19 ms·

Firefox 80

409 points by amake 6y ago

xvilka 6y ago
No layoffs mention in the release notes.
- deadalus 6y ago
  Why would browser users care about the layoffs?
  - caycep 6y ago
    I suppose the long term view is - what's the economic health of the organization responsible for ongoing maintenance as well as R&D, features, engineering of the software? And also what's the risk of Firefox being "orphaned" or falling behind technologically to Chrome/Webkit. although the comment below is true; there is a time and place for long term strategic comments, vs. technical release notes...
- AnyTimeTraveler 6y ago
  Those are changenotes of a piece of software, not the company.
  - freshsqueeze 6y ago
    i guess they should position themselves as software makers then, not social justice advocates https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/
- tfsh 6y ago
  Usually release notes exhibit the state and changes of the software, not the workings and changes of the maintainers. What were you expecting, something like this? New: - Firefox can now be set as the default system PDF viewer. - Laid off about 70 employees. Fixed: - Various security fixes.
  - cadence- 6y ago
    - Laid off about 250 employees.
- freshsqueeze 6y ago
  even their layoff post barely mentioned layoffs
kayson 6y ago
I really like the simplicity of the Firefox pdf viewer but sometimes it absolutely butchers printing. It also still needs fill able form support. Come on Mozilla!
- dawnerd 6y ago
  In fairness chrome does as well. I have to use adobe to print fedex thermal labels otherwise they get cut off.
- rrll22 6y ago
  The next release will have it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273174 (To be released on Sept 22)
- seppel 6y ago
  Firefox is my standard browser but it is completely unusable for printing anything; I always have to switch to Chrome to print.
  - matsemann 6y ago
    Try and select "Print" from the menu instead of Ctrl+P. Instead of bringing up the system print dialog, this brings up an interface where you can tweak the print layout. No idea why it isn't the default view when pressing ctrl+p. At least there I feel it's basically the same as Chrome when printing.
    - exciteabletom 6y ago
      On my Linux system Ctrl+p and File->print are the same dialog box.
  - cpeterso 6y ago
    Mozilla is fixing a lot of Firefox printing issues for Firefox 81 (September 22 release date). https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/Layout/Printing_and_fragmentation https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/Layout/Printing_and_fragme...
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
"Firefox can now be set as the default system PDF viewer." Neat. I loathe every time I have to install Adobe Reader for something. Unfortunately, all browsers PDF support for things like form filling and stuff tends to be pretty lacking.
- rrll22 6y ago
  See https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/i2xom1/firefox_81_pdf_reader_gets_form_filling/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/i2xom1/firefox_81_...
  - Darmody 6y ago
    I love that. I don't need anything else besides Evince to read PDF but in order to fill forms I always had to use online tools.
    - chungy 6y ago
      Evince can fill out PDF forms and even re-export as a read-only PDF with those forms filled.
      - Darmody 6y ago
        I wish that was true. I've never been able to fill a form with Evince.
        chungy 6y ago
        I've done it plenty. YMMV I suppose.
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  Great news. Windows used to come with Reader for this, but Microsoft killed it and said "Edge is the PDF viewer now." Rather annoying to have the wrong web browser launching itself to view PDFs when Firefox does perfectly well at displaying them.
qmarchi 6y ago
"We'd like to extend a special thank you to all of the new Mozillians who contributed to this release of Firefox." How ironic.
- SilasX 6y ago
  "... and we wish them well in their future endeavors."
  - freshsqueeze 6y ago
    goodbye and thanks for all the fish / $500M a yr from google
- 91edec 6y ago
  It's sad because normally there's a link with all the new people. The guy who makes the post got fired. https://blog.mozilla.org/community/ https://blog.mozilla.org/community/
trevor-e 6y ago
It's a bit mind-blowing to me how big browser apps have become the last few years. Firefox 80 takes up 210.8MB and Chrome _689.8MB_ on my MacBook.
- Minor49er 6y ago
  Back in the late 90s-early 2000s, Microsoft baked Internet Explorer into the Windows shell. It was badically powering the desktop. Ypu could even set ypur desktop background to an HTML page on Windows at one time. But basically, the browser has been given an enormous amount of responsibility that has not changed much since those experiments. We now have things like Chromebooks that are little more than an OS with just a browser attached.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    > We now have things like Chromebooks that are little more than an OS with just a browser attached. Which makes sense because a browser is basically a set of abstractions over some normal OS functions that blends remote and local actions (even if only a subset of them). Java wanted to be a universal VM, but browsers actually achieved this through HTML and JavaScript. They're going even farther with WASM.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      If by "even farther" you mean "circling back around" to being Java.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      > Java wanted to be a universal VM, but browsers actually achieved this through HTML and JavaScript. Java succeeded, you know. Still happily powers embedded systems, servers, and desktop applications. Still runs the same binaries on NT/Darwin/Linux/Haiku/whatever. Don't dismiss it just because it's not the latest hotness.
      - kbenson 6y ago
rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
More importantly, Firefox for Android has a brand new UI (and more): https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/25/introducing-a-new-firefox-for-android-experience/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/25/introducing-a-new-f... (GeckoView, picture in picture, Enhanced Tracking Protection, persistent private mode, dark theme…). The most awaited version in years. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269156
- dddddaviddddd 6y ago
  Linked article says it will be available starting August 27.
  - matsemann 6y ago
    I got that about a month ago, hmm. Linked article says north america august 27th, so maybe slowly rolling out?
- nuxi 6y ago
  Not sure if you tried it, but for me it was an absolute shitshow. It "upgrades" your settings, so if you then downgrade the app, everything is lost (as you have to uninstall + manually install the old apk). In my case it also decided to reset overridden settings to "defaults" (search engine, save passwords etc.), plus about:config was gone and the homepage cannot be set to bookmarks anymore. I uninstalled it and went back to the latest 68.x, and am now looking for a new browser on Android, possibly one that doesn't treat me like an idiot.
  - valvar 6y ago
    Oh, and add-ons are no longer really a thing. There are only about 10 "officially supported" add-ons. I had to install Fennec from f-droid instead, which is annoying as it is both slower and has some frustrating bugs (for example, you can't customise your search engines properly, so if you select text and then try to launch a search on searx, the query is discarded).
madmax108 6y ago
I know it's a hard time for the engineering team at Mozilla right now, but just wanted to put it out there: You guys are truly awesome! Thanks for everything.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  seconded, tru marathonists
likeafox 6y ago
The one feature I wish FF had is a UI based profile switcher - container tabs, which are now relegated to being an extension, simply are not cutting it for me. Does anyone know if there's a chance of that making it into the roadmap within the next couple years?
- est31 6y ago
  firefox -ProfileManager ?
  - _-david-_ 6y ago
    You can actually just do firefox -p
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  about:profiles is not amazing, but does exist...
- kbenson 6y ago
  > container tabs, which are now relegated to being an extension Now? Haven't they always been? > simply are not cutting it for me. Do you mind explaining why? I had some problems with them initially (when they first went into production FF), but some small tweaks since then and they've mostly worked exactly as I would want. The only complaints I have are Google, which I try to relegate to a container, making it really hard to open stuff in different containers because of how they send links in Gmail through a redirect to protect referrer info and making it hard to have separate Google accounts in different tabs (which i could probably resolve mos the issues by not assigning Google to a container by default so some of the switching is more smooth, but ick), and LastPass, which I only really need for work (as I use FF sync for my passwords). LastPass doesn't seem to be able to deal with containers and work SSO which auto redirects to a container, so I can't even sign in with LastPass without tweaking container domain assignments, and toggling that stuff every time I want to log in is ridiculous. Other than those, everything works pretty smoothly, IMO. I have 18 containers, of which 6-7 see consistent heavy use, and the most rest are for occasional things and are used once every few days.
megous 6y ago
Developer tools' network tab still unusable. https://megous.com/dl/tmp/01befe672faa84fe.png https://megous.com/dl/tmp/01befe672faa84fe.png Selecting one resource selects multiple resources at once (sometimes 5 or more), and you can only view one of the resources' detail in the right panel.
- vehemenz 6y ago
  That doesn't happen for me on Mac. Maybe it's an OS-specific bug?
  - megous 6y ago
    Yes https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1640745#c23 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1640745#c23 It happens all the time for me, because PID of my firefox processes tend to be in millions (because of long uptimes and a me doing a lot of kernel compilation). Probably caused by systemd upgrade back in march. Great. Systemd is another of those packages that keep breaking fundamentals on my systems every other release. Looking forward to having a network after a suspend/resume cycle again, and systemd-home not cutting off sshd remote access to my machines via infinite loops in its hugely complicated PAM module whenever v247 will be released. /s
hatsunearu 6y ago
Is video acceleration on Linux here yet? :(
- laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago
  i think on 79 you already got X11 support (was there for a while on wayland, if you truly care about UI performance)
  - refracture 6y ago
    Seems 80 for sure has it for X11. It's less about UI performance and more about battery life and heat; I might consider installing a Linux distro on my laptop now, last time I did the poor thing ramped up like it was rendering a video project or something anytime I pulled up a YouTube video.
    - laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago
      to maximize battery, disable media in the browser, and when you want to watch the content, just right click (or long press on android) and open on the non-drm native player such as VLC. It will always be better than a browser.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      FWIW, notwithstanding VAAPI support in Firefox, Linux has made massive improvements in power/heat efficiency in recent kernels. There's much less of a starting-a-jet-engine effect in regular use if you're able to use a distro based on kernel 5.7 or 5.8.
ddon 6y ago
Firefox crashing all the time on couple of my computers... the rest are doing fine. Tried to uninstall all plugins, create new profile, all sorts of tricks... Installed FF Nightly, hoping that this bug has been fixed in new browsers, but keeps crashing. Sending reports to FF pretty much every day, hoping that someone will notice, but so far, no luck. And then news came out that Mozilla is in financial trouble and firing people, so probably nobody will fix this :-/
- zbraniecki 6y ago
  Hi ddon. This is not normal. You may be experiencing a unique combination of factors that results in a bug. Could you load `about:crashes` and send me an ID or several of an your crashes? I would expect there to be a high number of similar crashes. It's possible that we already have a bug reported against this particular crash and we need someone who can reproduce it to help us find a way to fix it! I'll look to find such bug and contact you with the people who may be able to fix it. My email is my hackernews handle `@` `mozilla.com`. Thank you!
  - ddon 6y ago
    Very cool, thank you! Will do! And I didn't know about about:crashes page, very interesting!
- phkahler 6y ago
  Link to your bug reports?
  - ddon 6y ago
    https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/742507c9-b806-42a7-803d-3763b0200826 https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/742507c9-b806-4...
ColanR 6y ago
It sure would be nice if the memory leaks would be fixed. On some of the long-running machines I use, I have to use chrome because Firefox would eventually fill up the RAM.
kstenerud 6y ago
Firefox has been constantly crashing for the past 6 months or so on all of my computers (Linux, Windows, and now a new Mac as well - but mostly linux, probably because I use it most). Usually it's just a bunch of tabs that crash (almost always multiple tabs), but about 2-3 times a week the entire browser crashes. It's getting to the point where I don't want to use ff anymore :/
- schlipity 6y ago
  Have you tried resetting your profile? That is a regularly recommended fix for some crashes.
  - kstenerud 6y ago
    Many times. Doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
- kbrosnan 6y ago
  Provide some crash ID URLs? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter
  - kstenerud 6y ago
    I click send every time it crashes. It doesn't seem to matter what the URL is. Sometimes it's gmail, sometimes it's HN, could be any site really. Also, they should have the url of the crashed tab anyway.
    - takeda 6y ago
      Click on the URL given it shows you how to get the ID that's asked about: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter TLDR: got to about:crashes and provide IDs of the crashes you've had
      - 6y ago
robertoandred 6y ago
Why would you use a web browser as a PDF viewer instead of Preview...
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  Because you already have it installed and running, appreciate the security benefits of running a PDF render in a garbage-collected language in a sandbox, because anything that lets you run less Adobe code is a win, and because clicking a PDF in Firefox and having it open in Edge is generally undesirable.
  - robertoandred 6y ago
    Preview comes preinstalled, and isn't Adobe code...
jreed91 6y ago
Does anyone have the issue within developer tools that when you ctl-c a highlighted piece of text it actually just selects the whole line? I have to right click copy to get the exact piece of info I want. It’s driving me nuts.
teekert 6y ago
While we are on the topic, did any get the new FF on their Android phones last week? What happened? It completely breaks my flow of opening a page, reading, going back to my favorite sites and opening a new page <repeat>.. The only way to find your favorites now is opening a new tap, you'll find that when hitting the small tab counter and then the +. You will gather piles of tabs and they are still there after you close the browser (no more setting to forget them upon close). I like the bar at the bottom but that is the only nice thing. Am I missing something? Play store reviews are also pretty negative...
- pvitz 6y ago
  This version is terrible. The start screen with the most visited sites doesn't show up anymore. It is slower on my phone and I don't even know anymore how to view my downloads from within the browser. It really makes me consider changing to another browser, but I don't want to use Chrome. Would anyone have a good suggestion?
  - teekert 6y ago
    Yeah, I was very surprised, at first I thought: let's just get used to it, but I feel like I won't. Why on earth would hitting the biggest touchable area of the UI (the address bar) lead to a completely black screen with 0 options, that's just a big waste, it could have easily presented my most used websites there. I'm also looking for alternatives, it's a big step back imo. Right now I have 12 useless tabs open, I never had any tabs open (unless I opened them myself for later reading, and those tabs are now lost between all those useless tabs were I just wanted to switch to another website) but it's the only way to get to your favorites and collections (whatever collections may be, currently they are the same as my favorites??). I also can't find print and downloads anymore.
    - rapnie 6y ago
      For me the UX is down the drain. I notice I use my mobile less for browsing.. too unwieldy. Like a different browser was installed in that update. At many places it needs more clicks. Address bar completion works differently. You can avoid the new tab creation by clicking Back button after you open, but I hate to do this all the time. Had a huge list of tabs open before. Now the preview thumbnails do not load/refresh, text is bigger and truncated so tab list only half as useful.
mindcrime 6y ago
I had switched away from FF to use Chrome predominately a few years ago, for a mix of various reasons. Performance being a big one. But I've been thinking more about the whole browser monoculture issue, and the importance of Mozilla and Firefox for the Open Web in general lately, so about a week or two ago I started switching back to Firefox as my primary browser. So far, so good. Performance feels pretty snappy so far, and I haven't run across many rendering issues, and none that really matter. All in all, I'd say that if you have been considering Firefox, now might be a good time to give it a shot. This is all, BTW, in reference to the desktop version (Linux specifically) not mobile.
- IggleSniggle 6y ago
  Even Firefox for iOS (which must use Safari WebView) comes bundles with a decent content blocker. Recommended.
  - HenryKissinger 6y ago
    My favorite Firefox extension is tree style tabs. It displays your tabs as a vertical menu on the side rather than on a horizontal line at the top. I've been using this extension for years and I'm going to use it for the rest of my life. I highly recommend checking it out.
    - smabie 6y ago
      I agree, tree tabs is the best. How do people manage with out it?
      - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
        By having 8 tabs.
      - takeda 6y ago
        I really liked Tree Style Tabs before the restrictions on extensions. I do understand that they needed to discontinue them, because it was a roadblock for faster engine, but they felt less like a hack to provide that functionality.
neiman 6y ago
Oh my god, I didn't know they're still releasing those! <silly joke warning>
royal_ts 6y ago
Is there any kind of road for when to expect installable Web Apps the way it's possible in Chrome and Edge?
- esclerofilo 6y ago
  On desktop? They are working on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/eay1x1/firefox_73_adds_support_for_site_specific_browser/fb15u5h/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/eay1x1/firefox_73_... I don't know enough about mozilla's process to understand why bugzilla says it's already done, though.
kozmonaut 6y ago
Have used firefox forever. Their PDF rendering engine is quick and snappy.
akerro 6y ago
After recent events I feel quite nostalgic or sad about new Firefox releases, I can't justify it
reaperducer 6y ago
Firefox can now be set as the default system PDF viewer. The name reported by accessibility tools for items in multi-tiered tree controls no longer incorrectly includes information from items at deeper levels, providing users with the correct level of content when using a screen reader. I kinda expected more from an x.0 release.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Karunamon 6y ago
  Best to rein in those expectations. Browser developers abandoned SemVer some time ago (bumping the major number for trivial releases with no major features or breaking changes) for reasons that never really made a whole lot of sense to me. Treat the version number as a monotonic counter, that's all the information you're going to be able to make use of unless you're working on it.
badhabit 6y ago
there's no easy way to disable javascript on site viewing. brave got ir right with brave shield. add disable image on the ff shield then it's even more useful. brave suffers chrome's always forced refresh when stale tab is reopened or when page is scrolled up to induce reload wheel sometimes users do not want the freshest page. there's a reload button for that. sometimes we just want to save the stale page.
takeda 6y ago
The title should be "Firefox turns 80" ;)

Firefox 80

409 points by amake 6y ago

xvilka 6y ago

No layoffs mention in the release notes.

deadalus 6y ago
Why would browser users care about the layoffs?
- caycep 6y ago
  I suppose the long term view is - what's the economic health of the organization responsible for ongoing maintenance as well as R&D, features, engineering of the software? And also what's the risk of Firefox being "orphaned" or falling behind technologically to Chrome/Webkit. although the comment below is true; there is a time and place for long term strategic comments, vs. technical release notes...
AnyTimeTraveler 6y ago
Those are changenotes of a piece of software, not the company.
- freshsqueeze 6y ago
  i guess they should position themselves as software makers then, not social justice advocates https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/
tfsh 6y ago
Usually release notes exhibit the state and changes of the software, not the workings and changes of the maintainers. What were you expecting, something like this? New: - Firefox can now be set as the default system PDF viewer. - Laid off about 70 employees. Fixed: - Various security fixes.
- cadence- 6y ago
  - Laid off about 250 employees.
freshsqueeze 6y ago
even their layoff post barely mentioned layoffs

kayson 6y ago

I really like the simplicity of the Firefox pdf viewer but sometimes it absolutely butchers printing. It also still needs fill able form support. Come on Mozilla!

dawnerd 6y ago
In fairness chrome does as well. I have to use adobe to print fedex thermal labels otherwise they get cut off.
rrll22 6y ago
The next release will have it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273174 (To be released on Sept 22)
seppel 6y ago
Firefox is my standard browser but it is completely unusable for printing anything; I always have to switch to Chrome to print.
- matsemann 6y ago
  Try and select "Print" from the menu instead of Ctrl+P. Instead of bringing up the system print dialog, this brings up an interface where you can tweak the print layout. No idea why it isn't the default view when pressing ctrl+p. At least there I feel it's basically the same as Chrome when printing.
  - exciteabletom 6y ago
    On my Linux system Ctrl+p and File->print are the same dialog box.
- cpeterso 6y ago
  Mozilla is fixing a lot of Firefox printing issues for Firefox 81 (September 22 release date). https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/Layout/Printing_and_fragmentation https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/Layout/Printing_and_fragme...

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

"Firefox can now be set as the default system PDF viewer." Neat. I loathe every time I have to install Adobe Reader for something. Unfortunately, all browsers PDF support for things like form filling and stuff tends to be pretty lacking.

rrll22 6y ago
See https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/i2xom1/firefox_81_pdf_reader_gets_form_filling/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/i2xom1/firefox_81_...
- Darmody 6y ago
  I love that. I don't need anything else besides Evince to read PDF but in order to fill forms I always had to use online tools.
  - chungy 6y ago
    Evince can fill out PDF forms and even re-export as a read-only PDF with those forms filled.
    - Darmody 6y ago
      I wish that was true. I've never been able to fill a form with Evince.
      - chungy 6y ago
        I've done it plenty. YMMV I suppose.
wlesieutre 6y ago
Great news. Windows used to come with Reader for this, but Microsoft killed it and said "Edge is the PDF viewer now." Rather annoying to have the wrong web browser launching itself to view PDFs when Firefox does perfectly well at displaying them.

qmarchi 6y ago

"We'd like to extend a special thank you to all of the new Mozillians who contributed to this release of Firefox." How ironic.

SilasX 6y ago
"... and we wish them well in their future endeavors."
- freshsqueeze 6y ago
  goodbye and thanks for all the fish / $500M a yr from google
91edec 6y ago
It's sad because normally there's a link with all the new people. The guy who makes the post got fired. https://blog.mozilla.org/community/ https://blog.mozilla.org/community/

trevor-e 6y ago

It's a bit mind-blowing to me how big browser apps have become the last few years. Firefox 80 takes up 210.8MB and Chrome _689.8MB_ on my MacBook.

Minor49er 6y ago
Back in the late 90s-early 2000s, Microsoft baked Internet Explorer into the Windows shell. It was badically powering the desktop. Ypu could even set ypur desktop background to an HTML page on Windows at one time. But basically, the browser has been given an enormous amount of responsibility that has not changed much since those experiments. We now have things like Chromebooks that are little more than an OS with just a browser attached.
- kbenson 6y ago
  > We now have things like Chromebooks that are little more than an OS with just a browser attached. Which makes sense because a browser is basically a set of abstractions over some normal OS functions that blends remote and local actions (even if only a subset of them). Java wanted to be a universal VM, but browsers actually achieved this through HTML and JavaScript. They're going even farther with WASM.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    If by "even farther" you mean "circling back around" to being Java.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    > Java wanted to be a universal VM, but browsers actually achieved this through HTML and JavaScript. Java succeeded, you know. Still happily powers embedded systems, servers, and desktop applications. Still runs the same binaries on NT/Darwin/Linux/Haiku/whatever. Don't dismiss it just because it's not the latest hotness.
    - kbenson 6y ago

rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago

More importantly, Firefox for Android has a brand new UI (and more): https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/25/introducing-a-new-firefox-for-android-experience/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/25/introducing-a-new-f... (GeckoView, picture in picture, Enhanced Tracking Protection, persistent private mode, dark theme…). The most awaited version in years. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269156

dddddaviddddd 6y ago
Linked article says it will be available starting August 27.
- matsemann 6y ago
  I got that about a month ago, hmm. Linked article says north america august 27th, so maybe slowly rolling out?
nuxi 6y ago
Not sure if you tried it, but for me it was an absolute shitshow. It "upgrades" your settings, so if you then downgrade the app, everything is lost (as you have to uninstall + manually install the old apk). In my case it also decided to reset overridden settings to "defaults" (search engine, save passwords etc.), plus about:config was gone and the homepage cannot be set to bookmarks anymore. I uninstalled it and went back to the latest 68.x, and am now looking for a new browser on Android, possibly one that doesn't treat me like an idiot.
- valvar 6y ago
  Oh, and add-ons are no longer really a thing. There are only about 10 "officially supported" add-ons. I had to install Fennec from f-droid instead, which is annoying as it is both slower and has some frustrating bugs (for example, you can't customise your search engines properly, so if you select text and then try to launch a search on searx, the query is discarded).

madmax108 6y ago

I know it's a hard time for the engineering team at Mozilla right now, but just wanted to put it out there: You guys are truly awesome! Thanks for everything.

agumonkey 6y ago
seconded, tru marathonists

likeafox 6y ago

The one feature I wish FF had is a UI based profile switcher - container tabs, which are now relegated to being an extension, simply are not cutting it for me. Does anyone know if there's a chance of that making it into the roadmap within the next couple years?

est31 6y ago
firefox -ProfileManager ?
- _-david-_ 6y ago
  You can actually just do firefox -p
bzbarsky 6y ago
about:profiles is not amazing, but does exist...
kbenson 6y ago
> container tabs, which are now relegated to being an extension Now? Haven't they always been? > simply are not cutting it for me. Do you mind explaining why? I had some problems with them initially (when they first went into production FF), but some small tweaks since then and they've mostly worked exactly as I would want. The only complaints I have are Google, which I try to relegate to a container, making it really hard to open stuff in different containers because of how they send links in Gmail through a redirect to protect referrer info and making it hard to have separate Google accounts in different tabs (which i could probably resolve mos the issues by not assigning Google to a container by default so some of the switching is more smooth, but ick), and LastPass, which I only really need for work (as I use FF sync for my passwords). LastPass doesn't seem to be able to deal with containers and work SSO which auto redirects to a container, so I can't even sign in with LastPass without tweaking container domain assignments, and toggling that stuff every time I want to log in is ridiculous. Other than those, everything works pretty smoothly, IMO. I have 18 containers, of which 6-7 see consistent heavy use, and the most rest are for occasional things and are used once every few days.

megous 6y ago

Developer tools' network tab still unusable. https://megous.com/dl/tmp/01befe672faa84fe.png https://megous.com/dl/tmp/01befe672faa84fe.png Selecting one resource selects multiple resources at once (sometimes 5 or more), and you can only view one of the resources' detail in the right panel.

vehemenz 6y ago
That doesn't happen for me on Mac. Maybe it's an OS-specific bug?
- megous 6y ago
  Yes https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1640745#c23 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1640745#c23 It happens all the time for me, because PID of my firefox processes tend to be in millions (because of long uptimes and a me doing a lot of kernel compilation). Probably caused by systemd upgrade back in march. Great. Systemd is another of those packages that keep breaking fundamentals on my systems every other release. Looking forward to having a network after a suspend/resume cycle again, and systemd-home not cutting off sshd remote access to my machines via infinite loops in its hugely complicated PAM module whenever v247 will be released. /s

hatsunearu 6y ago

Is video acceleration on Linux here yet? :(

laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago
i think on 79 you already got X11 support (was there for a while on wayland, if you truly care about UI performance)
- refracture 6y ago
  Seems 80 for sure has it for X11. It's less about UI performance and more about battery life and heat; I might consider installing a Linux distro on my laptop now, last time I did the poor thing ramped up like it was rendering a video project or something anytime I pulled up a YouTube video.
  - laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago
    to maximize battery, disable media in the browser, and when you want to watch the content, just right click (or long press on android) and open on the non-drm native player such as VLC. It will always be better than a browser.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    FWIW, notwithstanding VAAPI support in Firefox, Linux has made massive improvements in power/heat efficiency in recent kernels. There's much less of a starting-a-jet-engine effect in regular use if you're able to use a distro based on kernel 5.7 or 5.8.

ddon 6y ago

Firefox crashing all the time on couple of my computers... the rest are doing fine. Tried to uninstall all plugins, create new profile, all sorts of tricks... Installed FF Nightly, hoping that this bug has been fixed in new browsers, but keeps crashing. Sending reports to FF pretty much every day, hoping that someone will notice, but so far, no luck. And then news came out that Mozilla is in financial trouble and firing people, so probably nobody will fix this :-/

zbraniecki 6y ago
Hi ddon. This is not normal. You may be experiencing a unique combination of factors that results in a bug. Could you load `about:crashes` and send me an ID or several of an your crashes? I would expect there to be a high number of similar crashes. It's possible that we already have a bug reported against this particular crash and we need someone who can reproduce it to help us find a way to fix it! I'll look to find such bug and contact you with the people who may be able to fix it. My email is my hackernews handle `@` `mozilla.com`. Thank you!
- ddon 6y ago
  Very cool, thank you! Will do! And I didn't know about about:crashes page, very interesting!
phkahler 6y ago
Link to your bug reports?
- ddon 6y ago
  https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/742507c9-b806-42a7-803d-3763b0200826 https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/742507c9-b806-4...

ColanR 6y ago

It sure would be nice if the memory leaks would be fixed. On some of the long-running machines I use, I have to use chrome because Firefox would eventually fill up the RAM.

kstenerud 6y ago

Firefox has been constantly crashing for the past 6 months or so on all of my computers (Linux, Windows, and now a new Mac as well - but mostly linux, probably because I use it most). Usually it's just a bunch of tabs that crash (almost always multiple tabs), but about 2-3 times a week the entire browser crashes. It's getting to the point where I don't want to use ff anymore :/

schlipity 6y ago
Have you tried resetting your profile? That is a regularly recommended fix for some crashes.
- kstenerud 6y ago
  Many times. Doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
kbrosnan 6y ago
Provide some crash ID URLs? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter
- kstenerud 6y ago
  I click send every time it crashes. It doesn't seem to matter what the URL is. Sometimes it's gmail, sometimes it's HN, could be any site really. Also, they should have the url of the crashed tab anyway.
  - takeda 6y ago
    Click on the URL given it shows you how to get the ID that's asked about: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter TLDR: got to about:crashes and provide IDs of the crashes you've had
    - 6y ago

robertoandred 6y ago

Why would you use a web browser as a PDF viewer instead of Preview...

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
Because you already have it installed and running, appreciate the security benefits of running a PDF render in a garbage-collected language in a sandbox, because anything that lets you run less Adobe code is a win, and because clicking a PDF in Firefox and having it open in Edge is generally undesirable.
- robertoandred 6y ago
  Preview comes preinstalled, and isn't Adobe code...

jreed91 6y ago

Does anyone have the issue within developer tools that when you ctl-c a highlighted piece of text it actually just selects the whole line? I have to right click copy to get the exact piece of info I want. It’s driving me nuts.

teekert 6y ago

While we are on the topic, did any get the new FF on their Android phones last week? What happened? It completely breaks my flow of opening a page, reading, going back to my favorite sites and opening a new page <repeat>.. The only way to find your favorites now is opening a new tap, you'll find that when hitting the small tab counter and then the +. You will gather piles of tabs and they are still there after you close the browser (no more setting to forget them upon close). I like the bar at the bottom but that is the only nice thing. Am I missing something? Play store reviews are also pretty negative...

pvitz 6y ago
This version is terrible. The start screen with the most visited sites doesn't show up anymore. It is slower on my phone and I don't even know anymore how to view my downloads from within the browser. It really makes me consider changing to another browser, but I don't want to use Chrome. Would anyone have a good suggestion?
- teekert 6y ago
  Yeah, I was very surprised, at first I thought: let's just get used to it, but I feel like I won't. Why on earth would hitting the biggest touchable area of the UI (the address bar) lead to a completely black screen with 0 options, that's just a big waste, it could have easily presented my most used websites there. I'm also looking for alternatives, it's a big step back imo. Right now I have 12 useless tabs open, I never had any tabs open (unless I opened them myself for later reading, and those tabs are now lost between all those useless tabs were I just wanted to switch to another website) but it's the only way to get to your favorites and collections (whatever collections may be, currently they are the same as my favorites??). I also can't find print and downloads anymore.
  - rapnie 6y ago
    For me the UX is down the drain. I notice I use my mobile less for browsing.. too unwieldy. Like a different browser was installed in that update. At many places it needs more clicks. Address bar completion works differently. You can avoid the new tab creation by clicking Back button after you open, but I hate to do this all the time. Had a huge list of tabs open before. Now the preview thumbnails do not load/refresh, text is bigger and truncated so tab list only half as useful.

mindcrime 6y ago

I had switched away from FF to use Chrome predominately a few years ago, for a mix of various reasons. Performance being a big one. But I've been thinking more about the whole browser monoculture issue, and the importance of Mozilla and Firefox for the Open Web in general lately, so about a week or two ago I started switching back to Firefox as my primary browser. So far, so good. Performance feels pretty snappy so far, and I haven't run across many rendering issues, and none that really matter. All in all, I'd say that if you have been considering Firefox, now might be a good time to give it a shot. This is all, BTW, in reference to the desktop version (Linux specifically) not mobile.

IggleSniggle 6y ago
Even Firefox for iOS (which must use Safari WebView) comes bundles with a decent content blocker. Recommended.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  My favorite Firefox extension is tree style tabs. It displays your tabs as a vertical menu on the side rather than on a horizontal line at the top. I've been using this extension for years and I'm going to use it for the rest of my life. I highly recommend checking it out.
  - smabie 6y ago
    I agree, tree tabs is the best. How do people manage with out it?
    - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
      By having 8 tabs.
    - takeda 6y ago
      I really liked Tree Style Tabs before the restrictions on extensions. I do understand that they needed to discontinue them, because it was a roadblock for faster engine, but they felt less like a hack to provide that functionality.

neiman 6y ago

Oh my god, I didn't know they're still releasing those! <silly joke warning>

royal_ts 6y ago

Is there any kind of road for when to expect installable Web Apps the way it's possible in Chrome and Edge?

esclerofilo 6y ago
On desktop? They are working on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/eay1x1/firefox_73_adds_support_for_site_specific_browser/fb15u5h/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/eay1x1/firefox_73_... I don't know enough about mozilla's process to understand why bugzilla says it's already done, though.

kozmonaut 6y ago

Have used firefox forever. Their PDF rendering engine is quick and snappy.

akerro 6y ago

After recent events I feel quite nostalgic or sad about new Firefox releases, I can't justify it

reaperducer 6y ago

Firefox can now be set as the default system PDF viewer. The name reported by accessibility tools for items in multi-tiered tree controls no longer incorrectly includes information from items at deeper levels, providing users with the correct level of content when using a screen reader. I kinda expected more from an x.0 release.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Karunamon 6y ago
Best to rein in those expectations. Browser developers abandoned SemVer some time ago (bumping the major number for trivial releases with no major features or breaking changes) for reasons that never really made a whole lot of sense to me. Treat the version number as a monotonic counter, that's all the information you're going to be able to make use of unless you're working on it.

badhabit 6y ago

there's no easy way to disable javascript on site viewing. brave got ir right with brave shield. add disable image on the ff shield then it's even more useful. brave suffers chrome's always forced refresh when stale tab is reopened or when page is scrolled up to induce reload wheel sometimes users do not want the freshest page. there's a reload button for that. sometimes we just want to save the stale page.

takeda 6y ago

The title should be "Firefox turns 80" ;)