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Firefox 33 Arrives With OpenH264 Support

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 33 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions include OpenH264 support as well as the ability to send video content from webpages to a second screen. Firefox 33 for the desktop is available for download now 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. Full changelogs are available here: desktop and Android."

61 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. More bloat, less marketshare by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    ... and Firefox continues to lose track of its origins and continues to add to the bloat, while hemorrhaging market share....

    1. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Actually, since it traces back to Netscape, its becoming one with its origins.

    2. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by Spy+Handler · · Score: 1

      I haven't looked into it in detail, but Firefox still feels less bloated than Chrome. I'm using 31.1.1 ESR.

      Javascript rendering seems faster on Firefox than Chrome also.

    3. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by QuietLagoon · · Score: 2

      ...Firefox still feels less bloated than Chrome...

      I was comparing to the time before the recent development fiascos (new UI, etc.). Firefox just seems to be getting larger and larger and larger.

      .
      It appears the Firefox developers are looking to please themselves, and not the users, because the Firefox marketshare is dropping in spite of all the additional bloat being added.

    4. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Chrome gains market share the same way IE had. It is default on the fafillion android devices out there, even if that device can't handle it.

      Breaking everything out into a plugin because the system only allows SO much and native code is rarely an option due to the plethora of exotic hardware firefox runs on. Do you want to decode advanced compressed video or decrypt cpu intensive encryption in a lowest-common-demoninator interpreted language on an ARM device with 256 MB of ram that runs like a 486? I don't.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    5. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by Spazmania · · Score: 4, Funny

      All versions of Netscape had a menu bar. Firefox long since passed Netscape's degree of awfulness.

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      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    6. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      My 486 didn't have that much RAM. And I can tell you todays mobile devices are much more capable than it. Last year I brought back a Pentium III from the dead, installed free software and none of the browsers were able to render medium to complex pages due to the javascript. But my HTC android from three years ago could. Seriously, the devices you carry around have some serious horsepower, don't belittle them because of their size.

    7. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It would be nice, if the Mozilla provided a official 64bit Windows build. Quite likely it would get more positive impressions than their "improved search experience" (whatever that means) or "qubic bezier curves editor". If they could also try to make the browser windows' Javascripts to run in parallel, so the whole browser would not get frozen and unresponsive when a single advertisement script decides to loop forever. Please, please make one release where there would not be a single new or removed feature, but fixes for existing bugs.

    8. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It would be nice, if the Mozilla provided a official 64bit Windows build.

      Done.
      If they could also try to make the browser windows' Javascripts to run in parallel, so the whole browser would not get frozen and unresponsive when a single advertisement script decides to loop forever.

      and done. You're welcome.

    9. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by narcc · · Score: 1

      It's scheduled for Firefox 37, to be released at the end of March next year.

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
    10. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      FFS. It's a configurable option. If you want Firefox to have a menu bar, just turn it on and stop whining.

    11. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by nctritech · · Score: 1

      http://www.palemoon.org/palemo...

      64-bit and rock solid and steadily improving. I have no complaints.

    12. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by RebelWebmaster · · Score: 1

      Other than being a fork of Gecko 24 (released over a year ago) and no plans to pick up anything newer, yeah, it's great.

    13. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Riiight, because everyone is gonna throw away the billion and a half PCs on the planet so they can get assraped by the MB to surf on a fucking phone. PC sales have slowed because PCs are uber powerful so there simply is no need to throw them away every year like most do with the shitty phones.

      Google is losing over a billion a year on Android and shows NO sign of EVER making a ROI, in fact the only one making bank on mobile is Apple thanks to their boutique pricing and even they are having trouble keeping that mobile gravy train rolling, see the company going against Jobs wishes by making the iPhablet Now that phones are running into the power wall you will see sales continue at current rates for maybe a year and a half as all those with older phones get new multicore units but after that? Just like the PC the OEMs are gonna be grasping at straws trying to come up with features to lure buyers, because short of a new battery tech AND a new programming language that makes scaling cores as easy as taking advantage of raw MHZ? they just don't have anywhere left to go.

      As for TFA? Firefox has become the Metro of browsers so this won't help stop the bleeding, you go to any forum talking about browsers and you find that FF users are bailing for PaleMoon or IceDragon or Waterfox because they HATE the ersatz Chrome UI, all you read over and over is "If I wanted Chrome I'd have took Chrome!" and I have to agree, give me PaleMoon any day, at least it looks like itself and the UI is stable.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    14. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 1

      How does Waterfox differ from Mozilla's 64 bit test builds?

      --
      There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
    15. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by Spazmania · · Score: 1

      I'm not whining. But until and unless "classic compact" catches up with the nasty new interface, I'm not upgrading either.

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    16. Re:More bloat, less marketshare by Dagger2 · · Score: 1

      Mozilla has had nightly 64-bit builds for many months now, but nobody wants to use them to help test and get things working more quickly

      You have this backwards. Mozilla tried to kill 64-bit Nightly builds two years ago, even though about 50% of Nightly users were using them at the time. Those users (somewhat predictably) weren't too happy and complained, and Mozilla eventually left 64-bit builds running, but disabled crash reports and automated testing, and refused to commit paid dev time to keeping it compiling or passing the tests. Plus they originally planned to automatically migrate those users to 32-bit, though that never actually happened. That's not exactly "nobody wants to use them to help test".

      (References: [1] and [2].)

      Of course, fast forward to a few months ago and Chrome's announcements of 64-bit, and suddenly it's "oh, we've been doing 64-bit builds for years".

  2. Caveat, baseline and high profiles only? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Note: Firefox currently uses OpenH264 only for WebRTC and not for the <video> tag, because OpenH264 does not yet support the high profile format frequently used for streaming video. We will reconsider this once support has been added.

  3. Finally by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    Firefox finally supports H.264 playback. No need to support WebM anymore.

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    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    1. Re:Finally by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Note: Firefox currently uses OpenH264 only for WebRTC and not for the tag, because OpenH264 does not yet support the high profile format frequently used for streaming video. We will reconsider this once support has been added.

      Don't we need to not use the high profile format to support older devices anyway?

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    2. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      and there's no guarantee that MPEG LA won't begin charging for streams in the future

      Sure there is.

      http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MP...

      Where the title is:

      MPEG LA’s AVC License Will Not Charge Royalties for Internet Video that is Free to End Users through Life of License

  4. Just upgraded, lost cookies by trawg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just upgraded then with that grim sense of foreboding that I now get with Firefox upgrades ("what's going to stop working this time? how is the UI I've been using for many years changed now?")

    I lost all my cookies - upon reload after the upgrade, I noticed I was logged out of a bunch of websites (including anything using Google Accounts and Slashdot). YMMV.

    1. Re:Just upgraded, lost cookies by narcc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      YMMV

      My certainly did. It restarted and reloaded my tabs, including this one, without a hitch.

      that grim sense of foreboding that I now get with Firefox upgrades ("what's going to stop working this time? how is the UI I've been using for many years changed now?")

      Just curious, what has been breaking for you? What UI features have changed in some significant way since Australis? I only ask because I switched back to Firefox from Chrome when Australis hit and have seen nothing but positive improvements with each release.

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
    2. Re:Just upgraded, lost cookies by trawg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just curious, what has been breaking for you? What UI features have changed in some significant way since Australis?

      SINCE Australis? Nothing major. In a recent version they changed the right click context menu to include icons for reload/back/forward, which irritated me - change for the sake of change. (Also the keyboard shortcut for Private Browsing no longer works - might be a plugin? Not sure.)

      Things like that seem little but when you've been using Firefox for years - which I have, every day, for work - little changes like that mean the platform loses a lot of stability, which is one of the things that is most important when you're trying to get things done.

      I'm not at all opposed to new features. I don't even care about feature bloat that much. But they should be opt-in. And at the very least, you should be able to opt-out without having to install some third party plugin. Having a new UI/UX forced on me just feels ... rude.

      Australis prompted me to install Classic Theme Restorer so I could restore the browser to the way I'd been using it for /years/. (Here's my +5 post about why I disliked Australis.) Enough has been written about Australis so I won't whine about that any more.

    3. Re:Just upgraded, lost cookies by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      SINCE Australis? Nothing major. In a recent version they changed the right click context menu to include icons for reload/back/forward, which irritated me - change for the sake of change. (Also the keyboard shortcut for Private Browsing no longer works - might be a plugin? Not sure.)

      Things like that seem little but when you've been using Firefox for years - which I have, every day, for work - little changes like that mean the platform loses a lot of stability, which is one of the things that is most important when you're trying to get things done.

      For me, it's that autocomplete stopped using the history and started using partial, so if you routinely went to a deep link, it would be suggested and may even be the first suggestion, but it won't autocomplete the entire URL. Just the domain, or one more level, etc.

      Really annoying when you routinely have deep URLs and where the upper directories return errors.

      Still haven't found a way to undo that change and just have it pull the autocomplete suggestion off the history.

      I think I thappened somewhere between 23 and 24. (e.g., if you used to type "www.a" and it would suggest "www.abig.com/long/example/of/a/long/url" as a completion. Now if you type "www.a" it just gives you "www.abig.com/" and the drop down would give you that full link, so you have to type a downarrow too).

      There have been many other little UI ding-a-lings that really screw up muscle memory.

      The "Bring tab to front" option is also an annoyance - sometimes you want to open a new tab to a site and not use an existing one...Oh yeah, did I mention that usually gets first on the dropdown, so now you have to do two down arrows?

      Funny enough, Chrome doesn't seem to break so many UI things every version - things still react the same way they always have.

    4. Re:Just upgraded, lost cookies by MMC+Monster · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I just like applications to go along with the UI guidelines set by the OS. Chrome breaks that, and so does the new Firefox UI.

      Simple things:
      1 - Menu items visible right under the title bar
      2 - A title bar that can be double-clicked to maximize or restore the screen
      3 - Minimize/Maximize/Restore buttons where the OS says they should be. (Chrome hard-codes them to the right side of the top of the window.)
      4 - If you allow customization of the top of the screen, as Firefox does, why can't I hide the Open Menu widget when I'm showing the menu items otherwise?

      --
      Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
    5. Re:Just upgraded, lost cookies by narcc · · Score: 1

      Thanks. Having returned to FireFox after years of Chrome, I'm not likely to notice, or be irritated, by those kinds of changes.

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
    6. Re:Just upgraded, lost cookies by caseih · · Score: 2

      MS Windows is still the dominant platform, and it doesn't seem to have any guidelines or standard widgets anymore. Every app seems to use s different set of widgets and owner-drawn window decorations are a plague in certain spaces like anti-malware and anti-virus. MS themselves started this trend by using a different set of widgets with every release of MS Office. I just laugh when people talk about Linux apps being all different and not fitting into together. Windows is at least as bad these days, if not worse. And yes Chrome has made the problem even worse, and now Firefox.

      If I could use classic theme restorer plus the GTK theme addon for Firefox I'd be a happy camper. As it is I'm stuck on ESR 24 for the time being.

  5. Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Nope, the amount of misinformation on this is mindblowing. The patents covering this still exist and there's no guarantee that MPEG LA won't begin charging for streams in the future. What's more, You're supposed to be paying for the patents to encode and decode the format, they've just made the streaming gratis.

  6. Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    At least for as long as Cisco is willing to pay maximum royalties to MPEGLA, and as long as you are willing to pay royalties to MPEGLA, and you bought properly licensed h.264 encoders, and you made sure not to shoot commercial video on consumer grade cameras (which don't come with commercial MPEGLA licenses), etc...

    The weakest link is Cisco - MPEGLA is most certainly going to look towards raising that h.264 cap in the coming years, and the only reason why Firefox can support h.264 is because it's Cisco's binaries. I'm assuming you remembered to get your MPEGLA royalties in order, or at the very least you are distributing non-commercial video and are hoping that MPEGLA continues their moratorium on royalties for non-commercial internet video.

    Or you can just use WebM, and not pay anyone. But then you don't play on IE or Safari, because Apple and Microsoft have been ardently against royalty-free video formats for various reasons. (Microsoft because they think MPEGLA is indestructible; Apple because they don't want to put hardware WebM decoders on their phones)

  7. No way will I support Firefox ever again by SuperKendall · · Score: 1, Insightful

    After what the Firefox board did to the creator of Javascript (Brendan Eich), I think everyone should simply ignore Firefox and let them die as a warning to all other companies unable to tolerate diversity of thought.

    Never forget.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by lgw · · Score: 1

      I just hope Pale Moon starts keeping more current. Recent IEs are pretty good, but naturally Windows-only. I'm trying to live a Google-free life, so Chrome is out.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    2. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Is that the same Brendan Eich who posted in his personal blog, that "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader."? Yeah that's why I am waiting for when your explaination that the reputation of the CEO never affects how the community or the public views a company ....nope CEO reputation affecting company reputation never happens (Gates, Jobs, Musk)

      Oh and yes that the Firefox board forced the overall community to attack him soon after the board chose him as CEO -- because the board totally wanted that to happen. I don't think the board did anything horrible by not protecting him ....I don't agree with what they did but they did not attack him a subset of the Firefox community and the public attacked him the board left him to deal with it and his choice as the CEO was to resign.

      The board had the diversity of thought to hire him as CEO but they realized that the public did not have the same view of Eich as they did and allowed Eich to deal with his partialy self imposed tempest in a Tea Pot .... he dealt with it by resigning becasue he believed he was too much of a lightening rod to be an effective leader.

    3. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You know why no one likes you Millennial SJW fucks? Because you preach "tolerance" but are utterly incapable of tolerating anyone who doesn't think exactly like you.

      This place was so much better before the fucking Millennials invaded.

      oh, the irony

    4. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      Is that the same Brendan Eich who posted in his personal blog, that "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader."?

      Yes, because the board were entirely against him. Even LGBT workers at Mozilla supported him, but the board would not - he resigned "voluntarily", because he had no support from the people who cared only about the witch hunt, not Mozilla.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    5. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by jopsen · · Score: 2

      After what the Firefox board....

      Where to start, where to start... First off there is no firefox board. Mozilla Corporation has a board, as does Mozilla Foundation.
      Having followed this, rather closely, I can assure you that Brendan made the decision to resign, the message was delivered by internal email.
      Later in an internal meeting the board explained that they had strongly recommended and hoped that Brendan would ride out the storm.

      Any allegations that the board force Brendan to resign is pure fiction. Sure, I can promise you that there wasn't an elaborate conspiracy to lie to all employees and community members, but if there was Brendan was in on that "conspiracy" :)
      The truth is that given the storm and the level and amount of personal attacks, I understand how someone does not wish to ride it out.

      All being said and done, let's move a long... Mozilla is not a political organization. It about building a better free and open web.

    6. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      I'm not smart enough to contribute code to the Mozilla project, but does throwing a few bucks there way now and then count?

      It's all going to suck once all browsers are fully DRM complaint, so I don't really see the benefit in one over the other at the moment. I use Epic Privacy Browser most of the time, but there are things that don't work there, so I'm stuck.

      Tell me something: If I use Chrome, with all the DoNotTrackMe and Disconnect and Privacy Badger and https everywhere extensions enabled, am I still doing any favors for Google?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    7. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by lgw · · Score: 1

      throwing a few bucks there way now and then count?

      I bought a copy of the Mozilla browser once. Remember when?

      It's all going to suck once all browsers are fully DRM complaint

      Nothing will be worse for browsers being able to play Netflix crap like Flash or Silverlight. Flash especially needs to die the death.

      I use Chrome, with all the DoNotTrackMe and Disconnect and Privacy Badger and https everywhere extensions enabled, am I still doing any favors for Google?

      Pretty sure Chrome always sends every URL you type to Google, though it would be neat if you could disable that (in IE and FF you turn off the features that warn you of well-known attack sites). There are chromium ports that claim to be entirely evil-free, but I haven't looked into them as I just don't like Chrome's UI (or the recent FF). They might be great.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    8. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by lgw · · Score: 1

      Grrr. "play Netflix without crap". Can't seem to type today.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    9. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

      Just answer me one thing: are you religious?

      Not at all, and I FULLY support gay marriage (as in I have been a part in a ceremony of a gay friend to his partner). I just don't support witch-hunts in any form.

      The fact you want be to qualify that is pathetic.

      Even if I WERE, why would you bring that up - it just proves my point on the dangers of intolerance. You have chosen to demonize an entire group of people simply because of how they want to live, which makes you no better than any religious evangelist preaching against gay marriage that ever lived. You just have a different religion, a different reason to hate...

      How about trying NO HATE? You ever think about that?

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    10. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Does Chrome send my URLs to Google even if I'm in incognito mode?

      So, let me make sure I've got this right: Chromium is just the rendering engine and Epic can use it to make a privacy browser but Chrome is the Google flagship browser with all the phoning home written in. Chromium is open source, but Chrome isn't. Is that right?

      You don't have to take the time to answer, I'll go look it up. I need to learn these things. I'm trying to unplug myself as much as I can from companies like Google, but I don't want to give up the basic functionality of the Internet.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    11. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      You know, I really don't get the importance of "Netflix in the browser". Why is having a Netflix app such a big problem for people? I mean, if I want to participate in Netflix's business model, OK, I'd be happy to buy into their app and their DRM, just like I do on a mobile device. But I hate the idea of this "DRM by default" that is being planned for HTML5 (at least the way I understand it).

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    12. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by lgw · · Score: 2

      Because Netflix is something like 1/3rd of internet traffic. If you haven't worked on a standards committee this might not be obvious, but the point of a standard is to document what the big players are doing, so that the little guys can interoperate. It's a descriptive, not proscriptive, process. A standard that the major players don't actually follow is worthless, and a failure of the committee.

      It's simple not the role or purpose of a standards committee to spout stuff like "we won't standardize X because we feel that X is bad". Heck, the ISO rules probably prohibit that sort of thing.

      But HTML5 will in no way create more DRM than there would otherwise have been - all it does is recognize that that this is a common thing done over the web, and provide a standard way of doing it, albeit as a sort of plug-in architecture. Moving the DRM out of a large, exploitable general-purpose framework like Flash or Silverlight, and into a well-defined (and contained) DRM module is a solid win.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    13. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by jez9999 · · Score: 1

      Uh, I don't think a large number of them refused to work under Eich. He had been at the organization for years.

      --
      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
    14. Re:No way will I support Firefox ever again by jopsen · · Score: 1

      Mozilla is not a political organization. It about building a better free and open web.

      That's hilarious.

      How so... I'm not afraid to say that I support Mozilla, and that I'm very very very very far from agreeing most Americans on serious and important political issues. You now the kind of issues where America murders innocent civilians. I could go on... But Mozilla is not the platform for these issues.

  8. Sour grapes much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It not catering to your whims precisely doesn't make it bloated, not make Mozilla not care about their users. It's fine to be upset that it isn't fondling your balls just right, but stop reaching for such petty and obviously incorrect excuses to hate Firefox for that.

    Its marketshare dropping has nothing to do with the UI, since usage rose after the release that introduced the revamped UI. The marketshare is dropping not because of fewer users. Actually their userbase has grown, just not as quickly as Chrome's. That's because they don't have the marketing budget to compete, plus they can't get a foothold on the much more important mobile OSes - they are either prohibited outright from running their own browser (just a reskin) or have to compete with the built-in browser in an era where virtually no one bothers to install a replacement browser.

    I'd actually like to know what the real bloat is? Adding new web features? Because it certainly isn't them trimming down the UI. And if you're going to be upset that they're adding web features, then it's the web you're upset with, not Firefox. All the browsers are bloating up from that perspective and every time Mozilla try to take a stand against it, they're the only ones who suffer.

    1. Re:Sour grapes much? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1
      It not catering to your whims precisely doesn't make it bloated...

      I never said that is was bloated because it does not cater to my whims.

      ... not make Mozilla not care about their users not make Mozilla not care about their users...

      Nor did I say that it not catering to my whims means that Mozilla does not care about its users.

  9. Netscape by dysmal · · Score: 1

    Yet another FF release.

    Yawn.

    Meantime, Netscape Navigator is 20 years old today.

  10. Meanwhile, on Pale Moon by hackertourist · · Score: 1

    After the Australis debacle I decided to move my Windows machines to Pale Moon. The change has been surprisingly painless, I could pretty much copy my Firefox profile wholesale without a hitch. All of the extensions work too and the interface is such a relief.
    Now to find something similar for my Mac...

    1. Re:Meanwhile, on Pale Moon by nctritech · · Score: 1

      When Australis becomes optional, those people who left Firefox because of it will then have your suggested option available.

    2. Re:Meanwhile, on Pale Moon by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      I used Firefox with Classic Theme Restorer before moving to Pale Moon. CTR helps, but it wasn't able to undo all of the crappiness that Australis brought. For example, the new tab design in Australis meant that very narrow tabs (anything below ~60 px) didn't work well anymore. I used the Custom Tab Width extension to adjust the minimum tab width. After Australis, there would be a ghost region around each tab, making the tabs overlap each other.
      CTR also didn't bring back the Status bar. Having status text overlap the main window is annoying.

    3. Re:Meanwhile, on Pale Moon by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      Over the past few years, the Mozilla foundation hasn't given the impression it'll listen to user feedback at all. If the rivers of vitriol over the Australis UI changes haven't had any effect, why would I bother giving them one more data point?

    4. Re:Meanwhile, on Pale Moon by Dagger2 · · Score: 1

      Then they replace their UI code so they do all of those things

      Nope, different projects. Australis wasn't part of any of those.

      and because you don't like it missing some features

      More like, Mozilla deliberately killed some features because they thought we were too stupid to handle them, and when people asked them not to, they basically said "sod off, we don't care".

      Would you rather have a browser you can still customize away from the defaults, or something like Firefox 2 or 3, where you have to sacrifice a lamb to change the UI substantially

      Hm. I'm on Firefox 3.6 and it's a ton easier to customize than Australis. I prefer to have my stop and reload buttons between back/forward and the address bar. On 3.6 I just do it, on Australis I can't do it at all. Same deal with a bunch of other stuff. I guess I can't easily rearrange icons on the status bar, but then I can't do that with Australis either, can I?

      presume that the only thing they need to do in order to get their way is spew more and more vitriol

      It's more like: we've tried every other option and Mozilla just doesn't give a shit, so what's left to do but to bitch? If we shut up about it, they'll just assume we were complaining because stuff changed, rather than because we didn't like what it changed *to*.

      All of that energy could have solved a real problem by now

      "My browser pisses me off every time I use it" actually is a real problem for some of us. I groan every time I need to launch Australis to test some newly committed feature, there's no way in hell I could deal with that every single time I need to open a webpage -- and I'd have a hard time getting any other problems solved if I was that pissed off all the time.

  11. Two Browsers, Two Goals. by enter+to+exit · · Score: 2

    Chrome is a good competitor to Firefox, it might be winning on various fronts at the moment but it's still a browser owned and controlled by a corporation with only profits in mind. Google made chrome to make it easier for them to track you and push their services on you.

    Every time I've used Chrome, it's constantly nagged me to sign in to Google services, asks to change what mailto: does and in recent versions (on Windows) they've included a notification icon that ties in with Google Now. I feel Chrome gets a free pass on a lot of this stuff because it's considered fast. A lot of that perception is in UI responsiveness as the millisecond rendering differences are practically indistinguishable. Firefox should really consider moving away from XUL.

    Firefox is a run by Mozilla (an NFP) who can only justify it's existence by making a good browser. Firefox needs to improve on a few fronts, but it's still a browser for the people. The only incentive they have is survival (which mean people using Firefox). The Mozilla Foundation has clearly become overly bureaucratic and focused on the survival of it's own bureaucracy to the detriment of their software. It needs a good shakedown. There are too many people looking for things to do - go to mozilla.org and check out the half-dead list of projects and 1000+ employees.

  12. Tabs in titlebar by Grincho · · Score: 1

    At least for #2, you can fix that in Firefox by setting browser.tabs.drawInTitlebar to false in about:config.

  13. Finally, single-word search isn't broken by bi$hop · · Score: 1

    Kudos to Mozilla for fixing a really, really, really annoying bug.

  14. SeaMonkey v2.29... by antdude · · Score: 1

    I upgraded v2.26.1 to v2.29 over a month ago, and my history got corrupted and I had to export and import bookmarks.html aftere reinstalling v2.26.1 (still on it). Also, v2.29 had sorting problems with its addressbooks. Thunderbird has the same problems from what I read. There are many QA issues lately with Mozilla products. :(

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  15. Re:What is openh264? by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

    A copy of a commercial codec that nobody but neckbeards will use.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  16. Re:A Non-story by nctritech · · Score: 1

    If the website is the browser itself, you have sound logic. If not...

  17. Why all the hate? by pandronic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every time there's a new Firefox release, I sit back and watch a very vocal group spewing the same old tired rants and lies:

    1. Firefox is released too often. Why would you want to wait a year or more between releases as it was the case in the 3.x days? It's better to have features released as they are ready and improved upon and not wait years to release them at once and have most of them not work properly. Why does it matter if it's Firefox 33, or firefox 4.33 or Firefox 2014-10?
    2. The UI is a copy of Chrome's. There are not many ways you could do a minimalist browser interface. If you don't know shit about design, don't talk about design. Shit, probably these people think that design is some useless, time wasting activity that hipsters do and then jerk off to it. Why would you want to see more of the UI when you could see more of the content. Also there are multiple ways to customize Firefox and make it look as bad or as complicated you wish. You can even make it look like your grandma's browser for 1999.
    3. Firefox uses a lot of memory and has memory leaks. Firefox is the most frugal browser when it comes to memory and doesn't have more memory leaks than other browsers. It fact it's the best browser to use if you use lots of tabs. Sure, maybe you can find a corner case or some extension that sucks memory, but I bet you can find that in any browser or application of the same complexity. I have Firefox installed on a lot of 512mb,1gb,2gb and 4gb machines and it works just fine.
    4. Firefox is unstable. It might be unstable if you use shitty extensions. Just stop using shitty extensions that crash your browser. You wouldn't use apps that crash your OS, would you?
    5. Firefox is going extinct. No it is not, even by a long shot. It still has 500mil users. People are still using it because it's a good product, not because it's pushed down their throat by every means possible as is the case with Chrome or was the case with Internet Explorer back in the 90s. (Not saying Chrome is a bad browser, just that the difference in market share is because of marketing not because of quality).
    6. Firefox is breaking addons with every upgrade. This probably hasn't happened in years and years and even if it did it's understandable and forgivable when an addon hasn't been updated in years and uses antiquated APIs that are incompatible with the speed and security we've come to expect from modern browsers. I'm not running DOS apps on the latest version of Windows, why would you want to run old, slow and unsecure addons?

    Besides that let me tell you some of the positive things that none of you assholes mention, because you like to talk out of your ass without even using the damn browser - it has the best looking and most intuitive developer tools out of any browser, a fast and feature complete Android browser with extensions, the best extensions out there out of any desktop browser, they offer an awesome email client and let's not forget that Mozilla is one of the best and most trustworthy organizations out there.

  18. Nice but.. by sarguin · · Score: 1

    Can Firefox (and Chrome!) add a descent support for HiDPI screen please?! On my laptop (Linux, QHD 3200x1800), those browsers are almost unusable. Yeah I know about the "layout.css.devPixelsPerPx" configuration in Firefox but it's not perfect. Stop adding new features and back to basic : display web pages correctly on today monitors. Please! Thanks :)