23 ms·

Firefox 51.0

362 points by binaryanomaly 10y ago

stuaxo 10y ago
Flac playback and more work on E10s, this is a pretty sweet release. Switching to Skia on linux for rendering is interesting too, I wonder how this affects rendering performance and correctness vs cairo ?
- wnevets 10y ago
  I had to look up what E10s was. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis >In Mozilla documentation "Electrolysis" is often shorted as "e10s".
  - Zecc 10y ago
    You probably got a more relevant result by searching for "E10s" than if you had searched for "Electrolysis", too.
    - wnevets 10y ago
      true but I've heard of Electrolysis in Firefox
  - stuaxo 10y ago
    Heh, I'd have written a more explanatory post, but was busy at work.
- majewsky 10y ago
  So they use Skia now? I would have expected them to rather switch to WebRender.
  - dblohm7 10y ago
    https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    Gecko was already using Skia on Windows and Mac, so enabling Skia on Linux helps consolidate the graphics code. WebRender is actively being ported to Gecko (the "Quantum Render" project), but it is a large effort and won't ship until late 2017. It's an all-or-nothing feature, so it can't be enabled incrementally.
    - shmerl 10y ago
      I wonder if Quantum plans to use Vulkan for rendering when it's available?
      - yazaddaruvala 10y ago
        It seems it will happen eventually, but not at this time[0]. There are likely higher priority changes which need to be made. [0] https://github.com/servo/webrender/issues/186 https://github.com/servo/webrender/issues/186
        shmerl 10y ago
        Interesting, thanks!
- sp332 10y ago
  According to http://www.slideshare.net/SamsungOSG/duel-of-two-libraries-cairo-skia http://www.slideshare.net/SamsungOSG/duel-of-two-libraries-c... Skia is faster than Cairo in most benchmarks, but the settings are very fiddly and it's easy to get incorrect results if you're not careful. It's owned by Google though, so I'd expect it to be possible to get good results. Also it says the API is not stable? That sounds like a big downside. I hope the speed gains are worth it.
- shmerl 10y ago
  I was using Skia in Firefox on Linux for a while already. It works OK. I also force layers acceleration, since it still blacklists Mesa it seems.
nautical 10y ago
Was using Firefox from a very long time , but for some reason recently Firefox is very slow on my machine . Even chromium starts up slowly . Google Chrome opens the fastest and is very light on resources .
- farresito 10y ago
  You are not alone. I also stopped using Firefox six months ago or so because it was incredibly slow. I'm keeping an eye on it to see if the performance improves, but unless something big happens, I don't think I will go back to it.
  - nautical 10y ago
    With every release I try it out in hope of improvements , but have not seen major gains .
  - dashundchen 10y ago
    I noticed this around version 49. Through process of elimination I found out it was caused by two plugins I had: Privacy Badger and Adblock Plus. Switched to uBlock origin and removed the other two, performance is normal again.
    - acomar 10y ago
      I've found the specific sites you have open matter too. Google products (inbox especially) and AWS in particular are awful if you leave them open for a while. I stopped doing that as soon as I noticed. On linux I also saw a lot of benefit to making sure hardware acceleration was force enabled (it's disabled on the platform by default for some reason; I also had to start optirun-ing it on my laptop). Firefox has literally never been faster or behaved better since making those two changes.
- zobzu 10y ago
  try refresh. ive no issue with firefox. uses less memory too
pyed 10y ago
I tested the FLAC playback, it plays only the first 9 seconds!
- TD-Linux 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure that's not the expected behavior :) Do you have a test case?
  - pyed 10y ago
    https://goo.gl/LGVxL4 https://goo.gl/LGVxL4
    - cpeterso 10y ago
      What operating system are you running? It plays correctly for me in Firefox 51 and Nightly (54) on Windows 10.
    - nirv 10y ago
      I believe issue is on your side, since playback is fine with my browser.
      - pyed 10y ago
        it works fine for me sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't try to close your Firefox and open it again and test, it gets stuck with me most of the time.
    - 51Cards 10y ago
      Also tested here and played through fine.
      - pyed 10y ago
        I just deleted all my cookies, all my web content, restarted Firefox, and it stopped on the 9th second, even though the file is half way downloaded
pjmlp 10y ago
Nice to see WebGL 2.0 finally coming to FF as well, congratulations!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
BoysenberryPi 10y ago
I see the WebGL improvements and how on their blog they market it as "Firefox Gets Better Video Gaming" and I really have to say, as a game developer, I really don't want the future of gaming to be on the web. This is more than just Javascript hate. It's hard to monetize games if you aren't going free to play with microtransactions. And really, on a personal level, I just like downloading games and playing them offline. I'm not always near internet access.
- rocky1138 10y ago
  Don't worry, binaries will always be around. The future of the majority of gaming is not on the web.
  - karyon 10y ago
    well, there are asm.js and in the near future web assembly (basically, binaries for the web)
  - patates 10y ago
    I thought with the WebAssembly we can have (sort of) both? (not really binaries because it's bytecode and not really on the web because it runs somewhat in a different context, but then again, are web workers not on the web? Perhaps it's hard to define what "on the web" means).
    - rocky1138 10y ago
      Yeah, I meant OS-specific binaries. For performance reasons I'm way more interested in important services being delivered by Linux binaries than Chrome or Firefox binaries.
- bobajeff 10y ago
  You don't have to use JavaScript. (See emscripten, binaryen etc.) The Web is basically just a runtime you don't have to host your files on a server if you don't want. You can distribute them via CDs if you prefer. Also you can use Service Workers now. That said monetisation all depends on the product not the medium. Just look at Minecraft. It didn't use ads or microtransactions and yet it was run from a Java applet in a browser.
debaserab2 10y ago
Side note: I absolutely love the format that Firefox does their release notes in. They're organized really well and do a good job of speaking with the right language for the audience of each change. I can't think of another product that does release notes as well as them. Usually your hunting down ticket numbers (often on a private tracker) that are referenced from a changelog.
- TD-Linux 10y ago
  Blender has my favorite release notes: https://www.blender.org/features/2-78/ https://www.blender.org/features/2-78/ Though that's cheating a bit because it's easier to get pretty pictures of features in Blender.
  - debaserab2 10y ago
    Nice! Another one I can think of is how Blizzard releases their patch notes. Gamers are especially picky to game changes, so you can tell they put some thought into how they announce changes. Example: http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20481262/heroes-of-the-storm-patch-notes-january-24-2017-1-24-2017 http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20481262/heroes-of-the-s... Makes me wonder if there is a market for a release notes platform for keeping customer up to date, something that's more focused on how changes are announced to customers than bug tickets.
    - mr_november 10y ago
      > Makes me wonder if there is a market for a release notes platform for keeping customer up to date There apparently is, we use https://headwayapp.co/ https://headwayapp.co/ for that.
      - chipperyman573 10y ago
        Terrible mobile UI
    - Semaphor 10y ago
spacehacker 10y ago
Tab switching has improved a lot. I also love the new zoom level indicator in the URL bar. Very innovative. Nice.
- lalalander 10y ago
  Is there a way to remove it from the URL bar? I find it rather distracting actually...
  - kbrosnan 10y ago
    Via userChrome.css @namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul); #urlbar-zoom-button { display: none !important;}
realusername 10y ago
> Remove Belarusian (be) locale Anyone knows why they removed it by curiosity?
- olegkikin 10y ago
  Looks like they didn't find a volunteer to do the translations. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743
  - realusername 10y ago
    That's very sad, I've heard the language is slowly dying and replaced by Russian, it's probably harder to find younger people contributing.
yuhong 10y ago
Another fix included: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1321357 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1321357
aorth 10y ago
The WebGL demo "After the Flood" linked in their release summary post is really beautiful. I don't play games but this technology is very impressive. Try it for yourself if you're on an updated Firefox (51+): https://playcanv.as/e/p/44MRmJRU/ https://playcanv.as/e/p/44MRmJRU/
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Sadly even though my GPU is OpenGL 3.3 capable, I only get sound on Chrome and FF, with FF eventually causing the NVidia driver to crash.
- amluto 10y ago
  On my laptop, something is very wrong with touchpad controls and I seem to be mostly stuck looking straight down or straight up :(
  - binaryanomaly 10y ago
    Yep touchpad is totally messed up here, too. Worked fine on my desktop with mouse, though.
- bwhitty 10y ago
  Very cool demo. Worked fine on my 2015 rMBP even if Ultra settings ran at about 10 FPS. The web really has come a long, long ways.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Hell, I got 8 FPS on Ultra on my 2013 Air (that's on Firefox 52.0, though). The Firefox 52b UI feels much snappier than the 51b UI, for some reason, which is fantastic, because my main annoyance with 51 was the sluggish UI. The whole browser would freeze while one tab was loading.
- HugoDaniel 10y ago
  Black screen here on "MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011)" (with the mighty Intel HD3000)
dagurp 10y ago
Does anyone else think the login popup is a bit annoying? Is there a way to go back to the way it was before?
- roryokane 10y ago
  The save password pop-up? You can disable it for all sites in the Firefox settings, the same as in previous versions. All they changed was making it recognize some login forms that it didn't recognize before; it's not a totally new feature. Are you seeing false positives with it?
  - dagurp 10y ago
    It seems buggy. For example, I don't like that it keeps suggesting other login names when I've already filled the field. I also don't understand what is supposed to happen when the popup appears in the password field, if I choose something the username isn't changed at least. Mostly I think it gets in the way. I had no problem with the old functionality where I just wrote the username and the password was filled out when I pressed tab.
anw 10y ago
This release seems to help on the UX side of things regarding logins, along with improved efficiency. Some of the highlights: * Users can view passwords in the save password prompt before saving them * Firefox will save passwords even in forms that do not have “submit” events * A warning is displayed when a login page does not have a secure connection * Improved video performance for users without GPU acceleration for less CPU usage and a better full screen experience * Added support for WebGL 2, with advanced graphics rendering features like transform feedback, improved texturing capabilities, and a new sophisticated shading language * Added support for FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) playback
- em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
  FLAC yes!
- emn13 10y ago
  I'm not sure about the audience here on hacker news, but I can image many are more interested in the developer release notes: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/51#Changes_for_Web_developers https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/51#Chan... (e.g. JS/CSS api changes). Aside; the FF dev release notes always impress upon me the scale of modern browsers. There's just so much new stuff, and lots of it isn't trivial at all, and that's despite the rather rapid release calendar, and the need to be pretty much rock solid on a huge variety of systems, and the list of tricky non-functional aspects like perf, size, security, maintainability, etc. that all this code needs to at least consider. It's daunting.
- stil 10y ago
  Does that address the instances where you can click login and save password, but the next time you go to log in, it won't remember your username and password?
agumonkey 10y ago
And Firefox Nightly 54.
owly 10y ago
FLAC FTW!!!
hannob 10y ago
The password warning is a great move by Mozilla. They tackle a very common misconception: Many people think it's enough to transfer the password encrypted, because they think https is only about secrecy. But it's crucial to also submit the form via https, otherwise attackers can mess with the form itself. A lot of webpages will be surprised by this, there are still quite a few who have insecure login forms.
- dmit 10y ago
  But you also need to serve the page that links to the form via https, otherwise it's vulnerable to the same attack (just one step longer). Which probably means you need to serve everything over https. And even then you need HSTS in order to avoid MITM agents downgrading https back to http. And even then you want to register your site so that at least some of the major browsers preload your HSTS info (https://www.chromium.org/hsts https://www.chromium.org/hsts). And as a user you just install HTTPS Everywhere, cross your fingers, and hope for the best.
  - nandhp 10y ago
    > But you also need to serve the page that links to the form via https Yes, in the limit. But current best-practices for user caution ("when you're entering personal information, check the address bar for the domain name you're expecting [and a lock icon]") would be enough to thwart that attack.
mrmondo 10y ago
From 2014: "Choose Firefox now, or you won't get a choice later" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579163
- 2bitencryption 10y ago
  After reading that article in 2014, I switched to Firefox. I used it from that point until just a few weeks ago when a program bypassed my defaults and launched Chrome. And I immediately remembered why I preferred Chrome and how much more responsive it feels, and how it handles plugins and per-tab processes and uses a quarter the memory somehow. So now I'm back on Chrome. Felt good to be on FF for awhile, felt like I was preserving freedom or whatever. But now that I'm on Chrome, I won't switch back until Firefox actually becomes a better browser.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    I use FF for almost everything but when it comes to Google stuff (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, etc.) I use Chromium. Firefox crashes on me too much with those apps and though I generally don't lose work it's a pain to have to relaunch and get back to where I was.
  - scholia 10y ago
    > and uses a quarter the memory somehow. I thought Chrome was famous for being a resource hog. It consumes more RAM on my Windows PCs, though I confess I use more tabs than are viable in Chrome....
    - twblalock 10y ago
      Chrome is a resource hog for me, on macOS and Windows. But Firefox is only slightly better in my experience. I last tried it about 3 months ago.
      - scholia 10y ago
        You can clear out memory use in Firefox by restarting it. It doesn't create a firestorm of reloads that cripple your PC because it only reloads tabs when you click on them.
ArtDev 10y ago
Looks like they fixed smooth scrolling bug I was experiencing too. Thanks :)
po1nter 10y ago
This will be the first software that I use everyday (and that I know of) that speaks my native tongue: Kabyle. It might not mean much to the rest of the world, especially since we're not that many native speakers, but I'm loving the fact that they've added it.
- hackerboos 10y ago
  In the same release they removed Belarusian. Anyone know why?
  - kbrosnan 10y ago
    Localization is done by volunteers. If the team that is providing the translations does not complete the translations then the localization is dropped > This locale hasn't seen any activity in almost 2 years, and we failed to revive the community effort. > The plan is to stop building Firefox Beta and Firefox Release, and move existing users to Russian. > I think it would also be a good idea to stop building Firefox Aurora, and remove Belarusian from product-details, but I'm open to different opinions. - bug 1304743
  - dtparr 10y ago
    "This locale hasn't seen any activity in almost 2 years, and we failed to revive the community effort." https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1307995 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1307995 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743
  - flodolo 10y ago
    As someone already explained, Mozilla localization is done completely by volunteers. You reach a point where the amount of English strings is so high in the UI that is more confusing than helpful to ship a localized version like that. Also considering the target of localized builds. The good news is that we can start shipping back Belarusian if there are new volunteers working on it steadily (it just happened for Georgian in 51). There are a few working already, but they need all the help they can get https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.l10n/dxf7HliMGE4/DuM1EYjRBQAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.l10n/dxf7HliMGE4... https://pontoon.mozilla.org/be/firefox-aurora/ https://pontoon.mozilla.org/be/firefox-aurora/
DavideNL 10y ago
...still no "smooth pinch-to-zoom" like Safari and Chromium have had for years :'( Zooming is such a basic thing, and it really sucks in Firefox in my opinion (using a Macbook with its trackpad that is.. if using a mouse it obviously doesn't apply)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bheesham 10y ago
> Use 2D graphics library (Skia) for content rendering on Linux What were they using before?
- jhasse 10y ago
  Cairo
ramblenode 10y ago
Firefox continues its commitment to privacy with this quiet change found in the developer notes [0]: > For privacy reasons, both BatteryManager.chargingTime and BatteryManager.dischargingTime now round the returned value to the closest 15 minutes (bug 1292655). See [1] for an explanation of how the battery status API can be used to track you. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/51#Changes_for_Web_developers https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/51#Chan... [1] https://www.hackread.com/smartphone-laptop-battery-invading-privacy/ https://www.hackread.com/smartphone-laptop-battery-invading-...
- r3bl 10y ago
  I've created a simple website that showcases the Battery API if you wanna see if you're affected or not: https://r3bl.me/battery/ https://r3bl.me/battery/ Done locally in JavaScript, info is not stored anyway (and, of course, you can see that for yourself here: https://github.com/aleksandar-todorovic/battery https://github.com/aleksandar-todorovic/battery).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- pkd 10y ago
  It's interesting that you mention privacy because I filed a bug report[1] just yesterday that is a potential privacy issue. Basically Firefox no longer allows you to deny websites access to camera individually. This means that while on a voice call on messenger.com, the camera is still always on, even if the video is "muted". [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1333186 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1333186
pmoriarty 10y ago
I can't see myself using Firefox for much longer due to it permanently breaking Pentadactyl, and there being no good replacements.
ejenk 10y ago
Warning to Vimperator users: some Vimperator features are currently broken in this release. See https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/568 https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/568
- Accacin 10y ago
  Sorry to be completely off-topic, but how can you disable keys in Vimperator? I'm a Front End Dev so I use the 'Q' key a lot so it's annoying that I keep trying to record macros (which I never need to do in Firefox).
m-p-3 10y ago
I guess this could mean direct playback of FLAC from Plex Web in the future!
akerro 10y ago
More people speak Belarusian than Kabyle, why was Belarusian locale removed?
- 0x4a42 10y ago
  You can read about it here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- belkacem77 10y ago
  Because Kabyle contributors are translating everyday :) . I'am a Kabyle localizer. I=We tried to build a team to keep it up-to-date. It's not a matter of number!!!
piyush_soni 10y ago
Is anyone else facing trouble in updating Firefox from the 'Help->About' dialog? Whenever a new Firefox version is released, this dialog promptly gives me the new release, but this time it has decided to stick to 50.1.0 (while going to the Firefox download site directly downloads 51.0)
ggchappell 10y ago
> Added support for WebGL 2, with advanced graphics rendering features like transform feedback, improved texturing capabilities, and a new sophisticated shading language Can anyone explain that last bit. I know WebGL 2 goes with GLSL ES 3.0, but that seems to be the same ol' GLSL with a few tweaks. Is this "new sophisticated shading language" just overblown PR, or is there an actual new shading language?

362 points by binaryanomaly 10y ago

Flac playback and more work on E10s, this is a pretty sweet release. Switching to Skia on linux for rendering is interesting too, I wonder how this affects rendering performance and correctness vs cairo ?

wnevets 10y ago
I had to look up what E10s was. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis >In Mozilla documentation "Electrolysis" is often shorted as "e10s".
- Zecc 10y ago
  You probably got a more relevant result by searching for "E10s" than if you had searched for "Electrolysis", too.
  - wnevets 10y ago
    true but I've heard of Electrolysis in Firefox
- stuaxo 10y ago
  Heh, I'd have written a more explanatory post, but was busy at work.
majewsky 10y ago
So they use Skia now? I would have expected them to rather switch to WebRender.
- dblohm7 10y ago
  https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Gecko was already using Skia on Windows and Mac, so enabling Skia on Linux helps consolidate the graphics code. WebRender is actively being ported to Gecko (the "Quantum Render" project), but it is a large effort and won't ship until late 2017. It's an all-or-nothing feature, so it can't be enabled incrementally.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    I wonder if Quantum plans to use Vulkan for rendering when it's available?
    - yazaddaruvala 10y ago
      It seems it will happen eventually, but not at this time[0]. There are likely higher priority changes which need to be made. [0] https://github.com/servo/webrender/issues/186 https://github.com/servo/webrender/issues/186
      - shmerl 10y ago
        Interesting, thanks!
sp332 10y ago
According to http://www.slideshare.net/SamsungOSG/duel-of-two-libraries-cairo-skia http://www.slideshare.net/SamsungOSG/duel-of-two-libraries-c... Skia is faster than Cairo in most benchmarks, but the settings are very fiddly and it's easy to get incorrect results if you're not careful. It's owned by Google though, so I'd expect it to be possible to get good results. Also it says the API is not stable? That sounds like a big downside. I hope the speed gains are worth it.
shmerl 10y ago
I was using Skia in Firefox on Linux for a while already. It works OK. I also force layers acceleration, since it still blacklists Mesa it seems.

nautical 10y ago

Was using Firefox from a very long time , but for some reason recently Firefox is very slow on my machine . Even chromium starts up slowly . Google Chrome opens the fastest and is very light on resources .

farresito 10y ago
You are not alone. I also stopped using Firefox six months ago or so because it was incredibly slow. I'm keeping an eye on it to see if the performance improves, but unless something big happens, I don't think I will go back to it.
- nautical 10y ago
  With every release I try it out in hope of improvements , but have not seen major gains .
- dashundchen 10y ago
  I noticed this around version 49. Through process of elimination I found out it was caused by two plugins I had: Privacy Badger and Adblock Plus. Switched to uBlock origin and removed the other two, performance is normal again.
  - acomar 10y ago
    I've found the specific sites you have open matter too. Google products (inbox especially) and AWS in particular are awful if you leave them open for a while. I stopped doing that as soon as I noticed. On linux I also saw a lot of benefit to making sure hardware acceleration was force enabled (it's disabled on the platform by default for some reason; I also had to start optirun-ing it on my laptop). Firefox has literally never been faster or behaved better since making those two changes.
zobzu 10y ago
try refresh. ive no issue with firefox. uses less memory too

pyed 10y ago

I tested the FLAC playback, it plays only the first 9 seconds!

TD-Linux 10y ago
I'm pretty sure that's not the expected behavior :) Do you have a test case?
- pyed 10y ago
  https://goo.gl/LGVxL4 https://goo.gl/LGVxL4
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    What operating system are you running? It plays correctly for me in Firefox 51 and Nightly (54) on Windows 10.
  - nirv 10y ago
    I believe issue is on your side, since playback is fine with my browser.
    - pyed 10y ago
      it works fine for me sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't try to close your Firefox and open it again and test, it gets stuck with me most of the time.
  - 51Cards 10y ago
    Also tested here and played through fine.
    - pyed 10y ago
      I just deleted all my cookies, all my web content, restarted Firefox, and it stopped on the 9th second, even though the file is half way downloaded

pjmlp 10y ago

Nice to see WebGL 2.0 finally coming to FF as well, congratulations!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

BoysenberryPi 10y ago

I see the WebGL improvements and how on their blog they market it as "Firefox Gets Better Video Gaming" and I really have to say, as a game developer, I really don't want the future of gaming to be on the web. This is more than just Javascript hate. It's hard to monetize games if you aren't going free to play with microtransactions. And really, on a personal level, I just like downloading games and playing them offline. I'm not always near internet access.

rocky1138 10y ago
Don't worry, binaries will always be around. The future of the majority of gaming is not on the web.
- karyon 10y ago
  well, there are asm.js and in the near future web assembly (basically, binaries for the web)
- patates 10y ago
  I thought with the WebAssembly we can have (sort of) both? (not really binaries because it's bytecode and not really on the web because it runs somewhat in a different context, but then again, are web workers not on the web? Perhaps it's hard to define what "on the web" means).
  - rocky1138 10y ago
    Yeah, I meant OS-specific binaries. For performance reasons I'm way more interested in important services being delivered by Linux binaries than Chrome or Firefox binaries.
bobajeff 10y ago
You don't have to use JavaScript. (See emscripten, binaryen etc.) The Web is basically just a runtime you don't have to host your files on a server if you don't want. You can distribute them via CDs if you prefer. Also you can use Service Workers now. That said monetisation all depends on the product not the medium. Just look at Minecraft. It didn't use ads or microtransactions and yet it was run from a Java applet in a browser.

debaserab2 10y ago

Side note: I absolutely love the format that Firefox does their release notes in. They're organized really well and do a good job of speaking with the right language for the audience of each change. I can't think of another product that does release notes as well as them. Usually your hunting down ticket numbers (often on a private tracker) that are referenced from a changelog.

TD-Linux 10y ago
Blender has my favorite release notes: https://www.blender.org/features/2-78/ https://www.blender.org/features/2-78/ Though that's cheating a bit because it's easier to get pretty pictures of features in Blender.
- debaserab2 10y ago
  Nice! Another one I can think of is how Blizzard releases their patch notes. Gamers are especially picky to game changes, so you can tell they put some thought into how they announce changes. Example: http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20481262/heroes-of-the-storm-patch-notes-january-24-2017-1-24-2017 http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20481262/heroes-of-the-s... Makes me wonder if there is a market for a release notes platform for keeping customer up to date, something that's more focused on how changes are announced to customers than bug tickets.
  - mr_november 10y ago
    > Makes me wonder if there is a market for a release notes platform for keeping customer up to date There apparently is, we use https://headwayapp.co/ https://headwayapp.co/ for that.
    - chipperyman573 10y ago
      Terrible mobile UI
  - Semaphor 10y ago

spacehacker 10y ago

Tab switching has improved a lot. I also love the new zoom level indicator in the URL bar. Very innovative. Nice.

lalalander 10y ago
Is there a way to remove it from the URL bar? I find it rather distracting actually...
- kbrosnan 10y ago
  Via userChrome.css @namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul); #urlbar-zoom-button { display: none !important;}

realusername 10y ago

> Remove Belarusian (be) locale Anyone knows why they removed it by curiosity?

olegkikin 10y ago
Looks like they didn't find a volunteer to do the translations. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743
- realusername 10y ago
  That's very sad, I've heard the language is slowly dying and replaced by Russian, it's probably harder to find younger people contributing.

yuhong 10y ago

Another fix included: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1321357 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1321357

aorth 10y ago

The WebGL demo "After the Flood" linked in their release summary post is really beautiful. I don't play games but this technology is very impressive. Try it for yourself if you're on an updated Firefox (51+): https://playcanv.as/e/p/44MRmJRU/ https://playcanv.as/e/p/44MRmJRU/

pjmlp 10y ago
Sadly even though my GPU is OpenGL 3.3 capable, I only get sound on Chrome and FF, with FF eventually causing the NVidia driver to crash.
amluto 10y ago
On my laptop, something is very wrong with touchpad controls and I seem to be mostly stuck looking straight down or straight up :(
- binaryanomaly 10y ago
  Yep touchpad is totally messed up here, too. Worked fine on my desktop with mouse, though.
bwhitty 10y ago
Very cool demo. Worked fine on my 2015 rMBP even if Ultra settings ran at about 10 FPS. The web really has come a long, long ways.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Hell, I got 8 FPS on Ultra on my 2013 Air (that's on Firefox 52.0, though). The Firefox 52b UI feels much snappier than the 51b UI, for some reason, which is fantastic, because my main annoyance with 51 was the sluggish UI. The whole browser would freeze while one tab was loading.
HugoDaniel 10y ago
Black screen here on "MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011)" (with the mighty Intel HD3000)

dagurp 10y ago

Does anyone else think the login popup is a bit annoying? Is there a way to go back to the way it was before?

roryokane 10y ago
The save password pop-up? You can disable it for all sites in the Firefox settings, the same as in previous versions. All they changed was making it recognize some login forms that it didn't recognize before; it's not a totally new feature. Are you seeing false positives with it?
- dagurp 10y ago
  It seems buggy. For example, I don't like that it keeps suggesting other login names when I've already filled the field. I also don't understand what is supposed to happen when the popup appears in the password field, if I choose something the username isn't changed at least. Mostly I think it gets in the way. I had no problem with the old functionality where I just wrote the username and the password was filled out when I pressed tab.

anw 10y ago

This release seems to help on the UX side of things regarding logins, along with improved efficiency. Some of the highlights: * Users can view passwords in the save password prompt before saving them * Firefox will save passwords even in forms that do not have “submit” events * A warning is displayed when a login page does not have a secure connection * Improved video performance for users without GPU acceleration for less CPU usage and a better full screen experience * Added support for WebGL 2, with advanced graphics rendering features like transform feedback, improved texturing capabilities, and a new sophisticated shading language * Added support for FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) playback

em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
FLAC yes!
emn13 10y ago
I'm not sure about the audience here on hacker news, but I can image many are more interested in the developer release notes: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/51#Changes_for_Web_developers https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/51#Chan... (e.g. JS/CSS api changes). Aside; the FF dev release notes always impress upon me the scale of modern browsers. There's just so much new stuff, and lots of it isn't trivial at all, and that's despite the rather rapid release calendar, and the need to be pretty much rock solid on a huge variety of systems, and the list of tricky non-functional aspects like perf, size, security, maintainability, etc. that all this code needs to at least consider. It's daunting.
stil 10y ago
Does that address the instances where you can click login and save password, but the next time you go to log in, it won't remember your username and password?

agumonkey 10y ago

And Firefox Nightly 54.

owly 10y ago

FLAC FTW!!!

hannob 10y ago

The password warning is a great move by Mozilla. They tackle a very common misconception: Many people think it's enough to transfer the password encrypted, because they think https is only about secrecy. But it's crucial to also submit the form via https, otherwise attackers can mess with the form itself. A lot of webpages will be surprised by this, there are still quite a few who have insecure login forms.

dmit 10y ago
But you also need to serve the page that links to the form via https, otherwise it's vulnerable to the same attack (just one step longer). Which probably means you need to serve everything over https. And even then you need HSTS in order to avoid MITM agents downgrading https back to http. And even then you want to register your site so that at least some of the major browsers preload your HSTS info (https://www.chromium.org/hsts https://www.chromium.org/hsts). And as a user you just install HTTPS Everywhere, cross your fingers, and hope for the best.
- nandhp 10y ago
  > But you also need to serve the page that links to the form via https Yes, in the limit. But current best-practices for user caution ("when you're entering personal information, check the address bar for the domain name you're expecting [and a lock icon]") would be enough to thwart that attack.

mrmondo 10y ago

From 2014: "Choose Firefox now, or you won't get a choice later" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579163

2bitencryption 10y ago
After reading that article in 2014, I switched to Firefox. I used it from that point until just a few weeks ago when a program bypassed my defaults and launched Chrome. And I immediately remembered why I preferred Chrome and how much more responsive it feels, and how it handles plugins and per-tab processes and uses a quarter the memory somehow. So now I'm back on Chrome. Felt good to be on FF for awhile, felt like I was preserving freedom or whatever. But now that I'm on Chrome, I won't switch back until Firefox actually becomes a better browser.
- ams6110 10y ago
  I use FF for almost everything but when it comes to Google stuff (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, etc.) I use Chromium. Firefox crashes on me too much with those apps and though I generally don't lose work it's a pain to have to relaunch and get back to where I was.
- scholia 10y ago
  > and uses a quarter the memory somehow. I thought Chrome was famous for being a resource hog. It consumes more RAM on my Windows PCs, though I confess I use more tabs than are viable in Chrome....
  - twblalock 10y ago
    Chrome is a resource hog for me, on macOS and Windows. But Firefox is only slightly better in my experience. I last tried it about 3 months ago.
    - scholia 10y ago
      You can clear out memory use in Firefox by restarting it. It doesn't create a firestorm of reloads that cripple your PC because it only reloads tabs when you click on them.

ArtDev 10y ago

Looks like they fixed smooth scrolling bug I was experiencing too. Thanks :)

po1nter 10y ago

This will be the first software that I use everyday (and that I know of) that speaks my native tongue: Kabyle. It might not mean much to the rest of the world, especially since we're not that many native speakers, but I'm loving the fact that they've added it.

hackerboos 10y ago
In the same release they removed Belarusian. Anyone know why?
- kbrosnan 10y ago
  Localization is done by volunteers. If the team that is providing the translations does not complete the translations then the localization is dropped > This locale hasn't seen any activity in almost 2 years, and we failed to revive the community effort. > The plan is to stop building Firefox Beta and Firefox Release, and move existing users to Russian. > I think it would also be a good idea to stop building Firefox Aurora, and remove Belarusian from product-details, but I'm open to different opinions. - bug 1304743
- dtparr 10y ago
  "This locale hasn't seen any activity in almost 2 years, and we failed to revive the community effort." https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1307995 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1307995 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743
- flodolo 10y ago
  As someone already explained, Mozilla localization is done completely by volunteers. You reach a point where the amount of English strings is so high in the UI that is more confusing than helpful to ship a localized version like that. Also considering the target of localized builds. The good news is that we can start shipping back Belarusian if there are new volunteers working on it steadily (it just happened for Georgian in 51). There are a few working already, but they need all the help they can get https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.l10n/dxf7HliMGE4/DuM1EYjRBQAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.l10n/dxf7HliMGE4... https://pontoon.mozilla.org/be/firefox-aurora/ https://pontoon.mozilla.org/be/firefox-aurora/

DavideNL 10y ago

...still no "smooth pinch-to-zoom" like Safari and Chromium have had for years :'( Zooming is such a basic thing, and it really sucks in Firefox in my opinion (using a Macbook with its trackpad that is.. if using a mouse it obviously doesn't apply)

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bheesham 10y ago

> Use 2D graphics library (Skia) for content rendering on Linux What were they using before?

jhasse 10y ago
Cairo

ramblenode 10y ago

Firefox continues its commitment to privacy with this quiet change found in the developer notes [0]: > For privacy reasons, both BatteryManager.chargingTime and BatteryManager.dischargingTime now round the returned value to the closest 15 minutes (bug 1292655). See [1] for an explanation of how the battery status API can be used to track you. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/51#Changes_for_Web_developers https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/51#Chan... [1] https://www.hackread.com/smartphone-laptop-battery-invading-privacy/ https://www.hackread.com/smartphone-laptop-battery-invading-...

r3bl 10y ago
I've created a simple website that showcases the Battery API if you wanna see if you're affected or not: https://r3bl.me/battery/ https://r3bl.me/battery/ Done locally in JavaScript, info is not stored anyway (and, of course, you can see that for yourself here: https://github.com/aleksandar-todorovic/battery https://github.com/aleksandar-todorovic/battery).
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pkd 10y ago
It's interesting that you mention privacy because I filed a bug report[1] just yesterday that is a potential privacy issue. Basically Firefox no longer allows you to deny websites access to camera individually. This means that while on a voice call on messenger.com, the camera is still always on, even if the video is "muted". [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1333186 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1333186

pmoriarty 10y ago

I can't see myself using Firefox for much longer due to it permanently breaking Pentadactyl, and there being no good replacements.

ejenk 10y ago

Warning to Vimperator users: some Vimperator features are currently broken in this release. See https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/568 https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/568

Accacin 10y ago
Sorry to be completely off-topic, but how can you disable keys in Vimperator? I'm a Front End Dev so I use the 'Q' key a lot so it's annoying that I keep trying to record macros (which I never need to do in Firefox).

m-p-3 10y ago

I guess this could mean direct playback of FLAC from Plex Web in the future!

akerro 10y ago

More people speak Belarusian than Kabyle, why was Belarusian locale removed?

0x4a42 10y ago
You can read about it here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743
deleted 10y ago
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belkacem77 10y ago
Because Kabyle contributors are translating everyday :) . I'am a Kabyle localizer. I=We tried to build a team to keep it up-to-date. It's not a matter of number!!!

piyush_soni 10y ago

Is anyone else facing trouble in updating Firefox from the 'Help->About' dialog? Whenever a new Firefox version is released, this dialog promptly gives me the new release, but this time it has decided to stick to 50.1.0 (while going to the Firefox download site directly downloads 51.0)

ggchappell 10y ago

> Added support for WebGL 2, with advanced graphics rendering features like transform feedback, improved texturing capabilities, and a new sophisticated shading language Can anyone explain that last bit. I know WebGL 2 goes with GLSL ES 3.0, but that seems to be the same ol' GLSL with a few tweaks. Is this "new sophisticated shading language" just overblown PR, or is there an actual new shading language?