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Firefox 22 Released, Boosts 3-D Gaming and Video Calls
Today Mozilla announced the launch of Firefox 22 for desktops and Android devices. For the desktop version, WebRTC, the open source browser-based communications API, is now enabled by default. "This technology makes it possible to place and receive video calls from a mobile or desktop browser or share live video, files and images with friends and family." Firefox 22 also has support for the asm.js subset of JavaScript, which allows for big performance boosts on graphically complex applications in the browser. (We saw a demonstration of this a while back.) Other new features include display scaling options for making text bigger on high-res displays, better WebGL rendering performance, word wrapping for text files displayed in the browser, and the ability to change the playback rate of HTML5 audio and video. The new Android version features include tablet UI support for smaller tablets, and a fix for scrolling in nested frames.
when can I use it to run emacs?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
does it support all html5 input types yet
Is there something named Firefox that isn't a browser but uses the same silly exponentially increasing versioning scheme?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Now I'll be able to play games on my Mac!!
I'm old, not dead. Well that's my 2 cents worth, your mileage may vary. I say what I think, not what you want to hear.
I have big hopes for asm.js. Even with its teething problems, it's the best chance we have for a truly multi-platform common ground to develop networked apps in.
At the same time, this awesomeness has traditionally been ignored by the big players who desired fragmentation. Hopefully this time is different, as all browser vendors have a lot to lose if they are the last to implement asm.js.
The big missing feature is threading - here's hoping for an extension to asm.js to make it complete.
Not trolling, straight question. I know nothing about webRTC; are communications 'secure' by default?
setTimeout(function(){window.locationmanageQueryStringParam('source','autorefresh');}, 600000);
this bit of code is a nightmare on FF mobile, iam trying to read the comments and bam iam looking at the slashdot homepage ? WTF ? i didnt press back
sort it out slashdot, your code needs much more work and if you cared about the user you would NEVER reload a page the user didnt request.
I don't know all use cases, but I personally use Firefox to browse. Why do I want 3D gaming and video conferencing integrated into it? What next, preparing taxes?
Does anyone know a way to block these features? I can't seem to find a matching about:config field.
That's two things i really never do within my browser.
Maybe in 23, they could boost performance and reduce memoryleaks instead of adding bloat.
" WebRTC, the open source browser-based communications API, is now enabled by default. "This technology makes it possible to place and receive video calls from a mobile or desktop browser or share live video, files and images with friends and family."
This doesn't sound very convenient - there are times that I am "browsing" when I don't want a video call suddenly interrupting me.
Luckily I don't have a webcam on this PC
Not perfect, but better... http://mrdoob.github.io/three.js/examples/css3d_periodictable.html
Can we please have some attention paid to the Linux build?
It still does absolutely inane things like treating Gimp/Inkscape as valid a PDF reader.
And switching tabs, even on a very light loads, locks the interface up for 2 seconds, and not to mention it's horribly sluggish (relevant hardware: 3.2GhZ hexacore, NVIDIA 460GT), whilst virtually every other browser on my system outperforms firefox when it comes to rendering and responsiveness by a factor of 20.
And it adapts absolutely horrendously to dark colour schemes, even when configured to NOT use the system colours (which is also the default)
And finishing up the half-assed interface changes would be appreciated too, at present tabs on top uses exactly 1 more vertical pixel than the alternative, and with default settings, selecting the entire url in the url bar (via double click), and copying that doesn't copy the http:// - which is bad for some URLs.
These are just the tip of the iceberg too.
I just find it patently ridiculous that in 2013, my choice of browser is dictated by which I find to be "least bad," rather than what's "best for me."
WebRTC is now enabled by default.
Useful!
support for the asm.js subset of JavaScript
Impressive!
word wrapping for text files displayed in the browser
Decidedly underwhelming.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The browser became an operating system when "dynamic web sites" became "web applications". The turning point as I see it came sometime close to when Firefox and Chrome added JIT recompilation for JavaScript in 2008.
Regression bugs in the ESR version should be fixed first, as a matter of the highest priority. It is essential to fix your current users problems first, only then go for the nice new features.
Without an approach like that it is hard to take the long term support version serious, and not as just token appeasement to the "we want a proper development cycle for stability group"
Like this one, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765337 .Took a year to fix and it is still not in ESR.
btw. not to mention that the fix is a hideous one. Who ever thought it is a good idea for a browser to even have the possibility to go to a different URL than the completely valid one the user has typed in ?
Is there something named Firefox that isn't a browser but uses the same silly exponentially increasing versioning scheme?
I used to use Firefox, and the thing about it that I remember 'increasing' was its memory consumption, due to leaks, up to the point that the computer practically froze. I stopped using Firefox when all I could get was denial that there were problems.
So how is the memory leakage issue now? (If there are reliable good reports, then maybe I might dare to try Firefox again?)
-wb-
Not trolling, straight question. I know nothing about webRTC; are communications 'secure' by default?
They use (S)RTP for the transport:
http://www.webrtc.org/reference/architecture#TOC-RTP-Stack
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_Transport_Protocol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Protocol
The speicific protocol used is DTLS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Security
They should focus on rewriting their engine and "boosting" memory management.
You can go to this page and find the about:config settings that will disable webRTC:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/11/progress-update-on-webrtc-for-firefox-on-desktop/
I know it's fashionable to give Firefox a hard time, but it's still my default browser after all these years. I use Firefox about 85% of the time and Google Chrome about 15%. Speed seems comparable, but overall the Firefox UI is still better for me.
Thank you, Mozilla developers.
For those who read the title and came here to moan about bloat:
The technologies mention in reference to 3D gaming are WebGL and asm.js. These serve to make things faster and their size is negligible (want to complain when the few extra bits in your JS engine make things go faster?). They can both be used in non-gaming situations, particularly processing-intensive stuff like dealing with images (processing, filters) and video (decoding - see ORBX.js). WebGL was already there, it's just better now.
You can disable it if you want, but WebRTC stuff doesn't load additional components (encoding/decoding video for instance) unless you're using them - which would be no worse than Flash (better actually). And just like with Geolocation, a site has to ask permission - to which you can say "never".
Chrome already has WebGL, WebRTC and is optimizing for asm.js. It's possible to land these without adversly impacting performance/responsiveness, and for the past year Mozilla has had their eye on the metrics.
So with all this new tech, it would be interesting to see a video-enabled web-based XMPP client sometime soon.
Does anyone have any now on something like this?
Every browser, even IE, has support for the subset of javascript - that is the whole point! What is significant is that it has been OPTIMIZED for the asm.js subset
Any Downsides to Upgrading?
For example are lots of extensions not working with the upgrade?
when can I use it to run emacs?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/firemacs/
It's a complicated question, since "secure" is a relative term. See http://sporadicdispatches.blogspot.com/2013/06/webrtc-security-and-confidentiality.html
For a project originally started to combat software bloat....
The funny part is that, after they went to all that trouble, 'web apps' are now being replaced by plain old 'apps'.
Unless you have a Chromebook or a Firefox phone. Their API for "apps" is the HTML DOM, just like the API for "web apps".
Time to move away from Firefox, it seems, and I've been using it since long before it had that name.
Why? Because it's going down the bloatware road that already destroyed Open Office. If you want 3D or video conferences, or kitchen sinks or coffee machines in your browser, a plugin is the proper way to go, period.
I don't want it. It want to display HTML pages. That includes Javascript and CSS and stuff, but why the f&%$! does it even have a plugin system if every newfangled crap gets thrown into the core code?
Firefox is taking up 650 MB right now. Yeah, that's with a bunch of tabs open, but still. 650 fucking MB to surf the web. It is by far the most memory-hungry app I have open all the time. The next in the list (Mail) clocks in at 160 MB, that's less than a quarter.
No, thank you. I don't want any additional crap in my browser.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
So why exactly is this something we want in a browser? How much more bloat do we need before it's enough?
Did they fix those yet? My v21 browser is currently taking 2.7GB of memory after being open for a week.
Anything to rid my friends and family's dependence on Skype(tm).
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
FF23 is due in a few weeks.
I prefer to Google chrome, but sometimes will switch to Firefox. The new features don’t have a big change for average users
no paid no gain
"Enabled by default" but they aren't quick to tell you how to disable it. It seems to be media.peerconnection.enabled (on about:config).
Go to http://jsperf.com/asm-js in Firefox 19: figures are the same for fast and slow.
Load the page in Firefox 22.0 (Mac OS X 10.7):
They managed to optimise it to take four times as long to run the asm.js code in comparison to normal interpreted code. Great job!
Most of your points sound reasonable except for one thing. I was unsure of the intended tone in one part of your comment. Is it bad to be "coding from your basement"? Is there a better way to earn the money needed to start a "proper" company?