15 ms·

Firefox 33

333 points by digitalcreate 12y ago

pontjho 12y ago
Love the improvements but how about an html5 date picker? Surely that is not hard?
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  What do you mean? I'm having trouble understanding how an html5 date picker is related to firefox.
  - daok 12y ago
    He means the implementation of the Html5's Calendar for FireFox.
  - whitehat2k9 12y ago
    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/Input https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/In... Because date is one of the valid types for HTML5 inputs.
  - frewsxcv 12y ago
    <input type="date">
  - dorward 12y ago
    It is a feature in HTML 5 that has been defined for a while but which Firefox hasn't implemented yet. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825294 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825294
- maccard 12y ago
  You could always do it?
- paulojreis 12y ago
  Wow. I had no idea that Firefox lacked support for <input type="date|datetime|datetime-local|time">. I was just assuming that it did, simply because "it's not IE". Thank you for pointing that out.
  - robin_reala 12y ago
    Safari doesn’t support them either: http://caniuse.com/#feat=input-datetime http://caniuse.com/#feat=input-datetime
    - mbrubeck 12y ago
      Mobile Safari and mobile Firefox support type="date" inputs. Desktop Safari and desktop Firefox do not.
    - mh- 12y ago
      only desktop Safari doesn't, for some reason. iOS does.
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  I have come to realize that these more extended elements (things beyond <select>, and input types such as password, text, or email) are actually pretty evil. Let me make a small argument in favor of this view: 1. They will provide different UI across different desktop browsers/OS's, etc. The theory was that the browser can decide what the datepicker should look like. The practice is that half of them are ugly or lack the UI you want and you can't do much to fix that. 2. What the UI looks like is still in flux and will likely remain in flux. This means that not only do you have to test/support all the currently provided UI, but you also have to be ready for unexpected changes in the future. 3. Specifically because you cannot change what the (fairly complex) UI looks like, you cannot make it match your theme. This can be a huge pain. 4. There are better JS-based datepickers out there for the desktop. The only reason to use <input type="date"> IMO would be for a mobile-only site. iOS/Safari uses a stable native date implementation which is awesome. However, on the desktop, there is no standard datepicker widget to use the same way, so it just ends up looking weird. What I would actually love is an <input> type that lets me just type in a date (think a date of birth field) where the input is perfectly validated. That's right, in 2014 with out state of the art browsers, this is still nearly impossible. Sure you can use a regex, but have you tried putting together a regex that validates 2/29/2012 vs 2/29/2014 vs 2/29/1900? On top of that, the patter= attribute doesn't prevent you from typing/pasting, it only provides a place to put validation that's optional. A callback mechanism for as-you-type validation would be so much better.
  - jimktrains2 12y ago
    > 1. They will provide different UI across different desktop browsers/OS's, etc. The theory was that the browser can decide what the datepicker should look like. The practice is that half of them are ugly or lack the UI you want and you can't do much to fix that. In theory they'd be more consistent across the platform, just like text and select boxes; I'm not seeing the problem. You're site doesn't need to have it's style imposed on every single control. > 2. What the UI looks like is still in flux and will likely remain in flux. This means that not only do you have to test/support all the currently provided UI, but you also have to be ready for unexpected changes in the future. Why do you care what the UI looks like? As long as the API is stable. > 3. Specifically because you cannot change what the (fairly complex) UI looks like, you cannot make it match your theme. This can be a huge pain. I count this as a plus, honestly. > 4. There are better JS-based datepickers out there for the desktop. Ugh. The less we rely on javascript for basic functionality the better. You're js, highly themed date picker probably isn't very accessible and probably doesn't function like the rest of the system does either. The more we can leverage the User Agent, the more we should. It's easier on developers. It's more accessible. It's more consistent across the user's platform.
riquito 12y ago
The "ev" tag next to the DOM elements with events seems really useful https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspector#Examining_event_listeners https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspecto...
- pjmlp 12y ago
  It is the best feature of this release! One of the things I really hate in web development is tracking down who is messing up the events.
- masklinn 12y ago
  Especially if there's support for jquery-bound events as current inspectors are kinda useless for those (they link to jquery's internal binding functions)
  - mmastrac 12y ago
    Didn't the change the introspect jQuery event structures land recently? Is this in FF33? http://flailingmonkey.com/view-jquery-and-jquery-live-events-in-firefox-devtools/ http://flailingmonkey.com/view-jquery-and-jquery-live-events...
    - masklinn 12y ago
      The page linked by riquito indicates that jQuery events introspection will land in FF34.
      - mmastrac 12y ago
        Ah thanks, missed that. Shame they didn't stuff that into the release -- it would have been incredibly valuable.
        mbrubeck 12y ago
        You can use it now in the Firefox Aurora test channel: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/webide-storage-inspector-jquery-events-iframe-switcher-more-firefox-developer-tools-episode-34/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/webide-storage-inspector-j... (It'll be in Firefox Beta later this week, too.)
magsafe 12y ago
Apparently someone out there still uses Firefox.
- digitalcreate 12y ago
  Yes, including many people on Hacker News.
  - bdcravens 12y ago
    I think you overstate the quality of the content on W3Schools or the expertise of the average HN reader.
    - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
      I'm curious as to how Chrome usage relates to expertise.
      - glass- 12y ago
        Anyone who deliberately installs and uses spyware such as Chrome is clearly lacking it.
      - bdcravens 12y ago
        It doesn't. The point being made was that W3Schools browser usage closely correlates to HN browser usage, which I think isn't accurate. W3Schools isn't that great of a resource, and I presume that the average HN reader's expertise is such that they wouldn't rely on a resource like W3Schools.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
- valarauca1 12y ago
  Unnecessary inflammatory comment. Firefox remains the second most used webbrowser. [1] Break Down is Chrome 59.6% FireFox 24.0% Internet Explorer 9.9% Safari 3.6% Opera 1.6% [1] http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Figs 12y ago
Great... so what long standing piece of UI did they screw around with this time that'll make me want to tear out my hair for a week until I either force myself to get used to it or give in to installing more 3rd party plugin crap to restore the functionality of? I've seriously come to dread browser updates lately.
- orthecreedence 12y ago
  They made the location bar a search bar, which is a joyous occasion for me personally. Typing one-word searches in the location bar was actually what made me tear my hair for a week, and I'd find myself coming up with searches that included two words instead of one just to skip the lengthy DNS lookup.
bsbechtel 12y ago
Since upgrading to the last version (32), Firefox has become a significant resource hog on my machine. It has become considerably worse than any other browser. Has anyone else had this issue?
- tokenizerrr 12y ago
  For me it's Chrome that has been the resource hog and Firefox that has been a lot more swift. Chrome frequently uses 100% of one of my cpu cores for minutes on end and is very sluggish with creating new tabs (where it's sometimes faster to start up Firefox and use that to search than to open a new tab in Chrome). I'm not quite sure what's going on, but it seems some browsers just occasionally have issues with certain hardware configurations?
  - JonnieCache 12y ago
    That sound like you have a bad extension.
    - tokenizerrr 12y ago
      I wish :( I've disabled them all, and checked chrome's internal task manager. It's the "Browser" task that consumes the CPU, and not one of the extension tasks: http://i.imgur.com/FvbDrMc.png http://i.imgur.com/FvbDrMc.png
  - r721 12y ago
    >very sluggish with creating new tabs There was a bug (https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=409126 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=409126), but it seems to be fixed. However last comment there hints on another related bug: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=407889 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=407889 Maybe you have bookmarks with foreign characters on bookmark bar too?
    - tokenizerrr 12y ago
      I used to have a large amount of bookmarks on the bookmark bar, which did cause sluggish tab switching. I've recently removed all of those which did improve the tab switching speed, but not the tab creation speed. I should probably do some more hunting through that issue tracker at some point...
SloopJon 12y ago
The Latin1 optimization looks interesting. It seems like a big improvement for such a simple change (granted that it took one developer two months to do). Activity Monitor reports that Firefox 32.0.3 is using 21 GB on my Mac. That makes for sluggish performance, even with 32 GB of RAM. Looking forward to trying Firefox 33.
- frewsxcv 12y ago
  I have 10 tabs open and Firefox is using 412 MB of memory. 21 GB is insane
  - SloopJon 12y ago
    Yes, it is insane. I've actually never seen it that high before. I get annoyed when it's over one or two GB. There has to be a leak of some kind, but I don't know how to diagnose it. Activity Monitor has me at 756 MB right now, but it will creep back up over the next few days.
    - masklinn 12y ago
      > There has to be a leak of some kind, but I don't know how to diagnose it Nicholas Nethercote's blog[0] has many entries on memory, memory profiling &al as he's one of the big "memshrink" guys. about:memory might be a good start, after reading his memshrink entries[1] and maybe contacting him. Although the very first order of business is to check your extensions, extension leaks is the most common source of trouble (and has been for a long time). Disable everything, see what happens, then re-enable extensions one by one. [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/ [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/
    - jason_dstillery 12y ago
      You can type 'about:memory' into the address bar and it will show you where all your memory is going.
- Yoric 12y ago
ck2 12y ago
34 beta1 is also out and looks good was hoping for native h264 to be working by now but apparently not http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/34.0b1/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/34.0...
hosay123 12y ago
Note: Firefox currently uses OpenH264 only for WebRTC and not for the <video> tag, because OpenH264 does not yet support the high profile format frequently used for streaming video. We will reconsider this once support has been added. Yay, another decade before we get YouTube on OS X
- ck2 12y ago
  Ugh, also on XP, darn it. Settings show it only supports up to level "31" whatever that is.
- acdha 12y ago
  YouTube usually already works as long as you don't have the Flash plugin installed (YouTube uses Flash by default for many videos even if you've opted in to the HTML5 beta) since they've transcoded most of the video to WebM. In any case, the bug to watch for OS X is actually different: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1062654 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1062654 That uses Apple's system implementation so it has great performance and it currently appears to be slated for Firefox 35; use the Nightly builds if you want it now and like to live dangerously.
  - acdha 12y ago
    n.b. I don't have the Flash plugin installed – easier than updating it – but if you hit some legacy YouTube / Vimeo embeds you might find these extensions useful for forcing the HTML5 player: https://github.com/hfiguiere/no-flash https://github.com/hfiguiere/no-flash https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-html5/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-h...
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    YouTube seems to be defaulting to HTML5 (WebM) video for Firefox Nightly and Aurora browsers, even though I have the Flash plugin installed and enabled.
    - acdha 12y ago
SloopJon 12y ago
Hmm, after upgrading and restoring the session, all of my Hacker News tabs now show a Secure Connection Failed error: "The OCSP response contains out-of-date information. (Error code: sec_error_ocsp_old_response)"
- SloopJon 12y ago
  Failed the first few reloads, but they're starting to work again.
pearjuice 12y ago
Did they fix the exponential usage of RAM for every extra tab yet? Stop saying that not used RAM is wasted RAM. I would like to do things with a browser in the background instead of closing and opening it everytime due to disproportionate RAM usage. For reference, Chromium doesn't have this issue.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  >Did they fix the exponential usage of RAM for every extra tab yet? >For reference, Chromium doesn't have this issue. I don't think this problem exists. I have 450 tabs open in Firefox on a 6 y/o computer with 4G of RAM. Last time I tried something like that on Chromium (a long time ago, I admit), blood started leaking from one of the USB ports.
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  There is a large linear usage of ram by adblock if you have the extension. Exponential memory usage per tab, I've never heard of it.
melling 12y ago
Hmmm... Don't most of HN users just use the Nightly's or the Canary build for Chrome? https://nightly.mozilla.org https://nightly.mozilla.org People complaining about the memory usage all the time seem a bit strange. Just buy a nice machine and help test betas so Google and Mozilla can move faster.
nd7 12y ago
Please tell me, how to return the gray background in a new tab? And how to return to the number rows and columns of picture thumbnails not decreased when the window changes at half-screen, non-rounded thumbnails? That new UI makes me sad...
- CalRobert 12y ago
  I'd love a black background for new tabs. For that matter, most of the internet is too bright in my view; luckily there's some good plugins and bookmarklets to address this.
  - nd7 12y ago
    Just grey was the default color, and I quite liked. Don't want to install extensions only at the whim of firefox.
- kevincrane 12y ago
  It looks like you still have the same number of rows, but each tile got larger so they can't all fit on a laptop screen anymore. If you zoom the page out (Ctrl/Cmd + minus) a few times, the bottom row shows up. Firefox guys in this thread, how do we get the old sizes back? 9 thumbnails > 6.
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    The about:config prefs for "browser.newtabpage.rows" and "browser.newtabpage.columns" seem to work in Firefox 32, but not 33. I don't know if this is a bug or a design change. UPDATE: This is Firefox bug 1005596. The prefs only work when you zoom out. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1005596 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1005596
    - kevincrane 12y ago
      Yeah, I saw that (the default for one of them changed to 5 for some reason). Searching around, I found this link: https://wiki.mozilla.org/QA/Newtab_page_Tiles/Test_Plan https://wiki.mozilla.org/QA/Newtab_page_Tiles/Test_Plan It looks like something about the tabs changed for Firefox 33, but I really can't tell what from that document. The two notable parts I saw were: - If there is not enough space for the fixed size tile and it's gutters, rows and/or columns are removed from the grid. - In the Tile Grid, there will be Top Sites tiles (based on user frequency), but also Sponsored or Partner tiles. I don't know why the first one changed (as opposed to just scaling the tiles like they did before). The second one seems like a whole different scary thing.
justcommenting 12y ago
still no cookie UI fix.... very disappointing, especially for an organization that claims to pride itself on protecting user privacy while dropping google analytics and google cookies on users... probably because they're so heavily dependent on google's money.
- ep103 12y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454456
  - justcommenting 12y ago
    when you go to getfirefox.com, you'll be tracked by google analytics as you're reading about mozilla's "commitment to your privacy". think one cookie is better than two? maybe, but the context matters here. it took mozilla seven years to stop sending other google cookies along with safebrowsing update requests, including about half a year after the washington post reported that NSA was using this behavior/functionality for targeting: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255 Mozilla never seems to have anything to say about Google PREF cookies being trivially correlated to google logins from the same IP within a certain timeframe. more to the point, Firefox still can't be trusted to even tell you which cookies have been dropped in its default configuration through the UI, let alone have a default configuration that limits persistent forms of tracking from its primary sponsor. i find this galling given their marketing push around mozilla's "commitment to your privacy".
munimkazia 12y ago
The "send to chromecast" feature on Firefox android app is awesome, but I was kinda hoping that they added this to the desktop application too. I know that stuff like this is usually left for add-ons, but there isn't a good firefox add on which does Chromecast, unlike the several options on the Chrome web store.
- hackmiester 12y ago
  The Chromecast libraries are available to all Android apps. On the PC, you have to actually run your Chromecast app inside of Chrome. So, Firefox would have to write an equivalent library.
- mmastrac 12y ago
  Is there even a stable, published API for this that a desktop app could use? I always believed that Chromecast support was a platform thing handled by the Chromecast API which is effectively a binary blob. Regardless, I imagine that Firefox will end up with some sort of support for pushing streams when the MatchStick is released, but whether it supports Chromecast is a question yet unanswered.
  - munimkazia 12y ago
    Oh. I am kinda surprised that the API isn't an open API. I don't know why I just assumed that it is.
- Excavator 12y ago
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=901803#c47 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=901803#c47 "Like Hubert said, Chromecast isn't open source. Getting it to work on desktop would require some reverse engineering and may or may not be impossible (I've heard that the Desktop extension for Chrome is all JS though, so that code may be useable)." You might also be interested in the "casting support" bugs: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=921924&hide_resolved=1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=92192...
  - 12y ago
whoisthemachine 12y ago
Anxiously awaiting the Waterfox build!
- justcommenting 12y ago
  and the Tor Browser Bundle build! :-)
- nly 12y ago
  I don't get the appeal of Waterfox. In my experience Intels C++ compiler isn't that good outside of SIMD, with inferior code generation to both GCC and Clang. What compiler are they benchmarking against on their homepage?
  - verbatim 12y ago
    I don't either, but I looked at their home page, and am not really inclined to trust performance claims of someone that uses a graph like the one under "General Benchmarks: Higher is Better" which uses a nice smooth curve to demonstrate... nothing, since the different data points are unrelated.
    - whoisthemachine 12y ago
      Yes I agree, his benchmarks seem like mostly fluff to me.
  - whoisthemachine 12y ago
    I'm not sure, but I used to run the Nightly build on all of my Windows machines in order to use 64-bit Firefox and anecdotally Waterfox does "feel" quite a bit faster. I definitely notice fewer pauses.
xenophonf 12y ago
So here's something I've noticed that's confused me about Firefox's cookie handling: I have cookies turned off, but a PREF cookie for google.com keeps getting set. I've even tried blocking cookies from google.com, but I still see this cookie. I turned off Do Not Track but haven't tried disabling SafeBrowsing or all my extensions, so maybe it is one of those. Has anyone noticed this, too?
- ewang1 12y ago
  It's probably related to their Google search partnership.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    It's more likely to be a preemptive cookie set by a privacy extension.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - justcommenting 12y ago
    It's more likely to be associated with built-in malware protection/phishing protection from Google. In Firefox's settings under Security, you can un-check "block reported attack sites" and "block reported web forgeries" and these cookies should disappear after running BleachBit. these types of cookies may seem benign and helpful to users (and maybe they are), but i also wouldn't doubt that Google uses this information for persistent tracking. it's already been disclosed that NSA uses Google PREF cookies to track users: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10/nsa-uses-google-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10... hence my other dispirited comment about the cookie UI... edit: reworded/clarified
    - xenophonf 12y ago
      At first I was only concerned about web page access tracking via this cookie (which indeed is set because of Safe Browsing---I turned both settings off, cleared my history, and the cookie is gone). If this cookie could be abused for location tracking, maybe it would be a good idea to leave Safe Browsing disabled.
nemetroid 12y ago
> Improved search experience through the location bar [1] Really happy to see this one. Previously single-word searches were so slow that I'd usually have time to remember that they are slow, press C-e, and enter the same search term in the search bar, all before the browser realises there is no matching host and does a web search instead. 1: http://msujaws.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/faster-and-snappier-searches-now-in-firefox-aurora/ http://msujaws.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/faster-and-snappier-...
- fpgaminer 12y ago
  I really hope this also fixes Firefox's behavior with one word searches and misbehaving DNS servers. Previously, if your DNS server returned advertising for bad DNS queries, one word "searches" would result in displaying your DNS server's ad page (since Firefox did a DNS query, assuming you meant a hostname instead of a one word search). This has been broken behavior in Firefox for quite awhile, with no workaround other than to install a different omnibar. I don't understand why Mozilla thought treating single words as hostnames in the omnibar made sense for the majority of people, especially when the majority of people are also subjected to misbehaving DNS servers.
  - worklogin 12y ago
    You shouldn't be searching in the URL bar. There is a search bar for that. If anything, it should be a toggle to allow searches to execute from URL bar input, but for IT folks and others who recognize the distinction, searches from the URL bar are frustrating and insecure.
    - fpgaminer 12y ago
      Do you have research to back up the statement that "searches from the URL bar are frustrating"? I could cite Chrome's market share as an indirect, empirical study indicating the contrary. Regardless, your comment is tangential to mine. My comment was about a bug in an existing Firefox feature. Whether that feature should exist in the first place or not is only tangentially related.
skrowl 12y ago
Best browser keeps getting better. "If you know a Chrome user, get them to switch to Firefox" is going to be the new "If you know an IE user ..."
- spindritf 12y ago
  I use Firefox as my main browser but that is, sadly, not true. Chrome remains faster, especially with js heavy webapplications. Some don't work in fx at all.
  - dangayle 12y ago
    Unless you have open a bunch of tabs, like I typically do. With multiple tabs, Firefox is easily the best performer. Chrome is the only app I have on my Macbook Air that pushes it into overheating, turning it into a lap-frying iron skillet.
    - morganvachon 12y ago
      > Chrome is the only app I have on my Macbook Air that pushes it into overheating, turning it into a lap-frying iron skillet. This is even more obvious on older Macs. I've got a Core 2 Duo mini that absolutely chokes on more than a few tabs in Chrome/Chromium, but runs acceptably well with Firefox even with ten or more tabs open, and flies with Safari. I really wish someone would put out a Chromium based, stripped down browser for OS X versions older than Mavericks. I think the rendering engine is solid, it's all the fluff that slows it down.
  - pwnna 12y ago
    Most of the time that's because those apps were developed for Chrome (much like how they used to be developed for IE). Which brings me to another point: cross browser testing is important.
  - jarin 12y ago
    Strangely enough, I've recently switched back to Safari because it's pretty good in Yosemite and has a fairly decent extension ecosystem now.
romanovcode 12y ago
Jeez FF really stepping up the game. Seems like 32 was released just yesterday. I'm not sure if there are any performance issues since I switched to FF about a year ago when bought new laptop with SSD and 16 gigs of ram it's as fast as Chrome. As for webdev tools, they are not worse, you are just too used to webkit ones. I might even say that FF has better dev tools because you can modify request and re-send it. I switched because Google is trying to integrate Google too much into Chrome. That's definitely not something I look in a browser since I would like it to be independent and not spy on what I type/do. Anyway, if anyone who is contributing to FF reading this I just want to thank you for best browser ever.
- magicalist 12y ago
  > Seems like 32 was released just yesterday Every six weeks, as it's been for like three years now...
- Yoric 12y ago
  Thanks :)
  - fubu 12y ago
    Yoric is an engineer at Mozilla. "Thanks" seems relevant and the downvotes seem unnecessary.
- kangax 12y ago
  You still can't edit JS like you can in chrome devtools. This is such a boon and a basic thing, really, that I can't switch until they add it. Aside from that, yeah, FF is getting pretty good.
  - Yoric 12y ago
    Have you filed a bug on the topic? I'm sure the devtools team would be interested.
- scope 12y ago
  > I'm not sure if there are any performance issues I also use Firefox on a MacBook Pro(2014), I don't know if this existed before or not but, under battery > Apps using significant enery, Firefox is one of em', opening the same exact tabs on Safari doesn't show safari on the list is this because apps that come with Apple are not included in the list or is Safari better at Energy consumption?
zenciadam 12y ago
Is this the version that doesn't use 100% of your memory with more than three tabs open?
- elektronjunge 12y ago
  It hasn't done that in years. I have ~20 tabs open and about 500 MB of memory used. For comparison chrome uses the same amount of memory at about 10 tabs open.
  - zenciadam 12y ago
    Just had to killall firefox. So I beg to differ. They just blame the third party addons. Like ABP, because it's your fault for installing one of the most popular plugins.
    - forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
      I use ABP and haven't run into this issue at all. Sounds like something's wrong with your install.
    - nnethercote 12y ago
      We can't act on vague complaints. We need data. Fortunately there's an easy way to get it. Can you visit about:memory when memory usage gets high, click on the "Measure" button and post the results here, or email me, or file a bug at bugzilla.mozilla.org and put "[MemShrink]" in the "whiteboard" field? Thank you.
chdir 12y ago
I'd be delighted to use FF on iPad. I do a lot of leisure browsing/reading and I want to support FF on all my devices. Is their stand still the same i.e. We refuse to bring Firefox to iOS until Apple lets us use our web engine ? http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/15/mozilla-ceo-we-refuse-to-bring-firefox-to-ios-until-apple-lets-us-use-our-web-engine/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/15/mozilla-ceo-we-refuse-to-b...
- soperj 12y ago
  I'd blame apple, not firefox. What's the point in them wasting their time just skinning something that is guaranteed to be slower than Safari?
  - caiob 12y ago
    Not valid for iOS8, as they introduced the WKWebView.
  - amartya916 12y ago
    Yes, Apple is definitely to "blame" as far as handicapping UIWebViews are concerned. That being said, the new WKWebview is supposed to have all the Javascript optimizations (and the Nitro engine) that mobile Safari uses. Chances are that it might still not be as fast as Safari, but Firefox should bite the bullet and just do it because: a. Firefox cannot afford to not be on all platforms. With computing devices converging and relying on handshakes (data syncing?), missing out on a major mobile platform is foolish. b. In a related point, syncing bookmarks/tabs via Firefox sync is severely handicapped by it's absence on iOS. c. There is a fantastic niche where FF can fit in on iOS. It'd be as privacy centric as Safari and with an iOS launch would be cross-platform like Chrome (without Google peddling their products front and centre). They could also get some inspiration from mobile Opera on iOS that has fantastic data saving features in-built.
    - apayan 12y ago
      For what it's worth, WKWebView is still astonishingly buggy and hangs quite a bit when loading some pages with XHRs. There are some other bugs that trigger these 10+ second hangs, but we couldn't delay shipping anymore so we reverted back to UIWebView.
AshleysBrain 12y ago
I think Firefox 33 also enables Direct3D 11 rendering on Windows. Can anyone confirm? I've just been digging through bugzilla and can't find a clear reference to that, but it's an interesting change if so.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  It's mentioned here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/OffMainThreadCompositing https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/OffMainThreadCompositi... (which is the destination of the not very obviously named link in the "Windows: OMTC enabled by default" change, I had followed it earlier to see what OMTC meant)
dannysu 12y ago
I read the changelog and saw that proprietary window.crypto functions are removed. I actually make use of window.crypto.getRandomValues(), and good thing that's not going away: https://wiki.mozilla.org/SecurityEngineering/Removing_Proprietary_window.crypto_Functions https://wiki.mozilla.org/SecurityEngineering/Removing_Propri...
- bzbarsky 12y ago
  getRandomValues is not proprietary. The in-progress spec is at http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/#RandomSource-method-getRandomValues http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/#RandomSource-method-getRa...
Eleopteryx 12y ago
I can finally watch 60FPS videos on YouTube thanks to the HTML5 player being fully functional now.
- Excavator 12y ago
  Link to an example video? Anything more "advanced" than 720p@30FPS seems to require DASH support or the like?
- imaginenore 12y ago
  Youtube has 60fps videos?
jodybdesigns 12y ago
I am currently running Win10 Dev preview full fledged on a daily work machine. Off topic, Win 10 works great except for a few USB bugs not allowing me to format USB drives. My usage is not as high as im reading. But a lot of my usage comes from Adblock. I have 5 browser windows open, with about 5-10 tabs each, im currently @ 760mb on Win 10. A nice bug I get is from Firebug. When I am debugging a site, and I try to hover over my Taskbar icons to grab a new window, it flashes for about 2 seconds on whatever im hovering, and I have to try again, the second try usually leaves my taskbar windows open. If I close Firebug, this problem stops. I also notice when I run flash (I stream mixtapes from datpiff.com), my usage goes sky high. I have been trying some debug options in about:config, and I think I have knocked the usage down by modifying a few lines. Also another bug I experience on Win10 with Firefox is my top bar will completely disappear, I have to alt+F4 to close out Firefox and re-open. Maybe Firefox 33 will fix some of these issues.
- jodybdesigns 12y ago
  * I managed to fix my top bar issue within minutes of my post. Don't know why, but I decided to add a skin to my Firefox ui - this fixed my issue 100% it seems, I am not getting the error at all anymore
yarrel 12y ago
Did they remove the DRM infection mechanism in this build?
J_Darnley 12y ago
I asked this last time... Does this remove the horrible Australis UI?
- lucb1e 12y ago
  In that case I am obliged to ask: I love the Australis UI, did they make it stay?
- cpeterso 12y ago
  Yes.
Spiritus 12y ago
I wish they would put some effort into making Firefox feel more native on OS X, for example: - Builtin support for Keychain (without relying on an extension). - swipe-animation when going forward/backwards in history. - "over-scroll" (you know, when you can sort sort scroll past the top and bottom of the page). I know it sounds a bit vain, but I simply can't make a switch unless the look and feel is native to OS X.
- rdatajef2 12y ago
  I agree that native to OS X would be nice, but I would immediately disable over-scroll if it were on by default. Luckily, FF is pretty good about giving power users this kind of flexibility. I haven't found a way to disable it on Safari for instance, though it's not my primary browser so it's not too big a deal. Another small OS X thing that FF is missing is three-finger tap to view dictionary definitions.
  - Excavator 12y ago
    Over-scroll was backed out due to performance issues¹, the bug² number for the future implementation of it is 939480. 1: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=946862 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=946862 2: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939480 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939480
Animats 12y ago
It's disappointing that the H.264 video player support is not open source. Most of the patents managed by MPEG-LA have expired, and the ones that remain are either encoding-side only or for features nobody uses much, like interlace. Check out the patent lists. http://www.osnews.com/story/24954/US_Patent_Expiration_for_MP3_MPEG-2_H_264/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24954/US_Patent_Expiration_for_M... http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#MPEG-1_Audio_Layer_3_patents http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#MPEG-1_Au... Most of the remaining patents expire in 2015. There are a few for 2017, but they're for features nobody really needs in a computer decoder.
- thristian 12y ago
  You mean this H.264 video player? https://github.com/cisco/openh264 https://github.com/cisco/openh264
  - Animats 12y ago
    Cisco paid for the MPEG-LA licenses on that. Back in 2013, they probably had to, but more patents have expired since then, and it's probably out of patent now, unless they put in extra stuff like N-channel audio.
    - drdaeman 12y ago
      If/when patents are gone, you could legally use and distribute self-compiled binaries, since source is already under BSD license.
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    Note that Firefox only uses OpenH264 for WebRTC video, not the <video> tag. OpenH264 only supports H.264 Baseline Profile, not the Main or High Profiles commonly used for embedded video. Also, MP4 videos often use AAC audio, which Firefox can't playback.
notastartup 12y ago
I begin to use Firefox more now than Chrome. Chrome has gotten really slow. like I navigate to a url, it will redirect to about:blank; watching youtube or soundcloud sends cpu crazy active. i remember I switched to chrome from firefox 5 years ago because of those reasons. now I find myself using firefox for the same reason, chrome is sluggish. I also don't feel creeped out.
twombly 12y ago
Do the Firefox releases have anything to do with the Spidermonkey releases? I've been seeing the placeholder page for Spidermonkey 31 for a couple of months now...
megablast 12y ago
I had a real problem updating from 31 to 32. What usually is done automatically did not work. It kept on asking me if I would like to, and after saying yes it just kept stalling. This was in 2 different workplaces and at home, where I have not had trouble before. I ended up having to download it from the website, which was not an obvious experience.
zobzu 12y ago
Interestingly this is not mentioned in this huge post, but according to http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/ Firefox JS is faster than Chrome and Safari in all benchmarks in both 32 and 64bit modes since quite a few month! It used to be that Chrome marketing was pushing for this as being so much faster on Chrome than others so that's a pretty nice feat.
- ksec 12y ago
  Because JS Speed don't matter any more, at least out of 90% of times for 90% of internet users. Speed for casual users, means rendering speed, network speed, Browser and web page responsiveness, startup speed etc. Although Firefox did make many incremental steps over the years. It is still not anywhere near the Blink / Chromium offers such as Google Chrome and Opera. e10s should make Firefox competitive. And its still quite a while before it lands.
  - zobzu 12y ago
    i still think being faster than chrome js is a nice feat. specially for html5 gaming. i dont think chrome having faster js back in the days did change much user-wise. gmail was as fast in firefox as it was in chrome... ;)
AndyKelley 12y ago
Still doesn't have the one feature I've been waiting for: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=792831 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=792831

Firefox 33

333 points by digitalcreate 12y ago

pontjho 12y ago

Love the improvements but how about an html5 date picker? Surely that is not hard?

sillysaurus3 12y ago
What do you mean? I'm having trouble understanding how an html5 date picker is related to firefox.
- daok 12y ago
  He means the implementation of the Html5's Calendar for FireFox.
- whitehat2k9 12y ago
  https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/Input https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/In... Because date is one of the valid types for HTML5 inputs.
- frewsxcv 12y ago
  <input type="date">
- dorward 12y ago
  It is a feature in HTML 5 that has been defined for a while but which Firefox hasn't implemented yet. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825294 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825294
maccard 12y ago
You could always do it?
paulojreis 12y ago
Wow. I had no idea that Firefox lacked support for <input type="date|datetime|datetime-local|time">. I was just assuming that it did, simply because "it's not IE". Thank you for pointing that out.
- robin_reala 12y ago
  Safari doesn’t support them either: http://caniuse.com/#feat=input-datetime http://caniuse.com/#feat=input-datetime
  - mbrubeck 12y ago
    Mobile Safari and mobile Firefox support type="date" inputs. Desktop Safari and desktop Firefox do not.
  - mh- 12y ago
    only desktop Safari doesn't, for some reason. iOS does.
IgorPartola 12y ago
I have come to realize that these more extended elements (things beyond <select>, and input types such as password, text, or email) are actually pretty evil. Let me make a small argument in favor of this view: 1. They will provide different UI across different desktop browsers/OS's, etc. The theory was that the browser can decide what the datepicker should look like. The practice is that half of them are ugly or lack the UI you want and you can't do much to fix that. 2. What the UI looks like is still in flux and will likely remain in flux. This means that not only do you have to test/support all the currently provided UI, but you also have to be ready for unexpected changes in the future. 3. Specifically because you cannot change what the (fairly complex) UI looks like, you cannot make it match your theme. This can be a huge pain. 4. There are better JS-based datepickers out there for the desktop. The only reason to use <input type="date"> IMO would be for a mobile-only site. iOS/Safari uses a stable native date implementation which is awesome. However, on the desktop, there is no standard datepicker widget to use the same way, so it just ends up looking weird. What I would actually love is an <input> type that lets me just type in a date (think a date of birth field) where the input is perfectly validated. That's right, in 2014 with out state of the art browsers, this is still nearly impossible. Sure you can use a regex, but have you tried putting together a regex that validates 2/29/2012 vs 2/29/2014 vs 2/29/1900? On top of that, the patter= attribute doesn't prevent you from typing/pasting, it only provides a place to put validation that's optional. A callback mechanism for as-you-type validation would be so much better.
- jimktrains2 12y ago
  > 1. They will provide different UI across different desktop browsers/OS's, etc. The theory was that the browser can decide what the datepicker should look like. The practice is that half of them are ugly or lack the UI you want and you can't do much to fix that. In theory they'd be more consistent across the platform, just like text and select boxes; I'm not seeing the problem. You're site doesn't need to have it's style imposed on every single control. > 2. What the UI looks like is still in flux and will likely remain in flux. This means that not only do you have to test/support all the currently provided UI, but you also have to be ready for unexpected changes in the future. Why do you care what the UI looks like? As long as the API is stable. > 3. Specifically because you cannot change what the (fairly complex) UI looks like, you cannot make it match your theme. This can be a huge pain. I count this as a plus, honestly. > 4. There are better JS-based datepickers out there for the desktop. Ugh. The less we rely on javascript for basic functionality the better. You're js, highly themed date picker probably isn't very accessible and probably doesn't function like the rest of the system does either. The more we can leverage the User Agent, the more we should. It's easier on developers. It's more accessible. It's more consistent across the user's platform.

riquito 12y ago

The "ev" tag next to the DOM elements with events seems really useful https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspector#Examining_event_listeners https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspecto...

pjmlp 12y ago
It is the best feature of this release! One of the things I really hate in web development is tracking down who is messing up the events.
masklinn 12y ago
Especially if there's support for jquery-bound events as current inspectors are kinda useless for those (they link to jquery's internal binding functions)
- mmastrac 12y ago
  Didn't the change the introspect jQuery event structures land recently? Is this in FF33? http://flailingmonkey.com/view-jquery-and-jquery-live-events-in-firefox-devtools/ http://flailingmonkey.com/view-jquery-and-jquery-live-events...
  - masklinn 12y ago
    The page linked by riquito indicates that jQuery events introspection will land in FF34.
    - mmastrac 12y ago
      Ah thanks, missed that. Shame they didn't stuff that into the release -- it would have been incredibly valuable.
      - mbrubeck 12y ago
        You can use it now in the Firefox Aurora test channel: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/webide-storage-inspector-jquery-events-iframe-switcher-more-firefox-developer-tools-episode-34/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/webide-storage-inspector-j... (It'll be in Firefox Beta later this week, too.)

magsafe 12y ago

Apparently someone out there still uses Firefox.

digitalcreate 12y ago
Yes, including many people on Hacker News.
- bdcravens 12y ago
  I think you overstate the quality of the content on W3Schools or the expertise of the average HN reader.
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    I'm curious as to how Chrome usage relates to expertise.
    - glass- 12y ago
      Anyone who deliberately installs and uses spyware such as Chrome is clearly lacking it.
    - bdcravens 12y ago
      It doesn't. The point being made was that W3Schools browser usage closely correlates to HN browser usage, which I think isn't accurate. W3Schools isn't that great of a resource, and I presume that the average HN reader's expertise is such that they wouldn't rely on a resource like W3Schools.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
valarauca1 12y ago
Unnecessary inflammatory comment. Firefox remains the second most used webbrowser. [1] Break Down is Chrome 59.6% FireFox 24.0% Internet Explorer 9.9% Safari 3.6% Opera 1.6% [1] http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Figs 12y ago

Great... so what long standing piece of UI did they screw around with this time that'll make me want to tear out my hair for a week until I either force myself to get used to it or give in to installing more 3rd party plugin crap to restore the functionality of? I've seriously come to dread browser updates lately.

orthecreedence 12y ago
They made the location bar a search bar, which is a joyous occasion for me personally. Typing one-word searches in the location bar was actually what made me tear my hair for a week, and I'd find myself coming up with searches that included two words instead of one just to skip the lengthy DNS lookup.

bsbechtel 12y ago

Since upgrading to the last version (32), Firefox has become a significant resource hog on my machine. It has become considerably worse than any other browser. Has anyone else had this issue?

tokenizerrr 12y ago
For me it's Chrome that has been the resource hog and Firefox that has been a lot more swift. Chrome frequently uses 100% of one of my cpu cores for minutes on end and is very sluggish with creating new tabs (where it's sometimes faster to start up Firefox and use that to search than to open a new tab in Chrome). I'm not quite sure what's going on, but it seems some browsers just occasionally have issues with certain hardware configurations?
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  That sound like you have a bad extension.
  - tokenizerrr 12y ago
    I wish :( I've disabled them all, and checked chrome's internal task manager. It's the "Browser" task that consumes the CPU, and not one of the extension tasks: http://i.imgur.com/FvbDrMc.png http://i.imgur.com/FvbDrMc.png
- r721 12y ago
  >very sluggish with creating new tabs There was a bug (https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=409126 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=409126), but it seems to be fixed. However last comment there hints on another related bug: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=407889 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=407889 Maybe you have bookmarks with foreign characters on bookmark bar too?
  - tokenizerrr 12y ago
    I used to have a large amount of bookmarks on the bookmark bar, which did cause sluggish tab switching. I've recently removed all of those which did improve the tab switching speed, but not the tab creation speed. I should probably do some more hunting through that issue tracker at some point...

SloopJon 12y ago

The Latin1 optimization looks interesting. It seems like a big improvement for such a simple change (granted that it took one developer two months to do). Activity Monitor reports that Firefox 32.0.3 is using 21 GB on my Mac. That makes for sluggish performance, even with 32 GB of RAM. Looking forward to trying Firefox 33.

frewsxcv 12y ago
I have 10 tabs open and Firefox is using 412 MB of memory. 21 GB is insane
- SloopJon 12y ago
  Yes, it is insane. I've actually never seen it that high before. I get annoyed when it's over one or two GB. There has to be a leak of some kind, but I don't know how to diagnose it. Activity Monitor has me at 756 MB right now, but it will creep back up over the next few days.
  - masklinn 12y ago
    > There has to be a leak of some kind, but I don't know how to diagnose it Nicholas Nethercote's blog[0] has many entries on memory, memory profiling &al as he's one of the big "memshrink" guys. about:memory might be a good start, after reading his memshrink entries[1] and maybe contacting him. Although the very first order of business is to check your extensions, extension leaks is the most common source of trouble (and has been for a long time). Disable everything, see what happens, then re-enable extensions one by one. [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/ [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/
  - jason_dstillery 12y ago
    You can type 'about:memory' into the address bar and it will show you where all your memory is going.
Yoric 12y ago

ck2 12y ago

34 beta1 is also out and looks good was hoping for native h264 to be working by now but apparently not http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/34.0b1/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/34.0...

hosay123 12y ago

Note: Firefox currently uses OpenH264 only for WebRTC and not for the <video> tag, because OpenH264 does not yet support the high profile format frequently used for streaming video. We will reconsider this once support has been added. Yay, another decade before we get YouTube on OS X

ck2 12y ago
Ugh, also on XP, darn it. Settings show it only supports up to level "31" whatever that is.
acdha 12y ago
YouTube usually already works as long as you don't have the Flash plugin installed (YouTube uses Flash by default for many videos even if you've opted in to the HTML5 beta) since they've transcoded most of the video to WebM. In any case, the bug to watch for OS X is actually different: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1062654 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1062654 That uses Apple's system implementation so it has great performance and it currently appears to be slated for Firefox 35; use the Nightly builds if you want it now and like to live dangerously.
- acdha 12y ago
  n.b. I don't have the Flash plugin installed – easier than updating it – but if you hit some legacy YouTube / Vimeo embeds you might find these extensions useful for forcing the HTML5 player: https://github.com/hfiguiere/no-flash https://github.com/hfiguiere/no-flash https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-html5/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-h...
- cpeterso 12y ago
  YouTube seems to be defaulting to HTML5 (WebM) video for Firefox Nightly and Aurora browsers, even though I have the Flash plugin installed and enabled.
  - acdha 12y ago

SloopJon 12y ago

Hmm, after upgrading and restoring the session, all of my Hacker News tabs now show a Secure Connection Failed error: "The OCSP response contains out-of-date information. (Error code: sec_error_ocsp_old_response)"

SloopJon 12y ago
Failed the first few reloads, but they're starting to work again.

pearjuice 12y ago

Did they fix the exponential usage of RAM for every extra tab yet? Stop saying that not used RAM is wasted RAM. I would like to do things with a browser in the background instead of closing and opening it everytime due to disproportionate RAM usage. For reference, Chromium doesn't have this issue.

pessimizer 12y ago
>Did they fix the exponential usage of RAM for every extra tab yet? >For reference, Chromium doesn't have this issue. I don't think this problem exists. I have 450 tabs open in Firefox on a 6 y/o computer with 4G of RAM. Last time I tried something like that on Chromium (a long time ago, I admit), blood started leaking from one of the USB ports.
sergiosgc 12y ago
There is a large linear usage of ram by adblock if you have the extension. Exponential memory usage per tab, I've never heard of it.

melling 12y ago

Hmmm... Don't most of HN users just use the Nightly's or the Canary build for Chrome? https://nightly.mozilla.org https://nightly.mozilla.org People complaining about the memory usage all the time seem a bit strange. Just buy a nice machine and help test betas so Google and Mozilla can move faster.

nd7 12y ago

Please tell me, how to return the gray background in a new tab? And how to return to the number rows and columns of picture thumbnails not decreased when the window changes at half-screen, non-rounded thumbnails? That new UI makes me sad...

CalRobert 12y ago
I'd love a black background for new tabs. For that matter, most of the internet is too bright in my view; luckily there's some good plugins and bookmarklets to address this.
- nd7 12y ago
  Just grey was the default color, and I quite liked. Don't want to install extensions only at the whim of firefox.
kevincrane 12y ago
It looks like you still have the same number of rows, but each tile got larger so they can't all fit on a laptop screen anymore. If you zoom the page out (Ctrl/Cmd + minus) a few times, the bottom row shows up. Firefox guys in this thread, how do we get the old sizes back? 9 thumbnails > 6.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  The about:config prefs for "browser.newtabpage.rows" and "browser.newtabpage.columns" seem to work in Firefox 32, but not 33. I don't know if this is a bug or a design change. UPDATE: This is Firefox bug 1005596. The prefs only work when you zoom out. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1005596 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1005596
  - kevincrane 12y ago
    Yeah, I saw that (the default for one of them changed to 5 for some reason). Searching around, I found this link: https://wiki.mozilla.org/QA/Newtab_page_Tiles/Test_Plan https://wiki.mozilla.org/QA/Newtab_page_Tiles/Test_Plan It looks like something about the tabs changed for Firefox 33, but I really can't tell what from that document. The two notable parts I saw were: - If there is not enough space for the fixed size tile and it's gutters, rows and/or columns are removed from the grid. - In the Tile Grid, there will be Top Sites tiles (based on user frequency), but also Sponsored or Partner tiles. I don't know why the first one changed (as opposed to just scaling the tiles like they did before). The second one seems like a whole different scary thing.

justcommenting 12y ago

still no cookie UI fix.... very disappointing, especially for an organization that claims to pride itself on protecting user privacy while dropping google analytics and google cookies on users... probably because they're so heavily dependent on google's money.

ep103 12y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454456
- justcommenting 12y ago
  when you go to getfirefox.com, you'll be tracked by google analytics as you're reading about mozilla's "commitment to your privacy". think one cookie is better than two? maybe, but the context matters here. it took mozilla seven years to stop sending other google cookies along with safebrowsing update requests, including about half a year after the washington post reported that NSA was using this behavior/functionality for targeting: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255 Mozilla never seems to have anything to say about Google PREF cookies being trivially correlated to google logins from the same IP within a certain timeframe. more to the point, Firefox still can't be trusted to even tell you which cookies have been dropped in its default configuration through the UI, let alone have a default configuration that limits persistent forms of tracking from its primary sponsor. i find this galling given their marketing push around mozilla's "commitment to your privacy".

munimkazia 12y ago

The "send to chromecast" feature on Firefox android app is awesome, but I was kinda hoping that they added this to the desktop application too. I know that stuff like this is usually left for add-ons, but there isn't a good firefox add on which does Chromecast, unlike the several options on the Chrome web store.

hackmiester 12y ago
The Chromecast libraries are available to all Android apps. On the PC, you have to actually run your Chromecast app inside of Chrome. So, Firefox would have to write an equivalent library.
mmastrac 12y ago
Is there even a stable, published API for this that a desktop app could use? I always believed that Chromecast support was a platform thing handled by the Chromecast API which is effectively a binary blob. Regardless, I imagine that Firefox will end up with some sort of support for pushing streams when the MatchStick is released, but whether it supports Chromecast is a question yet unanswered.
- munimkazia 12y ago
  Oh. I am kinda surprised that the API isn't an open API. I don't know why I just assumed that it is.
Excavator 12y ago
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=901803#c47 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=901803#c47 "Like Hubert said, Chromecast isn't open source. Getting it to work on desktop would require some reverse engineering and may or may not be impossible (I've heard that the Desktop extension for Chrome is all JS though, so that code may be useable)." You might also be interested in the "casting support" bugs: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=921924&hide_resolved=1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=92192...
- 12y ago

whoisthemachine 12y ago

Anxiously awaiting the Waterfox build!

justcommenting 12y ago
and the Tor Browser Bundle build! :-)
nly 12y ago
I don't get the appeal of Waterfox. In my experience Intels C++ compiler isn't that good outside of SIMD, with inferior code generation to both GCC and Clang. What compiler are they benchmarking against on their homepage?
- verbatim 12y ago
  I don't either, but I looked at their home page, and am not really inclined to trust performance claims of someone that uses a graph like the one under "General Benchmarks: Higher is Better" which uses a nice smooth curve to demonstrate... nothing, since the different data points are unrelated.
  - whoisthemachine 12y ago
    Yes I agree, his benchmarks seem like mostly fluff to me.
- whoisthemachine 12y ago
  I'm not sure, but I used to run the Nightly build on all of my Windows machines in order to use 64-bit Firefox and anecdotally Waterfox does "feel" quite a bit faster. I definitely notice fewer pauses.

xenophonf 12y ago

So here's something I've noticed that's confused me about Firefox's cookie handling: I have cookies turned off, but a PREF cookie for google.com keeps getting set. I've even tried blocking cookies from google.com, but I still see this cookie. I turned off Do Not Track but haven't tried disabling SafeBrowsing or all my extensions, so maybe it is one of those. Has anyone noticed this, too?

ewang1 12y ago
It's probably related to their Google search partnership.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  It's more likely to be a preemptive cookie set by a privacy extension.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- justcommenting 12y ago
  It's more likely to be associated with built-in malware protection/phishing protection from Google. In Firefox's settings under Security, you can un-check "block reported attack sites" and "block reported web forgeries" and these cookies should disappear after running BleachBit. these types of cookies may seem benign and helpful to users (and maybe they are), but i also wouldn't doubt that Google uses this information for persistent tracking. it's already been disclosed that NSA uses Google PREF cookies to track users: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10/nsa-uses-google-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10... hence my other dispirited comment about the cookie UI... edit: reworded/clarified
  - xenophonf 12y ago
    At first I was only concerned about web page access tracking via this cookie (which indeed is set because of Safe Browsing---I turned both settings off, cleared my history, and the cookie is gone). If this cookie could be abused for location tracking, maybe it would be a good idea to leave Safe Browsing disabled.

nemetroid 12y ago

> Improved search experience through the location bar [1] Really happy to see this one. Previously single-word searches were so slow that I'd usually have time to remember that they are slow, press C-e, and enter the same search term in the search bar, all before the browser realises there is no matching host and does a web search instead. 1: http://msujaws.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/faster-and-snappier-searches-now-in-firefox-aurora/ http://msujaws.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/faster-and-snappier-...

fpgaminer 12y ago
I really hope this also fixes Firefox's behavior with one word searches and misbehaving DNS servers. Previously, if your DNS server returned advertising for bad DNS queries, one word "searches" would result in displaying your DNS server's ad page (since Firefox did a DNS query, assuming you meant a hostname instead of a one word search). This has been broken behavior in Firefox for quite awhile, with no workaround other than to install a different omnibar. I don't understand why Mozilla thought treating single words as hostnames in the omnibar made sense for the majority of people, especially when the majority of people are also subjected to misbehaving DNS servers.
- worklogin 12y ago
  You shouldn't be searching in the URL bar. There is a search bar for that. If anything, it should be a toggle to allow searches to execute from URL bar input, but for IT folks and others who recognize the distinction, searches from the URL bar are frustrating and insecure.
  - fpgaminer 12y ago
    Do you have research to back up the statement that "searches from the URL bar are frustrating"? I could cite Chrome's market share as an indirect, empirical study indicating the contrary. Regardless, your comment is tangential to mine. My comment was about a bug in an existing Firefox feature. Whether that feature should exist in the first place or not is only tangentially related.

skrowl 12y ago

Best browser keeps getting better. "If you know a Chrome user, get them to switch to Firefox" is going to be the new "If you know an IE user ..."

spindritf 12y ago
I use Firefox as my main browser but that is, sadly, not true. Chrome remains faster, especially with js heavy webapplications. Some don't work in fx at all.
- dangayle 12y ago
  Unless you have open a bunch of tabs, like I typically do. With multiple tabs, Firefox is easily the best performer. Chrome is the only app I have on my Macbook Air that pushes it into overheating, turning it into a lap-frying iron skillet.
  - morganvachon 12y ago
    > Chrome is the only app I have on my Macbook Air that pushes it into overheating, turning it into a lap-frying iron skillet. This is even more obvious on older Macs. I've got a Core 2 Duo mini that absolutely chokes on more than a few tabs in Chrome/Chromium, but runs acceptably well with Firefox even with ten or more tabs open, and flies with Safari. I really wish someone would put out a Chromium based, stripped down browser for OS X versions older than Mavericks. I think the rendering engine is solid, it's all the fluff that slows it down.
- pwnna 12y ago
  Most of the time that's because those apps were developed for Chrome (much like how they used to be developed for IE). Which brings me to another point: cross browser testing is important.
- jarin 12y ago
  Strangely enough, I've recently switched back to Safari because it's pretty good in Yosemite and has a fairly decent extension ecosystem now.

romanovcode 12y ago

Jeez FF really stepping up the game. Seems like 32 was released just yesterday. I'm not sure if there are any performance issues since I switched to FF about a year ago when bought new laptop with SSD and 16 gigs of ram it's as fast as Chrome. As for webdev tools, they are not worse, you are just too used to webkit ones. I might even say that FF has better dev tools because you can modify request and re-send it. I switched because Google is trying to integrate Google too much into Chrome. That's definitely not something I look in a browser since I would like it to be independent and not spy on what I type/do. Anyway, if anyone who is contributing to FF reading this I just want to thank you for best browser ever.

magicalist 12y ago
> Seems like 32 was released just yesterday Every six weeks, as it's been for like three years now...
Yoric 12y ago
Thanks :)
- fubu 12y ago
  Yoric is an engineer at Mozilla. "Thanks" seems relevant and the downvotes seem unnecessary.
kangax 12y ago
You still can't edit JS like you can in chrome devtools. This is such a boon and a basic thing, really, that I can't switch until they add it. Aside from that, yeah, FF is getting pretty good.
- Yoric 12y ago
  Have you filed a bug on the topic? I'm sure the devtools team would be interested.
scope 12y ago
> I'm not sure if there are any performance issues I also use Firefox on a MacBook Pro(2014), I don't know if this existed before or not but, under battery > Apps using significant enery, Firefox is one of em', opening the same exact tabs on Safari doesn't show safari on the list is this because apps that come with Apple are not included in the list or is Safari better at Energy consumption?

zenciadam 12y ago

Is this the version that doesn't use 100% of your memory with more than three tabs open?

elektronjunge 12y ago
It hasn't done that in years. I have ~20 tabs open and about 500 MB of memory used. For comparison chrome uses the same amount of memory at about 10 tabs open.
- zenciadam 12y ago
  Just had to killall firefox. So I beg to differ. They just blame the third party addons. Like ABP, because it's your fault for installing one of the most popular plugins.
  - forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
    I use ABP and haven't run into this issue at all. Sounds like something's wrong with your install.
  - nnethercote 12y ago
    We can't act on vague complaints. We need data. Fortunately there's an easy way to get it. Can you visit about:memory when memory usage gets high, click on the "Measure" button and post the results here, or email me, or file a bug at bugzilla.mozilla.org and put "[MemShrink]" in the "whiteboard" field? Thank you.

chdir 12y ago

I'd be delighted to use FF on iPad. I do a lot of leisure browsing/reading and I want to support FF on all my devices. Is their stand still the same i.e. We refuse to bring Firefox to iOS until Apple lets us use our web engine ? http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/15/mozilla-ceo-we-refuse-to-bring-firefox-to-ios-until-apple-lets-us-use-our-web-engine/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/15/mozilla-ceo-we-refuse-to-b...

soperj 12y ago
I'd blame apple, not firefox. What's the point in them wasting their time just skinning something that is guaranteed to be slower than Safari?
- caiob 12y ago
  Not valid for iOS8, as they introduced the WKWebView.
- amartya916 12y ago
  Yes, Apple is definitely to "blame" as far as handicapping UIWebViews are concerned. That being said, the new WKWebview is supposed to have all the Javascript optimizations (and the Nitro engine) that mobile Safari uses. Chances are that it might still not be as fast as Safari, but Firefox should bite the bullet and just do it because: a. Firefox cannot afford to not be on all platforms. With computing devices converging and relying on handshakes (data syncing?), missing out on a major mobile platform is foolish. b. In a related point, syncing bookmarks/tabs via Firefox sync is severely handicapped by it's absence on iOS. c. There is a fantastic niche where FF can fit in on iOS. It'd be as privacy centric as Safari and with an iOS launch would be cross-platform like Chrome (without Google peddling their products front and centre). They could also get some inspiration from mobile Opera on iOS that has fantastic data saving features in-built.
  - apayan 12y ago
    For what it's worth, WKWebView is still astonishingly buggy and hangs quite a bit when loading some pages with XHRs. There are some other bugs that trigger these 10+ second hangs, but we couldn't delay shipping anymore so we reverted back to UIWebView.

AshleysBrain 12y ago

I think Firefox 33 also enables Direct3D 11 rendering on Windows. Can anyone confirm? I've just been digging through bugzilla and can't find a clear reference to that, but it's an interesting change if so.

maxerickson 12y ago
It's mentioned here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/OffMainThreadCompositing https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/OffMainThreadCompositi... (which is the destination of the not very obviously named link in the "Windows: OMTC enabled by default" change, I had followed it earlier to see what OMTC meant)

dannysu 12y ago

I read the changelog and saw that proprietary window.crypto functions are removed. I actually make use of window.crypto.getRandomValues(), and good thing that's not going away: https://wiki.mozilla.org/SecurityEngineering/Removing_Proprietary_window.crypto_Functions https://wiki.mozilla.org/SecurityEngineering/Removing_Propri...

bzbarsky 12y ago
getRandomValues is not proprietary. The in-progress spec is at http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/#RandomSource-method-getRandomValues http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/#RandomSource-method-getRa...

Eleopteryx 12y ago

I can finally watch 60FPS videos on YouTube thanks to the HTML5 player being fully functional now.

Excavator 12y ago
Link to an example video? Anything more "advanced" than 720p@30FPS seems to require DASH support or the like?
imaginenore 12y ago
Youtube has 60fps videos?

jodybdesigns 12y ago

I am currently running Win10 Dev preview full fledged on a daily work machine. Off topic, Win 10 works great except for a few USB bugs not allowing me to format USB drives. My usage is not as high as im reading. But a lot of my usage comes from Adblock. I have 5 browser windows open, with about 5-10 tabs each, im currently @ 760mb on Win 10. A nice bug I get is from Firebug. When I am debugging a site, and I try to hover over my Taskbar icons to grab a new window, it flashes for about 2 seconds on whatever im hovering, and I have to try again, the second try usually leaves my taskbar windows open. If I close Firebug, this problem stops. I also notice when I run flash (I stream mixtapes from datpiff.com), my usage goes sky high. I have been trying some debug options in about:config, and I think I have knocked the usage down by modifying a few lines. Also another bug I experience on Win10 with Firefox is my top bar will completely disappear, I have to alt+F4 to close out Firefox and re-open. Maybe Firefox 33 will fix some of these issues.

jodybdesigns 12y ago
* I managed to fix my top bar issue within minutes of my post. Don't know why, but I decided to add a skin to my Firefox ui - this fixed my issue 100% it seems, I am not getting the error at all anymore

yarrel 12y ago

Did they remove the DRM infection mechanism in this build?

J_Darnley 12y ago

I asked this last time... Does this remove the horrible Australis UI?

lucb1e 12y ago
In that case I am obliged to ask: I love the Australis UI, did they make it stay?
cpeterso 12y ago
Yes.

Spiritus 12y ago

I wish they would put some effort into making Firefox feel more native on OS X, for example: - Builtin support for Keychain (without relying on an extension). - swipe-animation when going forward/backwards in history. - "over-scroll" (you know, when you can sort sort scroll past the top and bottom of the page). I know it sounds a bit vain, but I simply can't make a switch unless the look and feel is native to OS X.

rdatajef2 12y ago
I agree that native to OS X would be nice, but I would immediately disable over-scroll if it were on by default. Luckily, FF is pretty good about giving power users this kind of flexibility. I haven't found a way to disable it on Safari for instance, though it's not my primary browser so it's not too big a deal. Another small OS X thing that FF is missing is three-finger tap to view dictionary definitions.
- Excavator 12y ago
  Over-scroll was backed out due to performance issues¹, the bug² number for the future implementation of it is 939480. 1: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=946862 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=946862 2: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939480 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939480

Animats 12y ago

It's disappointing that the H.264 video player support is not open source. Most of the patents managed by MPEG-LA have expired, and the ones that remain are either encoding-side only or for features nobody uses much, like interlace. Check out the patent lists. http://www.osnews.com/story/24954/US_Patent_Expiration_for_MP3_MPEG-2_H_264/ http://www.osnews.com/story/24954/US_Patent_Expiration_for_M... http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#MPEG-1_Audio_Layer_3_patents http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#MPEG-1_Au... Most of the remaining patents expire in 2015. There are a few for 2017, but they're for features nobody really needs in a computer decoder.

thristian 12y ago
You mean this H.264 video player? https://github.com/cisco/openh264 https://github.com/cisco/openh264
- Animats 12y ago
  Cisco paid for the MPEG-LA licenses on that. Back in 2013, they probably had to, but more patents have expired since then, and it's probably out of patent now, unless they put in extra stuff like N-channel audio.
  - drdaeman 12y ago
    If/when patents are gone, you could legally use and distribute self-compiled binaries, since source is already under BSD license.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  Note that Firefox only uses OpenH264 for WebRTC video, not the <video> tag. OpenH264 only supports H.264 Baseline Profile, not the Main or High Profiles commonly used for embedded video. Also, MP4 videos often use AAC audio, which Firefox can't playback.

notastartup 12y ago

I begin to use Firefox more now than Chrome. Chrome has gotten really slow. like I navigate to a url, it will redirect to about:blank; watching youtube or soundcloud sends cpu crazy active. i remember I switched to chrome from firefox 5 years ago because of those reasons. now I find myself using firefox for the same reason, chrome is sluggish. I also don't feel creeped out.

twombly 12y ago

Do the Firefox releases have anything to do with the Spidermonkey releases? I've been seeing the placeholder page for Spidermonkey 31 for a couple of months now...

megablast 12y ago

I had a real problem updating from 31 to 32. What usually is done automatically did not work. It kept on asking me if I would like to, and after saying yes it just kept stalling. This was in 2 different workplaces and at home, where I have not had trouble before. I ended up having to download it from the website, which was not an obvious experience.

zobzu 12y ago

Interestingly this is not mentioned in this huge post, but according to http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/ Firefox JS is faster than Chrome and Safari in all benchmarks in both 32 and 64bit modes since quite a few month! It used to be that Chrome marketing was pushing for this as being so much faster on Chrome than others so that's a pretty nice feat.

ksec 12y ago
Because JS Speed don't matter any more, at least out of 90% of times for 90% of internet users. Speed for casual users, means rendering speed, network speed, Browser and web page responsiveness, startup speed etc. Although Firefox did make many incremental steps over the years. It is still not anywhere near the Blink / Chromium offers such as Google Chrome and Opera. e10s should make Firefox competitive. And its still quite a while before it lands.
- zobzu 12y ago
  i still think being faster than chrome js is a nice feat. specially for html5 gaming. i dont think chrome having faster js back in the days did change much user-wise. gmail was as fast in firefox as it was in chrome... ;)

AndyKelley 12y ago

Still doesn't have the one feature I've been waiting for: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=792831 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=792831