Domain: mozilla.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to mozilla.org.
Comments · 17,579
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Investigate
Google Sharing it works great most of the time. I never used (or heard of) Scroogle but it would have be nice for when I don't have access to Firefox.
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XUL
https://developer.mozilla.org/En/XUL
Multi-platform with Xulrunner, integration with HTML5 engine if needed.
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Re:Somewhat Misleading
This worked fine in Firefox for me. Perhaps you should check if any of your beloved extensions are interfering by running Firefox's own safe mode
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Re:What could go wrong?
I like browserid, atleast when it gets out of the beta-stage (which it should in the coming months):
https://browserid.org/about
http://identity.mozilla.com/post/7616727542/introducing-browserid-a-better-way-to-sign-inIt is a quick and easy way to verify you are the owner of an email-address and an open specification.
Then Firefox will get it in the browser-UI, here is an old mockup:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/4/4c/IdentityInTheBrowser.png
Firefox still has about 25% of the market, if those users get an easy way to login to sites that should help with adoption.
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What could go wrong?
Let's trust an ad-serving company with a track record of intentional privacy violations and a publicly hostile attitude toward privacy rights to generate our passwords for us.
Ever wondered why Chrome bundled Flash despite dropping H.264 in the name of openness? Advertiser Flash cookies. Chrome is also the last major browser not to support the Do Not Track privacy feature. Google wants access to all your data because you are their product, and advertisers are their users.
Of course, trolls will probably accuse me of being a shill again, even though the facts are staring everyone in the face. I'll stick with Firefox and the PwdHash addon for secure password generation, thanks.
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Re:We found your privacy feature inconvenient.
The retarded part of this whole thing is that Apple's Safari was allowing 3rd party cookies AT ALL when 3rd party cookies are disabled. Remember, Apple sells ads on its platforms too. Now, it's QUITE simple to detect if any action actually came from a user initiated event. This is how most pop-up blockers have worked since 2000, including the ones built into our browsers. The JS that creates a new window/tab is blocked unless the JavaScript is executed as the result of actual user interaction... Point being: Apple knows how to detect if its a user action or not.
Additionally, when I was testing Safari a few years ago, any cookie that was already set would keep being sent to the server even after you disabled all cookies -- That option just disabled "new" cookies from being created. The old ones were still sent, not sure if this is still the behaviour because I stopped using their systems when their systems lied to -- or, at best, misled -- their users. Their settings have always been specious. Apple doesn't have a good track record when it comes to cookies.
The fact that Safari assumed that form submittal was a user initiated event is a big problem here too. This "invisible form" submission is how we did "Ajax" like Web2.0 features before XML HTTP Request objects were around. JS populates a form in a hidden iframe, submits, then the JS on the page, or in the iframe from the server, changes the main page without reloading it. If Safari is confusing this with a user action, I'd be calling Apple programmers on the carpet, "Did you do this?!? BAD CodeMonkey! BAD! No Banana, or APPL!" (it's actually difficult for me to believe this isn't Apple's intended design)
Don't get me wrong, I hate tracking more than the next guy, and instead prefer content based relevancy, but many users have Opted In to the Google Ad network. It's getting harder to opt out of parts of it w/ their new privacy policy. I keep separate accounts for G+, Gmail & Youtube because I don't want an action on one to ban me from the other. Point being, if you're logged in, you've logged in, and you agreed that it's fine for Google to target ads at you. They can't very well give you targeted ads in exchange for your privacy if they can't see if you're logged in or not via cookie...
I don't blame just Google for finding a way to get opted-in Safari users the content they opted-in to, even if it's ads. I also blame Apple for saying "3rd party cookies are disabled", when in reality, 3rd party cookies ARE SLIGHTLY DISABLED, unless you interact with the Ad, or we think you might have done so... You know, because We (Apple) also want to use those 3rd party cookies.
Here's an idea: SAFARI SHOULD BLOCK ALL 3RD PARTY COOKIES [PERIOD]! Otherwise, the "Block 3rd party Cookies" option actually doesn't.
Cookies are the easy-mode tracking channel. Many other methods exist. Hell, Mozilla removed the UI for 3rd party cookie disabling since it was so damn easy to work around. Had to use about:config for a while there, but now Firefox has the 3rd party cookies UI again. At the very base layer your IP address and time stamps are all the ad networks need. Blacklist the sites. Some Ad-block extensions actually make a request before not displaying the content -- Mission Failed.
Posted to remove a bad mod... figured I'd contribute in the process.
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Re:And people ask me why I don't use Chrome
Try Ghostery
I first started using it because of facebook, but after using it and seeing all the stuff that everyone else is tracking, i'm hooked.
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Re:Mozilla should not do an OS
Try comparing Chrome's addon development to the Firefox SDK. Traditional XUL addons are done at a much lower level, this does bring complexity but also power. Though not everyone needs that power, hance the SDK.
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Re:LOOOOOOOOL!!!!
Iâ(TM)ll accept that youtube comment section has such a bad rap that a lot of people who would make intelligent comments donâ(TM)t bother, but I think in general youtube reminds us that there are a huge number of very unintelligent people out there and they probably make up the bulk of youtube viewership!
There is a FireFox extension called YouTube Comment Snob.
I believe they have a version out for Chrome as well now.It hides comments if they fail a certain number of rules:
* More than # spelling mistakes: The number of mistakes is customizable, and the extension uses Firefox's built-in spell checker.
* All capital letters
* No capital letters
* Doesn't start with a capital letter
* Excessive punctuation (!!!! ????)
* Excessive capitalization
* ProfanityEver since I installed that add-on, set to "5 or more spelling mistakes and 4 or more rules fail", most video comment sections average out to 2-3% (That is: 2 or 3 out of every 100 comments) that I can still see.
It's almost as comical as the comments themselves, except at the end I don't want to slit my wrists as much.
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Re:Just Might Take Them Up On It
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Re:Mozilla weave
Mozilla weave (sync) is the only example I can think of, of this "cloud shit" done right.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Weave/Developer/Crypto ... crypto done right, and yet "it just works".Thanks for mentioning Weave -- it had slipped under my radar.
Other cloud app's that show they're making trustable / secure cloud storage effort:
PassPack (password mgmt, with fields encrypted locally by a key they never know. They also offer the underlying library for this as FOSS source code for anyone interested in working in a similar framework)
LastPass (similar, doesn't isolate account info from data like PassPack)
Hushmail used to have something similar.
Several secure-storage tools will encrypt then push the encrypted content to either DropBox or some other storage point.
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Mozilla weave
Mozilla weave (sync) is the only example I can think of, of this "cloud shit" done right.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Weave/Developer/Crypto ... crypto done right, and yet "it just works". -
Re:Nope
Um. They also run the plugin in a separate process...
plugin-container.exe
Since Firefox 3.6.4 actually.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/3.6.4/releasenotes/There are still possibilities for crashes, but hell, Chromium crashes on me too, even with it having the complete process isolation that Firefox just rolled out last fall on mobile.
Actually, on my particular hardware, Firefox seems to be far more stable and memory efficient, but that's unrelated to the plugin-container.exe thing
This sandbox is just an added layer.
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Re:He's right
Yep. It's still a draft, but it's already supported by Chrome. Firefox is working on it but may be waiting for the draft to be finalized. Wikipedia reports that there's a Firefox add-on that does it already, but of course it's not all too useful until a majority of internet users have support for it (general support by mobile browsers will likely take a couple years.... Server Name Indication is still not quite supported well enough to really justify using it despite being several years old).
Well, actually, it's a little different from SNI because there are currently a good number of servers around with self-signed certs. Adding DNSSEC stapled certificates to those would not affect old browsers and get rid of the warnings in new browsers.
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Re:He's right
Yep. It's still a draft, but it's already supported by Chrome. Firefox is working on it but may be waiting for the draft to be finalized. Wikipedia reports that there's a Firefox add-on that does it already, but of course it's not all too useful until a majority of internet users have support for it (general support by mobile browsers will likely take a couple years.... Server Name Indication is still not quite supported well enough to really justify using it despite being several years old).
Well, actually, it's a little different from SNI because there are currently a good number of servers around with self-signed certs. Adding DNSSEC stapled certificates to those would not affect old browsers and get rid of the warnings in new browsers.
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Re:'bout time!
True, the whole browser no longer crashes. But it does stop responding for about 30 seconds every time Flash crashes. Unfortunately, it crashes quite a bit more often than it should - about twice a week at least on my work machine. It would be great if they ran it on a different thread or didn't need to sync the thread so tightly or whatever it is they are doing that makes it freeze the entire browser. It comes back to life after a bit and even prompts you to report that Flash crashed.
Are you sure that Flash is actually crashing there?
If you open the task manager whilst a flash applet is running in Firefox, you'll see plugin-container.exe which is the hosting process for Flash. It sounds like Firefox is notifying Flash about something (redraw, click, scroll, whatever) and Flash is malfunctioning (100% CPU usage) causing Firefox to wait (If it's a redraw that was sent then the UI is going to lock until the draw completes) but Flash eventually eats too much RAM or does something stupid and crashes [after about 30 seconds]. Alternatively, Firefox might just be giving up and force-closing Flash after 30secs which is far too long, you should probably file a bug.
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Re:And we care because...
I totally understand not being willing to stick python on your machines.
If you're willing to, you can also manually download nightlies from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/ (you want the dated directories ending in "mozilla-central"). Again, I understand if you don't want to put in the time to do this; it's just that we do have AMD test machines and they're not showing the symptoms you describe....
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Re:Can't update on my work computer
Do you have a single sign on product installed? There is a known bug
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Re:And we care because...
Even Mozilla's own help site points to you Status-4-Evar. That combined with re-enabling the menu bar and putting the tabs on bottom pretty much restores the whole old UI you want, I'd think. Oh actually, move the stop/reload buttons too. There you go.
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Re:And we care because...
Even Mozilla's own help site points to you Status-4-Evar. That combined with re-enabling the menu bar and putting the tabs on bottom pretty much restores the whole old UI you want, I'd think. Oh actually, move the stop/reload buttons too. There you go.
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Re:Still no Flash in mobile ...
It's a shame Flash is not ready yet, because with the sync feature I can access my desktop bookmarks on my smartphone which is really useful. Also the way firefox mobile handles tabs (swipe the main window to the right to see the list of tabs) is quite nice - with the stock browser I need to select Menu -> Tabs and only then can I choose between windows.
According to this Flash is targeted for Firefox 11 though.
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Re:Still no Flash in mobile ...
Looks to me like it is ready and scheduled for Firefox 11:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking#Firefox_11:_Mobile
Good thing is, you don't have to wait a year, but it will be available to you in 6 weeks
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Re:How does it compare to Chrome?
Although you already mentioned it as irrelevant, I doubt it is : CHECK YOUR ADDONS !
I too was feeling FF getting sluggish over time and a colleague finally convinced me to give Chrome a try. WOW, it felt quick, it felt snappy... but it lacked on some parts; eg. somehow the chrome-internet had a lot more ads !?! So I installed Ad-Blocker for Chrome... Oh, and no live-bookmarks ?? No worries, plugin for that too. Hmm, clearly I need Password-maker too because I don't know any single pwd apart from my master pwd... luckily it was ported.... ugly, but workable, more or less. FoxyProxy on chrome ? Check, works albeit seems to mess around with the OS-settings instead of just those of Chrome..
.oh well, small price to pay I guess. Finding add-ons, err, extensions I mean, isn't fun either, you have to scroll through a gazillion poster-size flashy icons with no obvious explanation of what they do, how is that useful? Anyway, seems there is no chrome-alternative for https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tortoisesvn-menu/ and the author's page seems to have vanished. Too bad, maybe I'll give it a go myself on a dreary day... Luckily my grease-monkey scripts pretty much work right out of the box, so no losses there.
Let's have a look what else I have in FF, oohh, 7 more addons that I actually don't really need... time to uninstall them...After some days of alternatively using both I've managed to tweak Chrome so it does what I want it to do but as a result it feels a lot less snappy now than it did when it was virgin new and after upgrading FF to version 9 and removing those unneeded add-ons that one now feels pretty much the same as Chrome when browsing around the internet with the added benefit that it has the TortoiseSvn plugin that I really miss on Chrome. Yes, Chrome is remarkably faster too start but to be honest I leave my browser(s) open most of the time with tens of tabs open.. and I usually hibernate my laptop so it only gets reboot every few days anyway. Who cares about the browser taking 10 seconds extra to start ?
In the end I've gone back to FF completely except for the occasional situation where I land on some page in a foreign language and I do need to know what's on it (eg. some taiwanese driver page). Chrome really shines when it comes to the 'online' translation thing.
Out of curiosity I now have both open and chrome uses about 170Mb on 12 processes for 3 tabs, firefox takes about 450Mb for 18 tabs, but again, who cares as I've got another 450Mb of memory in standby anyway.
And as for as responsiveness is concerned, I've never experienced FF to hang like what you're describing unless I got in a situation where EVERY program starts behaving unresponsive, in those cases FF is no exception... there is only so much stuff you can cram in 4Gb of ram
... If you suffer from 'beach-balling' with 12Gb of memory, you're either having a lot of memory-hungry programs open (not sure how OSX handles swapping out memory of background programs, I guess not that different from Windows) or you're hard disk is going to die some of these days and warning you with IO-bottlenecks right now... (use some tool that can read the SMART info). -
Re:And we care because...
A Windows service to update applications without asking Administrator password will be in Firefox 12, and I'll be switching to the Aurora 12 builds as soon as they're out due to them fixing the Ctrl F page search results no longer appearing right at the bottom of the viewport, obscured so easily by overlaid "info bars" that websites put down there. Now the results will appear in the middle of the screen, FINALLY!
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Re:And we care because...
A Windows service to update applications without asking Administrator password will be in Firefox 12, and I'll be switching to the Aurora 12 builds as soon as they're out due to them fixing the Ctrl F page search results no longer appearing right at the bottom of the viewport, obscured so easily by overlaid "info bars" that websites put down there. Now the results will appear in the middle of the screen, FINALLY!
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Things missing from 10 ESR for web developers
that will be here within a couple versions, but those choosing not to update because of the ESR will miss out on:
3D view of pages - for anyone that has struggled to with figuring out what should be visible in nested layers.
Responsiveness indicator - by setting the about:config pref nglayout.debug.paint_flashing to true.
built-in style editor - so the right-click -> Inspect item is now immediately more useful.
Javascript debugger with better info on finding errors within js libraries like jquery, and integrated into the built-in source editor.
Websockets has been unprefixedHell, I say skip Firefox 10 and get Aurora right now!
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Things missing from 10 ESR for web developers
that will be here within a couple versions, but those choosing not to update because of the ESR will miss out on:
3D view of pages - for anyone that has struggled to with figuring out what should be visible in nested layers.
Responsiveness indicator - by setting the about:config pref nglayout.debug.paint_flashing to true.
built-in style editor - so the right-click -> Inspect item is now immediately more useful.
Javascript debugger with better info on finding errors within js libraries like jquery, and integrated into the built-in source editor.
Websockets has been unprefixedHell, I say skip Firefox 10 and get Aurora right now!
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Things missing from 10 ESR for web developers
that will be here within a couple versions, but those choosing not to update because of the ESR will miss out on:
3D view of pages - for anyone that has struggled to with figuring out what should be visible in nested layers.
Responsiveness indicator - by setting the about:config pref nglayout.debug.paint_flashing to true.
built-in style editor - so the right-click -> Inspect item is now immediately more useful.
Javascript debugger with better info on finding errors within js libraries like jquery, and integrated into the built-in source editor.
Websockets has been unprefixedHell, I say skip Firefox 10 and get Aurora right now!
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Things missing from 10 ESR for web developers
that will be here within a couple versions, but those choosing not to update because of the ESR will miss out on:
3D view of pages - for anyone that has struggled to with figuring out what should be visible in nested layers.
Responsiveness indicator - by setting the about:config pref nglayout.debug.paint_flashing to true.
built-in style editor - so the right-click -> Inspect item is now immediately more useful.
Javascript debugger with better info on finding errors within js libraries like jquery, and integrated into the built-in source editor.
Websockets has been unprefixedHell, I say skip Firefox 10 and get Aurora right now!
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Re:Still no Flash in mobile ...
It's scheduled for the next release for certain mobile devices. Presumably others will follow.
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Re:Still no Flash in mobile ...
It's scheduled for the next release for certain mobile devices. Presumably others will follow.
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Re:Incomplete summary
Could a Slashdot editor please add to the summary info about teh Koch brothers payola for organizations relased at the same time, and the new built-in government tracking software? Even a link too a website with coverage about the Apple iPad vs. Google Android would do.
Fixed your post to meet slashdot editorial standards.
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Re:Still no Flash in mobile ...
This is working fairly well on Nightly and Aurora. On Beta (11) soon.
Adding Flash to Firefox was a considerable amount of work. Adobe and Google rather drastically re-wrote NPAPI. The only documentation on how Flash worked on Android is the Android source. This work represents several hundred person hours to get it working.
TBH Flash support is in the current release version has a pref for flash on 2.2 and 2.3 but the experience is rather poor, hence it being disabled with no UI to enable it. about:config change plugin.disable to false. Judge Flash progress against the Nighty or Aurora builds. The Beta 10 or release 10 builds are not representative of the Flash experience for 11+.
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Re:Still no Flash in mobile ...
This is working fairly well on Nightly and Aurora. On Beta (11) soon.
Adding Flash to Firefox was a considerable amount of work. Adobe and Google rather drastically re-wrote NPAPI. The only documentation on how Flash worked on Android is the Android source. This work represents several hundred person hours to get it working.
TBH Flash support is in the current release version has a pref for flash on 2.2 and 2.3 but the experience is rather poor, hence it being disabled with no UI to enable it. about:config change plugin.disable to false. Judge Flash progress against the Nighty or Aurora builds. The Beta 10 or release 10 builds are not representative of the Flash experience for 11+.
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Re:And we care because...
They have released the Extended Support Release as well (the other ESR) which is part way there, at least in terms of a slower release cycle. http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/
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Re:And we care because...
Now if we could just get Mozilla to play better with the enterprise.
The first Extended Support Release is based on Firefox 10: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/. The FAQ outlines the life cycle for the ESR builds.
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Re:And we care because...
Now if we could just get Mozilla to play better with the enterprise.
The first Extended Support Release is based on Firefox 10: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/. The FAQ outlines the life cycle for the ESR builds.
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They broke add-on compatability
At least for one of my add-ons, they broke compatibility. That one shows "Not available for Firefox 10.0". Mozilla announced "All add-ons will be made compatible by default in the upcoming Firefox 10 release", but it didn't work.
(The add-on works fine under Firefox 10. It's Mozilla's download/upgrade/update/approve system, "AMO", that's broken. I have some of the same add-ons for both Firefox and Google Chrome, and the Google Chrome store system works much better than Mozilla's. This reflects Mozilla's focus on the browser being in control, rather than being a slave to the "cloud". Firefox updating and their "AMO" try to slave their browser to their servers. Mozilla isn't very good at that.)
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Re:And FF10 also makes addons compatible by defaul
FF11 will remove the UAC prompt on Windows, which will be a further improvement in 6 weeks from now.
How the hell do they intend to do that?
No, wait, let me guess - they intend to install it in the user directory like Chrome does. I have to guess, because the feature description sure doesn't explain how it would work.
Oh, but the bug reports do. Apparently they're going to "work around" UAC by running yet another background updater. Just what I need. Another background updater running at startup, slowing Windows boot, just to "work around" Windows security.
Somehow, the idea of "working around" security features built into the OS sounds like a horrible idea to me.
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Re:And FF10 also makes addons compatible by defaul
FF11 will remove the UAC prompt on Windows, which will be a further improvement in 6 weeks from now.
That actually missed FF11, and is slated for FF12.
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Addons now compatible by default
Personally, it hasn't been an issue for me (with my old, highly-customized profile), but one of the new features listed in the not-so-technical release notes is "Most add-ons are now compatible with new versions of Firefox by default". This seems to be the major issue most people have with their quicker release cycle, so hopefully it'll alleviate some pain there.
Older versions of Firefox (Firebird? Phoenix?) had a separate version number just for extensions, which would've avoided these issues. However, it would create a confusing second version number completely unrelated to the browser version, and they always seemed to set it to the same number as the browser version anyway.
As for my personal upgrade anecdote, I set "extensions.checkCompatibility.10.0" to False just to be safe. When I restarted Firefox, I got the box asking which addons I wanted to enable and disable (with my current settings pre-selected). I clicked OK and Firefox 10 opened up, looking exactly the same as 9.0.1 (which I have customized to look and act almost exactly the same as 3.6).
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Incomplete summary
Could a Slashdot editor please add to the summary info about the Extended Support Release for organizations released at the same time, and the new built-in web developer tools? Even a link to a website with coverage about the new changes to Firefox would do.
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Re:Uhm...
and visiting all those ad servers incidentally just slows down my web browsing for no good reason.
You don't use AdBlock? You'd be crazy to browse the web these days without AdBlock, NoScript, Flashblock and Ghostery. Unblock sites that you really care about if you must, but browsing without any protection is just nuts.
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Re:Uhm...
You only "send your traffic" to facebook, if you choose to click on the link to Facebook.
?
Wrong. Many sites share information on their visitors to 3rd parties, this allows said 3rd parties to track and profile you. You do not have to click a link, it happens in the background.
Use this to find out who the main players are: http://www.ghostery.com/Ghostery sees the invisible web - tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons. Ghostery tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity.
And obviously ad-block plus, NoScript at al...
Facebook specific:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-blocker/?src=userprofile -
Re:This isn't news...
Well perhaps because in this case quite a few of use can't read the article. Don't be an enabler https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/murdoch-block/ [mozilla.org] cut off the air supply before their greed cuts off yours.
Amazing!
Who'd have thought someone would write a browser add-on for intentionally self-censoring one's information?
Or that people who would probably otherwise describe themselves as "open minded" would seriously consider using such a thing, and think it a grand idea?
I suppose some people are more comfortable only seeing information that confirms their own views. That's fine and their right. I just wish such people would refrain from participating in the political process. It distorts the results for the rest of us that actually participate in finding the best solutions for the society regardless of what party or ideological side came up with the best solution, and not policies dictated by some blind ideological dogma that can't and doesn't tolerate differing views.
That's just fanaticism, and we've suffered enough fanatics lately.
Strat
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Re:This isn't news...
Well perhaps because in this case quite a few of use can't read the article. Don't be an enabler https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/murdoch-block/ cut off the air supply before their greed cuts off yours.
When it is part of the News Corp Empire, why bother, with so much advertising as news, blatant truth censorship and well all in all a PR=B$ (lies for profit). The Fox not-News network, why even bother to debate, they will have no qualms about spreading the biggest lies imaginable, basically a network whose motto is your pay it and they will spray it, fertiliser that is.
Let's not get to sucked in by the lies. Don't forget burning fossil fuels does not just produce carbon dioxide but also carbon monoxide, Nitrogen dioxide, Sulphur dioxide, Benzene and, Formaldehyde, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon.
So comparing the exhalation of people to a car exhaust, well perhaps if those who choose to do so would do us all of the favour of sucking on a car exhaust for a while, likely the pollution problem will be solved more rapidly.
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Re:And none with a decent interface.
Add in a little Hide Caption Titlebar Plus:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/13505/
and you can get rid of that pesky titlebar, too. Perfect browser UI. I use vimperator rather than Pentadactyl, but not having all that wasted chrome is a dream.
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Re:You had me at..
My FF 9 with 17 open tabs in two windows is using about 1.2 GB of virtual memory and between 810 and 747 MB of data memory. I'm checking it with top as I'm writing this and the fact it floats means it's actively garbage collecting (virtual memory changes accordingly). It doesn't feel like it slows down and I've only 4 GB of RAM. Not that bad IMHO.
I suggest you to stop using 3.6 anymore especially after all the work they've done on the JavaScript interpreter and the MemShrink initiative. We're at version 9 now, which could be 4.5 on the old numbering scheme and two years in the future (3.6 is from January 2010).
If what makes you stick on 3.6 is the new FF 4 GUI, there are ways to get the traditional one on new versions of FF. First of all, you can uncheck the Tab on top option and get the tabs between the menu and the html window (I did that). Then there are extensions to get back the status bar, but I realized the status bar is not that important: destination urls pop up at the bottom when you hover on links and the buttons of AdBlock, GreaseMonkey, Firebox etc show up at the right of the address bar now. Finally, on Linux you still get the File, Edit, View menu when it used to be. I don't know if it's possible to get it back on other platforms too but I understand the drive to save vertical space on the new reduced height screens of many laptops, so I won't bash Mozilla and the other browser teams for that.
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Re:I just want a sensible UI
Are you telling me Firefox users have problems finding extensions, especially when they're linked directly from the "what happened to the status bar" help topic? If they don't care enough to google "Firefox status bar", they don't count towards the "number of people who care about the status bar" statistic.
Even if you assume that every Firefox 3.6 user is on 3.6 solely because of the status bar, that means no more than six percent of web users actually care.
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Re:I just want a sensible UI
Yes, it's 1%. Back in 2009, there were ~270 million Firefox users. Only 150 thousand of them care about the status bar.
Given that not even 1% of Firefox users care about the status bar, I think the UI designers are entirely correct to say to say, quote, "fuck you, you exceptionally whiny bitches."