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Firefox 26 Arrives With Click-To-Play For Java Plugins

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 26 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions include Click-to-Play turned on by default for all Java plugins, more seamless updates on Windows, and a new Home design for Android. Firefox 26 has been released over on Firefox.com and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. Release notes are here: desktop and mobile."

208 comments

  1. Plug-ins by fluffythdestroy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The only problem i've seen with Firefox today is the updates are way too fast. The plug-ins and extentions aren't fast enough to follow becomes obsolete and break. It's not all the updates but I've seen some of it not compatible anymore

    --
    PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
    1. Re:Plug-ins by lennier1 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Depends.
      A third-party web application our company uses encountered Javascript problems in Firefox 24. Waiting for five minutes until Firefox 25 showed up fixed the problem again.

    2. Re:Plug-ins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only problem i've seen with Firefox today is the updates are way too fast. The plug-ins and extentions aren't fast enough to follow becomes obsolete and break. It's not all the updates but I've seen some of it not compatible anymore

      Running the ESR version of Firefox might alleviate that a bit.

    3. Re:Plug-ins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One month and twelve days, to be exact.

    4. Re:Plug-ins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Firefox only recently started their warp-speed versioning system, so your averages are irrelevant.

    5. Re:Plug-ins by Tsolias · · Score: 2

      I am using nightly many years and never had any problems. there was a problem 3-4 years ago with fast dial, but only because there was a problem into the verification from the mozilla site. the rest of my 25+ plugins work flawlessly and i am in version 29 or 28, which seems more like chrome, and chrome has a bad UI. generally speaking, 20 to 25 does not change a lot of things in the plugin api. The days were 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 were completely different and had many compatibility issues are past.

    6. Re:Plug-ins by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      Ok, so it's highly likely this will be followed by a wooshing sound...

      I'm all for fast upgrades, personally, but to Fluffy's point, it's not the straight line average clear back to Firebird 1.0 that's important, but the rate of change right now. Unless you'd like to argue that the rate of update release has not increased?

      Moreover, comparing to a different software package (even another browser) is problematic because it depends on what the design team calls an update.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    7. Re:Plug-ins by Tridus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nice try, but do it again starting at Firefox 4. That was released in March of 2011, and now we're up to 26. That's 22 versions in 2 years and 9 months, or 8 a year.

      --
      -- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
    8. Re:Plug-ins by Animats · · Score: 1

      A third-party web application our company uses encountered Javascript problems in Firefox 24. Waiting for five minutes until Firefox 25 showed up fixed the problem again.

      That's reality. I had to post this for one of my Firefox add-ons:

      "Due to Firefox Bug 886329, "drop-down list in Jetpack add-on breaks entire UI", the preferences menu in Ad Limiter is not working in Firefox version 23 only. It worked in Firefox 22, and is fixed in Firefox 24, which is now available. We suggest not using Firefox 23."

    9. Re:Plug-ins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, yes, we know, they incremented the first number instead of the second number, so you have Firefox 26 instead of Firefox 4.22, and you're willing to whine endlessly about this point.

      Nobody else cares. Nobody. Stop shitposting in every Firefox article about the damned version number.

    10. Re:Plug-ins by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Which I calculate as 29% more boneheaded than Chrome.

    11. Re:Plug-ins by Gordo_1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's true. The overall rate at which Firefox adds features is not really much different than in the past. The difference is that they trickle the features out every 6 weeks instead of a big dump once a year. That's just fine with me, as plugins rarely break anymore and overall stability and speed is much better than Firefox 4.0 and older. Yes, I said that and believe it to be true.

    12. Re:Plug-ins by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      I think the bigger point is FF's updates break shit and the Chromium based? Don't. Simple as that. Been on Comodo dragon since V2, now on V30, with ZERO plugin breakage. With FF my plug ins broke no less than 6 times before I finally gave up and made the switch.

      BTW while I'm on a rant, WTF is it with the Gecko engine and "senior moments"? You know, where it hangs or stutters,not enough to make you think its frozen,just enough to irritate? I can run any of the Chromium based, and fricking IE for that matter, on a little Bobcat netbook all day long and as long as I stick to SD video its smooth. With any of the Gecko based (FF,Waterdragon, Pale Moon, etc) they will have senior moments even on my hexacore? WTF FF Devs? And don't even get me started on FF Mobile, I thought FF 2 was a piggie, damn.

      But at the end of the day nobody would give a rat's ass if FF changed numbers every 5 minutes if it didn't break shit. After all i didn't even know what version of Dragon I was on until I hit about, I honestly thought it was V22 or V23, because everything has stayed the same as far as functionality and performance. if anything I'd say since the Moz team started focusing on sailphones that the gecko engine on the desktop has if anything gone backwards, with performance IMHO as far as senior moments and breakages getting more noticeable.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    13. Re:Plug-ins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I think that most people have stopped using the bulk of shitty addons that always break when Firefox changes. And most reasonable addons have moved on to the non-breaking type of addon (which is a lot like Chrome's, Safari's, etc).

      So really, what you're saying here is kinda FUDdy. I use 10-20 addons in Firefox, and not just on the release builds, but the nightlies. Almost none of them break, ever. At least no more than the equivalent Chrome ones break for me.

      Maybe you're just living 2 years in the past?

    14. Re:Plug-ins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doing something stupid for 22 versions does not make it less stupid.

    15. Re:Plug-ins by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 1

      But they completely reinvent how we access the web every 6 weeks or so. I mean can't you feel the innovation when you go to /. er, never mind.

      Since rapid releases I'm yet to see a feature that I really wanted. There might be one but I can't think of it. I have however had things break. I have ad block software and popups disabled and for whatever reason I get popups all the time. I get popups at sites that never used to give popups when I lived dangerously a few years ago and didn't block them at all (might be they are more aggressive with their popups now though). Regardless if the "block popups" button stops working that negates ALL the "features" since 4.0.

  2. "Click-to-pay"... by zarthrag · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...was the first thing I saw. Talk about a panic attack!

    --
    Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
    1. Re:"Click-to-pay"... by Russ1642 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Same here. I made some popcorn before opening the comments.

    2. Re:"Click-to-pay"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same here. I made some popcorn before opening the comments.

      hee hee yeah stupid ppl who can't read worth a shit before they jump to conclusions are SO marvelously entertaining!

    3. Re:"Click-to-pay"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hee hee yeah stupid ppl who can't read worth a shit before they jump to conclusions are SO marvelously entertaining!

      Please tell me this is sarcasm...

    4. Re:"Click-to-pay"... by steelfood · · Score: 1

      It's better than auto-pay.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    5. Re:"Click-to-pay"... by sconeu · · Score: 1

      Well, since Oracle is appealing on the API copyright issue, it may eventually come to that.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  3. great... by lyapunov · · Score: 4, Informative

    In the mean time they have made it substantially more difficult to configure the rejection of cookies.

    Jesus... I'm actually thinking IE is better at this point.

    --

    Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
    1. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ctrl+shift+p

      Isn't that pretty much the same ting. Mind IE11 is very nice now. Found myself using it over Firefox by mistake, wondering why the internet is suddenly faster.

    2. Re:great... by lyapunov · · Score: 1

      No. It is called "what features are really important to me."

      --

      Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
    3. Re:great... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Are you using CookieMonster? It's much better than any stock cookie controller that I've seen.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    4. Re:great... by lyapunov · · Score: 1

      No. I will check it out. Thanks!

      --

      Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
    5. Re:great... by magic+maverick+ · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you care about cookies, use an addon/extension that gives you a better interface, and finer control, than the built in systems. I use CookieMonster (set to deny all cookies by default), but there are others.

      CookieMonster allows you to set per website permissions, both temporary (until you close the browser, and then permissions revert to deny), per session (deletes every time you close your browser), and ordinary (hangs around until they expire). You can also set third party cookie controls.

      What makes Firefox great is the addon/extension ecosystem. If you're not going to use it, why even use Firefox? (OK, it's less evil.)

      --
      HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
    6. Re:great... by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 5, Informative

      Try the self-destructing cookies addon.
      When you close a tab, the cookies created by that tab are removed. You can whitelist domains to prevent their cookies from being deleted.
      This way, sites see cookies as being enabled, but can't track you after you close the tab.
      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-cookies/

      --
      Not a sentence!
    7. Re:great... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      In the mean time they have made it substantially more difficult to configure the rejection of cookies.

      Their intention is to outsource fine-grain cookie control to extensions. I think it is a good idea, but only half-baked. I would like to see them come up with a list of recommended privacy extensions (including cookie handlers), a sort of "Mozilla Recommended" list to make it easier for newbies who care about privacy but don't know enough to necessarily ask the right questions.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    8. Re:great... by sqrt(2) · · Score: 3, Informative

      Try out Self-destructing Cookies. It allows cookies to be set, but once you close the tab they are deleted, or deleted on a timer, or both. You can whitelist sites with a toolbar button. Then set Firefox to always reject 3rd party cookies and you're safe as far as cookies go.

      --
      If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
    9. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jesus... I'm actually thinking IE is better at this point.

      IE has been better than Firefox since IE 8. Unlike Mozilla, Microsoft has actually been improving the OS, partially because they had to counter the memetic legacy of IE being a slow virus downloader rather than a browser.

      Firefox with the right plugins still has some advantages, but Mozilla has become so dependent on the plugin system that they have done very little real work on the browser. Minor sub-sub-subversion numbers have become new Slashdot article releases to disguise the fact that Firefox has had fewer meaningful patches, fixes, and feature additions than any other browser available.

    10. Re:great... by fluffythdestroy · · Score: 1

      uhh, Just remember that updating a browser just like anything else on your computer is NOT mandatory. it's optional. Reading patch notes is a must for any pc owner as it teaches you a lot about the software or what you use.

      --
      PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
    11. Re:great... by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1

      ... updating a browser ... is NOT mandatory. it's optional.

      Don't tell that to some of the people on here who will immediately whine, "But this version fixes bugs and closes vulnerabilities. Don't you think about the children?"

      It's the same thing with XP. It's a great OS which satisfies the needs of 80% of the users on the planet, yet people will whine about them not jumping all over W7.

      Just because something's new doesn't make it better.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    12. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd like to be able to set the maximum lifetime of a cookie to about 30 days instead of the 100 years that most sites use. If I haven't been back to the site in 30 days the cookie can die.

    13. Re:great... by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      I just love how you're implying that IE is an OS...

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    14. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's fine to wax nostalgic, but don't turn it into waxing idiotic. Rose-colored glasses and all that. There's a very real reason that XP isn't "good enough" for 80% of users, and that's why people have shifted to other operating systems. Just because it could do 80% of what people need doesn't mean that better solutions don't exist, albeit with their own quirks, bugs, and instabilities. If you're happier living in something that makes you do more work, go right ahead. But don't try to convince me that an older version of Chrome or Firefox isn't basically asking for more problems than its worth. This isn't the same web it was even five years ago.

    15. Re:great... by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      CookieMonster is almost perfect, the only thing I miss is retroactively accepting cookies that were marked as session-only by my default policy. I guess this would need to store the original expiration date in the cookie itself, which at that point is overwritten by "till the session ends".

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    16. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reading patch notes teaches you next to nothing. But one doesn't expect anything but idiocy from a Twatter user.

    17. Re:great... by cffrost · · Score: 1

      In the mean time they have made it substantially more difficult to configure the rejection of cookies.

      Jesus... I'm actually thinking IE is better at this point.

      Pay no attention to Firefox's built-in cookie-handling interface; it's designed for Joe Kegger — not computer nerds and/or privacy control-freaks. Get whatever cookie-handling plugin(s) that'll give you the level of control you need.

      I use CookieSafe v3.0.5*, which I have set to block by default, and then "allow" and "allow for session" sites I want to white-list. Also provided: "allow temporarily" (for current session, then block), which is handy for determining if a site requires cookies to function, and "remove" (to get rid of domains' cookies that I used to allow).

      Another cookie plugin I like is Self-Destructing Cookies, which provides "delete-on-tab-close;" "delete-on-browser-close;" and "never delete." Unlike CookieSafe, however, it lacks a function for viewing the complete rule-set — only the rule in use for the currently-selected tab's domain.

      * If I remember correctly, there's a different version or branch of CookieSafe that's incompatible with recent versions of Firefox, plus a "Lite" version that's little better than Firefox's built-in level of control.

      --
      Thank you, Edward Snowden.

      "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
    18. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      to make it easier for newbies who care about privacy but don't know enough to necessarily ask the right questions

      Yeah if we don't dumb everything down then ... someone might ... use Google, and then... then you know what happens next?! DO YOU KNOW?! Why, they might even LEARN SOMETHING NEW! NOoooooooooooo!!!111!!!111oneoneone

    19. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whenever I have to go back and deal with an XP PC it is like a breathe of fresh air. The UI blows away anything that came after that. There was no damn reason to change it.

    20. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IE has been better than Firefox since IE 8.

      I'm curious what metric you're using to make that assertion.

      The metrics I use are a) reliability, b) adherence to web standards, and c) the number of bugs in CSS. IE 8 pretty much fails in all of those categories.

      IE 11, OTOH, looks like it's starting to come close to being usable.

    21. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, why don't they just take away the entire interface, then? Just have the XUL/HTML/Javascript stuff and make everything else a bloated third-party extension? There should be no functionality by default, right? Especially functionality that was there before. Maybe some people don't want a URI bar or tabs or uh, whatever's left.

    22. Re:great... by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      Don't tell that to some of the people on here who will immediately whine,

      And don't tell that to folks like Yahoo. They've been bugging me for months to upgrade to a Firefox that is optimized for Yahoo (not a Firefox that Yahoo has been optimized to work with), and to select a theme, every time I go to Yahoo mail.

      Today a user told me that the usual "continue anyway" link was no longer working. So Yahoo demands upgrades...

      Just because something's new doesn't make it better.

      And quite often the 'new' is significantly worse. Like 'neo'.

    23. Re:great... by Darinbob · · Score: 0

      IE 11 and Firefox 26 both have identical goals of serving up advertising to anonymous and unimportant eyeballs. Do not make the mistake of assuming either one cares about what end users think.

    24. Re:great... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      yes IE since 9 is a drastic improvement since IE 6 & 7.

      Its not the same buggy piece of shit it once was. However Firefox has improved too! It is fast and uses the least amount of ram since 14. IE 8 sucked hard. ... so did FF 3.6 and 4 but at least it was standards compliant.

      Today FF is better than IE as IE has no plugin support and 11 is buggy and crashes with dynamic flash creation and action script.

    25. Re:great... by mspohr · · Score: 1

      Here here!
      I'm still on IE 6... waiting for them to get the bugs worked out of this newfangled Internet before I upgrade.

      --
      I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
    26. Re:great... by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Yeah what do you need that safety glass in that windshield for? that regular glass kept the rain out of your face just fine!

      Got news for ya Sparky there is A REASON why we whine about users still on XP, because as the guy that has to work on them i can tell you more than 85% of them are running as admin, a good half have little to no antivirus and spyware protection, and a good 75%+ has more nasties than a Bangkok whore on coupon day. Say what you will about win 7 but at least it defaults to a limited user and will let you know when your AV is out of date, XP will happily let them run that 30 day trial of norton from 2002 and not say a word.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    27. Re:great... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      I make money cleaning malware. A huge correlation are business and home users on XP with updates turned off or use older browsers.

      MOST users are ignorant and do not know what a browser is? E standards for internet and they use Google as their internet just like we buy Fox and cnn TVs right? But you are downright an idiot if you know what a browser and OS and proudly refuse to keep current with updates take basic precautions. FF 3.6 had +50 exploits last time I looked Wow,

    28. Re: great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whatever. Xp is a mess. I'll stick to windows 95, thank you very much.

    29. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What? That's Chrome's MO. The other major browsers don't want it for a combination of reasons ranging from user advocacy to sticking it to Google.

    30. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IE supports extensions but the only ones I've seen are 'helpers' for random stuff and bits of malware.

    31. Re:great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Got news for ya Sparky there is A REASON why we whine about users still on XP, because as the guy that has to work on them i can tell you more than 85% of them are running as admin, a good half have little to no antivirus and spyware protection, and a good 75%+ has more nasties than a Bangkok whore on coupon day. Say what you will about win 7 but at least it defaults to a limited user and will let you know when your AV is out of date, XP will happily let them run that 30 day trial of norton from 2002 and not say a word.

      I'm sure you're right Slick. Bleeding edge, multiple, persistent, real-time AV's and quintuple anti-spyware on an hourly timer are the only reasonable protection. After all, there is no cost associated with Norton sucking up 110% of CPU cycles, only to periodically belch up false positives. Right?

      The reality is you are full of shit. AV is con and anti-spyware is only useful to undo the most naive user inflicted damage.

      No AV and/or spyware is anywhere near as effective as a content filtering proxy, noscript, an add filtering host file and an ip based ad network ip blocking firewall. That and not opening unknown email attachments.

      Any person or company selling you protection from Internet evil is a hustler. More, better protection is available to anyone willing to spend 30 minutes learning how to insulate themselves from the AV/Anti-spy hucksters.

    32. Re:great... by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      The setting they used to have by default was essentially a "break lots of websites" checkbox. People would toggle it, then complain that firefox "didn't work". If you want the control, and you know what you're doing, use one of the extensions.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    33. Re:great... by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1

      As to the 'continue anyway' button not working, I found the same thing so I did a right-click, Open in new Tab and got in.

      If Yahoo keeps pulling this shit, I won't use them any more other than to comment on their stories which say, "Look at [some random star] in her hot dress!" which they insist on sticking in a Flash format.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  4. Awaaaaaaay we goooooo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pssshaw!! I'm already on Firefox 37. Only noob still run that ancient version 26.

    1. Re:Awaaaaaaay we goooooo! by jez9999 · · Score: 3, Funny

      In the time that you posted that comment, Firefox versions 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, and 44 were released.

  5. The Angels Have The Phonebox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bring back the blink tag!

  6. My brain hurts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically

    "able" means I have a choice.
    "automatically" means I don't have a choice.

  7. Java should just die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is 2013 and I'm really tired of having my browser freeze for 2 seconds with a grey box every time a Java app has to load. With the latest JavaScript features there's no reason to be using Java in web pages anymore.

    1. Re:Java should just die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How many sites still use java applets that aren't just embedding some exploit kit?

    2. Re:Java should just die by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      Maybe you need a faster disk?

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    3. Re:Java should just die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is 2013 and I'm really tired of having my browser freeze for 2 seconds with a grey box every time a Java app

      I had Firefox freeze for hundreds of reasons, I would not be surprised if this was mainly a Firefox problem that the Java plug-in just happens to trigger. An applet developer can still avoid most of it by using/writing a loader for the resources instead of just hoping that both plug-in and browser act anywhere near sane.

      With the latest JavaScript features there's no reason to be using Java in web pages anymore.

      Not even close, unless you consider asm.js and even then JavaScript still misses a lot of features or is otherwise limited by having very few actual APIs to do stuff. Also new JavaScript APIs do not support existing/older browsers - a death sentence in the corporate world.

      Had to access specific folders on a user system for a project once (with signed applet + permission request), tried to do it in JavaScript only to find out Firefox scrapped the Firefox specific API for it with no replacement (write a plug-in and have your users install it is not a replacement) since doing so made their internal security model simpler. Even if JavaScript now had an API for accessing folders on a user system/executing programs which I am quite sure it does not it would not work with half the systems I have to support.

    4. Re:Java should just die by xombo · · Score: 1

      Even if JavaScript now had an API for accessing folders on a user system/executing programs which I am quite sure it does not it would not work with half the systems I have to support.

      <input type="file">

    5. Re:Java should just die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A lot of financial sites use java as part of their authentication mechanism to validate the machine connected to the site.

    6. Re:Java should just die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, you're right, this IS 2013. I fail to see how that's relevant.

      Get off the bandwagon and realize that Java's used all over the place and isn't going anywhere soon. Now, the PLUG-IN is a different manner.

      I can't believe that slashdot, the home of the "pick the right tool for the job" mentality has so many people thinking like this.

    7. Re:Java should just die by armanox · · Score: 1

      That selects a file, not a folder. I've been in the GP's position before - you have to use Java at best, ActiveX at worst.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    8. Re:Java should just die by tepples · · Score: 1

      Then have the user zip up the folder and work with the zipfile.

    9. Re:Java should just die by tepples · · Score: 1

      With the latest JavaScript features there's no reason to be using Java in web pages anymore.

      If your combination of GPU and Java plug-in supports OpenGL, but your combination of GPU and web browser gives only "Hmm. While your browser seems to support WebGL, it is disabled or unavailable. If possible, please ensure that you are running the latest drivers for your video card." with your operating system's latest drivers, then Java beats JavaScript.

    10. Re:Java should just die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Java...and Java GL...in a Web browser? I hope that somebody implements a Java version of Nepomuk so I can justify to my boss the purchase of that SGI Ice Cube I've been wanting.

    11. Re:Java should just die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In short, it's already experimentally in Webkit browsers, and Mozilla is finding some time to get it into Firefox. If more people asked for it, it would have been possible much sooner. For instance, see here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=846931

    12. Re:Java should just die by armanox · · Score: 1

      Not an option for those users...part of the reason I'm glad I don't do dev work anymore.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    13. Re:Java should just die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Search for File API

  8. my dream browser by csumpi · · Score: 2

    My dream browser would:

    - render text
    - render static images
    - block ads

    My dream browser would NOT:

    - play sounds
    - play movies
    - animate anything
    - open up additional windows
    - support java/javascript/whatever code
    - support cookies
    - store any information

    Oh well, I guess it will never happen.

    1. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i second this, from albuquerque, New Mexico, 87131 bldg #46

    2. Re:my dream browser by EMG+at+MU · · Score: 5, Interesting

      - support java/javascript/whatever code.

      As someone that runs NoScript, almost all of the websites on the modern Internet just don't work without JavaScript. They aren't even written to fail gracefully if JavaScript support isn't detected.

    3. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go back to bed grandpa.

    4. Re:my dream browser by freeze128 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I can tell from your requirements that you really don't do anything useful with your browser except read news websites.

      The rest of us who use web browsers to watch youtube videos, do any online shopping, or online banking will need something from this century. You can get along just fine with lynx.

    5. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you also still tie an onion to your belt, Lieutenant Luddite?

    6. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It already happened. Take Mosaic 0.1 and shut up

    7. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My dream browser would NOT: ...
      - support cookies

      You know that you could not login to sites like Slashdot without cookies?

    8. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My dream browser would:

      - render text

      - render static images

      - block ads

      My dream browser would NOT:

      - play sounds

      - play movies

      - animate anything

      - open up additional windows

      - support java/javascript/whatever code

      - support cookies

      - store any information

      Oh well, I guess it will never happen.

      Oh, I think you really ought to actually configure Firefox this way and try it out.

      Set all plugins to never activate in Tools > Add Ons
      Set "Accept cookies" to never, and clear all offline data under Advanced.
      Go into about:config and turn off audio and video, set cookies to never in preferences
      Install Adblock and Noscript. (You could turn off javascript for reals, but that would prevent Adblock from working. Noscript can do muc the same thing if configured right..)

      Try it. Try to get through one day on the real web with your browser set up this way.

      You'd need a fantasy dream Internet to make your dream browser work.

    9. Re:my dream browser by sqrt(2) · · Score: 2

      If you're just reading an article, the body text is usually still legible. That's all I need, usually. I ignore the site's protestations that it's intended to work only with javascript.

      --
      If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
    10. Re:my dream browser by steelfood · · Score: 1

      That's what happens when you have the perfect trifecta of greedy companies, lazy developers, and uneducated users. It's kind like the U.S. government right now.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    11. Re:my dream browser by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      So, basically, what you're looking for is Lynx with images. Interesting idea. I bet it'd render really fast.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    12. Re:my dream browser by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      > I can tell from your requirements that you really don't do anything useful with your browser except read news websites.

      ...and pr0n...

      But seriously, what's wrong with using a browser primarily to read news websites? How many cat videos can you watch anyway?

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    13. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those darn lazy developers not writing their entire site to work perfectly for the 2% of users who don't have javascript. I bet they don't even support netscape navigator!

    14. Re:my dream browser by steelfood · · Score: 1

      Besides YouTube, is there any ability that javascript and cookies give for your other purposes that SSL and regular plain old HTML doesn't?

      And I gotta say, watching YouTube is a much poorer activity than reading news websites. Sorry, I remember when I was able to download the embedded videos I wanted to watch, and watch it on the player of my choice.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    15. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is true, but I feel that NoScript is pretty much essential for safe browsing. Nearly all browser based exploits (That attack plugins or otherwise) are delivered via JS. It's often used to osbsuficate payloads that would otherwise be caught by simple safegaurds.

      I feel that the commonly accepted security model in most browsers is dangerous. When has it every been good practice to execute program code from untrusted sources? Worse, who's brilliant idea was it to load and execute code from external domains? JS should be run whitelist only. Too complicated? Setup a reputation service. Only don't fuck it up like we did with SSL certificates. Your ad vendor wants to load scripts from their ad servers? Too fucking bad. It's too much of a security risk.

    16. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I assume you mean the US government is greedy, lazy, and uneducated?

    17. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2%? Don't you mean .02%?

    18. Re:my dream browser by strength_of_10_men · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Some sites don't even get that far. It requires you load 3rd party JS to even load the content. Until then, it happily displays a blank page. WTF?

    19. Re:my dream browser by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      You know not every site requires you to log in? Of course you do, AC.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    20. Re:my dream browser by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      I actually have Iceweasel and Chromium configured to run that way on an old laptop with 256MB of RAM. It's still slow anyway.

      Links2, by the way, is entirely incapable of rendering modern websites in a readable way.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    21. Re:my dream browser by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      I can tell from your requirements that you really don't do anything useful with your browser except read news websites.

      The rest of us who use web browsers to watch youtube videos, do any online shopping, or online banking will need something from this century.

      So, you don't do anything useful either then?

      For most web-sites, I'm willing to interact with them at a level of Lynx. For some of them I'm willing to grant permissions for some of this stuff (all of the blockers allow site based permissions). For many many sites, if I would need to enable anything to view it ... the back button solves that.

      Most of the crap web sites have on them is so heavily geared towards tracking and analytics companies, treating them as untrusted until you're damn sure you want to is a good idea.

      If I need to allow Google Analytics to look at the content of your web site, then the content of your web site is shit.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    22. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure , but he is logged in to this site and only because of cookies.

    23. Re:my dream browser by Sigma+7 · · Score: 1

      My dream browser would NOT:

      There are early versions of Mosaic if that's what you want.

      The problem with modern browsers isn't because they do all that stuff, but because they do that stuff without you knowing about it or even controlling it. Anything relying on plugins can be set to Click-to-play (or via exception), popups can be blocked through similar tactics, and cookies/local store use can be identified through a simple icon or status bar message.

    24. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, we've got javascript, but we don't choose to let just any random website run their code in our browsers.

      (Let's hear it for NoScript!)

    25. Re:my dream browser by westlake · · Score: 0

      Oh well, I guess it will never happen.

      Right in one.

      Case in point: Disney's Frozen "Let It Go" Sequence Performed by Idina Menzel

      Official Disney Animation release. Exactly as it appears in the film. Released Dec 6. 4 million views by 3 PM EST Dec 10. 3.38 min. 720p and 1080p available.

    26. Re:my dream browser by just_a_monkey · · Score: 3

      My favorite are the ones that loads and displays all the content, and then after about a second second blanks the page and pops up a dialog about how my browser doesn't support javascript and this page absolutely needs javascript to function...

      --
      How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
    27. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No it's not. It's a good indication that you are convincing yourself that you didn't want to see it anyway so that you don't feel bad for making it impossible to do so.

    28. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you know that the specific cookie mechanism is not required for "logging in" to a site? I can think of at least three other ways off the top of my head.

    29. Re:my dream browser by Kagato · · Score: 1

      Generally for a reputable site I don't see a problem letting the site domain itself run. JS infection payload is far more likely to come from the ad network.

    30. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you use NoScript, you can prevent such automatic redirections by marking the checkbox "Forbid META redirections within NOSCRIPT elements" (my translation; I use a non-English user interface) in NoScript's extended settings for untrusted sites. You can still follow them manually for those sites which put them to good use.

    31. Re:my dream browser by cjellibebi · · Score: 1

      Depending on the site (eg. if it overlays the content with something else), you might be able to get the content back if you use the Nuke Anything Enhanced extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nuke-anything-enhanced/ and 'nuke' whatever is blocking the content.

    32. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Official Disney Animation release. Exactly as it appears in the film. Released Dec 6. 4 million views by 3 PM EST Dec 10. 3.38 min. 720p and 1080p available.

      Over HTTP, only 22 (mp4 video and audio 1280x720) is supported. 1080p requires two separate DASH streams: 137 (mp4 video at 1080p) and 141 (m4a audio at 256kbps) that must be remuxed separately.

      Oh, wait. This must be another YouTube enhancement. I meant 140 (m4a audio at 128kbps), because as of 24-48 hours ago, tag 141 is no longer available. In this particular instance 172 (256kbps webm audio) is available, but a lot of content creators have just had the quality of their audio streams cut by half.

      Moral of the story: Always keep a locally-stored copy, because you never know what a streaming service might do to it while you're not looking.

    33. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      File -> View -> Page Style -> No style

      Takes some getting used to, but usually allows you to circumvent certain particular types of obnoxiousness. I actually have a config where this is the default, it's like reading pages from 1996 (not *always* a bad thing...)

    34. Re:my dream browser by tepples · · Score: 1

      Besides YouTube, is there any ability that javascript and cookies give for your other purposes that SSL and regular plain old HTML doesn't?

      Cookies lets you stay logged in without having to reenter your name and password on every page and add items to your own shopping cart. JavaScript lets you expand and collapse comment trees without having to reload all the tens or hundreds of kilobytes of comments already on the page.

    35. Re:my dream browser by tepples · · Score: 1

      My dream browser would:
      - block ads

      Sites that depend on advertisement revenue would block your dream browser. Enjoy your paywall.

      My dream browser would NOT:
      - play sounds

      Starting from the web site of a band, how would you listen to the music that the band is offering to stream to you?

      My dream browser would NOT:
      - play movies

      Starting from the web site of a short film producer, how would you watch the video that the short film producer is offering to stream to you?

      My dream browser would NOT:
      - support java/javascript/whatever code

      If you have a web page with 100 kB of comments, and you click the button below a comment to view replies to that comment, do you really think it's efficient for the site to resend the 100 kB of other comments plus the additional comments in the tree that you expanded? Repeatedly resending comments would run up your data bill, especially if you happen not to live in a country with affordable unmetered mobile Internet access.

      My dream browser would NOT:
      - support cookies

      Would you rather have to register in order to use any web site with a shopping cart because an online store cannot set an anonymous session cookie to which to associate your shopping cart? And how would you log out of a web site without closing all other tabs? Most browsers that implement HTTP basic authentication don't stop sending the user's name and password until the user completely closes the browser session.

    36. Re:my dream browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you have a web page with 100 kB of comments, and you click the button below a comment to view replies to that comment, do you really think it's efficient for the site to resend the 100 kB of other comments plus the additional comments in the tree that you expanded?

      Pet peeve of mine on the "new" YouTube -- "expand all" doesn't expand all. It expands all threads to a depth of "2', and requires a reader to stop, mouse-click on the 2 replies, to see the rest of the threads.

      (An even bigger pet peeve -- thanks to Javashit and UX designers who think infinite scrolling is cool, it's impossible to see the first comments on YouTube. Or any comments by any specific date. If a video is 2-3 years old and has 2000 comments, I used to be able to go to the first page, last page, or somewhere in between, and execute a binary search between "page where-i-am out of 20 pages" and "page with comments-i-want out of 20 pages" to find out what the reaction was the day after something went viral.)

      The most efficient way would be to send all 100kb of comments and display them all, so that not even a mouse click was required to "expand" them. I'm not interested in expanding/collapsing threads like a monkey with Parkinson's disease, I'm interested in pressing the spacebar to page through content as I skim it.

    37. Re:my dream browser by tepples · · Score: 1

      Oh, you're one of those people who wants to see a user's entire Facebook timeline since college on one page. So if you want to reply to one of those comments, should it reload the entire page with all 30,000 comments plus a reply box, then reload the entire page with all 30,000 comments plus the first preview, then the entire page with all 30,000 comments plus the second preview, then the entire page with all 30,000 comments plus your added comment?

    38. Re:my dream browser by csumpi · · Score: 1

      Sites that depend on advertisement revenue would block your dream browser. Enjoy your paywall.

      Errrmmm... and how would they know to block it? I block ads on all (*A*L*L*) of my devices, most ads don't even get through my router, and get to go on any and all websites.

      .. how would you listen to the music .. how would you watch the video ..

      You know that there are plenty music and video players available other than the browser?

      ..you have a web page with 100 kB of comments...

      Oh yeah, there are the crappy coded websites. Let that be their problem, not mine.

      ..an online store cannot set an anonymous session cookie..how would you log out..

      Again, crappy coding. Not my problem.

    39. Re:my dream browser by melikamp · · Score: 1

      A lot of Web sites are simply broken. I routinely see commercial Web sites that display a blank page even after I "temporarily allow all this page" several times, so as to unblock everything (Firefox haters?). For my money, any Web site that could easily provide its functions without JavaScript, but doesn't, is broken. The ones that don't care to fail gracefully are even more broken. And then there are Web sites that are completely FUBAR, no matter how you look at them. Welcome to the Web :)

    40. Re:my dream browser by Monsuco · · Score: 2

      So, basically, what you're looking for is Lynx with images. Interesting idea. I bet it'd render really fast.

      In other words, Dillo combined with using a host file to block ads.

  9. A good start.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    NOW... Make flash click to play as well!

    1. Re:A good start.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      NOW... Make flash click to play as well!

      Flashblock extension does this to Flash. You can also white list sites you want to automatically run Flash (Youtube for example).

    2. Re:A good start.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And HTML. I heard that be really dangerous and/or resource intensive.

    3. Re:A good start.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Firefox:
      Tools > Add Ons, click Plugins, find Adobe Flash, choose Ask To Activate.

      Safari:
      Safari > Preferences, click Security, find Adobe Flash, click the list, choose Edit > Select All, click the minus (-), choose When visiting other websites: choose Block (no, not Ask.)

    4. Re:A good start.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For now, Flashblock does that.

    5. Re:A good start.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And noscript does what the article is talking about for java.

      The point is to make it the default of firefox so we can put an end to this shit. If the features of flashblock were the default for firefox. We MIGHT start seeing less stupid flash spewing out of the web.

    6. Re:A good start.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Use the Flashblock extension, I can't live without it. One sorta confusing thing to watch out for is that it also blocks real HTML5 videos by default, but shows the same Flash logo for both. I was very confused as to why websites were only serving me Flash videos, when they were really serving real videos which I thought were Flash plugins.

    7. Re:A good start.. by Windwraith · · Score: 1

      Firefox supports click-to-play for Flash since...I don't know, but feels like a long time ago, at least 6 months. One of my favorite things really, so convenient.

    8. Re:A good start.. by 3dr · · Score: 1

      Possible in Chrome, I don't remember using an extension for that. That's how I roll, with videos off by default.

    9. Re:A good start.. by bsmedberg · · Score: 4, Informative

      We studied doing this for Flash as well. Check out the user research study. We determined that the vast majority of users would merely be annoyed by making Flash click-to-play, and we wouldn't actually be improving security or performance for most users.

      As noted in other comments here, you can mark Flash as click-to-activate yourself in the Firefox addons manager, or get more fine-grained control over which Flash actually runs by installing an addon like Adblock.

      Our long-term strategy is to make it so that nobody needs to use plugins by adding new web APIs; to reimplement content like PDF and Flash in JS so that we can have control over the performance; and to use the mobile web as leverage to get new sites to use native HTML APIs like <video> to wean the world off of plugins.

    10. Re:A good start.. by Cochonou · · Score: 2

      Did you do the same kind of user research study for java ? It seems the same conclusions would be applicable...

  10. Really?, What's next? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Click-to-Leak (Memory)?

  11. Firefox to block 3rd party cookies by default... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Firefox to block 3rd party cookies by default... will IE or Chrome ever do this? (safari has)
    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/973156

    Be sure to compare how to set IE's cookie settings versus in Firefox:
    http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20042703-285/disable-third-party-cookies-in-ie-firefox-and-google-chrome/

  12. Unintended consequences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The only problem I've seen with Firefox today is the updates are way too fast.

    See folks, you mod'ed people who bitched about Firefox'es fast update cycle and now we have to deal with the bitching on every announcement. Karma whoring.

    Not that I can blame the parent, it IS a quick and easy way to boost karma because all of you are so easily manipulated - like everyone else in the World.

    1. Re:Unintended consequences by roc97007 · · Score: 2

      C'mon, realistically, there is a rate of releases that's too slow, (critical bugs and security holes never get fixed) and a rate of releases that's too fast (add-ons can't keep up). I don't have an opinion on where the sweet spot might be, but I think it's a valid discussion.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    2. Re:Unintended consequences by X0563511 · · Score: 2

      Or one could fix bugs and security issues whilst not introducing/removing/changing major features and breaking compatibility. You know, like what we had before with fractional version numbers.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    3. Re:Unintended consequences by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      's a good point, although I can see the value in introducing new functionality quickly, especially support for new standards and codecs.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    4. Re:Unintended consequences by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      So are you saying that new functionality breaks the extension API every time? 'Cause if it doesn't, then even new functionality can be a minor version number.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    5. Re:Unintended consequences by VortexCortex · · Score: 1

      C'mon, realistically, there is a rate of releases that's too slow, (critical bugs and security holes never get fixed) and a rate of releases that's too fast (add-ons can't keep up). I don't have an opinion on where the sweet spot might be, but I think it's a valid discussion.

      Well, if your plugin is anything like mine, then you can simply us a profile to discover exactly what the sweet spot is between releasing too quickly and not filling holes fast enough by loading up a network where an ex posts. Of course, if binary incompatibilities arise the release cycle may be exaggerated -- which is usually the case otherwise they wouldn't be exes.

    6. Re:Unintended consequences by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      You can have critical bug and security fixes done without creating a new major release number, and those critical bug fixes can be introduced without requiring the user to receive irrelevant UI or usage changes at the same time. Firefox managed this for a very long time just fine up through version 4.

    7. Re:Unintended consequences by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Informative

      The support for the new stuff is being demanded by web site builders but not by the actual end users. The web site makers want to promote their world view of browser-as-app-framework and if that means dragging the customers dragging and screaming so be it. Ie, Mozilla wants HTML5 to be adopted as fast as possible, thus it cares more about advertisers than users.

    8. Re:Unintended consequences by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      The one possible exception might be the users of mobile devices for which any web site that uses flash (still a whole lot of 'em) doesn't work. (I know, sometimes you can make it work on some devices, but mom and pop won't be able to figure it out.) I personally am not a tablet user, but I support them, and the inability to use flash is probably users' number one complaint. They may not know that's the problem, to them the website doesn't work. This is probably the primary killer of the tablet experience, and website builders need to be encouraged to fix it quickly.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    9. Re:Unintended consequences by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

      But whose fault is that? Put the blame where it lies, Steve jobs trying to push his appstore crapstore lock in. I have flash on my fricking THREE YEAR OLD single core cellphone and ya know what? plays great. try HTML V5 with H.264 on anything less than a dual core and see what you get,even with hardware acceleration its a fricking pig.

      So call a spade a spade, the killing of flash on mobile didn't have a damned thing to do with compatibility, or battery life, it had to do with Steve jobs making damned sure you weren't getting shit on that iPad without giving him 30%.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    10. Re:Unintended consequences by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      But whose fault is that? Put the blame where it lies, Steve jobs trying to push his appstore crapstore lock in. I have flash on my fricking THREE YEAR OLD single core cellphone and ya know what? plays great. try HTML V5 with H.264 on anything less than a dual core and see what you get,even with hardware acceleration its a fricking pig.

      So call a spade a spade, the killing of flash on mobile didn't have a damned thing to do with compatibility, or battery life, it had to do with Steve jobs making damned sure you weren't getting shit on that iPad without giving him 30%.

      I agree with all of that, and for a long while it was the primary reason I recommended Android devices rather than the ipad. Because lots of websites don't work on the ipad. It was a compelling argument.

      But then, Adobe for whatever frakking reason decided to cease support of flash on Android, and new Android devices started shipping without flash. My wife was really pissed when she got her Kindle HD and it wouldn't play video on any of her favorite sites. She nearly returned the device. (I think she should have.) I know, everything was supposed to switch to html 5 or some damned thing by now, but it's been over three years with almost no progress.

      I don't care if it's html 5 or some protocol not yet invented, or if Adobe brings Flash back to mobile, or whatever. It just HAS TO WORK. Tablets will be toys to many consumers until then.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    11. Re:Unintended consequences by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Dude hack the thing! Its Android, the only good thing about Android is if your device don't do what you want it to do? ROM the shit out of the thing. hell my phone is from 2011, was slow as shit...with the default ROM. I put in the Area51 ROM for my phone? Not only did it comes with flash already installed but its a damned nice phone now, just a pleasure to use. i was planning on getting another phone but now i think I'll just get the larger battery for this one and call it a day.

      But if the rumors are true you can thank Cupertino for adobe killing flash on android as well, the rumors are that Apple made it clear adobe would be a second class citizen on their platform if they kept flash and Adobe makes too much money of of Apple hipsters to risk that for a free player so they killed it. As for why you haven't seen squat when it comes to HTML V5? Its simple dude, take ANY video and encode 2 versions, same resolution and FPS, make one flash with Spark or VP6 and the other H.264 compatible with HTML V5 and see what you get. I can tell you that the flash video will play smoothly even on this 800Mhz single core ARM phone while the H.264 will choke anything less than a 1.2Ghz dual core without hardware acceleration and even WITH acceleration it'll suck down cycles like a drunk hitting a free mini-bar.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    12. Re: Unintended consequences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude, i did hack it. The new rom is incredibly fast but now my camera is nonfunctional and Bluetooth stops after 30 seconds of use.

      The only way an android rom ever makes stable is the developers (ala Ubuntu) just say "good enough" or "not going to fix that!". Dude.

      Bring on the real Linux phones that don't hide driver functions in some obscure layer, because I'm sick of this half open source joke that android is. Dude.

    13. Re:Unintended consequences by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      Oh, *I* can hack it. I've got the last supported version of Flash up in the Dolphin browser on my device. But the install process is not something you can expect Fred and Ethyl Mertz to do. To them, it just doesn't work. Still. And personally, I'm unwilling to hack a solution on a client's or family member's device, try to explain how to use it and then support it afterwards. That seems to be a good way to get buried in a bunch of hacks you'll have to support forever.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    14. Re:Unintended consequences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you're conflating YOURSELF with "end users". It's easy to do, and I do it all the time. But then I ask actual non-tech people what they want in their browser and it quite closely aligns with what's being done right now in Chrome and Firefox.

      Maybe we're just out of touch. I mean, I tried doing what I'm doing in HTML5 ten years ago in Java, and it was awful. I tried again in .Net and it was no better. Now devices are fast enough that HTML5 is working out fine; I can easily create one app that runs on all my companies' devices and rather well at that.

      Plus if you're lamenting the rose-colored view of what the web was like in the 90s, you've got a ton of addons to control things; NoScript, CookieMonster, RequestPolicy, etc. I use them and they're not nearly as annoying as people tell me they are.

      Frankly I think things have progressed in a piecemeal fashion, arms-race fashion. I would NOT want want to go back. My users don't want to go back either. I hardly think it's as bad as some people are claiming, even if it's often feels like we're stuck in a similarly buggy, laggy, and crummy experience.

    15. Re:Unintended consequences by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 1

      Not to mention that even if you can hack it should you have to? Flash has been around a long time and is used widely. Someone bringing a device to market should support it period. You've paid your money for a cool device that does what it advertises it does (and they generally don't advertise disclaimers like "you tube will not work, CNN views will not open" etc) not for a hobby/side job figuring out their software/hardware glitches for them.

    16. Re:Unintended consequences by hairyfeet · · Score: 0

      What support? Put a decent ROM on it and call it a day bro. I've been making nice extra Xmas money doing exactly that and the "support" consists of putting in their Gmail and showing them how to load ringtones (my personal fav is aura Ringtones as it has the sound effects most folks seem to want) and that is it. Thumbs up on dolphin BTW, I've tried over a dozen browsers and nothing beats the dolphin when it comes to android.

      And while I 100% agree we shouldn't HAVE to as long as the press keeps sucking apple's dick and letting them get away with shit (not a single website pointed out killing flash helped their lock in? Really?) and the OEMs keep putting out bloated shitty Android versions what choice do we have? just stay away from AOSP and Cyanogen and you'll be fine, both of those are frankly too generic to be worth a crap. Best to do a search for your device and see who has the best ROM for that model, since Straighttalk and net10 are popular in my area its Area51 ROMs, they have flash preloaded on most along with Android Assistant and App2SD but YMMV, good luck!

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  13. And version 26.0.1 arrives Thursday? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even after all the nightly and beta releases there is still the "final" beta known as the "x.0" with the "real" release known as the "x.0.1" coming out a day or two later.

  14. Re:mo3 do3n by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have seen this BSD spam bot lurking around here for something like a decade.

  15. Java in browsers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People still use Java in web browsers? Just asking. I haven't loaded a Java applet in years. I haven't even used Silverlight either. I must be visiting the wrong websites. lol

    1. Re:Java in browsers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quite a many corporate and even personal banking systems rely on Java applets. By this stunt Firefox may kill itself from corporate use completely.

    2. Re:Java in browsers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes Many corporate environment still use Java, even in the browser if only for a moment to open a local java applet and such.
      People have so much hate for Jave, Flash, Silverlight, etc...
      and the way many developers have used those technologies I can't compleatly blame them.
      But really there isn't anything wrong with Java if used properly, and if kept updated (just like any other decent software)

      I think click-to-play is probably a prudent feature, it should at least help folks who don't pay attention to where/how they browse...

  16. Re:mo3 do3n by X0563511 · · Score: 1

    Congratulations?

    Personally I'd bet these things are the new numbers station.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  17. I second this... by dclozier · · Score: 1

    Cookie Monster is one of my must have plugins for Firefox. You can easily see at a glance where the cookie usage stands for the site you are on and can then adjust as needed. Using a default of rejecting all can be a bit more work though but isn't so bad once you have white listed your regularly used web sites.

  18. Javascript is the new plugin hell by ron_ivi · · Score: 1

    I'd rather see "click-to-pay" the default for javascript.

    It's been many years since I've been annoyed by an irritating java applet, and there a few I find useful.

    But ugh - so much javascript, and so many sites that practically require it.

    1. Re:Javascript is the new plugin hell by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Ya, almost no one has a basic HTML web site anymore, they're all applications now. Turn off javascript and just about everything breaks in some way, with maybe half being unusable or displaying no information at all. No one cares about portability of web sites anymore, their goal is to serve up advertisements and collect user tracking information. And don't be fooled into thinking the people writing these web sites are all experts in creating efficiently coded Javascript applets, most of them are buggy and slow and suck up your CPU cycles and memory.

    2. Re:Javascript is the new plugin hell by nmr_andrew · · Score: 1

      But, but, the new shiny!

      Seriously, and I think both parent and GP would agree, all this Javascript just bloats the internet. If it's all about the content, most of what I care about could be presented nearly as well, faster, and in some cases better, using 1990s era pure HTML. There are places it makes sense to use code (if it actually does something useful) but I think most web "developers" do it just because they can or because they don't want their site to look outdated.

  19. TLS 1.1 and 1.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    TLS 1.1 was supposed to be released with this version by it had to backed out because there were some compatibility issues with a small number of sites:

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=733647

    The code is still in there, you just have to enable it manually via about:prefs: security.tls.version.max=2

    TLS 1.2 is also present:

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=861266

    Just set security.tls.version.max=3.

    Not sure if they're shooting for release 27 or 28. By default only TLS 1.0 is negotiated.

  20. Seems pretty obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Version 31 is bigger than version 26 so chrome must be better.

    1. Re:Seems pretty obvious by mythosaz · · Score: 1

      Bigger is better.

      It's clearly five better.

    2. Re:Seems pretty obvious by occasional_dabbler · · Score: 1
      --
      "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
  21. JAVA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dont you mean 'Click and Pray' JAVA plugins?

  22. NOT upgrading. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    And as-usual I will NOT be upgrading.

    Since Mozilla has followed in Google's path of removing useful functions with each new version. I do not upgrade any Google, Android, or Mozilla applications.

    1. Re:NOT upgrading. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good luck living in the past. If people really cared about those "useful" features so much they would have been available as an addon by now. But nope, all we get is a bunch of whiners who think it's Mozilla's job to do everything for them for free.

    2. Re:NOT upgrading. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, they are available as addons.

      If they continue removing useful features, soon we'll only need to install the addons.

  23. I can't upgrade by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    for some reason, the download page thinks that I am using the latest version of Firefox.

    "Congrats! You’re using the latest version of Firefox."

    No, I am using Firefox 25. Is 25 the latest version?? I thought 26 is.

  24. Download Window Completely Removed? by LeRaldo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Starting somewhere around version 21 of Firefox, they turned off the "downloads" window and took the ability to turn it on/off out of the options. In order to turn something on that had been in Firefox since it was called Phoenix, you had to go into about:config and change "browser.download.useToolkitUI" to true. Now for some reason, it appears to me that Firefox v26 has completely removed the download window altogether. I cannot for the life of me get the old downloads window back. Maybe I'm just blind/dumb, but I can't imagine why Mozilla continues to make changes like this.

    1. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by xombo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I suspect that as apps are rewritten to improve support for "Metro" interfaces, most windowed dialogues will be phased out.

    2. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm also pissed. If you find how to get it back do tell, please.

    3. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by just_a_monkey · · Score: 1

      Ah. So he's looking for the download tab?

      --
      How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
    4. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was taken out a while ago, and I say good riddance to it. I hate having more windows open than I need, cluttering up my task-switching with Alt+Tab or staying open after the parent window closes. The new button with the pop-up menu stays out of the way and is much easier to deal with, IMO.

    5. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by adiposity · · Score: 1

      It is still working for me. CTRL+J?

      Or, click on the download arrow, and click "show all downloads."

      This is on Windows, Firefox 26.

    6. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by LeRaldo · · Score: 1

      This is the History window. What I'm talking about is actually a separate window just for downloads that would be created whenever a new download starts, and would go away once the download(s) finished (depending on if you set it to do so).

    7. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, seems that is definitely gone. Wondering what Mozilla is going to fuck up next in FF.

    8. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by adiposity · · Score: 1

      I see what you mean. Though, this is the "Library" window, with the "downloads" section selected.

      It basically achieves what I had before, although it doesn't have the pop-up functionality (which I had previously turned off--probably why I never noticed the difference).

    9. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      I hate having to click on a icon and then a button to see if the mirror I slected is running like shit or not, it was always easy to turn off, but getting it back on is a serious bitch

    10. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Re:Download Window Completely Removed?

      The download dialog (Control + J) is gone. It was merged with the bookmarks and history and some kind of tag finder, into a new dialog. Great for those with an organization problem, but not so great for those who suddenly start finding much more than they wanted someone else to easily target in 10 seconds. It's like a rehash of the v3.0 "awesomebar" outcry when it was unthinkable to search for both history AND bookmarks (when all we wanted was url autocomplete)... except 2 years and 20+ versions later we have no breath to cry out with.

      Geeks are no longer the target market of any major alternative browser.
      We aren't welcome anymore, because we strongly resist, and force their hands by tweaking features back in, compiling them back in / forking code when the browser steals stuff old functionality and all that. Mainstream non-geeks just grin and bear it until we come to their aid and install some other browser.

      Speaking of resisting, Firefox intentionally prevents selecting multiple domains with your mouse in the cookie removal popup. They have an all-at-once button option, OR make you scroll down from a to z (I had dozens of domains going back a couple years) to apparently make it undesire-able to target large groups of cookies for those of us that might hurt their *.google.com revenue. What's more, they sort alphabetically in such a way that you'll find accounts.google.com near the top, and google.com near the middle, when they should just clump all of it into a single tree branch or give you some button to toggle and be done in much fewer clicks. I had about 2 thousand cookie pieces there.

    11. Re:Download Window Completely Removed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      +1

  25. Install the User Style Manager and then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    User Style Manager
    You're golden!

    1. Re:Install the User Style Manager and then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  26. What about memory use? by Reliable+Windmill · · Score: 1

    Does it use less than 250 MB of RAM while idling with no windows open, and less than 1 GB of RAM after 30 minutes of browsing? When it does, I'll get excited.

    --
    Signature intentionally left blank.
    1. Re:What about memory use? by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 1

      Except maybe for Links/Lynx, what browser uses that little amount of memory. Firefox has been doing quite well in the more recent versions, it uses less memory than MSIE and Chrome. (No idea about the others).
      Most sites are simply becoming annoying resource hogs with memory leaking javascript all over the place. Gmail has gone to almost unusable on my netbook within 2 years. Even Eclipse performs better than Gmail.

    2. Re:What about memory use? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Go search past stories for Firefox benchmark. FF uses least amount of ram

    3. Re:What about memory use? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes it does. I am sitting at 800 megs with a lot of tabs open and many addons.

    4. Re:What about memory use? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You could try to Reset Firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-problems/ and start afresh with the personal data automatically carried over.

  27. Re: Firefox ESR by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google it!

    I am at version 17 with the latest security fixes and it will updated to 24 next week:)

    Next version is a year away with continual security. Addon work now and what Mozilla should have done back in 2011

  28. Re:Creates surge in IE by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    Users will just downgrade to IE 8 on their XP and then whine to the webmasters that they need to make their site look as good as their foxfire. At least IE 8 works right?

  29. Re:Creates surge in IE by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    You give the perfect example of what's wrong. You are implying that you care more about the inconvenience of having to develop a site that can work on an older browser than about the the customer

    It's not like we're talking about something ancient like IE6 full of major security holes, IE8 is still only 5 years old and still supported. In fact the main reasons I see http://theie8countdown.com/ for upgrading is not due to security but because it "hampers the development of the web". Again that reinforces my point; Firefox is on its deathmarch because it wants the brave new web world whether or not its users want that world. And it wants that brave new web world because its advertiser friends have lots of money.

    It is perfectly appropriate to put up a warning that IE8 users may not see all features, that at least gives them a chance to consider upgrading or to avoid your site in the future. I certainly wish I had the luxury of ignoring customers using old releases, I could get a lot of free time if I didn't have to backport bug fixes like a responsible programer.

  30. Re:Creates surge in IE by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    You give the perfect example of what's wrong. You are implying that you care more about the inconvenience of having to develop a site that can work on an older browser than about the the customer

    It's not like we're talking about something ancient like IE6 full of major security holes, IE8 is still only 5 years old and still supported. In fact the main reasons I see http://theie8countdown.com/ for upgrading is not due to security but because it "hampers the development of the web". Again that reinforces my point; Firefox is on its deathmarch because it wants the brave new web world whether or not its users want that world. And it wants that brave new web world because its advertiser friends have lots of money.

    It is perfectly appropriate to put up a warning that IE8 users may not see all features, that at least gives them a chance to consider upgrading or to avoid your site in the future. I certainly wish I had the luxury of ignoring customers using old releases, I could get a lot of free time if I didn't have to backport bug fixes like a responsible programer.

    I am advocating that pushing change too hard and ignoring users makes them die hard afraid of change which puts the cost to you.

    I just saw a video yesterday that asked users what a browser was? Answer was Yahoo or Google. these were not nursing home seniors but average Joes! Asking them to change is beyond their ability to gasp.

  31. Electrolysis by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting

    WTF is it with the Gecko engine and "senior moments"?

    That's caused by the lack of a multi-process model in Firefox. Mozilla is working on it under the codename Electrolysis (e10s). It's still incomplete, but you can try it out by opening about:config, turning on browser.tabs.remote, and restarting Firefox. One drawback is that click-to-play is broken, as are "many plugins".

  32. Stupid decision by cowwoc2001 · · Score: 1

    All of Firefox's plugins have security problems. Requiring click-to-play only for Java while ignoring all other plugins comes off as biased.

    1. Re:Stupid decision by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not when a majority of the risks coming in are associated with oracle's broken sandbox and the java malware, caught by a drive-by download, has more rights to the system than the user sitting at the keyboard. I don't know about you but javascript/browser etc doesn't run as root on my machine and if a website needs desktop java, I don't need it (short of firewalls at work).

  33. Cookies vs. basic auth by tepples · · Score: 1

    Cookies are needed for an anonymous session, such as adding items to your shopping cart before logging in. HTTP Basic authentication isn't capable of distinct anonymous sessions.

  34. DRM, WebGL, asm.js, iOS, and folders by tepples · · Score: 1

    Our long-term strategy is to make it so that nobody needs to use plugins by adding new web APIs

    The illustration on the page you linked uses Silverlight as an example. Netflix uses Silverlight so that it can wrap rented videos in Microsoft's PlayReady digital restrictions management, and lack of PlayReady is why it doesn't work in Moonlight. Video on demand providers use digital restrictions management in the first place to deter users from in effect teeing a rented video into an encoder and keeping it past the rental period. How would VOD work on a browser distributed as free software without any proprietary plug-ins?

    The page you linked states: "As browsers have advanced, this kind of feature development can occur directly within the browser using technologies such as WebGL" but this page, on Firefox 25.0.1 on Xubuntu 12.04 LTS on a laptop with an Atom N450, states: "Hmm. While your browser seems to support WebGL, it is disabled or unavailable. If possible, please ensure that you are running the latest drivers for your video card." A lot of users aren't in the position to buy a brand new PC just to be able to switch from Flash or native apps to web applications.

    The page also mentions asm.js, but do non-Firefox web browsers, such as Chrome, Safari, and IE, support it yet? Otherwise, will have to write the program several times: once in asm.js for Firefox, once in Native Client for Chrome for PC, once as a native app for Android if the user hasn't already switched from Android Browser or Chrome to Firefox for Android, and then once as a native app for each platform that IE or Safari runs on.

    and to use the mobile web as leverage to get new sites to use native HTML APIs

    That won't especially help when Apple refuses to implement key HTML APIs in its iVersion of the mobile web. True, Safari for iOS can't run Flash anyway, but the idea on mobile is to get developers away from making platform-specific apps.

    Quick question: Using HTML APIs, how should a web application let the user select a folder (or "directory" if you insist) on the local machine and upload all files in the folder?

  35. 272 MB here by tepples · · Score: 1

    I've been browsing for a few hours, and Xfce Task Manager on the previous version (Firefox 25.0.1) shows a resident set size of 272 MB. My PC has 1 GB of RAM, and I routinely stay out of thrashing swap even with nine Cracked.com tabs open. Part of how I keep Firefox slim is that I use the Flashblock extension, so that sites other than YouTube and Newgrounds and a couple other whitelisted sites aren't allowed to load the Flash Player until I click.

  36. least worst browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm getting increasingly fed by the mozilla team.
    The browser performs horribly on Linux, and they're copying Chrome far too much, and the recently merged Australis stuff makes the age old idiotic mistake of assuming one interface is good enough for every form factor.
    It's not, come on guys, I shouldn't have to install a bunch of extensions like Classic theme Restorer, and fuck around in about:config to get a usable interface!!

    It's ticks me off to no end that it's almost 2014 and my browser of choice is based on which is LEAST WORST, rather than which suits me best.
    And the competition is even worse interface wise...

    Seriously Mozilla, if you have to copy Chrome, why can't you copy the good parts of it? Like the fact that it *never ever* displays webpages with similar artefacts to this when you're using a dark system theme: http://i.imgur.com/dSYp02p.png (about:memory when firefox is "not" using system colours)

  37. Time to get excited by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Been running the same session all day. 11 addons installed, 5 tabs open currently, one of which is using an AJAX based database interface and its using a whole 170MB here.

    Please take your concerns about Firefox memory use back to 2008 where it belongs. Firefox hasn't had memory issues for many years. If you still have a problem why not try a clean install, nuke your profile and get rid of your crappy addons.

    1. Re:Time to get excited by Reliable+Windmill · · Score: 1

      750 MB usage currently. Only running AdBlock, and I have 2 tabs from Slashdot open, so I think it is still very much a current issue.

      --
      Signature intentionally left blank.
  38. After the update Firefox refuses to start by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I updated to Firefox 26 this morning, and as a result it would display an error message at startup, after which it closes.
    I downgraded back to 25.1, but if this keeps happening I guess I'll switch browsers.

  39. This is an improvement by fa2k · · Score: 1

    A while ago they were blocking Java outright. Click to play is a great compromise: it's much harder for an attacker to get the user to click on something than to simply load something in the background. It's also much easier for users to log into their bank or view scientific illustrations in Java (possibly other things too:).

    Java has been slow at patching bugs, so I understand why they're getting the stick harder than flash. And their installer is insane, you have to install the 32 bit java to make it work in the browser, but that's not obvious from the download page

  40. In what non-crappy manner should sites be coded? by tepples · · Score: 1

    and how would they know to block it?

    By the fact that advertisement URLs are not being requested. You currently sail under the radar but won't if your dream browser should become popular.

    You know that there are plenty music and video players available other than the browser?

    Among all the external music and video players, which external music and video player should a site's operator choose to support?

    Oh yeah, there are the crappy coded websites. Let that be their problem, not mine.

    In what non-crappy manner should sites be coded instead to support expansion of a tree, such as a product category tree or a comment reply tree? And in what non-crappy manner should sites be coded instead to support a shopping cart model? Would you prefer having to register and log in in order to shop?

  41. Re:In what non-crappy manner should sites be coded by csumpi · · Score: 1

    ..currently sail under the radar..

    Awesome. So basically all those shit websites would disappear. I can live with that

    which external music and video player should a site's operator choose to support

    Magic, my friend. Just put a link to the mp3 or mp4 on your site. Works like a charm. In fact, it would be less hassle, pain and suffering for everyone involved.

    in what non-crappy manner should sites be coded?

    You kidding, right? Currently even to get to a webpage, you go through like 8 redirects. So this one is very easy to answer. You need two things:

    1. hire decent developers
    2. make sure that the back button works

  42. I seek to become a decent developer by tepples · · Score: 1

    Just put a link to the mp3 or mp4 on your site. Works like a charm.

    If Internet radio worked that way, then you'd end up downloading the station's entire playlist. This is unacceptable to the copyright owners who license the recordings to the station.

    in what non-crappy manner should sites be coded?

    You kidding, right?

    No. I seek to become a decent developer, and I'm asking you how a decent developer should solve the problems caused by trying to implement the rich interactions that web users expect without using any form of client-side script. How would a decent developer work around the lack of cookies when adding an item to the visitor's shopping cart? How would a decent developer work around the lack of JavaScript when trying to update the image in a web-based collaborative paint program, update the list of messages sent to a channel in a web-based chat program, scroll a large map, etc.?

    1. Re:I seek to become a decent developer by csumpi · · Score: 1

      This is unacceptable to the copyright owners who license the recordings to the station.

      OK, let's back up a second and make sure that we are not kidding ourselves into thinking that any music played on a computer cannot somehow be recorded.

      I seek to become a decent developer.

      That's awesome. And I see your challenge, because most likely the people that cut your paycheck want you to spend pretty much all your working hours exploiting users. I obviously can't provide any suggestions there, other than find a job where you can look at yourself in the mirror while shaving, because those razor cuts hurt.

      I'm also not going to google for you how to maintain session state without cookies.

      But as long as you make sure that the back buttons works, on all pages, all the time, even on your landing page, you will be a much better developer.

  43. Firefox: The most unstable software in common use. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 0

    I first reported the Firefox memory-hogging instability bug in Firefox version .9, whatever it was called then. Now, years later, Firefox still grabs more and more memory until it becomes unstable.

    The memory-hogging instability occurs when many windows and tabs are open, as is likely for anyone doing extensive research.

  44. Session state without cookies by tepples · · Score: 1

    OK, let's back up a second and make sure that we are not kidding ourselves into thinking that any music played on a computer cannot somehow be recorded.

    The record labels and movie studios have become comfortable with analog reconversion for private use that includes a DAC-speaker-microphone-ADC or DAC-display-camera-ADC in the path, just not digital reconversion that doesn't include this highly lossy step. Besides, a lot of video streams are considered rentals, and the provider wants to deter users from keeping the video past the rental period, which is a violation of terms of service.

    I'm also not going to google for you how to maintain session state without cookies.

    I just did, and I'm going to explain why I don't like the solutions that I found on the first couple pages of results.

    • Associating a session with an IP address allows session hijacking if multiple users are behind one NAT or proxy.
    • Including the session ID in all URLs and as a hidden input in all forms is fragile: someone using the back button would end up starting a new session. And as this page points out, it's more vulnerable to session hijacking when a user shares a link to product pages that happen to include old session IDs that may refer to private information.
    • Storing a session ID in the modification date of an image is also fragile, as it causes session loss when a device's RAM fills up and the user's browser starts purging things from cache. I don't see how it would work anyway, as there's nothing to associate the HTML page load with the image load other than the IP address, which I mentioned above.
    • window.name requires JavaScript and doesn't obey the same-origin or even same-domain policy.
    • HTTP authentication requires users to register and log in before shopping, which users find prohibitively inconvenient.
    • This page recommends making an order form that lets users copy and paste SKUs from another browser window and key in quantities, but it's almost as inconvenient as a phone order.

    What keywords should I have used instead?

    But as long as you make sure that the back buttons works, on all pages, all the time, even on your landing page

    Cookies handle the back button better than the leading cookieless solution (session ID in URL) does.

    you will be a much better developer.

    I have tried to keep to this philosophy on an online store that I maintain on behalf of my employer, even though it does use a session cookie, does use the occasional (optional) animation, and does use the occasional (optional) script. We don't use anything like the Facebook/Twitter/Google+ social recommendation crap that too many sites use.