Mozilla Details How Old Plugins Will Be Blocked In Firefox 17

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."

Comments

Yet another reason to dump FF

[fluffy99]

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.

Re:Yet another reason to dump FF

[Tumbleweed]

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.

Re:Yet another reason to dump FF

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yet another reason to dump FF

[Laxori666]

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.

Re:how long

[AuMatar]

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

Re:how long

[DarkOx]

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.

Only 18??

[Viol8]

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...

Re:how long

[Bacon Bits]

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.

Bizarre selection of core features

[JDG1980]

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?

Re:how long

[steelfood]

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.

You Bloated Sack of Protoplasm

[petsounds]

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.