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Firefox Product Roadmap

376 points by nachtigall 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Vinnl 9y ago
What's interesting is that the Mobile section doesn't mention Firefox for Android at all? Given that both Firefox Klar and Firefox Focus are mentioned, which I thought were different names for the same product, I'm probably misunderstanding something. Anyone who can clear that up for me?
- Brakenshire 9y ago
  Firefox for Android seems a bit underplayed in general. I'd have thought all this work on parallel processing with Quantum would make a difference in particular with mobile chips.
- opencl 9y ago
  Klar and Focus are indeed the same thing, something about a trademark dispute in Germany over the name Focus. Whoever wrote the article seems to have been slightly confused about this. I think Firefox for Android didn't get mentioned just because most of the desktop improvements apply equally to the Android version and they don't have much mobile-specific stuff planned. Meanwhile Focus/Klar is an entirely different codebase that is getting some new features.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
    Klar also has slightly different settings for telemetry as a result of local laws. "Firefox Klar is a version of Firefox Focus for Germany, Austria and Switzerland with user activity tracking disabled by default." - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.klar/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.klar/
  - Fej 9y ago
    But Quantum still hasn't come to Android?
    - NoGravitas 9y ago
      Firefox for Android has been using Quantum for some time. It's just that they haven't switched Focus over to using it (it currently uses an Android WebView).
- iggldiggl 9y ago
  Recent developments have been rather less than encouraging. First of all, gradually the whole of the original/long-term developers for the front-end either got moved to other projects (the iOS browser, other experimental mobile projects, Focus, ...) or left Mozilla, so by the end of 2016 almost nobody was left and most of the front end development was transferred to the Taipei office. There was some initial enthusiasm and activity, but then the same thing happened again - some developers were shifted over to start yet another browser (Firefox Rocket) and after the UI refresh for the 57 update activity started quietening down again. Then of course this January all mainline Firefox development from the Taipei office ceased completely (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16186927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16186927), which has led to the situation that since then, the front-end part of the app hasn't had any active Mozilla developers assigned (!). There's some minimal staffing to continue looking at bug reports and identifying any real critical issues that still require fixing ASAP with whatever development resources can be scraped together or contracted in, but other than that everything is on standby. There are some signs that some sort of rewrite might be on the table (although interestingly the roadmap keeps completely quiet about that), but until more is known about that, I tend to be rather pessimistic and assume lots of opportunities for losing or regressing current functionality and it taking ages until things are sorted out again, if ever.
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    Thanks for the insights, that was exactly what I was hoping for. It's a shame that the situation seems so dire. I guess I can understand it, since Firefox for Android really is not doing well and Focus seems to be doing a lot better, but it's still a really important part of the Firefox ecosystem, so it would be great if they could find a way to make it work well. But ah well. And perhaps they'll try to turn Focus into its replacement later on.
    - iggldiggl 9y ago
      > Firefox for Android really is not doing well and Focus seems to be doing a lot better From what public data can be pierced together, Firefox for Android still has more active daily users than Focus's lifetime install count on the Play Store, though.
maufl 9y ago
Can we maybe instead of/additional to a new Mozilla password manager get an API with which existing password managers can integrate with Firefox?
- luhn 9y ago
  Doesn't that exist already? I'm happily using 1Password with Firefox.
  - logic 9y ago
    The hoops a password manager has to jump through to get halfway decent integration into a browser is basically begging for security vulnerabilities. Seriously, just look at how much JavaScript is riding behind webextensions like LastPass, KeePassRPC, Bitwarden, etc. It's staggering. I dont have any interest in using Lockbox; I already have a self-hosted open-source password management solution (Bitwarden, in my case, but that's just an implementation detail) that works for much more than just my web browser, which means I'm way more interested in hearing how Mozilla plans to make this kind of integration smoother and less error-prone. I need to sync passwords for apps on my phone, for desktop apps that aren't web browsers (and for multiple browsers on several platforms), and Mozilla's one-off reinvention of existing software and protocols for their singular use cases is just xkcd'ing the problem, sadly.
abhiminator 9y ago
As a recent Firefox user, I'm super excited about the future evolution of the browser. I switched to Firefox Quantum after using Chrome as mainstay for over 9 years and I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the under-the-hood refinements and UX enhancements in v57.0 -- could clearly observe the impact of Gecko's upgraded Servo/Rust components at work. Noticeable visible differences included page-load performance as well as a smaller memory footprint relative to Chrome. Faster WebAssembly[0] starting from v58.0 made the speed optimization more visible -- it was at this point when I truly fell in love with the browser -- Firefox dethroned Chrome as my default. Add to this the hardened tracking protection, Greasemonkey's super massive stash of user scripts and values of the non-profit organization that supports the browser -- Chrome felt so old-school. [0] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/making-webassembly-even-faster-firefoxs-new-streaming-and-tiering-compiler/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/making-webassembly-even-fa...
- executesorder66 9y ago
  > Faster WebAssembly[0] starting from v58.0 made the speed optimization more visible How many websites do you visit (and which ones are they) that use WebAssembly?
  - a9t9 9y ago
    I am not the op, but (faster) WebAssembly could turn out to be a big thing for browser extensions. For example, we are just in the process of adding WebAssembly powered image search to our Kantu Selenium IDE to allow for visual testing. We tried before with normal Javascript and even WebGL, but both results were not usable for various reasons. The websight page gave us new hope ;-) https://websightjs.com/ https://websightjs.com/
    - stromgo 9y ago
      Faster WebAssembly isn't listed on the roadmap, so you are disappointed, right? Wasm is currently considered "around half as fast as native"[0]. The Wasm design, Emscripten compiler, and browser compilers all have a part of responsibility in this, but I suspect that browser compilers have the largest share. Mozilla created The WebAssembly Explorer[1] which shows good-looking ".wat", but bloated "Firefox x86 Assembly" compared to "LLVM x86 Assembly". I hope they intend to use this tool to improve Firefox x86 Assembly. [0] https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen/issues/1070 https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen/issues/1070 [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/03/previewing-the-webassembly-explorer/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/03/previewing-the-webassembly...
TheCoreh 9y ago
I really like the goals they picked, but wish "Native Look and feel" was also in there. I use Firefox as my primary browser on Windows, but on the Mac it still feels significantly non-native. For instance, we're still missing rubber-band scrolling, Firefox still doesn't set the file attribute that causes the progress bars to be displayed on the Finder for each file and on the Downloads stack on the dock, on full screen the toolbar doesn't 'move down' along with the menu bar when I move my cursor to the top of the screen, there is still no pinch to zoom, the back/forward trackpad gestures and checkboxes/radio buttons are not animated, etc.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  If anyone wants to help out with any of those issues the respective bugs are: Rubber band scrolling: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1124108 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1124108 Downloads in Finder: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=909760 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=909760 Toolbar movement in full screen: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=738335 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=738335 Pinch to zoom: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688990 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688990 Animate back gesture: doesn’t seem to be a bug for this. Animated checkboxes: can’t find a bug for this either.
  - TheCoreh 9y ago
    Thanks for posting these!
  - ascom 9y ago
    There actually is an animated back gesture, but E10s sort of broke it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1170032 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1170032
- haxiomic 9y ago
  The lack of trackpad gestures is very surprising in 2018. Fortunately it can be implemented with an addon but it's not perfect https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-touch-zoom/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-touch-z...
kivy 9y ago
You had me at "opinionated."
gkya 9y ago
> Global permissions management: Permission prompts, especially for notifications, have gotten out of control and users must deny them individually at every site that offers them. Firefox will provide users with a way to disable permission prompts globally for Location, Camera, Microphone, and Notifications. (Firefox 59) THANK YOU! I hope this will stop the notification boxes implemented in JS too. Using the web has become a whack-a-mole game with each website requiring me to tell it off ten times unitl I can get to the content.
- mikelward 9y ago
  I would gladly disable notification prompts. A number of sites I rarely visit show them. There's a reason I visit them rarely, and it's not because I forget to! But camera and microphone? They seem useful for Skype, Hangouts, and other opt-in use cases. Are people seeing those prompts so much they're annoyed by them? What's the mechanism to opt back in for selected sites?
  - mikelward 9y ago
    Appears to be partially covered by https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1434597 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1434597. Not clear it will be fixed before launch.
  - gkya 9y ago
    Notifications are the most frequent offenders, in my experience, and it's followed by the Location one. It seems to me that they'll provide four individual settings one for each permission in order to optionally globally disable the relative one. I don't think it's going to be one button to kill them all though. I'll disable cam, mic and notifications, but I do share my location to some websites very occasionally.
    - mikelward 9y ago
      Yeah. But it looks like the way it works is you say "Don't ask again" on e.g. microphone, then there's no good way to deal with some new site where you actually want to use your mic. I guess the site can detect the permission denial. But making the website show browser-specific instructions for how to disable the global opt-out seems really suboptimal. The browser is where browser-specific specific UI belongs!
yagodragon 9y ago
How much worse than chrome is firefox actually? I use firefox beta on a 500$ laptop with ubuntu mate and i'm more than satisfied with the speed and general performance. Privacy has been a very hot topic on HN lately (or has always been) and now i see people complaining over silly little things on firefox than make them go back to Chrome. How can we complain for the monopoly of Google Facebook etc, when we can't stand using a very good, competent and open source product that respects our privacy despite some minor bugs? Is firefox really so bad that you're willing to give everything to Google?
- mehta 9y ago
  One data point: it is not bad at all. I use Firefox as my primary browser(having used chrome on and off for many years) and it works well for almost everything. There are occasional sites that don't behave with ff and for those I go to chrome. Even the andoid version is not bad (the only problem is that is is harder to avoid chrome due to smaller issues with websites).
  - Timshel 9y ago
    Support for ublock origin on the android mobile version make it so useful.
- Timshel 9y ago
  Sadly not many mentions of privacy in their roadmap (outside of grouping controls). Things like "container tab" could allow them to really differentiate from Chrome ...
  - yscik 9y ago
    They already have containers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... Though I would prefer if it were a bit harder to accidentally leave a container when opening a new tab.
  - mintplant 9y ago
wst_ 9y ago
Video auto play blocking! I can't wait to have that feature. I hope it'll be there on mobile version as well.
- Lev1a 9y ago
  You're able to activate that feature right now. - open about:config. - type "autoplay" into the search bar at the top of the page. There should be two options there: "media.autoplay.enabled" and "media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground" What these options do should be rather self-explanatory. EDIT: damn markdown formatting
knodi 9y ago
I recently moved from Chrome to Firefox 57 on both Mobile and Desktop. The only grip i have with it is that i hope it can get a good with device battery as safari is.
roryisok 9y ago
> by blocking the worst content and more clearly communicating the privacy and other protections the browser offers. I really hope this includes the likes of outbrain, taboola and similar clickbait garbage that pollutes far too many blogs these days
mkj 9y ago
Boo, looks like osx keychain integration will still languish (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400 Reported 17 years ago). I'm puzzled what Lockbox is mean to do. https://mozilla-lockbox.github.io/lockbox-extension/faqs/ https://mozilla-lockbox.github.io/lockbox-extension/faqs/ What’s the difference between Lockbox and the Firefox password manager? newer encryption than what is offered with password manager AES256-GCM, HMAC SHA-256, eh, sounds fairly run of the mill?
- gruez 9y ago
  >Boo, looks like osx keychain integration will still languish probably because it wouldn't work with sync on linux/windows/android > eh, sounds fairly run of the mill? would you have preferred them to use some cutting edge cipher instead?
  - mkj 9y ago
    I can't see why they couldn't sync with linux/windows/android as well as storing the entries in OSX keychain. "run of the mill" is me taking a lazy jab at their description of advantages of Lockbox - they need to make a whole new product just to use the standard cipher/auth you'd expect them to be using anyway? I assume there might be more to it, but their product page doesn't really explain much.
megous 9y ago
I'm excited for WebAuthentication. That's probably the only thing that will push me to implement something new and significantly valuable for my apps this year based on web platform improvements.
trzmiel4 9y ago
I've always loved Firefox. Had to switch to Chrome for stability and resource consumption, but I did not enjoy being all Google and I did miss numerous awesome features of Firefox. The awesomebar and dev tools to just name a few. Went back to Firefox Quantum for a few months. Now I'm back on Chrome for exactly the same reasons. After hours of active use, Firefox is eating a ton of RAM and consuming way too much CPU, while also struggling to open any pages (let alone more complex apps) or downright crashing the apps that were already running. Plus, it does not seem to support web calls at all (Google Meet, BlueJeans, GoToMeeting you name it). I hate being on Chrome again, and I miss those Firefox features. But I have work to do, and I just can't have my tools grind to a halt all the time.
- PakG1 9y ago
  I wanted to love Firefox Quantum. At first, it was great. But for whatever reason (likely CPU and RAM as people are describing in this thread), I've discovered that its performance doesn't scale with many tabs as well as Chrome. I've discovered also that when I switch from tab to tab, sometimes the tab needs to reload the page. That's fine. But sometimes, it takes forever to get past a blank white screen on that tab. Sometimes when I open a new tab and try a Google search from the URL bar, same thing. Tried the same URL or same Google search from the URL bar in a new tab in Chrome, absolutely no problem. Sorry, I'm currently switching back to Chrome. :(
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    > I've discovered also that when I switch from tab to tab, sometimes the tab needs to reload the page. I believe that should only happen for tabs restored during startup. Unlike Chrome (unless something has changed), Firefox lazy-loads restored tabs on startup. I think that's preferable to the alternative.
    - PakG1 9y ago
      Sure, but I said that's fine. My point is that it doesn't load. I wait for minutes, and it doesn't load. Quoting myself: I've discovered also that when I switch from tab to tab, sometimes the tab needs to reload the page. That's fine. But sometimes, it takes forever to get past a blank white screen on that tab.
fwgwgwgch 9y ago
Given how neutral Firefox is I wish they didn't create new stuff when good open community developed alternatives are available. I'm referring to lockbox. It would be better id this was an extension to keepass or a fork that read the same file format
ergo14 9y ago
I can't wait for webcomponents to land in stable.
thriftwy 9y ago
It's sad that browser UI improvements came to an end. A number of innovative browsers never gained traction, and when mainstream ones try to improve UI it gets considerably worse. Every new browser has a short runway of new awesome ideas and then it's stagnant for decades.
- realusername 9y ago
  The UI of Firefox improved greatly, just remember how the old preferences screen looked like before.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    I've just opened preferences and I don't see much improvement. It's a page now, and there's less stuff, but it's what I had 15 years ago. Anyway, I still have to go to about:preferences all the time. I totally dislike their experiments with menu bar. I never wanted that. It's Ribbon all over again.
    - chrismorgan 9y ago
      I might have said that Preferences was much the same as ever, for most practical purposes, with only comparatively minor improvements; but one thing particularly stands out as a massive improvement: the search box. Now I don’t need to know where what I want to tweak is, if only I know what to search for, which I pretty much always do.
  - einr 9y ago
    I remember when it used to look like a nice, compact native dialog box* instead of a full-screen, space-wasting abomination that follows no standards for anything. But consistency, visual coherency, discoverability and predictability are apparently all outmoded concepts in UI design, so opinions like mine -- that native applications should look and feel like native applications -- don't seem to be worth much among the cool crowd nowadays. * https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/firefox-38-restore-old-preferences.png https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/firefox-...
pixard 9y ago
My one issue with Firefox right now is CPU use. On my iMac or on desktop it doesn't truly matter. But on a MBP no matter how many tabs I have or what I'm doing the fans never turn on with Chrome. On Firefox they turn on regularly. I've tested while looking at the activity monitor a bit. Loading random sites like HN show Firefox spiking to 80-90% CPU while Chrome spikes to 20-30%.
- 1k2ka 9y ago
  I have the same issue on my Linux laptop. It seems like Firefox always maxes out at least one core when loading pages or rendering pages with certain video codecs. I'm guessing Chrome throttles its performance or maybe it's just more performant.
- Certhas 9y ago
  On my 2012 MBA opening HN spikes very briefly to 25%. As others have pointed out, if you're genuinely hitting performance bugs then record a profile and fill a bug report.
anameaname 9y ago
> QUIC (aka HTTP/3) Why focus on QUIC when the JS APIs to use it aren't available? Numerous of the features of HTTP/2 aren't usable (i.e. trailers, flow control, security sensitive headers, priority, etc.). I don't understand how the web is supposed to flourish without giving web developers some kind of access to these tools. Meanwhile, app developers are showered with such goodies.
- dochtman 9y ago
  I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion, or what you mean? As I understand it, QUIC is a transport layer for the HTTP application-level protocol, so I would guess that pretty much all of the JS-exposed APIs are equally applicable.
  - Shoothe 9y ago
    I guess they mean extra API that utilize stuff that's in HTTP/2 but not in HTTP/1.1.
- asadotzler 9y ago
  QUIC was a mistake on the roadmap. I've removed it. I mis-understood some documentation about experiments with QUIC. Sorry for the confusion.
dark_ph0enix 9y ago
No mention of u2f. Is it because it's already available on the build (via about:config) or because they are not focusing on it at all this year?
- dark_ph0enix 9y ago
  Uhmm while not on the roadmap, according to their wiki[1] they are still working on it. [1]https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/CryptoEngineering https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/CryptoEngineering
- dochtman 9y ago
  I think it is effectively part of/superseded by Web Authentication, which is mentioned and links to: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/tsevyqfBHLE/lccldWNNBwAJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/t... First sentence in that thread is "Web Authentication is backward compatible with FIDO U2F second-factor tokens, and also supports more advanced capabilities in future FIDO 2.0 devices."
  - dark_ph0enix 9y ago
    Yup, just came to edit my comment after reading the Web Authentication bit, guess will leave it if anyone has the same question.
    - Shoothe 9y ago
      Yes, WebAuthentication will supersede U2F and it's backward compatible (meaning you can use your Yubikeys, but the API is different).
- Manishearth 9y ago
  The problem is that there's a buggy u2f library out in the wild distributed by Google that depends on Chrome-specific impl details. This means that while the pref works for sites like Github, it doesn't work for Duo or Google logins or anything that uses u2f.js. Sometimes it doesn't work to the extent that these sites break in other ways. There's nothing that Firefox can do about this; aside from waiting for it to be fixed. Ultimately the thing that is going to be shipped is probably webauthn.
majewsky 9y ago
Does anyone know if WebRender will become available as a crate for other Rust applications to use? I will be working on a text-heavy GUI application later this year and WebRender looks like a good fit feature-wise.
- dochtman 9y ago
  You can probably just pull it from GitHub: https://github.com/servo/webrender https://github.com/servo/webrender (Cargo lets you specify Git repos for dependencies.)
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Sure, but an unreleased crate is not likely to make any commitments wrt API stability etc.
    - zaarn 9y ago
      The Github Repo contains 3 releases as of now. Just because it has no release on crates.io doesn't mean it's unreleased or unstable. Crates.io is just one way to get your crates.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  Yes, WebRender is designed to be usable in other apps. There are small examples of standalone usage in the repository on GitHub.
a_imho 9y ago
Filter certain types of ads by default: Firefox will offer users a simple ad filtering option. We're in the early stages still, researching types of advertisements that should be blocked by default. (Q3) Come on, do the right thing for once and put the user first.
- Lev1a 9y ago
  There ARE some types of non-intrusive ads (read: unnoticed unless specifically searched for) like little ribbons with text and maybe a link, like on [Troy Hunts blog](https://www.troyhunt.com/ https://www.troyhunt.com/) or small non-animated banners like the ones on StackOverflow. The ones everyone (except the ad networks) wants blocked by default are the intrusive ones, like video ads auto-playing loud BS or the ones where you scroll or move the cursor and some <div> or something pops up, darkens the rest of the site and annoys the reader with some pathetic bid to "subscribe to our page" etc.
  - a_imho 9y ago
    I completely disagree, non-intrusive ('acceptable' etc) ads don't exist, no matter how hard this concept is pushed, period. Nevertheless, pretending Mozilla is not receiving funds from Google (who is already trying to force their standards through Chrome / Coalition for Better Ads) is intellectually dishonest. Block all ads, let the user white list, that is the pro user approach. Should have been done years ago.
pjmlp 9y ago
Looking forward to web components, ES6 modules and shapes path editor.
sv12l 9y ago
great choices, but I'm little disappointed seeing 0 results while searching for 'battery' as my Mac-book battery last longer on Safari than Firefox.
- crispyporkbites 9y ago
  Can ff really do much about that? Safari is probably getting a better battery life out of your Mac because Apple have a direct incentive to optimise for their own hardware.
- muizelaar 9y ago
  Fixing https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522 should bring a noticeable improvement here and should happen in 2018.
  - sv12l 9y ago
    Sorry, how does "Avoid using a transparent window by using CoreAnimation" improves battery life?
    - yoklov 9y ago
      Less compositing necessary, among other things
- jakecopp 9y ago
  This is the only thing I want from Firefox in 2018. It's the single issue I have with it that might push me back to Safari.
- mbesto 9y ago
  Ya, I just switched back to Chrome, because it was unbearable to use Firefox over Chrome without my laptop plugged in (we're talking ~8hrs life down to ~1.5hrs). I really wanted to like Firefox (given its strong privacy)...such a shame.
maeln 9y ago
> Breach Alerts: Breach alerts will inform a user if a site they've visited has been breached and will ask if the user wants to have their account checked to determine if it was compromised. If it was compromised, some helpful information will be presented to the user. (October) This is very interesting. If Chrome decide to follow the same path it could give a serious incentive to some website to be more careful about there security. The whole "display a warning when login are passed via HTTP" already managed to create some reaction. It probably won't be a revolution but it might be a good first step.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  And of course we should be ready for the slew of sites complaining about how terrible and irresponsible it is to tell users that they've been compromised:)
  - ksk 9y ago
    The last thing a business wants is a browser scaring customers away without cause. But I think they would be OK as long as the list is maintained and is accurate. Certainly, we should do more to penalize hackers, and not blame the victims of cyber attacks (as is sometimes the case).
    - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
      > we should do more to penalize hackers Malicious hacking is already illegal with significant penalties. > not blame the victims If the victims failed even basic security measures, I'm quite happy to give them their share of blame. There have been plenty of reports of exposed databases with no password protection, places that stored passwords in plain text, folks running unpatched OSs... You can't just ignore security and pretend that you're not at fault.
      - ksk 9y ago
        >Malicious hacking is already illegal with significant penalties. Yes, more people should end up in jail. >If the victims failed even basic security measures, I'm quite happy to give them their share of blame. Please detail how you have established that the victims themselves personally ignored security practices. >There have been plenty of reports of exposed databases with no password protection, places that stored passwords in plain text, folks running unpatched OSs... You can't just ignore security and pretend that you're not at fault. You are making broad claims. Remember that the non-technical business owners/managers/CEOs etc need our help, and they don't need people shaming them for using vendors or consultants who might have made made mistakes.
Spiritus 9y ago
I don’t care about any of that. Just add swipe animations when moving forward/backward in history already!
Grue3 9y ago
>Ctrl+F "tab groups" >Phrase not found Guess I'm still staying on v56...
- opencl 9y ago
  You're probably better off with v52ESR, it's at least getting maintained with security patches for another few months. FF61 should enable the Tab Groups addon to return in June (release of the tab hiding API), v52 is maintained until August.
- hokus 9y ago
  I use to try everything available to group tabs regardless of browser. They all had their issues. Eventually I just went with keeping things in their own browser window. With multiple monitors or a screen big enough to have separate windows the dragging and dropping of tabs works fine. Then the issue becomes that you cant save tab groups :( You can even use multiple browsers if they do something useful for a type of group. History and bookmarking becomes even more mysterious that way. The extensions I used to save groups are all broken atm.
- oblio 9y ago
  Tab Groups isn't in v56 either. What you're looking for is actually there, at least most of it: > More Extension APIs: Firefox extensions will become more capable with additional features for tab management and organization, including a full implementation of Tab Hiding (61) Once you can hide tabs, you can basically have tab groups.
  - mintplant 9y ago
    This is in fact the explicit motivator for the addition of this API.
- madmax108 9y ago
  This dropped recently. Needs a config to be set in about:config, but besides that, works just as well https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view...
k__ 9y ago
I switched to Firefox recently (with v57 or something) and I'm impressed, it really feels much faster than Chrome. But they need to get all videos working. It feels to me that it's a 50:50 chance to play a video. On Android the startup is faster than with Chrome too, but the scrolling feels rather sluggish, so I still prefer Chrome here.
- clouddrover 9y ago
  > But they need to get all videos working. It feels to me that it's a 50:50 chance to play a video. Videos generally work for me in Firefox. The only videos that don't work for me are from sites that are still (and only) using Flash because I don't have Flash installed. What's an example of a video that doesn't work for you?
  - k__ 9y ago
    Flash videos work. FF asks me if it should start Flash for it. Some "html5" videos on Facebook and Twitter don't work.
    - clouddrover 9y ago
      I rarely look at videos on Facebook but all the Twitter videos (or GIFs which they convert to H.264 video) I've seen have worked in Firefox. Do you have a link to a Twitter video that doesn't work for you in Firefox? If these videos are somehow different from normal then I'd find it a useful test case for an application I wrote which makes use of Twitter video.
childintime 9y ago
This feature already out (v59) caught my eye: "When we detect that disk IO may be slow, we send a network request in parallel, and we use the first response that comes back. For users with slow spinning disks and a low latency network, the result would be faster loads". Wow, the browser is giving up on the OS. What madness given that typical W10 PC's with 2GB RAM (with the disk spinning in vain) have only two apps open: the browser and its adversary, the AV. Heck 4GB isn't comfortable anymore with several tabs open.
markdog12 9y ago
Anyone know if/when WebRender will be testable on Android?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
kibwen 9y ago
For those curious about the progress of Pathfinder (WebRender's GPU-based font and vector graphics rasterizer), this month's Bay Area Rust meetup featured a talk and live demo from pcwalton: https://air.mozilla.org/rust-bay-area-meet-up-march-2018/ https://air.mozilla.org/rust-bay-area-meet-up-march-2018/
adambware 9y ago
Biggest issue for me switching to Firefox is the DevTools. "Undo" does not work for CSS changes in DevTools! Tried to submit a bug for this but it was misunderstood and dismissed. Hoping this might be fixed by the 3-Panel Inspector...
alexozer 9y ago
I feel like I'm definitely the vocal minority here, but I'm still a sucker for Google ecosystem and just find Firefox still overall slower than Chrome. I still consider myself a power user, but don't expect much out of my browser besides speed, and many pages just simply take longer to load in FF 58 than Chrome. Downvote me.
- smoyer 9y ago
  I'm apparently your opposite - I've been using the Developer Edition for quite some time after switching from Chrome (which ate piles of memory).
- ksk 9y ago
  How are you a sucker if you have a rational basis for making the decision? FWIW I switched from Chrome to FF and haven't noticed any major differences.
ksec 9y ago
Most of these features started in 2016 / 2017. So 2018 really is shipping those stable. But what about Servo? As in the parsing and layering part? Last time the test we had 10x speed difference compared to Gecko. WebRendr is GPU / Nvidia limited? I though PCwalton said it will also be a Software Render too.
- sp332 9y ago
  Servo is a rendering engine and Firefox has no plans to include it.
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    AFAIK: Servo is an experimental browser with many components, including a web rendering engine. Some parts of Servo already are migrated to Firefox, mostly in the Quantum release last fall.
    - sp332 9y ago
      Project Quantum is the Gecko-based project to bring Servo bits to Firefox. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum
    - sp332 9y ago
      Hey, sorry about the nonsensical comment yesterday. I was pretty much asleep and didn't really need to start an argument over nothing.
      - forapurpose 9y ago
        Thanks for being so thoughtful, but no problem. I honestly didn't realize I was involved in an argument.
rsuelzer 9y ago
I have tried to use Firefox but I keep ending up back on Chrome. It's because I am lazy and I have been sucked into the convience of Google's password manager. Also because many of the developer extensions I use aren't on Firefox (Apollo Dev tools). I think Firefox is great, I should make the switch.
throwaway84742 9y ago
No easily switchable, fully isolated profiles a-la Chrome, no default zoom support without installing an add on (handy on 4K displays). Epic fail. Better luck next year, Mozilla.
alinhan 9y ago
For Firefox to gain market share, it needs to target the average Joe, which I think they are trying. But in order to do that, it's not enough to make it work better than Chrome when you have 40 tabs open (less memory and CPU usage), they should also try to have the clean interface that Chrome has, or even cleaner, right after the installation. Take the toolbar, for example: After installation it has all that unused space on the left and right sides of the address bar. This is probably to encourage customizations to it, but Joe doesn't care about that. And then there are so many things on the toolbar that shouldn't be there. I think they should be hidden behind the sandwich menu, as the power users will know to add to the toolbar the ones that they need, and Joe wouldn't be overwhelmed by them. Only these things should be present on the toolbar: back button, forward button, reload button (maybe), a home button - only if a home page was set, a clean omnibar, and the sandwich button. Instead, even after trying to remove as much as I can from the toolbar, I still have: a non clean omnibar (two icons on its left end that seem to come from different universes, and too many things on it's right end - there should only be a dropdown button for the history at this end) and a more tools button. I counted and in total on the omnibar and the toolbar I have 4 buttons for "more stuff", instead of two (one dropdown for the history and the sandwich menu). But I do think they are on the right track. I personally switched to Firefox from Chrome less than a year ago, and I'm not going back. Thank you, Mozilla, for all the good work that you did on Firefox!
cesnja 9y ago
I'm just sad that proper keyboard API for a better Vimperator/Pentadactyl successor seems to have been silently dropped.
- CorpusCalcium 9y ago
  Isn't that what this bug is mostly about? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061
  - cesnja 9y ago
    Seems like it. But just compare how vocal the "we intend to support vimperator-like functionality" message used to be before version 57, and how silent everything has been since.
    - CorpusCalcium 9y ago
      I honestly don't remember the actual message from Mozilla varying much over the past two years when it comes to Vimperator-needed APIs. But then I don't remember anyone doing much to get things figured out on that front, so a lack of progress is hardly surprising to me.
AnarchistNode7 9y ago
To what for a price.. The new Firefox mainly caters to simple users. Mozilla has abandoned their feature rich concept to appeal only to Chrome users. Mozilla's only goal today is becoming number one in marketshare and beat Google no matter what. Even if that means they alienate every single power user. I do not at all agree with that. That is a pure simple betrayal - exchanging their origin user base against Chrome users. Opera did that too. The issue is, there is already an over-simplistic browser - Chrome. And only a minority of Chrome users will switch over to Firefox - the hope to absorb the majority of the Chrome user base will not work out for Mozilla. They should have kept the features for the nerds and geeks inside. You know, there is something which is called honesty and dignity. This is for what we from Anonymous are standing for and what we are valuing. And it is disgusting to see that an Open Source organization throws all of that over board just to become mainstream compatible.

376 points by nachtigall 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

What's interesting is that the Mobile section doesn't mention Firefox for Android at all? Given that both Firefox Klar and Firefox Focus are mentioned, which I thought were different names for the same product, I'm probably misunderstanding something. Anyone who can clear that up for me?

Brakenshire 9y ago
Firefox for Android seems a bit underplayed in general. I'd have thought all this work on parallel processing with Quantum would make a difference in particular with mobile chips.
opencl 9y ago
Klar and Focus are indeed the same thing, something about a trademark dispute in Germany over the name Focus. Whoever wrote the article seems to have been slightly confused about this. I think Firefox for Android didn't get mentioned just because most of the desktop improvements apply equally to the Android version and they don't have much mobile-specific stuff planned. Meanwhile Focus/Klar is an entirely different codebase that is getting some new features.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  Klar also has slightly different settings for telemetry as a result of local laws. "Firefox Klar is a version of Firefox Focus for Germany, Austria and Switzerland with user activity tracking disabled by default." - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.klar/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.klar/
- Fej 9y ago
  But Quantum still hasn't come to Android?
  - NoGravitas 9y ago
    Firefox for Android has been using Quantum for some time. It's just that they haven't switched Focus over to using it (it currently uses an Android WebView).
iggldiggl 9y ago
Recent developments have been rather less than encouraging. First of all, gradually the whole of the original/long-term developers for the front-end either got moved to other projects (the iOS browser, other experimental mobile projects, Focus, ...) or left Mozilla, so by the end of 2016 almost nobody was left and most of the front end development was transferred to the Taipei office. There was some initial enthusiasm and activity, but then the same thing happened again - some developers were shifted over to start yet another browser (Firefox Rocket) and after the UI refresh for the 57 update activity started quietening down again. Then of course this January all mainline Firefox development from the Taipei office ceased completely (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16186927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16186927), which has led to the situation that since then, the front-end part of the app hasn't had any active Mozilla developers assigned (!). There's some minimal staffing to continue looking at bug reports and identifying any real critical issues that still require fixing ASAP with whatever development resources can be scraped together or contracted in, but other than that everything is on standby. There are some signs that some sort of rewrite might be on the table (although interestingly the roadmap keeps completely quiet about that), but until more is known about that, I tend to be rather pessimistic and assume lots of opportunities for losing or regressing current functionality and it taking ages until things are sorted out again, if ever.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Thanks for the insights, that was exactly what I was hoping for. It's a shame that the situation seems so dire. I guess I can understand it, since Firefox for Android really is not doing well and Focus seems to be doing a lot better, but it's still a really important part of the Firefox ecosystem, so it would be great if they could find a way to make it work well. But ah well. And perhaps they'll try to turn Focus into its replacement later on.
  - iggldiggl 9y ago
    > Firefox for Android really is not doing well and Focus seems to be doing a lot better From what public data can be pierced together, Firefox for Android still has more active daily users than Focus's lifetime install count on the Play Store, though.

maufl 9y ago

Can we maybe instead of/additional to a new Mozilla password manager get an API with which existing password managers can integrate with Firefox?

luhn 9y ago
Doesn't that exist already? I'm happily using 1Password with Firefox.
- logic 9y ago
  The hoops a password manager has to jump through to get halfway decent integration into a browser is basically begging for security vulnerabilities. Seriously, just look at how much JavaScript is riding behind webextensions like LastPass, KeePassRPC, Bitwarden, etc. It's staggering. I dont have any interest in using Lockbox; I already have a self-hosted open-source password management solution (Bitwarden, in my case, but that's just an implementation detail) that works for much more than just my web browser, which means I'm way more interested in hearing how Mozilla plans to make this kind of integration smoother and less error-prone. I need to sync passwords for apps on my phone, for desktop apps that aren't web browsers (and for multiple browsers on several platforms), and Mozilla's one-off reinvention of existing software and protocols for their singular use cases is just xkcd'ing the problem, sadly.

abhiminator 9y ago

As a recent Firefox user, I'm super excited about the future evolution of the browser. I switched to Firefox Quantum after using Chrome as mainstay for over 9 years and I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the under-the-hood refinements and UX enhancements in v57.0 -- could clearly observe the impact of Gecko's upgraded Servo/Rust components at work. Noticeable visible differences included page-load performance as well as a smaller memory footprint relative to Chrome. Faster WebAssembly[0] starting from v58.0 made the speed optimization more visible -- it was at this point when I truly fell in love with the browser -- Firefox dethroned Chrome as my default. Add to this the hardened tracking protection, Greasemonkey's super massive stash of user scripts and values of the non-profit organization that supports the browser -- Chrome felt so old-school. [0] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/making-webassembly-even-faster-firefoxs-new-streaming-and-tiering-compiler/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/making-webassembly-even-fa...

executesorder66 9y ago
> Faster WebAssembly[0] starting from v58.0 made the speed optimization more visible How many websites do you visit (and which ones are they) that use WebAssembly?
- a9t9 9y ago
  I am not the op, but (faster) WebAssembly could turn out to be a big thing for browser extensions. For example, we are just in the process of adding WebAssembly powered image search to our Kantu Selenium IDE to allow for visual testing. We tried before with normal Javascript and even WebGL, but both results were not usable for various reasons. The websight page gave us new hope ;-) https://websightjs.com/ https://websightjs.com/
  - stromgo 9y ago
    Faster WebAssembly isn't listed on the roadmap, so you are disappointed, right? Wasm is currently considered "around half as fast as native"[0]. The Wasm design, Emscripten compiler, and browser compilers all have a part of responsibility in this, but I suspect that browser compilers have the largest share. Mozilla created The WebAssembly Explorer[1] which shows good-looking ".wat", but bloated "Firefox x86 Assembly" compared to "LLVM x86 Assembly". I hope they intend to use this tool to improve Firefox x86 Assembly. [0] https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen/issues/1070 https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen/issues/1070 [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/03/previewing-the-webassembly-explorer/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/03/previewing-the-webassembly...

TheCoreh 9y ago

I really like the goals they picked, but wish "Native Look and feel" was also in there. I use Firefox as my primary browser on Windows, but on the Mac it still feels significantly non-native. For instance, we're still missing rubber-band scrolling, Firefox still doesn't set the file attribute that causes the progress bars to be displayed on the Finder for each file and on the Downloads stack on the dock, on full screen the toolbar doesn't 'move down' along with the menu bar when I move my cursor to the top of the screen, there is still no pinch to zoom, the back/forward trackpad gestures and checkboxes/radio buttons are not animated, etc.

robin_reala 9y ago
If anyone wants to help out with any of those issues the respective bugs are: Rubber band scrolling: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1124108 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1124108 Downloads in Finder: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=909760 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=909760 Toolbar movement in full screen: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=738335 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=738335 Pinch to zoom: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688990 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688990 Animate back gesture: doesn’t seem to be a bug for this. Animated checkboxes: can’t find a bug for this either.
- TheCoreh 9y ago
  Thanks for posting these!
- ascom 9y ago
  There actually is an animated back gesture, but E10s sort of broke it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1170032 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1170032
haxiomic 9y ago
The lack of trackpad gestures is very surprising in 2018. Fortunately it can be implemented with an addon but it's not perfect https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-touch-zoom/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-touch-z...

kivy 9y ago

You had me at "opinionated."

gkya 9y ago

> Global permissions management: Permission prompts, especially for notifications, have gotten out of control and users must deny them individually at every site that offers them. Firefox will provide users with a way to disable permission prompts globally for Location, Camera, Microphone, and Notifications. (Firefox 59) THANK YOU! I hope this will stop the notification boxes implemented in JS too. Using the web has become a whack-a-mole game with each website requiring me to tell it off ten times unitl I can get to the content.

mikelward 9y ago
I would gladly disable notification prompts. A number of sites I rarely visit show them. There's a reason I visit them rarely, and it's not because I forget to! But camera and microphone? They seem useful for Skype, Hangouts, and other opt-in use cases. Are people seeing those prompts so much they're annoyed by them? What's the mechanism to opt back in for selected sites?
- mikelward 9y ago
  Appears to be partially covered by https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1434597 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1434597. Not clear it will be fixed before launch.
- gkya 9y ago
  Notifications are the most frequent offenders, in my experience, and it's followed by the Location one. It seems to me that they'll provide four individual settings one for each permission in order to optionally globally disable the relative one. I don't think it's going to be one button to kill them all though. I'll disable cam, mic and notifications, but I do share my location to some websites very occasionally.
  - mikelward 9y ago
    Yeah. But it looks like the way it works is you say "Don't ask again" on e.g. microphone, then there's no good way to deal with some new site where you actually want to use your mic. I guess the site can detect the permission denial. But making the website show browser-specific instructions for how to disable the global opt-out seems really suboptimal. The browser is where browser-specific specific UI belongs!

yagodragon 9y ago

How much worse than chrome is firefox actually? I use firefox beta on a 500$ laptop with ubuntu mate and i'm more than satisfied with the speed and general performance. Privacy has been a very hot topic on HN lately (or has always been) and now i see people complaining over silly little things on firefox than make them go back to Chrome. How can we complain for the monopoly of Google Facebook etc, when we can't stand using a very good, competent and open source product that respects our privacy despite some minor bugs? Is firefox really so bad that you're willing to give everything to Google?

mehta 9y ago
One data point: it is not bad at all. I use Firefox as my primary browser(having used chrome on and off for many years) and it works well for almost everything. There are occasional sites that don't behave with ff and for those I go to chrome. Even the andoid version is not bad (the only problem is that is is harder to avoid chrome due to smaller issues with websites).
- Timshel 9y ago
  Support for ublock origin on the android mobile version make it so useful.
Timshel 9y ago
Sadly not many mentions of privacy in their roadmap (outside of grouping controls). Things like "container tab" could allow them to really differentiate from Chrome ...
- yscik 9y ago
  They already have containers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... Though I would prefer if it were a bit harder to accidentally leave a container when opening a new tab.
- mintplant 9y ago

wst_ 9y ago

Video auto play blocking! I can't wait to have that feature. I hope it'll be there on mobile version as well.

Lev1a 9y ago
You're able to activate that feature right now. - open about:config. - type "autoplay" into the search bar at the top of the page. There should be two options there: "media.autoplay.enabled" and "media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground" What these options do should be rather self-explanatory. EDIT: damn markdown formatting

knodi 9y ago

I recently moved from Chrome to Firefox 57 on both Mobile and Desktop. The only grip i have with it is that i hope it can get a good with device battery as safari is.

roryisok 9y ago

> by blocking the worst content and more clearly communicating the privacy and other protections the browser offers. I really hope this includes the likes of outbrain, taboola and similar clickbait garbage that pollutes far too many blogs these days

mkj 9y ago

Boo, looks like osx keychain integration will still languish (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400 Reported 17 years ago). I'm puzzled what Lockbox is mean to do. https://mozilla-lockbox.github.io/lockbox-extension/faqs/ https://mozilla-lockbox.github.io/lockbox-extension/faqs/ What’s the difference between Lockbox and the Firefox password manager? newer encryption than what is offered with password manager AES256-GCM, HMAC SHA-256, eh, sounds fairly run of the mill?

gruez 9y ago
>Boo, looks like osx keychain integration will still languish probably because it wouldn't work with sync on linux/windows/android > eh, sounds fairly run of the mill? would you have preferred them to use some cutting edge cipher instead?
- mkj 9y ago
  I can't see why they couldn't sync with linux/windows/android as well as storing the entries in OSX keychain. "run of the mill" is me taking a lazy jab at their description of advantages of Lockbox - they need to make a whole new product just to use the standard cipher/auth you'd expect them to be using anyway? I assume there might be more to it, but their product page doesn't really explain much.

megous 9y ago

I'm excited for WebAuthentication. That's probably the only thing that will push me to implement something new and significantly valuable for my apps this year based on web platform improvements.

trzmiel4 9y ago

I've always loved Firefox. Had to switch to Chrome for stability and resource consumption, but I did not enjoy being all Google and I did miss numerous awesome features of Firefox. The awesomebar and dev tools to just name a few. Went back to Firefox Quantum for a few months. Now I'm back on Chrome for exactly the same reasons. After hours of active use, Firefox is eating a ton of RAM and consuming way too much CPU, while also struggling to open any pages (let alone more complex apps) or downright crashing the apps that were already running. Plus, it does not seem to support web calls at all (Google Meet, BlueJeans, GoToMeeting you name it). I hate being on Chrome again, and I miss those Firefox features. But I have work to do, and I just can't have my tools grind to a halt all the time.

PakG1 9y ago
I wanted to love Firefox Quantum. At first, it was great. But for whatever reason (likely CPU and RAM as people are describing in this thread), I've discovered that its performance doesn't scale with many tabs as well as Chrome. I've discovered also that when I switch from tab to tab, sometimes the tab needs to reload the page. That's fine. But sometimes, it takes forever to get past a blank white screen on that tab. Sometimes when I open a new tab and try a Google search from the URL bar, same thing. Tried the same URL or same Google search from the URL bar in a new tab in Chrome, absolutely no problem. Sorry, I'm currently switching back to Chrome. :(
- pcwalton 9y ago
  > I've discovered also that when I switch from tab to tab, sometimes the tab needs to reload the page. I believe that should only happen for tabs restored during startup. Unlike Chrome (unless something has changed), Firefox lazy-loads restored tabs on startup. I think that's preferable to the alternative.
  - PakG1 9y ago
    Sure, but I said that's fine. My point is that it doesn't load. I wait for minutes, and it doesn't load. Quoting myself: I've discovered also that when I switch from tab to tab, sometimes the tab needs to reload the page. That's fine. But sometimes, it takes forever to get past a blank white screen on that tab.

fwgwgwgch 9y ago

Given how neutral Firefox is I wish they didn't create new stuff when good open community developed alternatives are available. I'm referring to lockbox. It would be better id this was an extension to keepass or a fork that read the same file format

ergo14 9y ago

I can't wait for webcomponents to land in stable.

thriftwy 9y ago

It's sad that browser UI improvements came to an end. A number of innovative browsers never gained traction, and when mainstream ones try to improve UI it gets considerably worse. Every new browser has a short runway of new awesome ideas and then it's stagnant for decades.

realusername 9y ago
The UI of Firefox improved greatly, just remember how the old preferences screen looked like before.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  I've just opened preferences and I don't see much improvement. It's a page now, and there's less stuff, but it's what I had 15 years ago. Anyway, I still have to go to about:preferences all the time. I totally dislike their experiments with menu bar. I never wanted that. It's Ribbon all over again.
  - chrismorgan 9y ago
    I might have said that Preferences was much the same as ever, for most practical purposes, with only comparatively minor improvements; but one thing particularly stands out as a massive improvement: the search box. Now I don’t need to know where what I want to tweak is, if only I know what to search for, which I pretty much always do.
- einr 9y ago
  I remember when it used to look like a nice, compact native dialog box* instead of a full-screen, space-wasting abomination that follows no standards for anything. But consistency, visual coherency, discoverability and predictability are apparently all outmoded concepts in UI design, so opinions like mine -- that native applications should look and feel like native applications -- don't seem to be worth much among the cool crowd nowadays. * https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/firefox-38-restore-old-preferences.png https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/firefox-...

pixard 9y ago

My one issue with Firefox right now is CPU use. On my iMac or on desktop it doesn't truly matter. But on a MBP no matter how many tabs I have or what I'm doing the fans never turn on with Chrome. On Firefox they turn on regularly. I've tested while looking at the activity monitor a bit. Loading random sites like HN show Firefox spiking to 80-90% CPU while Chrome spikes to 20-30%.

1k2ka 9y ago
I have the same issue on my Linux laptop. It seems like Firefox always maxes out at least one core when loading pages or rendering pages with certain video codecs. I'm guessing Chrome throttles its performance or maybe it's just more performant.
Certhas 9y ago
On my 2012 MBA opening HN spikes very briefly to 25%. As others have pointed out, if you're genuinely hitting performance bugs then record a profile and fill a bug report.

anameaname 9y ago

> QUIC (aka HTTP/3) Why focus on QUIC when the JS APIs to use it aren't available? Numerous of the features of HTTP/2 aren't usable (i.e. trailers, flow control, security sensitive headers, priority, etc.). I don't understand how the web is supposed to flourish without giving web developers some kind of access to these tools. Meanwhile, app developers are showered with such goodies.

dochtman 9y ago
I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion, or what you mean? As I understand it, QUIC is a transport layer for the HTTP application-level protocol, so I would guess that pretty much all of the JS-exposed APIs are equally applicable.
- Shoothe 9y ago
  I guess they mean extra API that utilize stuff that's in HTTP/2 but not in HTTP/1.1.
asadotzler 9y ago
QUIC was a mistake on the roadmap. I've removed it. I mis-understood some documentation about experiments with QUIC. Sorry for the confusion.

dark_ph0enix 9y ago

No mention of u2f. Is it because it's already available on the build (via about:config) or because they are not focusing on it at all this year?

dark_ph0enix 9y ago
Uhmm while not on the roadmap, according to their wiki[1] they are still working on it. [1]https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/CryptoEngineering https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/CryptoEngineering
dochtman 9y ago
I think it is effectively part of/superseded by Web Authentication, which is mentioned and links to: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/tsevyqfBHLE/lccldWNNBwAJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/t... First sentence in that thread is "Web Authentication is backward compatible with FIDO U2F second-factor tokens, and also supports more advanced capabilities in future FIDO 2.0 devices."
- dark_ph0enix 9y ago
  Yup, just came to edit my comment after reading the Web Authentication bit, guess will leave it if anyone has the same question.
  - Shoothe 9y ago
    Yes, WebAuthentication will supersede U2F and it's backward compatible (meaning you can use your Yubikeys, but the API is different).
Manishearth 9y ago
The problem is that there's a buggy u2f library out in the wild distributed by Google that depends on Chrome-specific impl details. This means that while the pref works for sites like Github, it doesn't work for Duo or Google logins or anything that uses u2f.js. Sometimes it doesn't work to the extent that these sites break in other ways. There's nothing that Firefox can do about this; aside from waiting for it to be fixed. Ultimately the thing that is going to be shipped is probably webauthn.

majewsky 9y ago

Does anyone know if WebRender will become available as a crate for other Rust applications to use? I will be working on a text-heavy GUI application later this year and WebRender looks like a good fit feature-wise.

dochtman 9y ago
You can probably just pull it from GitHub: https://github.com/servo/webrender https://github.com/servo/webrender (Cargo lets you specify Git repos for dependencies.)
- majewsky 9y ago
  Sure, but an unreleased crate is not likely to make any commitments wrt API stability etc.
  - zaarn 9y ago
    The Github Repo contains 3 releases as of now. Just because it has no release on crates.io doesn't mean it's unreleased or unstable. Crates.io is just one way to get your crates.
pcwalton 9y ago
Yes, WebRender is designed to be usable in other apps. There are small examples of standalone usage in the repository on GitHub.

a_imho 9y ago

Filter certain types of ads by default: Firefox will offer users a simple ad filtering option. We're in the early stages still, researching types of advertisements that should be blocked by default. (Q3) Come on, do the right thing for once and put the user first.

Lev1a 9y ago
There ARE some types of non-intrusive ads (read: unnoticed unless specifically searched for) like little ribbons with text and maybe a link, like on [Troy Hunts blog](https://www.troyhunt.com/ https://www.troyhunt.com/) or small non-animated banners like the ones on StackOverflow. The ones everyone (except the ad networks) wants blocked by default are the intrusive ones, like video ads auto-playing loud BS or the ones where you scroll or move the cursor and some <div> or something pops up, darkens the rest of the site and annoys the reader with some pathetic bid to "subscribe to our page" etc.
- a_imho 9y ago
  I completely disagree, non-intrusive ('acceptable' etc) ads don't exist, no matter how hard this concept is pushed, period. Nevertheless, pretending Mozilla is not receiving funds from Google (who is already trying to force their standards through Chrome / Coalition for Better Ads) is intellectually dishonest. Block all ads, let the user white list, that is the pro user approach. Should have been done years ago.

pjmlp 9y ago

Looking forward to web components, ES6 modules and shapes path editor.

sv12l 9y ago

great choices, but I'm little disappointed seeing 0 results while searching for 'battery' as my Mac-book battery last longer on Safari than Firefox.

crispyporkbites 9y ago
Can ff really do much about that? Safari is probably getting a better battery life out of your Mac because Apple have a direct incentive to optimise for their own hardware.
muizelaar 9y ago
Fixing https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522 should bring a noticeable improvement here and should happen in 2018.
- sv12l 9y ago
  Sorry, how does "Avoid using a transparent window by using CoreAnimation" improves battery life?
  - yoklov 9y ago
    Less compositing necessary, among other things
jakecopp 9y ago
This is the only thing I want from Firefox in 2018. It's the single issue I have with it that might push me back to Safari.
mbesto 9y ago
Ya, I just switched back to Chrome, because it was unbearable to use Firefox over Chrome without my laptop plugged in (we're talking ~8hrs life down to ~1.5hrs). I really wanted to like Firefox (given its strong privacy)...such a shame.

maeln 9y ago

> Breach Alerts: Breach alerts will inform a user if a site they've visited has been breached and will ask if the user wants to have their account checked to determine if it was compromised. If it was compromised, some helpful information will be presented to the user. (October) This is very interesting. If Chrome decide to follow the same path it could give a serious incentive to some website to be more careful about there security. The whole "display a warning when login are passed via HTTP" already managed to create some reaction. It probably won't be a revolution but it might be a good first step.

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
And of course we should be ready for the slew of sites complaining about how terrible and irresponsible it is to tell users that they've been compromised:)
- ksk 9y ago
  The last thing a business wants is a browser scaring customers away without cause. But I think they would be OK as long as the list is maintained and is accurate. Certainly, we should do more to penalize hackers, and not blame the victims of cyber attacks (as is sometimes the case).
  - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
    > we should do more to penalize hackers Malicious hacking is already illegal with significant penalties. > not blame the victims If the victims failed even basic security measures, I'm quite happy to give them their share of blame. There have been plenty of reports of exposed databases with no password protection, places that stored passwords in plain text, folks running unpatched OSs... You can't just ignore security and pretend that you're not at fault.
    - ksk 9y ago
      >Malicious hacking is already illegal with significant penalties. Yes, more people should end up in jail. >If the victims failed even basic security measures, I'm quite happy to give them their share of blame. Please detail how you have established that the victims themselves personally ignored security practices. >There have been plenty of reports of exposed databases with no password protection, places that stored passwords in plain text, folks running unpatched OSs... You can't just ignore security and pretend that you're not at fault. You are making broad claims. Remember that the non-technical business owners/managers/CEOs etc need our help, and they don't need people shaming them for using vendors or consultants who might have made made mistakes.

Spiritus 9y ago

I don’t care about any of that. Just add swipe animations when moving forward/backward in history already!

Grue3 9y ago

>Ctrl+F "tab groups" >Phrase not found Guess I'm still staying on v56...

opencl 9y ago
You're probably better off with v52ESR, it's at least getting maintained with security patches for another few months. FF61 should enable the Tab Groups addon to return in June (release of the tab hiding API), v52 is maintained until August.
hokus 9y ago
I use to try everything available to group tabs regardless of browser. They all had their issues. Eventually I just went with keeping things in their own browser window. With multiple monitors or a screen big enough to have separate windows the dragging and dropping of tabs works fine. Then the issue becomes that you cant save tab groups :( You can even use multiple browsers if they do something useful for a type of group. History and bookmarking becomes even more mysterious that way. The extensions I used to save groups are all broken atm.
oblio 9y ago
Tab Groups isn't in v56 either. What you're looking for is actually there, at least most of it: > More Extension APIs: Firefox extensions will become more capable with additional features for tab management and organization, including a full implementation of Tab Hiding (61) Once you can hide tabs, you can basically have tab groups.
- mintplant 9y ago
  This is in fact the explicit motivator for the addition of this API.
madmax108 9y ago
This dropped recently. Needs a config to be set in about:config, but besides that, works just as well https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-view...

k__ 9y ago

I switched to Firefox recently (with v57 or something) and I'm impressed, it really feels much faster than Chrome. But they need to get all videos working. It feels to me that it's a 50:50 chance to play a video. On Android the startup is faster than with Chrome too, but the scrolling feels rather sluggish, so I still prefer Chrome here.

clouddrover 9y ago
> But they need to get all videos working. It feels to me that it's a 50:50 chance to play a video. Videos generally work for me in Firefox. The only videos that don't work for me are from sites that are still (and only) using Flash because I don't have Flash installed. What's an example of a video that doesn't work for you?
- k__ 9y ago
  Flash videos work. FF asks me if it should start Flash for it. Some "html5" videos on Facebook and Twitter don't work.
  - clouddrover 9y ago
    I rarely look at videos on Facebook but all the Twitter videos (or GIFs which they convert to H.264 video) I've seen have worked in Firefox. Do you have a link to a Twitter video that doesn't work for you in Firefox? If these videos are somehow different from normal then I'd find it a useful test case for an application I wrote which makes use of Twitter video.

childintime 9y ago

This feature already out (v59) caught my eye: "When we detect that disk IO may be slow, we send a network request in parallel, and we use the first response that comes back. For users with slow spinning disks and a low latency network, the result would be faster loads". Wow, the browser is giving up on the OS. What madness given that typical W10 PC's with 2GB RAM (with the disk spinning in vain) have only two apps open: the browser and its adversary, the AV. Heck 4GB isn't comfortable anymore with several tabs open.

markdog12 9y ago

Anyone know if/when WebRender will be testable on Android?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

kibwen 9y ago

For those curious about the progress of Pathfinder (WebRender's GPU-based font and vector graphics rasterizer), this month's Bay Area Rust meetup featured a talk and live demo from pcwalton: https://air.mozilla.org/rust-bay-area-meet-up-march-2018/ https://air.mozilla.org/rust-bay-area-meet-up-march-2018/

adambware 9y ago

Biggest issue for me switching to Firefox is the DevTools. "Undo" does not work for CSS changes in DevTools! Tried to submit a bug for this but it was misunderstood and dismissed. Hoping this might be fixed by the 3-Panel Inspector...

alexozer 9y ago

I feel like I'm definitely the vocal minority here, but I'm still a sucker for Google ecosystem and just find Firefox still overall slower than Chrome. I still consider myself a power user, but don't expect much out of my browser besides speed, and many pages just simply take longer to load in FF 58 than Chrome. Downvote me.

smoyer 9y ago
I'm apparently your opposite - I've been using the Developer Edition for quite some time after switching from Chrome (which ate piles of memory).
ksk 9y ago
How are you a sucker if you have a rational basis for making the decision? FWIW I switched from Chrome to FF and haven't noticed any major differences.

ksec 9y ago

Most of these features started in 2016 / 2017. So 2018 really is shipping those stable. But what about Servo? As in the parsing and layering part? Last time the test we had 10x speed difference compared to Gecko. WebRendr is GPU / Nvidia limited? I though PCwalton said it will also be a Software Render too.

sp332 9y ago
Servo is a rendering engine and Firefox has no plans to include it.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  AFAIK: Servo is an experimental browser with many components, including a web rendering engine. Some parts of Servo already are migrated to Firefox, mostly in the Quantum release last fall.
  - sp332 9y ago
    Project Quantum is the Gecko-based project to bring Servo bits to Firefox. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum
  - sp332 9y ago
    Hey, sorry about the nonsensical comment yesterday. I was pretty much asleep and didn't really need to start an argument over nothing.
    - forapurpose 9y ago
      Thanks for being so thoughtful, but no problem. I honestly didn't realize I was involved in an argument.

rsuelzer 9y ago

I have tried to use Firefox but I keep ending up back on Chrome. It's because I am lazy and I have been sucked into the convience of Google's password manager. Also because many of the developer extensions I use aren't on Firefox (Apollo Dev tools). I think Firefox is great, I should make the switch.

throwaway84742 9y ago

No easily switchable, fully isolated profiles a-la Chrome, no default zoom support without installing an add on (handy on 4K displays). Epic fail. Better luck next year, Mozilla.

alinhan 9y ago

For Firefox to gain market share, it needs to target the average Joe, which I think they are trying. But in order to do that, it's not enough to make it work better than Chrome when you have 40 tabs open (less memory and CPU usage), they should also try to have the clean interface that Chrome has, or even cleaner, right after the installation. Take the toolbar, for example: After installation it has all that unused space on the left and right sides of the address bar. This is probably to encourage customizations to it, but Joe doesn't care about that. And then there are so many things on the toolbar that shouldn't be there. I think they should be hidden behind the sandwich menu, as the power users will know to add to the toolbar the ones that they need, and Joe wouldn't be overwhelmed by them. Only these things should be present on the toolbar: back button, forward button, reload button (maybe), a home button - only if a home page was set, a clean omnibar, and the sandwich button. Instead, even after trying to remove as much as I can from the toolbar, I still have: a non clean omnibar (two icons on its left end that seem to come from different universes, and too many things on it's right end - there should only be a dropdown button for the history at this end) and a more tools button. I counted and in total on the omnibar and the toolbar I have 4 buttons for "more stuff", instead of two (one dropdown for the history and the sandwich menu). But I do think they are on the right track. I personally switched to Firefox from Chrome less than a year ago, and I'm not going back. Thank you, Mozilla, for all the good work that you did on Firefox!

cesnja 9y ago

I'm just sad that proper keyboard API for a better Vimperator/Pentadactyl successor seems to have been silently dropped.

CorpusCalcium 9y ago
Isn't that what this bug is mostly about? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061
- cesnja 9y ago
  Seems like it. But just compare how vocal the "we intend to support vimperator-like functionality" message used to be before version 57, and how silent everything has been since.
  - CorpusCalcium 9y ago
    I honestly don't remember the actual message from Mozilla varying much over the past two years when it comes to Vimperator-needed APIs. But then I don't remember anyone doing much to get things figured out on that front, so a lack of progress is hardly surprising to me.

AnarchistNode7 9y ago

To what for a price.. The new Firefox mainly caters to simple users. Mozilla has abandoned their feature rich concept to appeal only to Chrome users. Mozilla's only goal today is becoming number one in marketshare and beat Google no matter what. Even if that means they alienate every single power user. I do not at all agree with that. That is a pure simple betrayal - exchanging their origin user base against Chrome users. Opera did that too. The issue is, there is already an over-simplistic browser - Chrome. And only a minority of Chrome users will switch over to Firefox - the hope to absorb the majority of the Chrome user base will not work out for Mozilla. They should have kept the features for the nerds and geeks inside. You know, there is something which is called honesty and dignity. This is for what we from Anonymous are standing for and what we are valuing. And it is disgusting to see that an Open Source organization throws all of that over board just to become mainstream compatible.