Slashdot Mirror

You want the Classic Theme Restorer add-on. It puts Firefox back to close to the old way, including tabs below.

For those that want the old GUI back: Classic Theme Restorer.

This whole line of thought is broken by bad assumptions. You ask:

How is the median user (not an outlier technophile like much of the Slashdot population) expected to parse out a download URL from the result of wget http://getfirefox.com/ [getfirefox.com] or wget http://mozilla.org/ [mozilla.org] without using IE?

If you didn't include those URL's, you'd be closer to having a point. However, you did include them. Where'd they get those? They can get the download URL from the same place (maybe it was a friend, or an email, or an IM, or off a magazine ad... I have no idea).

You also added in the condition that it be for a median user, which the AC that TechyImmigrant was replying to did not include.

For a median user, they'll probably keep using whatever was installed when they bought their system, or maybe something someone else installed for them.
Slight above that, it depends on their OS. If on Windows, they'll probably use IE, search bing for Firefox or Chrome, and click around (duh).
That still doesn't apply to the question... how else are you supposed to download ?

That's a great question. You can't even use a naive "telnet getfirefox.com 80"... that'll just get you a 403 forbidden! If you include the "Host: getfirefox.com", then it'll give you a redirect to https://www.mozilla.org/firefo...
NOTE: that's https... if you try to go to the non-ssl version, it just redirects to the HTTPS again. So you can't get that without something like "openssl s_client -connect www.mozilla.org:443", and I don't think you'll find that on windows.

ftp works with a little digging through ftp.mozilla.org (assuming you know that url). Finding the binary is pretty easy. One needs to know some basics, but it's one of the easiest protocols out there. Ok for a median user? probably not. But it IS an option.

You could also have someone email it to you (if you can get files that big), or send you a CD or thumb drive with it (ex. your kind sysadmin at work might do this for you if you ask nice just to get rid of another IE 6 user). This technique worked for newbs back in the day (aol cd's and floppies anyone?), so why not now?

This whole line of thought is broken by bad assumptions. You ask:

How is the median user (not an outlier technophile like much of the Slashdot population) expected to parse out a download URL from the result of wget http://getfirefox.com/ [getfirefox.com] or wget http://mozilla.org/ [mozilla.org] without using IE?

If you didn't include those URL's, you'd be closer to having a point. However, you did include them. Where'd they get those? They can get the download URL from the same place (maybe it was a friend, or an email, or an IM, or off a magazine ad... I have no idea).

You also added in the condition that it be for a median user, which the AC that TechyImmigrant was replying to did not include.

For a median user, they'll probably keep using whatever was installed when they bought their system, or maybe something someone else installed for them.
Slight above that, it depends on their OS. If on Windows, they'll probably use IE, search bing for Firefox or Chrome, and click around (duh).
That still doesn't apply to the question... how else are you supposed to download ?

That's a great question. You can't even use a naive "telnet getfirefox.com 80"... that'll just get you a 403 forbidden! If you include the "Host: getfirefox.com", then it'll give you a redirect to https://www.mozilla.org/firefo...
NOTE: that's https... if you try to go to the non-ssl version, it just redirects to the HTTPS again. So you can't get that without something like "openssl s_client -connect www.mozilla.org:443", and I don't think you'll find that on windows.

ftp works with a little digging through ftp.mozilla.org (assuming you know that url). Finding the binary is pretty easy. One needs to know some basics, but it's one of the easiest protocols out there. Ok for a median user? probably not. But it IS an option.

You could also have someone email it to you (if you can get files that big), or send you a CD or thumb drive with it (ex. your kind sysadmin at work might do this for you if you ask nice just to get rid of another IE 6 user). This technique worked for newbs back in the day (aol cd's and floppies anyone?), so why not now?

C:\Users\pino>wget
wget: missing URL
Usage: wget [OPTION]... [URL]...

Try `wget --help' for more options.

How is the median user (not an outlier technophile like much of the Slashdot population) expected to parse out a download URL from the result of wget http://getfirefox.com/ or wget http://mozilla.org/ without using IE?

"... before I knew to block all those trackers..."

Ghostery for Firefox.
Ghostery for Chrome.

Google is on the way down, sadly. Part of the URL for Ghostery for Chrome is: mlomiejdfkolichcflejclcbmpeaniij

This Slashdot story is about Google, but the linked story only gives "facts" that are apparent on the surface. Below the surface, Google is going the way of Hewlett-Packard, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Tektronix: Slow and sometimes fast degradation. Yes, I feel I am qualified to make that statement.

Alternatively, try Resurrect Pages - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/

I use ErrorZilla Mod. It lets me 'wayback' with one click, and then I get to choose which dates make sense.

Try downloading with the Firefox extension Download Helper

Only slightly offtopic: Here's a similar use-case and how I solved it. The problem is 'collecting' job ads efficiently to spend my time applying for.

Requirement: Avoid redundant re-reading of the same stupids ads over and over, (so alway view ads boards by date, most recent ads first; and maybe use 'email search by date filters' too). Also, I want to avoid applying with recruiters as much as possible by applying only directly to firms whenever possible, etc.

The Scrapbook extension allows me to quickly select html verbatum from any web page and save it locally to disk with my notes, while a right-click takes me to the original web page. I save these in 'dated' folders, at least initially to save time, so I can stay focused to the task at-hand. Even when the original webpage is gone, I still have a copy of it, (and I didn't print or save any paper either).

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

Scrapbook allows me to save these pages locally to disk in folders, *and* the extension appears in the sidebar, *and* allows me to prioritize the ads worth applying to simply by re-ordering them up and down, using the mouse; and also move them to other folders

This is the best solution I've found so far, and if anyone knows something better I'm eager to read.

It's absolutely true. There were a bunch of blog posts by Mozilla employees supporting Brendan as CEO (even though many disagreed with his position on Prop 8), all completely ignored by the media. Looking at the relevant date range on http://planet.mozilla.org/ should find them...

> That font is hideous and unreadable,

I happen to think it's much more readable. The font wasn't messed with, he simply wrapped his post in tt tags, which ... unsurprisingly, is converted to whatever font your browser has configured to handle Teletype Text. I hope you can understand why it is considered more readable by many people, who happen to use computers daily.

You can probably change your font handling via

Chrome - https://support.google.com/chr... (look for fixed width font in your font settings)
Mozilla - https://support.mozilla.org/en...
(or use a plugin, or other guide, etc)

None of this has to do with his post and a great deal with your unfamiliarity with anything other than (probably) facebook. If you don't like it, as he suggested, change it.

Because I was running Certificate Patrol, my browser had already saved the previous certificates from the bank websites and was in a position to automatically notifiy me if anything changes. (I've been seeing a lot of Certificate Patrol notifications recently across the web in general, right after this HeartBleed problem came out.)

As for the Canadian Banks, I can say that I saw no Certificate Fingerprint change in TD, RBC and Tangerine. But PC Financial had changed their certificate very recently. I don't use BMO or Scotia so I can't comment on those ones.

there should line between tech and politics, but it's very difficult. Brendan was one of the Founders of the Mozilla Foundation, I think he does believe what Mozilla stands for, it's sad that he left. I still believe in the Manifesto "People are needed to make the Internet open and participatory - people acting as individuals, working together in groups, and leading others. The Mozilla Foundation is committed to advancing the principles set out in the Mozilla Manifesto. We invite others to join us and make the Internet an ever better place for everyone." Here's the link to the Mozilla Manifesto: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/a...

Three board members didn't quit over Brendan's presence as CEO. But the Wall Street Journal _did_ make up a story to that effect, which has gotten widely quoted, and refused to retract it when it was pointed out it was false.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/... has a Q&A on the issue, but basically two of the board members had wanted to move on to other things for a while but stuck it out until the end of the CEO search (because that was the board's primary job at the time). They left the board as soon as a CEO was chosen, a week or two before the choice was even announced.

The third board member who left did leave because he did not think Brendan would make a good CEO, but for reasons that have nothing to do with the Prop 8 mess.

The Guardian is clear that Brendan had no intention of stepping down:

Mozilla CEO insists he won't resign over 'private' support for gay marriage ban

By the same token the chair woman's statement says:

We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.

In her post she does not even mention one good thing Brendan has done while at Mozilla. To me that is disgusting. There are very few people who have done more for freedom on the Internet. He was one of the founders of Mozilla, who managed to start a movement that ended up taking down IE and exalting web standards. Not just by ranting but by using his gifts, he made a statement by simply showing a better way. He invented JavaScript which is now driving the web applications movement (Java failed at this). As CTO he backed Opus which is an outstanding open audio codec and also Daala which aims to do the same for video. Mozilla was also the first to implement SVG in the browser.

I don't think it is too relevant that what Mozilla did could be illegal. Brendan helped start Mozilla I don't think he wants to destroy it. He stands for freedom on the web and Mozilla is in an incredibly vulnerable position. On his blog he says:

I’m proud to have done with Firefox at Mozilla. I encourage all Mozillians to keep going. Firefox OS is even more daunting, and more important. Thanks indeed to all who have supported me, and to all my colleagues over the years, at Mozilla, in standards bodies, and at conferences around the world. I will be less visible online, but still around.

They have let go of visionary with a proven track record, they do not know who will fill his shoes. That puts the jobs of everyone in Mozilla on the line.

Get a persona login and watch the townhall meeting that reveals the real truth.

To be clear, I think Eich was scapegoated

Completely and utterly false. Get a persona login and watch the townhall meeting that reveals the real truth.

Tabs on the side is the only way to browse with wide-screen monitors (and I use narrow tabs on side with vertical monitors). Try Tabkit 2nd edition

Doesn't stop web-bugs.

Ghostery is better, both is best, but with top-level domains allowed in no-script.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... It just works. Together with old AdBlock, no more tracking of me anywhere.

Consider this: What makes the guy at OKCupid any different from Sen. Joe McCarthy?

The coercive power of the state for a start. And, of course, the fact pointed out by GP, that OKC is merely making a recommendation, which is, your purple wig example notwithstanding, is a "demand" more easily ignored than a summons from the House. I mean, get real dude!

That being said, to urge a boycott of a company (which has, in light of this controversy, publicly stated support for marriage equality) on the basis of a $1,000 donation made by a CEO appointed some 5 years after said donation (which donation was, in any case, a perfectly legitimate expression of that individual's personal convictions) seems unduly zealous to me. Especially when far more compelling reasons could be given for boycotting nearly each and every substitute product.

Of course if LGBT issues outrank one's other concerns, such zealotry is equally a perfectly legitimate expression of personal conviction. I however, as a truly caring and compassionate human being (and as a sociopath that requires some effort let me tell you!), shall continue to use Firefox.

*Cough* Nonsense. What happened to Comodo? [youtube.com] After they were compromised 3 times and issued numerous false certificates?

That was a long time ago, and SSL threat mitigation has been stepped up a LOT recently. A better example would be DigiNotar, which was revoked following its breach 2 years ago.

do it yourself (I get that this is often not an option, but including for completeness)

Sometimes it isn't an option because your fix gets rejected (or left to idle in an obscure bug report)

For example, one build utility had a bug where it checked for the presense of a compiler, but not if it was functional. The fix was rejected because the build utility doesn't check path - despite the fact that it does so for a different compiler. (Explicitly defining which compiler to use defeats the purpose of using said tool in the first place - I'd just use Makefile instead.)

Did you know it took 10+ years for Mozilla to fix the alert() denial loop? That bug is older than Mozilla itself, and the most obvious fix of "checkbox to stop further dialogs" was dismissed as a hack (compared to the destructive hack of force-killing Mozilla.)

A homosexual Mozilla employee's take on the topic: http://subfictional.com/2014/0...
A statement from Mitch Baker, Mozilla chairperson: https://blog.lizardwrangler.co...
A statement from Brendan himself: https://brendaneich.com/2014/0...
An official Mozilla statement on its policy regarding employee and contributor diversity: https://blog.mozilla.org/press...

That code already exists.

From Wikipedia:

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. Its verb form, "to stream", refers to the process of delivering media in this manner; the term refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than the medium itself.

a) provider = DVD player
b) received and presented by = TV

If we (I) want to be particularly bloody-minded and pedantic about it, anything you play from a DVD player is "streaming" as it's traveling over the wires connecting your DVD player and TV/monitor. After all, it's presented as a constant stream, isn't it? And you can pause streaming content, can't you? It's a rather nebulous term like "The Cloud", AKA "put it on somebody else's server."

I also laugh inside every time I run into a site that talks about streaming, yet the video file can still be grabbed by DownloadHelper, as it's not streaming even by the more normal definition.

after a string of recent short-tenured CEOs at Mozilla's helm.
Kovacs became CEO in 2010, and announced his departure in 2013, I think 7-year veteran Jay Sullivan has been acting CEO since then. Before that John Lilly was CEO for 2 years, taking over from Mitchell Baker who remains as Chairman. Two short-term CEOs in a row makes a pair, not a string.

People who don't like Firefox's six-week release cadence can quit bitching and run the Firefox Extended Support Release.

Greasemonkey to the rescue!

http://userscripts.org/scripts...

29 beta here and lost 1/2 hour to try rearrange things ... no much luck. But found this: https://addons.mozilla.org/bg/... which make me happy again.

The SeaMonkey site has an "extract to subdirectory &run" Linux release on the front page. I'm finding that quite a bit can be done to "update" the UIusing just themes & extensions over at "SeaMonkey Addons" like MonkeyFix and Sea Fox, but Iget the sense that a lot more can be done via about:config.

If this were Microsoft we wouldn't be remotely apologetic about it. We'd bitch, not use the new interface, and wait for the drop in funds to beat sense back into them.

ha ha, you're probably right :)
On ./ we're notorious for bashing MS. Though I feel we've become less aggressive about it in recent years.
- What shame, I loved to hate Microsoft; life was easier when evil was well-defined :)

Except Mozilla seems pretty immune/oblivious to that last point.

If you think Mozilla doesn't care about the community, the feedback and user adoption (market share), I suggest that you listen in on some of the Mozilla project meetings, videos here: https://air.mozilla.org/?tag=m...

I think there is pros and cons, to landing a big UI change at once, as oppose to introducing the changes one by one over time. Either way, I don't think Firefox will maintain or grow it's market share without changing and taking chances... Like I said, I'm no fan of fancy UIs, but IMO the UI overhaul could have been much worse. Just, look at office 2007 or gnome-shell...

If you change things that affect every user you have in order to satisfy theoretical needs for a future user that you don't have

I don't think all power users are affected by the changes, but some arguably will be. I do think that the wast majority of users (non-power-users) will be affected positively. I suspect that a lot of the current non-powerusers don't customize firefox because it's hard.

Really? The Firefox 4 mockup page on their wiki contains some discussion on the Chrome UI, so it seems unlikely that Mozilla had developed something along the lines of the Chrome UI before Google did. Otherwise they could've just referred to their own designs rather than Google's.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Talk%...

Do you have any links to these pre-Chrome Firefox mockups?

Mozilla has a page on how to use CSS variables here: https://developer.mozilla.org/...

For the past couple of years the Mozilla developers have been hard at work removing features from Firefox and making it less and less useful. We've been able to (mostly) work around these stupid, pointless changes with the use of additional extensions. Having to add extensions to bring back features that have been removed is stupid, but it works.

Now, with the new "Australis" design they take things to a whole new level. Australis completely destroys almost everything that made Firefox popular in the first place. An enormous amount of flexibility and customizability has been removed. But not just removed. Completely ripped out in such a way that getting it back through extensions (which are just bits of Javascript and CSS) will be difficult, if not impossible. Extensions such as "Classic Theme Restorer" attempt to undo some of the damage, but are only able to do so in a very limited way.

Firefox, as we know it, will soon be gone. What a bunch of assholes.

Firefox 31 only just fixed a bug where CSS variables of data: images in generated content are not visible until the real (non-var) string is used
Also, they have just changed the format spec for CSS variables in the last day or two from var-foo: stringOfProperties to --foo: stringOfProperties and as a property from var(foo) to var(--foo), so the the testcase on that bug won't work once Firefox updates to the new format.

Firefox 31 only just fixed a bug where CSS variables of data: images in generated content are not visible until the real (non-var) string is used
Also, they have just changed the format spec for CSS variables in the last day or two from var-foo: stringOfProperties to --foo: stringOfProperties and as a property from var(foo) to var(--foo), so the the testcase on that bug won't work once Firefox updates to the new format.

They did already, it was posted here a week ago. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/...

Well, they did eventually port it to Firefox. The demo is down right now, but it ran fine at least on Ubuntu.

Really exicited to see if they port this to Firefox. They have already ported the version 3 of the Unreal Engine to Firefox, using OpenGL for graphics and Asm.js for code. The speed difference compared to the native version should be very small to non-existent, since Asm.js is statically compiled.

If only we had something like an abbreviation tag or something to prevent these confusions!
Unfortunately some parts of the HTML standard are so underused many people don't know they exist except for people who write things like accessible compliant pages.

Are you on Windows 7 with IE 10 installed and broken R600 graphics drivers?

FTFO.

It boggles my mind that they released the browser with this bug unresolved.

You can only resolve bugs in your code. That's a bug in ATI's drivers, what they can do is to work around the bug, which they did.

As covered on Slashdot previously: Australis is landing. If you read the official blog post you'll get the impression that this is all about improvements, but if you pay a bit more attention you'll see it's actually more about removing most of the in-browser customizability.

That's such a big change in direction that I don't think it's reasonable to consider Firefox 29 the same browser as previous versions, and I don't think anybody should automatically move from one to the other.

Users of Windows 7 and Windows 8 should pay close attention to the Known Issues section of the Release Notes and and apply the workaround mentioned. The text rendering issue is quite severe.

Users of Windows 7 and Windows 8 should pay close attention to the Known Issues section of the Release Notes and and apply the workaround mentioned. The text rendering issue is quite severe.

I use the Tree Style Tab plugin and usually have over a hundred tabs open as well. I'll keep the session open for days, too. It's easier than searching through your history to find that thing you saw a few days ago and the page is intact from when you loaded it last which is useful for dynamic content. Plus, everything is automatically hierarchically sorted, so it's easy to push and pop my browsing stack! Since I no longer own a a 4:3 monitor it's the perfect way to fill up the extra vertical space. It's an essential plugin for me now, up there with Noscript, Autopager, AdBlock+ and Ghostery.

I've had a love / hate relationship with Firefox for many years - but for about the past 18 months it's been mostly stable.

Unless you're going to be submitting bug reports about the browser, or need bleeding-edge features (like VP9), you should just stay on the ESR branch:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/...

They make it hard to find, but I wouldn't use anything else... Those are the REAL stable releases, while their numbered releases are just betas.

With distros like CentOS/RHEL, the ESR version is in the yum repo, so you get a stable browser, updates are seamless, and you may not even notice the change when a new version gets installed.

"bugzilla discussion" was supposed to link to the bugzilla discussion

Installed the update and it didn't turn my laptop into a smoking crater on my desk; so far, so good..

Are you on Windows 7 with IE 10 installed? Or Windows 8.1?

Text Rendering Issues on Windows 7 with Platform Update KB2670838 (MSIE 10 Prerequisite) or on Windows 8.1

It boggles my mind that they released the browser with this bug unresolved. Almost 500 comments on the Bugzilla entry and the end result was "ship it!" I mean, look at some of these screenshots:

https://bug812695.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=682682
https://bug812695.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=735090
https://bug812695.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=797936
https://bug812695.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=720401

Who gives a damn if a large number of users can't even read the text on a page because, OMG!, we've just gotta have an HTML5 volume control! Someone probably should mention to Mozilla that just ripping off Chrome's look and release cycle doesn't really work if you don't also have Google's engineering and QA teams.

I don't think we need any more evidence that nobody is left steering the Firefox ship these days besides the cabin boy "designers".

Installed the update and it didn't turn my laptop into a smoking crater on my desk; so far, so good..

Are you on Windows 7 with IE 10 installed? Or Windows 8.1?

Text Rendering Issues on Windows 7 with Platform Update KB2670838 (MSIE 10 Prerequisite) or on Windows 8.1

It boggles my mind that they released the browser with this bug unresolved. Almost 500 comments on the Bugzilla entry and the end result was "ship it!" I mean, look at some of these screenshots:

https://bug812695.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=682682
https://bug812695.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=735090
https://bug812695.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=797936
https://bug812695.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=720401

Who gives a damn if a large number of users can't even read the text on a page because, OMG!, we've just gotta have an HTML5 volume control! Someone probably should mention to Mozilla that just ripping off Chrome's look and release cycle doesn't really work if you don't also have Google's engineering and QA teams.

I don't think we need any more evidence that nobody is left steering the Firefox ship these days besides the cabin boy "designers".