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Firefox 34 Arrives With Video Chat, Yahoo Search As Default

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

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 34 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Major additions to the browser include a built-in video chat feature, a revamped search bar, and tab mirroring from Android to Chromecast. This release also makes Yahoo Search the default in North America, in place of Google. Full changelogs: desktop and Android."

5 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Just what I wanted for xmas time, more bloat. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just what I wanted for xmas time, more bloat.
     

    1. Re:Just what I wanted for xmas time, more bloat. by UPi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is the way the world is going right now. HTML5 and JavaScript have become the new, universal runtime that everyone is trying to use to build their applications. It is extremely compelling too: you don't need to worry about deployment, supporting older versions, operating systems, etc. This, however, requires browsers to do a lot more than they did before. Sound and video input is just the tip of it. There's also the canvas, WebGL, WebSocket, tons of new CSS features.

      Firefox can either choose to keep up with new features or lose 90% of its share to Chrome. I'm actually happy they going forward because part of HTML5's appeal is that it is multi-vendor and is not solely controlled by a corporation like Google or Apple. Yes, it is "bloat", as in, lots of new features that you personally might not be using today. But someday you, or your friend will come across a site that uses one of these new features and if the site says "Sorry, you are using a backwards browser, please try Chrome instead", we both know what will happen. (You of course will scoff and close the site, but 10 other people will switch for every lean browser snob out there.)

      Point is, browsers are evolving. Deal with it.

  2. 512-bit self-signed certs (e.g. DD-WRT) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Firefox 32 happily connects to DD-WRT's self-signed 512-bit cert.
    Firefox 33 blocks DD-WRT's SSL cert, claiming "Secure Connection Failed" (Error code: sec_error_invalid_key), with no option to override.
    Firefox 34 just lies and claims "The connection was interrupted". Like the fuck it was. It works *right now* in the other browser in my virtual machine, from the same PC. Even after restarting firefox, and even after restarting the machine.

    Assholes got feedback that users need to access our HTTPS-encrypted DD-WRT, so they changed the message and claimed it was reset. This sounds like a case of "Let's just play the 'What problem? I don't have that problem on my machine. Oh, your connection was reset? That must be a problem with the device.' game"

    1. Re:512-bit self-signed certs (e.g. DD-WRT) by Jahta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not only that, but they fucking maintain their own DB of certs instead of relying on the OS. So I can install and trust a cert on my machine (or everyone's machine by policy) but Firefox won't fucking play by the rules. You have to find and use an obscure tool just to manage certs for Firefox. No thanks, assholes.

      IMO Firefox are doing this right. Having known good copies of the major root certs bundled with the browser is a strong defense against MITM attacks. I've worked in more than one organisation that was doing MITM on their staff's SSL sessions (unknown to the staff) by silently pushing "trusted" DIY certs to the workstations by policy. Chrome and IE swallowed this without complaint. Only Firefox complained that I didn't in fact have a secure session with, for example, google.com.

  3. Re:video chat by pavon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is based on WebRTC which is a W3C draft that both Safari and Internet Explorer have committed to implement. There has to be a first browser to implement any proposed standard.