7 ms·

Firefox 71

145 points by AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

pcx 7y ago
Great to see Mozilla consistently improving devtools in Firefox. I have been using them over Chrome for a while now, hope it gets to a place where most devs start using FF again for debugging web apps.
- cm-t 7y ago
  I agree, devtools are getting better. By the way , I recommmend developpers to use the developper edition https://www.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/developer/ https://www.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/developer/
  - teknopurge 7y ago
    I've been using the dev build for years. Highly recommended. (about:performance)
  - johnward 7y ago
    What is the difference? I just thought it was basically a dark theme.
    - sebazzz 7y ago
      It is somewhat newer than mainstream, does not require to enter "yes I'm sure" when opening the dev console and has actually a beta qualifier as version number. I haven't run into any stability issues though.
    - addicted44 7y ago
      They have some experimental features enabled there which they don't in other channels. For example, I'm running Nightly, and the Dev Tools>What's New tab says the "Debug Variables with Watchpoints" (break when a property is read/written) feature is in Developer Edition (and presumably not in Nightly or the Release channel).
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    Here's a generic link that should direct you to the page based on language (rather than the French or en-US one): http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/developer/ http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/developer/
- fandaa 7y ago
  > DevTools’ Network panel can now inspect WebSocket messages and automatically formats a variety of framework formats Finally! This was the main reason to develop on Chrome instead of FF for me. The rest is almost comparable with Chrome DevTools for everyday web development.
- skykooler 7y ago
  Firefox devtools are great now! The only thing I still use Chrome for is debugging Node (which, since it's webkit based, is probably unavoidable).
  - qbaqbaqba 7y ago
    How do you do that?
    - hashkb 7y ago
      Run Node with `--inspect` and browse to `about: inspect`
    - voxic11 7y ago
      start node with the `--inspect` flag and then open `about:inspect` in chrome and it should show up as a debuggable target.
- weinzierl 7y ago
  For me the Grid Inspector alone makes using the FF devtools worth it.
- liminal 7y ago
  The CSS Changes page is a godsend. When editing CSS live it collects all the changes you've made so you can then go back and apply them in your codebase without having to hunt for them in the page elements.
telegrammae 7y ago
Firefox is wonderful! Still hoping for much-needed general UI improvements, though. The tabs look bulky and have animation performance issues. The bookmarks manager is outdated and inconsistent with other tools in its look. Same with the downloads manager. All these things aren't a big deal, but Safari and Chrome seem to have a more pleasant overall graphic design.
- senorjazz 7y ago
  was trying to find a bookmark recently, and seems I have 2 or 3 separate bookmarking systems, some here, some there, some from the menu bar, some from an icon.
- olah_1 7y ago
  > The tabs look bulky and have animation performance issues. The fact that the tabs don't shrink, but instead slide out of view is infuriating. Something like this affects users constantly.
  - MrEldritch 7y ago
    Honestly, I also found Chrome's shrinking tab behavior infuriating. All things considered, I like Firefox's sliding behavior more.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    Shrinking tabs are awful, though, when you keep 500 to 1500 tabs open. Not that I'd do something like that..
  - nirvdrum 7y ago
    Doesn't constantly changing the tab size violate Fitts's Law? I'm sure Google did some sort of study on this, but it seems to me that Chrome's shrinking tabs break a fundamental model of usability. I personally find this problematic not only because the target area shrinks, but also because I can no longer read anything on the tab, so I'm forced to hover over them. I'd love to read any study on the usability of the Chrome approach if anyone happens to know of one. Maybe something on SIGCHI?
qxnqd 7y ago
>Native MP3 decoding on Windows, Linux, and macOS What does "native" mean in this context? Uses accelerated CPU instructions? Uses the codecs of the system instead of something Firefox has built-in?
- techntoke 7y ago
  Now if they could focus on native video decoding in Linux, something that actually works with Chromium and leads me to believe that Chromium developers are more committed to open source.
  - MrRadar 7y ago
    Mozilla are working on a "Wayland DMABuf" feature which will allow for separate processes to share GPU buffers on Linux[1]. For a long time that has been a blocker for hardware-accelerated video decoding as otherwise the data would need to be copied GPU->CPU->GPU which would negate a large portion of the gains. In the short term the work will only apply to WebGL rendering but it should open the door to hardware-accelerated video decoding in the near future. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1572697 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1572697
    - nominated1 7y ago
      I’m hoping Mozilla will move to libplacebo [1] when it’s stable. It’s seems the most promising. [1] https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libplacebo https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libplacebo
- ihuman 7y ago
  Previously, "[f]or patent reasons, Firefox [did] not directly support MP3; instead, platform-native libraries [were] used to support MP3."[0] Now it uses ffvpx, which is their fork of ffmpeg. [1] [2] [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/Audio_codecs https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/A... [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1582271 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1582271 [2] https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/master/media/ffvpx/README_MOZILLA https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/master/media/ffvpx...
polymorph1sm 7y ago
I switch to Firefox few months ago on macOS and Linux. Other than issues on Youtube video playback ( sometimes the frame just freeze when I switch between different workspace in macOS )and a few minor bugs across google's service the overall experience is mostly on par with Chrome.
portmanteaufu 7y ago
I've been shocked by how helpful the new Picture-in-Picture feature is. I wish the pop-out brought the full set of playback controls with it, but it's still far superior to making a full-blown window for video playback.
- dickeytk 7y ago
  I want to try it, but it’s windows-only right now I think
  - jumbopapa 7y ago
    Working on Ubuntu for me.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    It is, so they say. They said it should be coming to macOS and Linux in Janurary 2020. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/12/03/news-from-firefox-on-mobile-private-network-and-desktop/#PiP https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/12/03/news-from-firefox-o...
    - ihuman 7y ago
      Its in 71 on macOS (and maybe Linux), but its disabled by default. In about:config, search for picture-in-picture, and enable everything except for always-show (unless you want that). If you right-click a video, there will be a new picture-in-picture option. For Youtube, you need to double-right-click to bring up Firefox's right-click menu.
      - snailmailman 7y ago
        Can confirm that these options exist and appear to work in linux, at least for me. (ubuntu 16.04) And im still on v70, so i guess its been there for a little while at least.
- s9w 7y ago
  It's an interesting. In Chrome the way you can drag tabs out of the window and easily arrange youtube-tabs on the screen while they play works much smoother than in FF. But this new FF approach is kind of another way of solving that problem.
bluenose69 7y ago
I'll update, because that's the sensible thing to do. But, frankly, I only use FF because the Zotero plugin works in it, but not in Safari. And I tend to load FF, use it for a few minutes, and then quit it. That's because FF has a habit of going nuts somehow, and gulping energy on my OSX systems. I've no idea what causes the problem, and I don't really care, because Safari tends to be faster -- sometimes a lot faster.
- techntoke 7y ago
  The Firefox cult is out to downvote anyone who doesn't worship their browser unconditionally.
- MrRadar 7y ago
  Regarding the energy use, give 71 a try. It includes compositor enhancements (actually included in the last release) that should significantly reduce energy use on modern macOS: https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-reduced-power-usage-in-firefox-70-on-macos-with-core-animation/ https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-red...
weinzierl 7y ago
I'm happy to see subgrid land and I hope Chrome will catch up soon.
psim1 7y ago
FF still causes considerable grief on my wife’s Windows 10 laptop. Two hour battery life is not acceptable. MS Edge (spit) more than triples that battery life.
benologist 7y ago
Looking forward to this update hijacking my browsing and demanding a restart instead of just waiting for me to close the browser.

145 points by AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

pcx 7y ago

Great to see Mozilla consistently improving devtools in Firefox. I have been using them over Chrome for a while now, hope it gets to a place where most devs start using FF again for debugging web apps.

cm-t 7y ago
I agree, devtools are getting better. By the way , I recommmend developpers to use the developper edition https://www.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/developer/ https://www.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/developer/
- teknopurge 7y ago
  I've been using the dev build for years. Highly recommended. (about:performance)
- johnward 7y ago
  What is the difference? I just thought it was basically a dark theme.
  - sebazzz 7y ago
    It is somewhat newer than mainstream, does not require to enter "yes I'm sure" when opening the dev console and has actually a beta qualifier as version number. I haven't run into any stability issues though.
  - addicted44 7y ago
    They have some experimental features enabled there which they don't in other channels. For example, I'm running Nightly, and the Dev Tools>What's New tab says the "Debug Variables with Watchpoints" (break when a property is read/written) feature is in Developer Edition (and presumably not in Nightly or the Release channel).
- Someone1234 7y ago
  Here's a generic link that should direct you to the page based on language (rather than the French or en-US one): http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/developer/ http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/developer/
fandaa 7y ago
> DevTools’ Network panel can now inspect WebSocket messages and automatically formats a variety of framework formats Finally! This was the main reason to develop on Chrome instead of FF for me. The rest is almost comparable with Chrome DevTools for everyday web development.
skykooler 7y ago
Firefox devtools are great now! The only thing I still use Chrome for is debugging Node (which, since it's webkit based, is probably unavoidable).
- qbaqbaqba 7y ago
  How do you do that?
  - hashkb 7y ago
    Run Node with `--inspect` and browse to `about: inspect`
  - voxic11 7y ago
    start node with the `--inspect` flag and then open `about:inspect` in chrome and it should show up as a debuggable target.
weinzierl 7y ago
For me the Grid Inspector alone makes using the FF devtools worth it.
liminal 7y ago
The CSS Changes page is a godsend. When editing CSS live it collects all the changes you've made so you can then go back and apply them in your codebase without having to hunt for them in the page elements.

telegrammae 7y ago

Firefox is wonderful! Still hoping for much-needed general UI improvements, though. The tabs look bulky and have animation performance issues. The bookmarks manager is outdated and inconsistent with other tools in its look. Same with the downloads manager. All these things aren't a big deal, but Safari and Chrome seem to have a more pleasant overall graphic design.

senorjazz 7y ago
was trying to find a bookmark recently, and seems I have 2 or 3 separate bookmarking systems, some here, some there, some from the menu bar, some from an icon.
olah_1 7y ago
> The tabs look bulky and have animation performance issues. The fact that the tabs don't shrink, but instead slide out of view is infuriating. Something like this affects users constantly.
- MrEldritch 7y ago
  Honestly, I also found Chrome's shrinking tab behavior infuriating. All things considered, I like Firefox's sliding behavior more.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Shrinking tabs are awful, though, when you keep 500 to 1500 tabs open. Not that I'd do something like that..
- nirvdrum 7y ago
  Doesn't constantly changing the tab size violate Fitts's Law? I'm sure Google did some sort of study on this, but it seems to me that Chrome's shrinking tabs break a fundamental model of usability. I personally find this problematic not only because the target area shrinks, but also because I can no longer read anything on the tab, so I'm forced to hover over them. I'd love to read any study on the usability of the Chrome approach if anyone happens to know of one. Maybe something on SIGCHI?

qxnqd 7y ago

>Native MP3 decoding on Windows, Linux, and macOS What does "native" mean in this context? Uses accelerated CPU instructions? Uses the codecs of the system instead of something Firefox has built-in?

techntoke 7y ago
Now if they could focus on native video decoding in Linux, something that actually works with Chromium and leads me to believe that Chromium developers are more committed to open source.
- MrRadar 7y ago
  Mozilla are working on a "Wayland DMABuf" feature which will allow for separate processes to share GPU buffers on Linux[1]. For a long time that has been a blocker for hardware-accelerated video decoding as otherwise the data would need to be copied GPU->CPU->GPU which would negate a large portion of the gains. In the short term the work will only apply to WebGL rendering but it should open the door to hardware-accelerated video decoding in the near future. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1572697 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1572697
  - nominated1 7y ago
    I’m hoping Mozilla will move to libplacebo [1] when it’s stable. It’s seems the most promising. [1] https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libplacebo https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libplacebo
ihuman 7y ago
Previously, "[f]or patent reasons, Firefox [did] not directly support MP3; instead, platform-native libraries [were] used to support MP3."[0] Now it uses ffvpx, which is their fork of ffmpeg. [1] [2] [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/Audio_codecs https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Formats/A... [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1582271 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1582271 [2] https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/master/media/ffvpx/README_MOZILLA https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/master/media/ffvpx...

polymorph1sm 7y ago

I switch to Firefox few months ago on macOS and Linux. Other than issues on Youtube video playback ( sometimes the frame just freeze when I switch between different workspace in macOS )and a few minor bugs across google's service the overall experience is mostly on par with Chrome.

portmanteaufu 7y ago

I've been shocked by how helpful the new Picture-in-Picture feature is. I wish the pop-out brought the full set of playback controls with it, but it's still far superior to making a full-blown window for video playback.

dickeytk 7y ago
I want to try it, but it’s windows-only right now I think
- jumbopapa 7y ago
  Working on Ubuntu for me.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  It is, so they say. They said it should be coming to macOS and Linux in Janurary 2020. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/12/03/news-from-firefox-on-mobile-private-network-and-desktop/#PiP https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/12/03/news-from-firefox-o...
  - ihuman 7y ago
    Its in 71 on macOS (and maybe Linux), but its disabled by default. In about:config, search for picture-in-picture, and enable everything except for always-show (unless you want that). If you right-click a video, there will be a new picture-in-picture option. For Youtube, you need to double-right-click to bring up Firefox's right-click menu.
    - snailmailman 7y ago
      Can confirm that these options exist and appear to work in linux, at least for me. (ubuntu 16.04) And im still on v70, so i guess its been there for a little while at least.
s9w 7y ago
It's an interesting. In Chrome the way you can drag tabs out of the window and easily arrange youtube-tabs on the screen while they play works much smoother than in FF. But this new FF approach is kind of another way of solving that problem.

bluenose69 7y ago

I'll update, because that's the sensible thing to do. But, frankly, I only use FF because the Zotero plugin works in it, but not in Safari. And I tend to load FF, use it for a few minutes, and then quit it. That's because FF has a habit of going nuts somehow, and gulping energy on my OSX systems. I've no idea what causes the problem, and I don't really care, because Safari tends to be faster -- sometimes a lot faster.

techntoke 7y ago
The Firefox cult is out to downvote anyone who doesn't worship their browser unconditionally.
MrRadar 7y ago
Regarding the energy use, give 71 a try. It includes compositor enhancements (actually included in the last release) that should significantly reduce energy use on modern macOS: https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-reduced-power-usage-in-firefox-70-on-macos-with-core-animation/ https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-red...

weinzierl 7y ago

I'm happy to see subgrid land and I hope Chrome will catch up soon.

psim1 7y ago

FF still causes considerable grief on my wife’s Windows 10 laptop. Two hour battery life is not acceptable. MS Edge (spit) more than triples that battery life.

benologist 7y ago

Looking forward to this update hijacking my browsing and demanding a restart instead of just waiting for me to close the browser.