6 ms·

> View a page in Reader Mode by using Ctrl+Alt+R (command+alt+r on Mac) Took them bloody long enough. Now if only i was not stuck on ESR because GTK3...

aban 10y ago
If you want to avoid GTK3 and you're on Arch, there's a firefox-gtk2 [0] AUR package that compiles Firefox against GTK2 only. [0]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firefox-gtk2 https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firefox-gtk2
- dbl9 10y ago
  My local cairo-gtk2 build of Firefox 49 reliably crashes anytime you try to use the GTK file dialog. Does it work for you (arch or gentoo)?
  - greendragon 10y ago
    After almost a decade of building Firefox from source I finally bit the bullet to switch to a precompiled binary last month. It's fixed all the issues that have started to crop up but leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
    - dbl9 10y ago
      I had been using their binaries due to security updates and having to build at inopportune times for an hour or three (depending on machine), but like I wrote in a sibling comment, enabling the cairo-gtk2 backend resulted in crashes when trying to select a file with the gtk file dialog. So I bit the bullet and am struggling with the drawing regressions of GTK3.
  - aban 10y ago
    That's interesting. I've been happily using firefox-gtk2 and it's been working quite reliably. Not only I haven't had any issues with it so far, it even looks better than Arch's official package (that's built with gtk3). The issues have been present with gtk >= 3.20, and they should be fixed with release 50 and 51: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1266914 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1266914 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1264079 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1264079
JoshTriplett 10y ago
> Now if only i was not stuck on ESR because GTK3... What's the issue with GTK3?
- dbl9 10y ago
  GTK3 itself has various regressions and is slower than GTK2 despite the architectural refactoring lending itself to a snappier experience. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=771708 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=771708 Firefox GTK3 has regressions too, for instance the bookmark manager not remembering where you were last which works with Firefox ESR (GTK2). https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267863 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267863 Also GTK3's file dialog is subjectively a huge regression, but others may prefer it, just like Apple's finder changed over time. I still haven't figured out how dconf and gconf work with GTK3, not using GNOME3 as a desktop. There are more issues with GTK3 but these are the most visible for those of us who don't use GTK3 regularly as part of GNOME3 and have been forced to use it via Firefox. The way I read the GTK3 bugreport it seems like the devs don't test GTK3 outside GNOME3 and hence do not consider it a priority. That one dev has been stressing that a compositor is needed and multiple answers by the reporter that they're using a compositor seem to be missed during reading on the other side. It's a weird exchange. I'm with the reporter. If GTK3 is not supposed to or not tested outside GNOME3, then this should be communicated so that everyone can make an informed decision to use something else or revive the Firefox Qt toolkit code.
  - jhoechtl 10y ago
    Serious comment:why bother with gtk anyhow and move to Qt?
    - dbl9 10y ago
      I love GTK2, but I can do without GTK3, seeing we're at 3.22 and it's still not as stable or regression free as GTK2. I'd be the first to build and use a Firefox where the Qt port was updated and made to work but GTK is the GUI toolkit used by Firefox outside Android, macOS and Windows. That said, GTK2 was and still is very good at what it does. It just works but doesn't support Wayland. I cannot move to Wayland anyway until xterm or rxvt-unicode are ported since XWayland integration is still imperfect. Like they wrote in the bug report, while GTK2 doesn't have a Wayland backend, GTK3's backend isn't really production quality either with dialogs sometimes opting to zoom out rather than scale out or general stability issues. If you try to start Firefox under Wayland by telling GDK to use Wayland, it just crashes on startup.
tetromino_ 10y ago
If you have a hard requirement to use a thoroughly obsolete GUI toolkit, you can for now fairly easily compile your own copy of Firefox for GTK2; it takes around 30-40 minutes on a laptop with a Core i5. (On Gentoo, there is a USE flag for it.)
- digi_owl 10y ago
  If it is that bloody simple, why can't Mozilla be bothered to provide an official download?!
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Possibly for the same reason they don't ship Tk compiled versions. Why should they target every GUI toolkit and complicate their build process which they then have to deal with supporting? If it's that easy, you can probably find some third party that compiles and offers it. I'm not sure why you think Firefox needs to do it themselves.
    - greendragon 10y ago
      I think the third party situation is unlikely, unless they're shipping a fork like IceWeasel or stripping out all branding information. At the end of the compilation process in Gentoo it helpfully tells you (if you enabled the Firefox Branding) that you cannot legally redistribute a branded version of Firefox.
    - dbl9 10y ago
      For the same reason they haven't made 64-bit the default on Windows and provide two versions. There are many users for whom only one variant works reliably. If upstream, like in the case of cairo-gtk3, decides GTK2 is not supported anymore, it's a matter of chance whether your cairo-gtk2 build of Firefox works at all. For instance, for me 49.0.2 gtk2 local build on Arch crashes anytime I try to use the file dialog, while of course the file dialog of both GTK2 and GTK3 doesn't crash in other gtk apps on the same machine. Somebody requested this and the reality has been ignored so far: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1268234 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1268234
alphapapa 10y ago
It's fairly simple to build Firefox with Gtk2. There are some instructions here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5b0vtd/howto_build_firefox_49_with_gtk2_in_debianubuntu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5b0vtd/howto_build_f...

aban 10y ago

If you want to avoid GTK3 and you're on Arch, there's a firefox-gtk2 [0] AUR package that compiles Firefox against GTK2 only. [0]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firefox-gtk2 https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firefox-gtk2

dbl9 10y ago
My local cairo-gtk2 build of Firefox 49 reliably crashes anytime you try to use the GTK file dialog. Does it work for you (arch or gentoo)?
- greendragon 10y ago
  After almost a decade of building Firefox from source I finally bit the bullet to switch to a precompiled binary last month. It's fixed all the issues that have started to crop up but leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
  - dbl9 10y ago
    I had been using their binaries due to security updates and having to build at inopportune times for an hour or three (depending on machine), but like I wrote in a sibling comment, enabling the cairo-gtk2 backend resulted in crashes when trying to select a file with the gtk file dialog. So I bit the bullet and am struggling with the drawing regressions of GTK3.
- aban 10y ago
  That's interesting. I've been happily using firefox-gtk2 and it's been working quite reliably. Not only I haven't had any issues with it so far, it even looks better than Arch's official package (that's built with gtk3). The issues have been present with gtk >= 3.20, and they should be fixed with release 50 and 51: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1266914 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1266914 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1264079 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1264079

JoshTriplett 10y ago

> Now if only i was not stuck on ESR because GTK3... What's the issue with GTK3?

dbl9 10y ago
GTK3 itself has various regressions and is slower than GTK2 despite the architectural refactoring lending itself to a snappier experience. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=771708 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=771708 Firefox GTK3 has regressions too, for instance the bookmark manager not remembering where you were last which works with Firefox ESR (GTK2). https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267863 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267863 Also GTK3's file dialog is subjectively a huge regression, but others may prefer it, just like Apple's finder changed over time. I still haven't figured out how dconf and gconf work with GTK3, not using GNOME3 as a desktop. There are more issues with GTK3 but these are the most visible for those of us who don't use GTK3 regularly as part of GNOME3 and have been forced to use it via Firefox. The way I read the GTK3 bugreport it seems like the devs don't test GTK3 outside GNOME3 and hence do not consider it a priority. That one dev has been stressing that a compositor is needed and multiple answers by the reporter that they're using a compositor seem to be missed during reading on the other side. It's a weird exchange. I'm with the reporter. If GTK3 is not supposed to or not tested outside GNOME3, then this should be communicated so that everyone can make an informed decision to use something else or revive the Firefox Qt toolkit code.
- jhoechtl 10y ago
  Serious comment:why bother with gtk anyhow and move to Qt?
  - dbl9 10y ago
    I love GTK2, but I can do without GTK3, seeing we're at 3.22 and it's still not as stable or regression free as GTK2. I'd be the first to build and use a Firefox where the Qt port was updated and made to work but GTK is the GUI toolkit used by Firefox outside Android, macOS and Windows. That said, GTK2 was and still is very good at what it does. It just works but doesn't support Wayland. I cannot move to Wayland anyway until xterm or rxvt-unicode are ported since XWayland integration is still imperfect. Like they wrote in the bug report, while GTK2 doesn't have a Wayland backend, GTK3's backend isn't really production quality either with dialogs sometimes opting to zoom out rather than scale out or general stability issues. If you try to start Firefox under Wayland by telling GDK to use Wayland, it just crashes on startup.

tetromino_ 10y ago

If you have a hard requirement to use a thoroughly obsolete GUI toolkit, you can for now fairly easily compile your own copy of Firefox for GTK2; it takes around 30-40 minutes on a laptop with a Core i5. (On Gentoo, there is a USE flag for it.)

digi_owl 10y ago
If it is that bloody simple, why can't Mozilla be bothered to provide an official download?!
- kbenson 10y ago
  Possibly for the same reason they don't ship Tk compiled versions. Why should they target every GUI toolkit and complicate their build process which they then have to deal with supporting? If it's that easy, you can probably find some third party that compiles and offers it. I'm not sure why you think Firefox needs to do it themselves.
  - greendragon 10y ago
    I think the third party situation is unlikely, unless they're shipping a fork like IceWeasel or stripping out all branding information. At the end of the compilation process in Gentoo it helpfully tells you (if you enabled the Firefox Branding) that you cannot legally redistribute a branded version of Firefox.
  - dbl9 10y ago
    For the same reason they haven't made 64-bit the default on Windows and provide two versions. There are many users for whom only one variant works reliably. If upstream, like in the case of cairo-gtk3, decides GTK2 is not supported anymore, it's a matter of chance whether your cairo-gtk2 build of Firefox works at all. For instance, for me 49.0.2 gtk2 local build on Arch crashes anytime I try to use the file dialog, while of course the file dialog of both GTK2 and GTK3 doesn't crash in other gtk apps on the same machine. Somebody requested this and the reality has been ignored so far: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1268234 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1268234

alphapapa 10y ago

It's fairly simple to build Firefox with Gtk2. There are some instructions here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5b0vtd/howto_build_firefox_49_with_gtk2_in_debianubuntu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5b0vtd/howto_build_f...