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You're golden!

For now, Flashblock does that.

The only problem i've seen with Firefox today is the updates are way too fast. The plug-ins and extentions aren't fast enough to follow becomes obsolete and break. It's not all the updates but I've seen some of it not compatible anymore

Running the ESR version of Firefox might alleviate that a bit.

Anyone else have trouble accessing the article on Firefox? I get presented a certificate error, but without the button to bypass it, and the HTTP site auto-redirects to the HTTPS site. Looks like the exact same as Bugzilla #799836.

So I am basically locked out from viewing Mozilla's own blog when using their very own browser? I don't have Chrome on this machine. I can't believe I am about to install Chrome just to view Mozilla's own blog!

Anyone else have trouble accessing the article on Firefox? I get presented a certificate error, but without the button to bypass it, and the HTTP site auto-redirects to the HTTPS site. Looks like the exact same as Bugzilla #799836.

So I am basically locked out from viewing Mozilla's own blog when using their very own browser? I don't have Chrome on this machine. I can't believe I am about to install Chrome just to view Mozilla's own blog!

Maybe they think giving us web games will make us forget they still dont have multi process architecture?

To enable multi-process architecture in a recent nightly, go into about:config and set browser.tabs.remote to true.

AdBlock didn't catch anything

No ads are being loaded, just trackers. Abine's DoNotTrackPlus caught CrazyEgg, Google Analytics, Doubleclick, and ChartBeat, but not Google Tag Manager itself.

If a site signs up for Google Tag Manager, it gets DoubleClick tracking whether the site owner wants it or not. Here's what DoubleClick knows about you.

The Tag Manager system has a whole API for snooping on what the user is doing and sending the data back to Google or another server. "For example, you may want to fire a conversion tracking tag when a user clicks the Submit button". The tracker can also grab information from a form being submitted and send it to Google's tag manager server.

It could be because of the stuff the guy two posts up was describing (ie, various ways that Outlook/Exchange fails). It's wonderful that your specific installation/configuration is working out for you, though. If every installation and usage pattern was exactly like yours, then all of those baffling complaints would simply vanish. How very comprehensive your understanding seems to be!

Oh, and the last Thunderbird release was one week ago, so you've added exactly nothing useful to this conversation. Congratulations.

What do you know, there is an extension that mutes the browser easily. Unfortunately it looks like it is the whole browser it mutes, and not individual tabs. I haven't tried it, so I don't know if it works. Figured others may be interested.

Does Mozilla Lightbeam https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ throw any light on their and other's data mining efforts?

exactly, the *idea* of FFOS. how do you know carriers don't add tracking / spying software into the phones running FirefoxOS?

If you're paranoid, just build it yourself.

> Its called Lightbeam.
> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lightbeam/ [mozilla.org]
> Yes, its free, for certain definitions of free.

I can't find a licence statement. Some source files say it's under Mozilla Public Licence v2.0, which means those files are free software, but other files don't have any licence info at all. Maybe the author just forgot, but if there's no licence then they're not free by any sense of the word. I'll look for an email address to contact them.

Its called Lightbeam.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lightbeam/

Yes, its free, for certain definitions of free.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/

So long as the addon interface remains as powerful as it is, you can have any browser you want. Running FF28 with Australis now, and it's not far from FF27. I'm sure more changes could be done.

You could just install an extension to reverse the Chromification.

The only thing they "backed off" from was a a default setting. Big deal.

Paid for by Google Ads. Yeah, it's a problem.

IIRC, they were the first to even include that feature in their browser.

It was a proposed government standard. It was first implimented by collaborators after that meeting, and a plugin published for download on Mozilla's homepage. So no, they were not the first. Mozilla was the first browser to have it included, but that was not because of the Mozilla Foundation.

AFAIK there is still no other browser that offers such functionality. Not even Ghostery does the same job.

All browsers save cookies. They are documented ways of recovering them; for obvious reasons. Sorry.

How? How have they "infected" it?

The same way rich lobbyists infected Congress.

Mozilla was not always getting most of its revenue from Google,

Which means nothing in the present, in which they are.

Google isn't "giving" them the money, it's from ads,

No, Google is giving them money. But don't take my word for it; It's in the FAQ for their financial statements. Just browse down to the question "How does Mozilla generate revenue?"

The majority of Mozillaâ(TM)s revenue is generated from search and commerce functionality included in our Firefox product through all major search partners including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon, Ebay and others. Mozillaâ(TM)s reported revenues also include very important individual and corporate donations and grants, which are growing significantly, as well as other forms of income from our investable assets.

and Google's disappearance tomorrow would not make Mozilla "implode". They'd just have to advertise elsewhere.

Yeah. 90% of their revenue dries up and it's just a simple matter of pointing their ad servers to a new place...

I think you have extremely grossly overstated your case.

But I don't think I have "extremely grossly overstated" anything... in fact, if anything, I was trying to understate things to avoid flames from idiot fanboys who think their youthful idealism is shared by the companies whose products they use. But as that has failed, I'm reverting to my usual brand of bluntness. So with that in mind: I think you've been smoking more crack than the Toronto mayor. You were wrong on every point you made, and not just a little.

Hopefully just like Gnome2 -> 3, there will be a large community supported fork to maintain a customizable browser.

Why fork? It's just UI, there's already a Firefox extension that reverses everything mentioned. Firefox is still customisable albeit via extensions more than drag/drop now.

You obviously do not use, nor rely on, extensions. Extensions for Chrome/Chromium pale in comparison to what extensions for Firefox can do.

Want tabs on the side? Good luck with Chrome. Good luck with alternate Webkit browsers with not enough marketshare to attract extensions.

the new "Australis" version of Firefox. It's stupid and dumbed down and in a few months it will be your only choice unless you stay with an older version of Firefox forever...

Nope, not even for a second, snipped the rest because there's already an extension out restoring everything you mentioned.

What were they going to do? Operate off of donations?

Aside from you ignoring the giant white elephant in the room, which is that Google is increasingly encompassing or influencing every aspect of the internet it possibly can, which is NOT HEALTHY...Why not operate off donations? They're not a for-profit corporation, they don't have investors or shareholders, etc.

There was ZERO need for growing Mozilla into the monster it is today with a finger in everything. What the fuck is Mozilla doing promoting a surfing competition? Why the fuck is Mozilla making an OS and trying to sell cell phones?(Did all the OpenMoko failures start squatting at Mozilla HQ or something?) Why does the Mozilla website design change every month?

While I'm ranting: nobody was clamoring for the moron-ization of Firefox's controls (some privacy-related, like the stripping-out of the ability to expire history+cache+cookie data older than a certain time period. Want to only keep the last 7 days of history? Too fuckin' bad! Gee, who has an interest in that? Advertisers like GOOGLE) or the butchering of Thunderbird at the hands of some 20-year old self-proclaimed UX expert.

About the only thing I see Mozilla doing well these days is pissing people off with every application update, something Google excels at, as well.

And by the way, get off my lawn.

Despite engineers from high traffic websites such as Facebook begging Mozilla to implement it in the hopes of saving bandwidth costs, and despite plenty of success stories for those who implemented it only for Chrome, they still continue do deny the format a chance..
Meanwhile, the internet still lacks a lossy compression image format that supports alpha transparency... Thank you Mozilla!

It's because instead of listening to what the users want, they plow ahead with stupid UI-redesigns to make Firefox a slower, buggier Chrome clone. I mean sure, the new UI is spiffy, but they can't fix a nearly ten year old bug with find.

From your blog:

Who develops software? The same people who make money on our searches...the people who develop software aren't going to develop that program

You are never going to find helpful developers with an attitude like that. I don't work for a web advertiser, in fact of the 100s of professional software acquaintances I have, only two work with google, and they aren't in search or advertising. We are people too. We have varied political opinions and we have identities of our own to protect. We use and write whatever software we believe will be best for ourselves and others. There is no conspiracy against implementing your ideas, we just find them less practical than the ideas that we do implement. In fact, if you'd like your ideas implemented, but have somehow alienated all the developers around you: http://www.codeacadamy.com./

Besides, developers _have_ released tools for your ideas, but people just don't use them. For one example: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trackmenot/. I built myself a similar program so I could better control the searches it was making. I thought it solved the "child porn problem" AthanasiusKircher was talking about, but the right combination of innocent words can still be used against you (plus it doesn't hide my cookie dough fetish). The other problem pointed out by the other poster, but also confirmed in practice by me, is that sort of people who are going to go through your search history don't care what chance there was that you visited a websites or your camouflager did. Depending on their motives, they will raise 3 times the shit storm or serve you three times the ads when they find you are searching ramen noodle fetishes and fruit fly sex on top of cookie dough pounding.

Back to your post:

flood the identity theft market with fake personalities

You first have to penetrate into the market place and earn some street cred pedaling and buying good identities. Easy to say, but I hear it's rather long and involved to do. Then, you can start mixing your fake identities in with the real ones. Except, you quickly blow the trust you earned with your buyers and have to go back to step one. If you are the FBI, it would be easier to immediately arrest everyone who bought the fake identities, rather than having to supply enough real identities so that sellers don't catch on.

Before blaming everyone else for conspiring not to implement your ideas, go try them yourself, you'll discover they aren't really as easy as writing a blog post. Also, know that this is what you sound like to us with the ability to implement your ideas. http://xkcd.com/793/

Any office having trouble with a docx file in 2013 without the use of MSO is backward. Haven't had a problem opening in Google docs in years. Pretty sure OO's had that covered for a while too.

Also, winmail.dat is 100% a Microsoft-manufactured problem. They translate certain types of attachments to a proprietary Outlook format for security concerns real or imagined on SEND rather than simply buffering with said Outlook shenanigans on receipt but not resend so nobody else has to put up with Outlook's slow-ass dinosaur app BS but Outlook users. To be fair to MS, I suspec the Microsoft TwoFace coin landed on the incompetent moron side rather than the one featuring the slightly less incompetent devious asshole that day or they'd be doing the winmail.dat thing with a lot more file formats.

But fortunately that problem's already been compensated for with this plugin for Thunderbird. Found it at the top of my first Google. It's been out for a year. Maybe you should let your IT guys know before they get locked into... oh... too late aren't I?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/lookout/reviews/

Well at least when your users start pissing off some Thunderbird-using company that rightly identifies emails from clueless Outlook users as the problem, they can pass on that link so they don't have to pay money for the privilege of becoming a part of the same problem too.

Mozilla allows that, too. There's a slimeball company that takes over abandoned Firefox add-ons, adds spyware, and puts them up on Mozilla's "store". They did this to BlockSite. Users were very angry.

Mozilla's reaction? Mozilla's add-on policies prohibit this: "Whenever an add-on includes any unexpected* feature that ... compromises user privacy or security (like sending data to third parties)" ... "These features cannot be introduced into an update of a fully-reviewed add-on; the opt-in change process must be part of the initial review." The spyware was just fine with Jorge Villalobos, Mozilla's add-on project manager, who wrote "That's outdated, since we don't enforce that policy."

You can't trust the Mozilla Foundation any more. That's sad.

Mozilla allows that, too. There's a slimeball company that takes over abandoned Firefox add-ons, adds spyware, and puts them up on Mozilla's "store". They did this to BlockSite. Users were very angry.

Mozilla's reaction? Mozilla's add-on policies prohibit this: "Whenever an add-on includes any unexpected* feature that ... compromises user privacy or security (like sending data to third parties)" ... "These features cannot be introduced into an update of a fully-reviewed add-on; the opt-in change process must be part of the initial review." The spyware was just fine with Jorge Villalobos, Mozilla's add-on project manager, who wrote "That's outdated, since we don't enforce that policy."

You can't trust the Mozilla Foundation any more. That's sad.

Mozilla allows that, too. There's a slimeball company that takes over abandoned Firefox add-ons, adds spyware, and puts them up on Mozilla's "store". They did this to BlockSite. Users were very angry.

Mozilla's reaction? Mozilla's add-on policies prohibit this: "Whenever an add-on includes any unexpected* feature that ... compromises user privacy or security (like sending data to third parties)" ... "These features cannot be introduced into an update of a fully-reviewed add-on; the opt-in change process must be part of the initial review." The spyware was just fine with Jorge Villalobos, Mozilla's add-on project manager, who wrote "That's outdated, since we don't enforce that policy."

You can't trust the Mozilla Foundation any more. That's sad.

Also startsWith and endsWith are only in Firefox afaik.

Also startsWith and endsWith are only in Firefox afaik.

So I can use for..of loops, let and fat arrow assignments in Chrome like I can in Firefox?

So I can use for..of loops, let and fat arrow assignments in Chrome like I can in Firefox?

It depends what you're doing. You may want to buy low end desktops or tablets to use as thin clients to access high end systems with fast GPUs over the Internet, which is what OTOY, Autodesk, Mozilla and Amazon have worked on delivering.

So, might be worth checking about:crashes to see if there's a bug associated with your particular crash.
Maybe they enabled, like, graphics acceleration for a flakey card, and you can turn it off.
Or maybe they need attention drawn to it.

WRT installing old versions.
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/
Grab one off of there, install it (or unzip it).

If you're under windows btw, you can also try 64 bit nightlies for any date here:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/

ESR is another option.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

So, might be worth checking about:crashes to see if there's a bug associated with your particular crash.
Maybe they enabled, like, graphics acceleration for a flakey card, and you can turn it off.
Or maybe they need attention drawn to it.

WRT installing old versions.
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/
Grab one off of there, install it (or unzip it).

If you're under windows btw, you can also try 64 bit nightlies for any date here:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/

ESR is another option.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

So, might be worth checking about:crashes to see if there's a bug associated with your particular crash.
Maybe they enabled, like, graphics acceleration for a flakey card, and you can turn it off.
Or maybe they need attention drawn to it.

WRT installing old versions.
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/
Grab one off of there, install it (or unzip it).

If you're under windows btw, you can also try 64 bit nightlies for any date here:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/

ESR is another option.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

FYI, it's = it is/has. ;)

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/phoenix/releases/ doesn't even show v1.0. Only v0.1 to v0.5. However, its readme says to go to ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ that show v1.0 as 12/10/2004 (DOOM shareware's release 11 years old! 20 in 2013!).

FYI, it's = it is/has. ;)

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/phoenix/releases/ doesn't even show v1.0. Only v0.1 to v0.5. However, its readme says to go to ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ that show v1.0 as 12/10/2004 (DOOM shareware's release 11 years old! 20 in 2013!).

It's not just you - this is precisely the word that I was coming in here to comment about.

Firefox is still my primary browser, and I still think it's the "most free" and potentially most "featureful" one left (even Chromium is subject to Google's whims and reluctances - as an example, in my case I find it irritating that Firefox has had native .opus support for <audio> tags by default for over a year, while Google only implemented perhaps six months ago...and still has it disabled by default. Apparently they're not turning it on by default until their glacially-paced project to make "webm2" with opus audio is finally finished.)

Mozilla feels like it's turning more an more into a corporation more worried about "market share" than its original mission. Reading about how it's a "fun" browsing experience seems like those commercials of "fun to eat" junk food. It's marketing crap. I fear their "mission" may soon no longer be "promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web.[...]so people worldwide can be informed contributors and creators of the Web"[1] but "making the Web the leading platform for the greatest number of users and developers"[2] (i.e. it doesn't matter how open or participatory it is as long as it has the largest number of consumers).

I hope I'm wrong. It's possible I am - Mozilla DID throw quite a bit into development of the opus audio codec, which is the clear winner for performance, quality, AND freedom-of-participation (and seems to have a decent chance to take off as a real standard, despite Google's foot-dragging, Apple's terminal "Doesn't Play Well With Others" problem, and Microsoft's inability to keep up with the times), and they ARE throwing real effort and money into daala to be the video codec equivalent. These are awesome, and perhaps the problem is just that every time they poke their heads out they get shouted at by people who feel changes to the user interface are horrific insults, so they've taken to just listening to each other. ("Hey, General Public, do you think our browser is 'fun'?" "STOP CRAPPING ON ME AAARRGGGHH!!!" "Uh...okay, hey, just everyone who's getting a paycheck from Mozilla, do YOU think our browser is 'fun'?" "Oh, of course! It is the MOST fun, boss!" "Okay, tell marketing to go with that.")

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/
[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/11/05/mozilla-otoy-and-autodesk-work-to-deliver-high-performance-games-and-applications-on-the-web/ (2013-11-09)

It's not just you - this is precisely the word that I was coming in here to comment about.

Firefox is still my primary browser, and I still think it's the "most free" and potentially most "featureful" one left (even Chromium is subject to Google's whims and reluctances - as an example, in my case I find it irritating that Firefox has had native .opus support for <audio> tags by default for over a year, while Google only implemented perhaps six months ago...and still has it disabled by default. Apparently they're not turning it on by default until their glacially-paced project to make "webm2" with opus audio is finally finished.)

Mozilla feels like it's turning more an more into a corporation more worried about "market share" than its original mission. Reading about how it's a "fun" browsing experience seems like those commercials of "fun to eat" junk food. It's marketing crap. I fear their "mission" may soon no longer be "promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web.[...]so people worldwide can be informed contributors and creators of the Web"[1] but "making the Web the leading platform for the greatest number of users and developers"[2] (i.e. it doesn't matter how open or participatory it is as long as it has the largest number of consumers).

I hope I'm wrong. It's possible I am - Mozilla DID throw quite a bit into development of the opus audio codec, which is the clear winner for performance, quality, AND freedom-of-participation (and seems to have a decent chance to take off as a real standard, despite Google's foot-dragging, Apple's terminal "Doesn't Play Well With Others" problem, and Microsoft's inability to keep up with the times), and they ARE throwing real effort and money into daala to be the video codec equivalent. These are awesome, and perhaps the problem is just that every time they poke their heads out they get shouted at by people who feel changes to the user interface are horrific insults, so they've taken to just listening to each other. ("Hey, General Public, do you think our browser is 'fun'?" "STOP CRAPPING ON ME AAARRGGGHH!!!" "Uh...okay, hey, just everyone who's getting a paycheck from Mozilla, do YOU think our browser is 'fun'?" "Oh, of course! It is the MOST fun, boss!" "Okay, tell marketing to go with that.")

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/
[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/11/05/mozilla-otoy-and-autodesk-work-to-deliver-high-performance-games-and-applications-on-the-web/ (2013-11-09)

I'd say waaaaaay beyond a slight edge thanks to the memshrink project.
https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/

Old measurements. Situation keeps improving. Latest 2 or 3 firefox versions use smart loading/unloading of large images on image heavy web pages, for example.
http://www.itworld.com/sites/default/files/figure3_browserfootprint.jpg

Personally, on my chromebook, Chrome used 615MiB w/ 2 tabs open (crosh and a blank tab) while Firefox in Crouton used 385MiB with 18 tabs open, and that was after I had cycled through all the tabs to make sure they hadn't been unloaded.

Completely agreed.

Another way to get around this besides the quick esc-hitting is to install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/

Here's an extension that works, it just toggles the cookie pref globally, and does not re-enable 3rd party cookies when clicked on.

Are you referring to this issue? It seems to me that the problem is caused by Firefox making some text disproportionately big compared with other text due to its minimum font size settings, and you can fix the problem by changing Firefox's settings to not interfere with the font size.

I have that on my Firefox browser, and I have a Chrome browser that clears everything on exit. Between them, I can surf anywhere and keep tracking to a minimum. Won't stop the NSA, of course, but...

Alternately, you could use Albine's DoNotTrackMe add-on if you don't want to use an add-on funded by advertisers and businesses paying them for ad data and compliance

Although from what I understand, the only info that both apps send back to the mothership is generic usage data, so the risk (or lack thereof) is probably the same for both.

Mozilla's PDF renderer has trouble with larger math symbols, like sigmas and integrals.

Typical open source bug handling - reported in May 2013, somebody whines that that the test case for the bug is too big, someone else provides more details, bug is marked as confirmed, somebody tries it on OS-X, where it works, someone else demonstrates the failure with a small test case, posts screenshots, and shows that the PDF works on Linux Firefox but not Windows Firefox. After six months, zero progress on fixing it.

... instead of adding new features. FF22 (or 23?) brought with it WebRTC and a bunch of other crap that sent my installation's power usage skyrocketing. My laptop's battery life with Firefox running has dropped by about 30% (!!!!) - so much that I've stopped using GMail online and switched to Thunderbird so that I don't have to constantly have Firefox open.

And nobody seems to give a fuck.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=887129
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925629

Chrome is not much better, unfortunately, so switching isn't really an option (not to mention I'd miss a lot of my add-ons).

... instead of adding new features. FF22 (or 23?) brought with it WebRTC and a bunch of other crap that sent my installation's power usage skyrocketing. My laptop's battery life with Firefox running has dropped by about 30% (!!!!) - so much that I've stopped using GMail online and switched to Thunderbird so that I don't have to constantly have Firefox open.

And nobody seems to give a fuck.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=887129
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925629

Chrome is not much better, unfortunately, so switching isn't really an option (not to mention I'd miss a lot of my add-ons).

Good lord. Check out Bugzilla already, it's not like it's hard to search for "tls 1.2" in their search bar, is it?

TLS 1.1: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=733647
TLS 1.2: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=861266

Can't Slashdotters be arsed to even try the most basic things on their own anymore?

Good lord. Check out Bugzilla already, it's not like it's hard to search for "tls 1.2" in their search bar, is it?

TLS 1.1: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=733647
TLS 1.2: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=861266

Can't Slashdotters be arsed to even try the most basic things on their own anymore?

I'm running the 64-bit version now. I grabbed it from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/25.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/

Nobody cares about 64-bit Windows because Windows is a legacy OS.