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Mozilla Details How Old Plugins Will Be Blocked In Firefox 17

Posted by Soulskill on from the another-warning-message-your-parents-can-ignore dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, Mozilla announced it will prompt Firefox users on Windows with old versions of Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight to update their plugins, but refused to detail how the system will work. Now, the organization has unveiled 'click-to-play plugin blocks,' which will be on by default in Firefox 17, starting with the three aforementioned plugins. (Expect more to be added eventually.) Furthermore, you can try out the feature for yourself now in Firefox 17 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux." Also coming in Firefox 17 is support for Mozilla's "Social API." The announcement describes it thus: "Much like the OpenSearch standard, the Social API enables developers to integrate social services into the browser in a way that is meaningful and helpful to users. As services integrate with Firefox via the Social API sidebar, it will be easy for you to keep up with friends and family anywhere you go on the Web without having to open a new Web page or switch between tabs. You can stay connected to your favorite social network even while you are surfing the Web, watching a video or playing a game."

32 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Yet another reason to dump FF by fluffy99 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mozilla has lost it's focus and instead of making a good, fast, secure browser they are trying to turn it into a social API with every gee-whiz-bang feature most users don't want or need.

    1. Re:Yet another reason to dump FF by hardie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Don't those folks have anything better to do?

    2. Re:Yet another reason to dump FF by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mozilla has lost it's focus and instead of making a good, fast, secure browser they are trying to turn it into a social API with every gee-whiz-bang feature most users don't want or need.

      And yet, FF 16 is noticeably snappier for me than 15 was. Glad they got 16.0.1 out quickly. The developer tool updates in the last few versions are very welcome, as well, and certainly the reduced memory use is very nice.

    3. Re:Yet another reason to dump FF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually this is a good thing. The new api that the plugins use do not break during each release.

      I just started warming up to Firefox recently. After I submitted the story last spring of FF using the least amount of memory I gave it another whirl. It is much faster, it no longer nags you, flash is now sandboxed, and it gets faster during each release.

      With 5.0 I agree. I actually went back to IE 9 which was a decent browser back in 2011 believe it or not contrary to popular belief on slashdot. I found Chrome too lacking with features and minimalistic.

      But FF is much improved and they already patched the 16 bug. 16.01 is out starting last last night.

    4. Re:Yet another reason to dump FF by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 2

      Yeah shame on them for turning around and fixing a security issue in days and enabling an update method that ensures everyone will have the fix.

      If you can't notice that Firefox is faster too then you're blind.

    5. Re:Yet another reason to dump FF by CosaNostra+Pizza+Inc · · Score: 2

      The big reason that Firefox managed to hold on for so long was the ad blocker plugin.

      and noScript

    6. Re:Yet another reason to dump FF by Synerg1y · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Am I the only one who thinks that we need LESS social networking as opposed to oh say, actually meeting and talking to people in person?

    7. Re:Yet another reason to dump FF by Laxori666 · · Score: 4, Funny

      You mean, meeting in meat space? Heaven forbid. These mortal coils of ours are getting more and more outdated. It requires such effort to synchronize two intellects to meet at a certain point and time, and then to move two 200lb bodies from wherever they happen to be to that point in time and place in space.

      The inconvenience of course is in experiencing any sort of fleshy exertion as well as having to deal with the vicissitudes of the physical world. Going up a flight of stairs, getting delayed in traffic, etc. All serve to frustrate the would-be mortal coil transcender.

      It will help when we have cybernetic implants such that we can control our environment more readily with our thoughts. I'm thinking bionic arms and legs, and perhaps jetpacks, which are mentally-commanded, much like our regular arms and legs are, except they won't tire or feel pain.

      However, that's still not ideal as the machinery can break and still has to deal with physical forces. That'll just be a temporary stopgap until we can integrate everything meaningful into a consensual hallucination existing only on the computers of the world. Plug in, upload your consciousness, and then move about in and interact with a world entirely of your own making. No more need to move heavy bodies in the physical world, thus all of those muscles required for motion can atrophy, reducing the required caloric intake. The body becomes a more capable yet more powerful machine thanks to the mental interface into cyberspace.

      This won't be ideal at first until all the kinks are worked out. You're not gonna want a server outage to fry the brains of everyone currently uploaded to that server. It's that blasted physical world, again. But eventually the electronics will get smaller, we'll need less and less of our bodies, and we'll have a brilliantly glorious future consisting of billions of disembodied human brains side-by-side in gigantic clusters all uploaded to the most powerful networked computer program ever made, dependent upon almost-invisible/ethereal hardware. Boring from the outside, but inside, we won't have to eat, drink or sleep to survive. Just one long massive near-eternal dream whose inhabitants can do what they want, when they want: mass orgies, gigantic visceral FPSs, mini-golf simulations, RPGs, petting kitties, you name it.

      What a glorious future awaits this human race. Until then, I will continue living in this painful physical world... my first action will be to finish consuming this bag of fried pork skins.

    8. Re:Yet another reason to dump FF by MMC+Monster · · Score: 2

      Mozilla has lost it's focus and instead of making a good, fast, secure browser they are trying to turn it into a social API with every gee-whiz-bang feature most users don't want or need.

      While I would agree with you ... Facebook has a billion (active?) users. While not a majority, maybe a significant minority of users of Firefox can benefit from this feature.

      Besides, the only time Firefox seems to slow down on me is when Flash is doing something crazy. And I can't really blame Firefox completely for that.

      --
      Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
    9. Re:Yet another reason to dump FF by Laxori666 · · Score: 2

      Bah! An evolutionary left-over. A pitiful remnant which only goes to show the limitations of blind nature. I'll take my genetically-enhanced pleasure receptors massively stimulated by the electrodes plugged into my brain-in-a-vat set in tandem with the visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations of dozens of impossibly (and I mean physically impossibly) attractive females, each specifically designed by the PleasureSystem to cater to my specific tastes thanks to it having completely emulated my brain neurons and run hundreds of thousands of simulations to predict with almost 100% accuracy what I will most respond to above and beyond even what I know, servicing my mentally generated avatar for days at a time, any day.

    10. Re:Yet another reason to dump FF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      People don't listen to you because YOU'RE off the rails. You seem to be pretending that Firefox is so bloated, ill-equipped, and under-performant that people should just ditch it. And then you tell them to choose a browser that you prefer, like some insane marketing droid for Chromium, which isn't a rationally better choice in any general way.

      You can pretend that your favorite features are the most important, but they aren't. Chromium has its own security problems, performance bottlenecks, and basic compatibility issues. But I'm sure you'd rather not be honest about those when you're so busy bashing on Firefox.

      And guess what? Firefox isn't the hog you claim it is. They haven't stopped working on their issues. They haven't deserted their fans, no matter how inanely you jump up and down because they aren't exactly like you want them to be.

      YOU face it. Firefox hasn't "lost its way." It's still highly competitive at worst, and the web would be a worse place if it vanished because of willfully ignorant misinformants like yourself. Firefox may be pandering to a larger userbase now, but it is still adhering to a vision of the web that no longer matches yours precisely. Browsers are changing, even if you aren't.

      Now shut up and go back to your preferred browser, and stop trying to tell us that Firefox is crapware like your tiny little opinion matters. Mine doesn't, but I don't go crying about Mozilla or Google when I dislike something about their browsers. I write plugins, file bug reports, and even contribute.

      And I hate hearing self-entitled whiners like you pretend that nothing in Firefox ever improves, and that it's substandard scum when it's YOU who have a chip on your shoulder.

  2. Re:how long by AuMatar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Switch to SeaMonkey. They have the same renderer, don't change their UI every week, and actually seems to use less memory.

    --
    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  3. Social API Sounds Like a Privacy Nightmare by jerquiaga · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hopefully there is something built in separating that social API sidebar from what you are actually browsing. Facebook/Google/Apple/Skeezy Advertisers wouldn't need tracking cookies to know exactly where you surfed.

    1. Re:Social API Sounds Like a Privacy Nightmare by asa · · Score: 2

      The API doesn't allow for the sidebar or other social features to know about the content of the pages you're visiting. You can read the docs if you want to learn more. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Social_API

  4. privacy controls in social API? by alef.01 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Will Mozilla provide isolation for its social apps from the rest of the tabs, when requested by the user; i.e providing cintrols on what browsing data, session, cookies and history the social API will be able to access, or will this make it more difficult for users to wall social apps than it is to do so with web-based social apps using plug-ins as many now do?

    1. Re:privacy controls in social API? by asa · · Score: 2

      The Firefox Social API doesn't allow for the sidebar or other social features to know about the content of the pages you're visiting. You can read the docs if you want to learn more. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Social_API

  5. Re:how long by DarkOx · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes it does. SeaMonkey uses 13% less memory on my system with the same three tabs, slashdot, slate, and LQ open as does FireFox. Which is funny considering FF was started to be lighter weight than SeaMonkey. SeaMonkey is far and away the better browser now in terms of UI as well.

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  6. Only 18?? by Viol8 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I updated to 24 only 10 mins ago ... no wait, its updating itself again to 25 ... oh , no thats got some security issue , now its on 26 ... I'll get back to you...

  7. Re:Old News by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 2

    It actually is indeed old news—Nightly 19 has been doing this to me for a week now (with the Acrobat plug-in) and it's been pretty obnoxious.

    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  8. Re:how long by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 4, Insightful

    seems to use less memory

    I use modern computers. At work my computer has 32 GB of memory. At home I have 16 GB of memory. My laptop has 8 GB. I honestly could not care less how much memory Firefox uses because it can't use enough for any of these computers to care (Firefox being a 32-bit program) and I would rather the program use RAM (which is fast) instead of disk (which is slow).

    I have better things to do using the web browser itself instead of incessantly complaining about the fact that the program that encompasses 80% of my home use as 30% of my work use uses an equally large amount of the resources of the computer. I want the personal computer to spend it's time running the programs I'm using. I don't want 90% of the fast resources to be always available and doing nothing whatsoever. If this were still 2006 or if we were talking about servers, the memory usage shtick would be a valid complaint. However, now that memory capacity is an order of magnitude greater than it was (thanks to 64-bit operating systems and lower cost per GB) and considering that web browsing is never something you should be doing on a server, it's really not a valid complaint anymore.

    You're either doing something stupid (like running badly coded extensions), using ancient hardware (which can't keep up anyway), or just enjoying playing the same old song and dance over and over. The Firefox memory complaints were valid when there were actual memory leaks that might consume 90% of available system memory. That is no longer reality, and unless you're running beta and third party 64-bit builds, it's a technical impossibility.

    --
    The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
  9. Re:Social API? by NotBorg · · Score: 2

    Perhaps Chrome should include a text-to-speech feature to your posting back to you so that you can actually hear how your posted sound with incorrect or missing.

    ...

    Preemptive woooooosh. (Note: woosh more Os than usual because it mentions a Google product.)

    --
    I want this account deleted.
  10. Bizarre selection of core features by JDG1980 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Also coming in Firefox 17 is support for Mozilla's "Social API." The announcement describes it thus: "Much like the OpenSearch standard, the Social API enables developers to integrate social services into the browser in a way that is meaningful and helpful to users. As services integrate with Firefox via the Social API sidebar, it will be easy for you to keep up with friends and family anywhere you go on the Web without having to open a new Web page or switch between tabs. You can stay connected to your favorite social network even while you are surfing the Web, watching a video or playing a game."

    Can someone explain to me why crap like this is being incorporated into Firefox as a core feature, but if we want a traditional status bar or address bar, that has to be a plugin?

  11. Re:how long by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You don't care if a program is designed poorly and eats up memory because you enjoy buying more?

    Are you a fucking moron?

  12. Tabbed browsing by Cid+Highwind · · Score: 2

    You can stay connected to your favorite social network even while you are surfing the Web, watching a video or playing a game.

    Yeah, it's called tabbed browsing. Been in Firefox since version 2.0...

    --
    0 1 - just my two bits
  13. Seriously Firefox get your act together.... by NinjaTekNeeks · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First you install Firefox...
    Then Flashblock....
    Then Adblock Plus
    Then Noscript
    Then Fasterfox...
    Then....

    Make a browser that has the ability to turn off crap like ads, flash, easily white or black list javascript enabled sites (google, gmail, etc.) and reduce bloat (170mb of ram just to browse slashdot in firefox?!?!?!) and I'll be happy. Social Media integration? wow, who gives a flying firefox.....

  14. get your facts straight by asa · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is simply inaccurate. Firefox 10 (via changes that arrived way back at Firefox 7) was dramatically better than Firefox 4-6 and Firefox 15 was a good bit better than Firefox 10, thanks to killing add-on leaks and some other minor but incremental improvements in Firefox 11, 12, 13, and 14.

    Or to put it another way, Firefox 7 and Firefox 15 both made major advances in memory usage. More memory and performance optimizations hit in 16 or will in upcoming releases with Incremental Garbage Collection, IonMonkey, and then a Compacting Generational GC.

    I realize that unsupported assertions based on anecdotes is the norm around here, but expect to get called when they're the opposite of the truth. For the details, read the last few months worth of posts here: https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/

  15. I like my Google Toolbar as it is, thanks by scsirob · · Score: 2

    Not sure why Mozilla is forcing this on their users. I have ran FF for a long time, and one of the additions I really like is the Google Toolbar. It has not been maintained for a while, and it takes a tweak to convince FF12 and up to load it, but it does what I want. Losing this ability will be time to move on to another browser. Chrome, Opera, or heavens forbid, Internet Exploder...

    --
    To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
  16. Will Firefox ever allow users to remove plugins?! by BrendaEM · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Release after release, Mozilla has taunted us with the ability to remove unwanted plugins, but that promise has never been realized. Why?
    For Firefox to be secure, it should never allow a plug to be added and activated without the users's permission.

    Please fix this!!!!

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
  17. Re:how long by steelfood · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Some of us are still using 32-bit netbooks or laptops, which have 1GB to 2GB of memory. Some of us don't have these so-called "modern" computers because we find our slightly older ones are sufficient for our purposes, and are not interested in casually spending money on things we don't really need.

    Not to mention some of us know what the median U.S. household income is, and know what that actually means (that fancy ultrabook that costs $2000 in New York City still costs $2000 in Atlanta).

    I like when people trot out the old "I've got a computer from two years ago that has no problems running this program, and cost next to nothing for me when I got it, so you should have one too" argument when it comes to resource hogs. It really shows how detached from reality they actually are.

    --
    "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
  18. How about... by NoMaster · · Score: 2

    How about they jam their "social API" up their arse, and use the now-free developer time to maintain feature users want?

    Or, at the very least, those developers could be retrained and fruitfully employed. Testing cluebats on the Mozilla community co-ordinators & technical evangelists - who would rather gaslight people with different opinions than listen to them - might occupy a few...

    --
    What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
  19. Guess I won't update then... by wakeboarder · · Score: 2

    Firefox needs to get their act together regarding updates, they are driving people away.

  20. You Bloated Sack of Protoplasm by petsounds · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Firefox team is off the rails. In fact, the whole Mozilla Foundation has lost its way. First they basically abandon Thunderbird for no reason, and now they're bolting on entire social media interfaces. Commercial, closed-source ones at that. All because their egos make them want to stay with the big boys, instead of innovating, instead of just trying to be the best browser.

    If there was a fast, secure, standards-compliant browser that was compatible with the Firefox plugin architecture, I'd jump in a second.