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Firefox 27 Released: TLS 1.2 Support, SPDY 3.1, SocialAPI Improvements
jones_supa writes "Mozilla has released Firefox 27 for Linux, Android, Mac, and Windows (download). One of the big changes is enabling support for TLS 1.1 and 1.2 by default. Firefox 27 also supports the SPDY 3.1 protocol. Developers got some new toys: support was added for ES6 generators in SpiderMonkey, the debugger will de-obfuscate JavaScript, and style sheets can be reset by using all:unset. Mozilla also announced some new social integration options. In addition to all these changes, the Android version got some UI improvements and font readability upgrades. For a future release, Mozilla is currently testing a new approach for Firefox Sync in Nightly builds. They recognized the headaches involved with how it works, and they're now opting to use a simple e-mail and password combination like Google Chrome does. In the old system, users were forced to store an auto-generated authorization code, which, if lost, would render their bookmarks, passwords and browsing history inaccessible. "
Recent Firefox versions supported TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2, by setting security.tls.version.max=2 in about:config. It is nice to have it by default now, but the missing bit was GCM ciphers support. They are important because CBC ciphers are more and more under attack (BEAST was CBC-specific). Do they implement GCM now?
I sincerely hope these are optional and not going to get rammed down our throats so Mozilla can collect more ad revenue.
Because, quite frankly, I have no interest in having my web browser trying to integrate with social media.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I want to see WebPayment lift off. This could be a huge enabler for small internet businesses. Any news on that?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I used Chrome for quite a while but just switched back to Firefox. Chrome restricts things like downloading media (especially from YouTube) and doesn't work correctly on some ecommerce sites that I use. Firefox isn't (subjectively) that much slower than Chrome any longer and clearly has the widest choice of add-ons.
I see they haven't reversed the horrible misfeature of the "awesome" bar being restricted to whatever's specified in the search bar (e.g., Wikipedia) instead of using your default search engine regardless.
Or is there an about:config setting for that which I don't know about?
Maybe it's me, but Firefox 26 would crash at the drop of a hat (and that's on Windows and Linux). I would sincerely hope that 27 is somewhat better in that respect.
Thanks to weaklings such as you, our society turns into 1984.
I'll give FF another shot when there's a GTK3 port.
But, uh, hey... apparently we got us some Saavn (?) integration.
Chrome uses almost 300% more ram than FF or IE 11 on my system when I have +40 tabs opened.
Tomshardware.com did some benchmarks that can confirm this. It even hit slashdot that FF 13 used the least amount of ram a year and a half ago.
FF 4.0 != FF 25 and later and a lot has changed since 2011. I am tempted to switch back to Firefox as it is so light and quick now.
http://saveie6.com/
Does Chrome's RAM usage cause problems on your machine? If the RAM is available, I don't see why Chrome shouldn't be taking advantage of it to improve browsing performance.
Have you looked at the hard drive usage of Chrome versus FF? I haven't looked, but it would be interesting to see if Chrome's increased RAM usage results in lower hard drive usage.
What we really need is "Firefox Classic": a maintainable fork that takes the Firefox code base and strips it down to the essentials, without social networking add-ons or any of that garbage. Sort of like how Firefox itself originally forked off of the Mozilla Application Suite, come to think of it.
I'm hoping support for DANE will show up soon...
I only sync Bookmarks and Addons (for security reasons I don't even store passwords). But I've never had a problem with the way sync works now. You need to have a synced device on had to generate a code to feed into the device you want to add. As long as you have 1 accessible synced device you're good.
If you were using it to back up bookmarks on one machine and you are rebuilding that machine, then you may be in trouble. So I guess that's what they're referring to here.
I have it on my phone, so I can always have that one on hand
I refuse to sign
Am I the only one who could care less about social media integration?
One of the biggest changes in Firefox was that JavaScript was permanently enabled.
But a side effect of the removal of "Enable JavaScript" checkbox was the removal of the "Advanced" button which limited what scripts could do - move/resize windows, bring windows to front/back, allow scrpits to write to status bar, disable context-click (right click), etc.
Which is annoying because those options were good to have - especially sites that disable right-click.
On Firefox, it's possible to re-enable right click if you hold down Shift then right-click - this will force Firefox to display the proper right-click menu. But that's a PITA
While extensions like NoScript work, they don't prevent permitted sites from playing around with stuff like that - a site needs javascript ot work and then they promptly open a bunch of windows or disable right-click while it's enabled.
Firefox is my browser of choice and I find it does everything I need with the small, but irritating, exception of Flash. Adobe Flash plugin on Linux is horribly glitchy with Firefox and it's replacement, Shumway, is not supported on the websites I visit. I use Chrome for any Flash-heavy websites.
I'm not sure a "Classic" version would help much, it's the Internet itself that's bloated. You can have the fastest browser ever, but you're still downloading all that social media crap with Javascript pulled from all corners of the globe. The fastest web browsing experience? Firefox with Adblock and NoScript.
The browser could at least help, by not automatically assuming that everyone wants JavaScript support and re-enabling it even for anyone who willfully turned it off in the first place, while at the same time removing the GUI, requiring digging through the bowels of the hell that is about:config just to find the option to re-enable. The first step to cutting web bloat is to disable JavaScript, but ironically Mozilla seems to be directly against this idea.
What we really need is "Firefox Classic": a maintainable fork that takes the Firefox code base and strips it down to the essentials, without social networking add-ons or any of that garbage. Sort of like how Firefox itself originally forked off of the Mozilla Application Suite, come to think of it.
You should have a look at Pale Moon. It is not exactly what you asked for but it is a slightly slimmer version of Firefox that still has compatibility with the plugins.
So, just curious to know. The previous sync version had client-side encryption, i.e., Mozilla did not know what data you upload on their servers. In order to do authentication with a Mozilla account, I presume this has to be changed and now the Mozilla people have full access to an unencrypted version of your bookmarks/passwords etc.
Is this correct? That seems a worrisome change.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/settingsanity/ It even restores the 'Advanced' dialog but does not restore all it's options.
Curious if the folks who got the update saw this feature. I thought it would be a pretty desirable setting in a mobile browser, but the last version didn't seem to have it, even in about:config.
Back under the bridge...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Last year I was running Firefox on Win7-32, on a machine with 4GB RAM, and it would crash five times a day. Now that I'm running Win7-64, on the same hardware but with a lot more swap space enabled, it still crashes occasionally, but maybe once or twice a week.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I breathed a sigh of relief upon reading this headline.
The latest TLS version Firefox supported until now has been broken in principle--and increasingly in practice--since almost a year ago
Here's Matthew Green, JHU cryptography engineering professor/researcher, with a full account: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/03/attack-of-week-rc4-is-kind-of-broken-in.html
It's a lost battle. The best you can do is give people the option to properly manage Javascript, which requires something finer-grained than what they had implemented in the Firefox UI. Since few users care about this kind of thing, and there's already at least one world-class addon dealing with it that gets regular updates, there's really no reason for Mozilla to continue doing an inferior job of it.
You can argue all you want about principles, but Mozilla can't just cater to YOUR principles. They have to remain a viable option for lots of users, and if removing a dumb checkbox that's too convenient (as in, many users toggle it accidentally) is the easiest way to go, then so be it. Someone else can (and does) handle the more advanced UI for users who want it.
It mostly seems that some people can't quite grasp that Mozilla isn't able to do EVERYTHING, and sometimes an old feature that's convenient for some of us has to be let go. The people who really need that feature should be the ones who figure out how to make it work, not one company with limited resources who are already maintaining what's required for us to maintain such addons.
Only because she's Free AND Open.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
de-minify, not de-obfuscate. Obfuscated code generally replaces named variables with random letters, thus making it hard to read. Obviously there's no way of restoring the original code. But minified code can be restored by a parser. That seems to be what they are referring to.
You know what they say about opinions. They're all fabulous!
So, what useful UI elements were removed this time? I think they're starting to run out of things to axe, but pretty much every time there is "UI improvements" in patch notes, it meat a useful element of UI was removed from the browser, often with no real means of putting it back in.
Well, good thing that 3.6.28 is still quite functional, and for all other needs, there's pale moon.
I'm actually working on a fairly JS intensive algorithm right now. FF's JS engine is, on this test, *slightly* faster and a bit less memory intensive. Subjectively chrome has a faster layout engine (I'm not testing that right now and , honestly, I try not to anger that particular demon since reflow is the slowest thing one can do in JS!) .
Right now it is a bit of a wash. *This is a good thing.* Everyone chasing each other, trying to out-perform, out-do, etc. Remember before the browser speed wars? How slow it was be default? Sub-second laoding-procesing-rendering times wasn't always the norm!
Pick whichever browser you want. IE10+, FF, Chrome, etc etc. They are all relatively compliant, fast, and will serve you well. Choose on features!
Isn't the future awesome?
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Thanks, UnknownSoldier, for this: "I just want FF's memory leak to be fixed instead of the devs ignoring it version after version, year after year."
I first reported that problem about 10 years ago.
Mozilla Foundation
Top 20 Excuses
for Not Fixing the
Firefox Memory and CPU Hogging bugs
These are actual excuses given at one time or another. They are not all the excuses, just the top 20.
1) Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly build. [The same memory and CPU hogging bug has been reported many, many times over a period of TEN years.]
2) Yes, this bug exists, but other things are more important. [The bug eventually causes Firefox to take 100% of the power of one CPU, and makes Windows 7 unusable, even after Firefox is killed. The bug affects the heaviest users of Firefox, those who do a lot of research online.]
3) Yes, this bug exists, but it is not a common occurrence. [Numerous users have reported the bug. See the links.]
4) Works for me. [The bug is complicated to reproduce, so the developers did a simplified test, which didn't show the bug.]
5) No one has posted a TalkBack report. [If they had read the bug report, they would know that there is often no TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too, or a TalkBack report is not generated. TalkBack does not generate a report if Firefox is hogging the CPU. TalkBack cannot generate a report if the bug takes 100% of the CPU time.]
6) If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug. [They didn't bother to reproduce the bug using the detailed information provided.]
7) This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is invalid. [The other bugs aren't specified.]
8) You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. [But the same use does not crash any version of Chrome or Opera.]
9) I don't like the way you worded your bug report. [So, he didn't read it or think about it.]
10) You should run a debugger and find what causes this problem yourself. [Then when you have done most of the work, tell us what causes the problem, and we may fix it.]
11) Many bugs that are filed aren't important to 99.99% of the users.
12) If you are saying bad things about Mozilla and Firefox, you must be trolling. [They say this even though Firefox and Mozilla instability is beginning to be reported in media such as Information Week. See the links to magazine articles in this Slashdot comment: Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.]
13) Your problem is probably caused by using extensions. [These are extensions advertised on the Firefox and Mozilla web site, and recommended.]
14) Your problem is probably caused by a corrupt profile. [The same bug has been reported many times over a period of five years. One of the reports discusses an extensive test in both Linux and Windows that used a completely clean installation of the operating systems, not just a clean profile. The CPU hogging bug and instability was just as severe.]
15) If you are technically knowledgeable, you can spend several hours (or days) trying to discover the problem: Standard diagnostic - Firefox. [Firefox has "Standard Diagnostics". It has become accepted that some users will have severe problems. !!! ]
16) I won't actually read the (many) bug reports, but I will give you some complicated technical speculation. [This pretends to be helpful but, on investigation, is shown to have nothing to do with the bugs.]
17) It's understandable that Firefox developers become defensive when users report so many problems. [Translation: Firefox management is childlike, not adult.]
18) To spend smart developers' time going over reports of bugs generated by analysis tools would be a
The Firefox Memory and CPU Hogging bugs are NOT fixed in Firefox version 26.0. I had 2 crashes last week. One of them did not trigger a crash report. My system is very stable in all other conditions. (Windows 7 Ultimate)
Firefox is the most unstable software in common use.
The problems occur when using many windows and tabs and sleeping and hibernating the OS.
PLEASE don't bore everyone by saying you don't have the problem, but not listing your usage patterns, OS, and extensions.
When? Until Firefox gets that, it's not getting a place back on my desktop.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I can buy more RAM. I can't buy process-per-tab for Firefox.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Google Chrome can't be trusted and just because they used to say they'd do no evil doesn't make them safe to trust with everything you do online.
Firefox isn't that horrible, even on a computer from 2006. Splitting hairs. They'll have their up and their downs like the others and I don't mind they are not focused on the same priorities google is. I don't approve of SPDY, I'd rather they not waste the time and help HTTP 2 move forward faster. They should put more time into privacy since that is a weakness for the others.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
What's wrong with just using the Mozilla Application Suite? It got renamed to SeaMonkey a long time ago and development has continued ever since. It's got a mail and news client in addition to the browser, but apart from that there's no bloat or garbage. If, like me, you don't want to use the mail and news client, just don't open that window, and you'll never even know it's there.
It amazes me! Every time there is a discussion of the instability of Firefox, someone posts an irrelevant comment. I imagine that everyone who does extensive research, and therefore opens many windows and tabs, is willing to buy plenty of memory. Whether it is for Chrome or Firefox makes no difference.
It's the instability of Firefox that is the problem. Firefox becomes unstable and makes the Windows 7 operating system unstable.
Again, avoid irrelevant comments. Yes, the Windows 7 OS has huge flaws. I've never seen Firefox make Linux unstable; I haven't done a huge amount of testing. An Apple computer typically costs 3 to 5 times as much. Linux costs nothing. However, there is software available for Windows that is not available for other operating systems.
Latest version of Firefox: 27.0. Crashes: Over 7 days, currently 5 crashes per 100 "active daily installs".
See for yourself. Go to this URL:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/home/products/Firefox/versions/27.0
(Mozilla does not allow links from Slashdot.)
Those are NOT ALL the crashes! Those are just the crashes that don't also crash the Crash Reporter.
Earlier version, 26.0 is crashy, also:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/home/products/Firefox/versions/26.0
The first step to cutting web bloat is to disable JavaScript, but ironically Mozilla seems to be directly against this idea.
What world do you live in? I have to agree with the previous AC, it's a lost battle. Sure, for casual websites I can do without Javascript, and even opt to not look at blog X if it's done in such a crippled way that I'd need JS to read test. But my bank has such a web interface that I can't do without JS. Should I just start changing banks every time they do such a move? My time is more precious than that!
Hell, the nearest cinema has such a crippled webpage (recently upgraded to being a lot more JS-abuser) that I can't do anything (not even look at the schedule) without accepting a cookie for which is my preferred location (it's from a national chain of theaters). Almost feel like never going there again...
I can say that my request FINALLY made it into FF!
When using the "Inspect Element" function, all colors in the 'Rules' column were expressed in 8-bit RGB --a pain which forces designers/developers to use another app to convert the values to 8-bit hex. Now all values default to 8-bit hex and have a small 'swatch' filled with the color. Very handy!
Thank you to all the people that worked on this feature 'upgrade' --I read all of your posts on Bugzilla and stayed as active with it as needed.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
"It mostly seems that some people can't quite grasp that Mozilla isn't able to do EVERYTHING, and sometimes an old feature that's convenient for some of us has to be let go. The people who really need that feature should be the ones who figure out how to make it work, not one company with limited resources who are already maintaining what's required for us to maintain such addons."
You must use Apple systems. Yeah, let's dumb everything down, for all the idiots out there...
No, I'd rather not see GUIs become crippled, while powerful options get buried in messes like about:config or some registry or something. Just because advanced users are more capable of finding things and getting around a system, doesn't mean the developers should make it unnecessarily difficult to do so.
Its not the only thing that matters. What matters to me as an end user is that I have a responsive UI. Firefox does not offer me this reliably, and other browsers (not just Chrome) have for several years now. IE9 onwards has process per tab. Safari splits the rendering and UI into different threads. Firefox? Oh, this javascript in some random tab has locked up the browser's UI. Oops.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.