15 ms·

Firefox 67.0 Released

528 points by Spydar007 7y ago

stevekemp 7y ago
When I upgraded from 66.0.5 it created a new profile, rather than keeping my existing passwords/histories/extensions. I'm not going to use firefox sync, so it seems like there will be a painful migration ahead.
- callahad 7y ago
  We're defaulting to profile-per-install to make it easier to run different versions side-by-side, but you can still manually specify your original profile. Docs on the profile manager are at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... ...or, as a super weird hack, you can set the envvar SNAP_NAME=firefox to get the old behavior (see https://github.com/mozilla/nixpkgs-mozilla/issues/163 https://github.com/mozilla/nixpkgs-mozilla/issues/163 for context)
  - groovybits 7y ago
    Just curious, how large is the benefit of this? Does the average user run multiple versions of Firefox side-by-side? I consider myself a power user in many things, but never have I felt the need to run different versions of my browser simultaneously.
    - callahad 7y ago
      There are two sides to that coin: 1. People do genuinely seem to find it useful (it's been a feature in Developer Edition for years), so that's cool, but also... 2. Sharing a profile between different versions of Firefox can cause data loss, and profile-per-install makes it harder to accidentally make that mistake. So it's win-win. As for why people find it useful, I've mainly seen two camps: - People who want to keep their work and personal browsing separate. - Developers who want to maintain a pristine / default browser environment for testing, and a customized one for development. I've also, on occasion, seen normal people with separate browsers for specific tasks (only using Facebook in Opera, only banking in Firefox, etc.) Now those can all be different foxen! :-)
      - mthoms 7y ago
        As I understand it, this only affects running different official builds side by side. But what about running two different instances of a single build side by side with different profiles? The use-case I'm thinking of is something akin to Site Specific Browsers (SSBs), where each site has its own dock icon etc. Will this ever be possible?
        callahad 7y ago
        That actually is possible, but you have to manually create the shortcuts. Check out https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... for docs on the profile manager. Once you've set up the profiles you want, you can launch a specific profile by passing "-P profileNameHere" or "--profile /path/to/profile" to Firefox. You may also need to pass "--new-instance" or "--no-remote" to force Firefox to launch a new window if another copy of the same Firefox version is already open.
      - Vinnl 7y ago
        Additional use case: I sometimes give prerelease versions a try to report bugs, without intending to use it as my default browser (especially if bugs are blockers). It's nice to be able to get back to my regular install in that case.
      - groovybits 7y ago
        I see the use case for developers who want to test multiple versions. But as stevekemp said, the average user is losing their profile when simply upgrading from one version to the next. And it seems that the fix to this is to go back into the Profile Manager and set you old profile as the new default. Wouldn't this inadvertently cause data loss for the average user? (Ex: My parents do not even know Profile Manager is, much less that Profiles exist) If anything, I see this as a bad thing - especially for those who do not use FF Sync. Am I interpreting this correctly? We're talking about regular FF here, not Developer Edition, correct? Edit: > People who want to keep their work and personal browsing separate. I thought that's what Multi-Account Containers was supposed to help with.
- sdfjkl 7y ago
  Go to "about:profiles" and make your old profile ("default" by default) the default profile again, then restart Firefox. This was indeed a fucking terrible way of doing this: "Hey, we've just hidden all your profile data from you and to get it back you need to sign up to our web service!"
- acemarke 7y ago
  It looks like that may be related to FF now creating a separate profile for every installation. That was apparently targeted for FF65 originally, then bumped to FF67: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla.dev.platform/hVeJSYjSnO4/discussion https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla.dev.platform/hVeJS...
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  That's really odd. Had you used that profile with a post-67 nightly at some point or something? Some more information about the profiles involved here would be really useful. Are you willing to file a bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ ? If you do and give me the link to it, I'll get people who know the right questions to ask involved...
  - stevekemp 7y ago
    No, I always upgrade to the latest release when I spot it, but I don't try nightlies or anything other than releases. I take a backup of ~/.mozilla and just download the new binaries to /opt/firefox. (Well I download and update a symlink.)
    - callahad 7y ago
      We might be resolving symlinks to their physical paths, making each download look like a new install. If so, the nixpkgs issue I mentioned above is probably more relevant than expected. I'm not entirely certain, but if you want to source dive, nsXREDirProvider::GetInstallHash is a good place to start: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/6c9f60f8cc064a1005cd8141ecd526578ae9da7a/toolkit/xre/nsXREDirProvider.cpp#1178 https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/6c9f60f8cc064a1005...
qxcbr 7y ago
>Suspending unused tabs Didn't they already do that? I remember receiving a spinner whenever I changed between tabs very often since they introduced that multi-process thing. >More power to you with every update *Except when we decide to remotely execute code on your computer using Studies/Normandy/whatever
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  > Didn't they already do that? I remember receiving a spinner whenever I changed between tabs very often since they introduced that multi-process thing. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/tabs/discard https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... It seems to be something different than discarded tabs.
- sp332 7y ago
  The spinner is not for discarded tabs. That's when the main window is trying to connect to a different back-end process than the one you were using for the previous tab.
whyagaindavid 7y ago
if anyone from mozilla is reading hn, the link on the pop-up box 'Get the Lockbox app' go to 'apple appstore' even if I click on the Google Play icon.
- callahad 7y ago
  Thanks for the heads up! We'll get that fixed.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
darkpuma 7y ago
> "Suspending unused tabs" I'm curious to see how aggressive this is. If it's good enough to render my tab suspender extension obsolete, that'd be fantastic.
- revskill 7y ago
  On Chrome, i use the Great Suspender which does the trick. It's the ONLY extension that i keep there. Great to see it's built-in Firefox.
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  > I'm curious to see how aggressive this is. It's in the config parameter's name: browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory. Boolean, works only on Windows for now.
  - skykooler 7y ago
    Ah man. Hope this makes it to Linux and especially OSX soon!
    - j605 7y ago
      On Linux, I use cgroups to restrict memory usage of certain applications to prevent them from crashing the whole system.
  - tilolebo 7y ago
    Any idea when Linux will be supported? I'm using the Auto Tab Discard extension for now, but having a native way to handle this for Linux users would be great.
- corobo 7y ago
  Somewhat eerie.. I recently installed a tab suspender because a tab crashed or lagged out so I killed its process This version of Firefox is obviously because of me :P
- helb 7y ago
  > Firefox will now detect if your computer’s memory is running low, which we define as lower than 400MB, and suspend unused tabs that you haven’t used or looked at in a while. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/05/21/latest-firefox-release-is-faster-than-ever/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/05/21/latest-firefox-rele...
gerbilly 7y ago
I tried to see if letterboxing was enabled, but it didn't seem to make a difference.¹ Does anyone know whether they included this feature, and if so how to enable it? 1: https://browserleaks.com/javascript https://browserleaks.com/javascript still detects my window size down to the pixel.
- mbrubeck 7y ago
  Set the "privacy.resistFingerprinting" pref to "true"
  - gerbilly 7y ago
    I had that setting set to true since before the update. Every site that mentions letterboxing claims this is the setting to use to enable it. However, unless I misunderstand, it does not seem to enable it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- johnp_ 7y ago
  `privacy.resistFingerprinting.letterboxing` is currently a separate setting since it's still rough around the edges. Not sure if it works on Release, I have it set on Nightly.
arusahni 7y ago
Congrats to Mozilla on shipping WebRender[1]! Just Nvidia on Windows for now, but I'm looking forward to the restrictions being relaxed - the perf improvements have been significant on my end. 1: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-fps-how-webrender-gets-rid-of-jank/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-f...
- yash1th 7y ago
  related hackernews discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19969216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19969216
- hiccuphippo 7y ago
  You can enable it manually with the following: > To turn on WebRender, go to about:config, enable the gfx.webrender.all pref, and restart the browser.
  - vbuwivbiu 7y ago
    if you enable it & restart on another platform will it work ? how would you confirm it's working ?
    - callahad 7y ago
      It should. To confirm it's working, visit about:support and look for "WebRender" in the "Compositing" field.
backpackway 7y ago
> Save passwords in private browsing mode While this might be handy when visiting your favorite paid porn site, isn't this counter-intuitive? When I am in private mode, I expect nothing to be saved.
- mbrubeck 7y ago
  In both private and not-private windows, the browser asks the user whether to save each password. Nothing is saved unless you explicitly click the Save button.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Ok, but I think the parent is wondering in what situation you'd want to store in the browser details of a site you'd visited, but still use private mode to "hide" that you'd visited? What data does the password use retain? IIRC password store retains the "time first used, time last used" and displays that visibly. In short what's the use-case or user story that fits this feature?
    - mbrubeck 7y ago
      I sometimes use private browsing to temporarily access a site with a secondary account, without logging it if my main account.
      - darkpuma 7y ago
        Multi-Account Containers is good for that.
        RussianCow 7y ago
        Containers are overkill when you just want to do this as a one-off.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
zimbatm 7y ago
Firefox 67 also the first browser that ships with `prefers-color-scheme` (aka dark mode) after Safari. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref... And it does the right thing and disables the feature when enabling the resist fingerprinting option. I did a small survey and only very few websites have developed a second dark theme: https://zimbatm.com/DarkMode https://zimbatm.com/DarkMode
- megous 7y ago
  BTW, cheap-ass dark mode can be made by: filter: invert(95%) hue-rotate(190deg) on <body> and perhaps fiddling with some backgrounds, to avoid transparency.
  - Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
    As someone who codes dark mode first thanks for the lazy “OMG, my eyes...” mode ;-)
    - swozey 7y ago
      Have you used the Dark Reader addon? It's not amazing in firefox (has major performance issues on some sites) but I can't live without it.
      - butteroverflow 7y ago
        Have you tried simply using Stylus with a custom style? I've been pretty happy with the setup. No performance issues.
        johnnycab 7y ago
        Stylus is great when Darkreader breaks on certain sites. But when it works there are no substitutes e.g. navigating HN using the light setting in Darkreader offers a degree of customisation to create a scheme and reduce eye fatigue, without too much effort. Whereas, it can be hit and miss when trying various themes/stylesheets etc.
hd4 7y ago
>WebRender is gradually enabled by default on Windows 10 desktops with NVIDIA graphics cards Does this mean Webrender in Stable can now be force-enabled for non-Nvidia graphics cards on Windows 10? The language is a little unclear. AFAIK Webrender is available to anyone using Nightly by force enabling it.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  It would be better if they offered a way to really turn it off. Firefox has got very crashy in environments that have no access to a GPU.
  - e1ven 7y ago
    Could you set set gfx.webrender.enabled to false?
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      Already did. It is not enough.
  - cbrewster 7y ago
    Currently it will only be enabled on Windows machines with Nvidia GPUs. So this shouldn't be an issue for environments with no access to a GPU.
  - jamienicol 7y ago
    gfx.webrender.force-disabled=true should do the trick. Though we shouldn't be attempting to switch it on without a GPU, if you could file a bug that would be great.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      Thank you, thank you, thank you.
jdlyga 7y ago
I've tried to switch to Firefox, but I keep running into rendering engine issues with certain sites. It's like it's 2005 again.
- fghtr 7y ago
  Which sites?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Can't say I've had this problem...
- acdha 7y ago
  Which sites? They actively pursue compatibility issues but it's pretty rare to see non-Google sites which only work in Chrome.
  - cweagans 7y ago
    coda.io goes out of their way to only work in Chrome for some strange reason
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    it's pretty rare to see non-Google sites which only work in Chrome. Unfortunately that hasn't been my experience in recent months. A noticeable number of random sites I come across, sometimes including quite important ones, Just Don't Work in Firefox. Is there a quick way to send a link to such sites/pages, if someone at Mozilla is interested in investigating why? I think it's important to note that this behaviour isn't necessarily due to anything wrong with Firefox. It could simply be because Firefox is better at blocking unwanted content than certain other browsers and that feature is working as intended, but the kinds of sites that rely on hostile content also tend to break if those scripts are forcibly blocked by the browser.
    - 7y ago
cesarb 7y ago
> Change to extensions in Private Windows: Any new extensions you add to the browser won’t work in Private Windows unless you allow this in the settings. Does this mean that adblocking (and other safety-related) extensions will suddenly stop working on private windows, unless the user knows it has to go to the settings and enable them again?
- caiob 7y ago
  That's why they're called "Private".
- octosphere 7y ago
  > Does this mean that adblocking (and other safety-related) extensions will suddenly stop working on private windows, unless the user knows it has to go to the settings and enable them again? Looks like it, although if you don't know how to configure your extensions, then why even use them in the first place? Chrome has been doing this for a while now. You have to check the 'Allow in incognito' button for the extension to work in private mode.
  - bepvte 7y ago
    Previously installed extensions before this update will not be disabled automatically, only new ones
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    > Looks like it, although if you don't know how to configure your extensions, then why even use them in the first place? Because uBlock Origins et al. are incredibly useful for your average internet user who know fuck all about configuring extensions but benefit far more from it? What is this unnecessary elitism? Sane defaults are really important for people who don't know anything about the internet, much less privacy or security (see any number of examples of ad networks delivering malware). Adblocking not working in private mode isn't a sane default. The vast majority of people have no idea what any of this means or how to do any of this. Doesn't mean they're any less deserving of protection.
ncmncm 7y ago
Running Firefox under Qubes has become increasingly frustrating, as tabs crash whenever (apparently?) they try to use WebGL, or anything that depends on access to a GPU. More and more, Firefox seems to depend on GPU access (or something?) and fails hard when it's not there.
- javagram 7y ago
  Isn’t it possible to disable gpu in about:config?
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    about:config certainly has lots of settings to turn off, but I manifestly have not found enough of them, if indeed any number is enough.
    - the8472 7y ago
      You can cross-check about:config with the about:support Graphics section. A few switches of relevance: layers.acceleration, webgl.disabled, media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled, gfx.webrender.force-disabled
      - ncmncm 7y ago
        Aha! gfx.webrender.force-disabled was false. Now to ser how much difference it makes.
- testvox 7y ago
  Yeah I had to disable gpu acceleration on Firefox in parallels. Otherwise it rendered black boxes for elements with certain styles.
  - driverdan 7y ago
    That sounds like a Parallels / driver problem, not a Firefox problem.
akavel 7y ago
> "Enable FIDO U2F API, and permit registrations for Google Accounts" Oh! Didn't expect that! Does this mean YubiKeys will now be working in GMail on Firefox? Together with all the other stuff, this starts to look like a really important and major release of Firefox.
- lholden 7y ago
  Yep, though technically one could enable this before now by tweaking the about:config security.webauth.u2f setting. (Which is something I've been having to do for a while now). As a side note... the way Google handles U2F is somewhat out of spec. For example, you haven't been able to register a u2f device with Firefox on google. I wonder if that's been worked around with this release? That would be great! Otherwise, u2f has worked perfect with sites like GitLab and GitHub for example.
  - phillc73 7y ago
    > about:config security.webauth.u2f I still have this set to Value: "false" in Firefox 66.0.5 and it's working fine for Google Accounts. Edit: I'm pretty sure I registered by Nitrokeys with Google back in 2017 using Chrome, so I'm just referring to signing in with them.
    - judge2020 7y ago
      You could always sign in with any key, you just could only register keys via Chrome.
      - phillc73 7y ago
        I seem to recall U2F sign-in always failing with Firefox for a long time. I remember having to switch to Chrome for U2F and frankly ended up using a different 2FA method for a couple of years because of that.
  - amluto 7y ago
    > the way Google handles U2F is somewhat out of spec. Somewhat? As I understand it, it doesn’t even pretend to be fully specified. Chrome shipped it without going through the normal intent to ship process.
markdog12 7y ago
> We have seen great growth in the use of AV1 even in just a few months, with our latest figures showing that 11.8% of video playback in Firefox Where are people playing AV1 videos? YouTube released an AV1 playlist long ago, and haven't added a single video since release: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyqf6gJt7KuHBmeVzZteZUlNUQAVLwrZS https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyqf6gJt7KuHBmeVzZteZ... Besides that, I've only seen a few in the wild.
- markdog12 7y ago
  It does seem YouTube has AV1 videos, at least for lower resolutions (720p and lower)
  - markdog12 7y ago
    I've even found some in 5k, although they don't play back hardly at all. Performance not there yet.
    - callahad 7y ago
      That should be markedly better in Firefox 67, since we've just now switched to dav1d, a much more efficient decoder by the VideoLAN folks. Prior to that, we were using the reference implementation from libaom.
      - nullwasamistake 7y ago
        This is a huge enhancement, thank you!
      - markdog12 7y ago
        I'm on FF nightly, dav1d enabled.
- eclipseo76 7y ago
  Youtube has more AV1 videos than that playlist. My fav Youtuber has AV1 videos in 720p and it's not a huge channel.
radcon 7y ago
I can't find much info on the fingerprint protection. Has anyone tested it thoroughly? Do we know if it's effective against current fingerprinting methods? Can we actually rely on it, or will it simply be a matter of days/weeks before websites adapt to defeat this protection?
- danShumway 7y ago
  I don't think it's sufficient yet to stop someone determined, but I do think it's a step in the right direction, particularly when combined with a VPN. I'm looking forward to the letterboxing improvements. Anecdotally, I get a lot more captcha's when it's turned on. I regularly log in to sites and get prompts telling me I need to enter email confirmation codes. I signed up for a service recently that auto locked my account immediately on signup because of "abuse detection". To be clear, I take those as positive signs. My rough metric is that if privacy invasive sites are mad at me, I'm probably doing something right. So that's certainly not hard proof that it's effective, but it's at least circumstantial evidence that websites that I know fingerprint me get irritated when I turn it on.
  - radcon 7y ago
    I agree, those are good signs. If these fingerprint protection tools are effective, my main fear is that websites will simply say "Disable your fingerprint protection if you want to proceed", much like many sites currently do with ad blockers. Or if they don't spell it out in plain English, they'll make you jump through so many hoops that you'll switch it off just to end the suffering. Trying to interact with any major website using the TOR browser has been a complete nightmare. If you aren't blocked outright, you face CAPTCHAs at every turn.
    - user17843 7y ago
      The fingerprint protection this new setting refers to is simply a blacklist of a couple of known JS fingerprinters. Those are not relevant for the majority of users, because fingerprinting with these kind of scripts is only used by a very small number of obscure sites.
jwang2019 7y ago
Firefox 67.0 does run faster and consume less RAM compared to previous versions.
skykooler 7y ago
> New streamlined worker debugging in the JavaScript Debugger with the new Threads panel. This is great news!
Aaargh20318 7y ago
Does this release include javascript MDS mitigations ?
- mccr8 7y ago
  Yes, though they were only necessary on OS X.
ianopolous 7y ago
It would be super awesome if Firefox can implement writable streams: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1474543 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1474543
vanderZwan 7y ago
That means that one of the most obscure performance regression bugs I've ever found in Firefox is also fixed: property lookups on numbers being slower for values recognized and optimized as integers by the JavaScript engine than for regular doubles. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1523633 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1523633
mtgx 7y ago
It includes the Facebook container, but not the Google container?
- sp332 7y ago
  Where is that mentioned?
kpremote 7y ago
Apologize if this is not the right place to ask for help. Two days ago when I began to develop a web site backend, a strange thing happened. Visiting "mydomainname.com" in Firefox v66 gave me back error message saying site not found, but visiting "mydomainname.com/index.html" (or index.php) would be fine, the content of that page was returned. After one hour struggle, I used another browser (and my phone) to open "mydomainname.com", and it worked fine! It returned the index.html page. So it's not the issue of the default file setup. Did I miss something obvious? I felt stupid. I am now using Chrome but I would like to come back to Firefox. Thanks for any help.
- cpeterso 7y ago
  Does the error happen in a Private Browsing window? Maybe Firefox cached some "site not found" result it shouldn't have? This sounds more like a server configuration issue than a Firefox bug.
  - kpremote 7y ago
    __Edit: I installed the lastest Firefox v67, the problem is gone. It works great.__ Thanks. no it's not in a private browsing window. I also asked other people to visit the site(mydomainname.com) from their computers and phones, all worked fine. The hour long struggle left me with painful memories. :) I never had issue like this previously in Firefox or other browsers. On that day, Chrome and IE worked without problem on my computer (Win 7 32bit), so the computer should not be the culprit. That leaves Firefox v66 standing. I don't know why.
pcunite 7y ago
Under about:preferences#general, I can't disable checking for updates? Is there a way to do this under about:config?
- svnpenn 7y ago
  Its a known issue (for 13 years) https://superuser.com/questions/1432983/-/1432993 https://superuser.com/questions/1432983/-/1432993
  - pcunite 7y ago
    This feature has changed from the last version I was using (62.02). The option "Never check for updates" is now missing.
    - svnpenn 7y ago
      Regardless, its currently not possible via the GUI as youve discovered. Im not happy about the situation but it is being actively worked on as of today.
classics2 7y ago
Is RSS still too hard for Firefox?
OrgNet 7y ago
> Users will no longer be able to upload and share screenshots through the Firefox Screenshots server. I kinda liked that feature, hopefully they replace it with another cloud provider for when you need to take a screenshot for sharing
nklops 7y ago
Still no improvement on macOS. Don't know why don't they make it a priority as I have to use Chrome (Safari is missing some stuff that I need).
- windsignaling 7y ago
  Ha, it's becoming my routine now whenever Firefox is announced on HN to search for "mac" in the comments. Waiting for that day when someone finally says something different. I really want to stop using Chrome, but unfortunately Firefox just doesn't work as well.
  - redsparrow 7y ago
    I'm the same but using Vivaldi while I wait...
- roryokane 7y ago
  What do you mean “no improvement on macOS”? Most of the new features listed in these release notes could be considered improvements, and I assume that the macOS version of Firefox 67 has all those features, the same as on other platforms. I think you had in mind a specific aspect of Firefox that you wished would be improved, but you forgot to explain what that feature was. What is the missing feature that leads you to use Chrome?
  - aeonsky 7y ago
    I think its obvious he's talking about the fact that Firefox is unusable on MacOS (on scaled resolutions). And it seems Mozilla has no ability to fix this for a large portion of their potential clientele.
darkhorn 7y ago
https://webauthn.io https://webauthn.io Fingerprint reader works with Microsoft Edge but it doesn't work with Firefox.
bscphil 7y ago
Firefox 67 should be the first version to fix permissions request spam: where tons of websites request your location (common enough that it's become a meme) or for permission to send you notifications. Before Firefox 67, if you choose to hide these notifications by default, there's no way to change this later for individual sites without (a) knowing the site needs this information, and (b) going to Firefox's preferences menu to add an exception. Now, a small icon will appear next to the lock icon when Firefox automatically denies a permissions request. You can click that icon and grant the request. This means that permissions are now easily configurable without those spammy popups appearing on so many websites! I liked this feature so much I actually backported it to Firefox 66, and I can say it's an amazing quality improvement.
- tomcatfish 7y ago
  I'd like a way to manually enable a plug-in for a specific site. I have sites that won't request flash that require it, and it's a pain to turn flash to allow all to view the site and then turn it back off. If this setting exists and I'm missing it, someone please tell me.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    Can't you right click on the site, click "View Page Info", go to permissions, and give the site the permission to run Adobe Flash? I'm assuming this setting still works, but I kind of doubt there are too many people who install and test it these days. I don't think I've encountered a site that requires flash in years.
- bscphil 7y ago
  Additional information: I've found that it requires the following key in about:config to be set to true. permissions.desktop-notification.postPrompt.enabled A good site for testing this (requires javascript): https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html
sridca 7y ago
Is there a reason why I should switch to Firefox if I already trust Google to act in good faith?
- fourier_mode 7y ago
  https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/19/google-pulls-android-support-from-huawei/ https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/19/google-pulls-android-sup...
- roryokane 7y ago
  Only Firefox supports extensions that provide an alternative interface to the tab bar. Alternative interfaces such as vertical tabs or tree tabs are very useful if you have many tabs open in a single window. Examples of these extensions: • Tab Center Reborn – https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/tabcenter-reborn/ https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/tabcenter-reborn... • Tree Style Tab – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... • Tree Tabs – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/
m463 7y ago
Does anyone know how to turn off "Extract Canvas Data" by default?
Ayesh 7y ago
I use Firefox's password manager, and their new LockWise extension gives a fresh breath to password management. Nice work!
jeremiahlee 7y ago
Have you ever wanted to reset a HTML element’s style, as if it no styling had been applied? That’s what the `revert` CSS keyword does and you can now use it in Firefox 67. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/revert https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/revert

528 points by Spydar007 7y ago

When I upgraded from 66.0.5 it created a new profile, rather than keeping my existing passwords/histories/extensions. I'm not going to use firefox sync, so it seems like there will be a painful migration ahead.

callahad 7y ago
We're defaulting to profile-per-install to make it easier to run different versions side-by-side, but you can still manually specify your original profile. Docs on the profile manager are at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... ...or, as a super weird hack, you can set the envvar SNAP_NAME=firefox to get the old behavior (see https://github.com/mozilla/nixpkgs-mozilla/issues/163 https://github.com/mozilla/nixpkgs-mozilla/issues/163 for context)
- groovybits 7y ago
  Just curious, how large is the benefit of this? Does the average user run multiple versions of Firefox side-by-side? I consider myself a power user in many things, but never have I felt the need to run different versions of my browser simultaneously.
  - callahad 7y ago
    There are two sides to that coin: 1. People do genuinely seem to find it useful (it's been a feature in Developer Edition for years), so that's cool, but also... 2. Sharing a profile between different versions of Firefox can cause data loss, and profile-per-install makes it harder to accidentally make that mistake. So it's win-win. As for why people find it useful, I've mainly seen two camps: - People who want to keep their work and personal browsing separate. - Developers who want to maintain a pristine / default browser environment for testing, and a customized one for development. I've also, on occasion, seen normal people with separate browsers for specific tasks (only using Facebook in Opera, only banking in Firefox, etc.) Now those can all be different foxen! :-)
    - mthoms 7y ago
      As I understand it, this only affects running different official builds side by side. But what about running two different instances of a single build side by side with different profiles? The use-case I'm thinking of is something akin to Site Specific Browsers (SSBs), where each site has its own dock icon etc. Will this ever be possible?
      - callahad 7y ago
        That actually is possible, but you have to manually create the shortcuts. Check out https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... for docs on the profile manager. Once you've set up the profiles you want, you can launch a specific profile by passing "-P profileNameHere" or "--profile /path/to/profile" to Firefox. You may also need to pass "--new-instance" or "--no-remote" to force Firefox to launch a new window if another copy of the same Firefox version is already open.
    - Vinnl 7y ago
      Additional use case: I sometimes give prerelease versions a try to report bugs, without intending to use it as my default browser (especially if bugs are blockers). It's nice to be able to get back to my regular install in that case.
    - groovybits 7y ago
      I see the use case for developers who want to test multiple versions. But as stevekemp said, the average user is losing their profile when simply upgrading from one version to the next. And it seems that the fix to this is to go back into the Profile Manager and set you old profile as the new default. Wouldn't this inadvertently cause data loss for the average user? (Ex: My parents do not even know Profile Manager is, much less that Profiles exist) If anything, I see this as a bad thing - especially for those who do not use FF Sync. Am I interpreting this correctly? We're talking about regular FF here, not Developer Edition, correct? Edit: > People who want to keep their work and personal browsing separate. I thought that's what Multi-Account Containers was supposed to help with.
sdfjkl 7y ago
Go to "about:profiles" and make your old profile ("default" by default) the default profile again, then restart Firefox. This was indeed a fucking terrible way of doing this: "Hey, we've just hidden all your profile data from you and to get it back you need to sign up to our web service!"
acemarke 7y ago
It looks like that may be related to FF now creating a separate profile for every installation. That was apparently targeted for FF65 originally, then bumped to FF67: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla.dev.platform/hVeJSYjSnO4/discussion https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla.dev.platform/hVeJS...
bzbarsky 7y ago
That's really odd. Had you used that profile with a post-67 nightly at some point or something? Some more information about the profiles involved here would be really useful. Are you willing to file a bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ ? If you do and give me the link to it, I'll get people who know the right questions to ask involved...
- stevekemp 7y ago
  No, I always upgrade to the latest release when I spot it, but I don't try nightlies or anything other than releases. I take a backup of ~/.mozilla and just download the new binaries to /opt/firefox. (Well I download and update a symlink.)
  - callahad 7y ago
    We might be resolving symlinks to their physical paths, making each download look like a new install. If so, the nixpkgs issue I mentioned above is probably more relevant than expected. I'm not entirely certain, but if you want to source dive, nsXREDirProvider::GetInstallHash is a good place to start: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/6c9f60f8cc064a1005cd8141ecd526578ae9da7a/toolkit/xre/nsXREDirProvider.cpp#1178 https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/6c9f60f8cc064a1005...

qxcbr 7y ago

>Suspending unused tabs Didn't they already do that? I remember receiving a spinner whenever I changed between tabs very often since they introduced that multi-process thing. >More power to you with every update *Except when we decide to remotely execute code on your computer using Studies/Normandy/whatever

johnchristopher 7y ago
> Didn't they already do that? I remember receiving a spinner whenever I changed between tabs very often since they introduced that multi-process thing. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/tabs/discard https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... It seems to be something different than discarded tabs.
sp332 7y ago
The spinner is not for discarded tabs. That's when the main window is trying to connect to a different back-end process than the one you were using for the previous tab.

whyagaindavid 7y ago

if anyone from mozilla is reading hn, the link on the pop-up box 'Get the Lockbox app' go to 'apple appstore' even if I click on the Google Play icon.

callahad 7y ago
Thanks for the heads up! We'll get that fixed.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

darkpuma 7y ago

> "Suspending unused tabs" I'm curious to see how aggressive this is. If it's good enough to render my tab suspender extension obsolete, that'd be fantastic.

revskill 7y ago
On Chrome, i use the Great Suspender which does the trick. It's the ONLY extension that i keep there. Great to see it's built-in Firefox.
chupasaurus 7y ago
> I'm curious to see how aggressive this is. It's in the config parameter's name: browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory. Boolean, works only on Windows for now.
- skykooler 7y ago
  Ah man. Hope this makes it to Linux and especially OSX soon!
  - j605 7y ago
    On Linux, I use cgroups to restrict memory usage of certain applications to prevent them from crashing the whole system.
- tilolebo 7y ago
  Any idea when Linux will be supported? I'm using the Auto Tab Discard extension for now, but having a native way to handle this for Linux users would be great.
corobo 7y ago
Somewhat eerie.. I recently installed a tab suspender because a tab crashed or lagged out so I killed its process This version of Firefox is obviously because of me :P
helb 7y ago
> Firefox will now detect if your computer’s memory is running low, which we define as lower than 400MB, and suspend unused tabs that you haven’t used or looked at in a while. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/05/21/latest-firefox-release-is-faster-than-ever/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/05/21/latest-firefox-rele...

gerbilly 7y ago

I tried to see if letterboxing was enabled, but it didn't seem to make a difference.¹ Does anyone know whether they included this feature, and if so how to enable it? 1: https://browserleaks.com/javascript https://browserleaks.com/javascript still detects my window size down to the pixel.

mbrubeck 7y ago
Set the "privacy.resistFingerprinting" pref to "true"
- gerbilly 7y ago
  I had that setting set to true since before the update. Every site that mentions letterboxing claims this is the setting to use to enable it. However, unless I misunderstand, it does not seem to enable it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
johnp_ 7y ago
`privacy.resistFingerprinting.letterboxing` is currently a separate setting since it's still rough around the edges. Not sure if it works on Release, I have it set on Nightly.

arusahni 7y ago

Congrats to Mozilla on shipping WebRender[1]! Just Nvidia on Windows for now, but I'm looking forward to the restrictions being relaxed - the perf improvements have been significant on my end. 1: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-fps-how-webrender-gets-rid-of-jank/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-f...

yash1th 7y ago
related hackernews discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19969216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19969216
hiccuphippo 7y ago
You can enable it manually with the following: > To turn on WebRender, go to about:config, enable the gfx.webrender.all pref, and restart the browser.
- vbuwivbiu 7y ago
  if you enable it & restart on another platform will it work ? how would you confirm it's working ?
  - callahad 7y ago
    It should. To confirm it's working, visit about:support and look for "WebRender" in the "Compositing" field.

backpackway 7y ago

> Save passwords in private browsing mode While this might be handy when visiting your favorite paid porn site, isn't this counter-intuitive? When I am in private mode, I expect nothing to be saved.

mbrubeck 7y ago
In both private and not-private windows, the browser asks the user whether to save each password. Nothing is saved unless you explicitly click the Save button.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Ok, but I think the parent is wondering in what situation you'd want to store in the browser details of a site you'd visited, but still use private mode to "hide" that you'd visited? What data does the password use retain? IIRC password store retains the "time first used, time last used" and displays that visibly. In short what's the use-case or user story that fits this feature?
  - mbrubeck 7y ago
    I sometimes use private browsing to temporarily access a site with a secondary account, without logging it if my main account.
    - darkpuma 7y ago
      Multi-Account Containers is good for that.
      - RussianCow 7y ago
        Containers are overkill when you just want to do this as a one-off.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]

zimbatm 7y ago

Firefox 67 also the first browser that ships with `prefers-color-scheme` (aka dark mode) after Safari. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref... And it does the right thing and disables the feature when enabling the resist fingerprinting option. I did a small survey and only very few websites have developed a second dark theme: https://zimbatm.com/DarkMode https://zimbatm.com/DarkMode

megous 7y ago
BTW, cheap-ass dark mode can be made by: filter: invert(95%) hue-rotate(190deg) on <body> and perhaps fiddling with some backgrounds, to avoid transparency.
- Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
  As someone who codes dark mode first thanks for the lazy “OMG, my eyes...” mode ;-)
  - swozey 7y ago
    Have you used the Dark Reader addon? It's not amazing in firefox (has major performance issues on some sites) but I can't live without it.
    - butteroverflow 7y ago
      Have you tried simply using Stylus with a custom style? I've been pretty happy with the setup. No performance issues.
      - johnnycab 7y ago
        Stylus is great when Darkreader breaks on certain sites. But when it works there are no substitutes e.g. navigating HN using the light setting in Darkreader offers a degree of customisation to create a scheme and reduce eye fatigue, without too much effort. Whereas, it can be hit and miss when trying various themes/stylesheets etc.

hd4 7y ago

>WebRender is gradually enabled by default on Windows 10 desktops with NVIDIA graphics cards Does this mean Webrender in Stable can now be force-enabled for non-Nvidia graphics cards on Windows 10? The language is a little unclear. AFAIK Webrender is available to anyone using Nightly by force enabling it.

ncmncm 7y ago
It would be better if they offered a way to really turn it off. Firefox has got very crashy in environments that have no access to a GPU.
- e1ven 7y ago
  Could you set set gfx.webrender.enabled to false?
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Already did. It is not enough.
- cbrewster 7y ago
  Currently it will only be enabled on Windows machines with Nvidia GPUs. So this shouldn't be an issue for environments with no access to a GPU.
- jamienicol 7y ago
  gfx.webrender.force-disabled=true should do the trick. Though we shouldn't be attempting to switch it on without a GPU, if you could file a bug that would be great.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

jdlyga 7y ago

I've tried to switch to Firefox, but I keep running into rendering engine issues with certain sites. It's like it's 2005 again.

fghtr 7y ago
Which sites?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Can't say I've had this problem...
acdha 7y ago
Which sites? They actively pursue compatibility issues but it's pretty rare to see non-Google sites which only work in Chrome.
- cweagans 7y ago
  coda.io goes out of their way to only work in Chrome for some strange reason
- Silhouette 7y ago
  it's pretty rare to see non-Google sites which only work in Chrome. Unfortunately that hasn't been my experience in recent months. A noticeable number of random sites I come across, sometimes including quite important ones, Just Don't Work in Firefox. Is there a quick way to send a link to such sites/pages, if someone at Mozilla is interested in investigating why? I think it's important to note that this behaviour isn't necessarily due to anything wrong with Firefox. It could simply be because Firefox is better at blocking unwanted content than certain other browsers and that feature is working as intended, but the kinds of sites that rely on hostile content also tend to break if those scripts are forcibly blocked by the browser.
  - 7y ago

cesarb 7y ago

> Change to extensions in Private Windows: Any new extensions you add to the browser won’t work in Private Windows unless you allow this in the settings. Does this mean that adblocking (and other safety-related) extensions will suddenly stop working on private windows, unless the user knows it has to go to the settings and enable them again?

caiob 7y ago
That's why they're called "Private".
octosphere 7y ago
> Does this mean that adblocking (and other safety-related) extensions will suddenly stop working on private windows, unless the user knows it has to go to the settings and enable them again? Looks like it, although if you don't know how to configure your extensions, then why even use them in the first place? Chrome has been doing this for a while now. You have to check the 'Allow in incognito' button for the extension to work in private mode.
- bepvte 7y ago
  Previously installed extensions before this update will not be disabled automatically, only new ones
- jplayer01 7y ago
  > Looks like it, although if you don't know how to configure your extensions, then why even use them in the first place? Because uBlock Origins et al. are incredibly useful for your average internet user who know fuck all about configuring extensions but benefit far more from it? What is this unnecessary elitism? Sane defaults are really important for people who don't know anything about the internet, much less privacy or security (see any number of examples of ad networks delivering malware). Adblocking not working in private mode isn't a sane default. The vast majority of people have no idea what any of this means or how to do any of this. Doesn't mean they're any less deserving of protection.

ncmncm 7y ago

Running Firefox under Qubes has become increasingly frustrating, as tabs crash whenever (apparently?) they try to use WebGL, or anything that depends on access to a GPU. More and more, Firefox seems to depend on GPU access (or something?) and fails hard when it's not there.

javagram 7y ago
Isn’t it possible to disable gpu in about:config?
- ncmncm 7y ago
  about:config certainly has lots of settings to turn off, but I manifestly have not found enough of them, if indeed any number is enough.
  - the8472 7y ago
    You can cross-check about:config with the about:support Graphics section. A few switches of relevance: layers.acceleration, webgl.disabled, media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled, gfx.webrender.force-disabled
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      Aha! gfx.webrender.force-disabled was false. Now to ser how much difference it makes.
testvox 7y ago
Yeah I had to disable gpu acceleration on Firefox in parallels. Otherwise it rendered black boxes for elements with certain styles.
- driverdan 7y ago
  That sounds like a Parallels / driver problem, not a Firefox problem.

akavel 7y ago

> "Enable FIDO U2F API, and permit registrations for Google Accounts" Oh! Didn't expect that! Does this mean YubiKeys will now be working in GMail on Firefox? Together with all the other stuff, this starts to look like a really important and major release of Firefox.

lholden 7y ago
Yep, though technically one could enable this before now by tweaking the about:config security.webauth.u2f setting. (Which is something I've been having to do for a while now). As a side note... the way Google handles U2F is somewhat out of spec. For example, you haven't been able to register a u2f device with Firefox on google. I wonder if that's been worked around with this release? That would be great! Otherwise, u2f has worked perfect with sites like GitLab and GitHub for example.
- phillc73 7y ago
  > about:config security.webauth.u2f I still have this set to Value: "false" in Firefox 66.0.5 and it's working fine for Google Accounts. Edit: I'm pretty sure I registered by Nitrokeys with Google back in 2017 using Chrome, so I'm just referring to signing in with them.
  - judge2020 7y ago
    You could always sign in with any key, you just could only register keys via Chrome.
    - phillc73 7y ago
      I seem to recall U2F sign-in always failing with Firefox for a long time. I remember having to switch to Chrome for U2F and frankly ended up using a different 2FA method for a couple of years because of that.
- amluto 7y ago
  > the way Google handles U2F is somewhat out of spec. Somewhat? As I understand it, it doesn’t even pretend to be fully specified. Chrome shipped it without going through the normal intent to ship process.

markdog12 7y ago

> We have seen great growth in the use of AV1 even in just a few months, with our latest figures showing that 11.8% of video playback in Firefox Where are people playing AV1 videos? YouTube released an AV1 playlist long ago, and haven't added a single video since release: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyqf6gJt7KuHBmeVzZteZUlNUQAVLwrZS https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyqf6gJt7KuHBmeVzZteZ... Besides that, I've only seen a few in the wild.

markdog12 7y ago
It does seem YouTube has AV1 videos, at least for lower resolutions (720p and lower)
- markdog12 7y ago
  I've even found some in 5k, although they don't play back hardly at all. Performance not there yet.
  - callahad 7y ago
    That should be markedly better in Firefox 67, since we've just now switched to dav1d, a much more efficient decoder by the VideoLAN folks. Prior to that, we were using the reference implementation from libaom.
    - nullwasamistake 7y ago
      This is a huge enhancement, thank you!
    - markdog12 7y ago
      I'm on FF nightly, dav1d enabled.
eclipseo76 7y ago
Youtube has more AV1 videos than that playlist. My fav Youtuber has AV1 videos in 720p and it's not a huge channel.

radcon 7y ago

I can't find much info on the fingerprint protection. Has anyone tested it thoroughly? Do we know if it's effective against current fingerprinting methods? Can we actually rely on it, or will it simply be a matter of days/weeks before websites adapt to defeat this protection?

danShumway 7y ago
I don't think it's sufficient yet to stop someone determined, but I do think it's a step in the right direction, particularly when combined with a VPN. I'm looking forward to the letterboxing improvements. Anecdotally, I get a lot more captcha's when it's turned on. I regularly log in to sites and get prompts telling me I need to enter email confirmation codes. I signed up for a service recently that auto locked my account immediately on signup because of "abuse detection". To be clear, I take those as positive signs. My rough metric is that if privacy invasive sites are mad at me, I'm probably doing something right. So that's certainly not hard proof that it's effective, but it's at least circumstantial evidence that websites that I know fingerprint me get irritated when I turn it on.
- radcon 7y ago
  I agree, those are good signs. If these fingerprint protection tools are effective, my main fear is that websites will simply say "Disable your fingerprint protection if you want to proceed", much like many sites currently do with ad blockers. Or if they don't spell it out in plain English, they'll make you jump through so many hoops that you'll switch it off just to end the suffering. Trying to interact with any major website using the TOR browser has been a complete nightmare. If you aren't blocked outright, you face CAPTCHAs at every turn.
  - user17843 7y ago
    The fingerprint protection this new setting refers to is simply a blacklist of a couple of known JS fingerprinters. Those are not relevant for the majority of users, because fingerprinting with these kind of scripts is only used by a very small number of obscure sites.

jwang2019 7y ago

Firefox 67.0 does run faster and consume less RAM compared to previous versions.

skykooler 7y ago

> New streamlined worker debugging in the JavaScript Debugger with the new Threads panel. This is great news!

Aaargh20318 7y ago

Does this release include javascript MDS mitigations ?

mccr8 7y ago
Yes, though they were only necessary on OS X.

ianopolous 7y ago

It would be super awesome if Firefox can implement writable streams: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1474543 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1474543

vanderZwan 7y ago

That means that one of the most obscure performance regression bugs I've ever found in Firefox is also fixed: property lookups on numbers being slower for values recognized and optimized as integers by the JavaScript engine than for regular doubles. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1523633 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1523633

mtgx 7y ago

It includes the Facebook container, but not the Google container?

sp332 7y ago
Where is that mentioned?

kpremote 7y ago

Apologize if this is not the right place to ask for help. Two days ago when I began to develop a web site backend, a strange thing happened. Visiting "mydomainname.com" in Firefox v66 gave me back error message saying site not found, but visiting "mydomainname.com/index.html" (or index.php) would be fine, the content of that page was returned. After one hour struggle, I used another browser (and my phone) to open "mydomainname.com", and it worked fine! It returned the index.html page. So it's not the issue of the default file setup. Did I miss something obvious? I felt stupid. I am now using Chrome but I would like to come back to Firefox. Thanks for any help.

cpeterso 7y ago
Does the error happen in a Private Browsing window? Maybe Firefox cached some "site not found" result it shouldn't have? This sounds more like a server configuration issue than a Firefox bug.
- kpremote 7y ago
  __Edit: I installed the lastest Firefox v67, the problem is gone. It works great.__ Thanks. no it's not in a private browsing window. I also asked other people to visit the site(mydomainname.com) from their computers and phones, all worked fine. The hour long struggle left me with painful memories. :) I never had issue like this previously in Firefox or other browsers. On that day, Chrome and IE worked without problem on my computer (Win 7 32bit), so the computer should not be the culprit. That leaves Firefox v66 standing. I don't know why.

pcunite 7y ago

Under about:preferences#general, I can't disable checking for updates? Is there a way to do this under about:config?

svnpenn 7y ago
Its a known issue (for 13 years) https://superuser.com/questions/1432983/-/1432993 https://superuser.com/questions/1432983/-/1432993
- pcunite 7y ago
  This feature has changed from the last version I was using (62.02). The option "Never check for updates" is now missing.
  - svnpenn 7y ago
    Regardless, its currently not possible via the GUI as youve discovered. Im not happy about the situation but it is being actively worked on as of today.

classics2 7y ago

Is RSS still too hard for Firefox?

OrgNet 7y ago

> Users will no longer be able to upload and share screenshots through the Firefox Screenshots server. I kinda liked that feature, hopefully they replace it with another cloud provider for when you need to take a screenshot for sharing

nklops 7y ago

Still no improvement on macOS. Don't know why don't they make it a priority as I have to use Chrome (Safari is missing some stuff that I need).

windsignaling 7y ago
Ha, it's becoming my routine now whenever Firefox is announced on HN to search for "mac" in the comments. Waiting for that day when someone finally says something different. I really want to stop using Chrome, but unfortunately Firefox just doesn't work as well.
- redsparrow 7y ago
  I'm the same but using Vivaldi while I wait...
roryokane 7y ago
What do you mean “no improvement on macOS”? Most of the new features listed in these release notes could be considered improvements, and I assume that the macOS version of Firefox 67 has all those features, the same as on other platforms. I think you had in mind a specific aspect of Firefox that you wished would be improved, but you forgot to explain what that feature was. What is the missing feature that leads you to use Chrome?
- aeonsky 7y ago
  I think its obvious he's talking about the fact that Firefox is unusable on MacOS (on scaled resolutions). And it seems Mozilla has no ability to fix this for a large portion of their potential clientele.

darkhorn 7y ago

https://webauthn.io https://webauthn.io Fingerprint reader works with Microsoft Edge but it doesn't work with Firefox.

bscphil 7y ago

Firefox 67 should be the first version to fix permissions request spam: where tons of websites request your location (common enough that it's become a meme) or for permission to send you notifications. Before Firefox 67, if you choose to hide these notifications by default, there's no way to change this later for individual sites without (a) knowing the site needs this information, and (b) going to Firefox's preferences menu to add an exception. Now, a small icon will appear next to the lock icon when Firefox automatically denies a permissions request. You can click that icon and grant the request. This means that permissions are now easily configurable without those spammy popups appearing on so many websites! I liked this feature so much I actually backported it to Firefox 66, and I can say it's an amazing quality improvement.

tomcatfish 7y ago
I'd like a way to manually enable a plug-in for a specific site. I have sites that won't request flash that require it, and it's a pain to turn flash to allow all to view the site and then turn it back off. If this setting exists and I'm missing it, someone please tell me.
- bscphil 7y ago
  Can't you right click on the site, click "View Page Info", go to permissions, and give the site the permission to run Adobe Flash? I'm assuming this setting still works, but I kind of doubt there are too many people who install and test it these days. I don't think I've encountered a site that requires flash in years.
bscphil 7y ago
Additional information: I've found that it requires the following key in about:config to be set to true. permissions.desktop-notification.postPrompt.enabled A good site for testing this (requires javascript): https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html

sridca 7y ago

Is there a reason why I should switch to Firefox if I already trust Google to act in good faith?

fourier_mode 7y ago
https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/19/google-pulls-android-support-from-huawei/ https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/19/google-pulls-android-sup...
roryokane 7y ago
Only Firefox supports extensions that provide an alternative interface to the tab bar. Alternative interfaces such as vertical tabs or tree tabs are very useful if you have many tabs open in a single window. Examples of these extensions: • Tab Center Reborn – https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/tabcenter-reborn/ https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/tabcenter-reborn... • Tree Style Tab – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... • Tree Tabs – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/

m463 7y ago

Does anyone know how to turn off "Extract Canvas Data" by default?

Ayesh 7y ago

I use Firefox's password manager, and their new LockWise extension gives a fresh breath to password management. Nice work!

jeremiahlee 7y ago

Have you ever wanted to reset a HTML element’s style, as if it no styling had been applied? That’s what the `revert` CSS keyword does and you can now use it in Firefox 67. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/revert https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/revert