27 ms·

Firefox 96

508 points by NiekvdMaas 5y ago

mdrzn 5y ago
"When printing, you can now choose to print only the odd/even pages." It took 96 versions to reach this feature? Meanwhile, while browsing the web the whole browser becomes unresponsive anyway, even with 32gb of ram?
zecg 5y ago
Is saving the webpage (as PDF or MHTML or ANY BLOODY FORMAT) on Android back? It's incredible that that functionality just disappeared a few years ago and Mozilla is apparently ignoring user feedback.
- kevincox 5y ago
  I tried this a week or so ago and don't think it is.
- INTPenis 5y ago
  My routine is send the tab to a PC device and do it there later. I love Firefox Sync so much I think I might just host my own backend server for it some day.
  - BadOakOx 5y ago
    I would love Firefox Sync too, but a lot of times it just doesn't send the tab I wanted (I always fallback to checking what is open on my other browser).
    - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
      You need to re-sync in your PC side then it will show the tabs that you sent. I had issues with FF Sync with not appearing on the other side. It is usually that Firefox haven't start the syncing that you have to tell it to sync now. If you are using Android, disable the battery optimization on Firefox in Android setting.
- gildas 5y ago
  It's still possible to install SingleFile [1] on Firefox Nightly but you will need, for example, another browser to display saved pages [2]. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/single-file/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/single-file/ [2] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7546 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7546
- Siecje 5y ago
  I'd like to be able to open PDFs with Firefox and search the contents for a string.
JshWright 5y ago
I realize I'm just one person, but the dealbreaker for me is still the very minimal WebAuthn support. No soft tokens, and therefore no TouchID/Hello support. The difference in friction between "Getting my Yubikey out of my bag" and "Pressing the TouchID button" is enough to keep me on Chrome.
- AnonHP 5y ago
  I don’t know about TouchID support, but Windows Hello has been supported by Firefox for at least a couple of years or longer now. I use fingerprint authentication on a laptop with Windows 10 and Firefox on sites that allow me to use this as the second factor. There is also a flag in about:config (signon.management.page.os-auth.enabled = true) to make sure this support is enabled. Initially I found that it wasn’t working, and then I went through troubleshooting mode (disable all extensions) and found an extension that was blocking this from working (I didn’t spend time on investigating why or if someone else had seen the same issue).
  - JshWright 5y ago
    That's for signing in to Firefox (as well as unlocking the built-in password store, I believe). I'm referring to using TouchID for WebAuthn (i.e. "a built-in Yubikey") This is the Bugzilla ticket in question: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536482 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536482
JohnTHaller 5y ago
I've been using Firefox and packaging it for portable use at PortableApps.com since before version 1.0. It's my daily browser on Windows and Android (yay extensions). And the best alternative to Chrome/Safari domination.
- samtheprogram 5y ago
  Haven’t used PortableApps in at least a decade, but wanted to say thank you. It was immensely useful at school, work and with multiple machines.
  - JohnTHaller 5y ago
    You're welcome! Glad it helped you out.
rubyist5eva 5y ago
I love Firefox but I can't really use it at work because our front-end devs refuse to support it, so our application doesn't have scrollbars - and switching between browsers sucks. Use it at home and all of my personal devices though, and will not be switching any time soon.
pmarreck 5y ago
I've been using Firefox Nightly for a while now, had no discernible issues
marcodiego 5y ago
Not the first time I say this but I have to say it again: Firefox: the last remaining mostly independent, maintained and reasonably popular browser. Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd still use it for the above mentioned reasons.
- jjtheblunt 5y ago
  isn't Safari also mostly independent and popular?
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  >Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd still use it for the above mentioned reasons. I agree with you, but luckily, it's not inferior!
  - egeozcan 5y ago
    I hope I will never have to use Chrome again and I love Firefox but sometimes it's a PITA. It surely isn't generally "inferior" but let's say it has character. I always thought it just needs a bit more attention, and I'm willing to donate, but I don't trust Mozilla for routing what we give towards Firefox development.
    - dorfsmay 5y ago
      Agreed. I wish they created a dedicated fund for Firefox the way it was done for Thunderbird. Let's not forget the ridiculous pay for the executives which has been shown to not correlate with revenue (or anything else): https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html I give to the Thunderbird fund every year but have not given to Mozilla for a long time!
      - throwoutway 5y ago
        $2.5M?!
berdon 5y ago
Been using Firefox as my daily for 5+ years, couldn’t be happier. This morning various websites stopped working (really random js failures). After lots of digging around…chrome works fine… :/ Waiting on a restart which hopefully fixes things so I can delete this line.
- iKevinShah 5y ago
  Weird. This[1] only mentions "We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load." while this[2] says "No notable changes." in Javascript section. 1: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes 2: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/96 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Rel...
- berdon 5y ago
  Nope, restart didn't fix it. Seems like most CORS requests are failing; for example on LinkedIn.
  - berdon 5y ago
    Sigh. Switching from "Strict" to "Standard" in the Firefox security settings "fixes" it. Or disabling Enhanced Protection for the individual website.
    - acdha 5y ago
      This is a great example of the challenges browser developers face: when something breaks, people often blame the browser since that's the thing they remember most recently changing but it's far more often that it's something the remote website pushed out which isn't visible to the user.
      - berdon 5y ago
        I don't blame Firefox here though I do believe this was a change to perhaps the strictness or level of introspection. I've observed two websites with similar issues. Either way, I'm a-ok with these types of changes even at the expense of my time in remembering the cause and the solution.
ksec 5y ago
>We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load. Such an important detail that deserve at least few more sentence of marketing message or explanation. But the whole release note just feels like they couldn't be bothered anymore.
- leecb 5y ago
  The improvements seem to be in which thread WebRTC does work: moving more work to workers and off the main thread. The release notes for alpha builds (e.g. [1]) link to this bug [2] "[meta] Update libwebrtc to new stable branch 2H2020", which as a number of comments about WebRTC using the main thread as its worker thread. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0a1/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0a1/releasenotes/ [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112
- stelonix 5y ago
  This has been happening for god knows how many releases now. Release notes make it seem like it's a minor version update and I'm not sure there were that many changes since they don't and haven't been caring. I will still use Firefox since it's not Chrome, but what people have been saying is true: it's a facade so google does not get sued for antitrust/monopoly. I don't know how to fix this, but I believe sometime down the road the EU is going to sue Google and also believe Firefox is going to be forked. Can't wait for both of those things to happen.
  - jakub_g 5y ago
    Release notes are generally very concise. They are typically followed up with a detailed blog on https://hacks.mozilla.org/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      Why can't they just make a combined reason notes with both of those. Casual readers don't need to scroll to the bottom and understand everything and it makes updates look more meaty.
CaioAlonso 5y ago
I've become conditioned to react to Firefox version announcements with 'I wonder how Mozilla has screwed up the browser this time'. Either by introducing useless features or by removing options I considered useful. I hope I'm wrong this time.
- sovnade 5y ago
  This one seems to be mostly performance related with no/few functional changes.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  I usually expect some relatively insignificant but highly maligned UI adjustment, like adding an extra pixel or two of padding or bouncing back and forth between rounded and square cornered tabs. After one of the more egregious changes awhile back I modified some thing (I don't even remember what it was anymore) and it's been fine since, but I still expect something to change every time.
- legofr 5y ago
  They had a couple big blunders with the ugly border/expansion when clicking the address bar, and "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order".. both of these things should have never been the default (or at least we should've been given the option to select a default when they were first added, similar to what they did with the new color theme support), but besides that then I can't think of anything terrible and always happy to see new updates. I would especially love to see deeper integration with their Multi-Account Containers add-on, e.g. allow us to tell a bookmark to open in X container, or allow us to always open X container based on URL path instead of just domain name.
  - mynameismon 5y ago
    > and "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order".. both of these things should have never been the default Personally, Ctrl+Tab-bing cycling through tabs in most recently used order is greatly useful. Maybe its just me, but everytime I go back to Edge or Chrome, it becomes painful to the point I have to use the mouse for moving through tabs.
4cao 5y ago
Version 93 back in October added sponsored search suggestions on by default, [1] without even explicitly mentioning it in the release notes. [2] Is there going to be a similar surprise this time? I still use Firefox as the lesser evil, and I believe there are lots of great people working on it (to whom I am thankful) but to see how the project has been run by the Mozilla Corpo-Foundation in the recent years is really disillusioning. I would love to see a change that would put a stop to the incessant stream of anti-features, while instead focusing on staying true to the original goals of the project. 1. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest 2. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/93.0/releasenotes https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/93.0/releasenotes
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- iqanq 5y ago
  If you don't like nasty surprises, I recommend that you use Firefox ESR instead: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ (In the same vein, if you use Windows, I recommend Windows LTSC)
  - 2143 5y ago
    Whoa, I didn't even know there was a Windows LTSC.
    - zeagle 5y ago
      I run Windows 10 LTSC 1809 which has extended support until 2029-01-09 (security and bug fixes). Licensed via my academic institution. It is stripped of the store, edge and a few other features which may be a draw for some.
      - activitypea 5y ago
        How do you browse the web without using Edge or MS Store to download another browser?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tosh 5y ago
> We’ve made significant improvements in noise-suppression and auto-gain-control as well as slight improvements in echo-cancellation to provide you with a better overall experience. Where can I find out more about this?
- coldpie 5y ago
  From here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0a1/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0a1/releasenotes/ I found this link: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112 Which contains this comment: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112#c371 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112#c371 Which explains that the improvements came from upgrading their libwebrtc library to version 2H2020. I wasn't able to find release notes for libwebrtc itself.
  - tosh 5y ago
    wow, ty!
wodenokoto 5y ago
> We’ve made significant improvements in noise-suppression and auto-gain-control as well as slight improvements in echo-cancellation to provide you with a better overall experience. What does that even mean?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Better audio in calls using the browser, seems pretty clear to me.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    I was not aware that this is something the browser would do.
    - elkos 5y ago
      You can test it out with meet.jitsi.org or via element if you like
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      It has to, and as far as I understand it always has (as well as the operating system). Take for example echo suppression. For this to work, the algorithm has to be aware of the audio that's being output in real-time. We can't have the server do that, of course, and it would be very inefficient to do this in JavaScript (which also wouldn't have access to audio output by other tabs or processes). So this has to be something done by the browser, in a very low latency and efficient way. As far as I understand it, Chrome and Firefox have both been doing browser side DSP in WebRTC for a while. There is a way to disable this however.
      - Nextgrid 5y ago
        I would've expected this to be done at the OS level, or at the very least have this configurable and opt-in at the browser level just so you know and can decide as I assume that it would be counter-productive to have both the OS and the browser do it.
Nextgrid 5y ago
Still no built-in uBlock Origin (or equivalent in-house implementation compatible with uBlock-style lists) in a browser by a company that claims to care about privacy.
- brink 5y ago
  That's the kind of thing you don't want to be "in-housed" because then you end up being stuck with in-house politics. Install your choice of ad-blocking extension and be thankful you have a choice.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    It's kind of like releasing an operating system without the concept of user accounts (everything running as root) in 2022 and defending the choice by saying that you can install third-party extensions. No, in 2022 a browser without uBlock Origin or equivalent enabled by default should be considered defective and a security vulnerability.
    - noisem4ker 5y ago
      Firefox comes with Enhanced Tracking Protection. It's an integrated blocklist and it's enabled by default. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...
    - brink 5y ago
      That would be an accurate metaphor if ads had root privileges on the browser, but web pages are sandboxed - so no, everything is not being run as root.
      - Nextgrid 5y ago
        Ads have root privileges as far as your online fingerprint is concerned. (not to mention that running untrusted code could expose you to browser exploits so running untrusted code for no benefit is a liability when there are permissively-licensed tools such as uBlock and its filter lists to detect & block them)
kevincox 5y ago
> We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load. Does anyone know the technical details here?
Croftengea 5y ago
I switched to Waterfox a few months ago after infamous Proton redesign. I love Firefox in principle but hate UI redesigns for the sake of "fresh" look without improvements in usability. Waterfox based on Firefox but with an old school compact UI and privacy features turned on by default.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  I like proton. THe menus are easy to scan. I don't have to learn a bunch of icon-function associations, I just scan the short titles. It's clean, but it doesn't diminish usability. It got rid of a bunch of clunky design choices.
- funOtter 5y ago
  I like their idea in general, but are you concerned that System1 ("[we] operate the world's most advanced Responsive Acquisition Marketing Platform") owns the project?
  - Croftengea 5y ago
    Yes, but the same concerns are applicable to Firefox given that Google is their major sponsor.
- programmer_dude 5y ago
  From wikipedia >In February 2020, Alex Kontos faced criticism over selling Waterfox to System1, an advertising company.[23][24] >In 2018, How-To Geek advised users to not use Firefox forks such as Waterfox because security updates take longer to be incorporated into the forks compared to Firefox.[25]
- mrob 5y ago
  Here are instructions for customizing the Proton UI to imitate previous versions: https://www.userchrome.org/firefox-89-styling-proton-ui.html https://www.userchrome.org/firefox-89-styling-proton-ui.html
parhamn 5y ago
At the risk of being downvoted and called out for my potential biases, I don't really buy the 'last bastion of hope' argument re: FF. I spend most my day trying to create a competitive alternative to chrome. Heres my main reasoning: I trust open source and the governance and operations around it. Chromium the engine is open-source licensed permissively, way more hackable than Firefox, and has a ton of organizations work on it actively (even more if you include derivative projects like CEF and Electron) The web standards are still driven via committee, theres now just a much more reliable and stable reference implementation. The economic incentives are still largely there to be a relatively good open source custodian (forking is easy and probably a better place to start anyway). If anything it feels more Linux-like in that sense too (common compatible core with lots of room for forking/creating distros). The anti-competitive practices are IMO things like Widevine and Google properties blocking non-whitelisted browsers, which we should be talking about. The chromium convergence doesn't quite feel the same to me.
- Korici 5y ago
  I like the custodian approach with the open-source software.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- darkwater 5y ago
  > Heres my main reasoning: I trust open source and the governance and operations around it. Chromium the engine is open-source licensed permissively, way more hackable than Firefox, and has a ton of organizations work on it actively (even more if you include derivative projects like CEF and Electron) And what if they stop? Or what if they bring the development into something you don't like anymore? Hard forking a giant codebase like Chrome's is basically impossible for anyone nowadays, so you are stuck with Google's decisions for Blink and Chromium. We still need Firefox.
jefftk 5y ago
Developer notes: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/96 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Rel... Highlights: * CSS color-scheme support, which was the last of the major browsers:https://caniuse.com/?search=color-scheme https://caniuse.com/?search=color-scheme * Web Locks API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Locks_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Locks_A... (Still not in Safari)
- jakub_g 5y ago
  Re: `color-scheme` CSS prop: AFAIU it can be useful pretty soon, because Chrome is experimenting with forced dark mode for web content (i.e. the equivalent of "Dark Reader" extension, but natively built in the browser). If your website supports dark mode and you want to opt-out from browser messing things up, this property is the one you need. https://twitter.com/__jakub_g/status/1478847423913107456 https://twitter.com/__jakub_g/status/1478847423913107456
- lucasyvas 5y ago
  Having not seen the Web Locks proposal before, it feels like a mistake. The ease of using the API combined with the intricacies of locking feels like substantial misuse is guaranteed (especially in a language dominated by learners). We've only recently seen languages capable of being smarter about preventing concurrency issues at compile time, and JavaScript is not ready. I suppose it could be nice to have, but I'm almost certain I'd be searching for ways to solve my problem in other ways before reaching for this. Edit: The lock is acquired via a string as well - I'm sure that'll never collide in a third party library...
  - mmastrac 5y ago
    Cookies and localStorage are scoped by string and we've just learned to deal with it. Namespaces are hard and strings are probably one of the best of the bad solutions that don't massively increase complexity.
    - wheybags 5y ago
m0llusk 5y ago
I wonder when it will get forced on me. Was having trouble meeting some aggressive deadlines, so keeping a session going with mostly reference manuals loaded was important. But Firefox kept badgering me about 95.0.2 and providing a dialog with only Download and Dismiss options. Looked at the site and saw 95.0.2 addresses frequent crashes on c/e/z-series Bobcat processors running Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 which has no relevance to me. Then my Windows 10 box Firefox stopped bothering with the Download/Dismiss dialog and started updating directly. Only Windows security allowed me to stop it. It is great that Firefox developers are making progress and releasing fixes, but they should really try to make the updating process more friendly and allow people who do not have outdated processors and operating systems to get work done without being interrupted by irrelevant junk. This may seem small, but having the operating system and all major applications constantly demanding updates and restarts is getting really distracting.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  So, true story: yesterday at work, trying to catch a web bug, linux musheen. Download different version of firefoxes, run them, check the web to pinpoint the regression between versions. Doing some pinpointing, running again a specific version with the bug. No bug anymore. 30 minutes later. "Ah, I see firefox auto-update itself by default, so when running again it's on 9$.$ something".
  - iggldiggl 5y ago
    PS: You know about mozregression? It's a tool for automating as much of that workflow of pinpointing a regression as possible – you just tell it between which versions you want to test and it then automatically downloads the appropriate builds and runs them and you just need to answer which builds were good and which were bad in order to narrow down the date range. Should be easily installable via python/pip.
    - 5y ago
hajhatten 5y ago
> On macOS, command-clicking links in Gmail now opens them in a new tab as expected. How is this Firefox's problem? Isn't Gmail just a website?
- SwiftyBug 5y ago
  That called my attention too. Does that mean Firefox runs code specifically on Gmail?
  - wlpu 5y ago
    Does Chrome?
  - coldpie 5y ago
    I found this link from another bug that was marked fixed in 96. It contains all bugs marked to be included in the changelog for 96: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?f1=cf_tracking_firefox_relnote&o1=equals&v1=96%2B https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?f1=cf_tracking_fire... From there I found this bug relating to cmd-clicking links in Gmail: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1739929 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1739929 You can find detailed discussion about what's going on there. I believe this is the ultimate fix: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/0fb0990124cf https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/0fb0990124cf It does not appear to be specific to Gmail, no.
    - hajhatten 5y ago
      Great find. I would've worded this differently then.
      - coldpie 5y ago
        Changelogs are really hard! Do you describe the actual bug that was fixed ("mouse click events in secure contexts would sometimes be ignored even if the web application didn't handle them") or do you describe the end-user impact ("middle-clicking links in gmail works again")? There's no right answer.
mikkelam 5y ago
I love firefox and use it avidly, but why does every firefox update keep trending on HN? I'm genuinely curious, most of these updates seem fairly minor
- gostsamo 5y ago
  Because there they are part of a bigger discussion around the web, chrome, and browser engine diversity. Browsing is a difficult problem and the existing solutions do not satisfy big part of the audience here.
- stackbutterflow 5y ago
  I love firefox too and I have a different question. Why is the general sentiment negative towards firefox on HN? While other threads are generally anti Google.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    If I had to hazard a guess: - The HN crowd were likely burned the hardest by Mozilla's continued dumbing down of the browser (you'll reliably see complaints about how it seems like new releases always remove or move things needlessly) - Firefox is de facto a Google project. If Google says jump, Mozilla says 'how high' because Google holds them at budgetpoint. - Mozilla's stewardship of Firefox has been abysmal. A history of unforced errors, with a result of a completely irrelevant market share. (While paying a CEO millions to do... what, exactly?) - Talking out of both sides of their mouth wrt. privacy (telemetry, cliqz and hiding it, etc)
    - AnonHP 5y ago
      > Firefox is de facto a Google project. If Google says jump, Mozilla says 'how high' because Google holds them at budgetpoint. Nope. Look at deviations in implementing Manifest v3 as an example.
    - bilkow 5y ago
      Meh, I think all of those points are highly exaggerated by drama, to the point of most of them not even being true. For once, I like most of their decisions (except maybe for the layoffs, but they were arguably needed). Some were unfortunate, but they realized that and fixed them publicly. Everyone makes mistakes.
mrleinad 5y ago
Gave up on FF a month ago because it was just too damn slow, but I didn't want to go back to use Chrome because I don't want to have to install a ton of addons just to have features that should be baked in the browser by now. I found Vivaldi and besides really minor things that I'd like to have, it looks like the perfect browser. Highly customizable, fast, and with full access to the Chrome addons. Not going back to either of the other two for the time being.
- acdha 5y ago
  If you're finding Firefox to be noticeably slower than Chrome/Edge, disable extensions until you find which one is slowing it down that much. On a clean install they're very comparable in speed.
- jwatt 5y ago
  Troubleshooting mode might have been useful for diagnosing what was making Firefox slow: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/diagnose-firefox-issues-using-troubleshoot-mode https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/diagnose-firefox-issues...
- Karunamon 5y ago
  I really want to like Vivaldi, but it's just so damn slow. The multiple seconds delay when pulling a tab into a new window is infuriating.
- GreenWatermelon 5y ago
  I tried vivaldi a while back, but ot suffered from being too slow/stuttery for me.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  So, you are back to Google dictating what you can and cannot have. Lets not pretend that Vivaldi has much influence over that (if any at all). They ship Chromium with trivial/irrelevant tweaks. If that makes you feel good, more power to you. However, people underestimate the amount of influence Google has in the Chromium ecosystem. At this point it's their way or the highway (i.e. Firefox/Safari). None of the companies shipping Chromium based browser have either the competence, willingness, or team to ship a functional browser that is meaningfully different. It's just lipstick on a pig and magical thinking when it comes to privacy. Firefox works well enough for me. If there are websites that work less well in it, I've long stopped caring about those. All the essentials that try to sell me stuff work just fine. Financial dependence does that. People put in an effort to make shit works when money is on the line.
eitland 5y ago
> We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load. Good. Still waiting for a message about "fixed the extension API".
- Lev1a 5y ago
  > "fixed the extension API" What does that constitute in your opinion? Because if it's "go back to XUL", that's: 1. never going to happen, 2. would invalidate A LOT of work that's been done to make Firefox more performant and more secure and reduced technical debt (IIRC XUL leeched into FF internals all over the place, making pretty much any sort of update to the browser into a breaking change for extensions)
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    Feature parity. There are still things you could do then and can't do now with this neutered 'hey-lets-be-like-Chrome' API that nobody asked for.
    - dblohm7 5y ago
      You're never going to get parity to XUL extensions.
      - eitland 5y ago
        Don't need to either. Just starting in an end and fix the worst omissions would be a good start.
  - eitland 5y ago
    No, it is not going back to XUL. But, it is amomg other things to make a function available that will remove the top tab bar or at least make it invisible. Not exactly hard, I do it manually every single time I restart my Firefox Developer edition. (Yes, the chrome (i.e. frame) around the browser window is still written in markup. I go into it with inspector and enter display:none at the right place.)
boplicity 5y ago
I very much want "reader view" to have a "true black" mode specifically for oled phone screens. This is extremely valuable for people who want to read on their phones, because the black pixels emit no light at all. Unfortunately, dark mode isn't true black, which means those pixels emit light, leading to more eye strain, and defeating the real purpose (IMO) of dark mode on phones.
- mrob 5y ago
  In chrome/userContent.css in your Firefox profile directory: @-moz-document url-prefix("about:reader") { body { background-color: #000000 !important; color: #FFFFFF !important; } } And set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true in about:config
  - boplicity 5y ago
    I'm not sure if it's possible to edit userContent.css in Android or iOS. Is it? I can't find a way to do it.
- hedora 5y ago
  I want this for all display technologies. I paid for as dark gray and consistent a black level LCD as I could afford, and set the brightness to as white as is comfortable. Why waste the dynamic range of the screen? Gray on gray definitely increases eye strain for me.
webscalist 5y ago
does it still crash your OS if you delete a site (domain) that you frequently visited from history?
bouncycastle 5y ago
2022 and still no native IPFS?
nescioquid 5y ago
Every time a Firefox thread pops up on HN, I read through it hoping to learn the source of the persistent vitriol, which often comes off as entitled whining. I once wrote a little app for myself and (what the heck) decided to release it under the GPL in case it might be of some small use to someone else. The emails I received were split between a very small fraction with useful feedback (and even a couple patches), a group of people who merely wanted to thank me, and the rest were various levels of upset and demanding. What an eye-opener that was. What am I missing? People being defensive because they use some other browser? I'm truly mystified.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  One reason could be that active users of the browser are annoyed at the constant useless UI changes that break their workflow. My reason is that I don't like Mozilla's false-advertising as a privacy-protecting browser which is absolutely not the case and gives a false sense of security to less savvy users that aren't aware that they need to change many settings and install specific third-party extensions to reach a semblance of privacy.
  - germandiago 5y ago
    I would like to have some insights, if possible at the level of privacy reached by Firefox compared to Chrome and what the best alternative for privacy is overall in which I can keep things usable. Honest question, since I am not into this research that much. I am using Firefox right now on the basis that Chrome prostitutes user data as much as possible.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Chrome is terrible as it sends extra metadata to Google domains which can be used to track you. It however doesn't come as a surprise as it's a browser made by an advertising company notorious for tracking users. Firefox by default is on par with other mainstream browsers but at least most other browsers don't shout "privacy!" at every possible opportunity. Firefox with some configuration options changed and uBlock Origin is very good but changing configuration from the defaults exposes you to extra fingerprinting, so it's a double-edged sword.
fartcannon 5y ago
Any chance we can have bookmarks back on a new tab page? Not 'recent' bookmarks. Regular, old, cultivated bookmarks.
orf 5y ago
> On macOS, command-clicking links in Gmail now opens them in a new tab as expected. I wonder what happened here?
- bunnythefifth 5y ago
  Tangential, but every time I read "macOS" in FF release notes, I hope that this fundamental bug gets fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1600153 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1600153 Gist: You click a link (outside FF, say from an app), and FF opens 2 windows - one with the link and other blank. I have no idea how is this acceptable for a browser as mainstream as FF.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Oh crap, they broke backdrop-filter: blur. It was so beautiful, and now it doesn't work, despite being enabled in about:config. Why are you doing this to me, Firefox Developers?
gcr 5y ago
When I saw the version number, I was expecting some retro nostalgic version of Firefox with Windows 95 window decorations and theming. Oh well. Congrats on the release!!
TonyTrapp 5y ago
I love Firefox, but I hate to see that they seem to have given in to the Chrome hegemony once again and hide the login realm message when doing HTTP basic authentication now. I still hate Chrome to this day for starting to do that, because you can no longer send people to a site protected by basic auth and expect them to know which credentials to fill in. Firefox was the last popular browsing allowing the user to read the login message provided by the server.
- pxc 5y ago
  What's the rationale for hiding it?
  - TonyTrapp 5y ago
    I don't know the true rationale, but if I remember correctly a Chrome dev provided some really dubious reasoning one the related issue tracker item, something like "someone could MITM the connection and change the basic auth message to 'please enter your YouTube credentials'". Well guess what, if I MITM your connection, I can provide a much more convincing HTML representation of the YouTube login page! I guess the grain of truth that was in there is that this is one of the few times where a server-provided string is presented as part of the browser's UI, but I am sure there are better ways to highlight that the browser is just quoting the server than outright not showing the message. Edit: It seems like a dubious security report was the origin of this, not a developer: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=544244 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=544244
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
iamwpj 5y ago
I'm unimpressed with these commenters griping about the UI change or sponsored this and that. I don't think that's an honest standard you hold yourself to in any fashion and is simply not a functional way to live your life! What about your toothpaste packaging -- or gasp the product itself?! Things change all the time, you can be annoyed about it, of course! But accepting change is part of being a human in societies. "UI changes breaking my workflow" -- seriously? I don't buy it. I wish the conversations like this would fade because it encourages bad attitudes across the board -- I can't put my finger on it. Is it entitlement? Mozilla owes ME a good browser?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gerash 5y ago
  Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > Things change all the time Why do they need to change? The tab bar has been perfectly functional for decades, and the relatively recent change makes it worse in many aspects. I don't mind changes that fix problems or introduce new useful features, but don't fix what ain't broke. And no, some designer/product manager somewhere having to justify their salary doesn't count as a valid problem in my book.
  - iamwpj 5y ago
    Don't perpetuate that type of logic. It's toxic to your peers and not good for society. It's shorthand for a phrase like "It works for ME, so don't change it for OTHERS." Also, this concept requires anyone making a change to justify it to you so you understand it -- even though the changes are for a product and user base as a whole. Most other people read and accept the change and either make adjustments or even switch products all without requiring a bespoke explainer. Also, your comment about designers and product managers is pretty dismissive and leads me to believe that you aren't very appreciative how hard it is to get UI/UX right. Just because it's area you don't understand or don't practice within doesn't mean it's not important.
floatboth 5y ago
> Cookie Policy: Same-Site=lax by default LET'S GOOOOO The day web developers forget about stupid "csrf protection tokens" is coming \o/
efnx 5y ago
Funny, I thought “Firefox 96” might be a new Vaporwave artist!
peakaboo 5y ago
Not much innovation in new versions anymore but I'm still excited to be running Firefox. It's something about using a browser written for privacy from day one.
soueuls 5y ago
I have read the blog post from Mitchell Baker -> https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat... I uninstalled Firefox. I don't trust anyone who is trying hard to corner me into an echo chamber.
ajlburke 5y ago
I saw the name and thought it might be some kind of retro throwback to the 1996 version of Netscape Communicator. I was sort of looking forward to the integrated but awkward built-in mail client and newsreader.
mdoms 5y ago
Every time a new version of Firefox comes out I try it on my XPS 13 to see if two finger scroll & pan and pinch to zoom still feel janky and weird compared to every other app on my computer. Yup, still weird. Still can only scroll either horizontally or vertically but not both at the same time. Pinching feels weirdly linear and zooming out still doesn't use the mouse cursor position as a central point but just zooms from the center. It's 2022, why doesn't Firefox just behave like every other application on my computer with scroll and pinch?
Shadonototra 5y ago
Firefox development seems to be stagnating (despite pumping an insane amount of money to it /s) I wonder where all the Google money goes? definitely not in firefox, otherwise it wouldn't have only just 3% market share If they do pump money in firefox, then i guess it's time to replace the entire team, including the people at the top of the mafia, they are clearly incompetent
schipplock 5y ago
I'm using Firefox since Phoenix 0.1 :). I'm not giving it up! (I hate the look of the "new" tabs though :( (looks wrong on macOS and Windows, okish on Linux).
MikusR 5y ago
And it broke reopen recently closed tabs.
scrumlord 5y ago
Hacker News needs to rename itself to Crybaby News.
davidgerard 5y ago
annoyingly, it breaks the Lepton UI fix: https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

508 points by NiekvdMaas 5y ago

"When printing, you can now choose to print only the odd/even pages." It took 96 versions to reach this feature? Meanwhile, while browsing the web the whole browser becomes unresponsive anyway, even with 32gb of ram?

zecg 5y ago

Is saving the webpage (as PDF or MHTML or ANY BLOODY FORMAT) on Android back? It's incredible that that functionality just disappeared a few years ago and Mozilla is apparently ignoring user feedback.

kevincox 5y ago
I tried this a week or so ago and don't think it is.
INTPenis 5y ago
My routine is send the tab to a PC device and do it there later. I love Firefox Sync so much I think I might just host my own backend server for it some day.
- BadOakOx 5y ago
  I would love Firefox Sync too, but a lot of times it just doesn't send the tab I wanted (I always fallback to checking what is open on my other browser).
  - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
    You need to re-sync in your PC side then it will show the tabs that you sent. I had issues with FF Sync with not appearing on the other side. It is usually that Firefox haven't start the syncing that you have to tell it to sync now. If you are using Android, disable the battery optimization on Firefox in Android setting.
gildas 5y ago
It's still possible to install SingleFile [1] on Firefox Nightly but you will need, for example, another browser to display saved pages [2]. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/single-file/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/single-file/ [2] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7546 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7546
Siecje 5y ago
I'd like to be able to open PDFs with Firefox and search the contents for a string.

JshWright 5y ago

I realize I'm just one person, but the dealbreaker for me is still the very minimal WebAuthn support. No soft tokens, and therefore no TouchID/Hello support. The difference in friction between "Getting my Yubikey out of my bag" and "Pressing the TouchID button" is enough to keep me on Chrome.

AnonHP 5y ago
I don’t know about TouchID support, but Windows Hello has been supported by Firefox for at least a couple of years or longer now. I use fingerprint authentication on a laptop with Windows 10 and Firefox on sites that allow me to use this as the second factor. There is also a flag in about:config (signon.management.page.os-auth.enabled = true) to make sure this support is enabled. Initially I found that it wasn’t working, and then I went through troubleshooting mode (disable all extensions) and found an extension that was blocking this from working (I didn’t spend time on investigating why or if someone else had seen the same issue).
- JshWright 5y ago
  That's for signing in to Firefox (as well as unlocking the built-in password store, I believe). I'm referring to using TouchID for WebAuthn (i.e. "a built-in Yubikey") This is the Bugzilla ticket in question: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536482 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536482

JohnTHaller 5y ago

I've been using Firefox and packaging it for portable use at PortableApps.com since before version 1.0. It's my daily browser on Windows and Android (yay extensions). And the best alternative to Chrome/Safari domination.

samtheprogram 5y ago
Haven’t used PortableApps in at least a decade, but wanted to say thank you. It was immensely useful at school, work and with multiple machines.
- JohnTHaller 5y ago
  You're welcome! Glad it helped you out.

rubyist5eva 5y ago

I love Firefox but I can't really use it at work because our front-end devs refuse to support it, so our application doesn't have scrollbars - and switching between browsers sucks. Use it at home and all of my personal devices though, and will not be switching any time soon.

pmarreck 5y ago

I've been using Firefox Nightly for a while now, had no discernible issues

marcodiego 5y ago

Not the first time I say this but I have to say it again: Firefox: the last remaining mostly independent, maintained and reasonably popular browser. Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd still use it for the above mentioned reasons.

jjtheblunt 5y ago
isn't Safari also mostly independent and popular?
thesuitonym 5y ago
>Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd still use it for the above mentioned reasons. I agree with you, but luckily, it's not inferior!
- egeozcan 5y ago
  I hope I will never have to use Chrome again and I love Firefox but sometimes it's a PITA. It surely isn't generally "inferior" but let's say it has character. I always thought it just needs a bit more attention, and I'm willing to donate, but I don't trust Mozilla for routing what we give towards Firefox development.
  - dorfsmay 5y ago
    Agreed. I wish they created a dedicated fund for Firefox the way it was done for Thunderbird. Let's not forget the ridiculous pay for the executives which has been shown to not correlate with revenue (or anything else): https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html I give to the Thunderbird fund every year but have not given to Mozilla for a long time!
    - throwoutway 5y ago
      $2.5M?!

berdon 5y ago

Been using Firefox as my daily for 5+ years, couldn’t be happier. This morning various websites stopped working (really random js failures). After lots of digging around…chrome works fine… :/ Waiting on a restart which hopefully fixes things so I can delete this line.

iKevinShah 5y ago
Weird. This[1] only mentions "We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load." while this[2] says "No notable changes." in Javascript section. 1: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes 2: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/96 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Rel...
berdon 5y ago
Nope, restart didn't fix it. Seems like most CORS requests are failing; for example on LinkedIn.
- berdon 5y ago
  Sigh. Switching from "Strict" to "Standard" in the Firefox security settings "fixes" it. Or disabling Enhanced Protection for the individual website.
  - acdha 5y ago
    This is a great example of the challenges browser developers face: when something breaks, people often blame the browser since that's the thing they remember most recently changing but it's far more often that it's something the remote website pushed out which isn't visible to the user.
    - berdon 5y ago
      I don't blame Firefox here though I do believe this was a change to perhaps the strictness or level of introspection. I've observed two websites with similar issues. Either way, I'm a-ok with these types of changes even at the expense of my time in remembering the cause and the solution.

ksec 5y ago

>We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load. Such an important detail that deserve at least few more sentence of marketing message or explanation. But the whole release note just feels like they couldn't be bothered anymore.

leecb 5y ago
The improvements seem to be in which thread WebRTC does work: moving more work to workers and off the main thread. The release notes for alpha builds (e.g. [1]) link to this bug [2] "[meta] Update libwebrtc to new stable branch 2H2020", which as a number of comments about WebRTC using the main thread as its worker thread. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0a1/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0a1/releasenotes/ [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112
stelonix 5y ago
This has been happening for god knows how many releases now. Release notes make it seem like it's a minor version update and I'm not sure there were that many changes since they don't and haven't been caring. I will still use Firefox since it's not Chrome, but what people have been saying is true: it's a facade so google does not get sued for antitrust/monopoly. I don't know how to fix this, but I believe sometime down the road the EU is going to sue Google and also believe Firefox is going to be forked. Can't wait for both of those things to happen.
- jakub_g 5y ago
  Release notes are generally very concise. They are typically followed up with a detailed blog on https://hacks.mozilla.org/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    Why can't they just make a combined reason notes with both of those. Casual readers don't need to scroll to the bottom and understand everything and it makes updates look more meaty.

CaioAlonso 5y ago

I've become conditioned to react to Firefox version announcements with 'I wonder how Mozilla has screwed up the browser this time'. Either by introducing useless features or by removing options I considered useful. I hope I'm wrong this time.

sovnade 5y ago
This one seems to be mostly performance related with no/few functional changes.
jimmygrapes 5y ago
I usually expect some relatively insignificant but highly maligned UI adjustment, like adding an extra pixel or two of padding or bouncing back and forth between rounded and square cornered tabs. After one of the more egregious changes awhile back I modified some thing (I don't even remember what it was anymore) and it's been fine since, but I still expect something to change every time.
legofr 5y ago
They had a couple big blunders with the ugly border/expansion when clicking the address bar, and "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order".. both of these things should have never been the default (or at least we should've been given the option to select a default when they were first added, similar to what they did with the new color theme support), but besides that then I can't think of anything terrible and always happy to see new updates. I would especially love to see deeper integration with their Multi-Account Containers add-on, e.g. allow us to tell a bookmark to open in X container, or allow us to always open X container based on URL path instead of just domain name.
- mynameismon 5y ago
  > and "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order".. both of these things should have never been the default Personally, Ctrl+Tab-bing cycling through tabs in most recently used order is greatly useful. Maybe its just me, but everytime I go back to Edge or Chrome, it becomes painful to the point I have to use the mouse for moving through tabs.

4cao 5y ago

Version 93 back in October added sponsored search suggestions on by default, [1] without even explicitly mentioning it in the release notes. [2] Is there going to be a similar surprise this time? I still use Firefox as the lesser evil, and I believe there are lots of great people working on it (to whom I am thankful) but to see how the project has been run by the Mozilla Corpo-Foundation in the recent years is really disillusioning. I would love to see a change that would put a stop to the incessant stream of anti-features, while instead focusing on staying true to the original goals of the project. 1. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest 2. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/93.0/releasenotes https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/93.0/releasenotes

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
iqanq 5y ago
If you don't like nasty surprises, I recommend that you use Firefox ESR instead: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ (In the same vein, if you use Windows, I recommend Windows LTSC)
- 2143 5y ago
  Whoa, I didn't even know there was a Windows LTSC.
  - zeagle 5y ago
    I run Windows 10 LTSC 1809 which has extended support until 2029-01-09 (security and bug fixes). Licensed via my academic institution. It is stripped of the store, edge and a few other features which may be a draw for some.
    - activitypea 5y ago
      How do you browse the web without using Edge or MS Store to download another browser?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tosh 5y ago

> We’ve made significant improvements in noise-suppression and auto-gain-control as well as slight improvements in echo-cancellation to provide you with a better overall experience. Where can I find out more about this?

coldpie 5y ago
From here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0a1/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0a1/releasenotes/ I found this link: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112 Which contains this comment: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112#c371 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112#c371 Which explains that the improvements came from upgrading their libwebrtc library to version 2H2020. I wasn't able to find release notes for libwebrtc itself.
- tosh 5y ago
  wow, ty!

wodenokoto 5y ago

sudosysgen 5y ago
Better audio in calls using the browser, seems pretty clear to me.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  I was not aware that this is something the browser would do.
  - elkos 5y ago
    You can test it out with meet.jitsi.org or via element if you like
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    It has to, and as far as I understand it always has (as well as the operating system). Take for example echo suppression. For this to work, the algorithm has to be aware of the audio that's being output in real-time. We can't have the server do that, of course, and it would be very inefficient to do this in JavaScript (which also wouldn't have access to audio output by other tabs or processes). So this has to be something done by the browser, in a very low latency and efficient way. As far as I understand it, Chrome and Firefox have both been doing browser side DSP in WebRTC for a while. There is a way to disable this however.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      I would've expected this to be done at the OS level, or at the very least have this configurable and opt-in at the browser level just so you know and can decide as I assume that it would be counter-productive to have both the OS and the browser do it.

Nextgrid 5y ago

Still no built-in uBlock Origin (or equivalent in-house implementation compatible with uBlock-style lists) in a browser by a company that claims to care about privacy.

brink 5y ago
That's the kind of thing you don't want to be "in-housed" because then you end up being stuck with in-house politics. Install your choice of ad-blocking extension and be thankful you have a choice.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  It's kind of like releasing an operating system without the concept of user accounts (everything running as root) in 2022 and defending the choice by saying that you can install third-party extensions. No, in 2022 a browser without uBlock Origin or equivalent enabled by default should be considered defective and a security vulnerability.
  - noisem4ker 5y ago
    Firefox comes with Enhanced Tracking Protection. It's an integrated blocklist and it's enabled by default. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...
  - brink 5y ago
    That would be an accurate metaphor if ads had root privileges on the browser, but web pages are sandboxed - so no, everything is not being run as root.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Ads have root privileges as far as your online fingerprint is concerned. (not to mention that running untrusted code could expose you to browser exploits so running untrusted code for no benefit is a liability when there are permissively-licensed tools such as uBlock and its filter lists to detect & block them)

kevincox 5y ago

> We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load. Does anyone know the technical details here?

Croftengea 5y ago

I switched to Waterfox a few months ago after infamous Proton redesign. I love Firefox in principle but hate UI redesigns for the sake of "fresh" look without improvements in usability. Waterfox based on Firefox but with an old school compact UI and privacy features turned on by default.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
I like proton. THe menus are easy to scan. I don't have to learn a bunch of icon-function associations, I just scan the short titles. It's clean, but it doesn't diminish usability. It got rid of a bunch of clunky design choices.
funOtter 5y ago
I like their idea in general, but are you concerned that System1 ("[we] operate the world's most advanced Responsive Acquisition Marketing Platform") owns the project?
- Croftengea 5y ago
  Yes, but the same concerns are applicable to Firefox given that Google is their major sponsor.
programmer_dude 5y ago
From wikipedia >In February 2020, Alex Kontos faced criticism over selling Waterfox to System1, an advertising company.[23][24] >In 2018, How-To Geek advised users to not use Firefox forks such as Waterfox because security updates take longer to be incorporated into the forks compared to Firefox.[25]
mrob 5y ago
Here are instructions for customizing the Proton UI to imitate previous versions: https://www.userchrome.org/firefox-89-styling-proton-ui.html https://www.userchrome.org/firefox-89-styling-proton-ui.html

parhamn 5y ago

At the risk of being downvoted and called out for my potential biases, I don't really buy the 'last bastion of hope' argument re: FF. I spend most my day trying to create a competitive alternative to chrome. Heres my main reasoning: I trust open source and the governance and operations around it. Chromium the engine is open-source licensed permissively, way more hackable than Firefox, and has a ton of organizations work on it actively (even more if you include derivative projects like CEF and Electron) The web standards are still driven via committee, theres now just a much more reliable and stable reference implementation. The economic incentives are still largely there to be a relatively good open source custodian (forking is easy and probably a better place to start anyway). If anything it feels more Linux-like in that sense too (common compatible core with lots of room for forking/creating distros). The anti-competitive practices are IMO things like Widevine and Google properties blocking non-whitelisted browsers, which we should be talking about. The chromium convergence doesn't quite feel the same to me.

Korici 5y ago
I like the custodian approach with the open-source software.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
darkwater 5y ago
> Heres my main reasoning: I trust open source and the governance and operations around it. Chromium the engine is open-source licensed permissively, way more hackable than Firefox, and has a ton of organizations work on it actively (even more if you include derivative projects like CEF and Electron) And what if they stop? Or what if they bring the development into something you don't like anymore? Hard forking a giant codebase like Chrome's is basically impossible for anyone nowadays, so you are stuck with Google's decisions for Blink and Chromium. We still need Firefox.

jefftk 5y ago

Developer notes: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/96 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Rel... Highlights: * CSS color-scheme support, which was the last of the major browsers:https://caniuse.com/?search=color-scheme https://caniuse.com/?search=color-scheme * Web Locks API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Locks_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Locks_A... (Still not in Safari)

jakub_g 5y ago
Re: `color-scheme` CSS prop: AFAIU it can be useful pretty soon, because Chrome is experimenting with forced dark mode for web content (i.e. the equivalent of "Dark Reader" extension, but natively built in the browser). If your website supports dark mode and you want to opt-out from browser messing things up, this property is the one you need. https://twitter.com/__jakub_g/status/1478847423913107456 https://twitter.com/__jakub_g/status/1478847423913107456
lucasyvas 5y ago
Having not seen the Web Locks proposal before, it feels like a mistake. The ease of using the API combined with the intricacies of locking feels like substantial misuse is guaranteed (especially in a language dominated by learners). We've only recently seen languages capable of being smarter about preventing concurrency issues at compile time, and JavaScript is not ready. I suppose it could be nice to have, but I'm almost certain I'd be searching for ways to solve my problem in other ways before reaching for this. Edit: The lock is acquired via a string as well - I'm sure that'll never collide in a third party library...
- mmastrac 5y ago
  Cookies and localStorage are scoped by string and we've just learned to deal with it. Namespaces are hard and strings are probably one of the best of the bad solutions that don't massively increase complexity.
  - wheybags 5y ago

m0llusk 5y ago

I wonder when it will get forced on me. Was having trouble meeting some aggressive deadlines, so keeping a session going with mostly reference manuals loaded was important. But Firefox kept badgering me about 95.0.2 and providing a dialog with only Download and Dismiss options. Looked at the site and saw 95.0.2 addresses frequent crashes on c/e/z-series Bobcat processors running Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 which has no relevance to me. Then my Windows 10 box Firefox stopped bothering with the Download/Dismiss dialog and started updating directly. Only Windows security allowed me to stop it. It is great that Firefox developers are making progress and releasing fixes, but they should really try to make the updating process more friendly and allow people who do not have outdated processors and operating systems to get work done without being interrupted by irrelevant junk. This may seem small, but having the operating system and all major applications constantly demanding updates and restarts is getting really distracting.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
johnchristopher 5y ago
So, true story: yesterday at work, trying to catch a web bug, linux musheen. Download different version of firefoxes, run them, check the web to pinpoint the regression between versions. Doing some pinpointing, running again a specific version with the bug. No bug anymore. 30 minutes later. "Ah, I see firefox auto-update itself by default, so when running again it's on 9$.$ something".
- iggldiggl 5y ago
  PS: You know about mozregression? It's a tool for automating as much of that workflow of pinpointing a regression as possible – you just tell it between which versions you want to test and it then automatically downloads the appropriate builds and runs them and you just need to answer which builds were good and which were bad in order to narrow down the date range. Should be easily installable via python/pip.
  - 5y ago

hajhatten 5y ago

> On macOS, command-clicking links in Gmail now opens them in a new tab as expected. How is this Firefox's problem? Isn't Gmail just a website?

SwiftyBug 5y ago
That called my attention too. Does that mean Firefox runs code specifically on Gmail?
- wlpu 5y ago
  Does Chrome?
- coldpie 5y ago
  I found this link from another bug that was marked fixed in 96. It contains all bugs marked to be included in the changelog for 96: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?f1=cf_tracking_firefox_relnote&o1=equals&v1=96%2B https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?f1=cf_tracking_fire... From there I found this bug relating to cmd-clicking links in Gmail: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1739929 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1739929 You can find detailed discussion about what's going on there. I believe this is the ultimate fix: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/0fb0990124cf https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/0fb0990124cf It does not appear to be specific to Gmail, no.
  - hajhatten 5y ago
    Great find. I would've worded this differently then.
    - coldpie 5y ago
      Changelogs are really hard! Do you describe the actual bug that was fixed ("mouse click events in secure contexts would sometimes be ignored even if the web application didn't handle them") or do you describe the end-user impact ("middle-clicking links in gmail works again")? There's no right answer.

mikkelam 5y ago

I love firefox and use it avidly, but why does every firefox update keep trending on HN? I'm genuinely curious, most of these updates seem fairly minor

gostsamo 5y ago
Because there they are part of a bigger discussion around the web, chrome, and browser engine diversity. Browsing is a difficult problem and the existing solutions do not satisfy big part of the audience here.
stackbutterflow 5y ago
I love firefox too and I have a different question. Why is the general sentiment negative towards firefox on HN? While other threads are generally anti Google.
- Karunamon 5y ago
  If I had to hazard a guess: - The HN crowd were likely burned the hardest by Mozilla's continued dumbing down of the browser (you'll reliably see complaints about how it seems like new releases always remove or move things needlessly) - Firefox is de facto a Google project. If Google says jump, Mozilla says 'how high' because Google holds them at budgetpoint. - Mozilla's stewardship of Firefox has been abysmal. A history of unforced errors, with a result of a completely irrelevant market share. (While paying a CEO millions to do... what, exactly?) - Talking out of both sides of their mouth wrt. privacy (telemetry, cliqz and hiding it, etc)
  - AnonHP 5y ago
    > Firefox is de facto a Google project. If Google says jump, Mozilla says 'how high' because Google holds them at budgetpoint. Nope. Look at deviations in implementing Manifest v3 as an example.
  - bilkow 5y ago
    Meh, I think all of those points are highly exaggerated by drama, to the point of most of them not even being true. For once, I like most of their decisions (except maybe for the layoffs, but they were arguably needed). Some were unfortunate, but they realized that and fixed them publicly. Everyone makes mistakes.

mrleinad 5y ago

Gave up on FF a month ago because it was just too damn slow, but I didn't want to go back to use Chrome because I don't want to have to install a ton of addons just to have features that should be baked in the browser by now. I found Vivaldi and besides really minor things that I'd like to have, it looks like the perfect browser. Highly customizable, fast, and with full access to the Chrome addons. Not going back to either of the other two for the time being.

acdha 5y ago
If you're finding Firefox to be noticeably slower than Chrome/Edge, disable extensions until you find which one is slowing it down that much. On a clean install they're very comparable in speed.
jwatt 5y ago
Troubleshooting mode might have been useful for diagnosing what was making Firefox slow: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/diagnose-firefox-issues-using-troubleshoot-mode https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/diagnose-firefox-issues...
Karunamon 5y ago
I really want to like Vivaldi, but it's just so damn slow. The multiple seconds delay when pulling a tab into a new window is infuriating.
GreenWatermelon 5y ago
I tried vivaldi a while back, but ot suffered from being too slow/stuttery for me.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
So, you are back to Google dictating what you can and cannot have. Lets not pretend that Vivaldi has much influence over that (if any at all). They ship Chromium with trivial/irrelevant tweaks. If that makes you feel good, more power to you. However, people underestimate the amount of influence Google has in the Chromium ecosystem. At this point it's their way or the highway (i.e. Firefox/Safari). None of the companies shipping Chromium based browser have either the competence, willingness, or team to ship a functional browser that is meaningfully different. It's just lipstick on a pig and magical thinking when it comes to privacy. Firefox works well enough for me. If there are websites that work less well in it, I've long stopped caring about those. All the essentials that try to sell me stuff work just fine. Financial dependence does that. People put in an effort to make shit works when money is on the line.

eitland 5y ago

> We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load. Good. Still waiting for a message about "fixed the extension API".

Lev1a 5y ago
> "fixed the extension API" What does that constitute in your opinion? Because if it's "go back to XUL", that's: 1. never going to happen, 2. would invalidate A LOT of work that's been done to make Firefox more performant and more secure and reduced technical debt (IIRC XUL leeched into FF internals all over the place, making pretty much any sort of update to the browser into a breaking change for extensions)
- Karunamon 5y ago
  Feature parity. There are still things you could do then and can't do now with this neutered 'hey-lets-be-like-Chrome' API that nobody asked for.
  - dblohm7 5y ago
    You're never going to get parity to XUL extensions.
    - eitland 5y ago
      Don't need to either. Just starting in an end and fix the worst omissions would be a good start.
- eitland 5y ago
  No, it is not going back to XUL. But, it is amomg other things to make a function available that will remove the top tab bar or at least make it invisible. Not exactly hard, I do it manually every single time I restart my Firefox Developer edition. (Yes, the chrome (i.e. frame) around the browser window is still written in markup. I go into it with inspector and enter display:none at the right place.)

boplicity 5y ago

I very much want "reader view" to have a "true black" mode specifically for oled phone screens. This is extremely valuable for people who want to read on their phones, because the black pixels emit no light at all. Unfortunately, dark mode isn't true black, which means those pixels emit light, leading to more eye strain, and defeating the real purpose (IMO) of dark mode on phones.

mrob 5y ago
In chrome/userContent.css in your Firefox profile directory: @-moz-document url-prefix("about:reader") { body { background-color: #000000 !important; color: #FFFFFF !important; } } And set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true in about:config
- boplicity 5y ago
  I'm not sure if it's possible to edit userContent.css in Android or iOS. Is it? I can't find a way to do it.
hedora 5y ago
I want this for all display technologies. I paid for as dark gray and consistent a black level LCD as I could afford, and set the brightness to as white as is comfortable. Why waste the dynamic range of the screen? Gray on gray definitely increases eye strain for me.

webscalist 5y ago

does it still crash your OS if you delete a site (domain) that you frequently visited from history?

bouncycastle 5y ago

2022 and still no native IPFS?

nescioquid 5y ago

Every time a Firefox thread pops up on HN, I read through it hoping to learn the source of the persistent vitriol, which often comes off as entitled whining. I once wrote a little app for myself and (what the heck) decided to release it under the GPL in case it might be of some small use to someone else. The emails I received were split between a very small fraction with useful feedback (and even a couple patches), a group of people who merely wanted to thank me, and the rest were various levels of upset and demanding. What an eye-opener that was. What am I missing? People being defensive because they use some other browser? I'm truly mystified.

Nextgrid 5y ago
One reason could be that active users of the browser are annoyed at the constant useless UI changes that break their workflow. My reason is that I don't like Mozilla's false-advertising as a privacy-protecting browser which is absolutely not the case and gives a false sense of security to less savvy users that aren't aware that they need to change many settings and install specific third-party extensions to reach a semblance of privacy.
- germandiago 5y ago
  I would like to have some insights, if possible at the level of privacy reached by Firefox compared to Chrome and what the best alternative for privacy is overall in which I can keep things usable. Honest question, since I am not into this research that much. I am using Firefox right now on the basis that Chrome prostitutes user data as much as possible.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Chrome is terrible as it sends extra metadata to Google domains which can be used to track you. It however doesn't come as a surprise as it's a browser made by an advertising company notorious for tracking users. Firefox by default is on par with other mainstream browsers but at least most other browsers don't shout "privacy!" at every possible opportunity. Firefox with some configuration options changed and uBlock Origin is very good but changing configuration from the defaults exposes you to extra fingerprinting, so it's a double-edged sword.

fartcannon 5y ago

Any chance we can have bookmarks back on a new tab page? Not 'recent' bookmarks. Regular, old, cultivated bookmarks.

orf 5y ago

> On macOS, command-clicking links in Gmail now opens them in a new tab as expected. I wonder what happened here?

bunnythefifth 5y ago
Tangential, but every time I read "macOS" in FF release notes, I hope that this fundamental bug gets fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1600153 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1600153 Gist: You click a link (outside FF, say from an app), and FF opens 2 windows - one with the link and other blank. I have no idea how is this acceptable for a browser as mainstream as FF.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

Oh crap, they broke backdrop-filter: blur. It was so beautiful, and now it doesn't work, despite being enabled in about:config. Why are you doing this to me, Firefox Developers?

gcr 5y ago

When I saw the version number, I was expecting some retro nostalgic version of Firefox with Windows 95 window decorations and theming. Oh well. Congrats on the release!!

TonyTrapp 5y ago

I love Firefox, but I hate to see that they seem to have given in to the Chrome hegemony once again and hide the login realm message when doing HTTP basic authentication now. I still hate Chrome to this day for starting to do that, because you can no longer send people to a site protected by basic auth and expect them to know which credentials to fill in. Firefox was the last popular browsing allowing the user to read the login message provided by the server.

pxc 5y ago
What's the rationale for hiding it?
- TonyTrapp 5y ago
  I don't know the true rationale, but if I remember correctly a Chrome dev provided some really dubious reasoning one the related issue tracker item, something like "someone could MITM the connection and change the basic auth message to 'please enter your YouTube credentials'". Well guess what, if I MITM your connection, I can provide a much more convincing HTML representation of the YouTube login page! I guess the grain of truth that was in there is that this is one of the few times where a server-provided string is presented as part of the browser's UI, but I am sure there are better ways to highlight that the browser is just quoting the server than outright not showing the message. Edit: It seems like a dubious security report was the origin of this, not a developer: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=544244 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=544244
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

iamwpj 5y ago

I'm unimpressed with these commenters griping about the UI change or sponsored this and that. I don't think that's an honest standard you hold yourself to in any fashion and is simply not a functional way to live your life! What about your toothpaste packaging -- or gasp the product itself?! Things change all the time, you can be annoyed about it, of course! But accepting change is part of being a human in societies. "UI changes breaking my workflow" -- seriously? I don't buy it. I wish the conversations like this would fade because it encourages bad attitudes across the board -- I can't put my finger on it. Is it entitlement? Mozilla owes ME a good browser?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gerash 5y ago
Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
Nextgrid 5y ago
> Things change all the time Why do they need to change? The tab bar has been perfectly functional for decades, and the relatively recent change makes it worse in many aspects. I don't mind changes that fix problems or introduce new useful features, but don't fix what ain't broke. And no, some designer/product manager somewhere having to justify their salary doesn't count as a valid problem in my book.
- iamwpj 5y ago
  Don't perpetuate that type of logic. It's toxic to your peers and not good for society. It's shorthand for a phrase like "It works for ME, so don't change it for OTHERS." Also, this concept requires anyone making a change to justify it to you so you understand it -- even though the changes are for a product and user base as a whole. Most other people read and accept the change and either make adjustments or even switch products all without requiring a bespoke explainer. Also, your comment about designers and product managers is pretty dismissive and leads me to believe that you aren't very appreciative how hard it is to get UI/UX right. Just because it's area you don't understand or don't practice within doesn't mean it's not important.

floatboth 5y ago

> Cookie Policy: Same-Site=lax by default LET'S GOOOOO The day web developers forget about stupid "csrf protection tokens" is coming \o/

efnx 5y ago

Funny, I thought “Firefox 96” might be a new Vaporwave artist!

peakaboo 5y ago

Not much innovation in new versions anymore but I'm still excited to be running Firefox. It's something about using a browser written for privacy from day one.

soueuls 5y ago

I have read the blog post from Mitchell Baker -> https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat... I uninstalled Firefox. I don't trust anyone who is trying hard to corner me into an echo chamber.

ajlburke 5y ago

I saw the name and thought it might be some kind of retro throwback to the 1996 version of Netscape Communicator. I was sort of looking forward to the integrated but awkward built-in mail client and newsreader.

mdoms 5y ago

Every time a new version of Firefox comes out I try it on my XPS 13 to see if two finger scroll & pan and pinch to zoom still feel janky and weird compared to every other app on my computer. Yup, still weird. Still can only scroll either horizontally or vertically but not both at the same time. Pinching feels weirdly linear and zooming out still doesn't use the mouse cursor position as a central point but just zooms from the center. It's 2022, why doesn't Firefox just behave like every other application on my computer with scroll and pinch?

Shadonototra 5y ago

Firefox development seems to be stagnating (despite pumping an insane amount of money to it /s) I wonder where all the Google money goes? definitely not in firefox, otherwise it wouldn't have only just 3% market share If they do pump money in firefox, then i guess it's time to replace the entire team, including the people at the top of the mafia, they are clearly incompetent

schipplock 5y ago

I'm using Firefox since Phoenix 0.1 :). I'm not giving it up! (I hate the look of the "new" tabs though :( (looks wrong on macOS and Windows, okish on Linux).

MikusR 5y ago

And it broke reopen recently closed tabs.

scrumlord 5y ago

Hacker News needs to rename itself to Crybaby News.

davidgerard 5y ago

annoyingly, it breaks the Lepton UI fix: https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix