Firefox 17 Launches With Click-to-Play Plugin Blocks

An anonymous reader writes "As expected, Mozilla on Tuesday officially launched Firefox 17 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The biggest addition in this release is click-to-play plugins, announced back in October. In short, the addition means Mozilla will now prompt Firefox users on Windows with old versions of Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight (more will be added eventually)." The release notes are available, as is a list of changes for devs. Firefox for Android got a new release as well (notes).

Comments

Re:Still no Retina support for OS X

[ColdWetDog]

17? Seventeen?

WTF.

Last time I checked (I think it was last week) it was 4 or 5.

This Internet thingy is way too fast for me. Getting old. Slowing down.

(And, back on subject, the only way I can tell when FF has a new version is WHEN SOMETHING ELSE BREAKS. Stop that, please.)

Re:Still no Retina support for OS X

[nmb3000]

It's okay, the whole point of their fast release cycle is that you'll probably see that feature within the next 6 weeks rather than in 6 months from now. Idiots who don't understand the version system will whine about it, but that's a very tangible benefit of releasing more often.

And you know, if the rapid updates were just to fix bugs and improve performance, I doubt anyone would really care how fast versions came out. The problem is that with every release they feel the need to dick around with the user interface as well.

Look what's included in 17:

• Some frakking stupid built-in "Social API" bullshit. Why the hell do I need Facebook and Twitter embedded in my browser? I intentionally block both of them on webpages, and now I have to deal with them being an integrated part of the software? I genuinely DO NOT understand this -- I thought the WHOLE POINT of the addon system was for adding things like this. Nowadays the Firefox addon ecosystem seems more focused on removing things from the browser. What. The. Hell.
• Just what we need: Bigger icons!. Let's display less information and take up valuable vertical screen space (which they whine about so much as excuses to get rid of the status and tab bars).

I think Mozilla would face much less resistance to their new update model if they would release fixes and performance updates automatically, but hold off making poorly thought-out UI changes except for on a 6-12 month cycle.

Or, better yet, drop the stupid UI changes all together.