Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Firefox 17 Launches With Click-to-Play Plugin Blocks

Posted by Soulskill on 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).

17 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Still no Retina support for OS X by TheoCryst · · 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 · · 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 jopsen · · Score: 4, Informative

      You do realize Chrome has the same release cycle?

    3. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Billly+Gates · · 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/
    4. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Funny

      Thank goodness Chrome is not updated like Firefox or anything. Then we would have a problem.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    5. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Cyberax · · Score: 4, Informative

      Quite a lot of sites support the full 'retina' resolution. For example, Google Maps or Picassa Web.

    6. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by _xeno_ · · 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.
    7. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by TheoCryst · · 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.
    8. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by Darinbob · · 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.

    9. Re:Still no Retina support for OS X by stms · · 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.

  2. exponential version numbers by Anonymous Coward · · 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 · · 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 · · 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.

  3. ClickToPlay sounded good; then I read the summary. by jonadab · · 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.
  4. Re:Click to play plugins? by cgt · · Score: 3

    Opera is actually a decent browser (though I prefer Firefox), but their fanboys are even more annoying than Chrome fanboys.

  5. Sandbox by mx+b · · 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?).

  6. Re:ClickToPlay sounded good; then I read the summa by caspy7 · · 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.