39 ms·

Firefox 74

540 points by replax 7y ago

MasterYoda 7y ago
The 74 release says "New: Facebook container..." Do they mean the facebook container addon will come as standard, pre-installed with 74 or do they only mean they updated the addon? Little bit confused, feels a bit strange if they meant the later (under the new firefox release), but a at the same time when I updated 73 to 74 I could not see any traces of the "facebook container" in 74, no added addon. Is it meant fb container should should be like an pre-installed addon?
- dao- 7y ago
  > Do they mean the facebook container addon will come as standard, pre-installed with 74 or do they only mean they updated the addon? The latter.
  - Santosh83 7y ago
    Why is that being mentioned in the main application's release notes? Isn't it more appropriate on the addon's main page? This confused me too. I thought they were including Facebook Container by default like they did with Pocket, then could find no trace of it after updating.
    - cadence- 7y ago
      There is nothing else major in this release, so it probably made sense to Use this opportunity to mention it.
    - asveikau 7y ago
      I don't watch mozilla closely other than I run firefox in a couple of places [including typing this message], and it does seem to me that they often promo existing features as "new" assuming that people are unfamiliar with them, which in fairness, a lot of people are probably unfamiliar.. For example when they recently updated their android app, it was phrased as "our new android app" with the possible implication that it was written from scratch more recently [I was already using it]. And probably to a lot of potential users, it might as well be new, because most people are not on it. Seems a tad slimy/deceptive/over-hyping. But I understand that the public at large is unaware of the feature set and they wish to make a good impression.
- Derek_MK 7y ago
  Pretty sure the "new" part is the following: > But when we need an exception, you can now create one by adding custom sites to the Facebook Container.
MikusR 7y ago
After updating Firefox opens this page (using Google trackers) https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/74.0/whatsnew/all/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/74.0/whatsnew/all/ with a huge banner for Facebook container. Notably Mozilla hasn't made or advertises a Google container (probably has nothing to do with their heavy use of Google analytics or the search deal they have with Google).
pgm8705 7y ago
Eagerly awaiting a Firefox release that improves power consumption on Mac to a point where it is at least close to competitive with Safari. That, plus the rumors that iOS will soon allow 3rd party default browsers and I'm all in Firefox for sure.
- unethical_ban 7y ago
  I'm on a 2019 Macbook Pro and my battery lasts for hours. Then again, I haven't run Safari for an extended period of time.
  - apetresc 7y ago
    Well of course it lasts "for hours", what would the alternative be? A brand new laptop dying in minutes?
    - unethical_ban 7y ago
      My 2019 Lenovo E485 with Ryzen 7 was lasting about 90 minutes on Ubuntu due to a microcode bug that was recently fixed.
- AbuAssar 7y ago
  restricting all browsers to use safari is the single killer feature that made me stick with ios. If I blacklisted a website in control center it is respected in all browsers even in private mode.
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    Requiring all third party browsers to honor those settings is something I could see Apple doing.
  - hencoappel 7y ago
    > restricting all browsers to use safari is the single killer feature "killer" is right, "feature" is not. It's very anti-competitive and for those who don't want to use Safari it means iOS is just not an option. > If I blacklisted a website in control center it is respected in all browsers even in private mode. This is useful if you're using multiple browsers, but why bother if they're all Safari?
genpfault 7y ago
Any way to get rid of this "Your browser is being managed by your organization" tomfoolery without nuking the relevant code in EnterprisePolicies.js[1] and rebuilding Firefox? [1]: https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/components/enterprisepolicies/EnterprisePolicies.js#568 https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/compo...
- kiriliponi 7y ago
  +1, would love to circumvent this !
- Someone1234 7y ago
  If you could then enterprises would use the same mechanism to turn it off too.
- jorams 7y ago
  Can't you ask your organization to get rid of its policies?
  - starik36 7y ago
    If it were only that easy.
ape4 7y ago
Even if Facebook is containerized, if you make a purchase on <site>.com they might just tell Facebook (without the browser involved)
- chrisjc 7y ago
  Apparently this can be done in a brick-and-mortar (Home Depot, Pavillions, so on) too. And I mean even without ID, members card, ewallet, etc... There's nothing Mozilla can do about that too.
- sp332 7y ago
  But that site would have to know what your Facebook profile is. And with FB domains blocked outside of the FB container, they're going to have a harder time putting that info together.
  - ape4 7y ago
    Could they just use your email address?
    - groovecoder 7y ago
      psst ... check out https://monitor.firefox.com/protect-my-email https://monitor.firefox.com/protect-my-email
      - newscracker 7y ago
        That helps only for breaches involving specific email addresses. What the GP is hinting at is Facebook having your email address and you using the same email address on a site for a purchase. Sellers usually upload their customers' email addresses on to Facebook and other social media platforms so that they can target these users better. So if you use the same email address everywhere, then linking all your interactions and transactions is a certainty.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    But that site would have to know what your Facebook profile is. And with FB domains blocked outside of the FB container, they're going to have a harder time putting that info together. Nope. I didn't find a lot of activity here (most was wrong), but Albertsons and Home Depot had hits. I've never given either my Facebook info. https://facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/ https://facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/
MivLives 7y ago
It's interesting that the patch notes seem to have references to a specific site. Did they really make changes to Firefox that only target Instagram?
- ben-schaaf 7y ago
  I was recently reading through the input handling code for firefox on windows. Turns out that some input method editors insert a special character that facebook then deletes, breaking input handling. So they have a special case fix for facebook where they turn that character into a different one. I guess when you don't have enough market share to force extremely popular websites to fix themselves, you're forced to fix them yourself.
  - behringer 7y ago
    Either that or they're working around anti competitive features.
- h4l0 7y ago
  > Facebook Container prevents Facebook... Considering that Mozilla is already protecting their users from specific target sites, it is only logical to assume that they are also improving user experience for a website which has 1B+ users. Edit: I still cannot overcome the fact that both products are owned by the same company.
  - kibwen 7y ago
    Note that Facebook Container is an external add-on, not included with the default browser.
- csomar 7y ago
  I'm really wondering about that too. > When a video is uploaded with a batch of photos on Instagram, the Picture-in-Picture toggle would sit atop of the “next” button. The toggle is now moved allowing you to flip through to the next image of the batch.
- 7y ago
Avi-D-coder 7y ago
Switched to Firefox nightly and preview recently; it's great once you enable webrender and mess with a few other about:config options. Lockwise on Android is the only issue, it doesn't always suggest my saved passwords.
- onyva 7y ago
  Same for me on iOS. Commented above. It’s also annoyingly slow.
- jmkni 7y ago
  Which about:config options specifically would you recommend?
  - Avi-D-coder 7y ago
    I have a blog post in my drafts folder that documents it.
    - edoceo 7y ago
      Hoping you post to HN when you publish.
spatulon 7y ago
I'd love to hear if they made any progress in tracking down the 'interesting WebRender bug' from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22359574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22359574
- tux3 7y ago
  I think it's tracked under https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604492 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604492 It's still open, but it seems people haven't been able to hit the bug on the last few nightlies (this is also my experience), so it's possible the bug was quietly fixed as a side effect of some other patch.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    Programming can be so easy: "Oh hey, it fixed itself!" Programming can be so hard: "So then what was the bug?"
    - petargyurov 7y ago
      Something something Schrodinger's Bug...
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      You can bisect to try and figure out where exactly the bug "fixed" itself. Not easy with a bug that can't be triggered reliably, of course.
    - chrismorgan 7y ago
      And the awful thing if you can’t pinpoint what caused and fixed it is that it can more easily regress later.
- jiripospisil 7y ago
  They have, it's suspected to be caused by a race condition with memory pressure events [0][1]. It looks like the patch is not included in Firefox 74 though. [0] https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2020/03/02/moz-gfx-newsletter-51/ https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2020/03/02/moz-gfx-newslett... [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1617083 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1617083
baal80spam 7y ago
Is it me or the security fixes link points to a nonexisting page?
- vesinisa 7y ago
  It might be under embargo. Links up until MFSA2020-07 work.
maallooc 7y ago
https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2020-08/ https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2020-08/ Link seems broken.
stavros 7y ago
The Facebook container is great, but I wish there was an option for the built-in Multi-Account containers to work this way. I've been doing what the Facebook Container extension does, but with built-in containers, and the experience is very clunky. The two biggest issues are that I can't give the container a list of domains beforehand and say "everything under google.com should open here". I have to go to each Google subdomain and set it to "always open in this container" with three or four clicks. The other major issue is that there's no way to have links outside those domains open outside the container, so whenever I click a link on Gmail that goes to Github, Github opens in the Google container and I always have to copy/paste the address to a new tab. Fixing those two annoyances would make the built-in containers feature amazing. Maybe I should file a feature request. EDIT: I have filed a feature request: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1621276 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1621276
- IanSanders 7y ago
  I wish every domain could automatically be opened in an individual container. I don't even need to know about them.
  - matsemann 7y ago
    That would break a lot of stuff, though. And then I don't just mean "bad" tracking, but normal auth flows etc
    - katet 7y ago
      You're quite right - I have some trouble with "modal" popup windows and the Atlassian Single Sign On in particular with the temporary extensions tab. But I eventually figured out to copy and paste those URLs and manually whitelist them to a specific container tab I wouldn't recommend it for family or friends, but I'm happy with the trade off
  - pyr0hu 7y ago
    There is a temp container extension that does exactly this.
skrowl 7y ago
The largest change is disabling TLS 1.0 and 1.1 by default. Chrome following when 81 gets released (currently in beta).
- tialaramex 7y ago
  Yes, all the major browsers are on board with this plan. An IETF Best Common Practice document saying to stop using TLS 1.0 (and TLS 1.1 which was rarely used in practice) will probably be published later this year. I liked this document's original name better but alas it's more important for people to act on correct advice than for the advice to make me smile. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-moriarty-tls-oldversions-diediedie/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-moriarty-tls-oldversi...
seumars 7y ago
A new Firefox release, a new reminder that Firefox hasn't implemented native context menus in macOS for 20 years.
- macinjosh 7y ago
  It is open source. If you want that feature so badly you've had 20 years to implement it and submit a patch.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- OJFord 7y ago
  I reckon it's the only thing I use on macOS that even has a context menu. What's wrong with it? Or is it just that it doesn't look like those in... whatever you're using that also has them (Numbers.app et al. maybe?)?
  - ken 7y ago
    Literally every other application on my Mac. I don't know of any Mac applications that don't have a useful context menu. Even if you ignore Firefox's weird horizontal menu items, it looks wrong, and it acts wrong. The dividers have a non-standard color. Some menu items have tooltips. One item has an icon, and it doesn't highlight correctly. When dismissed, the menu disappears sharply instead of fading out. (To add insult to injury, the menu doesn't even use the system language. There's some internal setting that nobody can find which causes it to use Japanese even though my system and Firefox prefs are all set to English.) The position is wrong, too. I'm used to dragging one pixel to the right, but that's not far enough to highlight the first item in Firefox. Many keyboard shortcuts are missing, e.g., the common ways to jump to the top/bottom item (home/end, cmd-up/down) don't work.
- gmfawcett 7y ago
  I suggest withholding payment until they fix the problem.
- 7y ago
onyva 7y ago
I wish they’d fix Lockwise on iOS. Not really working. In my case takes ages to open when set as default, and never auto suggests login for the active site, either from Firefox or any other app.
- lorenzhs 7y ago
  Yes, it's a shame, it feels like none of the developers is actually using it. It also took them several months to fix a blatantly obvious UI issue with iOS 13. I would love to like Lockwise, it fits the bill perfectly for me, but its current state on iOS is just painfully bad.
- abledon 7y ago
  Why use lock wise over say. 1password or LastPass ?
  - onyva 7y ago
    Because I trust Mozilla with my data. Would love it to support alternative backends, like NextCloud, though.
    - abledon 7y ago
      Trust a small portion of a web browser company instead of an entire company dedicated to the security application?
      - onyva 7y ago
        Absolutely zero trust in for-profits, especially ones who only care about an exit or getting bought by Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. It'll be too late to get your data out of their hands at that stage. Regardless, so far we've seen that no software/company is 100% reliable, no matter what their expertise...
        jamesgeck0 7y ago
theandrewbailey 7y ago
> Firefox has added support for the new JavaScript optional chaining operator (?.) Cool! This sounds like something all programming languages should have had decades ago. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/Optional_chaining https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
- jeffadotio 7y ago
  I like it, but idiomatic symbols are tough. When I look at some functional languages they seem so dense with operators that I have to use some inference (which I probably get at least partially wrong) to glean the meaning. This is a good operator that, in my opinion, should be in a dynamically-typed object-oriented language. But it is not as universally understood as most of JavaScript. There is a place for languages that use more keywords and fewer operators as a design choice. Of course there also need to be languages that don’t have the undefined/null value and don’t need this.
- jmkni 7y ago
  This is only a recent addition to Typescript as well. I'm working on a project built on Angular7 at the moment, and the version of Typescript we use is too old for this operator. What happens when the browser supports an operator the version of Typescript you are using doesn't?
  - untog 7y ago
    > What happens when the browser supports an operator the version of Typescript you are using doesn't? Nothing, because the compiled TypeScript won't contain it. TypeScript is deliberately conservative about the language features it supports to ensure it never gets out of sync with JS.
  - jve 7y ago
    > What happens when the browser supports an operator the version of Typescript you are using doesn't? Well I'm certain that it won't compile. Your .ts file must go through tsc after all before you get .js
dcarmo 7y ago
I wish Firefox had a good multi-account support like Chrome has. That, and the fact that iOS 14 might allow to set your default browser would make me move to use Firefox everywhere.
- matsemann 7y ago
  Containers are a vastly superior experience to profiles, at least for my use. I still have all my history, bookmarks etc., just different cookies&stuff for the things I open in the various containers I use.
- bluedevil2k 7y ago
  I wish Firefox on iOS had ad-blocker - that's the only thing preventing me from switching on my iPhone.
  - newscracker 7y ago
    On iOS, all the browsers share the Content Blockers you install and enable in Settings (system wide). Install Firefox Focus (a single tab browser), which comes with its own Content Blocker.
- Semaphor 7y ago
  Multi-account works great with containers, far superior to chrome. What you mean is probably multi-profile. I have never used that with chrome, but with FF I can go to about:profiles to open a new one or (according to a quick search) have a shortcut to the profile switcher or to a specific profile. What does Chrome do better?
  - cdubzzz 7y ago
    > What does Chrome do better? I haven't used Chrome in a long time, but this is the primary major thing I miss from it (possibly the only thing). E.g. we have a family computer that my spouse and I use. I have set up separate profiles for us and forced Firefox to ask which profile to use on launch. But this means that if she has the browser open and has stepped away, I can't just open a new window, switch to my profile, and do things under it. I have to fully quit the browser and restart it. If I remember correctly, with Chrome the profile was essentially tied to the logged in account and it was possible to have multiple windows open to different accounts. With Firefox you need to sign out of a Sync account before logging in to another.
fdghfg 7y ago
does it still come with google tracking on the welcome screen and a ton of unapproved communication to mozilla servers?
- vntok 7y ago
  Yes it does.
Waterluvian 7y ago
It says a lot that there's a new feature bullet for Facebook alone. I wonder if at some point Firefox is going to be so effective at hampering FB's goals that FB decides it needs to be crushed
- IanSanders 7y ago
  Firefox has (unfortunately) such an insignificant share that it doesn't make any difference. Also many companies don't even bother officially supporting it any more.
  - fwup 7y ago
    Google services are extremely slow on Firefox too.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
trasz 7y ago
I still find it somewhat surprising that the FreeBSD pkg is already there, just hours after release.
- dddddaviddddd 7y ago
  Just note that Firefox (any version) won't be in the quarterly repository for a few days due to a dependency problem, at least for 12.1-RELEASE: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2020-March/117932.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2020-March...
ptx 7y ago
"Going forward, only users can install add-ons; they cannot be installed by an application." Surely that depends on how hard the application wants to try? I suppose they might mean that installing add-ons externally is now unsupported.
- notriddle 7y ago
  Windows and macOS both have application-tied sandboxing systems. Maybe they plan to use that?
metalliqaz 7y ago
This release really seems broken to me. Tree Style Tabs broke completely, and i have problems with non-responsive windows
- kyleee 7y ago
  Ugh that makes me worry, what happened to TST for you?
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    I can only close tabs with Ctrl+W. Clicking on the 'x' button does nothing.
    - sfink 7y ago
      Something's weird, then, given the number of Mozilla devs who use TST. Try in safe mode / try in a different profile / file a bug. (I am running Nightly and am happily clicking away TST tabs with the 'x'.)
      - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
        Thanks. Reinstalling the extension fixed it.
        mkl 7y ago
        Did that lose your existing tree structure and flatten everything?
        abdullahkhalids 7y ago
        Nope. I did the following steps: (1) uninstall TST (2) restart browser (3) install TST (4) restart browser. All the tabs were as is. But I also purposefully did not open or close any tabs between (2) and (3). Not sure what the impact of that would be.
DonCopal 7y ago
Until Firefox allows Tampermonkey scripts to be loaded from local files, I'm not switching.
jorvi 7y ago
Please just fix the macOS CoreAnimation patch. It was introduced with so much fanfare ~6 months ago but it doesn't do anything, in terms of power use, for a large contingent of Firefox users. Firefox still nukes batteries, especially with video playing.
franczesko 7y ago
The desktop version should be a lower-level priority in the mobile driven world. The Android version of the browser is still annoyingly slow and too complex to be a daily default. Brave, with it's dead easy setup should be an example to follow.
- Ayesh 7y ago
  Did you try FF preview 4? It's quite good.
Hitton 7y ago
I guess this means that containers still don't work in private mode.
Ohn0 7y ago
First item listed under New: > Your login management has improved with the ability to reverse alpha sort (Name Z-A) Cool!
saberworks 7y ago
I don't know what is up with mozilla/firefox. I'm still using firefox but not because I like it, only because the alternatives are worse. I signed up for a firefox account almost right after they were announced. At the time and multiple times since I've unsubscribed from "all" their emails because I'm not interested in them. They just either invent a new list and auto-subscribe me to it or they just ignore my preferences and spam me anyway. Today I got an email from mozilla telling me to "Get the 'F' out." So I did, I reset my password, logged into their service, unsubscribed (again!!) from all their lists, and then deleted my account. Yes, I was forced to reset my password and log in just to unsubscribe. Not mentioned in the changelog for this release is that in the URL bar, when I start typing and the suggestion list drops down, the first result is now highlighted in an eye-destroying bright green (even in dark mode, which I'm using).
- Ohn0 7y ago
  I used to be a fan of FF until chrome. I understand it's bad - but how about chromium? Btw, I'm not against looking at FF again, but looking at this changelog and recent product direction, they honestly feel lost.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    How is chromium better than chrome? It's the same program, minus some blobs.
    - tedunangst 7y ago
      Some users may not like the blobs.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
        I mean, sure, but chromium is still happy to spy on you, integrate with Google services, and contributes to the Blink monoculture. I'm just surprised that there are people who would object to Chrome on principle and not to chromium.
Ohn0 7y ago
> When a video is uploaded with a batch of photos on Instagram ... Features just for insta? I thought this was a web browser not an instagram browser. I guess same goes for the facebook container... what's up with building browser features for facebook? Why no reddit container, or google container, or amazon container?
- rictic 7y ago
  It's possible this was a layout bug whose most common and visible consequence was on instagram? Or does FireFox's picture in picture code have special casing for some sites?
  - Ohn0 7y ago
    Good question
  - edoceo 7y ago
    FF has some special cases for specific sites. A bug linked above shows it for Insta and another for a bank.
- MikusR 7y ago
  The Instagram thing is because a feature in Firefox broke a website
- IAmEveryone 7y ago
  > When a video is uploaded with a batch of photos on Instagram ... They fixed a site-specific bug. It takes some creativity (and a strategically short quote) to get outraged over a browser update improving how the browser renders websites.
- sandov 7y ago
  Firefox stopped being a neutral browser long ago. See [1] and [2][3]. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/08/21/mozilla-takes-action-to-protect-users-in-kazakhstan/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/08/21/mozilla-takes-actio... [2] https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/the-removal-of-the-dissenter-extention/38140 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/the-removal-of-the-dissenter... [3] https://hub.packtpub.com/mozilla-and-google-chrome-refuse-to-support-gabs-dissenter-extension-for-violating-acceptable-use-policy/ https://hub.packtpub.com/mozilla-and-google-chrome-refuse-to...
brynjolf 7y ago
The browser is unusable on Twitch or YouTube. It is so slow. It also starts lagging my 2700x CPU, which is insane. As always performance is an issue with Firefox and always will be
tomaszs 7y ago
Firefox. A story of a best browser that changed into a privacy freak software
- tomaszs 7y ago
  Thanks for minuses. You give them but you know i am right
  - dang 7y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
    - tomaszs 7y ago
      Stop bullying me
srathi 7y ago
So Firefox sent me an email with a title "Get Facebook Out". I tried to unsubscribe, but that forces me to login first, for which I don't remember the password. So I had to reset the password, and then unsubscribe from their "tips" emails. Shouldn't Firefox offer a one click unsubscribe botton?
- finchisko 7y ago
  you are supposed to use facebook login for that :D
grandpaedophilZ 7y ago
Why is everyone writing like paedophiles? As soon as there's anything all the paedophile sharks come out to play. Even dang(tm) should notice this skit, he is a moderator after all. Fucking
finchisko 7y ago
I wish disabling extension will not reset all the settings.
neop1x 7y ago
I am surprised that browsing experience looks mostly the same as it did in the beginning of web browsing. Browsers are almost operating systems, yet they look like, well.. content readers. Nowadays I tend to work on several "projects" or tasks in paralel and for each project I open multiple tabs. I am opening multiple windows but it's easy to get lost in what each of these windows belongs to, difficult to switch between them, browser windows all look the same. Containers are not exactly good for this as they have their own cookies/local storage (different use case). It seems to me that browsers are not evolving in the actual end user usability that much. Also, more generally, why can't we have electron built-in in the browser, integrated with OS (so windows would look like a native app with it's own icon, title, etc)? Why does there need to be a separate Electron "browser" for every webapp instead of reusing already running browser with extra, per-app elevated API access? Why are browsers using vague version numbering instead of semver as it used to be? I don't know if FF 74 is the massive upgrade from 73 or if it is similar to the change from 72 to 73 or 71 to 72. And will it still take 2 seconds to get visual feedback after clicking the button in that fancy marerial SPA on my cutting-edge desktop machine?

540 points by replax 7y ago

The 74 release says "New: Facebook container..." Do they mean the facebook container addon will come as standard, pre-installed with 74 or do they only mean they updated the addon? Little bit confused, feels a bit strange if they meant the later (under the new firefox release), but a at the same time when I updated 73 to 74 I could not see any traces of the "facebook container" in 74, no added addon. Is it meant fb container should should be like an pre-installed addon?

dao- 7y ago
> Do they mean the facebook container addon will come as standard, pre-installed with 74 or do they only mean they updated the addon? The latter.
- Santosh83 7y ago
  Why is that being mentioned in the main application's release notes? Isn't it more appropriate on the addon's main page? This confused me too. I thought they were including Facebook Container by default like they did with Pocket, then could find no trace of it after updating.
  - cadence- 7y ago
    There is nothing else major in this release, so it probably made sense to Use this opportunity to mention it.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    I don't watch mozilla closely other than I run firefox in a couple of places [including typing this message], and it does seem to me that they often promo existing features as "new" assuming that people are unfamiliar with them, which in fairness, a lot of people are probably unfamiliar.. For example when they recently updated their android app, it was phrased as "our new android app" with the possible implication that it was written from scratch more recently [I was already using it]. And probably to a lot of potential users, it might as well be new, because most people are not on it. Seems a tad slimy/deceptive/over-hyping. But I understand that the public at large is unaware of the feature set and they wish to make a good impression.
Derek_MK 7y ago
Pretty sure the "new" part is the following: > But when we need an exception, you can now create one by adding custom sites to the Facebook Container.

MikusR 7y ago

After updating Firefox opens this page (using Google trackers) https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/74.0/whatsnew/all/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/74.0/whatsnew/all/ with a huge banner for Facebook container. Notably Mozilla hasn't made or advertises a Google container (probably has nothing to do with their heavy use of Google analytics or the search deal they have with Google).

pgm8705 7y ago

Eagerly awaiting a Firefox release that improves power consumption on Mac to a point where it is at least close to competitive with Safari. That, plus the rumors that iOS will soon allow 3rd party default browsers and I'm all in Firefox for sure.

unethical_ban 7y ago
I'm on a 2019 Macbook Pro and my battery lasts for hours. Then again, I haven't run Safari for an extended period of time.
- apetresc 7y ago
  Well of course it lasts "for hours", what would the alternative be? A brand new laptop dying in minutes?
  - unethical_ban 7y ago
    My 2019 Lenovo E485 with Ryzen 7 was lasting about 90 minutes on Ubuntu due to a microcode bug that was recently fixed.
AbuAssar 7y ago
restricting all browsers to use safari is the single killer feature that made me stick with ios. If I blacklisted a website in control center it is respected in all browsers even in private mode.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  Requiring all third party browsers to honor those settings is something I could see Apple doing.
- hencoappel 7y ago
  > restricting all browsers to use safari is the single killer feature "killer" is right, "feature" is not. It's very anti-competitive and for those who don't want to use Safari it means iOS is just not an option. > If I blacklisted a website in control center it is respected in all browsers even in private mode. This is useful if you're using multiple browsers, but why bother if they're all Safari?

genpfault 7y ago

Any way to get rid of this "Your browser is being managed by your organization" tomfoolery without nuking the relevant code in EnterprisePolicies.js[1] and rebuilding Firefox? [1]: https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/components/enterprisepolicies/EnterprisePolicies.js#568 https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/compo...

kiriliponi 7y ago
+1, would love to circumvent this !
Someone1234 7y ago
If you could then enterprises would use the same mechanism to turn it off too.
jorams 7y ago
Can't you ask your organization to get rid of its policies?
- starik36 7y ago
  If it were only that easy.

ape4 7y ago

Even if Facebook is containerized, if you make a purchase on <site>.com they might just tell Facebook (without the browser involved)

chrisjc 7y ago
Apparently this can be done in a brick-and-mortar (Home Depot, Pavillions, so on) too. And I mean even without ID, members card, ewallet, etc... There's nothing Mozilla can do about that too.
sp332 7y ago
But that site would have to know what your Facebook profile is. And with FB domains blocked outside of the FB container, they're going to have a harder time putting that info together.
- ape4 7y ago
  Could they just use your email address?
  - groovecoder 7y ago
    psst ... check out https://monitor.firefox.com/protect-my-email https://monitor.firefox.com/protect-my-email
    - newscracker 7y ago
      That helps only for breaches involving specific email addresses. What the GP is hinting at is Facebook having your email address and you using the same email address on a site for a purchase. Sellers usually upload their customers' email addresses on to Facebook and other social media platforms so that they can target these users better. So if you use the same email address everywhere, then linking all your interactions and transactions is a certainty.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  But that site would have to know what your Facebook profile is. And with FB domains blocked outside of the FB container, they're going to have a harder time putting that info together. Nope. I didn't find a lot of activity here (most was wrong), but Albertsons and Home Depot had hits. I've never given either my Facebook info. https://facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/ https://facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/

MivLives 7y ago

It's interesting that the patch notes seem to have references to a specific site. Did they really make changes to Firefox that only target Instagram?

ben-schaaf 7y ago
I was recently reading through the input handling code for firefox on windows. Turns out that some input method editors insert a special character that facebook then deletes, breaking input handling. So they have a special case fix for facebook where they turn that character into a different one. I guess when you don't have enough market share to force extremely popular websites to fix themselves, you're forced to fix them yourself.
- behringer 7y ago
  Either that or they're working around anti competitive features.
h4l0 7y ago
> Facebook Container prevents Facebook... Considering that Mozilla is already protecting their users from specific target sites, it is only logical to assume that they are also improving user experience for a website which has 1B+ users. Edit: I still cannot overcome the fact that both products are owned by the same company.
- kibwen 7y ago
  Note that Facebook Container is an external add-on, not included with the default browser.
csomar 7y ago
I'm really wondering about that too. > When a video is uploaded with a batch of photos on Instagram, the Picture-in-Picture toggle would sit atop of the “next” button. The toggle is now moved allowing you to flip through to the next image of the batch.
7y ago

Avi-D-coder 7y ago

Switched to Firefox nightly and preview recently; it's great once you enable webrender and mess with a few other about:config options. Lockwise on Android is the only issue, it doesn't always suggest my saved passwords.

onyva 7y ago
Same for me on iOS. Commented above. It’s also annoyingly slow.
jmkni 7y ago
Which about:config options specifically would you recommend?
- Avi-D-coder 7y ago
  I have a blog post in my drafts folder that documents it.
  - edoceo 7y ago
    Hoping you post to HN when you publish.

spatulon 7y ago

I'd love to hear if they made any progress in tracking down the 'interesting WebRender bug' from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22359574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22359574

tux3 7y ago
I think it's tracked under https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604492 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604492 It's still open, but it seems people haven't been able to hit the bug on the last few nightlies (this is also my experience), so it's possible the bug was quietly fixed as a side effect of some other patch.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  Programming can be so easy: "Oh hey, it fixed itself!" Programming can be so hard: "So then what was the bug?"
  - petargyurov 7y ago
    Something something Schrodinger's Bug...
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    You can bisect to try and figure out where exactly the bug "fixed" itself. Not easy with a bug that can't be triggered reliably, of course.
  - chrismorgan 7y ago
    And the awful thing if you can’t pinpoint what caused and fixed it is that it can more easily regress later.
jiripospisil 7y ago
They have, it's suspected to be caused by a race condition with memory pressure events [0][1]. It looks like the patch is not included in Firefox 74 though. [0] https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2020/03/02/moz-gfx-newsletter-51/ https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2020/03/02/moz-gfx-newslett... [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1617083 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1617083

baal80spam 7y ago

Is it me or the security fixes link points to a nonexisting page?

vesinisa 7y ago
It might be under embargo. Links up until MFSA2020-07 work.

maallooc 7y ago

https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2020-08/ https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2020-08/ Link seems broken.

stavros 7y ago

The Facebook container is great, but I wish there was an option for the built-in Multi-Account containers to work this way. I've been doing what the Facebook Container extension does, but with built-in containers, and the experience is very clunky. The two biggest issues are that I can't give the container a list of domains beforehand and say "everything under google.com should open here". I have to go to each Google subdomain and set it to "always open in this container" with three or four clicks. The other major issue is that there's no way to have links outside those domains open outside the container, so whenever I click a link on Gmail that goes to Github, Github opens in the Google container and I always have to copy/paste the address to a new tab. Fixing those two annoyances would make the built-in containers feature amazing. Maybe I should file a feature request. EDIT: I have filed a feature request: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1621276 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1621276

IanSanders 7y ago
I wish every domain could automatically be opened in an individual container. I don't even need to know about them.
- matsemann 7y ago
  That would break a lot of stuff, though. And then I don't just mean "bad" tracking, but normal auth flows etc
  - katet 7y ago
    You're quite right - I have some trouble with "modal" popup windows and the Atlassian Single Sign On in particular with the temporary extensions tab. But I eventually figured out to copy and paste those URLs and manually whitelist them to a specific container tab I wouldn't recommend it for family or friends, but I'm happy with the trade off
- pyr0hu 7y ago
  There is a temp container extension that does exactly this.

skrowl 7y ago

The largest change is disabling TLS 1.0 and 1.1 by default. Chrome following when 81 gets released (currently in beta).

tialaramex 7y ago
Yes, all the major browsers are on board with this plan. An IETF Best Common Practice document saying to stop using TLS 1.0 (and TLS 1.1 which was rarely used in practice) will probably be published later this year. I liked this document's original name better but alas it's more important for people to act on correct advice than for the advice to make me smile. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-moriarty-tls-oldversions-diediedie/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-moriarty-tls-oldversi...

seumars 7y ago

A new Firefox release, a new reminder that Firefox hasn't implemented native context menus in macOS for 20 years.

macinjosh 7y ago
It is open source. If you want that feature so badly you've had 20 years to implement it and submit a patch.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
OJFord 7y ago
I reckon it's the only thing I use on macOS that even has a context menu. What's wrong with it? Or is it just that it doesn't look like those in... whatever you're using that also has them (Numbers.app et al. maybe?)?
- ken 7y ago
  Literally every other application on my Mac. I don't know of any Mac applications that don't have a useful context menu. Even if you ignore Firefox's weird horizontal menu items, it looks wrong, and it acts wrong. The dividers have a non-standard color. Some menu items have tooltips. One item has an icon, and it doesn't highlight correctly. When dismissed, the menu disappears sharply instead of fading out. (To add insult to injury, the menu doesn't even use the system language. There's some internal setting that nobody can find which causes it to use Japanese even though my system and Firefox prefs are all set to English.) The position is wrong, too. I'm used to dragging one pixel to the right, but that's not far enough to highlight the first item in Firefox. Many keyboard shortcuts are missing, e.g., the common ways to jump to the top/bottom item (home/end, cmd-up/down) don't work.
gmfawcett 7y ago
I suggest withholding payment until they fix the problem.
7y ago

onyva 7y ago

I wish they’d fix Lockwise on iOS. Not really working. In my case takes ages to open when set as default, and never auto suggests login for the active site, either from Firefox or any other app.

lorenzhs 7y ago
Yes, it's a shame, it feels like none of the developers is actually using it. It also took them several months to fix a blatantly obvious UI issue with iOS 13. I would love to like Lockwise, it fits the bill perfectly for me, but its current state on iOS is just painfully bad.
abledon 7y ago
Why use lock wise over say. 1password or LastPass ?
- onyva 7y ago
  Because I trust Mozilla with my data. Would love it to support alternative backends, like NextCloud, though.
  - abledon 7y ago
    Trust a small portion of a web browser company instead of an entire company dedicated to the security application?
    - onyva 7y ago
      Absolutely zero trust in for-profits, especially ones who only care about an exit or getting bought by Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. It'll be too late to get your data out of their hands at that stage. Regardless, so far we've seen that no software/company is 100% reliable, no matter what their expertise...
      - jamesgeck0 7y ago

theandrewbailey 7y ago

> Firefox has added support for the new JavaScript optional chaining operator (?.) Cool! This sounds like something all programming languages should have had decades ago. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/Optional_chaining https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

jeffadotio 7y ago
I like it, but idiomatic symbols are tough. When I look at some functional languages they seem so dense with operators that I have to use some inference (which I probably get at least partially wrong) to glean the meaning. This is a good operator that, in my opinion, should be in a dynamically-typed object-oriented language. But it is not as universally understood as most of JavaScript. There is a place for languages that use more keywords and fewer operators as a design choice. Of course there also need to be languages that don’t have the undefined/null value and don’t need this.
jmkni 7y ago
This is only a recent addition to Typescript as well. I'm working on a project built on Angular7 at the moment, and the version of Typescript we use is too old for this operator. What happens when the browser supports an operator the version of Typescript you are using doesn't?
- untog 7y ago
  > What happens when the browser supports an operator the version of Typescript you are using doesn't? Nothing, because the compiled TypeScript won't contain it. TypeScript is deliberately conservative about the language features it supports to ensure it never gets out of sync with JS.
- jve 7y ago
  > What happens when the browser supports an operator the version of Typescript you are using doesn't? Well I'm certain that it won't compile. Your .ts file must go through tsc after all before you get .js

dcarmo 7y ago

I wish Firefox had a good multi-account support like Chrome has. That, and the fact that iOS 14 might allow to set your default browser would make me move to use Firefox everywhere.

matsemann 7y ago
Containers are a vastly superior experience to profiles, at least for my use. I still have all my history, bookmarks etc., just different cookies&stuff for the things I open in the various containers I use.
bluedevil2k 7y ago
I wish Firefox on iOS had ad-blocker - that's the only thing preventing me from switching on my iPhone.
- newscracker 7y ago
  On iOS, all the browsers share the Content Blockers you install and enable in Settings (system wide). Install Firefox Focus (a single tab browser), which comes with its own Content Blocker.
Semaphor 7y ago
Multi-account works great with containers, far superior to chrome. What you mean is probably multi-profile. I have never used that with chrome, but with FF I can go to about:profiles to open a new one or (according to a quick search) have a shortcut to the profile switcher or to a specific profile. What does Chrome do better?
- cdubzzz 7y ago
  > What does Chrome do better? I haven't used Chrome in a long time, but this is the primary major thing I miss from it (possibly the only thing). E.g. we have a family computer that my spouse and I use. I have set up separate profiles for us and forced Firefox to ask which profile to use on launch. But this means that if she has the browser open and has stepped away, I can't just open a new window, switch to my profile, and do things under it. I have to fully quit the browser and restart it. If I remember correctly, with Chrome the profile was essentially tied to the logged in account and it was possible to have multiple windows open to different accounts. With Firefox you need to sign out of a Sync account before logging in to another.

fdghfg 7y ago

does it still come with google tracking on the welcome screen and a ton of unapproved communication to mozilla servers?

vntok 7y ago
Yes it does.

Waterluvian 7y ago

It says a lot that there's a new feature bullet for Facebook alone. I wonder if at some point Firefox is going to be so effective at hampering FB's goals that FB decides it needs to be crushed

IanSanders 7y ago
Firefox has (unfortunately) such an insignificant share that it doesn't make any difference. Also many companies don't even bother officially supporting it any more.
- fwup 7y ago
  Google services are extremely slow on Firefox too.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

trasz 7y ago

I still find it somewhat surprising that the FreeBSD pkg is already there, just hours after release.

dddddaviddddd 7y ago
Just note that Firefox (any version) won't be in the quarterly repository for a few days due to a dependency problem, at least for 12.1-RELEASE: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2020-March/117932.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2020-March...

ptx 7y ago

"Going forward, only users can install add-ons; they cannot be installed by an application." Surely that depends on how hard the application wants to try? I suppose they might mean that installing add-ons externally is now unsupported.

notriddle 7y ago
Windows and macOS both have application-tied sandboxing systems. Maybe they plan to use that?

metalliqaz 7y ago

This release really seems broken to me. Tree Style Tabs broke completely, and i have problems with non-responsive windows

kyleee 7y ago
Ugh that makes me worry, what happened to TST for you?
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  I can only close tabs with Ctrl+W. Clicking on the 'x' button does nothing.
  - sfink 7y ago
    Something's weird, then, given the number of Mozilla devs who use TST. Try in safe mode / try in a different profile / file a bug. (I am running Nightly and am happily clicking away TST tabs with the 'x'.)
    - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      Thanks. Reinstalling the extension fixed it.
      - mkl 7y ago
        Did that lose your existing tree structure and flatten everything?
        abdullahkhalids 7y ago
        Nope. I did the following steps: (1) uninstall TST (2) restart browser (3) install TST (4) restart browser. All the tabs were as is. But I also purposefully did not open or close any tabs between (2) and (3). Not sure what the impact of that would be.

DonCopal 7y ago

Until Firefox allows Tampermonkey scripts to be loaded from local files, I'm not switching.

jorvi 7y ago

Please just fix the macOS CoreAnimation patch. It was introduced with so much fanfare ~6 months ago but it doesn't do anything, in terms of power use, for a large contingent of Firefox users. Firefox still nukes batteries, especially with video playing.

franczesko 7y ago

The desktop version should be a lower-level priority in the mobile driven world. The Android version of the browser is still annoyingly slow and too complex to be a daily default. Brave, with it's dead easy setup should be an example to follow.

Ayesh 7y ago
Did you try FF preview 4? It's quite good.

Hitton 7y ago

I guess this means that containers still don't work in private mode.

Ohn0 7y ago

First item listed under New: > Your login management has improved with the ability to reverse alpha sort (Name Z-A) Cool!

saberworks 7y ago

I don't know what is up with mozilla/firefox. I'm still using firefox but not because I like it, only because the alternatives are worse. I signed up for a firefox account almost right after they were announced. At the time and multiple times since I've unsubscribed from "all" their emails because I'm not interested in them. They just either invent a new list and auto-subscribe me to it or they just ignore my preferences and spam me anyway. Today I got an email from mozilla telling me to "Get the 'F' out." So I did, I reset my password, logged into their service, unsubscribed (again!!) from all their lists, and then deleted my account. Yes, I was forced to reset my password and log in just to unsubscribe. Not mentioned in the changelog for this release is that in the URL bar, when I start typing and the suggestion list drops down, the first result is now highlighted in an eye-destroying bright green (even in dark mode, which I'm using).

Ohn0 7y ago
I used to be a fan of FF until chrome. I understand it's bad - but how about chromium? Btw, I'm not against looking at FF again, but looking at this changelog and recent product direction, they honestly feel lost.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  How is chromium better than chrome? It's the same program, minus some blobs.
  - tedunangst 7y ago
    Some users may not like the blobs.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      I mean, sure, but chromium is still happy to spy on you, integrate with Google services, and contributes to the Blink monoculture. I'm just surprised that there are people who would object to Chrome on principle and not to chromium.

Ohn0 7y ago

> When a video is uploaded with a batch of photos on Instagram ... Features just for insta? I thought this was a web browser not an instagram browser. I guess same goes for the facebook container... what's up with building browser features for facebook? Why no reddit container, or google container, or amazon container?

rictic 7y ago
It's possible this was a layout bug whose most common and visible consequence was on instagram? Or does FireFox's picture in picture code have special casing for some sites?
- Ohn0 7y ago
  Good question
- edoceo 7y ago
  FF has some special cases for specific sites. A bug linked above shows it for Insta and another for a bank.
MikusR 7y ago
The Instagram thing is because a feature in Firefox broke a website
IAmEveryone 7y ago
> When a video is uploaded with a batch of photos on Instagram ... They fixed a site-specific bug. It takes some creativity (and a strategically short quote) to get outraged over a browser update improving how the browser renders websites.
sandov 7y ago
Firefox stopped being a neutral browser long ago. See [1] and [2][3]. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/08/21/mozilla-takes-action-to-protect-users-in-kazakhstan/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/08/21/mozilla-takes-actio... [2] https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/the-removal-of-the-dissenter-extention/38140 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/the-removal-of-the-dissenter... [3] https://hub.packtpub.com/mozilla-and-google-chrome-refuse-to-support-gabs-dissenter-extension-for-violating-acceptable-use-policy/ https://hub.packtpub.com/mozilla-and-google-chrome-refuse-to...

brynjolf 7y ago

The browser is unusable on Twitch or YouTube. It is so slow. It also starts lagging my 2700x CPU, which is insane. As always performance is an issue with Firefox and always will be

tomaszs 7y ago

Firefox. A story of a best browser that changed into a privacy freak software

tomaszs 7y ago
Thanks for minuses. You give them but you know i am right
- dang 7y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
  - tomaszs 7y ago
    Stop bullying me

srathi 7y ago

So Firefox sent me an email with a title "Get Facebook Out". I tried to unsubscribe, but that forces me to login first, for which I don't remember the password. So I had to reset the password, and then unsubscribe from their "tips" emails. Shouldn't Firefox offer a one click unsubscribe botton?

finchisko 7y ago
you are supposed to use facebook login for that :D

grandpaedophilZ 7y ago

Why is everyone writing like paedophiles? As soon as there's anything all the paedophile sharks come out to play. Even dang(tm) should notice this skit, he is a moderator after all. Fucking

finchisko 7y ago

I wish disabling extension will not reset all the settings.

neop1x 7y ago

I am surprised that browsing experience looks mostly the same as it did in the beginning of web browsing. Browsers are almost operating systems, yet they look like, well.. content readers. Nowadays I tend to work on several "projects" or tasks in paralel and for each project I open multiple tabs. I am opening multiple windows but it's easy to get lost in what each of these windows belongs to, difficult to switch between them, browser windows all look the same. Containers are not exactly good for this as they have their own cookies/local storage (different use case). It seems to me that browsers are not evolving in the actual end user usability that much. Also, more generally, why can't we have electron built-in in the browser, integrated with OS (so windows would look like a native app with it's own icon, title, etc)? Why does there need to be a separate Electron "browser" for every webapp instead of reusing already running browser with extra, per-app elevated API access? Why are browsers using vague version numbering instead of semver as it used to be? I don't know if FF 74 is the massive upgrade from 73 or if it is similar to the change from 72 to 73 or 71 to 72. And will it still take 2 seconds to get visual feedback after clicking the button in that fancy marerial SPA on my cutting-edge desktop machine?