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Firefox 20 Arrives With Per-Window Private Browsing, New Download Manager

Posted by Soulskill on from the one-more-and-it's-old-enough-to-drink dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla on Tuesday officially launched Firefox 20 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The improvements include per-window private browsing, a new download manager in the Firefox toolbar, and the ability to close hanging plugins without the browser hanging. The new desktop version was available as of yesterday on the organization's FTP servers, but that was just the initial release of the installers. Firefox 20 has now officially been made available over on Firefox.com and all users of old Firefox versions should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on the official Google Play Store. The changelogs are here: desktop and Android."

18 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Re:like it's 2008 all over again by Shimbo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Chrome had it for 5 years now...

    Nice troll, but as Chrome didn't exist 5 years ago, somewhat implausible.

  2. Re:like it's 2008 all over again by increment1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It sounds a bit different since Chrome supports one private browsing cookie store, and one general cookie store. If you have two private browsing chrome windows (or tabs) they both use the same private browsing cookie store.

    Firefox now sounds like it supports multiple private browsing cookie stores, so you could login to the same site 3 or 4 or however many times with different private windows, whereas with chrome you can only login twice at the same time.

  3. Re:Version 20? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Firefox is going exponential. Can't wait for the next version, Firefox v2^5

  4. Re:FAP FAP FAP by sanman2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    v21 will have auto-sausage-fapping capability - it'll even wipe up after you

  5. Embarrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    seriously ?, the new download "manager" is nothing of the sort, it manages nothing, as soon as i click the downloads button it opens the entire library (and the cpu sucking waiting time for it to open), which is asking to show me ALL my history, bookmarks AND downloads in a whole another window, not a little onobtrusive window like before, and no that terrible chromeless!!? overlay doesn't count, good job iam not disabled egh ? what a total waste of time

    as for information, it wastes space like nothing else, 200px tall rows for 1 line of 12px text ? (the name of the downloaded file whoo), no extra info or details about the download at all other than apparently its on my hard drive, no exact link, speed, time completed, size, referer, server details etc etc

    absolute garbage, an embarrasment to mention it other than WTF have you done ?, and iam looking for a replacement addon as we speak HALP

    1. Re:Embarrasing by TypoNAM · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've found that by going into about:config and changing browser.download.useToolkitUI to true will restore the original download manager. There is one bug I've noticed by using the old download manager is that the title of its window will clear out leaving it a titleless window after all downloads are completed. Closing and reopening the downloads window will cause the title to be restored. A warning though that this key might fail to work in the next release or so. Just like the status bar fiasco.

      You'll also need to customize the toolbar in order to remove the new downloads icon though. Also the "new" download manager is still accessible via History menu &> Show All History after making the above configuration change.

      --
      This space is not for rent.
  6. And that index is disturbing... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, that's freaky.

    I routinely delete things like download history when I've no further need for the files, partly as a tidiness thing and partly as a privacy thing. (This is a work machine that I use for my consulting/contracting gigs, including screen sharing for presentations/teleconferencing from time to time, so both tidiness and discretion are often called for.)

    Suddenly, when I go to Tools->Downloads, there's a whole list of everything I downloaded since forever, not least a few potentially sensitive financial records and a whole trail of breadcrumbs identifying clients and various commercial research I've been doing on their behalf. The files are long gone, of course, but it's a good thing that lot didn't show up in the middle of a screen-sharing session with a different client.

    What's more disturbing is that despite being reasonably careful about these things, or so I thought, Firefox has apparently been keeping a detailed record of these downloads even though I'd been clearing the old Downloads dialog regularly. What else is it storing away somewhere that I don't know about?

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    1. Re:And that index is disturbing... by Stumbles · · Score: 5, Informative

      I just checked that and you are right. The download manager showed things I thought were deleted.

      --
      My karma is not a Chameleon.
    2. Re:And that index is disturbing... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 5, Informative

      Which is OK until you hit Ctrl+Shift+T or open History->Recently Closed Tabs, which apparently keep these things around even if you've explicitly deleted them from your history.

      I just opened a second window for the first time since upgrading to Firefox 20 a few minutes ago, and it even tried to reopen a page I was working on earlier today, which I clearly haven't visited for several hours because it's an admin UI hosted on a device that's powered off right now. I have absolutely no idea why it chose that page to open, and not any of the dozens I must have visited since. In fact, I have no idea why it tried to reopen any old pages at all, though I had restarted Firefox a couple of minutes earlier after updating various extensions so perhaps that was something to do with it.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    3. Re:And that index is disturbing... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes, remarkably it turns out that grown-ups use the Internet for things that need privacy other than the one you're thinking of. In this case, I was looking at every bank account number for my company, since among my recent downloads were records from on-line banking to do our taxes and the files were named after each account. Sorry if that wasn't the giggly story you were hoping for, but when you're old enough to have a bank account and a job of your own, I'm sure you'll understand.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    4. Re:And that index is disturbing... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Informative

      It looks like they've broken Private Browsing as far as extensions are concerned as well.

      I use Lazarus to avoid losing form data if things crash, and it used to automatically disable itself in Private Browsing mode. I've just confirmed that since updating to Firefox 20 this doesn't happen any more, even though the relevant Lazarus option is still set the same way.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    5. Re:And that index is disturbing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This may make me stop using firefox permanently if they are keeping hidden duplicates of all the logs. Seriously, where were these things logged and why did it never delete it with the other history logs?

      Did we just find a secret government backdoor? /tinfoil hat

  7. DownThemAll by ZeroNullVoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't understand why they don't natively incorporate download managers like DownThemAll into Firefox.  Segmented transfers, speed limiting, link catchers...

  8. Download Manager by WedgeTalon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't understand why Mozilla never just worked with the author of Download Statusbar to integrate it. That extension has been one of the most popular addons since it was released in 2004. In fact, the addons site show it is currently the 7th most-used plugin with 1,930,345 current users.

  9. Re:like it's 2008 all over again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nope. Just tested this, and the second private browsing window automatically picked up the login session from the first private browsing window.

  10. It's Firefox Tuesday! by Skapare · · Score: 4, Funny

    Time to close all your browser windows.

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  11. Re:So what did they take away now? by Emetophobe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Looked at the location bar... shed a tear for my "http://"

    You can disable that by going to about:config and setting browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false.

    It's old, but still a pain. Remember when Stop had a separate button?

    There's always been a separate stop button, you just have to customize the toolbar so that the stop button is ordered before the reload button, otherwise it "combines" them into a single reload/stop button. http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142587

    Basically you right click the toolbar, select customize, then drag the stop button to the left of the reload button, and viola... separate buttons (yes it's retarded).

  12. 6 more to go. by Dan541 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So Firefox is now at 20, Chrome is now at 26.

    Looks like they are finally going to reach their goal of overtaking chrome.

    --
    An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"