24 ms·

Firefox 52 released

• carbolymer 10y ago
  > Removed support for Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI) plugins other than Flash. Silverlight, Java, Acrobat and the like are no longer supported. That's really, really bad. At this point Firefox was the only browser which was supporting Java on Linux. I am forced to stick to the 51 version (52 64bit ESR does not support Java also). You may ask, why on earth do you need Java inside your browser in 2017? My company, which does not support Linux, uses Java applet to create system-wide VPN connections to the client's networks and Firefox was the only choice.
• axelfontaine 10y ago
  And so the age of WebAssembly begins...
  • k__ 10y ago
    What I ask myself, is this really the end of JavaScript? WASM reminds me of the NDK on Android. A way to write high performance GC-less code, but nobody started to use it for other things than high performance computations. Will people really start to port runtime environments to WASM so they can run Ruby, Python and Java in browsers? Or will this mainly be a place for C/C++, Rust and co to get some niche high end stuff running?
    • bluejekyll 10y ago
      Or a bigger question, will it be a great space to show that Rust is a great language that can scale up and down through the entire stack? There is one language and toolset which can be used to do everything. Utopia? Yeah. I know people will still choose their favorite languages for task x, y and z, but I can still dream.
    • judah 10y ago
      Definitely not the end of JavaScript. But it is the end of JavaScript-only. It's likely we'll see other languages targeting WebAssembly in the next few years. I heard rumors Microsoft is working on something in that area. If I were to guess, I'd expect a TypeScript-to-WASM and C#-to-WASM to follow. Java, Rust, Go, and others will likely have something too. Additionally, I expect to see some JS-heavy frameworks (React, Angular, etc.) write performance-critical sections with WASM, thus benefiting a great number of web apps.
      • bluejekyll 10y ago
        Rust already has something: https://hackernoon.com/compiling-rust-to-webassembly-guide-411066a69fde#.4nukotm6s https://hackernoon.com/compiling-rust-to-webassembly-guide-4...
      • k__ 10y ago
        Rust on WASM is probably trivial. But C#, Java and Go are GC languages, porting them is probably a much heavier venture.
      • tmccrmck 10y ago
        Where did you hear these rumors? I could see a WebAssembly target for MSVC in the near future (say hello to Office in the browser) but the CoreCLR needs GC so it's currently out of the question.
        • judah 10y ago
          I heard this directly from a higher up at MS during a conference afterparty. He said he couldn't wait for browser support for Web Assembly to go live so he can show the things they're working on. And yeah, for C# to WASM, we'd need garbage collection support in WASM. That doesn't exist yet, though it's on the list of future enhancements[0]. [0]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/02/where-is-webassembly-now-and-whats-next/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/02/where-is-webassembly-now-a...
    • flohofwoe 10y ago
      IMHO: No, I don't think WASM is the end of Javascript, in the best case both flavours can focus on what they do best (Javascript for light-weight web-frontend scripting and DOM manipulation, WebAssembly for computation modules). And Javascript can focus on being a 'scripting language' again, and not a compile target. I think most serious WebAssembly apps will still use Javascript glue code for the actual HTML/CSS frontend. I also think there will be many web apps which are 50/50 JS/WebAssembly where WebAssembly is used for libraries that need to do fairly heavy computations, but can do that without having to call into browsers APIs too much (e.g. image processing, physics engines, AI, etc...). Android NDK is heavily used for games, I wouldn't say that 'nobody started using it'. I'm not seeing the appeal for running languages on top of WebAssembly that need a heavy runtime environment. The big downloads this requires will kill all the fun. Even C++ will create bloated WASM modules if one isn't careful. Using 'embedded style' programming practices really makes sense when trying to reduce module size for asm.js/WebAssembly.
      • pjmlp 10y ago
        > Android NDK is heavily used for games, I wouldn't say that 'nobody started using it'. Which is very much the only use case that Google's supports, and Android APIs that are exposed to it, for anything else welcome to JNI.
        • flohofwoe 10y ago
          True, and isn't that a shame :/
        • floatboth 10y ago
          Isn't JNI on Android also "NDK"? NDK provides a compiler toolchain and a build system — if you're building native libraries to JNI into, that's also built by NDK.
          • flohofwoe 10y ago
            Internally: yes. But if all you need is the C-APIs provided by the NDK you don't need to deal with JNI (or Java). Unfortunately the NDK doesn't provide much.
    • pjmlp 10y ago
      Well on Android's case it helps that the Android team is not very keen in allowing the NDK to be anything more than porting native code into Android, high performance games, or just implementing Java native methods. Even for Android Things they gave up on their plan for C++ Frameworks on Brillo, and adopted the Android Frameworks instead, due to "We incorporated the feedback from Project Brillo to include familiar tools such as Android Studio, the Android Software Development Kit (SDK)". So to come back to WASM, it depends on how willing the browser vendors are to push it, beyond the initial prototype.
      • greenhouse_gas 10y ago
        Generally, it seems that the success and failure of a language depends on libraries, and most android libraries are written around Java rather than native. But if you want, you can write libraries which will allow you to write Android Apps in C, C++, C#, Rust or Go (as people have already done, see Qt and Xamarin for example). The thing is that it's much easier to write a simple CRUD app in Java than in C++.
        • pjmlp 10y ago
          Because of how Google handles the NDK experience. Using C++ on iOS or UWP isn't as painful experience as on Android.
    • dualogy 10y ago
      No, compiled languages have never ended the existence of Python, Perl and other scripting languages. Similar principles will surely apply. For WASM code to interact with DOM or external scripts / JS libs in any meaningful manner, the wasm generator will have to provide in any event additional JS code anyway.
    • greenhouse_gas 10y ago
      No, but for a different reason. Right now relying solely on WebAssembly where you can use JS is dead in the water (how many websites still keep up IE support). The question will be in a few years (especially once WebAssembly DOM support comes in). Even then, there's so much JS in the wild that only a depracative step (JS is no longer supported) will kill it. It's like Clojure, Kotlin, Groovy and other JVM languages. Even if they are better by a long shot than Java, the legacy factor will keep JS (and Java) alive for a long time (and the fact that JS doesn't require a compiler or environmental).
• kamac 10y ago
  > Removed support for Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI) plugins other than Flash. Silverlight, Java, Acrobat and the like are no longer supported. Good bye, you will be missed (not).
  • _ZeD_ 10y ago
    I will miss them...
  • pjmlp 10y ago
    They will return as WebAssembly, just wait.
    • Spivak 10y ago
      And we'll be better off because of it.
      • Karunamon 10y ago
        Until 20 years in the future when Firefox 66 (if Mozilla is still around after murdering the only reason people use their browser) when the new hotness is whatever WASM's successor is, after it's widely deployed and in use everywhere, people making snarky comments about how they're glad WASM is dead, and we get to piss away another tens of millions of man hours and annoy tens of millions of users by changing things for the sake of change rather than objective technical benefit. Yes, I'm slightly bitter. I'm starting to think the Suckless guys have the right idea...
      • pjmlp 10y ago
        I have my doubts, at least I could disable plugins when I wanted to. Now I have to disable dns entries.
  • indexerror 10y ago
    With this goes the support for DivX player and VLC plugin for Firefox. I'd surely miss the ability to play any format in my browser until PPAPI replacements come up.
• jvehent 10y ago
  > Enhanced Sync to allow users to send and open tabs from one device to another. If you haven't used this, try it out, it's a fantastic feature. I use it all the time to send a page I'm reading on my phone to my laptop, and vice versa.
  • dbalbright 10y ago
    Sounds like a part of what pushbullet does. That's a welcome function.
    • danielsamuels 10y ago
      It's also been in Chrome for years.
      • jamesgeck0 10y ago
        In the form of an official Chrome extension that was discontinued just over two years ago.
        • drusepth 10y ago
          How is it different from the native functionality in Chrome that lets you see (and open) any tabs you have open in Chrome across any device?
          • nfm 10y ago
            The difference is that you can push a tab from one device to another. So if you're reading something on your phone, and push it to your laptop, it will automatically open in a new tab there once it syncs. It's good for when you're on the go, and want to remember to read something later on once you get back to your computer. By the way, Firefox also has the feature you mention (view tabs that are open on devices).
            • drusepth 10y ago
• simplehuman 10y ago
  Why does Mozilla make it hard to run the sync server (easily) on our own? Just give a docker file. Instead you need a sync server, your own account server.. such poor technical design. These are small features that will make many stick to Firefox.
  • alyandon 10y ago
    I self-host my own weave server which is significantly easier to set up and run. They haven't dropped support for that yet.
    • noja 10y ago
      Try connecting to it with a new profile on a recent Firefox without jumping through hoops.
      • alyandon 10y ago
        Yeah, I know the process isn't exactly straightforward.
    • eoger 10y ago
      If you are currently hosting a Sync 1.1 server I strongly encourage you to migrate to 1.5, we removed the legacy parts of Sync in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1296767 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1296767 which means it will not work anymore on Firefox 54.
      • alyandon 10y ago
        I'll investigate that, thanks. However, the last time I checked I'd have to set up and run a separate account server service as well and since weave still works I had no reason to invest the effort into switching. Regardless, I'll likely be switching to FF 52 ESR so the point will be moot.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• Joeboy 10y ago
  Doesn't mention if the major problem I have with Firefox 51 is fixed. It makes a new, unauthenticated request every time I do View Source rather than showing the source of the page I'm looking at, which is an extreme PITA. If View Source works properly, that'd be worth upgrading for immediately.
  • sp332 10y ago
    That is annoying, but does the Inspector in the Developer Tools show what you're looking for?
    • baq 10y ago
      but doesn't it show something completely different, ie. DOM after JS ran?
    • Joeboy 10y ago
      As far as I know the way to get the unmodified source in the Developer tools is to find the html request in the Network tab, click on it, go to the Response tab of the small panel on the right and read the source out of said small panel (it's about 65x11 chars here). I'd much, much rather be able to just hit Ctrl-U and read it in a new tab. If there's an easier way then I'd like to know about it.
      • Drdrdrq 10y ago
        For me it suffices, though I too would prefer if "View source" just showed this same content. Maybe an extension could hijack Ctrl-U and display fetched source?
    • rpeden 10y ago
      The difference is that the Inspector shows the page exactly as it exists now, including any DOM changes that have been done via JavaScript. I typically use 'View Source' when I want to see the original page content before anything had been altered. It looks like the the original commenter is talking about was first reported 12 years ago[1], so I wouldn't count on it being resolved any time soon. It just doesn't seem to be something that many web browser users actually care about, so I don't blame the FF team for not assigning much priority to changing the current behavior, even though I'd also like View Source to work the way way Joeboy is asking for. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307089 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307089
• sp332 10y ago
  You might want to switch yourself to the ESR branch if you depend on add-ons that will not update to the new Web Extensions API. The old extensions model is scheduled to be removed in FF 57, later this year. But 52 ESR will be supported until at least mid-2018. Edit: switched "plugins" to "add-ons".
  • rebelwebmaster 10y ago
    ESR52 also maintains support for NPAPI plugins for those who depend on that.
  • notatoad 10y ago
    Plugins are not affected by the WebExtensions API. Support for NPAPI plugins is removed in this release, support for XUL extensions is a different issue.
    • throwanem 10y ago
      It's also scheduled to happen prior to the next ESR, which if the "every seven versions" period remains in use, will be Firefox 59. So switching to 52 ESR might still be a good idea for those reliant on XUL extensions not likely (or not able) to be ported soon.
  • WalterGR 10y ago
    Based on https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:... it looks like 52 ESR will be the latest ESR when 57 is released. Is that right?
    • sp332 10y ago
      Yup, this is the last ESR before that change is currently expected. Things could change over the next year of course.
    • digi_owl 10y ago
      Seems i need to consider a full time move to Palemoon, as i am currently on 45esr (their last GTK2 based esr). Its really "funny" how it seems i can get Qt5 to work on an "old" X11 install, but GTK3 balks at same. If the FOSS world really wants a foot in the door on the desktop they really need to learn to properly do backwards compatibility. Yes, it is not a glorious job unlike working on the latest shiny framework or language. But it is what has kept the likes of Microsoft in the top spot all this time. Frankly i fear that once Torvalds steps down as kernel boss, Linux as a whole will fragment into a million variants with diverging APIs.
• jadbox 10y ago
  I'd love to see some webassymbly benchmarks now with 52 stable.
• fenollp 10y ago
  Most important to me from this release: webdriver finally supports self-signed certificates.
  • fohara 10y ago
    Nice. Maybe it's finally time to upgrade to the latest Firefox for testing. We had been pegged at an older version because we ran into some issues with the new (at the time) MarionetteDriver[1], but I imagine the migration might be smoother now. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/QA/Marionette https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/QA/Marionet...
• threepipeproblm 10y ago
  What percent of Google Voice users will abandon Firefox now that v52 breaks a key component of their workflow? https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2017/02/google-hangouts-temporary-issues-with-firefox.html https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2017/02/google-hangouts... Ironically, Mozilla has stated that breaking all these user plugins is part of some strategy to regain market share and "influence web standards". Now that it's actually happening, I'm hoping more people will see how it's not going to work.
  • wnevets 10y ago
    I didn't even realize google voice had hangouts integration in the browser.
  • TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
    Why is Google relying on an NPAPI plugin for Hangouts, rather than using WebRTC?
    • mavhc 10y ago
      This is the old version of hangouts, so I guess a) because WebRTC didn't exist/was too new at the time, and b) hats
      • cpeterso 10y ago
        Hangouts switched from NPAPI to WebRTC in Chrome back in 2014, but still uses plugins (NPAPI or ActiveX) for other browsers. Hangouts depends on some non-standard WebRTC functionality in Chrome. Google has had almost three years to adapt to other browsers' WebRTC stacks, but it is not a priority because the plugins have still worked (in Firefox < 52 and IE). https://plus.google.com/103171586947853434456/posts/39TCW3PcLye https://plus.google.com/103171586947853434456/posts/39TCW3Pc...
  • Etzos 10y ago
    Except Mozilla had planned and announced this would happen at least a year in advance. On top of that Google also removed the same thing from Chrome a while ago citing the same reasons, it's just that they shoehorned in a fix for Chrome and IE when they did so.
• midgetjones 10y ago
  I hope this update doesn't break Vimperator again.
  • jvehent 10y ago
    The removal of XUL addons is scheduled for Firefox 57. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/02/16/the-road-to-firefox-57-compatibility-milestones/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/02/16/the-road-to-firef...
  • jamesgeck0 10y ago
    Vimperator is gonna break for good by the end of the year. It's been encouraging that the VimFX developer has been so involved in the Web Extension discussions about keyboard input [1]. Unfortunately, the last few updates don't look super promising [2]. 1. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061 2. https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx/issues/860 https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx/issues/860
    • midgetjones 10y ago
      Oh gosh :(
  • ronjouch 10y ago
    VimFx is enough for me, maybe it's for you too. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimfx/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimfx/
    • midgetjones 10y ago
      Thanks! I hadn't seen it, but Vimperator was what finally got me to switch from Chrome/Vimium. If it's customizable enough that I can remap `d` to close a tab and `u` to reopen, I'll be happy... but then I guess I don't need to be happy, as I won't have a choice soon enough :)
      • 10y ago
• dsschnau 10y ago
  woohoo CSS Grid! It's happening!
• __s 10y ago
  Past few days I've been making a Befunge JIT that targets WASM: https://github.com/serprex/Befunge/blob/master/funge.js https://github.com/serprex/Befunge/blob/master/funge.js Ended up finding that Firefox 52 is overly accepting in validation. Dead code is allowed to pop from an empty stack, whereas in Chrome that's not allowed (as per spec). It's fixed already in next versions of Fx
  • Pxtl 10y ago
    > Past few days I've been making a Befunge JIT that targets WASM why??????????????
    • majewsky 10y ago
      Science isn't about why?, it's about why not!?.
      • Pxtl 10y ago
        This isn't science, this is art. Specifically, this is like making Pollock's Autumn Rythm out of play-dough.
        • majewsky 10y ago
          I see you haven't recognized the reference?
    • krylon 10y ago
      The usual answer to this question is Because we can The more helpful answer, though, is: Because it's fun (at least to some people)!
• nfriedly 10y ago
  Firefox for Android recently stopped showing me the "Send to Firefox" option in the share menu. I previously used it all the time to send tabs to my desktop. Does anyone know what happened or how to get it back?
  • jvehent 10y ago
    It's present on mine under the paper plane icon: https://pageshot.net/tXxzW2A7XAhVuAGN/mail.google.com https://pageshot.net/tXxzW2A7XAhVuAGN/mail.google.com
    • nfriedly 10y ago
      I'm pretty sure I've seen that paper plane icon before, but it doesn't seem to be there now either. The one I always used had a Firefox icon.
      • StavrosK 10y ago
        Same here, I have a Firefox icon in the share menu called "Send to other devices".
  • pricechild 10y ago
    If it has been removed, a comment below you quoted the following which would likely explain it? > Enhanced Sync to allow users to send and open tabs from one device to another.
    • nfriedly 10y ago
      It could be related, but that comes from the desktop section. It doesn't say anything about Enhanced Synk in the Android section. Although, if you go back to the 51.0 release notes, it does say "Improved reliability of browser data sync". https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/android/51.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/android/51.0/releaseno...
  • eoger 10y ago
• jwarren 10y ago
  Firefox is the first major browser to support CSS Grids out of the box. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/01/css-grid https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/01/css-grid is a simple introduction to it. http://gridbyexample.com/ http://gridbyexample.com/ is probably the best reference site. https://tympanus.net/codrops/css_reference/grid/ https://tympanus.net/codrops/css_reference/grid/ is another very nice single-page reference. Some technical examples from Igalia, who have been implementing Grid in Blink and Webkit: http://igalia.github.io/css-grid-layout/ http://igalia.github.io/css-grid-layout/ Some lovely creative examples from Mozilla's Jen Simmons: http://labs.jensimmons.com/ http://labs.jensimmons.com/ http://labs.jensimmons.com/2016/ http://labs.jensimmons.com/2016/
  • nachtigall 10y ago
    And the Firefox Devtools now also have an excellent tools for learning, visualizing and debugging CSS Grids: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/12/css-grid-and-grid-highlighter-now-in-firefox-developer-edition/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/12/css-grid-and-grid-highligh... Well done, new feature coming along with Devtools for it.
  • gsnedders 10y ago
    And we expect Chrome 57 to ship Grid (which should ship around March 14th), Safari 10.1 (part of macOS 10.12.4 and iOS 10.3, expected March/April), and Edge to probably ship it later this year.
  • hubert123 10y ago
    Sorry to be so blunt but I dont care about another flexbox that much. What they should have done is to implement the shadowdom. Instead we have to wait another half year for them to get to parity with Chrome.
  • marc_omorain 10y ago
    What's the difference between grids and flexbox? To the untrained eye, they look like two alternate layout systems where one should suffice.
• kyoji 10y ago
  Congrats Firefox team! I've been using the latest Nightly releases (for container tabs!) as my daily driver and it has been a rock-solid experience. Thanks for the hard work
  • nachtigall 10y ago
    There's now also a Firefox Testpilot experiment for container tabs: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers
    • amarraja 10y ago
      Thank you! I've been eagerly awaiting containers for a while, but didn't want to switch to nightly
    • majewsky 10y ago
      "online trackers can’t connect your browsing in one container to another" Yeah sure, because we all know that deleting cookies makes you totally anonymous on the internet. /s
    • sorenjan 10y ago
      This looks great! It would make for a natural fit with tab groups, unfortunately Mozilla has removed that feature, and the extension will not be updated [0] to support the new extension API at the end of this year. [0] http://fasezero.com/lastnotice.html http://fasezero.com/lastnotice.html
• naibafo 10y ago
  It is annoying that I have to install pulseaudio if I want to continue using Firefox for media consumption.
• simonsquiff 10y ago
  Mozilla says 'Enabled multi-process Firefox for Windows users with touch screens', however on my Dell XPS 13 it still says multiprocess windows are 'Disabled by accessibility tools' in about:support, which was the touch screen issue. Any ideas?
  • floatboth 10y ago
    Force enable it in about:config, browser.tabs.remote.force-enable i think
  • bzbarsky 10y ago
    Are you running a 32-bit Firefox or 64-bit? I _think_ the touchscreen thing was only fixed for 32-bit for the Firefox 52 release, and the fix for 64-bit will be in Firefox 54. I'll see about getting the release notes fixed to reflect that.
• wiremine 10y ago
  > Added support for WebAssembly, an emerging standard that brings near-native performance to Web-based games, apps, and software libraries without the use of plugins. I've been watching this from the sidelines... what's the best way to dive into WebAssembly? Or is it just waiting for tooling to catchup to produce it for WebAssembly-enabled browsers to execute?
  • callahad 10y ago
    The WASM Explorer is a good place to start. I wrote up a little blurb about it: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/03/previewing-the-webassembly-explorer/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/03/previewing-the-webassembly... Lin Clark's Cartoon Intro to WebAssembly is also great: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/02/a-cartoon-intro-to-webassembly/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/02/a-cartoon-intro-to-webasse... Rasumus Andersson's WASM Intro dives deeper into the binary format and wasm semantics: https://rsms.me/wasm-intro https://rsms.me/wasm-intro Lastly, the WASM Community Group's page at http://webassembly.org http://webassembly.org is quite good. The tooling story is currently the same as it was for asm.js: Use the Emscripten fork of LLVM. Upstream support is being worked on in LLVM, and Rust has a cross-compiler in the works.
    • vanderZwan 10y ago
      Given that WASM is a stack-based language, do you think it would be a good target for a modern concatenative language? Something like, say, Kitten? http://kittenlang.org/ http://kittenlang.org/
  • bogas04 10y ago
    This video is a great start to it https://youtu.be/3XrGjSnPHGY https://youtu.be/3XrGjSnPHGY
• tmaly 10y ago
  What I like most about firefox is the mobile version supports addons like ublock origin. In mobile Chrome the support for add blockers is not really well supported.
  • vocatus_gate 10y ago
    uBlock is the sole reason I use Firefox over Chrome on Android.
    • tannhaeuser 10y ago
      Not only does FF Mobile support uBlock, I find it to be an excellent day-to-day mobile browser in its own right actually. Compatibility and performance gap vs mobile Chrome is much smaller than on the desktop for the sites I visit (or is even non-existent).
      • vanderZwan 10y ago
        There's also the part where youtube videos keep playing if you move to another tab or app
        • diminish 10y ago
          That's how I listen to music and talks on the go :) Ublock origin and that.
        • dredmorbius 10y ago
          https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13746830#13751653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13746830#13751653
        • bubblethink 10y ago
          You can use newpipe (find it on f-droid) as an alternative to the youtube app. It has some other benefits too. It seems to block ads as a side-effect. You can also fix the stream quality. It has a few limitations too, but it's better than playing them in firefox, and even the youtube app for my use cases.
• andreyv 10y ago
  Starting from this release, Firefox now requires PulseAudio for sound on Linux [1]. ALSA can still be enabled at build time for now, but is not supported. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056
  • Mister_Snuggles 10y ago
    How does this fit in with the current state of sound on Linux? I'd guess that this would impact relatively few people if they're willing to require it.
    • coldpie 10y ago
      I do most of the audio work on the Wine project. I personally think it's a bad move to drop official support for ALSA. Not everyone can or wants to use PulseAudio, for various good and bad reasons. Supporting multiple backends also keeps you "honest," so to speak, preventing you from relying on certain behaviors or features that only some platforms support. But, I can understand the practical arguments behind dropping support for ALSA. The ALSA API really sucks to work with. There's a fair number of bugs and device quirks and whatnot that you have to take care of as an application developer. Standardizing around PulseAudio means only PulseAudio has to care about those quirks, instead of every single application. In practice, the vast majority of users use PulseAudio; there's a small (but vocal) minority that don't. So really there's no clear winner on whether to provide support for ALSA.
      • majewsky 10y ago
        Like many Poettering products, PulseAudio polarizes. There's one minority of users with either quirky setups or just bad luck for whom it just doesn't work, so they have to stick with ALSA. One minority of users (including me) who really loves the features it puts on the table (e.g. per-app volume control, effortless network transparency). And of course, there's a large majority of users who couldn't care less, and who will just choose whatever their distribution installs (which is why I think the most Linux users not using PulseAudio are on those distros which don't install any sound stuff by default, e.g. Arch).
• jaas 10y ago
  I did a lot of work on Firefox's NPAPI implementation over the past decade. Improving that code was rewarding in that it had very tangible benefits for Firefox users but it was pretty clear that improving Firefox's code was only going to get us so far, and not far enough. The system is a mess and I couldn't be happier to see Firefox dropping support. I hope I can be the one to rip out the code altogether some day.
• keda 10y ago
  How is Firefox Android working for everyone? I can't seem to get video player working on some website like bloomberg.com, otherwise I'm a fan of it.
  • majewsky 10y ago
    I avoid videos on mobile like the plague anyway (because of shitty data plan), so I can't comment on that, but otherwise I'm a happy user of Firefox for Android, esp. because it has uBlock Origin available.
  • louhike 10y ago
    I use as my main browser too and I do not have specific problems with it. The greatest advantage is being able to use the same extensions as the desktop version.
    • Drdrdrq 10y ago
      Can you? I miss NoScript... :-/ EDIT: looks like it's available, installing... Thanks!
  • Drdrdrq 10y ago
    Another fan here. There are some rough spots and there doesn't seem to be much done to fix them. I have already cloned the source but haven't found the time to build it yet. My main gripe is that it doesn't treat closing the window as "exit", which means you must go to menu and select Exit if you want to remove session cookies and similar. Another one is that selecting text is clumsy because standard Android lens is not used. But I still prefer FF to its "all-your-data-are-belong-to-us" competition.
    • diminish 10y ago
      actually a whole session is the phone turning on and off. So I like this session behavior better. Otherwise unlike apps I have to login again and again to some websites.
  • dublinben 10y ago
• akmittal 10y ago
  Can't wait for servo to be shipped so that everyone can move back again to Firefox.
• branchless 10y ago
  I have one question: when I hit "." in twitter.com will the whole thing hang whilst it crunches through the updates? I moved from chrome to firefox and so far this is my one complaint. This and I believe the CPU usage is higher for the same number of tabs open.
• liminal 10y ago
  It's frustrating that multi-process is still not enabled on my touchscreen windows laptop. The about:support page says "Disabled by accessibility tools". Feel like I've been waiting for this feature to arrive for years.
  • sp332 10y ago
    You can force-enable it if you want to see for yourself whether it interferes with your Accessibility settings. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Force_Enable https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Force_Enable
  • cpeterso 10y ago
    Multi-process support for Windows touchscreens should be coming in Firefox 53, according to the release notes. 53 will enter the Firefox Beta channel this week or next. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/53.0a2/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/53.0a2/releasenotes/
    • theandrewbailey 10y ago
      Since "Enabled multi-process Firefox for Windows users with touch screens" is in the Firefox 52 release notes, it should be enabled now. I don't understand how else that note could be interpreted.
      • dblohm7 10y ago
        I'm the developer responsible for multiprocess on touch screens. There was a mixup in the release notes. This is what the realities of the situation are: Touchscreen Windows users running 32-bit Firefox 52 should have multiprocess. Touchscreen Windows users running 64-bit Firefox will not have multiprocess until version 54.
        • theandrewbailey 10y ago
          Thanks for the clarification. And thank you for the work.
• sigvef 10y ago
  Firefox is one of those projects that just keeps on giving, and it's all thanks to the hard work put in by all the contributors. It's easy to forget that sometimes. We use Firefox headlessly to render videos at https://www.musicvideodispenser.com https://www.musicvideodispenser.com , a task that certainly wasn't the initial intended use-case for that browser, but it still works, and we have the Firefox team to thank for that!
  • marios 10y ago
    Can you elaborate on the "using Firefox headlessly" ? I recently had to deal with WebRTC on a headless machine and managed to hack up something with some Python scripting and GStreamer. I didn't know it was possible to run Firefox headlessly and now you got me wondering whether that would have been preferable to my stitched up solution.
    • syncsynchalt 10y ago
      On a unix system you can run any browser headlessly by using a headless X11 display such as Xvfb. Instead of having a real screen, Xvfb uses an in-memory framebuffer for screen output that you can screenshot etc if needed. It's as easy as: Xvfb :123 & DISPLAY=:123 firefox ### firefox is now running and outputting ### to the framebuffer display on :123, and ### can be driven by WebDriver etc.
      • zurn 10y ago
        For practical use you want the xvfb-run wrapper script, and use a saner mode than the default 256-color one: xvfb-run --auto-servernum --server-args="-screen 0, 1024x868x24" firefox
    • sigvef 10y ago
      I also tried to hack together WebRTC headlessly a while ago actually! I looked at GStreamer and Kurento, but ended up using Janus instead. Anyway, turns out you can use Xvfb, essentially a "fake screen", to headlessly run GUI programs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xvfb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xvfb , which is what we're doing with Firefox.
• floatboth 10y ago
  WASM, Grid, deprecation of NPAPI and SHA-1 certs, all in one release. That is huge. A very important release!
• exodust 10y ago
  I'm still rockin Firefox 33 (released 2014) on one of my PCs. Sad to observe websites which fail and throw errors without any grace including big sites like Netflix and others. Strange errors and broken functionality usually without any mention of my browser being the problem. That's sloppy development. A browser from 2014 isn't "Netscape 3". Signed up to Google Firebase recently. Tried navigating to the console on my PC with Firefox 33, "there was an error completing your request". That's because I was using a browser from 2014. No mention of that in the error. At first I thought the service was down, then I tried a newer browser. Backwards compatibility or at least graceful degradation and error handling is accessibility. Your site either has it or it doesn't.
  • DominoTree 10y ago
    Why are you using such an old browser? Part of the reason sites are built for current browsers is that responsible users should be updating their browsers frequently. With as many ways as you can have your machine compromised by simply browsing to a website that had some malicious advertising code embedded, I can't imagine why anybody would use such an old browser if they weren't absolutely forced to.
    • unethical_ban 10y ago
      That misses the point. Security is one thing, features are another. Regardless of whether a user should update regularly for security patches, the Internet should support 3-year-old technologies, or gracefully fail otherwise.
    • nonbel 10y ago
      For most people it is because the (desired) security updates come bundled with (undesired) UI changes, default search engine changes, increased telemetry, etc. I work with a visually impaired PhD student, and we had to turn off browser updates because of the hell it was causing him (eg why are my search results different all of a sudden? why are pdfs opening differently?). This isn't limited to firefox, google voice recently got a UI update that lowered the information density. Where he used to be able to see who he was talking to now there is a big colored shape surrounded by whitespace, etc. If he didn't limit the updates, probably 25-50% of his time would be spent dealing with interface changes.
• hedora 10y ago
  sigh I had to switch to Chromium because they've broken + disabled HW acceleration on Linux, and my 2016 netbook is too slow to browse amazon or read news without it. Here is the bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594876 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594876 In the release notes for 52, it says hangouts is broken. I wonder if this means all of webrtc is broken or not. Regressing "stable" features like these is creating serious problems for end users. I wish they'd focus on keeping the ship afloat instead of continuing to chase the new shiny. I really don't like relying on google (or any other ad/surveillance shop) for my web browser.
  • TD-Linux 10y ago
    Hangouts doesn't use WebRTC, it uses a NPAPI plugin on Firefox and nonstandard APIs on Chrome.
  • dralley 10y ago
    >hangouts is broken Hangouts is broken because Hangouts uses NPAPI, not WebRTC Hangouts will be fixed whenever Google actually ships the WebRTC version of Hangouts
  • rebelwebmaster 10y ago
    Here's Google's official post about the Hangouts issue: https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2017/02/google-hangouts-temporary-issues-with-firefox.html https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2017/02/google-hangouts...
    • hackuser 10y ago
      And the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13763759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13763759
• pmoriarty 10y ago
  Does Pentadactyl still work in this release?
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• TekMol 10y ago
  Still no hardware accelerated video on Linux. Everytime Mozilla adds new features, I am reminded of this: https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/
• pkrumins 10y ago
  I just added Firefox 52 to Browserling. You can try this new version at this URL without installing it: https://www.browserling.com/firefox/52/news.ycombinator.com https://www.browserling.com/firefox/52/news.ycombinator.com If the demand is too high then you'll have to wait in a queue for a while to try it. I'm adding more servers right now to let more people try it without waiting.
  • chipperyman573 10y ago
    Out of curiosity, what's the difference between browserling and a service like browserstack?
    • pkrumins 10y ago
      Biggest difference is that Browserling is powered by alien technology, unlike Browserstack that is powered by puny human technology.
  • vdfs 10y ago
    Nice, Can your service be used to test Chrome extensions (like extension Popup)?
    • pkrumins 10y ago
      Yes, you can install Chrome extensions and test them but when you close Browserling, your extensions will be gone.
• nachtigall 10y ago
  Here's a more hacker oriented write-up at https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/03/firefox-52-introducing-web-assembly-css-grid-and-the-grid-inspector/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/03/firefox-52-introducing-web... (published today). Discussion (if it comes) at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13812145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13812145
• yoavm 10y ago
  And still no support for <input type="date"> . I just can't believe Firefox is behind Edge on this one. I'm using Firefox as main browser for years now, and it feels so bad when I always need to use a polyfill when developing a form with date field - to support Firefox. It's embrassing that Chrome supported it since... Chrome 20, in 2012.
  • mkurz 10y ago
    Date/time input types are behind a flag starting with v54. Also Safari still doesn't support it...
  • nachtigall 10y ago
    I think this is in Nightly and now Firefox Developer Edition (54) behing a pref: https://twitter.com/mozhacks/status/821005161602646016 https://twitter.com/mozhacks/status/821005161602646016
• conductor 10y ago
  Despite of my media.gmp-provider.enabled setting being set to false Firefox makes a connection to ciscobinary.openh264.org on port 80 and downloads the h264 decoder binary provided by Cisco. Does this mean that the library is being downloaded (and executed) using plain HTTP without any authentication? Sounds like a nice target for QUANTUM style MITM attacks.
• beefman 10y ago
  If you're using Tree Style Tab and this upgrade causes new tabs to appear after a delay of many seconds... setting browser.tabs.animate to false resolved it for me (macOS 10.12).
• MichaelMoser123 10y ago
  What are the supported operating systems, I don't see any list of supported OS's ? i did the upgrade and it just crashed on startup (on windows 7 enterprise edition), Installing from scratch didn't help either.
  • bzbarsky 10y ago
    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/52.0/system-requirements/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/52.0/system-requiremen... has the list. Windows 7 is supported...
• digi_owl 10y ago
  Did they bump the minimum Android version required? I do not see the release via the Play store app, but the web site shows it. For a project that seems to bill itself as being for the people, they seems awful quick at dropping backwards compatibility.
• FullyFunctional 10y ago
  What happened to TLS 1.3 which was supposed to land in Firefox 52? (At least according to https://threatpost.com/mozilla-turning-tls-1-3-on-by-default-with-firefox-52/121461/ https://threatpost.com/mozilla-turning-tls-1-3-on-by-default...) Not that I'm ungrateful; Firefox is my preferred browser.