20 ms·

Firefox 73

631 points by i_am_not_elon 7y ago

amenod 7y ago
> To date, CORS network errors have been shown as warnings, making them too easy to overlook when resources could not load. Now they are correctly reported as errors, not warnings, to give them the visibility they deserve. I know this is a small improvement (s/warning/error), but like it nevertheless. What I would _LOVE_ however is that CORS errors would be displayed where it would make sense - in the Network tab. When I'm debugging connections I am looking there, not in Console.
- pedrogpimenta 7y ago
  s/warning/error/g :)
- digitarald 7y ago
  Firefox dev here. Making sure failed requests are properly highlighted in Network panel is a big one on our list!
  - RonanTheGrey 7y ago
    This would be amazing. It's one of the last holdouts of why I develop on Chrome - I need to be able to see the failed request to debug what's getting sent and what isn't!
  - amenod 7y ago
    Very glad to hear that! Now that I know what is going on, I check the console whenever the request doesn't appear in Network tab, but it is very unintuitive. Keep up the good work!
- Ayesh 7y ago
  Now that I'm reading this, I would love this feature! I like the network tab but debugging CORS or CSP with Firefox has never been so fun.
  - amenod 7y ago
    Actually in my experience Firefox CSP debugging is light years ahead of Chrome's. Not only debugging - CSP in Firefox at least works as intended, while with Chrome(ium) it's hit and miss. [0] That said, it does happen that Firefox gives a cryptic error message, and running in Chromium gives enough clues to solve the problem. But usually FF is much better with CSP, at least in my experience (and I work with CSP pretty often). [0] EDIT: "miss" meaning that the request, forbidden by CSP rules, is not stopped. Firefox correctly stops the same request.
mrspeaker 7y ago
"Did you know that console logs can be styled using backgrounds? For even more variety, you can add images, using data-uris" Ha ha, oh my... Sooo many recruiting ads coming our way! [Edit: also the WebSocket inspector is really awesome. I wish I had that years ago!]
- samschooler 7y ago
  I immediately was thinking that, and some sort of scam/phishing attack.
- dependenttypes 7y ago
  > you can add images, using data-uris Seems like a good way to detect when someone opens the console. Edit: Actually I am wrong
  - negativegate 7y ago
    Data-uris don't make network requests.
    - jwandborg 7y ago
      There's a slight possibility that you could construct an SVG that would load another resource, but it shouldn't (as in RFC 2119 "MUST NOT") be possible.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- bambax 7y ago
  What's the point of spending time on that?? Some bugs have been open for a very long time that don't appear to have been fixed in this release [0]... but we can select a background color in the console???? [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1220696 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1220696
  - 7y ago
dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
I switched to Firefox this month. Had to, with everything that's going on in Chrome. After struggling to remember to use Firefox, I just signed out of all my accounts in Chrome. Now I reach for Firefox much more naturally. Soon enough it should take. Great to see the emphasis on DevTools in this release. DevTools have definitely much improved since I last tried, but they are still glitchy compared to Chrome. For example, I was using the JS debugger, and for some reason breakpoints wouldn't "hold"—after being stopped for some period of time (not long), the page would refresh. Also little things like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1613957 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1613957, which I was able to report. It was frustrating. Had to go back to Chrome for development. Still, it was nice to see many features that Chrome doesn't have, like breakpoint logging, which is nice when you want to insert a log into third party code. And as a browser from a non-dev perspective, it's great. Great to know this browser is all about privacy instead of just trying to provide the bare minimum to keep people on board. Great to have the Facebook Container. Thank you Firefox!
- Topgamer7 7y ago
  Yeah the debugger certainly still leaves some things to be desired. When using a fairly sizeable react project, I set a XHR breakpoint, it was triggered, then the whole tab became unresponsive (dev tools included)
  - sefrost 7y ago
    This happens to me a lot in the Chrome developer tools as well. Especially with hot reloading, so would love any advice to help with it. Chrome is the only application I ever have to force quit.
    - dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
      Happens to me in Chrome too, specifically when I reload a page that's stopped at a breakpoint. Instead of force quitting the whole application, check out Window -> Task manager. There you can force quit just a single, specific tab without closing the whole application.
chrshawkes 7y ago
I think Firefox shines when it comes to flexbox, grid, CSS animations & dealing with fonts. Aside from those key features, Firefox and Chrome are roughly identical when it comes to debugging capabilities and being memory hogs.
unethical_ban 7y ago
>...The General tab in Preferences now has a Zoom tool. You can use this feature to set the magnification level applied to all pages you load. You can also specify whether all page contents should be enlarged, or only text. We know this is a hugely popular feature because of the number of extensions that offer this functionality. Selective zoom as a native feature is a huge boon to users. This is terrific! I have been shocked that this has not been a feature with accessibility otherwise having decent focus from major software vendors. I no longer have to have the zoom level preference in my toolbar to tune every site.
CodesInChaos 7y ago
Does "Zoom text only" only change the default text size (and thus the `rem` unit) or does it have other effects as well?
fsajkdnjk 7y ago
it would be nice if firefox would stop sending unapproved requests on the background to mozilla's infra. i am tired of blacklisting all those domains in my hosts file. also the famous welcome screen full of google and other trackers... epic joke on the users. also, still not having custom search engines via keywords in the url bar, like chrome, is so lame.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Erm, they've had keywords for ages? I thought they also had some defaults, but I use "g $word1 $word2" for Google search from the address bar for what feels like over a decade. The don't have the fancy UI to go with it that Chrome has.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- josteink 7y ago
  > also, still not having custom search engines via keywords in the url bar, like chrome, is so lame. What are you talking about? Firefox has had this since before Chrome even existed? I’m using it all the time. Maybe do some research next time?
- rhizome 7y ago
  >custom search engines via keywords Right-click in a search field; "Add a Keyword for this Search..."
- lode 7y ago
  I believe parent refers to Chrome's ability to autodetect OpenSearch websites. It is my 1 reason why I keep going back to Chrome. How this works: Chrome automatically detects when a website supports OpenSearch. So for instance, if I have previously visited English Wikipedia, next time I start typing "en.w" Chrome will not suggest autocompletiong to en.wikipedia.org, but will also say: "Press TAB to search Wikipedia(en)". This is much easier than creating custom search keywords. For instance, it also adds quick searching for e-commerce sites I frequent, even though I'd never add a custom search keyword for it. If there's a Firefox extension that replicates this functionality (autodetection of OpenSearch and integrating with the URL bar) I'd uninstall Chrome today.
globalproctd 7y ago
I'm an avid, avid, avid Firefox user, but I switched to Vivaldi last month after doing a comparison of RAM load with the same exact open tabs and seeing a difference of: Firefox sitting at 12 gigs Vivaldi sitting at 5 gigs This is on MacOS, so mileage may vary and all that, but with the same tabs open, why would there be such a difference? Edit: And there's no difference in the plugins. I use the same plugins on both browsers: password manager, uBlock Origin, React dev tools, and Redux dev tools and that's it.
- vsareto 7y ago
  I wish I knew but something has always bothered me about people jumping browsers due to open tab usage for tab counts above 20. Is that really the only feature people care about?
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    It's one of the biggest practical differences between browsers that can completely cripple the experience. Why wouldn't it matter?
  - SkyMarshal 7y ago
    When it completely bogs down the browser so that opening a new window stakes 5s and other normal actions are extremely laggy, no other features matter. This can happen even on my 64GB workstation when Firefox hasn’t consumed all the available memory yet. Performance is a feature. (That said I continue to use Firefox exclusively b/c 1) Firefox is really good now, 2) best addon/extension support, 3) Google’s leadership is Evil now, and 4) I don’t want a rendering engine monoculture).
    - webmobdev 7y ago
      That's understandable. But what exactly is the thought process in having so many tabs (10+) open in the first place?
      - 7y ago
hstaab 7y ago
I switched to Firefox Dev Edition last year and havnt gone back since. It really does have a noticeably smoother feel to it. I do miss certain Chrome dev tools such as Lighthouse, however its not a difficult transition at all. I hope more people take the leap.
- jacurtis 7y ago
  You can always boot up Chrome for the few times a month you need lighthouse. Run the test, get the data, then quite chrome. That's what I do. I use Firefox as my daily. But I still have chrome installed and boot it up probably once a month. So it's there, but I don't stay logged in, and I don't use it very often.
- duhi88 7y ago
  You can get all of Lighthouse features in Google Page Speed Insights.
- digitarald 7y ago
  Firefox dev here: Just to understand the use case (and others can pile on too) – do you use Lighthouse for online staged/prod sites or local testing?
  - pawelk 7y ago
    I use Chrome to benchmark my local version of a website. The use case is very limited, because the results fluctuate a lot depending on the overall load on my machine (including the dev server), so I usually do three passes on the master branch of my project, get scores like 53, 56, 51, then switch to my development branch, three passes again, if I see e.g. 58, 56, 61 then it's fine, if the results are noticeably lower than master then time to investigate. In any case we have a dedicated environment with lighthouse-ci and this is where the real pre-release benchmarks are executed.
- sevencolors 7y ago
  Been using this as well. The CSS Grid Editor has been amazing. I think this is in the mainline now too. Also the blue icon looks better I think
sydney6 7y ago
Soon, People, Soon: [Wayland] Implement ffmpeg/VAAPI video playback https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1610199 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1610199
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  Is this feature only going to be implemented on Wayland?
  - sydney6 7y ago
    I believe so. It appears that X11 is about to go into "maintenance mode". https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2019/06/24/on-the-road-to-fedora-workstation-31/ https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2019/06/24/on-the-road-to-fed...
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      This is bought to you by the people that think /etc/sudoers is best replaced with javascript rules and the solution to a mash up of javascript and compiled languages not freeing memory is to ignore the issue for 7 or 8 years then admit that the issue is unfixable and solve it by manually running the gc constantly and noting that this performs in practice way better than you would imagine for such a hacky crappy solution. In practice most users not using fedora are "apt" to see wayland not sooner than they upgrade to ubuntu 24.04 LTS or Debian 11 or later and as users will naturally upgrade when they feel like it as opposed to release day one would expect the majority to transition between 2024 and 2028. Apps which don't work on X before this period would be even more niche than usual.
- whalesalad 7y ago
  I wish I could take Wayland for a spin but it feels like HL3 vaporware that only a select few individuals are actually capable of using. (I have an nVidia card)
  - downtide 7y ago
maga 7y ago
And still no support for RegExp features from ES2018(!), i.e. named groups [1]. I love FF as much as the next web dev, but sometimes features fall by the wayside, and it takes forever for FF to implement them. For example, it took literally years for FF to implement focusin/focusout events after they were standardized and all other browsers implemented them. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1362154 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1362154
axelfontaine 7y ago
Strangely lately Firefox has been failing both Acid2 and Acid3 tests (see https://www.acidtests.org/ https://www.acidtests.org/) even though it used to pass them years ago.
- komali2 7y ago
  ...so? > and the Acid Tests are correspondingly no longer being maintained. Acid3, in particular, contains some controversial tests and no longer reflects the consensus of the Web standards it purports to test, especially when it comes to issues affecting mobile browsers. The tests remain available for historical purposes and for use by browser vendors. It would be inappropriate, however, to use them as part of a certification process, especially for mobile browsers.
- eropple 7y ago
  Not strange, as I understand it. Neither Acid2 nor Acid3 reflect current CSS specifications. And Acid3 was always a bit contentious.
abinaya_rl 7y ago
With the way that they are releasing new versions frequently, It is going to be a future. Good job Mozilla!
tyrion 7y ago
I just set up a small monthly donation to Mozilla. You can do the same if you wish at: https://donate.mozilla.org https://donate.mozilla.org I think it is worth it since I have been using FF since forever for free.
- newscracker 7y ago
  Note that donations go to Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit parent of Mozilla Corporation that works on an open web and other social initiatives. Mozilla Corporation, the maker of Firefox, does not get anything from your donations because of the way these organizations are structured. I've asked about this here before (how to support MoCo and Firefox with money), but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that so far. This is one of the reasons Mozilla Corporation has been looking at other services, like the VPN service we've heard of, to get more revenue. Mozilla Corporation also laid off several people from the Firefox team recently because...not enough money, in very simple terms! This is not to say that one must not donate to Mozilla Foundation. Just be aware of where your money can go and what it can be used for. On the other hand, donations to Mozilla Thunderbird go directly to Thunderbird development, maintenance, etc. Edit: Removed an erroneous statement about the search engine partnerships.
  - tyrion 7y ago
    Thanks for bringing this up. I remember reading something similar in a previous thread, but while making the donation I couldn't think of why it would be a reason not do donate anyway. If I could donate directly towards ff development, I would probably choose to do so. Anyway from your comment I get the impression that donating to Moz Foundation is not such a great idea. If so, could you elaborate why? My reasoning is this: I wish to donate to the people that brought me FF. If they believe those funds are better allocated to something else (instead of FF development), I guess it is should be their choice. Unless they start neglecting FF I see no reason not to donate some small amount anyway.
    - FeepingCreature 7y ago
      I use Tab Mix Plus. (I'm on Waterfox just for that one extension.) Back when Firefox switched to the new UI backend and broke approximately all of the addons, it was promised that the missing APIs they'd ditched would be re-added post release as JS APIs. This is now many years overdue. Frnakly, I disagree that it should be their choice, and will not donate until they give me an avenue to donate to Firefox Browser specifically.
numbers 7y ago
Excited to see NextDNS being added to DNS over HTTPS. I’ve been using them device wide but this just means more people will be able to find them.
franczesko 7y ago
I'd prefer the mobile version of the browser to be more polished, rather than the desktop one.
- ac29 7y ago
  Firefox Preview (early release of next generation Firefox on Android) has been improving fairly rapidly. Extension support landed in nightly a week or so ago, for those who have been holding off on checking it out.
  - galangalalgol 7y ago
    I switched that day. Ublock origin was the only thing holding me back. I like it. I do want my I don't care about cookies add on.
kakuri 7y ago
It will be nice if Firefox restores support for high-quality scaling. transform(scale) used to work well, then for a long time it produced horribly pixelated text. They improved it a few months back, but it's still noticeably pixelated. Chrome is perfectly smooth.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  This is an ongoing struggle for the graphics teams involved with both browsers, and the behavior will be different depending on OS. It really helps if you file bug reports for text quality issues that provide an example of the scenario that looks wrong. I've had multiple text/transform quality issues fixed in both Firefox and Chrome by providing examples of corner cases that perform badly. The CSS + HTML specs (and the general nature of the primitives involved) make it very very difficult to get this right in every case. Your issue is almost certainly not a question of 'high quality scaling' and instead a question of how the heuristics are selecting the source resolution to rasterize the text at. fwiw in the long run it would be possible to solve many quality issues specifically for transformed text by using variable-rate shading (like Slug, maybe Pathfinder) but this is still effectively a research area, I'm not aware of it being shipped in real software.
newscracker 7y ago
One more Firefox release, one more long list of people on HN who: * have switched from Chrome because <...> reasons why Chrome is worse or has become worse * have always used Firefox and never left it * have used Firefox but have faced issues and would want to try it if <...> What I, as a long time Firefox user and evangelist, would like to know is how we can have Firefox thrive and grow, what Mozilla Corporation is doing (or not doing) to get more funding for Firefox, and why we aren't seeing all those services that they wanted to sell to generate revenue. The Firefox team has reduced in size recently, and more money might probably help avoid such situations (or postpone them). P.S.: Donations on mozilla.org go to Mozilla Foundation, which is the non-profit parent of Mozilla Corporation (the maker of Firefox). I do not know of any direct way for end users/supporters to fund Firefox development.
- Kuinox 7y ago
  One of my coworker don't use it because some error in angular are showing up as [Object object] in Firefox, while in Chrome it show the full error.
  - jazoom 7y ago
    Not just Angular. My Vue app as well. I can't figure out why Firefox doesn't just display the error.
    - bzbarsky 7y ago
      I'd love to know more about the setup here. I am aware of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595046 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595046 which is for cases when someone rejects a Promise with a non-Error (and non-DOMException, I suspect) object. Is that what's going on here? Or could it be the thing described in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595046#c5 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595046#c5 with throwing a random non-Error object and the resulting console interaction?
      - jazoom 7y ago
harsher 7y ago
I think it's inevitable that we'll see a steady increase in Firefox's market share.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  I think you are being optimistic. Like, "Year of the Linux Desktop" optimistic. The fact is that Firefox has earned its tiny marketshare by not providing significant value for its drawbacks except to a relatively small segment of vocal people on HN. Their past hijinks don't help either.
bachmeier 7y ago
Another Firefox release means yet again my browser's going to quit working while I'm busy in the middle of the workday. It'll offer to restart, but it won't work, and then I'll have to reload all my pages manually. I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix. I never switched to Chrome at any point. This behavior is so damn annoying that it might be the one thing that actually gets me to switch.
- digitarald 7y ago
  I am on Nightly which updates 2x daily without problems. If restart doesn't work maybe try a re-install. Filing a bug would be great so Firefox devs can work with you to find a root cause. On Windows it should background update now as well.
braindongle 7y ago
Still no LastPass on Android. Why is this so?
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  Is that a firefox problem, or has lastpass just not made their extension mobile-capable?
  - braindongle 7y ago
    Did a little more reading and, my bad. For both Android and iOS the LastPass app works within browsers. No extension needed. Was maybe trying to justify not switching my life to FF from Chrome because PITA. Oughtta just do it.
jakobdabo 7y ago
Previously I had managed to force Firefox not to make unwanted automatic connections using gHacks user.js [0] and this official guide [1], but this new version makes a connection to firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com after startup no matter what. Not a big deal, but leaves a bad aftertaste from the upgrade. [0] https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making...
seumars 7y ago
20 year old bug coming through: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572
DantesKite 7y ago
On a related note, I find myself using Safari for its password management and Chrome for everything else because it’s so pleasant to use on mobile. They really nailed down the icons and animations (which doesn’t seem like it would be that important compared to other issues going on). You’d think privacy would be a major concern for me but when I observe my behavior honestly, it doesn’t seem to be that big of a factor. The voice to text feature on Chrome is really useful too when you’re searching for something and don’t want to type it all out. Stunningly accurate. iOS has a built-in voice-to-text feature on their keyboard but it’s not as good.
myNameSkip 7y ago
It's just this constant false narrative of "switching" your browser, here on HN. As if you just simply cannot have five browsers installed, all at the same time. As if Firefox isn't a crucial platform for demonstrating cross-platform compatibility for at least 4 hardware platforms used in one hundred languages around the world. If Firefox didn't exist, we'd all seep into a quagmire of software monopoly in about 6 months. Microsoft, Apple and the FAANG stocks all need Firefox to exist, as a lynchpin of the world tech economy. But yeah, you're "switching" browsers. Okay.
inviromentalist 7y ago
My Firefox install is at least 30x slower than chrome. Is this my fault? It's what prevents me from using Firefox.
- veilrap 7y ago
  What does 30x slower mean? Is this a benchmarking issue? Firefox UX responsiveness? Website responsiveness? Personally, I've never had a problem with my daily firefox usage, perf is basically indistinguishable from other major browsers like Chrome and Edge.
  - inviromentalist 7y ago
    It's exactly how it sounds. Reddit loads in 1s on chrome and 30s in Firefox. I used to blame my computer for not having enough free space, but now that I have 200GB of SSD free, I suppose I need to blame the software at some point.
    - sp332 7y ago
      Sounds like something isn't loading and Firefox waits for it to time out.
      - magicalhippo 7y ago
        Not a Chrome user, but didn't they recently bypass the system DNS in favor for their own? If so, a slow DNS could explain it as well.
        sp332 7y ago
        Yeah but that's experimental and it's supposed to have failsafes and fallbacks. I guess it's possible that it malfunctioned, and I'd never rule out DNS more generally though.
        magicalhippo 7y ago
nneonneo 7y ago
FYI, if you're switching to Firefox, I strongly (strongly) recommend checking out the Tree Style Tab extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...), which puts all your tabs in a tree in a sidebar. Once you have it installed and are happy with it, you can remove the horizontal tab bar entirely and gain a nice chunk of precious vertical space (https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#on-firefox-69-and-later https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...). I use a slightly more compact layout that saves space and lets me see more tabs; put this in "Advanced->Extra style rules" in the addon preferences: /* Compact tab layout */ :root { --tab-height: 20px !important; } .tab { height: 20px !important; } /* Shrink space between pinned tabs and tab bar, only when pins are present */ #tabbar[style*="margin"] { margin-top: 20px !important; } I've used this extension for nearly a decade at this point, and I could never imagine switching back to a top tab bar. It scales very nicely to an arbitrary number of tabs, organizes them in a highly natural way, and gives you a bunch of new power-user ways to manage your tabs (close a whole tree, migrate subtrees to new windows, ...).
- aldanor 7y ago
  Switched to Firefox only because of TST and been happy ever since.
- timbit42 7y ago
  I don't think it would work for me. My Firefox windows are 1366 pixels wide and screen height tall on a 4K screen. I don't have any sidebar space to waste. Maybe it's OK for people who maximize their browser windows on 16:9 screens.
  - barrkel 7y ago
    I generally size my browser so that the viewport is roughly square - a wide squat browser usually leaves acres of margin, or on sites that don't have decent margin, enormously long lines that are all but impossible to read. A square viewport on a widescreen monitor leaves loads of space for a sidebar.
geddy 7y ago
It took some time, but I finally feel comfortable with Firefox. I stuck with Brave for a while but the weird blockchain bookmarks syncing worked like total shit, and I'd open a browser on my nth device and it'd reset my bookmarks to what they were three weeks ago. Total nightmare. Firefox is working great currently. I have one gripe and it's that the DevTools frame doesn't let you drag-resize on the _entire_ bar. That is, the tab bar (Inspector, Console, Network, Debugger, etc). On Chrome, you can click anywhere on the bar and drag it up. As a web developer, I'm constantly resizing the viewport, and sometimes it's nice to have a larger console, but I have roughly ~2px to work with every time, and it takes some trial and error a lot of the time. Would be nice for a fix to that soon.
inshadows 7y ago
TL;DR Firefox development is focused on helping web developers deliver more junk to users, safely. Mozilla never actually caring about user features: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1520119 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1520119 Mozilla introducing unnecessary complexity and denying sane configuration management in the name of performance: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/08/03/new-backend-for-storage-local-api/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/08/03/new-backend-for-s... Mozilla just being bored I guess: https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-get-old-firefox-aboutconfig-menu-back.htm https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-get-old-firefox...
- minitech 7y ago
  > Mozilla never actually caring about user features: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1520119 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1520119 (a link to a fixed bug)
  - inshadows 7y ago
    In version 74. I linked this to illustrate, that features for users are made hastily, as if by "intern", to check the box and get paid. I cannot imagine a job or a student project where I was tasked to make keyboard shortcuts editor and got away with implementation that lacked ability to delete shortcut. But I get it. Since Firefox is for free, I have to either a) shut up, or b) hail it positively. There's no room for negative feedback.
    - majewsky 7y ago
      You mean like the room right here where you're literally providing negative feedback right now?
jonawesomegreen 7y ago
With Safari removing my ability to use uBlock in version 13, I've been wanting to make the jump back to Firefox on the desktop. The one thing that has been holding me back is that Firefox can't use the OSX Keychain for passwords. All my passwords are in my OSX/iCloud Keychain, and this is great. It works on my iOS devices and on my Mac and everything is lovely, but its keeping me using Safari on the desktop. There was an extension that did this, but the API it relies on was removed in FF 57 with the switch to the extension API.
- icanhackit 7y ago
  Long time Safari user as well, primarily for its speed and OSX feature integration (keychain). Made the jump back to Firefox in December and installed uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript and a video ripper/transcoder. While entering my passwords into FF and exporting/importing bookmarks was a minor (and brief) annoyance, the utter joy of using a feature rich and secure browser with no ads made it worth the switch, even if I don't have keychain integration. Give it a go, even just for a week.
lars_francke 7y ago
A year or so ago they introduced a bug (was it with the Quantum release) that Firefox would eat huge amounts of CPU (basically pegged at 100%) if used on MacOS with a scaled resolution. Any idea if there has been any progress on this issue? Last time I tried a few months ago it still wasn't fixed.
mariushn 7y ago
Slightly related: I'm working on an article called "Stop installing mobile apps". Would you please have a quick look and comment with your feedback, so I can incorporate it? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cmm_8DIJgOs5QsYC0CGuMebB7XC2FR9O-M0dJFX6Cds/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cmm_8DIJgOs5QsYC0CGuMebB... Any suggestions on where to publish it? (avoiding Medium) Thanks so much!
TheRealPomax 7y ago
Glad to see console background images being fixed. console.table is nice but sometimes you just need a console.plot, and that doesn't work without background-image styling.
newhotelowner 7y ago
I recently started using Firefox more. I love containers. Firefox should make the extension part of the Firefox install wizard or ask the user to install it after you install the firefox.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  Even better, delete all cookies, session and local data for each domain after all tabs for this domain have been closed (after 15 seconds), unless the user specifically whitelist a particular website. Like the amazing Cookie AutoDelete addons, that has completely changed my browser usage.
ignasl 7y ago
Still waiting for when Firefox starts supporting Matroska container for videos. Right now it cannot play h264 recorded by Chrome as Chrome puts it in Matroska for some reason. Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1422891 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1422891
xvilka 7y ago
It would be nice to have the progress bar like "XX% of C++ code was rewritten in Rust" for every new Firefox release.
mike50 7y ago
So what features are removed, added despite user complaints or demonstrate an inability to understand how the internet works?
dempedempe 7y ago
Addons are still not available in Reader View. :(
brylie 7y ago
One of the pain points of developing with Firefox dev tools, which has kept me on Chromium for development, is lack of proper formatting for tracebacks. Reading tracebacks in FF has been quite an eye strain, whereas Chromium offers syntax highlighting and formats tracebacks for readability.
iamleppert 7y ago
The developer tools still need a lot of performance work. Why does the UI crash or become unresponsive? The UI needs to be decoupled from whatever state is being managed by the tools and incrementally updated on whatever state changes. It doesn’t feel like that when using the tools as they get slower and slower the larger and more complex the application. There doesn’t appear to be any notion of paging. A good example is the console. I should be able to have an infinite log, limited by my available memory. Under no circumstances should the tools crash or get slow when dealing with a large or complicated console output. It feels like that although I’m only viewing a few dozen lines of the console the entire buffer is rendered and then clipped out. The console and many other features get slower and slower the more data I’m working with. Expanding and inspecting an array with 100 items should be no different from inspecting a list with 50 million items. This is something that chrome devtools just works, so whatever they are doing Firefox just needs to copy that in order for the tools to be useable on anything other than trivial demo’s. If the goal is to be able to develop UI’s in Firefox that can manage large datasets in the browser the devtools themselves need to be able to work with such data. Otherwise, what’s the point?
jsilence 7y ago
Would love to see an option in FF to only give CPU to the visible tab and sleep all others. I have a lot (!!!) of open tabs and ever so often one of them seems to go wild and CPU hogs. Have to restart FF for remedy.

631 points by i_am_not_elon 7y ago

> To date, CORS network errors have been shown as warnings, making them too easy to overlook when resources could not load. Now they are correctly reported as errors, not warnings, to give them the visibility they deserve. I know this is a small improvement (s/warning/error), but like it nevertheless. What I would _LOVE_ however is that CORS errors would be displayed where it would make sense - in the Network tab. When I'm debugging connections I am looking there, not in Console.

pedrogpimenta 7y ago
s/warning/error/g :)
digitarald 7y ago
Firefox dev here. Making sure failed requests are properly highlighted in Network panel is a big one on our list!
- RonanTheGrey 7y ago
  This would be amazing. It's one of the last holdouts of why I develop on Chrome - I need to be able to see the failed request to debug what's getting sent and what isn't!
- amenod 7y ago
  Very glad to hear that! Now that I know what is going on, I check the console whenever the request doesn't appear in Network tab, but it is very unintuitive. Keep up the good work!
Ayesh 7y ago
Now that I'm reading this, I would love this feature! I like the network tab but debugging CORS or CSP with Firefox has never been so fun.
- amenod 7y ago
  Actually in my experience Firefox CSP debugging is light years ahead of Chrome's. Not only debugging - CSP in Firefox at least works as intended, while with Chrome(ium) it's hit and miss. [0] That said, it does happen that Firefox gives a cryptic error message, and running in Chromium gives enough clues to solve the problem. But usually FF is much better with CSP, at least in my experience (and I work with CSP pretty often). [0] EDIT: "miss" meaning that the request, forbidden by CSP rules, is not stopped. Firefox correctly stops the same request.

mrspeaker 7y ago

"Did you know that console logs can be styled using backgrounds? For even more variety, you can add images, using data-uris" Ha ha, oh my... Sooo many recruiting ads coming our way! [Edit: also the WebSocket inspector is really awesome. I wish I had that years ago!]

samschooler 7y ago
I immediately was thinking that, and some sort of scam/phishing attack.
dependenttypes 7y ago
> you can add images, using data-uris Seems like a good way to detect when someone opens the console. Edit: Actually I am wrong
- negativegate 7y ago
  Data-uris don't make network requests.
  - jwandborg 7y ago
    There's a slight possibility that you could construct an SVG that would load another resource, but it shouldn't (as in RFC 2119 "MUST NOT") be possible.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
bambax 7y ago
What's the point of spending time on that?? Some bugs have been open for a very long time that don't appear to have been fixed in this release [0]... but we can select a background color in the console???? [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1220696 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1220696
- 7y ago

dmitryminkovsky 7y ago

I switched to Firefox this month. Had to, with everything that's going on in Chrome. After struggling to remember to use Firefox, I just signed out of all my accounts in Chrome. Now I reach for Firefox much more naturally. Soon enough it should take. Great to see the emphasis on DevTools in this release. DevTools have definitely much improved since I last tried, but they are still glitchy compared to Chrome. For example, I was using the JS debugger, and for some reason breakpoints wouldn't "hold"—after being stopped for some period of time (not long), the page would refresh. Also little things like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1613957 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1613957, which I was able to report. It was frustrating. Had to go back to Chrome for development. Still, it was nice to see many features that Chrome doesn't have, like breakpoint logging, which is nice when you want to insert a log into third party code. And as a browser from a non-dev perspective, it's great. Great to know this browser is all about privacy instead of just trying to provide the bare minimum to keep people on board. Great to have the Facebook Container. Thank you Firefox!

Topgamer7 7y ago
Yeah the debugger certainly still leaves some things to be desired. When using a fairly sizeable react project, I set a XHR breakpoint, it was triggered, then the whole tab became unresponsive (dev tools included)
- sefrost 7y ago
  This happens to me a lot in the Chrome developer tools as well. Especially with hot reloading, so would love any advice to help with it. Chrome is the only application I ever have to force quit.
  - dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
    Happens to me in Chrome too, specifically when I reload a page that's stopped at a breakpoint. Instead of force quitting the whole application, check out Window -> Task manager. There you can force quit just a single, specific tab without closing the whole application.

chrshawkes 7y ago

I think Firefox shines when it comes to flexbox, grid, CSS animations & dealing with fonts. Aside from those key features, Firefox and Chrome are roughly identical when it comes to debugging capabilities and being memory hogs.

unethical_ban 7y ago

>...The General tab in Preferences now has a Zoom tool. You can use this feature to set the magnification level applied to all pages you load. You can also specify whether all page contents should be enlarged, or only text. We know this is a hugely popular feature because of the number of extensions that offer this functionality. Selective zoom as a native feature is a huge boon to users. This is terrific! I have been shocked that this has not been a feature with accessibility otherwise having decent focus from major software vendors. I no longer have to have the zoom level preference in my toolbar to tune every site.

CodesInChaos 7y ago

Does "Zoom text only" only change the default text size (and thus the `rem` unit) or does it have other effects as well?

fsajkdnjk 7y ago

it would be nice if firefox would stop sending unapproved requests on the background to mozilla's infra. i am tired of blacklisting all those domains in my hosts file. also the famous welcome screen full of google and other trackers... epic joke on the users. also, still not having custom search engines via keywords in the url bar, like chrome, is so lame.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Erm, they've had keywords for ages? I thought they also had some defaults, but I use "g $word1 $word2" for Google search from the address bar for what feels like over a decade. The don't have the fancy UI to go with it that Chrome has.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
josteink 7y ago
> also, still not having custom search engines via keywords in the url bar, like chrome, is so lame. What are you talking about? Firefox has had this since before Chrome even existed? I’m using it all the time. Maybe do some research next time?
rhizome 7y ago
>custom search engines via keywords Right-click in a search field; "Add a Keyword for this Search..."
lode 7y ago
I believe parent refers to Chrome's ability to autodetect OpenSearch websites. It is my 1 reason why I keep going back to Chrome. How this works: Chrome automatically detects when a website supports OpenSearch. So for instance, if I have previously visited English Wikipedia, next time I start typing "en.w" Chrome will not suggest autocompletiong to en.wikipedia.org, but will also say: "Press TAB to search Wikipedia(en)". This is much easier than creating custom search keywords. For instance, it also adds quick searching for e-commerce sites I frequent, even though I'd never add a custom search keyword for it. If there's a Firefox extension that replicates this functionality (autodetection of OpenSearch and integrating with the URL bar) I'd uninstall Chrome today.

globalproctd 7y ago

I'm an avid, avid, avid Firefox user, but I switched to Vivaldi last month after doing a comparison of RAM load with the same exact open tabs and seeing a difference of: Firefox sitting at 12 gigs Vivaldi sitting at 5 gigs This is on MacOS, so mileage may vary and all that, but with the same tabs open, why would there be such a difference? Edit: And there's no difference in the plugins. I use the same plugins on both browsers: password manager, uBlock Origin, React dev tools, and Redux dev tools and that's it.

vsareto 7y ago
I wish I knew but something has always bothered me about people jumping browsers due to open tab usage for tab counts above 20. Is that really the only feature people care about?
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  It's one of the biggest practical differences between browsers that can completely cripple the experience. Why wouldn't it matter?
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  When it completely bogs down the browser so that opening a new window stakes 5s and other normal actions are extremely laggy, no other features matter. This can happen even on my 64GB workstation when Firefox hasn’t consumed all the available memory yet. Performance is a feature. (That said I continue to use Firefox exclusively b/c 1) Firefox is really good now, 2) best addon/extension support, 3) Google’s leadership is Evil now, and 4) I don’t want a rendering engine monoculture).
  - webmobdev 7y ago
    That's understandable. But what exactly is the thought process in having so many tabs (10+) open in the first place?
    - 7y ago

hstaab 7y ago

I switched to Firefox Dev Edition last year and havnt gone back since. It really does have a noticeably smoother feel to it. I do miss certain Chrome dev tools such as Lighthouse, however its not a difficult transition at all. I hope more people take the leap.

jacurtis 7y ago
You can always boot up Chrome for the few times a month you need lighthouse. Run the test, get the data, then quite chrome. That's what I do. I use Firefox as my daily. But I still have chrome installed and boot it up probably once a month. So it's there, but I don't stay logged in, and I don't use it very often.
duhi88 7y ago
You can get all of Lighthouse features in Google Page Speed Insights.
digitarald 7y ago
Firefox dev here: Just to understand the use case (and others can pile on too) – do you use Lighthouse for online staged/prod sites or local testing?
- pawelk 7y ago
  I use Chrome to benchmark my local version of a website. The use case is very limited, because the results fluctuate a lot depending on the overall load on my machine (including the dev server), so I usually do three passes on the master branch of my project, get scores like 53, 56, 51, then switch to my development branch, three passes again, if I see e.g. 58, 56, 61 then it's fine, if the results are noticeably lower than master then time to investigate. In any case we have a dedicated environment with lighthouse-ci and this is where the real pre-release benchmarks are executed.
sevencolors 7y ago
Been using this as well. The CSS Grid Editor has been amazing. I think this is in the mainline now too. Also the blue icon looks better I think

sydney6 7y ago

Soon, People, Soon: [Wayland] Implement ffmpeg/VAAPI video playback https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1610199 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1610199

michaelmrose 7y ago
Is this feature only going to be implemented on Wayland?
- sydney6 7y ago
  I believe so. It appears that X11 is about to go into "maintenance mode". https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2019/06/24/on-the-road-to-fedora-workstation-31/ https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2019/06/24/on-the-road-to-fed...
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    This is bought to you by the people that think /etc/sudoers is best replaced with javascript rules and the solution to a mash up of javascript and compiled languages not freeing memory is to ignore the issue for 7 or 8 years then admit that the issue is unfixable and solve it by manually running the gc constantly and noting that this performs in practice way better than you would imagine for such a hacky crappy solution. In practice most users not using fedora are "apt" to see wayland not sooner than they upgrade to ubuntu 24.04 LTS or Debian 11 or later and as users will naturally upgrade when they feel like it as opposed to release day one would expect the majority to transition between 2024 and 2028. Apps which don't work on X before this period would be even more niche than usual.
whalesalad 7y ago
I wish I could take Wayland for a spin but it feels like HL3 vaporware that only a select few individuals are actually capable of using. (I have an nVidia card)
- downtide 7y ago

maga 7y ago

And still no support for RegExp features from ES2018(!), i.e. named groups [1]. I love FF as much as the next web dev, but sometimes features fall by the wayside, and it takes forever for FF to implement them. For example, it took literally years for FF to implement focusin/focusout events after they were standardized and all other browsers implemented them. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1362154 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1362154

axelfontaine 7y ago

Strangely lately Firefox has been failing both Acid2 and Acid3 tests (see https://www.acidtests.org/ https://www.acidtests.org/) even though it used to pass them years ago.

komali2 7y ago
...so? > and the Acid Tests are correspondingly no longer being maintained. Acid3, in particular, contains some controversial tests and no longer reflects the consensus of the Web standards it purports to test, especially when it comes to issues affecting mobile browsers. The tests remain available for historical purposes and for use by browser vendors. It would be inappropriate, however, to use them as part of a certification process, especially for mobile browsers.
eropple 7y ago
Not strange, as I understand it. Neither Acid2 nor Acid3 reflect current CSS specifications. And Acid3 was always a bit contentious.

abinaya_rl 7y ago

With the way that they are releasing new versions frequently, It is going to be a future. Good job Mozilla!

tyrion 7y ago

I just set up a small monthly donation to Mozilla. You can do the same if you wish at: https://donate.mozilla.org https://donate.mozilla.org I think it is worth it since I have been using FF since forever for free.

newscracker 7y ago
Note that donations go to Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit parent of Mozilla Corporation that works on an open web and other social initiatives. Mozilla Corporation, the maker of Firefox, does not get anything from your donations because of the way these organizations are structured. I've asked about this here before (how to support MoCo and Firefox with money), but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that so far. This is one of the reasons Mozilla Corporation has been looking at other services, like the VPN service we've heard of, to get more revenue. Mozilla Corporation also laid off several people from the Firefox team recently because...not enough money, in very simple terms! This is not to say that one must not donate to Mozilla Foundation. Just be aware of where your money can go and what it can be used for. On the other hand, donations to Mozilla Thunderbird go directly to Thunderbird development, maintenance, etc. Edit: Removed an erroneous statement about the search engine partnerships.
- tyrion 7y ago
  Thanks for bringing this up. I remember reading something similar in a previous thread, but while making the donation I couldn't think of why it would be a reason not do donate anyway. If I could donate directly towards ff development, I would probably choose to do so. Anyway from your comment I get the impression that donating to Moz Foundation is not such a great idea. If so, could you elaborate why? My reasoning is this: I wish to donate to the people that brought me FF. If they believe those funds are better allocated to something else (instead of FF development), I guess it is should be their choice. Unless they start neglecting FF I see no reason not to donate some small amount anyway.
  - FeepingCreature 7y ago
    I use Tab Mix Plus. (I'm on Waterfox just for that one extension.) Back when Firefox switched to the new UI backend and broke approximately all of the addons, it was promised that the missing APIs they'd ditched would be re-added post release as JS APIs. This is now many years overdue. Frnakly, I disagree that it should be their choice, and will not donate until they give me an avenue to donate to Firefox Browser specifically.

numbers 7y ago

Excited to see NextDNS being added to DNS over HTTPS. I’ve been using them device wide but this just means more people will be able to find them.

franczesko 7y ago

I'd prefer the mobile version of the browser to be more polished, rather than the desktop one.

ac29 7y ago
Firefox Preview (early release of next generation Firefox on Android) has been improving fairly rapidly. Extension support landed in nightly a week or so ago, for those who have been holding off on checking it out.
- galangalalgol 7y ago
  I switched that day. Ublock origin was the only thing holding me back. I like it. I do want my I don't care about cookies add on.

kakuri 7y ago

It will be nice if Firefox restores support for high-quality scaling. transform(scale) used to work well, then for a long time it produced horribly pixelated text. They improved it a few months back, but it's still noticeably pixelated. Chrome is perfectly smooth.

kevingadd 7y ago
This is an ongoing struggle for the graphics teams involved with both browsers, and the behavior will be different depending on OS. It really helps if you file bug reports for text quality issues that provide an example of the scenario that looks wrong. I've had multiple text/transform quality issues fixed in both Firefox and Chrome by providing examples of corner cases that perform badly. The CSS + HTML specs (and the general nature of the primitives involved) make it very very difficult to get this right in every case. Your issue is almost certainly not a question of 'high quality scaling' and instead a question of how the heuristics are selecting the source resolution to rasterize the text at. fwiw in the long run it would be possible to solve many quality issues specifically for transformed text by using variable-rate shading (like Slug, maybe Pathfinder) but this is still effectively a research area, I'm not aware of it being shipped in real software.

newscracker 7y ago

One more Firefox release, one more long list of people on HN who: * have switched from Chrome because <...> reasons why Chrome is worse or has become worse * have always used Firefox and never left it * have used Firefox but have faced issues and would want to try it if <...> What I, as a long time Firefox user and evangelist, would like to know is how we can have Firefox thrive and grow, what Mozilla Corporation is doing (or not doing) to get more funding for Firefox, and why we aren't seeing all those services that they wanted to sell to generate revenue. The Firefox team has reduced in size recently, and more money might probably help avoid such situations (or postpone them). P.S.: Donations on mozilla.org go to Mozilla Foundation, which is the non-profit parent of Mozilla Corporation (the maker of Firefox). I do not know of any direct way for end users/supporters to fund Firefox development.

Kuinox 7y ago
One of my coworker don't use it because some error in angular are showing up as [Object object] in Firefox, while in Chrome it show the full error.
- jazoom 7y ago
  Not just Angular. My Vue app as well. I can't figure out why Firefox doesn't just display the error.
  - bzbarsky 7y ago
    I'd love to know more about the setup here. I am aware of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595046 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595046 which is for cases when someone rejects a Promise with a non-Error (and non-DOMException, I suspect) object. Is that what's going on here? Or could it be the thing described in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595046#c5 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595046#c5 with throwing a random non-Error object and the resulting console interaction?
    - jazoom 7y ago

harsher 7y ago

I think it's inevitable that we'll see a steady increase in Firefox's market share.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
I think you are being optimistic. Like, "Year of the Linux Desktop" optimistic. The fact is that Firefox has earned its tiny marketshare by not providing significant value for its drawbacks except to a relatively small segment of vocal people on HN. Their past hijinks don't help either.

bachmeier 7y ago

Another Firefox release means yet again my browser's going to quit working while I'm busy in the middle of the workday. It'll offer to restart, but it won't work, and then I'll have to reload all my pages manually. I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix. I never switched to Chrome at any point. This behavior is so damn annoying that it might be the one thing that actually gets me to switch.

digitarald 7y ago
I am on Nightly which updates 2x daily without problems. If restart doesn't work maybe try a re-install. Filing a bug would be great so Firefox devs can work with you to find a root cause. On Windows it should background update now as well.

braindongle 7y ago

Still no LastPass on Android. Why is this so?

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
Is that a firefox problem, or has lastpass just not made their extension mobile-capable?
- braindongle 7y ago
  Did a little more reading and, my bad. For both Android and iOS the LastPass app works within browsers. No extension needed. Was maybe trying to justify not switching my life to FF from Chrome because PITA. Oughtta just do it.

jakobdabo 7y ago

Previously I had managed to force Firefox not to make unwanted automatic connections using gHacks user.js [0] and this official guide [1], but this new version makes a connection to firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com after startup no matter what. Not a big deal, but leaves a bad aftertaste from the upgrade. [0] https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making...

seumars 7y ago

20 year old bug coming through: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572

DantesKite 7y ago

On a related note, I find myself using Safari for its password management and Chrome for everything else because it’s so pleasant to use on mobile. They really nailed down the icons and animations (which doesn’t seem like it would be that important compared to other issues going on). You’d think privacy would be a major concern for me but when I observe my behavior honestly, it doesn’t seem to be that big of a factor. The voice to text feature on Chrome is really useful too when you’re searching for something and don’t want to type it all out. Stunningly accurate. iOS has a built-in voice-to-text feature on their keyboard but it’s not as good.

myNameSkip 7y ago

It's just this constant false narrative of "switching" your browser, here on HN. As if you just simply cannot have five browsers installed, all at the same time. As if Firefox isn't a crucial platform for demonstrating cross-platform compatibility for at least 4 hardware platforms used in one hundred languages around the world. If Firefox didn't exist, we'd all seep into a quagmire of software monopoly in about 6 months. Microsoft, Apple and the FAANG stocks all need Firefox to exist, as a lynchpin of the world tech economy. But yeah, you're "switching" browsers. Okay.

inviromentalist 7y ago

My Firefox install is at least 30x slower than chrome. Is this my fault? It's what prevents me from using Firefox.

veilrap 7y ago
What does 30x slower mean? Is this a benchmarking issue? Firefox UX responsiveness? Website responsiveness? Personally, I've never had a problem with my daily firefox usage, perf is basically indistinguishable from other major browsers like Chrome and Edge.
- inviromentalist 7y ago
  It's exactly how it sounds. Reddit loads in 1s on chrome and 30s in Firefox. I used to blame my computer for not having enough free space, but now that I have 200GB of SSD free, I suppose I need to blame the software at some point.
  - sp332 7y ago
    Sounds like something isn't loading and Firefox waits for it to time out.
    - magicalhippo 7y ago
      Not a Chrome user, but didn't they recently bypass the system DNS in favor for their own? If so, a slow DNS could explain it as well.
      - sp332 7y ago
        Yeah but that's experimental and it's supposed to have failsafes and fallbacks. I guess it's possible that it malfunctioned, and I'd never rule out DNS more generally though.
        magicalhippo 7y ago

nneonneo 7y ago

FYI, if you're switching to Firefox, I strongly (strongly) recommend checking out the Tree Style Tab extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...), which puts all your tabs in a tree in a sidebar. Once you have it installed and are happy with it, you can remove the horizontal tab bar entirely and gain a nice chunk of precious vertical space (https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#on-firefox-69-and-later https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...). I use a slightly more compact layout that saves space and lets me see more tabs; put this in "Advanced->Extra style rules" in the addon preferences: /* Compact tab layout */ :root { --tab-height: 20px !important; } .tab { height: 20px !important; } /* Shrink space between pinned tabs and tab bar, only when pins are present */ #tabbar[style*="margin"] { margin-top: 20px !important; } I've used this extension for nearly a decade at this point, and I could never imagine switching back to a top tab bar. It scales very nicely to an arbitrary number of tabs, organizes them in a highly natural way, and gives you a bunch of new power-user ways to manage your tabs (close a whole tree, migrate subtrees to new windows, ...).

aldanor 7y ago
Switched to Firefox only because of TST and been happy ever since.
timbit42 7y ago
I don't think it would work for me. My Firefox windows are 1366 pixels wide and screen height tall on a 4K screen. I don't have any sidebar space to waste. Maybe it's OK for people who maximize their browser windows on 16:9 screens.
- barrkel 7y ago
  I generally size my browser so that the viewport is roughly square - a wide squat browser usually leaves acres of margin, or on sites that don't have decent margin, enormously long lines that are all but impossible to read. A square viewport on a widescreen monitor leaves loads of space for a sidebar.

geddy 7y ago

It took some time, but I finally feel comfortable with Firefox. I stuck with Brave for a while but the weird blockchain bookmarks syncing worked like total shit, and I'd open a browser on my nth device and it'd reset my bookmarks to what they were three weeks ago. Total nightmare. Firefox is working great currently. I have one gripe and it's that the DevTools frame doesn't let you drag-resize on the _entire_ bar. That is, the tab bar (Inspector, Console, Network, Debugger, etc). On Chrome, you can click anywhere on the bar and drag it up. As a web developer, I'm constantly resizing the viewport, and sometimes it's nice to have a larger console, but I have roughly ~2px to work with every time, and it takes some trial and error a lot of the time. Would be nice for a fix to that soon.

inshadows 7y ago

TL;DR Firefox development is focused on helping web developers deliver more junk to users, safely. Mozilla never actually caring about user features: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1520119 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1520119 Mozilla introducing unnecessary complexity and denying sane configuration management in the name of performance: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/08/03/new-backend-for-storage-local-api/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/08/03/new-backend-for-s... Mozilla just being bored I guess: https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-get-old-firefox-aboutconfig-menu-back.htm https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-get-old-firefox...

minitech 7y ago
> Mozilla never actually caring about user features: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1520119 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1520119 (a link to a fixed bug)
- inshadows 7y ago
  In version 74. I linked this to illustrate, that features for users are made hastily, as if by "intern", to check the box and get paid. I cannot imagine a job or a student project where I was tasked to make keyboard shortcuts editor and got away with implementation that lacked ability to delete shortcut. But I get it. Since Firefox is for free, I have to either a) shut up, or b) hail it positively. There's no room for negative feedback.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    You mean like the room right here where you're literally providing negative feedback right now?

jonawesomegreen 7y ago

With Safari removing my ability to use uBlock in version 13, I've been wanting to make the jump back to Firefox on the desktop. The one thing that has been holding me back is that Firefox can't use the OSX Keychain for passwords. All my passwords are in my OSX/iCloud Keychain, and this is great. It works on my iOS devices and on my Mac and everything is lovely, but its keeping me using Safari on the desktop. There was an extension that did this, but the API it relies on was removed in FF 57 with the switch to the extension API.

icanhackit 7y ago
Long time Safari user as well, primarily for its speed and OSX feature integration (keychain). Made the jump back to Firefox in December and installed uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript and a video ripper/transcoder. While entering my passwords into FF and exporting/importing bookmarks was a minor (and brief) annoyance, the utter joy of using a feature rich and secure browser with no ads made it worth the switch, even if I don't have keychain integration. Give it a go, even just for a week.

lars_francke 7y ago

A year or so ago they introduced a bug (was it with the Quantum release) that Firefox would eat huge amounts of CPU (basically pegged at 100%) if used on MacOS with a scaled resolution. Any idea if there has been any progress on this issue? Last time I tried a few months ago it still wasn't fixed.

mariushn 7y ago

Slightly related: I'm working on an article called "Stop installing mobile apps". Would you please have a quick look and comment with your feedback, so I can incorporate it? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cmm_8DIJgOs5QsYC0CGuMebB7XC2FR9O-M0dJFX6Cds/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cmm_8DIJgOs5QsYC0CGuMebB... Any suggestions on where to publish it? (avoiding Medium) Thanks so much!

TheRealPomax 7y ago

Glad to see console background images being fixed. console.table is nice but sometimes you just need a console.plot, and that doesn't work without background-image styling.

newhotelowner 7y ago

I recently started using Firefox more. I love containers. Firefox should make the extension part of the Firefox install wizard or ask the user to install it after you install the firefox.

rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
Even better, delete all cookies, session and local data for each domain after all tabs for this domain have been closed (after 15 seconds), unless the user specifically whitelist a particular website. Like the amazing Cookie AutoDelete addons, that has completely changed my browser usage.

ignasl 7y ago

Still waiting for when Firefox starts supporting Matroska container for videos. Right now it cannot play h264 recorded by Chrome as Chrome puts it in Matroska for some reason. Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1422891 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1422891

xvilka 7y ago

It would be nice to have the progress bar like "XX% of C++ code was rewritten in Rust" for every new Firefox release.

mike50 7y ago

So what features are removed, added despite user complaints or demonstrate an inability to understand how the internet works?

dempedempe 7y ago

Addons are still not available in Reader View. :(

brylie 7y ago

One of the pain points of developing with Firefox dev tools, which has kept me on Chromium for development, is lack of proper formatting for tracebacks. Reading tracebacks in FF has been quite an eye strain, whereas Chromium offers syntax highlighting and formats tracebacks for readability.

iamleppert 7y ago

The developer tools still need a lot of performance work. Why does the UI crash or become unresponsive? The UI needs to be decoupled from whatever state is being managed by the tools and incrementally updated on whatever state changes. It doesn’t feel like that when using the tools as they get slower and slower the larger and more complex the application. There doesn’t appear to be any notion of paging. A good example is the console. I should be able to have an infinite log, limited by my available memory. Under no circumstances should the tools crash or get slow when dealing with a large or complicated console output. It feels like that although I’m only viewing a few dozen lines of the console the entire buffer is rendered and then clipped out. The console and many other features get slower and slower the more data I’m working with. Expanding and inspecting an array with 100 items should be no different from inspecting a list with 50 million items. This is something that chrome devtools just works, so whatever they are doing Firefox just needs to copy that in order for the tools to be useable on anything other than trivial demo’s. If the goal is to be able to develop UI’s in Firefox that can manage large datasets in the browser the devtools themselves need to be able to work with such data. Otherwise, what’s the point?

jsilence 7y ago

Would love to see an option in FF to only give CPU to the visible tab and sleep all others. I have a lot (!!!) of open tabs and ever so often one of them seems to go wild and CPU hogs. Have to restart FF for remedy.