Firefox 17 Launches With Click-to-Play Plugin Blocks

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Firefox 17 Launches With Click-to-Play Plugin Blocks

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @07:40AM from the primed-with-new-features dept.

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).

34 of 137 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Still no Retina support for OS X by TheoCryst · 2012-11-20 07:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

Apparently they have it in nightly builds now, but it hasn't trickled down to the main release channel quite yet. Bummer.

--
Warning: Contents May Be Flammable. Keep Out Of Reach Of Children.
1. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-20 07:47 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
2. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by ColdWetDog · 2012-11-20 07:53 · Score: 2
  
  Chrome? No way. OS X is into old wood veneer.
  
  --
  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
3. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by kthreadd · 2012-11-20 08:12 · Score: 2
  
  Just grab 10.0.11 ESR and relax.
  Or 17.0 ESR which is also out now and that will replace 10.0 ESR over the two upcoming releases. So if you want to roll out Firefox in your organization, be advised that 10.0 ESR is going out of support in only a couple of months.
4. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by jopsen · 2012-11-20 08:53 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  You do realize Chrome has the same release cycle?
5. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Billly+Gates · 2012-11-20 08:55 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  ESR is only supported for a year. It allows for 2 months in between versions before one version is dropped.
  IE is going the same route with annual updates. IE 10 is an exception due to the incompetence of the Windows 8 team forcing WDDM 1.2 and DirectX 11.1 onto it which requires significant backporting.
  So this time next year IE 11 will be out or in RC states and the following IE 12 etc. Organizations need to learn to adapt to change more rapidly. It is not like a minor release is anything like the huge rewrite of apps that resulted from IE 6 to IE 7 or even 8. Your browser should always be updated at a regular basis.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
6. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Billly+Gates · 2012-11-20 08:57 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Thank goodness Chrome is not updated like Firefox or anything. Then we would have a problem.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
7. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Cyberax · 2012-11-20 09:01 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Quite a lot of sites support the full 'retina' resolution. For example, Google Maps or Picassa Web.
8. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by _xeno_ · 2012-11-20 09:02 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Funny, that picture looks just fine to me on my non-"retina" display. It's almost as if you don't need a retina display to see images!
  But wait, there's more. When that image is embedded into a webpage, it's embedded at the standard, non-"retinal" resolution. So when displayed on a "retina" display, it will look "blurry."
  Except apparently Wikipedia uses Safari's made up extension for "retina" images, so it would work there. (Hopefully Firefox will stick with standards and not make up extensions for non-existent problems.)
  But on the vast majority of webpages, all you're going to get is a standard-res image. Making "retina" basically useless.
  
  --
  You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
9. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by thetoadwarrior · 2012-11-20 09:05 · Score: 2
  
  I'm just on OSX with Firefox. Chrome is for geek posers.
10. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Desler · 2012-11-20 09:09 · Score: 2
  
  Retina support is more than just higher resolution images. It's about the text rendering, too.
11. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Desler · 2012-11-20 09:52 · Score: 2
  
  You seem to be thinking that "retina support" is only about rendering the webpage at a higher resolution. It's also about the program's UI. And no, Firefox did not automatically use HiDPI rendering of text in webpages or its UI therwise they wouldn't have needed to fix that. That is an issue with Firefox not OS X as you seem to be trying to blame. Your focus solely on the webpage images misses the point entirely.
12. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by TheoCryst · 2012-11-20 09:56 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Additionally, any site that renders text will look better. Firefox 17 doesn't render text at the higher DPI supported by new MacBook Pros, causing every site to look blurrier than it would in Chrome or Safari.
  For the record, the same is true in Windows: change the scaling factor of the OS, and Firefox simply scales the same low-res text. It's unclear whether the change I mentioned in nightlies will fix Windows as well; I simply haven't tried it yet.
  
  --
  Warning: Contents May Be Flammable. Keep Out Of Reach Of Children.
13. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Darinbob · 2012-11-20 09:58 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You don't understand. These people paid extra money for Retinal Displays. They demand that their applications come and reassure them that the money was well spent.
14. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Cyberax · 2012-11-20 10:09 · Score: 2
  
  There's an unofficial patch for Firefox for Retina support (I'm using it right now to write this message). It works just fine, and it also is going to be integrated into F18.
15. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by stms · 2012-11-20 15:07 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Really? I never thought I see the day where (non-troll) people on /. would fail to appreciate the value of a higher resolution display. I understand the "retina" marketing gimmick is bullshit but at least someone is pushing resolution beyond 1080p. I certainly hope we don't keep our current screen resolution as a standard for the web indefinitely. Some people are going to have to start adopting higher resolutions at some point.
exponential version numbers by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-20 07:52 · Score: 5, Funny

I've ran the numbers through our compute cluster here at JPL and have determined that Firefox version numbers are on an exponential climb and will reach critical mass and achieve self awareness around the 20th or 21st of December THIS YEAR with the creation of a singularity on the entire planet's web browser population.
The Mayans knew... the Mayans knew...
1. Re:exponential version numbers by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-20 08:31 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  So did the programmers. I mean, just look at what is happening in that icon?
2. Re:exponential version numbers by nickittynickname · 2012-11-20 08:45 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That's crazy. Last time I heard a firefox version number joke was right after I fell off my dinosaur and into my wooden underwear. Good job, I'm glad to see you spiced up that dead horse with a few other dead horses. That should bring an old joke back to life.
Click to play plugins? by Hentes · 2012-11-20 08:00 · Score: 2, Informative

As always, Opera did it first.
1. Re:Click to play plugins? by Archenoth · 2012-11-20 08:11 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah, I wonder how long other features like Speed Dial, or Tab stacking will last before someone copies them.
  I wish that people knew where all of these fancy features are coming from, that way Opera would have more funding to innovate. They certainly haven't slowed down since they created tabbed browsing eons ago...
  
  --
  The arch foe.
2. Re:Click to play plugins? by bill_mcgonigle · 2012-11-20 08:40 · Score: 2
  
  As always, Opera did it first.
  Oh, did Opera implement a feature in 2010 that Flashblocker for Firefox implemented in 2002? How innovative.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
3. Re:Click to play plugins? by gparent · 2012-11-20 08:46 · Score: 2
  
  Flashblock did this in 2006, if not earlier. Quit sucking Opera's dick.
4. Re:Click to play plugins? by cgt · 2012-11-20 08:51 · Score: 2
  
  So what? You want everyone to have permanent patents on everything they “invent”? Also, this feature isn't quite what you think it is—RTFA.
5. Re:Click to play plugins? by cgt · 2012-11-20 08:55 · Score: 3
  
  Opera is actually a decent browser (though I prefer Firefox), but their fanboys are even more annoying than Chrome fanboys.
6. Re:Click to play plugins? by oakgrove · 2012-11-20 09:02 · Score: 2
  
  I wish that people knew where all of these fancy features are coming from, that way Opera would have more funding to innovate.
  While the cynic may see it as chump change especially in multi-national mega-corp terms, in 2011, Opera Software's net income came in at a comfortable 24.6 million dollars on an operating income of 156.5 million, a substantial increase over the year before. Not quite as much as Mozilla who netted 43 million in 2009 but for a small company of 777 employees just doing their thing making their browser, it's not too bad. Bear in mind too that Mozilla resides in the US while Opera is in Norway so a direct 1:1 comparison of financials can be slightly misleading especially when you take into account social services especially health care the respective companys' employees have access to and the different tax structures they exist under. Financially, Opera Software looks healthy with very low debt, and I think 150 million in cash reserves which, again, for their size is not too shabby. Most of their revenue comes from two places, namely licensing and search deals with licensing bringing in a bit more. Search is huge for them accounting for about a third of their income so they're in pretty deep with Google and to a much lesser extent Yandex and Amazon. While being heavily dependent on one other company that barring contractual obligations could turn the money off at a whim isn't the greatest thing ever, it's obviously better to have it than not have it just bearing in mind that it might not always be there. The bright side is their licensing revenues are not only slightly larger than search but actually appear to be growing faster respectively as well. And since they do offer some unique technology enabling web browsing on very low-end feature phones that otherwise wouldn't have it at all (as far as I know), it's reasonable to think the licensing revenue is fairly stable. If you want the whole story, here's their (warning pdf)2011 annual report. Riveting.
  
  --
  The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
ClickToPlay sounded good; then I read the summary. by jonadab · 2012-11-20 08:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

When I read the headline, "Click-to-Play Plugin Blocks", I was thinking that plugin content would be blocked from doing anything unless the user clicks a play button. Just like FlashBlock, in other words. That would actually be a good thing. A good change, in a new version of Firefox: I might've fainted.

But no, what it actually means is this:
> Mozilla will now prompt Firefox users on Windows with old versions of Adobe Reader...

Oh, yes, please.

We need this because Adobe Reader doesn't already prompt every single user who has it installed to the effect that they need to upgrade it, a bare minimum of three per hour. We definitely need our web browser to bug us about this also, otherwise we might not know that three new versions of Adobe Reader were released during the time it took us to download and install the version we currently have. Well, I mean, okay, in theory we'd _know_, but without this extra reminder we might occasionally go up to fifteen minutes at a time without _thinking_ about it. Mozilla must protect us from that horrific fate.

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Waiting for 18.. by dstyle5 · 2012-11-20 08:58 · Score: 2

which should release in about 3... 2... 1...
Sandbox by mx+b · 2012-11-20 09:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

What I find more fascinating in TFA is that Firefox has added simple support for HTML5 Sandboxes. You can apparently specify whether the data inside the IFRAME is allowed to access outside domains, etc. (if I am reading it correctly; I am not actively involved in web design at the moment and so am a bit behind the curve; does anyone know how good this sandbox function is compared to other software/browsers?).
ESR by jones_supa · 2012-11-20 10:24 · Score: 2

Notice that Firefox 17 is also an Extended Support Release, so if you are a fan of a more conservative update cycle, now is a good time to hop on the wagon.
Mozilla Firefox ESR Overview
Sounds much better than it is. by UltraZelda64 · 2012-11-20 10:56 · Score: 2

I thought from the description that this would require clicking *all* Flash, Java or other plug-in applets before they would run. That would be true security (until the dumb masses find and click one they shouldn't). I thought this would be a relief for when I'm using a fresh copy of Firefox; I could possibly go a bit longer before installing Adblock, NoScript and the rest. But no... it only blocks this crap from loading without a click when an "old" version of a plug-in is used. Yay. Talk about pointless. So, AdBlock and NoScript still do it better, and this is no temporary holdover until the real plug-in can be installed.
Actually, this is possibly even worse. Once people find out that they can "block" annoying moving Flash ads that have sound by simply keeping their plug-ins out of date, they'll probably never want to update again. I know I wouldn't. So then when they do click to run a bad applet, they really are screwed.
Re:ClickToPlay sounded good; then I read the summa by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-20 10:58 · Score: 2, Informative

No, click-to-play does what you think it does. Like FlashBlock. The Acrobat Reader prompts are an additional feature.
Re:ClickToPlay sounded good; then I read the summa by Lennie · 2012-11-20 12:56 · Score: 2

It supports both, the behaviour is configurable.

--
New things are always on the horizon
Re:ClickToPlay sounded good; then I read the summa by caspy7 · 2012-11-20 15:27 · Score: 3, Informative

To enable click-to-play for all plugins go to about:config in the location bar and set “plugins.click_to_play” to true.
The feature is considered still under development which is why it's not enabled by default.