms of user ergonomics. Whilst Mozilla may have done this for noble reasons such as improved security it's of very little concern to the the average user (myself included) whose facility no longer works. As far as he/she is concerned, Mozilla has fucked up yet again - I'm not exaggerating here, it's been a constant theme for Mozilla to blatantly ignore compatibility from the early 2000s until today. Just go to Mozilla's add-ons site and check the huge number of incompatibility issues one finds even with the items that are still listed (many are not).
For the record, I'll mention one add-on that should have been in the core program that was fixed by an add-on which was later busted by a 'retrograde' Mozilla 'upgrade' and that was Lazarus, it very usefully allowed undos in dialogue boxes etc. which often get lost for nefarious reasons after one has typed much text. If just about every text editor and wordprocessor has multiple levels of undo then why doesn't Firefox?
Whilst there may be many reasonable excuses for why Mozilla acted the way it did, the user isn't interested in hearing any of them - all he/she knows is that a useful feature that once worked now doesn't and Mozilla's actions are the reason. Many of us remember those failures and it's why so many of us go to inordinate lengths to nuke automatic updates, as they're likely to backfire just when we least expect it (inconviently in the middle of an important job etc.).
(The picture that such actions (and there's been many of them) engender in many of us users is that Mozilla programers primarily program out of self-interest rather than that of users' actual needs. Naturally, you programmers prefer simpler, cleaner code that doesn't support legacy features - similarly, it seems none of you are prepared to do the extra yard work - the extra coding - need to keep old-API add-ons safe. I know, it's boring shit, and no one will do so willingly, they have to be compelled to do so, and no one in authority at Mozilla has made that call (and that alone speaks a great deal about the ethos/culture at Mozilla).
Again, just get it into your heads that no one other than you Mozilla programmers care a damn about the reasons why you nuked XUL/NPAPI as laudable as you at Mozilla deem nuking them to be. Morever, many of us aren't interested in DRM or pandering to the tech giants. Right, include new features if you have to but at least provide us users with the option to let us turn them off. For instance, the first of these annoyances was the removal of the switch to turn JavaScript off. Right, default it to 'on' for the majority who wish to use it but it's down outright authoritarian programming to insist that you programers know best - especially when you haven't a clue about user ergonomics or what actually annoys users (and I've a damned good idea having run an IT department for years only to find myself continually falling foul and being blamed and held responsible by users for your programming changes.
Why you programers want to be on such a power kick is something that only psychologists can figure out if that's at all possible. Of course, it's not only Mozilla programmers here, Microsoft's are possibly the worst. It's the sheer arrogance that you programners diaplay when you think you know what's best for users when you often don't have a clue which is so annoying (I'm not aiming specifically at Mozilla programmers here, rather that inflated ego is characteristic of breed. BTW, I've done a considerable amount of programming in my time but I don't consider myself a professional programer.)
3. Similarly, instead of fixing boring bugs such as those longstanding ones in the printer routine and the overall outdatedness of the printer routine per se, not to mention that other first-class annoyance - the failure of text selected by the mouse to be copied from the context menu thus requiring a full highlight followed by CTRL-C then CTRL-V to actually work - you Mozilla programers simply ignore them year after year. Right, fixing bugs is boring, but adding new features obviosly isn't - even if many users deem them unnecessary or of secondary importance to rectifying the more utilitarian features of the program. I mention Australis here. As it's clear it annoyed the hell out of many users, thus it's fitting to ask why Mozilla didn't include an optional fallback to the older UI? Right, I've already answered that point.
4. If Mozilla's programmers genuinely claim they're trying to do the right thing by users then it's almost impossible to conclude that they actually understand users - or what features they actually want from a browser. Yes, it's a restatement of what I've already said, but it has to be true otherwise Firefox's usage ratings wouldn't be nosediving off the graph. An adjunct to that is that Mozilla never fully levels with its users concerning the real reasons for why its takes certain actions - that is other than to dress up changes with PR-speak and spin. If Mozilla's leveled with users more honesty then users would likely reciprocate. Moreover, you would have fewer users like me upping critical hyperbole out of sheer frustration.
Finally, likewise, I don't understand why you can't see my reasoning for why the Firefox 94 webpage contains said info you mentioned. I'll get the quote and post it here when I've a moment.
Again, what I've said hurts and I know it. Please understand it's no vendetta and it hurts me to be so negative (especially when there's so much negativity about these days); and it also hurts to see the only essentially independent browser going down the gurgler when it ought not to be. You should spare a thought for people like me who insist that the corporate browser should be Firefox only to find us between a rock and a hard place when it all goes belly-up for the many reasons mentioned. Defending Firefox against Chrome is no easy task these days.
Apology! Please ignore this post and read the corrected one. I hadn't realized it was there until it was too late to delete it. Not being able to delete a post when there are no replies isn't the most cleaver of ideas in my opinion.
Incidentally, the problem occurred when I was editing the text and I responded too quickly to a page that wasn't appearing to update. The server responded with a one-line message to the effect that it hadn't uppated the text and whatever I did next somehow created a duplicate.
Incidentally, the problem occurred when I was editing the text and I responded too quickly to a page that wasn't appearing to update. The server responded with a one-line message to the effect that it hadn't uppated the text and whatever I did next somehow created a duplicate.
> People who've used Firefox in the past have done so because they want an alterative - not more of the same.
Exactly!
Despite of all the telemetry Mozilla still has absolutely zero clue who their core audience actually is, because they sure as hell are set on decimating what's left of it.
Exactly!
Despite of all the telemetry Mozilla still has absolutely zero clue who their core audience actually is, because they sure as hell are set on decimating what's left of it.
But why?
It's bizarre. It's almost as if moles from other browser manufacturers have been smuggled surreptitiously onto Mozilla's staff to sabotage the Firefox project.
It's bizarre. It's almost as if moles from other browser manufacturers have been smuggled surreptitiously onto Mozilla's staff to sabotage the Firefox project.
Or maybe, just maybe, people have a different opinion to yourself about how Mozilla can succeed.
[deleted]
> I don't know about this version but at least one could uninstall the maintenance service.
You'd obviously be able to uninstall this, too. If your OS allows third-party programs to install services that can not be disabled or uninstalled, the problem is deeper than just the programs you are installing; you need a different OS.
> Mozilla has a damned hide to automate updates, not to mention gathering data about users' habits without telling them what's been gathered, and also not allowing users to turn off that collection if they wished.
Telemetry is optional. You can disable it. I can understand disliking Mozilla or Firefox's direction, but I absolutely don't understand this paranoid, cynical doomposting and straight-up misinformation about one of the only browsers where you can actually outright disable telemetry, and where you can still separate the address bar from the search bar to avoid leaking information.
> we know the depth of this surveillance just by looking at Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage. There's no way Mozilla would know that data unless Firefox's surveillance of its users had been all-pervasive.
What do you expect to happen when you check the "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" other than them sending data about how people use the browser to Mozilla? It even has a link right next to it in the settings where you can see what data is used. You can know the "depth of this surveillance" by just clicking "learn more" and reading the very first section you are linked to, titled "Interaction data".
More importantly, what do you actually propose? What browser are you using that is much more private and secure than Firefox, and allows you the same flexibility in controlling the level of privacy you actually want?
You'd obviously be able to uninstall this, too. If your OS allows third-party programs to install services that can not be disabled or uninstalled, the problem is deeper than just the programs you are installing; you need a different OS.
> Mozilla has a damned hide to automate updates, not to mention gathering data about users' habits without telling them what's been gathered, and also not allowing users to turn off that collection if they wished.
Telemetry is optional. You can disable it. I can understand disliking Mozilla or Firefox's direction, but I absolutely don't understand this paranoid, cynical doomposting and straight-up misinformation about one of the only browsers where you can actually outright disable telemetry, and where you can still separate the address bar from the search bar to avoid leaking information.
> we know the depth of this surveillance just by looking at Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage. There's no way Mozilla would know that data unless Firefox's surveillance of its users had been all-pervasive.
What do you expect to happen when you check the "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" other than them sending data about how people use the browser to Mozilla? It even has a link right next to it in the settings where you can see what data is used. You can know the "depth of this surveillance" by just clicking "learn more" and reading the very first section you are linked to, titled "Interaction data".
More importantly, what do you actually propose? What browser are you using that is much more private and secure than Firefox, and allows you the same flexibility in controlling the level of privacy you actually want?
"You'd obviously be able to uninstall this, too"
Likely so, or I'd never install it. The OSes I use do allow one to uninstall it: specifically Linux, heavily rooted, fully deGoogleized Android and and a highly-hacked Windows 7† (wouldn't be seen dead with any later version for the same reasons).
"Telemetry is optional."
Turning off telemetry is optional for only some of Firefox's telemetry. The first thing Firefox does when launched is to contact home irrespective of how normal user settings are set. And as we well know, most users will use the defaults and Mozilla is counting on this quirk of human nature.
If Mozilla's bona fides were actually genuine and not sleight of hand then it would default all and every bit of telemetry to off and allow the user to switch it on if he or she so desired. BTW, I don't buy the argument that only some of the phone-home data counts as telemetry; by definition, any data sent to Mozilla is telemetry.
"What browser are you using that is much more private and secure than Firefox, and allows you the same flexibility in controlling the level of privacy you actually want?"
Palemoon. Read my 'Edit' in another of your related posts. Please note: that edit was posted before I'd read this post of yours.
__
† For starters, Internet Explorer code no longer exists, thus calls to IE by any program that wishes to bypass the new default browser will fail. This is only one of several thousand tweaks to Win 7 needed to make it user-friendly to yours truly.
Likely so, or I'd never install it. The OSes I use do allow one to uninstall it: specifically Linux, heavily rooted, fully deGoogleized Android and and a highly-hacked Windows 7† (wouldn't be seen dead with any later version for the same reasons).
"Telemetry is optional."
Turning off telemetry is optional for only some of Firefox's telemetry. The first thing Firefox does when launched is to contact home irrespective of how normal user settings are set. And as we well know, most users will use the defaults and Mozilla is counting on this quirk of human nature.
If Mozilla's bona fides were actually genuine and not sleight of hand then it would default all and every bit of telemetry to off and allow the user to switch it on if he or she so desired. BTW, I don't buy the argument that only some of the phone-home data counts as telemetry; by definition, any data sent to Mozilla is telemetry.
"What browser are you using that is much more private and secure than Firefox, and allows you the same flexibility in controlling the level of privacy you actually want?"
Palemoon. Read my 'Edit' in another of your related posts. Please note: that edit was posted before I'd read this post of yours.
__
† For starters, Internet Explorer code no longer exists, thus calls to IE by any program that wishes to bypass the new default browser will fail. This is only one of several thousand tweaks to Win 7 needed to make it user-friendly to yours truly.
P.S.: it would be nice if down-voters had the guts to say why they disagreed.
But then, perhaps that's a bit too close for comfort if you work for Mozilla.
But then, perhaps that's a bit too close for comfort if you work for Mozilla.
Assuming everybody who disagrees with you is some sort of Mozilla inside agent is really getting off on a bad foot, and sabotages any hope of productive discussion before it even starts. Don't assume bad faith in everybody who doesn't think the same way that you do.
What I think is irrelevant, I can echo my disgust here out of frustration, but I know that in the grand scheme of things it will amount to nought.
Bad faith or just plain stupidity, you cannot escape the fact that Firefox is on a fast slippery slope to obivlion and that Mozilla personnel have done nothing to arrest the process in recent years.
Why not? What's driving them to continually implement features and policies that clearly turn users off using Firefox?
"Don't assume bad faith in everybody who doesn't think the same way that you do."
I usually don't, in fact I always welcome a solid debate but there comes a time when things go so wrong or turn so bizarre that one has to look to offtrack ideas for an explanation.
If you've a better rational reason (or perhaps inside knowledge) for why Mozilla continually shoots itself in the foot then many of us would like to hear it.
Edit: I usually use the Firefox fork Palemoon to get around many of Firefox's most egregious features but I'd prefer not to do that as it increases my vulnerability to browser fingerprinting,etc., as such, I have to take additional remedial action such as spoofing the user agent for a more common one - and frankly it's a damn pain having to do so.
You ought to be able to at least understand why many of us are so annoyed when essentially the last independent browser manufacturer is seemingly (willingly) attempting suicide .
Bad faith or just plain stupidity, you cannot escape the fact that Firefox is on a fast slippery slope to obivlion and that Mozilla personnel have done nothing to arrest the process in recent years.
Why not? What's driving them to continually implement features and policies that clearly turn users off using Firefox?
"Don't assume bad faith in everybody who doesn't think the same way that you do."
I usually don't, in fact I always welcome a solid debate but there comes a time when things go so wrong or turn so bizarre that one has to look to offtrack ideas for an explanation.
If you've a better rational reason (or perhaps inside knowledge) for why Mozilla continually shoots itself in the foot then many of us would like to hear it.
Edit: I usually use the Firefox fork Palemoon to get around many of Firefox's most egregious features but I'd prefer not to do that as it increases my vulnerability to browser fingerprinting,etc., as such, I have to take additional remedial action such as spoofing the user agent for a more common one - and frankly it's a damn pain having to do so.
You ought to be able to at least understand why many of us are so annoyed when essentially the last independent browser manufacturer is seemingly (willingly) attempting suicide .
(I used to work on the team that owned this)
The maintenance service is used to prevent the need for UAC prompts during upgrades. That's it. No background update functionality.
The maintenance service is used to prevent the need for UAC prompts during upgrades. That's it. No background update functionality.
Turning background updates off is the first thing I do after installing FF
I think we can thank Microsoft for this, leaving us without a decent package manager for decades. Here's to hoping that Winget is the panacea.
I think the sweet spot would be for minor updates that fix security issues, but for MAJOR version updates, no tell me what you're doing. How sure are you that I didn't intentionally install an older version to figure out a bug on an older variant of the browser.
I had to resort to using policies.json in order to disable updates completely. I'm on Firefox 88.0.1 and have zero plans to update and take proton/photon or whatever they are calling the new design.
If you’re lucky, some friendly malicious website will compromise you for the sole purpose of updating your copy of Firefox before someone else compromises you for a more nefarious purpose.
It is a risk, but one I have chosen to take in the short-term. I really dislike the direction Mozilla is going and I will probably have to switch browsers in 2022.
Which browser vendor goes to a direction you'd like?
I'm just curious because as much as I disagree with many of Mozilla decisions, I still can't honestly compare it to other browser vendors like Google, Apple, and Microsoft.
I'm just curious because as much as I disagree with many of Mozilla decisions, I still can't honestly compare it to other browser vendors like Google, Apple, and Microsoft.
Truthfully, I'm starting to feel browser-homeless, for lack of a better term. I'm using FF because I don't want to be on Chrome. I don't have a problem with Chromium based browsers, though, so I gave Edge a try. Turns out, Edge really really REALLY wants me to be logged into my Microsoft account and I am weary of just how tightly Microsoft's products are integrated to the browsing experience. So that's a no-go. Safari's UI is just not for me and it has atrocious plugin/extension support.
I'll probably just find some fork of Firefox or a Chromium based browser and just make-do.
I'll probably just find some fork of Firefox or a Chromium based browser and just make-do.
Actually way the background updater is done is much better than most. eg Instead of running its own downloader process, it uses the Windows BITS service to download updates.
People often confuse this feature with the Mozilla Maintenance Service, the latter has shipped with Firefox for more than a decade and is used to avoid UAC prompts during updates.
(I used to work at Mozilla and at one point also worked on the team that owns install/update.)
People often confuse this feature with the Mozilla Maintenance Service, the latter has shipped with Firefox for more than a decade and is used to avoid UAC prompts during updates.
(I used to work at Mozilla and at one point also worked on the team that owns install/update.)
The problem here is windows not providing an open way to update things from an external repo easily like Linux does.
The end game, I assume, is that updates eventually come through the store. But that effectively prevent updates unless they agree to it.
The end game, I assume, is that updates eventually come through the store. But that effectively prevent updates unless they agree to it.
To remove this task, open Task Scheduler, you will find a new Mozilla folder under "Task scheduled library" where you can disable or delete it. Will probably come back next update.
This is a Windows problem, not a Firefox problem.
It's especially strange to be constantly avoiding auto-updates when I'm trying to update everything with winget.
I assume there is an option
Yes, you've been able to disable auto-updates for as long as auto-updates have existed.
There is under Settings General FF Updates.
Is there no one with a clue at Mozilla? How much worse can they make this browser?
If I wanted an auto-updating key-logging tool on my systems, I'd have sold my soul to Chrome already.
I had upgraded before seeing this ... In preferences, you have the following options:
> Allow Firefox to:
> --------------------------------------------------------
> [x] Automatically install updates (recommended)
> [ ] Check for updates but let you choose to install them
> This setting will apply to all Windows accounts and Firefox profiles using this installation of Firefox.
> --------------------------------------------------------
> [x] Use a background service to install updates
How about "don't ping home"?
For some double-speak, read the Manifesto: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
In a sense, they are very open about their goals, if you have read the classics by Kafka, Orwell, and Bradbury.
If I wanted an auto-updating key-logging tool on my systems, I'd have sold my soul to Chrome already.
I had upgraded before seeing this ... In preferences, you have the following options:
> Allow Firefox to:
> --------------------------------------------------------
> [x] Automatically install updates (recommended)
> [ ] Check for updates but let you choose to install them
> This setting will apply to all Windows accounts and Firefox profiles using this installation of Firefox.
> --------------------------------------------------------
> [x] Use a background service to install updates
How about "don't ping home"?
For some double-speak, read the Manifesto: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
In a sense, they are very open about their goals, if you have read the classics by Kafka, Orwell, and Bradbury.
>key-logging tool
But what is this accusation of key-logging now? Where did that come from?
But what is this accusation of key-logging now? Where did that come from?
Is it actually key-logging or are you just making things up
Version 92[1] got one step closer. Extrapolating current trends, I shudder to think what will be in version 99.
> Firefox will send Mozilla search queries (what you are typing into the address bar), and city-level location (what's nearby and relevant, determined from your IP address). Firefox also informs the service if you click on a provided suggestion.
Combine this with "studies" which were never made public, extra avenues of telemetry that one finds out about waaaayyy after the fact etc, the last couple of years have seen Firefox become increasingly hostile to users.
[1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-fir...
> Firefox will send Mozilla search queries (what you are typing into the address bar), and city-level location (what's nearby and relevant, determined from your IP address). Firefox also informs the service if you click on a provided suggestion.
Combine this with "studies" which were never made public, extra avenues of telemetry that one finds out about waaaayyy after the fact etc, the last couple of years have seen Firefox become increasingly hostile to users.
[1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-fir...
That's not key-logging. That's search suggestions. If you find the privacy implications of search suggestions damning, you've always been able to turn them off.
I don't like that level of telemetry, and I also dislike the "studies" and some of the other things they've pulled, but glibly referring to search suggestions as "key-logging" is disingenuous at best. It seems to imply that there's some nefarious logging happening that people aren't familiar with and can't disable.
I don't like that level of telemetry, and I also dislike the "studies" and some of the other things they've pulled, but glibly referring to search suggestions as "key-logging" is disingenuous at best. It seems to imply that there's some nefarious logging happening that people aren't familiar with and can't disable.
> referring to search suggestions as "key-logging" is disingenuous at best.
Most regular users think you search for something on Google, it is between them and Google. This "feature" started sending one's incomplete queries to Mozilla as well. Every time user presses a key, search suggestions update, meaning every key user presses is sent to Mozilla before the search is even executed on Google.
Upon upgrade, users where not asked "We would like to see every key you press while typing anything in the search bar. Do you give us permission?"
> glibly referring to search suggestions as "key-logging"
Yeah, I think I am going to keep glibly referring to sending every key-stroke to Mozilla while the user is constructing a search query or looking for a bookmark or a page in their browser history as "key-logging."
Most regular users think you search for something on Google, it is between them and Google. This "feature" started sending one's incomplete queries to Mozilla as well. Every time user presses a key, search suggestions update, meaning every key user presses is sent to Mozilla before the search is even executed on Google.
Upon upgrade, users where not asked "We would like to see every key you press while typing anything in the search bar. Do you give us permission?"
> glibly referring to search suggestions as "key-logging"
Yeah, I think I am going to keep glibly referring to sending every key-stroke to Mozilla while the user is constructing a search query or looking for a bookmark or a page in their browser history as "key-logging."
There is no key-logging, but there is some keystroke leaking in particular circumstances (specifically, typing in the unified address bar, by default, leaks the first word by pinging DNS repeatedly when you don't have spaces).
Unfortunately, taking things completely out of context and editorializing the facts is par for the course. Discourse is getting very disingenuous.
Unfortunately, taking things completely out of context and editorializing the facts is par for the course. Discourse is getting very disingenuous.
if you want a vision of the future, imagine a background service updating a web browser, forever
> How considerate of them, I felt I didn't have enough auto-updating background agents yet.
I'm not sure you are aware that this feature is toggled in Firefox's settings. You can get a glimpse of the settings panel in the following link:
https://www.ghacks.net/2021/11/02/firefox-94-0-release-here-...
I'm not sure you are aware that this feature is toggled in Firefox's settings. You can get a glimpse of the settings panel in the following link:
https://www.ghacks.net/2021/11/02/firefox-94-0-release-here-...
It has made me really sad that I have had to quite using Firefox, as I've enjoyed the technical improvements they have been making, but the new ads in the address bar thing is just non negotiable, I will not be a part of that.
>... I will not be a part of that.
So instead of not being a part of it by simply disabling it (or never enabling it to begin with, as it's currently opt-in), you're abandoning the browser altogether?
So instead of not being a part of it by simply disabling it (or never enabling it to begin with, as it's currently opt-in), you're abandoning the browser altogether?
Yeah, search the preferences for the word “Sponsored” and uncheck anything you don’t want to see.
It's opt-in AFAIK.
Mozilla support doc on controlling this:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-fir...
[deleted]
There are ads in the address bar?
I think he's referring to the "Firefox Suggest" ads: https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/22715179/firefox-suggest-...
thats news to me.... you sure some extension you installed isn't adding them?
> Firefox Suggest sends Mozilla search terms and information about engagement with Firefox Suggest, some of which may be shared with partners to provide and improve the suggested content.
https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2021/09/15/data-and-firefox-su...
> To deliver smarter contextual suggestions, Firefox will need to send Mozilla new data, specifically, what you type into the search bar, city-level location data to know what’s nearby and relevant, as well as whether you click on a suggestion and which suggestion you click on.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi...
https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2021/09/15/data-and-firefox-su...
> To deliver smarter contextual suggestions, Firefox will need to send Mozilla new data, specifically, what you type into the search bar, city-level location data to know what’s nearby and relevant, as well as whether you click on a suggestion and which suggestion you click on.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi...
For anybody who needs clarification, this is opt-in only at the moment. From the second link:
> As always, we believe people should be in control of their web experience, so Firefox Suggest will be a customizable feature.
> We’ll begin offering smarter contextual suggestions to a percentage of people in the U.S. as an opt-in experience.
> As always, we believe people should be in control of their web experience, so Firefox Suggest will be a customizable feature.
> We’ll begin offering smarter contextual suggestions to a percentage of people in the U.S. as an opt-in experience.
Despite Mozilla's claim that Firefox Suggest is opt-in, many users (myself included) found the setting enabled by default when it initially shipped.
I'd recommend checking your settings to see if sponsored suggestions are enabled.
I'd recommend checking your settings to see if sponsored suggestions are enabled.
No it's a real thing.
https://uk.pcmag.com/browsers/136146/firefox-now-shows-ads-i...
https://uk.pcmag.com/browsers/136146/firefox-now-shows-ads-i...
The what now?!
Firefox: the last remaining mostly independent, maintained and reasonably popular browser.
Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd still use it for the above mentioned reasons.
Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd still use it for the above mentioned reasons.
Yes. It's also shrinking to be almost the only reason I run Firefox. I absolutely loathe the constant tinkering with UI and settings, they just can't seem to leave stuff alone. The ghacks user.js does get rid of a lot of nuisances, but I also know some people also want to get rid of the user.js config option.
I wonder if any of them read HN or feedback from the feedback page or anything?
I can't help but think the designers do not care. I'm guessing the UI/UX folks at Mozilla think only a loud minority of users are protesting the incessant redesigns. They probably look towards what Apple and Google do and believe they have to follow trends or be left behind. They also probably want to be seen as bold and innovative - so damn the metaphorical torpedoes, full speed ahead!
Edit: The kind of feedback they're willing to accept is probably only barely impactful. Suggest going back to the old tab bar? Sorry, but you'll learn to love it and we aren't changing it. Suggest a slightly different shade of gray for the edge of the rounded tab bar? They might just take the suggestion. That kind of thing.
Edit: The kind of feedback they're willing to accept is probably only barely impactful. Suggest going back to the old tab bar? Sorry, but you'll learn to love it and we aren't changing it. Suggest a slightly different shade of gray for the edge of the rounded tab bar? They might just take the suggestion. That kind of thing.
The "Submit feedback" menu entry now links to their ideas@mozilla platform, launched several months ago:
https://mozilla.crowdicity.com
They seem to be reading and considering some of the suggestions, though none have been implemented yet.
- Most popular idea (819 votes): Compact Interface Option - https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/719764
- Most critical idea (in my opinion): Expand support for extensions for the stable android version - https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/723675
https://mozilla.crowdicity.com
They seem to be reading and considering some of the suggestions, though none have been implemented yet.
- Most popular idea (819 votes): Compact Interface Option - https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/719764
- Most critical idea (in my opinion): Expand support for extensions for the stable android version - https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/723675
No, they only pay attention to feedback from their telemetry. HN users mostly disable telemetry, right?
I don't.
> No, they only pay attention to feedback from their telemetry
If that's true, it probably explains why they're bleeding users. Why stick with a company that ignores your complaints?
If that's true, it probably explains why they're bleeding users. Why stick with a company that ignores your complaints?
What UI changes? I run firefox nightly for ages and minor sizing changes are barely noticeable. The biggest change was moving of address bar lower and tabs higher.
Some that come to mind:
* completely changing the settings UI;
* the very annoying "present" icon that appears after updates;
* constantly messing the address bar in how it works and what it searches;
* constantly re-enabling stuff like searching in Amazon and Google;
* changing the menu to the hamburger menu.
There's probably more that I forgot. But it seems every two or three months or so I need to make effort to turn off some feature I don't want. Stuff like the stupid pocket functionality no one ever asked for.
* completely changing the settings UI;
* the very annoying "present" icon that appears after updates;
* constantly messing the address bar in how it works and what it searches;
* constantly re-enabling stuff like searching in Amazon and Google;
* changing the menu to the hamburger menu.
There's probably more that I forgot. But it seems every two or three months or so I need to make effort to turn off some feature I don't want. Stuff like the stupid pocket functionality no one ever asked for.
Proton is not even six months old, surely you must remember.
So independent all their funding is provided by Google.
Not all, some funding is.
>Last year, more than 400,000 individuals gave to Mozilla to protect and improve the health of the Internet. The Mozilla Foundation also receives support in the form of grants from other like-minded major foundations, including the Knight, MacArthur, Bill & Melinda Gates, and Ford foundations.
>Last year, more than 400,000 individuals gave to Mozilla to protect and improve the health of the Internet. The Mozilla Foundation also receives support in the form of grants from other like-minded major foundations, including the Knight, MacArthur, Bill & Melinda Gates, and Ford foundations.
But the foundation is not responsible for Firefox development, isn't it? It's the corporation which can't be supported through donations iirc.
I don't know the exact figures of how it operates. According to Wikipedia Firefox is "developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation".
As luck would have it: it's inferior in most aspects. Security, Usability (UI, responsiveness), Performance, Defaults (Privacy)...
Security: Is it the case? (legitimate question)
Usability: It works really well for me, even on old computers. Could be better, but in comparison with the other browsers, it does well.
Performance: This I don't get, it's snappy, and light for me, feels more solid and less resource hungry than chrome based browsers
Defaults settings are far from being great, but there's no competition in term of privacy, firefox + ublock origin is still the best option.
Defaults settings are far from being great, but there's no competition in term of privacy, firefox + ublock origin is still the best option.
[deleted]
And don't forget support for the latest Web APIs. Fewer and fewer new, heavy web-apps work on it. I love everything else about Firefox but if they can't keep up on the API side it's going to increasingly impede my workflow.
This is not 100% fair.
A lot of web APIs are rolled out by Google without sufficient standardization or agreement from the other organizations that ship engines. So Google is being a poor citizen here, but because of their dominance, everybody else is blamed.
A lot of web APIs are rolled out by Google without sufficient standardization or agreement from the other organizations that ship engines. So Google is being a poor citizen here, but because of their dominance, everybody else is blamed.
I really would like you to explain all of those, especially the first and the last. In what way is it less secure or private than the alternatives?
My God, this thread turned into a cesspool of whining, bitching and utter negativity to what seems like a great update.
How about we praise the positives as well? They listed a slew of performance improvements and a battery usage improvement on macOS.
Firefox team: keep it up.
How about we praise the positives as well? They listed a slew of performance improvements and a battery usage improvement on macOS.
Firefox team: keep it up.
I agree. It's an outstanding achievement that Firefox remains competitive with Chrome
- and even exceeds it - given the disparity of resources between Mozilla and Google. The Firefox community also tends to be more responsive on their bugtracker than the Chrome/Chromium team. (seriously, great work y'all)
(also, they've even caught up to Chrome in version numbers! joke)
(also, they've even caught up to Chrome in version numbers! joke)
I think Firefox is a much better browser than Chrome. I mean once you tried container tabs with a different session and cookie store for each tab... It's just amazing.
Also no Google in my browser is a huge plus.
Also no Google in my browser is a huge plus.
I'm fairly certain Google just pays Mozilla money to avoid any claims about being a monopoly browser.
My understanding (with the caveat that I worked for Mozilla a decade ago) is that Google pays Mozilla and Apple money for browser search placement because it directly makes them money in ad revenue. Someone put the numbers into a spreadsheet and said "yeah, it works."
Agreed! A browser engine is a horrifically complicated piece of tech, and unfortunately nobody wants to pay a cent for their browser software. The fact that we have an “independent” browser at all is amazing! Sure, everybody has their pet peeves, but overall I think the Firefox project is great. I switched off chrome a few years back, and have been a happy user ever since.
I can proudly announce that I did pay cold hard cash for my browser software! $49.90 for a Netscape Navigator box back in 1996 :)
Thank you for voicing this perspective! I've switched to Firefox ~3-4 years ago and I've seen considerable progress (on multiple platforms). I'm really grateful that we - internet users - have a great alternative to corporate-backed browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari). Thanks Firefox team!
Massive regression on Firefox Mobile... they block 99% of extensions nowadays (only about 12 out of thousands are allowed).
You can install other extensions by using Firefox Nightly [1] which is quite stable actually.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
The Collections process is very cumbersome, and I've found that the Collections pages are a bit buggy - for instance, the adding-to-a-collection part uses a separate search bar that doesn't even find a large swath of store extensions for some reason.
It works, but is a decidedly poor experience.
It works, but is a decidedly poor experience.
Why do you need to create a collection? I was happy when all extensions was the only collection. And this has been in Nightly for about a year.. when is it coming to stable? (those questions aren't really questions, it just looks like Mozilla is trying to make extensions go away)
I agree. However, as an extension author, I was happy to hear that the work I put into making it compatible with Android didn't go to waste after all. Still better than nothing.
On android, you can keep a copy of Firefox 68.1, ESR, ready to run. If you run in desktop mode, you can use all your favorite old plugins. Then use a Nightly version, for daily browsing, if you are worried about up to date security and features.
(ESR= extended service release.)
That's what I do, but even this ESR isn't supported anymore.
How about we avoid making sweeping overgeneralizations in an emotionally-manipulative way to try to guilt-trip others into making positive comments, and actually address the points that the other comments made?
This comment is rather anti-intellectual, and I'd much rather see the "cesspool of whining, bitching and utter negativity" that has actual thought put behind it than something empty and meaningless (actually, worse: something underhanded) like this.
This comment is rather anti-intellectual, and I'd much rather see the "cesspool of whining, bitching and utter negativity" that has actual thought put behind it than something empty and meaningless (actually, worse: something underhanded) like this.
I groan whenever I see a Firefox post on the front page.
-"X moved Y pixels making Firefox UNUSABLE! So now I use Brave."
-"Mozilla is run by a bunch of SJW idiots because they ran their CEO off. So now I run Brave." (I had to look into this, as I wasn't paying attention at the time. They picked a new CEO who cared so passionately about removing the right of gay people to get married he even donated his own money to the cause. That was a dumb hill to die on. Now he's an anti-masker who actually runs Brave.)
-"My precious browser workflow was completely dependent on the interaction of 156 distinct XUL extensions so now I use Brave."
-"something, something, Mr. Robot." (that, like everything, you can turn off)
-"Ads in the address bar!" (that, like everything, you can turn off)
-"They take money from Google!" (Hey, free money, since everyone either switches to DGG or were going to use Google anyway.)
There are real criticisms you can make of Firefox/Mozilla. But on the whole, for the general user, none of them are grounds for moving to a Chromium based browser out of spite.
-"X moved Y pixels making Firefox UNUSABLE! So now I use Brave."
-"Mozilla is run by a bunch of SJW idiots because they ran their CEO off. So now I run Brave." (I had to look into this, as I wasn't paying attention at the time. They picked a new CEO who cared so passionately about removing the right of gay people to get married he even donated his own money to the cause. That was a dumb hill to die on. Now he's an anti-masker who actually runs Brave.)
-"My precious browser workflow was completely dependent on the interaction of 156 distinct XUL extensions so now I use Brave."
-"something, something, Mr. Robot." (that, like everything, you can turn off)
-"Ads in the address bar!" (that, like everything, you can turn off)
-"They take money from Google!" (Hey, free money, since everyone either switches to DGG or were going to use Google anyway.)
There are real criticisms you can make of Firefox/Mozilla. But on the whole, for the general user, none of them are grounds for moving to a Chromium based browser out of spite.
If I could pin your comment on all threads related to Firefox, I would. All this whining is what will finally do Firefox in.
We really don't deserve Firefox. I'm really glad they are still kicking.
They picked a new CEO who cared so passionately about removing the right of gay people to get married he even donated his own money to the cause. That was a dumb hill to die on. Now he's an anti-masker who actually runs Brave.
I disagree with some of his assumed views, as you never know until you actually speak with someone directly. Could be any number of motivations. I supported Biden not because I disagreed with a lot of what Trump did, but because I felt he was a toxic agent to the republic. Is that anti-Trump? Yes and no. And I may be the last person in existence that supports Eich's right to express them in any way he chooses. If that causes social backlash by a bunch of sensitive people that's fine, but I think there's a majority that get no press, who like me, never had it impact my view of Eich. I see no connection to the projects he has or does work on.
"Anti-masker" is broad as well. I don't think based on the science, that masks make sense for young children. I do support them for adults, indoors at least. Is that an anti-masker? It's called nuance. A concept lost in society today.
After ~19 years on Firefox I moved to Microsoft Edge and only Edge fulltime in August and love it. So I couldn't care less about FF vs Brave.
I disagree with some of his assumed views, as you never know until you actually speak with someone directly. Could be any number of motivations. I supported Biden not because I disagreed with a lot of what Trump did, but because I felt he was a toxic agent to the republic. Is that anti-Trump? Yes and no. And I may be the last person in existence that supports Eich's right to express them in any way he chooses. If that causes social backlash by a bunch of sensitive people that's fine, but I think there's a majority that get no press, who like me, never had it impact my view of Eich. I see no connection to the projects he has or does work on.
"Anti-masker" is broad as well. I don't think based on the science, that masks make sense for young children. I do support them for adults, indoors at least. Is that an anti-masker? It's called nuance. A concept lost in society today.
After ~19 years on Firefox I moved to Microsoft Edge and only Edge fulltime in August and love it. So I couldn't care less about FF vs Brave.
It is indeed sad.
Regarding standard discussion patters I see it often. I imagine sometimes a pinned comment that would outline those. Along with all the usual corrections and corrections to those corrections.
Regarding standard discussion patters I see it often. I imagine sometimes a pinned comment that would outline those. Along with all the usual corrections and corrections to those corrections.
See, this is why deadhorse.com should exist and do the thing that I outlined here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/bg8vc/what_websi...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/bg8vc/what_websi...
This is really cool. I wonder how difficult it would be to allow users to wire this up to arbitrary user-specified VPNs e.g. through WireGuard.