mozilla.org · Domains · Slashdot Mirror

It's all about ads and tracking by Animats · 2013-06-28 07:47 · Score: 0 · on QUIC: Google's New Secure UDP-Based Protocol

The point of this is to improve performance for tiny HTTP transactions. The need for all those tiny transactions comes from ads and tracking data and their associated tiny bits of Javascript and CSS. The useful content is usually one big TCP send.

Blocking of all known tracking systems is a simpler solution.

Where...I everywhere. by tuppe666 · 2013-06-26 03:58 · Score: 0 · on IE 11 Getting WebGL, SPDY/3, New Dev Tools

Oh? Where can I find the repository for security patches for linux 1.0?

https://www.kernel.org/.

The reality though by compitors I unsurprisingly meant (but not limited to :) Firefox http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ and Chrome https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/

XP exists on about 20% of computers...or about 220,000,000 which is why the point is about XP :)

Turn off webRTC by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-25 08:04 · Score: 0 · on Firefox 22 Released, Boosts 3-D Gaming and Video Calls

You can go to this page and find the about:config settings that will disable webRTC:

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/11/progress-update-on-webrtc-for-firefox-on-desktop/

who cares ? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-25 07:12 · Score: 0 · on Firefox 22 Released, Boosts 3-D Gaming and Video Calls

Regression bugs in the ESR version should be fixed first, as a matter of the highest priority. It is essential to fix your current users problems first, only then go for the nice new features.
Without an approach like that it is hard to take the long term support version serious, and not as just token appeasement to the "we want a proper development cycle for stability group"

Like this one, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765337 .Took a year to fix and it is still not in ESR.
btw. not to mention that the fix is a hideous one. Who ever thought it is a good idea for a browser to even have the possibility to go to a different URL than the completely valid one the user has typed in ?

Re:Safebrowsing by allo · 2013-06-22 21:22 · Score: 1 · on Ask Slashdot: Most Secure Browser In an Age of Surveillance?

mod parent up. and disable mozilla addon-tracking

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/how-to-opt-out-of-add-on-metadata-updates/

Re:Some sites block... by Barefoot+Monkey · 2013-06-22 10:07 · Score: 1 · on Firefox Advances Do-Not-Track Technology

I recommend configuring your browser to keep cookies only until you close your browser. This is quite easy to do in Firefox - go to the options, in the Privacy tab, and under the checkbox for whether to accept cookies there's a dropdown labelled "Keep until:". Set that to "Keep until: I close Firefox". Then you can grab something like Cookie Monster to make it easy to whitelist those site where you do want persistent cookies. Which browser are you using, by the way?

Re:FFOS highly insecure by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-21 01:41 · Score: 0 · on Foxconn Betting Big On Firefox OS

[...] malware could scrape your email and passwords from insecure storage if an app stores your username and password for subsequent logins, [...]

however, as pointed out here:

Each app runs in a separate sandbox, meaning that all data stored by an app is separate from all data stored by another app. This includes things like cookie data, localStorage data, indexedDB data, and site permissions.

Unless an app stores the usernames etc in external storage (i.e. the SD card), I don't see how malware can harvest this data. Even with external storage one has to grant permission to the app and the malware to access it.

Good? I guess. by Arker · 2013-06-20 15:49 · Score: 0 · on Foxconn Betting Big On Firefox OS

The Mozilla folks dont seem tohave their head in the game at all on the computer, and frankly I am not sure they ever did. When really basic stuff like this goes untouched for well over 10 years while the developers busy themselves adding 'features' no one wants or needs and redesigning the UI over and over again, you have to wonder what is going on. Apparently, what Mozilla really wanted to do all this time is make a toy OS for smart phones so all their 'designers' can keep themselves busy dragging bitmaps around all day without being expected to code.

So if that is where their head is at then I guess this is for the best. But it leaves a real need for someone else to step up and make a decent web browser.

Thunderbird Chat and Off the record by FriendlyLurker · 2013-06-20 02:17 · Score: 1 · on Stanford, Mozilla, Opera Launch Web Privacy Initiative

I am hoping they can fix the very long outstanding security bug for the Thunderbird chat - enable the ability for people to use plugins like OTR in Thunderbird chat. So far It is like they are dragging their feet on it/don't want encryption/privacy is not a priority:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=779052
https://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/otr_support_in_instant_messaging_chat
https://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/deleting_chat_conversations_or_going_off_the_record

Re:Firefox support by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-17 16:34 · Score: 5, Informative · on Google Enables VP9 Video Codec In Chromium

I went to the Mozilla IRC (have Chatzilla installed before clicking) and typed this:

firebot: vp9 bugs

and got this:

Bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=833023 , , nobody, NEW, Implement VP9 video decoder in Firefox

So it's not ASSIGNED to anybody yet, meaning "when" it'll be patched in isn't known.
And now you won't have to ask about a Firefox bug on slashdot ever again, because you know a more reliable place to ask.

Re:Firefox support by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-17 16:34 · Score: 5, Informative · on Google Enables VP9 Video Codec In Chromium

I went to the Mozilla IRC (have Chatzilla installed before clicking) and typed this:

firebot: vp9 bugs

and got this:

Bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=833023 , , nobody, NEW, Implement VP9 video decoder in Firefox

So it's not ASSIGNED to anybody yet, meaning "when" it'll be patched in isn't known.
And now you won't have to ask about a Firefox bug on slashdot ever again, because you know a more reliable place to ask.

Re:Actions to take by FriendlyLurker · 2013-06-16 21:03 · Score: 1 · on Snowden NSA Claims Partially Confirmed, Says Rep. Jerrold Nadler

Suggestion: Create a tracking list of all "journalists"/news organizations who ever cheerleadered consistently for the security state/reduced liberty for security. Brainstorm methods to disseminate the list/expose the said "journalists". One example would be the excellent browser addons like Murdoch alert [1]. For example many Journalists at The Guardian - where these leaks are being published, are rabidly pro security state and take any opportunity to attack whistle-blowers. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/MurdochAlert-details/

Brief by doru · 2013-06-11 10:34 · Score: 1 · on Slashdot Asks: How Will You Replace Google Reader?

I've been using Brief (add-on for Firefox) for about two months, and I'm quite satisfied. Getting used to the bookmark integration took some time, but it's not so bad. It can import feeds exported from Google Reader. More details here.

If Life Wasn't So Busy, My Own by eldavojohn · 2013-06-11 02:53 · Score: 5, Informative · on Slashdot Asks: How Will You Replace Google Reader?

How Will You Replace Google Reader?

(Disclaimer: I'm going to use the term 'bandwidth' universally instead of the more correct 'latency' or 'throughput' so normal people can hopefully understand this post) The biggest problem I have with every alternative I have tried is that they are built with the most annoying design flaws. They are so painful to me that I am certain these flaws will be look back upon as the geocities of our modern day web development.

When I fire up an alternative, the responsiveness that was in Google Reader just isn't there. And it always seems like the alternatives require you to hit "refresh" on their interface and then what happens? It apparently makes a call out to every single RSS feed to get updates. On the surface this may seem like standard HTTP way of thinking about things. But it makes for a shit user experience. I have thousands of RSS feeds. Thousands. And if I hit refresh in this paradigm, my browser makes 1,000+ HTTP GET requests. It's not a lot of data but if even one of those requests is slow, it's usually blocking on ceding control back to me.

So let's iterate improvements on here that will get us back to Google Reader style responsiveness, shall we? Well, one of the simplest improvements I can see is to do these requests asynchronously with nonblocking web workers. You can attach each of them to the div or construct that each feed is displayed in and only have them work when that feed is visible (for instance if I am collapsing/expanding folders of feeds). You can grey out the feed until the request comes back but if another request returns first, it is parsed and inserted and activated to my vision. That way if cnn.com comes back faster than NASA's Photograph of the Day, I can read while waiting for my images.

But the core problem is that I'm on my home computer on a residential cable modem and, let's face it, Cox sucks. So what I think Google was doing was sacrificing their bandwidth to actually "reverse" the request from client to server. And, in doing so, they could package up all your updates and ship them out in one request (probably compressed). So, this is how I would approach that. Instead of doing a heart beat HTTP GET to check for RSS updates, I'd build a WebSocket and instead of requesting information, the client (browser) would be listening for information. The event/listener paradigm here would save both the user and the RSS host a lot of bandwidth but it would cost the host of the feed reader service some of that bandwidth (although much less). So basically the client JavaScript would load the page just like normal but instead of continually sending HTTP GET requests, a WebSocket would merely inform the server which feeds are active and listen for updates coming in from the server.

On the downside, this greatly complicates the server side. You need to have one be-all end-all "cache" or storage of all incoming feeds that any user is subscribed to. And for each of these feeds, you need to have a list of the users subscribed to it. And now your server will need to maintain the HTTP GET requests to cnn.com and NASA in order to get updates. When it gets an update, there's two ways you could handle it (user queues are complicated so I won't suggest that) but the most basic way is to send it right out to everyone on that subscription list who has an active WebSocket session established with their account. If a new WebSocket session is established, they simply get the last N stories from their subscriptions (Google included pagination backwards binned by time). To alleviate even more bandwidth from you, you could store it on the client side with HTML5 Web Storage and then the first thing the Web Socket does is find the last date on the last stored element and send that across to t

If Life Wasn't So Busy, My Own by eldavojohn · 2013-06-11 02:53 · Score: 5, Informative · on Slashdot Asks: How Will You Replace Google Reader?

How Will You Replace Google Reader?

(Disclaimer: I'm going to use the term 'bandwidth' universally instead of the more correct 'latency' or 'throughput' so normal people can hopefully understand this post) The biggest problem I have with every alternative I have tried is that they are built with the most annoying design flaws. They are so painful to me that I am certain these flaws will be look back upon as the geocities of our modern day web development.

When I fire up an alternative, the responsiveness that was in Google Reader just isn't there. And it always seems like the alternatives require you to hit "refresh" on their interface and then what happens? It apparently makes a call out to every single RSS feed to get updates. On the surface this may seem like standard HTTP way of thinking about things. But it makes for a shit user experience. I have thousands of RSS feeds. Thousands. And if I hit refresh in this paradigm, my browser makes 1,000+ HTTP GET requests. It's not a lot of data but if even one of those requests is slow, it's usually blocking on ceding control back to me.

So let's iterate improvements on here that will get us back to Google Reader style responsiveness, shall we? Well, one of the simplest improvements I can see is to do these requests asynchronously with nonblocking web workers. You can attach each of them to the div or construct that each feed is displayed in and only have them work when that feed is visible (for instance if I am collapsing/expanding folders of feeds). You can grey out the feed until the request comes back but if another request returns first, it is parsed and inserted and activated to my vision. That way if cnn.com comes back faster than NASA's Photograph of the Day, I can read while waiting for my images.

But the core problem is that I'm on my home computer on a residential cable modem and, let's face it, Cox sucks. So what I think Google was doing was sacrificing their bandwidth to actually "reverse" the request from client to server. And, in doing so, they could package up all your updates and ship them out in one request (probably compressed). So, this is how I would approach that. Instead of doing a heart beat HTTP GET to check for RSS updates, I'd build a WebSocket and instead of requesting information, the client (browser) would be listening for information. The event/listener paradigm here would save both the user and the RSS host a lot of bandwidth but it would cost the host of the feed reader service some of that bandwidth (although much less). So basically the client JavaScript would load the page just like normal but instead of continually sending HTTP GET requests, a WebSocket would merely inform the server which feeds are active and listen for updates coming in from the server.

On the downside, this greatly complicates the server side. You need to have one be-all end-all "cache" or storage of all incoming feeds that any user is subscribed to. And for each of these feeds, you need to have a list of the users subscribed to it. And now your server will need to maintain the HTTP GET requests to cnn.com and NASA in order to get updates. When it gets an update, there's two ways you could handle it (user queues are complicated so I won't suggest that) but the most basic way is to send it right out to everyone on that subscription list who has an active WebSocket session established with their account. If a new WebSocket session is established, they simply get the last N stories from their subscriptions (Google included pagination backwards binned by time). To alleviate even more bandwidth from you, you could store it on the client side with HTML5 Web Storage and then the first thing the Web Socket does is find the last date on the last stored element and send that across to t

Re:Disable Flash by fbobraga · 2013-06-11 01:05 · Score: 1 · on Microsoft Boasts of Tiny Energy Saving With IE

It (https://addons.mozilla.org/pt-br/firefox/addon/flashblock/), and http://adblockplus.org/, keeps Firefox usable on Old computers

Re:I agree with your premise by HaZardman27 · 2013-06-10 08:24 · Score: 2 · on Book Review: Core HTML5 Canvas

the web browser has ways to go if you are trying to put a league of legends, world of warcraft, or COD in the browser.

I would argue that "ways to go" has been getting much shorter.

Auto-Pager. by tuppe666 · 2013-06-08 07:32 · Score: 1 · on Dell's New X18: 5 Pounds, 18 Inches

This seems to be a mediocre, unnecessarily page-broken review of a machine with mediocre hardware specs. Did I miss anything important?

Yes using Auto-pager. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/autopager/ I don't know if there is an equivalent in other browsers, but it automatically loads next pages when you reach the end of a page...and I rarely get this problem of page-breaks. It used to work on the mobile firefox version.

Re:Not-so-accurate source by Bananenrepublik · 2013-06-05 20:46 · Score: 1 · on BBC Clock Inaccurate - 100 Days To Fix?

trying to automatically determine which time zone any particular visitor to the site happens to be in (by, what, IP address tracing?).

This might help: getTimezoneOffset documentation.

Re:Booo, hissss by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-05 17:08 · Score: 0 · on Mozilla Plans Major Design Overhaul With Firefox 25 Release In October

Sixth: From the article: "In this vein, there is a discussion of removing the Add-on Bar completely, killing user-created custom toolbars, and having the main toolbar feature a dedicated area for add-on buttons and widgets instead."

Heh. "Discussion". This is what discussion means.

Clarification here...
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/firefox-dev/2013-May/000426.html
But SOL for those addons that can only be built with a dedicated bar.

They're doing their best to kill off Firefox.

Re:Ahhhh by TubeSteak · 2013-06-05 09:58 · Score: 1 · on Mozilla Plans Major Design Overhaul With Firefox 25 Release In October

If you want to avoid change, try the extended support release.
It's currently on v17: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

It gets security patches from the current version without any nags to upgrade.

Re:Booo, hissss by Dagger2 · 2013-06-05 09:18 · Score: 4, Informative · on Mozilla Plans Major Design Overhaul With Firefox 25 Release In October

Sixth: From the article: "In this vein, there is a discussion of removing the Add-on Bar completely, killing user-created custom toolbars, and having the main toolbar feature a dedicated area for add-on buttons and widgets instead."

Heh. "Discussion". This is what discussion means.

Everyone's missing the most interesting part! by caspy7 · 2013-06-03 17:51 · Score: 3, Interesting · on Mozilla, Foxconn Confirm Firefox OS Partnership

Dr. Li Gong, SVP of Mobile Devices, President of Asia Operations, and CEO of Mozilla Taiwan (cited in the press announcement) also posted on his blog about the partnership. https://blog.mozilla.org/ligong/2013/06/03/foxconn-joins-the-firefox-os-eco-system/

This line in particular stuck out to me.

Foxconn stated that they intend to have FFOS running on all categories of the “8 screen” devices, from smartphone to tablets to laptops to TVs and outdoor signage.

Laptops, TVs and outdoor signage? Ambitious plans.

Re:Getting out of GMAIL by thewebdev · 2013-05-29 21:42 · Score: 1 · on Google Rolling Out Gmail Redesign

I had 1+ GB of email in my gmail account, and this is how I moved it to another server using IMAP: 1. Go through all your emails and delete all unwanted emails. Don't forget to 'empty' (delete permanently) your Junk and Thrash folder. 2. If you haven't, enable IMAP for your Gmail account. [ https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/1668960?hl=en#ts=1665018 ] 3. Download and install Mozilla Thunderbird. [ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/ ] 4. In Thunderbird, set up a new email account and configure it to your Gmail. 5. Thunderbird will now slowly download all your emails from Gmail. 6. Once all the emails are downloaded, create another email account in Thunderbird and configure it with the settings of the new email service that you want to use. 7. From the 'Gmail' account in Thunderbird, select the Gmail emails and drag and drop it to the 'New Email' email account (created in step 6). 8. Thunderbird will transfer the mail to the new email server. (Note: for step 7, it is advisable to NOT select all the email and transfer at one go. Best that you sort it by size, and transfer the bigger emails first. Delete transfered emails from Gmail and continue until there is no more email left. You may also recreate all the folders / labels of gmail in the new email account to - as IMAP folders - and drag and drop it directly to those folders.) I've been de-addicted from Google for more than a year and never been better. ;)

Re:Sounds Horrible by idontgno · 2013-05-29 07:55 · Score: 2 · on Google Rolling Out Gmail Redesign

The point of gmail is email. Free email, frankly. The web interface is less than useful. It's an active impediment, but thankfully I don't have to use it. I can use their storage and their SMTP hosting with proper IMAP support for free with a proper MUA.

I've actually been thinking about this by rsilvergun · 2013-05-28 12:18 · Score: 1 · on WeVideo Helps You Edit Your Videos Online (Video)

speaking of /vertisements, I've been thinking of adding this sort of thing to my Firefox extension. It's not too hard to do, but I haven't had many people express interest in it per se. And doesn't youtube already have a video editor?

Re:Holy Mackerel by firewrought · 2013-05-22 04:59 · Score: 1 · on Google Chrome 27 Is Out: 5% Faster Page Loads

Not sure if it would be granular enough. I use Google products and would want js to work but only when I'm actually browsing to one of their sites.

Thing is, many websites fetch common JavaScript libraries from Google's CDN (in addition to using maps, fonts, and other API's). Much of the web is unintelligible without them. On the bright side, it looks like Google does their tracking thru separate domain names (doubleclick.net, googleadservices.com, google-analytics.com), and NoScript can discriminate among those.

However, you may want to look at RequestPolicy, which requires you to whitelist all cross-domain access in a way that is clearly modeled after NoScript, which should prevent web bugs and other non-script techniques. (In fact, since so many sites require JS to view/use, I'm beginning to think that RP has a better premise than NS when it comes to managing web privacy/safety.)

Re:Once, long ago by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-17 11:05 · Score: 0 · on Mozilla Delays Default Third-Party Cookie Blocking In Firefox

You just went in, deleted cookies.txt once, then mkdir cookies.txt. Then set it to allow cookies across the board. All websites worked fine, but anytime you restarted the browser they were all gone.

Set network.cookie.lifetimePolicy = 2
ref: http://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/cookies/cookie-prefs.html

In SeaMonkey, this can be set via the preferences GUI under Privacy->Cookies. Not sure if such exists in the FireFox GUI.

Re:Well... this is going to be awkward... by devent · 2013-05-16 20:56 · Score: 1 · on Ubuntu Developers Revisit Replacing Firefox With Chromium

I don't think they are equals.
* Side tabs don't work
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/?src=search
http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_treestyletab.html.en#screenshots
* Fonts don't work
* Some distributions don't package Chromium because it's a mess:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Chromium
* IMHO Chromium looks very ugly because of the custom window decorations
* Firefox just have much more addons

Re:Fine by me by evilviper · 2013-05-16 12:56 · Score: 3, Informative · on Ubuntu Developers Revisit Replacing Firefox With Chromium

They're updating ff so much a release graph looks like their graphing the motion of a nervous umbrella. Enough already.

The Mozilla folks decided to make the public at-large their new beta-testers. That's not entirely unusual in the Open Source world.

But they do have a far more "stable" release you can use, instead. The ESR release works great, doesn't get all the new cruft, and generally just works. It's the version of Firefox in RHEL/CentOS repos, so most users are using it. There's no reason not-to go with ESR, except that Mozilla makes it hard to find:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

Re:Anything to get more customers by recoiledsnake · 2013-05-16 05:39 · Score: 1 · on Google Demands Microsoft Pull YouTube App For WP8

Who's being evil now???

The company that's providing a way to view ad supported content, ad free, is being evil.

Why bring Mozilla into this?

https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

Re:Who cares? by jones_supa · 2013-05-15 08:50 · Score: 1 · on How Maintainable Is the Firefox Codebase?

Use the Extended Support Release of Firefox.

Re:LibXUL on Win32 approaching 4GB memory limit by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-15 06:15 · Score: 0 · on How Maintainable Is the Firefox Codebase?

According to recent comments (continued on the next day's thread), the win32 compiler that Mozilla use is approaching the 4GB limit, after which LibXUL (which Firefox depends upon) will no longer compile.

It's currently at 3.5GB, and at the current rate, will reach the limit in approximately 6 months: Chart of memory usage of LibXUL during last 90 days

Well that's easily solvable, just run a PAE kernel... oh, wait...

LibXUL on Win32 approaching 4GB memory limit by revealingheart · 2013-05-15 05:38 · Score: 5, Informative · on How Maintainable Is the Firefox Codebase?

According to recent comments (continued on the next day's thread), the win32 compiler that Mozilla use is approaching the 4GB limit, after which LibXUL (which Firefox depends upon) will no longer compile.

It's currently at 3.5GB, and at the current rate, will reach the limit in approximately 6 months: Chart of memory usage of LibXUL during last 90 days

While I think that Servo will produce a more decentralised design than Gecko and XUL, the memory limit will be reached well before that. With Windows XP support ending next year, Mozilla should consider migrating to x64 as soon as reasonably possible, keeping x32, but focusing on stripping large and extraneous code above new features.

Re:Still no support for TLS 1.1 / 1.2 by chuckinator · 2013-05-15 02:36 · Score: 1 · on Firefox 21 Arrives

Firefox gets its SSL/TLS support from the underlying NSS library (another Mozilla product), and TLS 1.1 support was added there in NSS 3.14 released on Dec 18, 2012, and NSS-3.14 is the most current version on my system. While the browse dev team needs to pick up the pace on their side of implementing support for it, it is now present in the crypto library.

Still on Firefox 8... by Xenolith0 · 2013-05-14 13:59 · Score: 2 · on Firefox 21 Arrives

Since Firefox has started their crazy version numbering, I've given up on upgrading. I use 27 different addons and perfectly configured to make my web browser do what I want. It is near impossible to do an upgrade without spending hours reconfiguring the addons, some of which need to be manually downloaded and have their "MaxVersion" incremented so they will install. Maybe in 6 more months when we reach Firefox 50 I'll give it a try, but until then. Firefox 8 all the way!