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Firefox 79

379 points by caution 6y ago

sp332 6y ago
Firefox releases come out every 6 weeks. It helps to put something in the title that explains what's interesting about this one.
- CUViper 6y ago
  It's actually every 4 weeks now!
- ville 6y ago
  The original title is slightly better in this regard: “Firefox 79: The safe return of shared memory, new tooling, and platform updates”
- Amorymeltzer 6y ago
  >A new stable version of Firefox brings July to a close with the return of shared memory! Firefox 79 also offers a new Promise method, more secure target=_blank links, logical assignment operators, and other updates of interest to web developers.
  - twic 6y ago
    A couple of details ... the return of shared memory > At the start of 2018, Shared Memory and high-resolution timers were effectively disabled in light of Spectre. In 2020, a new, more secure approach has been standardized to re-enable shared memory. mondo details here https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/safely-reviving-shared-memory/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/safely-reviving-shared-mem... more secure target=_blank links > To prevent the DOM property window.opener from being abused by untrusted third-party sites, Firefox 79 now automatically sets rel=noopener for all links that contain target=_blank.
    - frandroid 6y ago
      > Firefox 79 now automatically sets rel=noopener Only took what, three years since that vulnerability was found?
- ProAm 6y ago
  Hopefully they changed the address bar back to be non-Chromeified.
  - boogies 6y ago
    Haven't used it in a while, but when I did it was always easy to switch the behavior (for a power user, and I think the omnibar is much more appealing to non power users as it's visually simpler, big, and easier to click — unifying the search and address bar is what you're talking about, right?).
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      I think they're referring to the browser hiding parts of the URL, the way Chrome does. Unthinkingly following Chrome, Firefox started doing this too. To my knowledge, Firefox still defaults to doing this, but I could be mistaken. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/879926 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/879926
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - ProAm 6y ago
      Its not easy to switch back anymore and breaks a lot of functionality if you do. But its crazy that you have to accept serious UI/UX changes to get security fixes too.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - unethical_ban 6y ago
        How? "Preferences > Search > Search Bar" allows you to add back the separate bar. And you can toggle search suggestions in the address bar as well. I don't see how that breaks anything or that it is a "serious UI change". And finally, the security implications of search suggestions in the address bar are debatable for the end user.
grezql 6y ago
Firefox, current, is really slow on video rendering. Youtube on 1080p kinda freezes at times. Same video works perfectly in Chrome Im on Win10, this happenened on win8.1 aswell.
- boogies 6y ago
  Are you sure it's not just YouTube? Alphabet's arbitrarily changed YT's behaviour based on the browser's UA string in the past, and used deprecated APIs only implemented in Chrome.
  - konart 6y ago
    Youtube was updated to the v1 quite some time ago with a fresh Polymer version >Polymer.version 3.4.1
- acdha 6y ago
  This isn’t generally true. You might want to try disabling WebM to see if it’s something like falling back to software rendering.
agurk 6y ago
For Wayland users DMA-BUF video textures are now used when the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is enabled. I personally saw a number of regressions[0] on Debian testing for video playback on the beta releases for 79, but it largely seems to have settled down now. [0] particularly this one: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643855 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643855 (Copied from my comment on the submission for the official release notes)
marcopolo 6y ago
"The reference-types proposal is now supported. It provides a new type, externref, which can hold any JavaScript value, for example strings, DOM references, or objects." This is exciting! It opens up faster possibilities for wasm apps
recursive 6y ago
For me, "Restart stack frame" is probably the biggest impact I've seen in a while.
shantara 6y ago
Android version comes with a completely new design, and empty "What's new" section in Google Play gave no indication it's going be such a major change. Even more importantly, it has overridden data collection preferences after the update. Check "Settings > Data collection". I had to disable "Marketing data" and "Experiments" toggles. Not cool!
- conradfr 6y ago
  I got a notification announcing the change. Which is more appropriate than the one about Facebook.
  - shantara 6y ago
    Interesting. Was it a regular Android notification or something custom in-app? For me, there was no indication that this update was going to be any different from a minor bugfix they've rolled out a couple of days ago, until I've launched FF for the first time after the update and was a greeted by a full screen splash with the new version info.
    - magicalhippo 6y ago
      Mine popped up in the notification area thingy at the top, like any other app notification. Clicking on it took me to a web page detailing the changes. I've been running Nightly and Regular side-by-side for a while. I still use Regular the most, mainly because I find the new UI quite horrible to use. Nightly is clearly much smoother to use though.
  - sixhobbits 6y ago
    Maybe more directly relevant but still very Not OK in my books. I get very few push notifications. Send me an email, put it on your blog, whatever - it's definitely not interesting enough for me to come even close to the "I want this pushed on top of whatever else I was doing" bar though. Brave sent me a push notification this week too :( what browser should I switch to that doesn't try to exploit my 'engagement'
The_rationalist 6y ago
meanwhile chromium has async stack traces since 2017 https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/05/devtools-release-notes https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/05/devtools-r...
- hu3 6y ago
  TIL. Thanks for sharing. I also didn't know Chrome could emulate different levels of slow network.
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  HN or how to get downvoted by stating basic sourced facts.
The_rationalist 6y ago
does "better source map for SCSS" means that devtools will show scss variables ? big if true
saagarjha 6y ago
I wonder if we could try something new and have all discussion related to Mozilla or Firefox as a whole, including comparisons to other browsers, privacy, and how much battery it uses on macOS in just one thread so people can collapse it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- AnonHP 6y ago
  Post an “Ask HN” on this, perhaps, and request those who know more or have direct experiences across versions and browsers to weigh in?
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    No need, it comes up every time anyways. Just looking to find a more productive outlet for that discussion.
marcrosoft 6y ago
I’ve tried Firefox about once a year for the past five years and always immediately go back to chromium. Scrolling is always broken out of the box on all platforms I’ve tried (Linux and macOS). Edit: trying again, the macOS track pad seems ok but scroll wheel behavior is different. Firefox requires 2-3 times the scrolling distance and transitions slowly to the final scroll destination. Chrome does not. Edit 2: I’m almost positive it’s smooth scrolling. Some people hate it and some like it. This reddit thread sums up: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/5zoa1t/do_you_use_smooth_scrolling/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/5zoa1t/do_you_use_...
- confounded 6y ago
  Never encountered this, same platforms. What do you mean by broken?
  - marcrosoft 6y ago
    If I were to guess I think it has something to do with “smooth scrolling”. The behavior is scroll the mouse wheel three clicks/times to move the page. Expected behavior is move the wheel at all and the page moves. Also on a track pad the page should move in sync with your fingers. It doesn’t in Firefox.
    - acdha 6y ago
      That’s what happens on a clean install on Windows or MacOS. You might want to reset any custom settings and remove any extensions to see if it still reproduced.
    - seba_dos1 6y ago
      > Also on a track pad the page should move in sync with your fingers. It doesn’t in Firefox. It does just fine for me on GNU/Linux.
- taylorlapeyre 6y ago
  I'm so confused by this comment. You downloaded Firefox on MacOS and scrolling was broken? Scrolling itself is always broken on Firefox on all platforms? Considering that scrolling clearly isn't broken for Firefox users (I think Mozilla would notice), doesn't that point to the fact that it's probably something on your end and not Firefox?
50 6y ago
Sweet! This update fixes the issue where you weren't able to play videos on Firefox 78 with the MacOS Big Sur Beta.
nine_k 6y ago
Highlights: - Return of shared memory between parts of the same page (including web workers). Parallel processing becomes more efficient, good for complex apps and games. - Time-traveling debugger of sorts: search for "restart frame".
- inetknght 6y ago
  See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910775
  - roca 6y ago
    https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/safely-reviving-shared-memory/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/safely-reviving-shared-mem... explains how SharedArrayBuffer is being reenabled in a way that prevents it being used for Spectre attacks.
  - lilyball 6y ago
    Or not, because that's just FUD. `dom.workers.serialized-sab-access` is the flag they've put in so that way they can disable concurrent execution of JS threads that share memory in case a novel cross-process attack shows up. Spectre is purely an in-process attack and the whole article that comment is attached to is about the work they did to enable shared memory while defending against Spectre. `dom.workers.serialized-sab-access` does not affect Spectre. It appears to be intended for preventing a novel cross-process attack from leveraging shared memory in other processes into becoming a high-resolution timer. Also note that threads that have access to shared memory in Firefox 79 also have access to the full high-resolution performance.now(), and flipping dom.workers.serialized-sab-access doesn't affect that.
hackcasual 6y ago
A lot of good WebAssembly stuff in there. WASM threads, bulk memory ops are big performance wins, and reference types huge for DOM interoperation.
adrian17 6y ago
Same question as the last time [0]: I see the benefit of wasm extensions and I see how to enable them in "manual" compilation (for rustc, -C target-feature=+bulk-memory), but I didn't yet find a documented way of using them in wider used setups like wasm-pack. I'd love to try recompiling a full project with these features, but I just can't find out how to do it. The release notes say "The wasm-bindgen documentation includes guidance for taking advantage of externref from Rust", but I didn't yet find anything about it there either. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23690406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23690406
robotmay 6y ago
Have they reverted the godawful address bar change yet?
freediver 6y ago
Every few versions I would check Firefox on macOS just to see if they make any progress with battery drain. And... Firefox 79 with one active tab is taking 6x more energy than Safari with 20+ tabs. https://imgur.com/a/LyhnbKZ https://imgur.com/a/LyhnbKZ Maybe it is better on other OSes, but on macOS nothing beats Webkit in terms of performance. Not to mention the home page bloat - Firefox is starting to look like cnn of browsers.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  There has been progress. Firefox is pretty close to Chrome in power usage on macOS now. Safari is still streets ahead of every other browser on power usage though.
- ColanR 6y ago
  Is the in-house software just better at fitting the power usage metrics, or does the battery actually last longer with Safari when you let it physically drain out?
  - snazz 6y ago
    The latter. I'm having trouble finding an unbiased benchmark right now, but Safari is quite a bit less of a battery hog than either Chrome or Firefox.
- Jnr 6y ago
  In your screenshot I see some extensions in Firefox. Please go to about:performance and see the energy impact of your extensions. I just compared clean Firefox install with Safari on macOS and they both show energy impact 0.1
  - Jnr 6y ago
    Looking at about:performance when browser is idle, it doesn't do anything, but as soon as I start doing something with tabs, some extensions start to do some work. If a little bit more power draw is the price to pay for having no ads while browsing (with ublock origin), I am willing to pay it.
ComodoHacker 6y ago
In 78 they've added a persistent Google search as a top line in URL bar drop-down list. I couldn't find it documented anywhere neither in release notes nor in help topics. Does anyone by chance knows how to remove it?
- infogulch 6y ago
  about:preferences#search aka Menu > Options | Search | Search Suggestions > Provide Search Suggestions
  - ComodoHacker 6y ago
    No, it's not suggestions. Suggestions are disabled.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
matsemann 6y ago
Completely rewamped Android. Feels very snappy. Upgrade was a breeze. Only one addon that didn't work, hope full addon support is back soon.
- tallanvor 6y ago
  All of the add-ons I use are now unsupported. It's extremely frustrating and unwelcome for them to break things like this.
  - 0x49d1 6y ago
    Eh.. They had to: probably they will add more robust support of extensions in the future, but for now they had to re-implement some basic browser functions + add something new to attract new customers (like "Collections").
jknz 6y ago
I would hope the key presses required to use the native search among opened tabs had changed. - Ctrl-L to go to the address bar - release Ctrl (otherwise, the next keypress fail) - Shift-6 to type "%" in the address bar - space - [your query and hit tab/enter to navigate results] The last bullet is a close to ideal, native search among open tabs and make it so smooth to find an opened tab among dozens. But the key presses necessary to get there? Who can use that without weekly hospital stays for finger RSIs? I love firefox. If someone, somewhere reads this, please please please think of simpler key presses to use this nice, already built functionality. (I know non-native extensions provide similar feature. But native would be so cool and stable, especially that it's already built).
- sbierwagen 6y ago
  What keyboard layout are you on that puts % on 6?
  - jknz 6y ago
    That was Shift+5, not 6. Thanks for pointing that out :)
- ivank 6y ago
  If you're on Windows, you can do something like this with AutoHotkey: ; Make alt-q in Firefox type ctrl-l followed by "% " #IfWinActive ,ahk_class MozillaWindowClass !q::Send, ^l`%{Space} #IfWinActive
- roryokane 6y ago
  Tip: You don’t need to type the space. For example, you can search for “%ycom” to see open https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ tabs.
formerly_proven 6y ago
Doesn't contain a fix for the tearing on Windows 10 with Hardware Graphics Scheduling.
potiuper 6y ago
The summary section could use work.
jpdus 6y ago
For me, Fenix on Android is the worst update ever. I use Firefox as my main browser on Android since almost 10 years and my whole mobile workflow depends on the awesome Tab Queue-feature (new tabs from other Apps like Twitter/Slack/Mails are opened in the background). With Fenix, Mozilla decided to just abandon that feature. Issues are closed, it got removed from the feature list [1] and further questions are ignored. I fully understand that you can't keep every feature everywhere, but this was THE main benefit of Firefox (besides ublock) for me and if you look at GitHub/Reddit/Twitter I am not the only one. Now I have to stick to an outdated browser because of an (for me) completely unnecessary, degrading update :/. [1] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/470 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/470
- paulintrognon 6y ago
  I don't get what benefit they get from "lock[ing] and limit[ing] conversation to collaborators" on such issues. Why would you want to deliberately cut valuable user feedback? I mean I can't even put a "thumb up" on the issue!
- piaste 6y ago
  Same. I blocked the auto-update for Firefox as soon as I saw that the feature hadn't landed in stable. I hope some other browser picks it up. Would probably be a good fit for Vivaldi, which is meant for power-users who might go through link aggregators a lot.
- iggldiggl 6y ago
  More missing features: - Recently closed tabs (AFAIK "Undo close tab" currently fakes it by not actually closing the tab until the "Undo close tab" popup has disappeared) - The Firefox share target that actually gave you a choice whether you'd like to open the page in Firefox directly, merely bookmark it or use Sync to send it to some other Firefox instance without having to actually open the page in Firefox first - Add-on support that isn't limited to a few blessed "Recommended extensions" - viewing local HTML files is not possible (although admittedly Google hasn't helped there, either, by vastly complicating file system access in recent Android versions, and their purported replacement method is absolutely unsuitable for HTML files that depend on additional resources such as images, styles, scripts, other HTML files etc., but in the end it was still Mozilla's decision to disallow it completely right now) - about:config - View source - bfcache is broken - cannot force-refresh a page - the tab import from the previous versions drops all the session history of those tabs, i.e. it only imports the currently viewed page, but you can no longer go back or forward
lrnStats 6y ago
Anyone using something other than Firefox or chrome?
- bradgessler 6y ago
  Safari. Works great.
  - lrnStats 6y ago
    Meh, that requires trusting Apple. No thanks.
- bzb3 6y ago
  Edgium. I like it. Switched from Brave some time ago because they couldn't stop pulling shit off.
  - lrnStats 6y ago
    What do you mean about brave?
    - bzb3 6y ago
      Adding ads and stupid features. For me the breaking point was when they added an interface to buy crypto on the new tab page.
      - coldpie 6y ago
        It's funny how any involvement with cryptocurrencies is now an immediate red flag. Is there any use for cryptocurrencies in 2020 that isn't either an outright scam or a pump-and-dump scheme?
        lrnStats 6y ago
        Bitcoin is a Hedge against government inflation and unlike gold, nuclear chemistry proof. The rest of the coins... Not really. Maybe privacy coins might be useful.
tumblewit 6y ago
Firefox 80 is scheduled to come with vaapi for X11 which will be a major release for those with distro like PopOS or those that use i3wm
sam_goody 6y ago
It's a small thing, but I have found the usage of the logical and/or/null to be much cleaner. a ??= 3; (It would be even nicer if it could mean the same thing in PHP.)
Proven 6y ago
Awesome, now it's probably only a matter of hours before my current FF versions refuses to work until I restart it to update. So freaking annoying.
johnisgood 6y ago
> Firefox 79.0 released with master password renamed to primary password Jeez...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lytefm 6y ago
This update has, for the first time in over 10 years, rendered Firefox pretty much unusable for me on Ubuntu: Both the URL and the search bar are completely broken - neither autocomplete nor searching via google/DDG works. The only way to open a URL is to type it in full. Not cool. I guess I should move to ESR.
shultays 6y ago
Thumbnails are buggy. Auto complete doesnt work in some cases. No tab reordering, open in new tab order is weird. Home page is worse. No addons... lots of other small annoyances. And worst of it, no about config. I dont like the direction mozilla is taking. Do they have any reasoning for no abour config. This is quite a downgrade, I think I am switching to another browser on mobile.

379 points by caution 6y ago

Firefox releases come out every 6 weeks. It helps to put something in the title that explains what's interesting about this one.

CUViper 6y ago
It's actually every 4 weeks now!
ville 6y ago
The original title is slightly better in this regard: “Firefox 79: The safe return of shared memory, new tooling, and platform updates”
Amorymeltzer 6y ago
>A new stable version of Firefox brings July to a close with the return of shared memory! Firefox 79 also offers a new Promise method, more secure target=_blank links, logical assignment operators, and other updates of interest to web developers.
- twic 6y ago
  A couple of details ... the return of shared memory > At the start of 2018, Shared Memory and high-resolution timers were effectively disabled in light of Spectre. In 2020, a new, more secure approach has been standardized to re-enable shared memory. mondo details here https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/safely-reviving-shared-memory/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/safely-reviving-shared-mem... more secure target=_blank links > To prevent the DOM property window.opener from being abused by untrusted third-party sites, Firefox 79 now automatically sets rel=noopener for all links that contain target=_blank.
  - frandroid 6y ago
    > Firefox 79 now automatically sets rel=noopener Only took what, three years since that vulnerability was found?
ProAm 6y ago
Hopefully they changed the address bar back to be non-Chromeified.
- boogies 6y ago
  Haven't used it in a while, but when I did it was always easy to switch the behavior (for a power user, and I think the omnibar is much more appealing to non power users as it's visually simpler, big, and easier to click — unifying the search and address bar is what you're talking about, right?).
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    I think they're referring to the browser hiding parts of the URL, the way Chrome does. Unthinkingly following Chrome, Firefox started doing this too. To my knowledge, Firefox still defaults to doing this, but I could be mistaken. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/879926 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/879926
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - ProAm 6y ago
    Its not easy to switch back anymore and breaks a lot of functionality if you do. But its crazy that you have to accept serious UI/UX changes to get security fixes too.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - unethical_ban 6y ago
      How? "Preferences > Search > Search Bar" allows you to add back the separate bar. And you can toggle search suggestions in the address bar as well. I don't see how that breaks anything or that it is a "serious UI change". And finally, the security implications of search suggestions in the address bar are debatable for the end user.

grezql 6y ago

Firefox, current, is really slow on video rendering. Youtube on 1080p kinda freezes at times. Same video works perfectly in Chrome Im on Win10, this happenened on win8.1 aswell.

boogies 6y ago
Are you sure it's not just YouTube? Alphabet's arbitrarily changed YT's behaviour based on the browser's UA string in the past, and used deprecated APIs only implemented in Chrome.
- konart 6y ago
  Youtube was updated to the v1 quite some time ago with a fresh Polymer version >Polymer.version 3.4.1
acdha 6y ago
This isn’t generally true. You might want to try disabling WebM to see if it’s something like falling back to software rendering.

agurk 6y ago

For Wayland users DMA-BUF video textures are now used when the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is enabled. I personally saw a number of regressions[0] on Debian testing for video playback on the beta releases for 79, but it largely seems to have settled down now. [0] particularly this one: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643855 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643855 (Copied from my comment on the submission for the official release notes)

marcopolo 6y ago

"The reference-types proposal is now supported. It provides a new type, externref, which can hold any JavaScript value, for example strings, DOM references, or objects." This is exciting! It opens up faster possibilities for wasm apps

recursive 6y ago

For me, "Restart stack frame" is probably the biggest impact I've seen in a while.

shantara 6y ago

Android version comes with a completely new design, and empty "What's new" section in Google Play gave no indication it's going be such a major change. Even more importantly, it has overridden data collection preferences after the update. Check "Settings > Data collection". I had to disable "Marketing data" and "Experiments" toggles. Not cool!

conradfr 6y ago
I got a notification announcing the change. Which is more appropriate than the one about Facebook.
- shantara 6y ago
  Interesting. Was it a regular Android notification or something custom in-app? For me, there was no indication that this update was going to be any different from a minor bugfix they've rolled out a couple of days ago, until I've launched FF for the first time after the update and was a greeted by a full screen splash with the new version info.
  - magicalhippo 6y ago
    Mine popped up in the notification area thingy at the top, like any other app notification. Clicking on it took me to a web page detailing the changes. I've been running Nightly and Regular side-by-side for a while. I still use Regular the most, mainly because I find the new UI quite horrible to use. Nightly is clearly much smoother to use though.
- sixhobbits 6y ago
  Maybe more directly relevant but still very Not OK in my books. I get very few push notifications. Send me an email, put it on your blog, whatever - it's definitely not interesting enough for me to come even close to the "I want this pushed on top of whatever else I was doing" bar though. Brave sent me a push notification this week too :( what browser should I switch to that doesn't try to exploit my 'engagement'

The_rationalist 6y ago

meanwhile chromium has async stack traces since 2017 https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/05/devtools-release-notes https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/05/devtools-r...

hu3 6y ago
TIL. Thanks for sharing. I also didn't know Chrome could emulate different levels of slow network.
The_rationalist 6y ago
HN or how to get downvoted by stating basic sourced facts.

The_rationalist 6y ago

does "better source map for SCSS" means that devtools will show scss variables ? big if true

saagarjha 6y ago

I wonder if we could try something new and have all discussion related to Mozilla or Firefox as a whole, including comparisons to other browsers, privacy, and how much battery it uses on macOS in just one thread so people can collapse it.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
AnonHP 6y ago
Post an “Ask HN” on this, perhaps, and request those who know more or have direct experiences across versions and browsers to weigh in?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  No need, it comes up every time anyways. Just looking to find a more productive outlet for that discussion.

marcrosoft 6y ago

I’ve tried Firefox about once a year for the past five years and always immediately go back to chromium. Scrolling is always broken out of the box on all platforms I’ve tried (Linux and macOS). Edit: trying again, the macOS track pad seems ok but scroll wheel behavior is different. Firefox requires 2-3 times the scrolling distance and transitions slowly to the final scroll destination. Chrome does not. Edit 2: I’m almost positive it’s smooth scrolling. Some people hate it and some like it. This reddit thread sums up: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/5zoa1t/do_you_use_smooth_scrolling/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/5zoa1t/do_you_use_...

confounded 6y ago
Never encountered this, same platforms. What do you mean by broken?
- marcrosoft 6y ago
  If I were to guess I think it has something to do with “smooth scrolling”. The behavior is scroll the mouse wheel three clicks/times to move the page. Expected behavior is move the wheel at all and the page moves. Also on a track pad the page should move in sync with your fingers. It doesn’t in Firefox.
  - acdha 6y ago
    That’s what happens on a clean install on Windows or MacOS. You might want to reset any custom settings and remove any extensions to see if it still reproduced.
  - seba_dos1 6y ago
    > Also on a track pad the page should move in sync with your fingers. It doesn’t in Firefox. It does just fine for me on GNU/Linux.
taylorlapeyre 6y ago
I'm so confused by this comment. You downloaded Firefox on MacOS and scrolling was broken? Scrolling itself is always broken on Firefox on all platforms? Considering that scrolling clearly isn't broken for Firefox users (I think Mozilla would notice), doesn't that point to the fact that it's probably something on your end and not Firefox?

50 6y ago

Sweet! This update fixes the issue where you weren't able to play videos on Firefox 78 with the MacOS Big Sur Beta.

nine_k 6y ago

Highlights: - Return of shared memory between parts of the same page (including web workers). Parallel processing becomes more efficient, good for complex apps and games. - Time-traveling debugger of sorts: search for "restart frame".

inetknght 6y ago
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910775
- roca 6y ago
  https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/safely-reviving-shared-memory/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/safely-reviving-shared-mem... explains how SharedArrayBuffer is being reenabled in a way that prevents it being used for Spectre attacks.
- lilyball 6y ago
  Or not, because that's just FUD. `dom.workers.serialized-sab-access` is the flag they've put in so that way they can disable concurrent execution of JS threads that share memory in case a novel cross-process attack shows up. Spectre is purely an in-process attack and the whole article that comment is attached to is about the work they did to enable shared memory while defending against Spectre. `dom.workers.serialized-sab-access` does not affect Spectre. It appears to be intended for preventing a novel cross-process attack from leveraging shared memory in other processes into becoming a high-resolution timer. Also note that threads that have access to shared memory in Firefox 79 also have access to the full high-resolution performance.now(), and flipping dom.workers.serialized-sab-access doesn't affect that.

hackcasual 6y ago

A lot of good WebAssembly stuff in there. WASM threads, bulk memory ops are big performance wins, and reference types huge for DOM interoperation.

adrian17 6y ago

Same question as the last time [0]: I see the benefit of wasm extensions and I see how to enable them in "manual" compilation (for rustc, -C target-feature=+bulk-memory), but I didn't yet find a documented way of using them in wider used setups like wasm-pack. I'd love to try recompiling a full project with these features, but I just can't find out how to do it. The release notes say "The wasm-bindgen documentation includes guidance for taking advantage of externref from Rust", but I didn't yet find anything about it there either. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23690406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23690406

robotmay 6y ago

Have they reverted the godawful address bar change yet?

freediver 6y ago

Every few versions I would check Firefox on macOS just to see if they make any progress with battery drain. And... Firefox 79 with one active tab is taking 6x more energy than Safari with 20+ tabs. https://imgur.com/a/LyhnbKZ https://imgur.com/a/LyhnbKZ Maybe it is better on other OSes, but on macOS nothing beats Webkit in terms of performance. Not to mention the home page bloat - Firefox is starting to look like cnn of browsers.

nicoburns 6y ago
There has been progress. Firefox is pretty close to Chrome in power usage on macOS now. Safari is still streets ahead of every other browser on power usage though.
ColanR 6y ago
Is the in-house software just better at fitting the power usage metrics, or does the battery actually last longer with Safari when you let it physically drain out?
- snazz 6y ago
  The latter. I'm having trouble finding an unbiased benchmark right now, but Safari is quite a bit less of a battery hog than either Chrome or Firefox.
Jnr 6y ago
In your screenshot I see some extensions in Firefox. Please go to about:performance and see the energy impact of your extensions. I just compared clean Firefox install with Safari on macOS and they both show energy impact 0.1
- Jnr 6y ago
  Looking at about:performance when browser is idle, it doesn't do anything, but as soon as I start doing something with tabs, some extensions start to do some work. If a little bit more power draw is the price to pay for having no ads while browsing (with ublock origin), I am willing to pay it.

ComodoHacker 6y ago

In 78 they've added a persistent Google search as a top line in URL bar drop-down list. I couldn't find it documented anywhere neither in release notes nor in help topics. Does anyone by chance knows how to remove it?

infogulch 6y ago
about:preferences#search aka Menu > Options | Search | Search Suggestions > Provide Search Suggestions
- ComodoHacker 6y ago
  No, it's not suggestions. Suggestions are disabled.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

matsemann 6y ago

Completely rewamped Android. Feels very snappy. Upgrade was a breeze. Only one addon that didn't work, hope full addon support is back soon.

tallanvor 6y ago
All of the add-ons I use are now unsupported. It's extremely frustrating and unwelcome for them to break things like this.
- 0x49d1 6y ago
  Eh.. They had to: probably they will add more robust support of extensions in the future, but for now they had to re-implement some basic browser functions + add something new to attract new customers (like "Collections").

jknz 6y ago

I would hope the key presses required to use the native search among opened tabs had changed. - Ctrl-L to go to the address bar - release Ctrl (otherwise, the next keypress fail) - Shift-6 to type "%" in the address bar - space - [your query and hit tab/enter to navigate results] The last bullet is a close to ideal, native search among open tabs and make it so smooth to find an opened tab among dozens. But the key presses necessary to get there? Who can use that without weekly hospital stays for finger RSIs? I love firefox. If someone, somewhere reads this, please please please think of simpler key presses to use this nice, already built functionality. (I know non-native extensions provide similar feature. But native would be so cool and stable, especially that it's already built).

sbierwagen 6y ago
What keyboard layout are you on that puts % on 6?
- jknz 6y ago
  That was Shift+5, not 6. Thanks for pointing that out :)
ivank 6y ago
If you're on Windows, you can do something like this with AutoHotkey: ; Make alt-q in Firefox type ctrl-l followed by "% " #IfWinActive ,ahk_class MozillaWindowClass !q::Send, ^l`%{Space} #IfWinActive
roryokane 6y ago
Tip: You don’t need to type the space. For example, you can search for “%ycom” to see open https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ tabs.

formerly_proven 6y ago

Doesn't contain a fix for the tearing on Windows 10 with Hardware Graphics Scheduling.

potiuper 6y ago

The summary section could use work.

jpdus 6y ago

For me, Fenix on Android is the worst update ever. I use Firefox as my main browser on Android since almost 10 years and my whole mobile workflow depends on the awesome Tab Queue-feature (new tabs from other Apps like Twitter/Slack/Mails are opened in the background). With Fenix, Mozilla decided to just abandon that feature. Issues are closed, it got removed from the feature list [1] and further questions are ignored. I fully understand that you can't keep every feature everywhere, but this was THE main benefit of Firefox (besides ublock) for me and if you look at GitHub/Reddit/Twitter I am not the only one. Now I have to stick to an outdated browser because of an (for me) completely unnecessary, degrading update :/. [1] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/470 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/470

paulintrognon 6y ago
I don't get what benefit they get from "lock[ing] and limit[ing] conversation to collaborators" on such issues. Why would you want to deliberately cut valuable user feedback? I mean I can't even put a "thumb up" on the issue!
piaste 6y ago
Same. I blocked the auto-update for Firefox as soon as I saw that the feature hadn't landed in stable. I hope some other browser picks it up. Would probably be a good fit for Vivaldi, which is meant for power-users who might go through link aggregators a lot.
iggldiggl 6y ago
More missing features: - Recently closed tabs (AFAIK "Undo close tab" currently fakes it by not actually closing the tab until the "Undo close tab" popup has disappeared) - The Firefox share target that actually gave you a choice whether you'd like to open the page in Firefox directly, merely bookmark it or use Sync to send it to some other Firefox instance without having to actually open the page in Firefox first - Add-on support that isn't limited to a few blessed "Recommended extensions" - viewing local HTML files is not possible (although admittedly Google hasn't helped there, either, by vastly complicating file system access in recent Android versions, and their purported replacement method is absolutely unsuitable for HTML files that depend on additional resources such as images, styles, scripts, other HTML files etc., but in the end it was still Mozilla's decision to disallow it completely right now) - about:config - View source - bfcache is broken - cannot force-refresh a page - the tab import from the previous versions drops all the session history of those tabs, i.e. it only imports the currently viewed page, but you can no longer go back or forward

lrnStats 6y ago

Anyone using something other than Firefox or chrome?

bradgessler 6y ago
Safari. Works great.
- lrnStats 6y ago
  Meh, that requires trusting Apple. No thanks.
bzb3 6y ago
Edgium. I like it. Switched from Brave some time ago because they couldn't stop pulling shit off.
- lrnStats 6y ago
  What do you mean about brave?
  - bzb3 6y ago
    Adding ads and stupid features. For me the breaking point was when they added an interface to buy crypto on the new tab page.
    - coldpie 6y ago
      It's funny how any involvement with cryptocurrencies is now an immediate red flag. Is there any use for cryptocurrencies in 2020 that isn't either an outright scam or a pump-and-dump scheme?
      - lrnStats 6y ago
        Bitcoin is a Hedge against government inflation and unlike gold, nuclear chemistry proof. The rest of the coins... Not really. Maybe privacy coins might be useful.

tumblewit 6y ago

Firefox 80 is scheduled to come with vaapi for X11 which will be a major release for those with distro like PopOS or those that use i3wm

sam_goody 6y ago

It's a small thing, but I have found the usage of the logical and/or/null to be much cleaner. a ??= 3; (It would be even nicer if it could mean the same thing in PHP.)

Proven 6y ago

Awesome, now it's probably only a matter of hours before my current FF versions refuses to work until I restart it to update. So freaking annoying.

johnisgood 6y ago

> Firefox 79.0 released with master password renamed to primary password Jeez...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lytefm 6y ago

This update has, for the first time in over 10 years, rendered Firefox pretty much unusable for me on Ubuntu: Both the URL and the search bar are completely broken - neither autocomplete nor searching via google/DDG works. The only way to open a URL is to type it in full. Not cool. I guess I should move to ESR.

shultays 6y ago

Thumbnails are buggy. Auto complete doesnt work in some cases. No tab reordering, open in new tab order is weird. Home page is worse. No addons... lots of other small annoyances. And worst of it, no about config. I dont like the direction mozilla is taking. Do they have any reasoning for no abour config. This is quite a downgrade, I think I am switching to another browser on mobile.