12 ms·

Firefox 95 Released

162 points by ecliptik 5y ago

frankjr 5y ago
> We’ve added a User Agent override for Slack.com, which allows Firefox users to use more Call features and have access to Huddles. So now `window.navigator.vendor` returns "Google Inc." if your URL matches `://app.slack.com/`. LOL. https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/eea0fac2cb8cae1e5a2e38959eeaa0b7f6d23456/browser/extensions/webcompat/injections/js/bug1727100-slack.com-ua-override.js https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/eea0fac2cb8cae1e5a...
- perihelions 5y ago
  There's a list of UA overrides and other hardcoded website patches in about:compat.
  - NelsonMinar 5y ago
    Wow, what a collection of hacks. It reminds me of the efforts Microsoft goes to so that old programs keep working on Windows.
    - TimTheTinker 5y ago
      I think in both cases it was less hack and more getting around browser sniffing code that makes outdated or incorrect assumptions. Please don't browser-sniff, use feature detection instead. The web platform is standards-driven, not browser-driven -- let's keep it that way :)
      - NelsonMinar 5y ago
        I'm sympathetic to the need to do this, just admiring the kludges. It's not just user agent spoofing; some of the compatibility hacks seem to be modifying CSS of websites.
  - Osiris 5y ago
    Opera 12, with the Presto engine, had this same problem. It had a huge list of overrides (JavaScript and CSS) to fix problems with popular websites. This is inevitable when a browser has limited market share.
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    The things you learn. The damn CDC Covid tracker won't open in Firefox. It feels like not following open standards for cross compatibility is a dereliction of duty for government agencies, let alone the official tracking app during a pandemic.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  I wonder why they bother with user-agents in the first place. It's more of a fingerprinting vector than anything else, especially considering Firefox's browser marketshare. Just hardcode it to Chrome's once and for all.
  - streptomycin 5y ago
    Sometimes browsers have bugs that cannot be identified with feature detection, in which case the user agent is all we have to know when to work around those bugs.
    - foxrider 5y ago
      I feel like with the modern rate of browser development by the time you have identified and fixed the bug the fix may no longer be relevant
    - tomxor 5y ago
      This^ I like Firefox, but it's the only browser to blindly follow the questionable and backwards incompatible parts of the SVG-2 spec... I challenge anyone to identify that SVG-2 <use> is implemented instead of SVG-1 <use> without parsing the useragent string. The former is backwards incompatible (implemented in Firefox) and will render some nice black shapes if you've previously relied upon target context CSS rules for inheritance that have been supported by SVG-1 for the last decade. AFAIK you can only see this in the output since the inside of the <use> element is a shadow DOM inaccessible to JavaScript, so you cannot determine computed styles. For this reason I wrote an "unpolyfill" [0] that implements some of SVG-1 <use> elements with mutation-observers in JS, albeit in a not 100% correct way. Even so, it still needs to be explicitly enabled, depending one something else to parse the useragent string. We enjoy far more consistency than a decade ago, but browsers are incredibly complex, and there will no doubt continue to be obscure differences that are difficult or impossible to detect programmatically. Rendering differences most of all. [0] https://github.com/ThomasBrierley/svg2use-unpolyfill https://github.com/ThomasBrierley/svg2use-unpolyfill
  - RF_Savage 5y ago
    Heh, user-agents have been like that since the start. Almost all modern browsers start their user-agent with "Mozilla/", so we are back to the beginning in that regard. And naturally it is for the same reasons too!
- kingcharles 5y ago
  You can't make this shit up O_O
  - stavros 5y ago
    What's so unbelievable about faking something to get an app that works perfectly fine on your browser to stop refusing to work on your browser?
    - prohobo 5y ago
      I think he's talking about the fact that they had to do that at all.
      - werdnapk 5y ago
        Blame slack.
      - kingcharles 5y ago
        This.
      - stavros 5y ago
        In that case, what's unbelievable about a developer phoning feature detection in and just using the user-agent string? :P
        sp332 5y ago
        Is it possible to detect the format of the webrtc video? That sounds difficult anyway.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - alophawen 5y ago
      General juniority of the HN crowd.
- shmerl 5y ago
  Slack is very nasty in how they refused to support proper WebRTC.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  Kind of interesting that they don't even mention talking to Slack about just removing the check ... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1727100 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1727100
  - usrlocal1023 5y ago
    They tried but Slack weren't interested. Update from 2 years ago To summarize my current understanding: Slack's video conferencing service only support Chrome's non-standard Plan B format for WebRTC calls. And our attempts to talk to Slack about changing that were kindly rejected (we met with them shortly after they had launched the calling feature). And my repeated questions in public events about adding Firefox support were also turned down. Source: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1626121#c4 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1626121#c4 Further clarification from last year https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1626121#c10 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1626121#c10 I have seen people mention that they have tried few more times to contact them, but Slack weren't interested. My understanding as to why it works now, correct me if I am wrong, is because of Slack moving to using AWS Chime SDK for calls which has Firefox support and just faking the UA to Chrome tricks Slack into loads the necessary SDK/JS for calls and Chime SDK takes care of the rest.
    - shmerl 5y ago
      Such kind of attitude from Slack is disgusting.
    - splatzone 5y ago
      I'm very confused - if it's working on Firefox with the Chime SDK, what good reason is there for Slack to block the feature on Firefox? Is there some political reason for them to disadvantage Firefox that I'm not aware of?
      - usrlocal1023 5y ago
        When Slack launched video calls, it was using Chrome's own implementation of WebRTC which is called Plan B. So it worked in both their app which is electron based and Chrome. Not sure if it worked with chromium derivatives like Brave, Vivaldi, etc. Firefox rolled out the standard based WebRTC implementation and chrome eventually did as well, but companies like Slack and various others didn't migrate instead just threw an error message saying calling isn't supported in Firefox and instead use their app or chrome. Since Slack's partnership with AWS about 2 years ago, they migrated from their own call infrastructure to using AWS's Chime. Chime SDK has support for all major browsers https://docs.aws.amazon.com/chime/latest/dg/meetings-sdk.html#mtg-browsers https://docs.aws.amazon.com/chime/latest/dg/meetings-sdk.htm... But their browser check still remains today and Mozilla started to spoof the user agent as a workaround so that Firefox users can make calls as Slack aren't willing to remove the check or properly add support. Chrome is planning to remove WebRTC plan B soon, so this should force companies to use the unified WebRTC implementation and hopefully means Firefox support. https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/IY2amIigFFs https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/IY2am...
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  The big wheel of `User-Agent: Mozilla` has finally turned.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  Quirks Mode 2.0
- deleted 5y ago
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  - deleted 5y ago
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Someone1234 5y ago
Nice iterative release with mostly cross-platform security and MacOS specific performance improvements. I wonder if there is any benefit to Windows Store Vs. installer setups (e.g. does the update process change)?
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  System-wide tools like Homebrew and Chocolatey are nice because they allow you to decide to update everything on your system when you've fucked off and it doesn't cost you any time while your machine chews away - without the loss of control and rights "stores" represent. Also, agreed - the MacOS performance improvements will be most welcome (I'm waiting on a de-Mozilla'd derivative to update.)
  - jlkuester7 5y ago
    +1 https://scoop.sh/ https://scoop.sh/ is pretty much the first thing I ever install on a Windows computer and then I use that to load up everything else.
- randy408 5y ago
  Based on my experience Microsoft Store will kill the app to update it.
bovermyer 5y ago
I can't remember why I moved from Firefox to Brave. I'm curious if I should move back again. Can anyone sell me on/off this idea?
- stavros 5y ago
  I use Firefox as my main browser, and have done so for years now. I really like it, I've had no problems with it, and I like the fact that it's the only major non-Webkit browser.
  - cxr 5y ago
    "The only major non-WebKit browser", if it exists, is a title that would have to go to Chrome, and it would require you to consider Firefox a "minor non-WebKit browser". At <5% (on par with Opera circa 2012), that wouldn't necessarily be an inaccurate way to describe it.
- moray 5y ago
  I am in the same boat and I was just thinking about it after upgrading to a Mac M1 pro. One plus point for Firefox is the dev tools, especially for grid and flex.
- cottager2 5y ago
  I use Firefox. Honestly, some sites are broken, like my brokerage account and Zillow. Having uBlock work at blocking 100% of known-bad requests is worth it to me. Chrome only blocks something like 60% due to the asynchronous nature of the extension API.
  - foepys 5y ago
    > Chrome only blocks something like 60% due to the asynchronous nature of the extension API. Let's not kid ourselves. This is clearly a 100% deliberate design decision, aimed at making content blockers less effective. This has nothing to do with the API being asynchronous. It is just the excuse Google went with.
ChildOfChaos 5y ago
Does it run on Windows 95 though?
- dankwizard 5y ago
  Yeah it does.
- nix0n 5y ago
  No
- Lammy 5y ago
  The best you can probably do on plain Win95 is K-Meleon 1.6 (2010) http://kmeleonbrowser.org/wiki/KMeleon16 http://kmeleonbrowser.org/wiki/KMeleon16 With installation of KernelEx you can try K-Meleon 74 or Opera 12: https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2018/05/k-meleon-74-windows-9x-edition.html https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2018/05/k-meleon-74... http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/wiki/Opera http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/wiki/Opera
  - trts 5y ago
    IIRC K-Meleon predated Firefox / Phoenix 0.1 and was the (or one of the) original minimal gecko-based browers. It filled an interesting niche at least for me at the time in being a capable, open-source, Windows-native browser when IE had already started to dominate + bloat and Netscape / Seamonkey was also quite heavy in resource usage. Plus I think it had tabs. cool to see it's still getting new releases!
- seoulmetro 5y ago
  Been a long time since I saw someone using Win95. What's the reasoning?
aeturnum 5y ago
> reduced the power usage of software decoded video on macOS Oh nice - tho Firefox is lower-power than Chrome for me it was noticeably bad on some video sites.
- kibwen 5y ago
  I didn't see it in any release notes, but AV1 decoding on Windows has also greatly improved in power consumption this year. My laptop used to nearly overheat when watching HD videos (Youtube started serving AV1 for HD within the past year), but nowadays it doesn't seem to cause any extra stress.
  - ksec 5y ago
    > AV1 decoding on Windows most likely due to dav1d than anything else.
newsbinator 5y ago
This is silly, but one of the main things I like about Firefox is being able to drag a sizable JSON file on top of it and getting that JSON in treeview, with a search filter. It's convenient out-of-the-box functionality.
- thayne 5y ago
  That's a great feature
- nofunsir 5y ago
  Not silly. Just yesterday I used it myself the exact same way. Couldn’t even get VS Code or Sublime to do it without random plugins. Firefox, aka Mozilla JSON tree viewer.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- claviska 5y ago
  This is fantastic. I’ve always wondered why browsers don’t show HTML, CSS, and JS source with syntax highlighting, bracket matching, and other basic dev tools features. You are, after all, viewing the source.
  - mdaniel 5y ago
    It's one of the reasons I have Firefox Nightly on Android: it still honors the "view-source:https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29480749 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29480749" protocol allowing me to look in the page sources on mobile. Naturally, Firefox does this on desktop, too, but that's expected. The "normal" Firefox for Android used to do that, but it also used to let people install extensions as if they owned the phone, but that era is over So while not "bracket matching," it does have syntax highlighting and often it will even highlight bogus HTML in red
- captn3m0 5y ago
  I've especially enjoyed this functionality since a very popular JSON Viewer extension on Firefox got taken over by tracking malware and started logging all your history.
authed 5y ago
Which version did they remove the cool screenshot feature? seems like they just added it.... (you could easily take a screenshot of the whole page) Edit: Looks like Firefox 88 only moved the feature: https://techdows.com/2021/03/firefox-88-removes-screenshot-option-from-address-bar-how-to-take-screenshots.html https://techdows.com/2021/03/firefox-88-removes-screenshot-o... I wonder what useless/detrimental move they made this time I remember when they removed the right-click View Image not long ago... luckily there's an add-on that can bring back this basic feature.
- acdha 5y ago
  They removed one of the ways you could get to it: from the right-click context menu. You can still use the keyboard shortcut or add it to the toolbar. (Yes, it was disappointing to see it removed for no good reason)
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Yeah and then a few updates later their holy telemetry tells them nobody uses it anymore (makes sense as it's much harder to find) and it gets cut. It goes like this a lot. They listen too much to telemetry. Especially because a significant part of their userbase will turn it off.
    - nyuszika7h 5y ago
      This is exactly the issue with telemetry, it's a vicious cycle. Most power users will turn it off because it's "spyware", so the only telemetry they get is from average users who don't even know the feature exists, which leads to them removing useful features, so in its current state it's practically useless for actual measurements and only ends up hurting things. That's why I don't like when there's a blind hate mob against telemetry, because it can be legitimately useful for developers. People should focus on voicing actual privacy concerns and trying to get them addressed rather than completely rejecting any form of telemetry no matter how anonymous they try to make it. But on the other hand, Mozilla should be well aware that a large majority of their user base probably turns off telemetry (I'm not sure if there's any telemetry sent back that says "user turned off telemetry", maybe not because some people are outraged even by that, but regardless they should know that) and not arbitrarily remove features that are "unused" when their sample is not representative. I highly doubt a feature like this causes a huge maintainance burden that necessitates removing it. I'm not entirely sure what kind of data Mozilla's telemetry collects, so I'm just more talking in general and not claiming that it's fully anonymous and there's no reason to be concerned at all. You should definitely be allowed to opt out (or maybe even make it opt-in - that does reduce the sample size even further but maybe if they showed trustworthiness then more people would be inclined to opt in), but IMO we need to find some solution that benefits both sides. The only other alternative I see is having some sort of forum where they make discussions/polls to ask users about how much they use certain features. But that requires active user effort and I imagine a lot of people couldn't be bothered to do it. Shoving surveys in users' faces would just annoy them, but not advertising it would result in a lot of people not knowing about it and missing out on an opportunity to vouch for their favorite feature because they weren't part of the discussion.
chiefofgxbxl 5y ago
Question about Firefox's future and Mozilla's corporate leadership: Last week I made a slide deck and 20 min demo video of some features I feel like are fundamental to web browsers that none of them have. I think Mozilla is - in principle / on paper - the best organization to embody the principles that my ideas espouse. The general HN attitude toward Mozilla seems to be that it's a leadership issue. Is there any hope that I could send my pitch/demo-video and be heard out? Is there any hope that Mozilla can revive itself, or, if the problem is in fact bad corporate leadership, is the organization essentially doomed with no recourse?
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  Why not share it publicly? If the ideas are good, I'm sure they'll get adopted by someone.
- dblohm7 5y ago
  https://ideas.mozilla.org https://ideas.mozilla.org is a dedicated site for user feature suggestions. Perhaps you might want to try submitting over there?
skept 5y ago
I'm still rooting for Firefox but the only thing stopping me from switching to it as my daily browser is that it can't do multi-language spellcheck [0]. Chromium-based browsers have been supporting this for years now. [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402822 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402822
up6w6 5y ago
One thing that shocked me was discovering that Firefox encrypts the saved passwords but doesn't (and won't) encrypt the cookies database at all. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1259652 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1259652
- webmobdev 5y ago
  Firefox is now also an Ad-Ware and Spyware: > “When contextual suggestions are enabled, Firefox Suggest uses your city location and search keywords to make contextual suggestions from Firefox and our partners, while keeping your privacy in mind,” the support post reads. The “relevant suggestions” from “trusted partners” appear at the bottom of the usual search suggestions pulled from your bookmarks, browser history, and open tabs — a less intrusive version of a search ad, but technically still an ad. https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/22715179/firefox-suggest-search-ads-browser https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/22715179/firefox-suggest-... ----- I've now switched to Tor Browser - it's a privacy hardened Firefox browser with all the crap removed. (Disabling and removing Tor, which is integrated with it, is a slight pain, but doable).
  - invalidname 5y ago
    You can disable that with a chckbox. Calling it adware is a stretch, calling it spyware is diminishes the word.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Wow that's indeed bad. They should at least make it optional.
d3nj4l 5y ago
> We’ve added a User Agent override for Slack.com, which allows Firefox users to use more Call features and have access to Huddles. YES E: Shame on Slack. Three years and counting they haven't fixed this.
- 10000truths 5y ago
  I thought it was standard knowledge that if you need a specific Web API or JavaScript feature, you explicitly test for it, rather than making assumptions based on the user agent.
  - d3nj4l 5y ago
    I thought it was standard knowledge that Slack doesn't care about their in-browser experience :P Seriously, though, Slack is easily among the worst apps I've used in browser. On Safari I have a mountain of issues, including one where it grays out every message it sends and then shows them twice. On FF they flat out didn't support calls and huddles until FF called their bluff on it, and even on Chrome I've had missed notifications^. It's almost like they deliberately make it worse so you have to download their app - which also just runs in a browser. ^: Incidentally, for a work focused messaging platform, Slack has had the worst notification misses for me. They also don't clear notifs on mobile if you see the message on desktop and vice versa. Discord and WhatsApp - both platforms for casual use - are way better.
- aitchnyu 5y ago
  MS Teams refuses to do video in browsers except Edge and Chrome, so I have to force Chromium to spoof Chrome UA.
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  Good lord, what's old is new again. Maybe FF should just always use a Chrome-like UA and be done with it.
Glench 5y ago
> We’ve also reduced the power usage of software decoded video on macOS, especially in fullscreen. This includes streaming sites such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Thank god. This has been a real problem.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I wonder why hardware decoding isn't used for those sites though.
  - nyuszika7h 5y ago
    The Widevine CDM is responsible for decoding the video, and on desktop platforms so far only software-based DRM is supported, though they're planning to introduce hardware DRM for Widevine on desktop soon, which would enable higher quality streaming and possibly also hardware acceleration. So far they're only planning to support this on Windows 10 and above, maybe macOS support will come at a later date, but Linux users will almost certainly be left in the dust, considering they already don't support VMP (Verified Media Path) on Linux, resulting in many streaming services limiting video quality to SD or blocking streaming on Linux altogether.
megous 5y ago
My desktop doesn't feature dark mode switching, so Firefox since version 95 is in dark mode all the time without any option to change it to light mode anywhere, not even in about:config. Since when is dark mode a reasonable default?
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Comment regarding usability and layout from a grumpy old fart who dissed them before (in partially most impolite ways): I'd still like a more compact layout for tabs and address-bar. At least one can improve the visibility of active tabs vs. inactive with what nowadays counts as color theme. Both for dark and light modes. So that point of critic is now moot. Regarding dark mode, more and more sites work with that without fiddling, which didn't in the old 7/8.x ESRs, neither 94.x. With 95 there were a few pleasant surprises in dark. But that may have to do with the passed time, too. Maybe the sites themselves changed something. Didn't check for that. Anyways, apart from the still wasted pixels it's very pleasant to use. /me eats chalk...(but just a little. GIEF MEE BACK MY PIXELS!)
dbg31415 5y ago
This is the update I've been waiting for since the pandemic started! It no longer turns my MacBook into a toaster when I'm on a video call. (= It used to jack the power usage metric up to like 100, now it's more aligned with Chrome or Safari even when I do video calls. Thanks!

162 points by ecliptik 5y ago

> We’ve added a User Agent override for Slack.com, which allows Firefox users to use more Call features and have access to Huddles. So now `window.navigator.vendor` returns "Google Inc." if your URL matches `://app.slack.com/`. LOL. https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/eea0fac2cb8cae1e5a2e38959eeaa0b7f6d23456/browser/extensions/webcompat/injections/js/bug1727100-slack.com-ua-override.js https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/eea0fac2cb8cae1e5a...

perihelions 5y ago
There's a list of UA overrides and other hardcoded website patches in about:compat.
- NelsonMinar 5y ago
  Wow, what a collection of hacks. It reminds me of the efforts Microsoft goes to so that old programs keep working on Windows.
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    I think in both cases it was less hack and more getting around browser sniffing code that makes outdated or incorrect assumptions. Please don't browser-sniff, use feature detection instead. The web platform is standards-driven, not browser-driven -- let's keep it that way :)
    - NelsonMinar 5y ago
      I'm sympathetic to the need to do this, just admiring the kludges. It's not just user agent spoofing; some of the compatibility hacks seem to be modifying CSS of websites.
- Osiris 5y ago
  Opera 12, with the Presto engine, had this same problem. It had a huge list of overrides (JavaScript and CSS) to fix problems with popular websites. This is inevitable when a browser has limited market share.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  The things you learn. The damn CDC Covid tracker won't open in Firefox. It feels like not following open standards for cross compatibility is a dereliction of duty for government agencies, let alone the official tracking app during a pandemic.
Nextgrid 5y ago
I wonder why they bother with user-agents in the first place. It's more of a fingerprinting vector than anything else, especially considering Firefox's browser marketshare. Just hardcode it to Chrome's once and for all.
- streptomycin 5y ago
  Sometimes browsers have bugs that cannot be identified with feature detection, in which case the user agent is all we have to know when to work around those bugs.
  - foxrider 5y ago
    I feel like with the modern rate of browser development by the time you have identified and fixed the bug the fix may no longer be relevant
  - tomxor 5y ago
    This^ I like Firefox, but it's the only browser to blindly follow the questionable and backwards incompatible parts of the SVG-2 spec... I challenge anyone to identify that SVG-2 <use> is implemented instead of SVG-1 <use> without parsing the useragent string. The former is backwards incompatible (implemented in Firefox) and will render some nice black shapes if you've previously relied upon target context CSS rules for inheritance that have been supported by SVG-1 for the last decade. AFAIK you can only see this in the output since the inside of the <use> element is a shadow DOM inaccessible to JavaScript, so you cannot determine computed styles. For this reason I wrote an "unpolyfill" [0] that implements some of SVG-1 <use> elements with mutation-observers in JS, albeit in a not 100% correct way. Even so, it still needs to be explicitly enabled, depending one something else to parse the useragent string. We enjoy far more consistency than a decade ago, but browsers are incredibly complex, and there will no doubt continue to be obscure differences that are difficult or impossible to detect programmatically. Rendering differences most of all. [0] https://github.com/ThomasBrierley/svg2use-unpolyfill https://github.com/ThomasBrierley/svg2use-unpolyfill
- RF_Savage 5y ago
  Heh, user-agents have been like that since the start. Almost all modern browsers start their user-agent with "Mozilla/", so we are back to the beginning in that regard. And naturally it is for the same reasons too!
kingcharles 5y ago
You can't make this shit up O_O
- stavros 5y ago
  What's so unbelievable about faking something to get an app that works perfectly fine on your browser to stop refusing to work on your browser?
  - prohobo 5y ago
    I think he's talking about the fact that they had to do that at all.
    - werdnapk 5y ago
      Blame slack.
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      This.
    - stavros 5y ago
      In that case, what's unbelievable about a developer phoning feature detection in and just using the user-agent string? :P
      - sp332 5y ago
        Is it possible to detect the format of the webrtc video? That sounds difficult anyway.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - alophawen 5y ago
    General juniority of the HN crowd.
shmerl 5y ago
Slack is very nasty in how they refused to support proper WebRTC.
solarkraft 5y ago
Kind of interesting that they don't even mention talking to Slack about just removing the check ... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1727100 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1727100
- usrlocal1023 5y ago
  They tried but Slack weren't interested. Update from 2 years ago To summarize my current understanding: Slack's video conferencing service only support Chrome's non-standard Plan B format for WebRTC calls. And our attempts to talk to Slack about changing that were kindly rejected (we met with them shortly after they had launched the calling feature). And my repeated questions in public events about adding Firefox support were also turned down. Source: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1626121#c4 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1626121#c4 Further clarification from last year https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1626121#c10 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1626121#c10 I have seen people mention that they have tried few more times to contact them, but Slack weren't interested. My understanding as to why it works now, correct me if I am wrong, is because of Slack moving to using AWS Chime SDK for calls which has Firefox support and just faking the UA to Chrome tricks Slack into loads the necessary SDK/JS for calls and Chime SDK takes care of the rest.
  - shmerl 5y ago
    Such kind of attitude from Slack is disgusting.
  - splatzone 5y ago
    I'm very confused - if it's working on Firefox with the Chime SDK, what good reason is there for Slack to block the feature on Firefox? Is there some political reason for them to disadvantage Firefox that I'm not aware of?
    - usrlocal1023 5y ago
      When Slack launched video calls, it was using Chrome's own implementation of WebRTC which is called Plan B. So it worked in both their app which is electron based and Chrome. Not sure if it worked with chromium derivatives like Brave, Vivaldi, etc. Firefox rolled out the standard based WebRTC implementation and chrome eventually did as well, but companies like Slack and various others didn't migrate instead just threw an error message saying calling isn't supported in Firefox and instead use their app or chrome. Since Slack's partnership with AWS about 2 years ago, they migrated from their own call infrastructure to using AWS's Chime. Chime SDK has support for all major browsers https://docs.aws.amazon.com/chime/latest/dg/meetings-sdk.html#mtg-browsers https://docs.aws.amazon.com/chime/latest/dg/meetings-sdk.htm... But their browser check still remains today and Mozilla started to spoof the user agent as a workaround so that Firefox users can make calls as Slack aren't willing to remove the check or properly add support. Chrome is planning to remove WebRTC plan B soon, so this should force companies to use the unified WebRTC implementation and hopefully means Firefox support. https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/IY2amIigFFs https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/IY2am...
jonathankoren 5y ago
The big wheel of `User-Agent: Mozilla` has finally turned.
smnrchrds 5y ago
Quirks Mode 2.0
deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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Someone1234 5y ago

Nice iterative release with mostly cross-platform security and MacOS specific performance improvements. I wonder if there is any benefit to Windows Store Vs. installer setups (e.g. does the update process change)?

KennyBlanken 5y ago
System-wide tools like Homebrew and Chocolatey are nice because they allow you to decide to update everything on your system when you've fucked off and it doesn't cost you any time while your machine chews away - without the loss of control and rights "stores" represent. Also, agreed - the MacOS performance improvements will be most welcome (I'm waiting on a de-Mozilla'd derivative to update.)
- jlkuester7 5y ago
  +1 https://scoop.sh/ https://scoop.sh/ is pretty much the first thing I ever install on a Windows computer and then I use that to load up everything else.
randy408 5y ago
Based on my experience Microsoft Store will kill the app to update it.

bovermyer 5y ago

I can't remember why I moved from Firefox to Brave. I'm curious if I should move back again. Can anyone sell me on/off this idea?

stavros 5y ago
I use Firefox as my main browser, and have done so for years now. I really like it, I've had no problems with it, and I like the fact that it's the only major non-Webkit browser.
- cxr 5y ago
  "The only major non-WebKit browser", if it exists, is a title that would have to go to Chrome, and it would require you to consider Firefox a "minor non-WebKit browser". At <5% (on par with Opera circa 2012), that wouldn't necessarily be an inaccurate way to describe it.
moray 5y ago
I am in the same boat and I was just thinking about it after upgrading to a Mac M1 pro. One plus point for Firefox is the dev tools, especially for grid and flex.
cottager2 5y ago
I use Firefox. Honestly, some sites are broken, like my brokerage account and Zillow. Having uBlock work at blocking 100% of known-bad requests is worth it to me. Chrome only blocks something like 60% due to the asynchronous nature of the extension API.
- foepys 5y ago
  > Chrome only blocks something like 60% due to the asynchronous nature of the extension API. Let's not kid ourselves. This is clearly a 100% deliberate design decision, aimed at making content blockers less effective. This has nothing to do with the API being asynchronous. It is just the excuse Google went with.

ChildOfChaos 5y ago

Does it run on Windows 95 though?

dankwizard 5y ago
Yeah it does.
nix0n 5y ago
No
Lammy 5y ago
The best you can probably do on plain Win95 is K-Meleon 1.6 (2010) http://kmeleonbrowser.org/wiki/KMeleon16 http://kmeleonbrowser.org/wiki/KMeleon16 With installation of KernelEx you can try K-Meleon 74 or Opera 12: https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2018/05/k-meleon-74-windows-9x-edition.html https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2018/05/k-meleon-74... http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/wiki/Opera http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/wiki/Opera
- trts 5y ago
  IIRC K-Meleon predated Firefox / Phoenix 0.1 and was the (or one of the) original minimal gecko-based browers. It filled an interesting niche at least for me at the time in being a capable, open-source, Windows-native browser when IE had already started to dominate + bloat and Netscape / Seamonkey was also quite heavy in resource usage. Plus I think it had tabs. cool to see it's still getting new releases!
seoulmetro 5y ago
Been a long time since I saw someone using Win95. What's the reasoning?

aeturnum 5y ago

> reduced the power usage of software decoded video on macOS Oh nice - tho Firefox is lower-power than Chrome for me it was noticeably bad on some video sites.

kibwen 5y ago
I didn't see it in any release notes, but AV1 decoding on Windows has also greatly improved in power consumption this year. My laptop used to nearly overheat when watching HD videos (Youtube started serving AV1 for HD within the past year), but nowadays it doesn't seem to cause any extra stress.
- ksec 5y ago
  > AV1 decoding on Windows most likely due to dav1d than anything else.

newsbinator 5y ago

This is silly, but one of the main things I like about Firefox is being able to drag a sizable JSON file on top of it and getting that JSON in treeview, with a search filter. It's convenient out-of-the-box functionality.

thayne 5y ago
That's a great feature
nofunsir 5y ago
Not silly. Just yesterday I used it myself the exact same way. Couldn’t even get VS Code or Sublime to do it without random plugins. Firefox, aka Mozilla JSON tree viewer.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
claviska 5y ago
This is fantastic. I’ve always wondered why browsers don’t show HTML, CSS, and JS source with syntax highlighting, bracket matching, and other basic dev tools features. You are, after all, viewing the source.
- mdaniel 5y ago
  It's one of the reasons I have Firefox Nightly on Android: it still honors the "view-source:https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29480749 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29480749" protocol allowing me to look in the page sources on mobile. Naturally, Firefox does this on desktop, too, but that's expected. The "normal" Firefox for Android used to do that, but it also used to let people install extensions as if they owned the phone, but that era is over So while not "bracket matching," it does have syntax highlighting and often it will even highlight bogus HTML in red
captn3m0 5y ago
I've especially enjoyed this functionality since a very popular JSON Viewer extension on Firefox got taken over by tracking malware and started logging all your history.

authed 5y ago

Which version did they remove the cool screenshot feature? seems like they just added it.... (you could easily take a screenshot of the whole page) Edit: Looks like Firefox 88 only moved the feature: https://techdows.com/2021/03/firefox-88-removes-screenshot-option-from-address-bar-how-to-take-screenshots.html https://techdows.com/2021/03/firefox-88-removes-screenshot-o... I wonder what useless/detrimental move they made this time I remember when they removed the right-click View Image not long ago... luckily there's an add-on that can bring back this basic feature.

acdha 5y ago
They removed one of the ways you could get to it: from the right-click context menu. You can still use the keyboard shortcut or add it to the toolbar. (Yes, it was disappointing to see it removed for no good reason)
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Yeah and then a few updates later their holy telemetry tells them nobody uses it anymore (makes sense as it's much harder to find) and it gets cut. It goes like this a lot. They listen too much to telemetry. Especially because a significant part of their userbase will turn it off.
  - nyuszika7h 5y ago
    This is exactly the issue with telemetry, it's a vicious cycle. Most power users will turn it off because it's "spyware", so the only telemetry they get is from average users who don't even know the feature exists, which leads to them removing useful features, so in its current state it's practically useless for actual measurements and only ends up hurting things. That's why I don't like when there's a blind hate mob against telemetry, because it can be legitimately useful for developers. People should focus on voicing actual privacy concerns and trying to get them addressed rather than completely rejecting any form of telemetry no matter how anonymous they try to make it. But on the other hand, Mozilla should be well aware that a large majority of their user base probably turns off telemetry (I'm not sure if there's any telemetry sent back that says "user turned off telemetry", maybe not because some people are outraged even by that, but regardless they should know that) and not arbitrarily remove features that are "unused" when their sample is not representative. I highly doubt a feature like this causes a huge maintainance burden that necessitates removing it. I'm not entirely sure what kind of data Mozilla's telemetry collects, so I'm just more talking in general and not claiming that it's fully anonymous and there's no reason to be concerned at all. You should definitely be allowed to opt out (or maybe even make it opt-in - that does reduce the sample size even further but maybe if they showed trustworthiness then more people would be inclined to opt in), but IMO we need to find some solution that benefits both sides. The only other alternative I see is having some sort of forum where they make discussions/polls to ask users about how much they use certain features. But that requires active user effort and I imagine a lot of people couldn't be bothered to do it. Shoving surveys in users' faces would just annoy them, but not advertising it would result in a lot of people not knowing about it and missing out on an opportunity to vouch for their favorite feature because they weren't part of the discussion.

chiefofgxbxl 5y ago

Question about Firefox's future and Mozilla's corporate leadership: Last week I made a slide deck and 20 min demo video of some features I feel like are fundamental to web browsers that none of them have. I think Mozilla is - in principle / on paper - the best organization to embody the principles that my ideas espouse. The general HN attitude toward Mozilla seems to be that it's a leadership issue. Is there any hope that I could send my pitch/demo-video and be heard out? Is there any hope that Mozilla can revive itself, or, if the problem is in fact bad corporate leadership, is the organization essentially doomed with no recourse?

jonny_eh 5y ago
Why not share it publicly? If the ideas are good, I'm sure they'll get adopted by someone.
dblohm7 5y ago
https://ideas.mozilla.org https://ideas.mozilla.org is a dedicated site for user feature suggestions. Perhaps you might want to try submitting over there?

skept 5y ago

I'm still rooting for Firefox but the only thing stopping me from switching to it as my daily browser is that it can't do multi-language spellcheck [0]. Chromium-based browsers have been supporting this for years now. [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402822 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1402822

up6w6 5y ago

One thing that shocked me was discovering that Firefox encrypts the saved passwords but doesn't (and won't) encrypt the cookies database at all. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1259652 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1259652

webmobdev 5y ago
Firefox is now also an Ad-Ware and Spyware: > “When contextual suggestions are enabled, Firefox Suggest uses your city location and search keywords to make contextual suggestions from Firefox and our partners, while keeping your privacy in mind,” the support post reads. The “relevant suggestions” from “trusted partners” appear at the bottom of the usual search suggestions pulled from your bookmarks, browser history, and open tabs — a less intrusive version of a search ad, but technically still an ad. https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/22715179/firefox-suggest-search-ads-browser https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/22715179/firefox-suggest-... ----- I've now switched to Tor Browser - it's a privacy hardened Firefox browser with all the crap removed. (Disabling and removing Tor, which is integrated with it, is a slight pain, but doable).
- invalidname 5y ago
  You can disable that with a chckbox. Calling it adware is a stretch, calling it spyware is diminishes the word.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Wow that's indeed bad. They should at least make it optional.

d3nj4l 5y ago

> We’ve added a User Agent override for Slack.com, which allows Firefox users to use more Call features and have access to Huddles. YES E: Shame on Slack. Three years and counting they haven't fixed this.

10000truths 5y ago
I thought it was standard knowledge that if you need a specific Web API or JavaScript feature, you explicitly test for it, rather than making assumptions based on the user agent.
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  I thought it was standard knowledge that Slack doesn't care about their in-browser experience :P Seriously, though, Slack is easily among the worst apps I've used in browser. On Safari I have a mountain of issues, including one where it grays out every message it sends and then shows them twice. On FF they flat out didn't support calls and huddles until FF called their bluff on it, and even on Chrome I've had missed notifications^. It's almost like they deliberately make it worse so you have to download their app - which also just runs in a browser. ^: Incidentally, for a work focused messaging platform, Slack has had the worst notification misses for me. They also don't clear notifs on mobile if you see the message on desktop and vice versa. Discord and WhatsApp - both platforms for casual use - are way better.
aitchnyu 5y ago
MS Teams refuses to do video in browsers except Edge and Chrome, so I have to force Chromium to spoof Chrome UA.
JeremyNT 5y ago
Good lord, what's old is new again. Maybe FF should just always use a Chrome-like UA and be done with it.

Glench 5y ago

> We’ve also reduced the power usage of software decoded video on macOS, especially in fullscreen. This includes streaming sites such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Thank god. This has been a real problem.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
I wonder why hardware decoding isn't used for those sites though.
- nyuszika7h 5y ago
  The Widevine CDM is responsible for decoding the video, and on desktop platforms so far only software-based DRM is supported, though they're planning to introduce hardware DRM for Widevine on desktop soon, which would enable higher quality streaming and possibly also hardware acceleration. So far they're only planning to support this on Windows 10 and above, maybe macOS support will come at a later date, but Linux users will almost certainly be left in the dust, considering they already don't support VMP (Verified Media Path) on Linux, resulting in many streaming services limiting video quality to SD or blocking streaming on Linux altogether.

megous 5y ago

My desktop doesn't feature dark mode switching, so Firefox since version 95 is in dark mode all the time without any option to change it to light mode anywhere, not even in about:config. Since when is dark mode a reasonable default?

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

Comment regarding usability and layout from a grumpy old fart who dissed them before (in partially most impolite ways): I'd still like a more compact layout for tabs and address-bar. At least one can improve the visibility of active tabs vs. inactive with what nowadays counts as color theme. Both for dark and light modes. So that point of critic is now moot. Regarding dark mode, more and more sites work with that without fiddling, which didn't in the old 7/8.x ESRs, neither 94.x. With 95 there were a few pleasant surprises in dark. But that may have to do with the passed time, too. Maybe the sites themselves changed something. Didn't check for that. Anyways, apart from the still wasted pixels it's very pleasant to use. /me eats chalk...(but just a little. GIEF MEE BACK MY PIXELS!)

dbg31415 5y ago

This is the update I've been waiting for since the pandemic started! It no longer turns my MacBook into a toaster when I'm on a video call. (= It used to jack the power usage metric up to like 100, now it's more aligned with Chrome or Safari even when I do video calls. Thanks!