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Firefox 6 Ships Next Week, 8 Blocks Sneaky Add-Ons
CWmike writes "Mozilla is on track to release Firefox 6 next week, according to notes posted on the company's website. 'On track with a few bugs still remaining. No concerns for Tuesday,' the notes stated. Firefox 6 includes several noticeable changes, including highlighting domain names in the address bar — both Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 do something similar by boldfacing domain names — and reducing startup time when users rely on Panorama, the browser's multi-tab organizer. Meanwhile, Mozilla said this week that starting with Firefox 8, Mozilla will automatically block browser add-ons until users approve them, which should put an end to sneaky installs."
Quick, invent more 'stuff' to throw at it, so we don't have to fix the bugs we introduced in ff4!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I'm really looking forward to this.
I'm planning on running 12 by the end of the year. You guys are waaaay behind.
I would love an auto update to this that did not say "Hey go download here to get the latest version" Or even the current "Downloading patch, please apply later" bit. IM not a chrome user but i like that it auto updates with out intervention.
Really? They can block third party addons?
Gee, every time there was a story about a third party addon breaking Firefox, Firefox's excuse was always that it's "impossible" to prevent third parties from installing addons. Apparently they were lying; they just didn't bother.
Ironically, the ability to block third party addons blocks Firefox from being deployed in any enterprise settings. I guess they weren't kidding about Firefox not being for enterprise users.
And by 2014, we'll be preparing to upgrade to Firefox 24. \o/
now they need to do something about helping authors keep their addons up to date or making them work some other way.
example google voice addon - didn't work,wasn't supported on 4 via the official addon site. I ended up going back to 3.6 and finally found someone who updated the addon for 4.*
Screw it now, I'm staying on 3.*
It gets to a point where an addon is part of the functionality of the browser in this case the voice addon was something I relied on daily instead of keeping the tab open.
I'm using FF8 alphas on the Nightly channel, which is part of the Moziila PPA in Ubuntu. It's fantastic. It uses way less memory and is way faster. It's also way stabler than nightlies were when I was running Moziila nightlies in 2001, and they were pretty good even then. The only downside is extensions that haven't caught up. If you're clear for those, I heartily recommend it.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
They have back room deals woth multiple memory manufactuerers to deliberatley include memory leaks, so they can sell more ram. Back in 2004 a Gig of memory was high end, now it is too little for even netbooks thanks to payola from memory companies.
I am now a chrome user and won't be using Firefox anymore.
FireFox7, aka FinalFantasy7, will have a huge step forward dealing with memory. FF6 doesn't have such nice awaited features. I'll skip #6.
-- Rastignac was here.
Great, another rounds of broken add-ons.
First 4, then very quickly Firefox 5 and now version 6? Where is the consistency?
I'd rather they add some easy way to let users install addons that say, "Does not support Firefox x.x". They can put a big disclaimer/warning/alert to make sure the user knows what they are doing, but with the Firefox rapid release schedule I am tired of having my addons break because of version string issues.
One example is the Stylish addon. I am using the Firefox 6 beta in Ubuntu 11.10 alpha and Stylish refuses to install due to the version string. The addon info says it supports Firefox 3.6 - 6.0a2 (key part being "6.0.a2"). That tells me that it should work in later alpha/beta version 6 builds.
Firefox really needs to address the issue of how addons determine whether or not they are out-of-date. The browser version is no longer a useful metric for that.
Exactly how are they going to block that? Anything FireFox has access to, so would an (admin-level) installer.
Unless they're taking a signature from the add-on and some information unique to the user profile and generating a hash/code or that, and keep the hashing algorithm secret somehow?
More 0-days woohoo
Sneaky add-ons are installed by software that has the priviledge of messing with the system, like windows updates. When they have such a priviledge, it's easy to manipulate the user's profile to make it accept the new add-ons. They can't protect themselves against this.
I suppose it's no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to Firefox development for the past several years, but for fuck's sake, listen to your users and stop with the version number inflation!
Seriously, what makes this a Firefox 6 and not a Firefox 4.2? What new features does it add? Apparently the only really "stand-out" feature is graying out anything that isn't the domain name in the useless-bar. I mean, Awesome Bar.
(Seriously, I like the concept, but I've had quite a few instances this past week where instead of finding "the page I was just on five minutes ago" it does something like "page 3 of this article you read two months ago" with no hint of the URL I'd opened literally ten times already that day. Awesome. Here's an idea, can Firefox try and fix it to make it useful? Like sort based on number of times a page was viewed, counting reloads, so that typing the URL to a forum doesn't find page 2, 3, 4, and 5, but never page 1 because I don't click on the page 1 link enough, I just reload the forum?)
But back to the version number issue - quick, how many people know what version number Chrome is up to off the top of their head? Anyone?
How many people using Firefox 5 here have literally forgotten that they're using Firefox 5, because the last really major update was Firefox 4? I still think of it as "Firefox 4" because it looks identical, and have to be reminded that they've inflated the version number for no useful reason.
Seriously, stop blindly aping Chrome! If you're going to copy something Chrome does, try and understand it! For example, take removing the status bar. Chrome will expand the little URL popup that replaced the status bar if you continue hovering a link. Firefox 4 and 5 don't. And for some reason they randomly switch between left-aligning it and right-aligning the popup. And for fuck's sake, why don't you just expand the popup to fill the entire horizontal width of the window?! I've got the room to display the entire URL! Why doesn't Firefox bother doing so?!
But kudos for aping (poorly) the feature in IE 9 that warns when third party addons have been installed and gives you the option of not using them. It's nice to know that you're going to go ahead and do that after crying about how it's impossible to do, even after IE had launched with that feature.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
FF6 has a new Tools > Developer submenu, and they moved Error Console, View Source and Web Console there. Moving View Source there was a big surprise. Any reasonable developer might get totally freaked out searching high and low for View Source if they didn't know about that move.
In case you missed it, Web Console in FF5+ is like the console in Firebug when you have it set to enter JS commands at the bottom of the pane. But the difference is, Web Console is always available. It's not a plug-in like Firebug. So it's something you can count on, even if you upgrade and Firebug breaks in the new version.
I was a long-time Firefox user, I even was part of Spreadfirefox.com and was a "Zealot" that managed to convert my Mom and brother to it and when I was at college I got the IT admins to install it back in the bad old days of IE6. But Firefox has lost its way. Its peak was 1.0 to 3.6. The memory leaks, the obsessive version numbers, the theft of the status bar and ignoring its users and wasting 80 million dollars a year is the last straw. I uninstalled Firefox today, and have switched to Chrome on my main PCs and Safari on my iPad.
Netscape died a horrible death, and Firefox seems to be repeating it. Hopefully enough concerned users fork the Firefox 3.6 code and "re-pheonix" it before it's too late.
I got fed up with Firefox's horrible memory leaks and poor performance way back at Firefox 2, and have used alternate browsers since then. But after hearing about Firefox 5 being released, I figured that I'd give it a go.
What a mistake! Firefox 5 hasn't improved at all. The memory leaks are still there, and they're far worse now. I used it for a couple of hours, and its memory use was over 7 GB. Luckily, I've got 16 GB, so 7 GB wasn't that painful. Still, it was totally unacceptable for a web browser to ever use that much memory.
The performance pales in comparison to Chrome, Safari, and even IE. It felt slow, while the others feel fast and responsive.
I just don't get it. They've had years upon years to improve the situation, but it isn't getting any better. It's getting much worse, in fact! All of the other browsers are getting better. Why isn't Firefox? Why does it keep getting worse?
They need to add the Firefox 3 UI and the status bar back as an option. Some of the changes they have talked about lately are dumb (like adding facebook functionality to the navigation bar). However, none of them compare to the UI change for no reason. I think the last line of one of the articles prove that.
As of the end of July, 48% of Firefox users were running Firefox 5, while just 11% were still on Firefox 4.
This leaves over 40% running 3.6 and before, not a small number by any stretch. And what was changed from 3.6 to 4? A bunch of things no one would notice immediately and the UI overhaul. I think those demographics are a message. Is Mozilla listening?
I'm still using 3.something.
I bet none of them are standards compliant.
How about obfuscation like polymorphic code shipped to end users. The installer generates a binary using a set of instructions that vary based on a randomizing algorithm that has a cryptographic random number generator for secure input. When finished it destroys all evidence of what seed created the binary. Then that binary when ran, uses prevention techniques to prevent scanning the binary by malware to determine where the new exploit needs to go. Make it a huge pain to implement these engines by increasing randomness, not software techniques. Keep that algorithm to yourself and ship new code for each customer when they click the download link.
A: Each exploit is now traceable to some extent back to which binary they had to create the exploit.
B: Code can't spread because it can't figure out what to do? (reaching here)
C: Think of memory randomization, applied to the compilation process with regards to unique instruction ordering with the same output and data layouts that have varying patterns. (think of endianness but at the memory/storage areas in the binary, with MANY more types of layouts designed to be confusing and unique per binary. Every other bit, every 3 bits then 2 back with opposite truth parsing(0,1 switched), etc.Instead of BigEndian, use cascading vertical/horizontal binary spreads with randomized loaders also generated.
That would be damn near impossible to crack, but after dabbling with Genetic Programming (programs that generate lots of programs with a sliding wedge towards a certain fitness and mutate those programs similar to evolution) I believe what I described above is possible.
We generated code using such a program that could be fed 255 integers (5 digit limit per integer) of various counting schemes (start at 0 count by 2, count by 12s, 4 forwards, 2 backwards with mutation, Fibonacci! etc.) and it figured out how to write python programs to solve the problem or generate the input from the source code without saving the input inside the program! Even more is every time it's ran it figures out a different program to solve the input. Using a fitness algorithm for complexity trimming (some programs took hours to generate 255 integer output, some took 1 minute, some took 400 milliseconds) we can trim the user experience to an acceptable level.
That is where I see the future going. You heard it here back in measly 2011! And everyone thinks I'm crazy.....
Why can't that work? On a serious level. I know the talent is in here reading this.
This is now the third time in a row they've pushed these new "update or die" version updates incompatible with the automatic update features. I may be on top of things and know when to go click "Help -> About" to trigger the update process, but my parents and such aren't, and I'll be damned I'm going to individually walk them through the process every few weeks like this. I'm done with Firefox.
At this point, my family is more likely to have an up-to-date and properly-patched browser with IE than with Firefox.
And by 2014, we'll be preparing to upgrade to Firefox 24. \o/
It's doubtful that Firefox will be relevant much beyond mid-2012. It's already sliding into irrelevancy. It is becoming the XFree86 of the browser world.
There's just no pressing reason to use Firefox these days. It's no longer 2002, where the only other browser was IE6. With Chrome and Safari and Opera and even IE9 available to us, Firefox offers no benefit.
All of its competitors today are faster, they use less memory, they have better developer tools, they are more extensible, they have smaller installers, and don't go changing their UI every fucking release.
The UI bug that allows light colored system fonts to screw up input boxes is still there. Why are they still phoning in the Linux version?
Be patient humans.... version 42 will answer all your questions....
".....to report whether they still work or are having some issues with alpha and beta releases. Note: Recommended for alpha and beta users only! in other words, not for anyone who is interested in maintaining a production stable system.
Firefox has jumped the shark, "upgrade or die". fuck you, Mozilla Corporation.
will they fix the memory leaks ?
for Linux .. how about a QT version ? GTK being old and broken it seems wasteful to code on top of it. .. the FlashVideoReplacer plugin does this, but its as crashy as anything... .. ..
how about an inbuilt ability to open flash videos with say, mplayer for a start
and in default settings - not to allow 3rd party cookies. or flash cookies. i know there are extensions for this
basic cross site scripting protection, and oh my god, the memory leaks
The only downside is extensions
I've been loving Firefox for years, but this fast release schedule is driving me nuts. Every time a new "major" version comes out now, at least one or two of my extensions break. The first one to go (on FF4) was Ubiquity, which still isn't fixed, and the stupid thing about that is Ubiquity is a Mozilla Labs extension. It's pretty sad when their own damn extensions can't even keep up, let alone 3rd party stuff.
So, back to your point about extensions being the only downside, honestly, do we use Firefox for any other reason? I could have ditched FF for Chrome or even IE9 (shudder) but it's the extensions that make Firefox so awesome, and that's what's suffering the most with this bullshit release schedule.
I still haven't gotten Firefox 5 completely back to the old 3.6 look and feel, which was more workable and required fewer button clicks. The last nagging issue is the one that Firefox no longer displays in the drop-down the history of links in the current tab, so you can't quickly go back to the top of a rabbit trail that you started down. Sometimes that was my only way out of stupid sites that disable the back button.
Oh, and the Federal Student Aid site (FAFSA.gov) only supports Firefox 3.5 and 3.6, one of which is no longer supported by FF and the other of which will also soon be not supported.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
As another person posted we really need an option to stop user installed add ons in schools etc...
All my extensions will break, and I'll have to manually edit them to work. They would have of course worked if the version number went up by a decimal point.
Firefox 3.6.19 forever! I am now treating Firefox like an abandoned application. Google developers have now taken over. It may still be the best current browser due to its useful extensions, but it is like a bad copy of Chrome and imho inferior to Firefox 3.6.19 in most ways.
If I had to choose between Chrome and Firefox 4+, I really don't know what I would choose. Despite the horrible interface and all the badly implemented Chrome-ness Firefox 4+ still has unique functionality in the form of extensions like NoScript, Adblock Plus, and Scrapbook. They contain functionality that I just cannot live without and I haven't seen 100% replicated in any other browser. So I would probably be forced to stick with Firefox 4+ even though I prefer Chrome, Opera, and even MSIE in terms of the interface and usability etc.
Sure Chrome has NotScript, but it just doesn't work very well compared to NoScript. It's not a viable replacement. I ended up using the built in javascript whitelisting functionality which was a huge PITA. It was like going back to IE4 when I had to manually add sites to security zones by actually typing in the URLs.
If it some point a critical security flaw is found in Firefox 3.6.19 complete with exploits in the wild I may reluctantly migrate to Opera. Or maybe by that time someone will have forked Firefox 3.6.19 to at least apply security fixes as needed.
As of today Firefox 3.6.19 is still downloadable for Windows and Mac OS X and is available as a binary in the repositories of both of the Linux distros I use: ArchLinux and TinyCore.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
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No concerns for Tuesday
Well, guess I know what I'm doing on my next day off (Wednesday- don't ask). I'll be fixing all the backwards ass bullshit they seem to love including in these "rapid fire" releases. Disable compatibility checking, test everything to see it still works, yadda yadda.
This is getting old.
Sex. Drugs, and Unix.
For businesses and users worried about the fast update cycle of Firefox, perhaps they could consider using SeaMonkey. And, if they don't want SeaMonkey's chat and e-mail, perhaps they could make a fork of it, strip the unwanted features and... oh, wait!
I'm not totally opposed to the fast development cycle but I think Mozilla could step down the version numbering pace a few notches. e.g. release a new update every 6 weeks, but call it Firefox N.x+1 or N.x.y+1 instead of Firefox N+1 (Firefox 5 would be 4.1 and 6 would be 4.2). Push up the "big version" once each year or so.
Some fellow commenters have said it above: Mozilla don't listen to their users and ignore the obvious (e.g. huge memory consumption/memory leaks). Memory usage is better in Fx 7 and 8 thanks to the Memshrink project by Nicholas Nethercorte. However, they keep finding more and more leaks/inefficiencies. Some of them are caused by new features, some of them have been present for a long time, even with bugs filed about them. I hope they get their act together soon.
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
I'll stay on the stable 3.6 forever it seems.
I dont see the point of switching to the unstable branch that keeps braking things.
WTF. I'm still on FF3.x, yo!
***What's with the rash of major updates?!***
Within my 90 days let-the-suckers-go-first-buffer period FF4.x was eol'ed, right. It was said that FF5.x was the "security update to 4.x. And now, again, 5.x is to be supplanted by 6.x? Why bother updating, concordantlly I'll upgrade when shit breaks. Nice going Mozilla. *sigh* Or get on a periodic release schedule and stick to it.
They're not planning to fix the memory leak issues until Firefox 416, due out sometime in early 2012.
Why do new versions come out so often?
So am I... This one change could make the web twice as safe for most users (and I'm tired of explaining to them which part of the URL is the domain name).
I have to say ... IT SUCKS!!! It still has the annoying problem of not opening links until you click it multiple times.
The quality of Firefox is going to the garbage dump release after release. Instead of trying to mimic Google's quality less release schedule, how about actually doing some SQA and not releasing untested garbage?
I hate updates when opening programs. I shut down the FF update service at FF 5.
When a program can install an addon, it can enable it, too.
So has anybody created a fork of Firefox yet that includes all the browser optimisations, faster JavaScript, etc, but doesn't bugger up the UI every month for no good reason (and ideally has a sane version numbering system)?
Firefox 6 has been already released unofficially (i.e. files are available, the announcement hasn't been yet made).
What, are they doing a major rev every couple of months now to catch up to IE's 9?
Anyone else here having memories of the Slackware/RedHat/Debian version wars of the 1990s?
Why did it take the developers this long to realize that people may not want a bunch a crap added to Firefox without their permission? Blocking the addition of features without express consent of the user should have been the default setting from the very beginning.
I have to close Firebug anytime a heavy webpage (a huge table with sorting, like in a Drupal admin area, etc.). If I don't it locks up for several seconds anytime I try to leave that page. About 25% of those times it just hangs until I have to restart it. It has made FF 3.6 look like the last version of FF for me... and I've been using it (or Mozilla before FF even existed) since the Netscape 6 debacle. Sorry guys - I hate the idea of Chrome as much as any privacy lover would, and I love certain addons (Adblock/NoScript/Firebug/etc.), but as a web dev FF4+ just isn't cutting it. Unless one of these new version fix those issues, I have to leave FF behind. It's now wasting my time on the job. BTW - Isn't it ironic that it's the same version number (4.x) where the Netscape code became too buggy/broken and had to be scrapped? Hopefully that's not an omen for Firefox...
I don't know about you, but the last time I remember using the home button was in Netscape 3. Nowadays I just resume to whatever state I left the browser in.
The concept of a "home page" is obsolete since at least ten years.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Sorry guys - I hate the idea of Chrome as much as any privacy lover would, and I love certain addons (Adblock/NoScript/Firebug/etc.), but as a web dev FF4+ just isn't cutting it. Unless one of these new version fix those issues, I have to leave FF behind. It's now wasting my time on the job.
Fortunately...I found many of the same addons for Chrome that I was using in FF. Don't get me wrong...have been using and am used to FF...but when I have to wait for my quad-core to catch up to whatever I'm doing in FF...something had to give...so went with Chrome and the problems went away.
Whenever I read that FF gets their act together and it starts acting like Chrome/Opera/IE...I will start using it again.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles M. Schulz
Your loss... can't say I'll miss you.
I am really tired of them putting out major versions at this speed. Since these are obviously minor versions, why can't they just call them minor versions and stop breaking people's add-ons? I considered Firefox my browser of choice for a long time even though I disliked the large memory footprint, for one reason- Add-ons. ADD-ONS. The same ADD-ONS which they are now breaking as fast as they can. I've now switched to a webkit browser with far fewer features but less suck- Midori. You might want to check it out if you can't see the end of this Firefox crap. http://www.twotoasts.de/index.php?/pages/midori_summary.html