Firefox 36 Arrives With Full HTTP/2 Support, New Design For Android Tablets

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 36 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions to the browser include some security improvements, better HTML 5 support, and a new tablet user interface on Android. The biggest news for the browser is undoubtedly HTTP/2 support, the roadmap for which Mozilla outlined just last week. Mozilla plans to keep various draft levels of HTTP/2, already in Firefox, for a few versions. These will be removed "sometime in the near future." The full changelog is here.

Comments

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[Anonymous Coward]

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NoScript support for android

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I installed a recent version of Firefox in Google Nexus 5 phone. I could not install NoScript. Says not supported. I desperately need an alternative to Chrome in my phone. All kinds of pop-ups. Does this version support NoScript?

Re:NoScript support for android

[Anonymous Coward]

a href=http://lmgtfy.com/?q=firefox+android+noscript

Re:NoScript support for android

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, Slashdot is becoming worse and worse all the time. Preview showed a working link...

Re:NoScript support for android

[Anonymous Coward]

Give lynx or elinks a whirl...no scripts all day long!

Re:NoScript support for android

[Anonymous Coward]

NoScript Anywhere for Android (NSA++).

Re:NoScript support for android

[serviscope_minor]

Dig around. Someone's ported noscript to Android: I'm happily running it.

Re:NoScript support for android

[Daniel Klugh]

What, no love for w3m?
q.v. Emacs/W3 at that same link.
n.b. I also seem to remember a version of w3m that could display pictures when run in an xterm.

Re:NoScript support for android

[davester666]

yes, you would think the initial link of the article would be to the firefox website where you could download it...but now, it goes to some site trying to get more hits.

Re:NoScript support for android

[Anonymous Coward]

The NoScript site has NoScriptAnywhere available for Firefox for Android. The acronym is a bit disconcerting, though.

Does Apache suppot it yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because until then...

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Is Media Source Extensions supported?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't play 1080p videos or higher from Youtube without it. This is the absolute last thing that's holding me back from removing flash altogether. I know they mentioned specifically enabling MSE for youtube only on the bugtracker page (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617), because of some issues but I don't see this in the changelog.

Re:Is Media Source Extensions supported?

[ChunderDownunder]

I'm running the Aurora build (v38) and no. That could be just debian testing, of course. :) But *I think* I have all the relevant codecs installed.

MSE & H.264 is in red on https://www.youtube.com/html5

I might wait for a kernel and xorg update - intel has native VP8 support for their Bay Trail Atom chips. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...

Re:Is Media Source Extensions supported?

[Ark42]

I think it was backed out, due to problems (I noticed pretty major audio sync problems myself, but it otherwise seemed to play 1080/4K/60fps videos just fine on YouTube).
You can go enable the prefs in about:config if you want to try it out. I'm pretty sure the code is all there, just turned off by default still because of bugs.

Re:Is Media Source Extensions supported?

[BZ]

MSE support isn't in Firefox 36.

The Youtube-only thing is currently being targeted for Firefox 37, and enabling it in general for 38 or 39 once the standards-compliance issues are worked out.

Re:Is Media Source Extensions supported?

[rsmith-mac]

MSE support is supposed to make it in 37. However they can't seem to get it right and it's likely it won't be in a shippable state in 6 weeks.

Re:Is Media Source Extensions supported?

[Anonymous Coward]

it was supposed to be in 34 then 35, then 36 and now 37?

is a farce.

I am testing youtube right now, ignore_codecs is disabled in about:config, the html5 youtube page reports h264 and mse as a tick, but when I try to load 60fps videos it just spins for ages and eventually falls back to an older codec.

Re:Is Media Source Extensions supported?

[Anonymous Coward]

which pref?

ignore_codecs is no longer needed as the html5 youtube page reports the codec as available, but the videos simply do not play.

Re:Is Media Source Extensions supported?

[Ark42]

media.mediasource.enabled, media.mediasource.mp4.enabled, media.mediasource.webm.enabled, and media.mediasource.youtubeonly.
Everything but webm.enabled is defaulted to true in FF 37 Beta now. They were defaulted to false (except youtubeonly) in the later 36 Betas and 36 Final.

Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget this version also comes with Firefox Hello! Firefox Hello allows you to voice chat with all your friends, right from your browser! You'll know about it because when you update to Firefox 36, Firefox sure as hell won't let you miss this new feature that you never wanted in a god-damned browser and will immediately remove from the toolbar because it's goddamned useless and WHY IS THIS IN A BROWSER AT ALL?!!!

(I know the answer to that last one: because VOIP is part of the increasingly bloated and useless HTML 5 spec and this uses the new HTML 5 VOIP junk. In case you wondered when HTML 5 jumped the shark...)

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[sexconker]

I believe this shit was introduced in the last version. And yes, it's absolutely useless fucking shit that shouldn't be in a fucking browser.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure it was added previous to 36, but the "we're forcibly adding it to your toolbar and popping up a popup about how great it is" is new this version. Previous versions you had to hunt it out to find it.

This version also forcibly adds the new "share this page" button (which also existed previously but wasn't forcibly added), because copy and pasting the link out of the address bar is too hard, I guess.

I love how Firefox wants to talk about how customizable and user-centric it is and every single upgrade seems to remove options and rearrange my toolbar on me to meet some UX hipster's plans for how I'm supposed to be browsing the web rather than how I do. If only the other browsers weren't just as bad at that as Firefox is. I suppose Chrome at least doesn't have a chat client built-in. Does it?

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[ChunderDownunder]

You say bloat, I say functionality.

Let's see there's skype (that requires installing a closed source binary from the evil empire), FaceTime (that only works on Apple hardware), Hangouts (that requires a Google account, and yes there are still people on the planet...) Other technologies exist but those are the most Grandma-friendly.

Videoconferencing from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for pretty much all of those Windows, OS X, iOS and Android users (who are also basically all of the users who exist), Firefox is "special software" that they have to go out of their way to install. It won't already be installed on their computers or devices, while one or more of the other products you listed very likely will be installed by default.

What you say holds true only for the small handful of users who use Linux, and the three poor fucks in Ethiopia who use Firefox OS. So basically nobody.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lennart Poettering? Is that you? I want you to repeat after me: "do one thing, and do it well." Again, "do one thing, and do it well." Now write that a million more times. Hopefully it will have sunk in by then.

Videoconferencing from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?

Well, ignoring that you'd have to install Firefox, and of course what's happening is Firefox is embedding special software to enable videoconferencing. It's not like you can fabricate the videoconferencing software out of nothing, it still has to exist.

Yes, it's bloat. It's special software being jammed into the browser itself that doesn't need to be there. If you want to do videoconferencing, install Skype. Or pick an open source solution, there are plenty. Of course it should be kept out of the browser! Especially the browser, because the web browser is the largest attack surface for malicious coders out there. Firefox should be working on reducing that attack surface, not increasing it with useless features that no one in their right mind wants tied to their browser.

Here, I'll give you a real-world example. The IT department where I work has decided we have to use a "webapp" for video conferencing. (Read: browser plugin.) Because Firefox doesn't separate out tabs into different processes, I can either browse the web in Firefox, or attend a meeting in it. My decision is to just throw up an IE instance to make the plugin happy rather than deal with trying to run it in Firefox. That way, when Firefox inevitably freezes up on some page, I don't time out of the meeting. And when what you're trying to do in the video conference is demo a webapp, being able to both attend the meeting and browse the web is somewhat important...

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[ChunderDownunder]

The 'Hello' service may or may not be firefox-only but the technology behind it is in the HTML5 spec. So any compliant HTML5 implementor can trivially support it.

that is, only if the 3 other browser implementors don't stymie efforts by tieing people to their own service. Which should not surprise you that the companies that develop IE, Chrome and Safari each control Skype, Hangouts and FaceTime respectively and have a vested interest in fragmentation.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[ChunderDownunder]

No, I'm not Lennart but I can see that the web has evolved from 25 years ago when it was a simple viewer for hypertext into an application platform. Some might harken for simpler days but that's progress.

If you want to do videoconferencing, install Skype. Or pick an open source solution, there are plenty.

Which fails the grandma test, since its another piece of technology that grandson has to support and maintain on her computer.

In any case, you're suggesting a browser plugin as an alternative and in the same breath talk about reducing the attack service... Mozilla are proactively reducing reliance on browser plugins, e.g. (1) by supporting HTML5 to create an alternative to Java applets, (2) Developing pdf.js to substitute for Acrobat Reader, (3) Supporting video formats formerly requiring flash (4) Developing shumway for other legacy content. All use the same sandboxing model which reduces the attack service from what plugins provided.

Now you talk about firefox stability with multiple tabs, which are slowly perhaps glacially being addressed by servo and electrolysis. Surely that's a limitation of the implementation that a flaw of videoconferencing?

[Perhaps I should apply for a job at Mozilla; I do spend a good deal of time defending it on here! :) ]

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[mrchaotica]

Videoconferencing from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?

YES, in the same way that every user on the planet would probably want a calculator once in a while but that doesn't mean the browser needs to add one!

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[mrchaotica]

Yo dawg, I heard you like 'application platforms' so I turned your web browser into a goddamn operating system?

Fuck that. Just because Google does it doesn't make it a good idea!

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[AuMatar]

In *browser*? Abso-fucking-lutely. If Mozilla Foundation wanted to write the Mozilla Videoconfrencing app, that would be fine. But there is 0 reason to put it in the browser, and it only decreases security of everyone involved by having it in there. A browser should display webpages- period.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[dns_server]

Webrtc is a standard that has been in the browser for the last year or more.
What the button does is open a web page that calls the standard api's.
Adding this button does not bloat the browser that much because the underlying api is already there.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[ChunderDownunder]

Well either you accept the direction the web is moving or you don't. Firefox 3.6, the last of the traditional firefox releases, was 5 years ago... The genie won't be put back in the bottle.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[asa]

Videoconferencing from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?

YES, in the same way that every user on the planet would probably want a calculator once in a while but that doesn't mean the browser needs to add one!

Firefox comes with a couple of calculators built in. It has since before it was called Firefox.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[narcc]

Blame the W3C if you don't like the direction the web has been moving.

Though I'm curious, would you rather Mozilla ignore standards? Strict adherence is what is saving us from the nightmare that is a fragmented web, after all. I don't pine for the days of "Best viewed in ______"

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[narcc]

Google WebRTC, then hang your head in shame.

A browser should display webpages- period.

The rest of the world disagrees with you. The web has been billed as an application platform since at least 1995.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[AuMatar]

Those applications are all *drumroll* web pages. They are not video conferencing or any of the other crap Mozilla has been putting in there lately. Anyone who thinks those belong in a browser is a fucking idiot.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[Anonymous Coward]

Webrtc is pretty good and there are some really good implementations out there. Unfortunately, Hello is awful buggy crap with no features and none of the good implementations work in Firefox.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Videoconferencing from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?

Yes, it is.

I don't ever make a videoconference, but I play chess online - like millions of other people. What would you think of taking also my needs in account, in Firefox?

Playing chess from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[narcc]

Those applications are all *drumroll* web pages

Only if you don't count 20 years worth of java, flash, etc. apps that previously enabled that kind of rich content in the browser. Like it or not, the web has been an application platform for at least the past 20 years. It's about time you got over it, and accepted the fact that the web simply isn't what you personally want it to be, and hasn't been for nearly it's entire existence.

Anyone who thinks those belong in a browser is a fucking idiot.

Or people who have had to deal with complex deployments and cross-platform development. A set of simple standards that significantly reduces the demand for shaky third-party plugins is a great thing.

I'm curious now: what browser technologies do you find acceptable? What does " should display webpages- period" mean to you?

If your beef is with media types, what would be allowed in your world? Text, presumably, but what about images? If images are okay, would you also be opposed to the audio tag? Is video right out, or is YouTube okay with you?

If it's not the media type that bugs you, but interactivity, do you disapprove of forms and form controls? How about CSS as it allows for some pretty fancy interactivity? What about hyperlinks? They could presumably be used to add a level of interactivity that you might find uncomfortable.

You're a long-time user of a site that does far more than mere "display" so you presumably draw a line somewhere. Where is that line?

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[ChunderDownunder]

videoconferencing is an essential business tool of the 21st century for remote workers and virtual communities. It's been submitted to the w3c as webRTC.

In any case, there used to be a Java applet client for FICS, someone has probably written an HTML5 chess client without requiring extensive web specifications to be implemented by each browser.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[thegarbz]

Yo dawg, I heard you like 'application platforms' so I turned your web browser into a goddamn operating system?

Fuck that. Just because Google does it doesn't make it a good idea!

No, but the HTML5 spec borderline requires it. As the record-with-a-stuck-needle-AC said in an earlier post, "Do one thing and do it well". Well how about we implement a full spec for the modern internet, in full, and have the browser support all that is necessary without having to rely on a group of plugins to do basic browsing. Your anger is very misdirected.

Welcome to the modern internet. It doesn't run in a browser anymore. You need InternetOS, and if you don't have it, no internet for you.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Videoconferencing from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?

Yes. Yes it is.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[sexconker]

It was on my toolbar with an annoying popup as of 35.0.1.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[sexconker]

The button is bloat. It bloats the UI by default. It bloats the overall package.
The code to insert the button into the UI by default is bloat.
The code to pop up a message telling people how great it is is bloat.
The code to support the standard is bloat.
The "standard" itself is bloat.

I want a build of Firefox without this shit or any of the shitty recent additions like it. Disabling it (or however much of it you can) isn't a fix because it's still resident, still takes up storage space, still needs to be updated when there are security issues, still wastes time and money in development, etc.

They don't fucking understand what people liked about Firefox.
Hint: Fast, flexible, extensible, lean, secure, reliable.

Over the past few years it's gotten relatively slower, less flexible, fatter, less secure (largely as a result of all the new insecure bloaty shit they add in), and less reliable.
Hell, just last month I had to do a complete wipe of Firefox because the fucking internal database was broken as shit after some update and the "Awesome Bar" wasn't pulling from any history past the date it broke (even though all the subsequent history entries were present). I can no longer tell Firefox to remember my browsing history but not to remember the download history. I can't tell Firefox to tie into the standard cert store on any OS, making site-wide management a pain in the ass (you have to use their own half-working, half-documented command line tool and maintain a separate copy of all certs) and making trust pinning nearly impossible. I can't do half the shit I used to be able to do with Firefox because some fucking asshat at Mozilla decided that I didn't need to.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[jemmyw]

skype (that requires installing a closed source binary from the evil empire), FaceTime (that only works on Apple hardware), Hangouts (that requires a Google account, and yes there are still people on the planet...) Other technologies exist but those are the most Grandma-friendly.

free.gotomeeting.com. I work with the guys who make it. It's more grandma friendly than any of the above, share a link, straight into the meeting.

Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello!

[Lennie]

What I like about WebRTC is that it restores the 'end-to-end encrypted' part we had lost.

Skype, Facetime and others were all sued by this company which has patents:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2...

They all made deals and changed the way their software worked instead of paying for the patent directly.

Do you know what they changed ? They are no longer peer2peer applications anymore.

And at least in the case of Skype, we know Microsoft can decrypt the calls. And we know they have at least automated systems which watch the text-messages you send over Skype because they have an anti-spam system in place.

WebRTC does real peer2peer for free, without patents, with standardized protocols. With probably-free codecs. At least the Opus audio codec is completely free. VP8 and VP9 probably don't have problems. But you might end up talking to an endpoint which only supports H.264 so you'll need something for that.

And there are libraries which you can use that use the same protocols and you can build your own desktop or smartphone app with that if you want.

I'm sorry, but I see WebRTC as something which solves real problems we thought we didn't have a couple of years ago.

What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently saw a comment that linked to Mozilla's Firefox feedback stats site. I've been checking it daily for a few days now.

As I'm writing this, a whopping 87% of the feedback from the last seven days is 'sad'! 87%! That's unbelievable!

These aren't just a few people leaving negative feedback. That's 87% of almost 10,000 responses!

I'm sure some Mozillians will say, "But only unhappy people give feedback!" or some other excuse like that. But I don't think that's the case. That feedback page is accessible to anyone and everyone who uses Firefox.

People are genuinely disappointed with all of the Firefox products these days. That's why 87% of the reports are classified as 'sad'. Firefox just doesn't make people happy! It used to, years ago, but it doesn't any more.

Why isn't Mozilla taking this more seriously? Why are they so complacent with 87% of Firefox users being unhappy? That's an atrocious failure rate. Why aren't they making a big deal about it?

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, of COURSE people will say "only those who are unhappy will provide feedback". It has nothing to do with being a Mozillian or not. Show me one passive feedback form where people who are content outnumber the people who aren't. Besides, what do you want Mozilla to do? It's not like their userbase has a unified vision for what Firefox should be. Oh, they have empty platitudes up the wazoo, but specifics? The only people who agree on them are (again) the people who want the changes to be made. The minute they enacted half the stuff that people want, a big chunk of the users will complain about it. You just can't win with software that has such a varied userbase. Even Chrome (my browser of choice) gets no respect, and they aren't in the middle of revamping their browser engine to meet with the demands of their users. I sometimes think that Firefox users just like to feel like they're being trampled on so they can get upvoted for complaining (while solving precisely nothing themselves).

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Em Adespoton]

Actually, the general feedback rule is 20/80 -- usually 80% of feedback is negative. So this is your balance point. 87% negative means that they're getting 7% negative feedback from users who normally wouldn't be providing negative feedback, which is a concern, but not as big as the 87% number would indicate.

So the real question is: How long have they been on a downward trend with an 81%+ negative rating? Are there signs that they are adjusting something to deal with that feedback?

The secondary question is: what exactly is the negative feedback about? Is it that Firefox now uses a bundleware installer that attempts to foist third party products on you? Is it that the Yahoo search doesn't give the same results people are used to from Google? Is it that the software crashes regularly? Slow javascript? Unimplemented features? Is it that certain sites don't work with Flash disabled or NoScript enabled? People don't like the icon?

Personally, I'm not having any problems with Firefox, other than that it is starting to roll some features into the core browser that in all fairness should be plugins. I still prefer it to the privacy mess that is Chrome and the "nothing to see here" way Safari and IE have been hiding details of their browsing experience from the end user by default. That said, I still go to Safari when I want to see what components are actually running during a web session -- some of that doesn't show up too well in Firefox's Web Console.

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me summarize your comment for everyone else here:

Excuse. Excuse. Excuse. Denial. Excuse. Denial. Denial. Excuse. Denial. Blame the user. Denial. Excuse. Denial. Denial. Excuse. Denial. Blame the user again. Excuse. Denial. Denial. Misrepresent Chrome. Denial. Denial. Excuse. Blame the user one more time. Denial. Excuse. Denial.

For a supposed "Chrome user", you sure have got the Mozilla deny/excuse/blame-the-user routine perfected!

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently saw a comment that linked to Mozilla's Firefox feedback stats site. I've been checking it daily for a few days now.

As I'm writing this, a whopping 87% of the feedback from the last seven days is 'sad'! 87%! That's unbelievable!

These aren't just a few people leaving negative feedback. That's 87% of almost 10,000 responses!

I'm sure some Mozillians will say, "But only unhappy people give feedback!" or some other excuse like that. But I don't think that's the case. That feedback page is accessible to anyone and everyone who uses Firefox.

People are genuinely disappointed with all of the Firefox products these days. That's why 87% of the reports are classified as 'sad'. Firefox just doesn't make people happy! It used to, years ago, but it doesn't any more.

Why isn't Mozilla taking this more seriously? Why are they so complacent with 87% of Firefox users being unhappy? That's an atrocious failure rate. Why aren't they making a big deal about it?

Whoa, hold on there. 87% of ~10,000 responses DOES NOT EQUAL 87% of ALL Firefox users.

While I agree that Mozilla should take these complaints seriously, I also realize that people who have a negative experience are probably significantly more likely to be motivated to go leave feedback than users who have a positive or neutral experience. Seriously, how many times do you go out of your way to leave feedback on a product or service just to say "yep, working a-ok"? Now contrast that with times you've run into a serious issue or bug, and have been disgruntled enough to go write "THIS STUPID FSCKING PILE OF SH*T SUUUUUUUUUUCKS!!!!!!11111111"

People can be very vocal about pain, but generally ambivalent to a lack of it.

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can imagine whatever you want to imagine. I mean, the post about 87% negative feedback sounds like shilling to me, and this comment does nothing to make me think otherwise. So that's what I'm going to choose to assume. Go ahead, be unproductively negative about Firefox.

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? The earlier commenter is "shilling" by using Mozilla's very own stats and just interpreting them at face value?!

To summarize your comment:

Denial. False accusation. Denial. Excuse. Denial.

It's another perfect example of the idiocy we see all too often from Mozilla supporters.

Re: What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

That appeared to be the only ui interface way to resin to the multi process problems and give a report without going into Bugzilla or similar.

So 87% sad seems reasonable... it was named poorly. I'm sure as hell not negative on Firefox, but to give the best reply I had to hit the 'sad' thing.

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Trax3001BBS]

People are genuinely disappointed with all of the Firefox products these days. That's why 87% of the reports are classified as 'sad'. Firefox just doesn't make people happy! It used to, years ago, but it doesn't any more.

Why isn't Mozilla taking this more seriously? Why are they so complacent with 87% of Firefox users being unhappy? That's an atrocious failure rate. Why aren't they making a big deal about it?

The screw: Opera did this to all of it's program users by removing bookmarks as "research shows" people prefer those thumbnails that FireFox uses, while for "me", I have to wait for FireFox show that site as a thumbnail then pin it, Opera lets you edit or put the one you want where and when you want.

The the finger: Opera will import bookmarks but not Opera's own.

I noticed just now Opera will import Opera.12 bookmarks this Version: 27.0.1689.69 - Restart Opera to update to version 27.0.1689.76
What I was met with, that's one important update - I thought I had updates disabled, It's how one ends up with FireFox 36 (I'll take your word for it, and avoid it), but it is a standard practice of mine to disable updates. (carry over from Windows history of bad updates). /. will still allow Opera 12 with no complaints and what I'm using now. checking further, updates on, off, or maybe aren't an option for Opera 27. Well I'm done with Opera till I find that secret word (none of that flakey opera:config for Chrom... er Opera)., it's bad enough it's always demanded to be your torrent client unless edited - I'm getting close Opera:cache works but you can't access anything else, I finger it out. This paragraph was a work in progress they went back to opera:config.

Below update is now outdated:
UPDATE: With the release of new versions, opera:config page has been replaced by opera://flags.
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-ac...

Opera saved an entire web page as a .MHT file, so I saved them that way (one file instead, a folder containing one html file and a folder of files). They were very handy, at some point (below 12) - Opera quit loading them. I won't fall for that one again, ie: saving in a format only one browser will load.

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Trax3001BBS]

. /. will still allow Opera 12 with no complaints and what I'm using now. checking further, updates on, off, or maybe aren't an option for Opera 27. Well I'm done with Opera till I find that secret word (none of that flakey opera:config for Chrom... er Opera)., it's bad enough it's always demanded to be your torrent client unless edited - I'm getting close Opera:cache works but you can't access anything else, I finger it out. This paragraph was a work in progress they went back to opera:config.

Below update is now outdated:
UPDATE: With the release of new versions, opera:config page has been replaced by opera://flags.
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-ac...

Going back and forth I got lost, and ran opera:config on Opera 12 (I'll take the hits), Opera 27 (which is the only Opera open) also runs log-in info like FireFox knew I should of quit at the finger.

Sigh-goto go now and find the key word to edit Opera 27 to something usable.

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Jane Q. Public]

People are genuinely disappointed with all of the Firefox products these days.

Well, I must not be "people" then. I've used Firefox for years and while Mozilla has made a slip or two, it's my go-to browser of choice.

At least on my system, it's smaller and faster than Chrome, and it has far more useful and privacy-protecting plugins. More plugins in general, I think.

No complaints here.

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[ravenlord_hun]

Firefox has been constantly losing marketshare for a long while now. As for dealing with feedback, Mozilla's preferred solution has been to throw a middle finger to the users.

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[gbjbaanb]

what exactly is the negative feedback about?

I imagine its all kinds of stuff. I clicked the sad button when an upgrade made the pop-out hamburger menu thing instantly close itself. Turns out it was privacy badger plugin, but FF still got 'sad' feedback from me.

They also got valid 'sad' feedback from me too though., when an upgrade added the search box to the 'new tab' screen, all the thumbnails got quite a lot smaller, I complained about that and they did, fair play to them, make the thumbnails bigger in subsequent versions.

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[t_ban]

IE loads mht-s, so does Firefox with this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Trax3001BBS]

IE loads mht-s, so does Firefox with this extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

I wasn't aware of that, if it's new or not, IE I wouldn't of used, it's never updated and blocked, Opera will now open them as well, so mayhaps a problem at my end that I just up and accepted Opera quit loading them, not the first time.

That Opera 26+ keyword I can't find but did come across this
opera main menu > more tools > check enable developer tool (Not needed for the next "key")

Key: opera://flags/#experimental-start-page will open up 104 options some helpful

and thanks for that I would of never tried to load one in FireFox, being an Opera standard.

Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well lets see.

still no h264 support on html5
pointless hello button on toolbar, i wonder how much dev time that feature tookup
now enforced smart detection when using search box, I cannot find way to disable the behaviour

no other comments yet

They make it sound

[Anonymous Coward]

like HTTP/2 support is a feature and enhancement. http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2716278

I've posted this 1312 times

[AbRASiON]

No more features.
No more features.
No more features.
No more features.
Stability, performance.Stability, performance.
Stability, performance.Stability, performance.

Did I mention Stability, performance?

Stop.
This goes for Firefox, this goes for Android (VERY much)
Stop assuming there's always more powerful things coming. Stuff has slowed down the last 5 years. I can't believe how slow a modern browser can get on a decent machine. I shouldn't need 8 cores at 4.5ghz with 16gb of DDR4 or something ridiculous like that.

Stop fiddling and start cleaning up.
Oh and Firefox? It's 2015...... native 64bit as default already, for fucks sake.
and this, ASAP.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Elect... A.S.A.P

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[AFCArchvile]

Installing NoScript onto Firefox is one of the best things I've done for Firefox memory usage. It's also more secure since it stifles most cross-site scripting connections, drastically reduces load times since said cross-site scripting isn't being loaded.

Then again, I'm still looking over at Pale Moon, and thinking that I should abandon Firefox entirely and shift my primary browsing over to Pale Moon. It accepts Noscript, and doesn't even need Classic Theme Restorer or Status-4-Evar installed, since it never messed with the UI, and never removed the status bar. (I don't know if Firefox 36 still has this problem, but Firefox 35, 34, 33, etc, all had an issue where a new window would sometimes result in the status bar not appearing. I like seeing a status bar in a windowed program, since it does what it says on the tin: provides status cues, as well as providing far less annoying insight than hovering the mouse over something and waiting for a tooltip to appear.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[MrL0G1C]

I'd be happy if they fixed bugs that IE and Opera don't have, some of which are a decade old and have 'won't fix' attached.

How many hundreds of millions do they have sitting in the bank and they get all stupid and decide not to fix bugs! Firefox is going to end up like Netscape 4.7.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[AbRASiON]

I've switched to waterfox, the thing never crashes. Uses a shitload of ram but never crashes. Also noscript - but the performance is still subpar, quite subpar.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[thegarbz]

The modern browser isn't slow due it itself. The modern browser is slow due to the online experience bloating.

HTML5, fancy graphics, all elements on the screen moving relative to each other, every object being dynamic, pictures, did I mention dynamic objects? The constant reliance on a link between server and client to send push messages, and of course all the dynamic objects.

If you disable javascript and break most of the webpages then browsers run quite blazingly fast. It's not a Firefox related problem that the internet now demands the browser to be a borderline operating system with built in media player.

Maybe slashdot could release an autoplaying video description of why this trend is such a problem.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[eulernet]

I confirm that: I use Windows with 2Gb RAM and Firefox is barely usable, thus I switched to Palemoon, but I'm not very satisfied either.
Chrome is even worse, and IE is out of question.
I tried Opera, Seamonkey and K-Meleon, but prefer Palemoon.

On my wife's computer, it's even worse: she has a 1GB computer with nothing installed, and Firefox is absolutely unusable !
I switched her to Qupzilla.
She doesn't browse heavy flash sites, so why should we need 4 Gb+ to use gmail and do basic browsing ?

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[rHBa]

Actually I've found the Android version of FF performs significantly worse than the default Android browser (on my Nexus 7). This page includes a parallax scroll effect with a massive background image at the bottom:

http://www.authenticasia.net/

On FF Android it is very glitchy depending on how fast you scroll, on the default Android browser it works fine.

I do however get your point about eye candy bloat, fashion before function etc...

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you are getting at exactly.

Assuming you are using a Windows version post-XP, 1GB or even 2GB would have the operating system using a major chunk of that memory. I wouldn't recommend below 8GB (recommended spec) for anything as new as Vista, unless you are trying to squeeze a budget, then at minimum 4GB. I could be wrong, but doesn't Windows take up at between 500 and 750 MB to run, unless you want to constantly thrash with page files?

That being said, my installation of Firefox takes up about 2GB of ram. I keep a ton of tabs open at once and I would love if I could find an add-on that could allow me to archive chunks of websites at a time or even click something on the tab to make the website removed from the cache, so it would have to reload it once I visit it again. Even with NoScript / AdBlock up and running, various Google services take up on average 700MB (when looking at the about:memory page) by themselves. This is likely tied to the fact I keep pinned tabs for email accounts for at least part of that.

I really don't want to shift to Chrome, but if they keep adding features that take up more memory that I don't want and slow down what I do want to do, I may have to migrate. Chrome is better engineered, it is the legacy of add-ons I've come to expect with Firefox that keeps me (not that they don't look the same now).

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly do you think a native 64bit web browser will give you?

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[mrchaotica]

Firefox is going to end up like Netscape 4.7.

Firefox has an IM client built in now. Clearly, you're using the wrong verb tense.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[AuMatar]

Define "default android browser". Each OEM ships their own- Google has one, but so does Samsung. If you have a Samsung phone you've never used the default Android browser.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly do you think a native 64bit web browser will give you?

On the surface, nothing.

However, some possible benefits:

- do OS limit how much memory a single 32-bit process can grab? 64-bit code may have a higher limit
    only likely to matter if someone browses with lots of tabs

- plugins...video, flash, etc. 64-bit plugin may or may not be faster
      (depends if the "plugin" does the work, or if it just calls another library, so the bit-ness of the plugin may not matter..
          no idea if e.g. 32-bit plugins can call 64-bit code)

- javascript should likely be quicker if it can use 64-bit instructions...different javascript engines work differently, but
      my understanding is modern implementations effectively do just-in-time compiling down to native code, similar to
        java....so 64-bit instructions should be a performance win here

- on 64-bit systems e.g. linux distros, not needing to install "support for 32-bit programs" might be desirable.
    besides the disk space and having to keep multiple copies of libraries around, why should someone who does not
    need to run any 32-bit programs have support for it enabled? why should a web browser be the hold-up here?

I do disagree with parent though:

default distribution should not be 32-bit or 64-bit .

yes, testing and QA may mean only one or the other can properly be gauged in a reasonable time frame to
make official releases timely...

but I would hope from a developer POV, 32-bit or 64-bit is largely irrelevant: the code should be written for both cases.

It would be just as silly to start hard-coding 64-bit code everywhere, because that is en vogue today.

Leave it to another department (QA, release team) to verify a build is stable ... I don't see why developers should generally
be targetting one over the other...most code it should not be an issue at all.

The things I mentioned, should all work fine 32-bit or 64-bit ... code should work in either case, there should be regular support and testing for both cases.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and Firefox? It's 2015...... native 64bit as default already, for fucks sake.

Don't give them ideas - as is, firefox can only leak & use 4 GB of ram since it's 32-bit. With 64-bit, the memory leak potential is much worse...

Posted using firefox that is using 950 MB according to windows task manager.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, to disable Hello crap:

1. type "about:config" in URL bar
2. type "loop." in the search bar
3. Double click on key "loop.enabed" so that it flips to "false"
4. Restart FF

You are welcome

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[rHBa]

I did say it's a Nexus 7 so it's the standard Android browser (com.android.browser - Version 4.4.4)

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

I have experienced the same "new window" problem with 35-34 abouts and it didn't seem to be getting better. Haven't had it yet with 36, so here's hoping.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

This will always be the problem facing open source software. It seems that people want to code new things, not look over old code and find errors and make improvements.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

Switched to Palemoon a while back and never looked back. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, which is why it so important today to be able to isolate and kill misbehaving sites/tabs, something that Firefox sucks at. It's the crashiest program I have installed. The typical pattern is it eventually eats up 2GB of RAM, usually when I have gmail or gdocs open, at which point it pegs one of the processor cores to just move memory around, then eventually crashes. No amount of closing tabs and windows will bring it back from the brink.

For now I just avoid gmail and gdocs as much as I can and hope Vivaldi will live up to its promise.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[ChunderDownunder]

Single Core 1.46Ghz, 8GB of RAM (complete overkill). 64bit Linux, iceweasel process has NEVER used more than 1.5GB. 3 tabs open currently sitting at 341.3MB

Are you just trolling or is there some mysterious combination of extensions and addons that requires an 8 core box?

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox on W7 always crashes when it bloats above 1.2 GB on my 4GB 32 bit work machine. I have 6GB on the 64 bit home one and it gets slow and restart-needy beyond that point anyway. There is something about memory management and algorithm efficiency that FF's devs just cannot understand compared to other projects. It is just like linux graphic file managers choke when showing multi-thousand-file directories that are so commonplace in my Windows partition.

Anyway, if you are still stuck on single core OS at 1GB, it must it be hard. Youtube was already too heavy for FF on my 1GB 1.9Ghz Pentium 4 in *2011* even on linux.

I type this from Pale Moon tonight and have been testing the waters with Seamonkey. The takeaways are that
1) ram usage is not much lower than FF and Chrome/ium*
2) Many extensions just don't work on Seamonkey thanks to Mozilla forcing some engine split for FF 25. If you thought it was bad enough for your favorite extension coders to need to rewrite for newer versions every 3 months, you'll hate seeing how small the compat list is - https://wiki.mozilla.org/SeaMonkey/AddonCompat

* I haven't seen sub-100MB tabbed browsing since Opera 6 and FF v1.0PR a decade ago. Risks and all if you are OK with finding historical versions of must-have long-lived extensions, try an old release's portable version with flash disabled and add an older noscript. Google et all will be nagging everywhere, but I get the feeling your setup is already causing those.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, Firefox has been 64-bit by default on all major Linux distros for years. The default Windows version is 32-bit because ???. I think they have 64-bit nightlies, so it clearly works fine in 64-bit. I suspect it has something to do with plugins being 32-bit (the same reason why IE keeps a 32-bit version around).

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[narcc]

I can't believe how slow a modern browser can get on a decent machine. I shouldn't need 8 cores at 4.5ghz with 16gb of DDR4 or something ridiculous like that.

I have several older computers in a public lab (P4, 1-2gb) that run FireFox exceptionally well. (Chrome, oddly enough, barely runs at all. The reverse used to be true.) You don't need 8 cores at 4.5ghz and 16gb of DDR4 or "something ridiculous like that" A nearly 10-year-old computer with FireFox seems to cope well enough with the modern web.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[narcc]

It doesn't have to be that way. Get web developers to stop competing with one another on how many frameworks and general-purpose libraries they can cram on a single page to do something better handled with CSS. It's like a plague.

You can have a fancy site with lots of "dynamic" elements than is efficient and performant. It actually takes significantly less effort than forcing a bunch of buggy and bloated "time saving" libraries to work together.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

One could also blame Google for those problems. It is really weird that the Google groups and G+ are the slowest web pages I have seen in years. I am quite sure they do not suck so much with their own browser.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[AbRASiON]

I would hardly define opening "About:blank" in a single tab, web browsing.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[narcc]

Yes, yes, very funny. Humor is a great way to cope when reality challenges your preconceptions. Just don't forget that it's merely a coping mechanism and that you'll need to accept the world for how it is eventually.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

The 64bit Pale Moon implementation borks PNG graphics. AFAICT it fails to render yellow entirely.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

My Nexus 7 shipped with Chrome as the default browser.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Malc]

I switched to Chrome a few years ago because I was fed-up with Firefox's monolithic single process architecture. With a single process I have no way to tell which tab is draining my battery, which is a bigger issue than the constant memory leaking. The devs at Mozilla and Netscape before it have never really understood the benefits of multi-processing.

My laptop failed a few days ago so I'm on an old machine I haven't used for three years, but seeing as Firefox is the default I thought I'd update it and give it a shot. Mistake. One tab having trouble loading a web page blocks the whole UI leaving me wondering whether the app has hung up and needs to be killed via Task Manager. What a load of utter shit. Internet Explorer is better these days.

When did they promise that Electrolysis would be done this Feb? How many years have they been promising it full-stop? Now it seems it'll be later this year. No commitment, and apparently incapable of either running a decent engineering operation that can deliver anything sensible in a predictable and reasonable time frame.

Back to Chrome.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[thegarbz]

It's not that simple. One way or the other we're not going back to the "good old days" of the internet. Even the supposedly lean pages for mobile like m.slashdot.org is far larger and more resource intensive than the desktop version of Slashdot from the 90s.

Did I mention video on Slashdot? Even if you write super efficient pages we still demand our browser to be a full media player capable of 1080p video playback (or even 4k as per some YouTube content).

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[gbjbaanb]

I agree, I tweaked a few settings on my work FF (as work laptop is 4GB) and it shows 245MB private bytes used with 6 tabs open and doesn't show nay signs of slowness compared to the default 'cache up loads of stuff' settings.

I think the most important is the sessionhistory stuff as that can multiply how much back button pages are stored, per tab!

browser.cache.memory.enable;false
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers; 2
browser.sessionstore.max_serialize_back;5
browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo;5
browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo;2

I think those are the only settings that I've changed WRT memory. Maybe they could do a pre-defined setting set that optimises FF for low-memory PCs.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[rHBa]

Hmm, good point. I installed Firefox when I first got the tablet and have mostly used it ever since.

However last year I re-flashed to CM11 which must have come with the stock Android browser. I didn't noticed the change from Chrome to Android browser because I never really used either of them, I just installed FF again.

Anyway my original point, that FF mobile is more bloated than the Android browser, still stands but I now realise I shouldn't have referred to it as the 'default' Android browser, my bad...

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[cyberchondriac]

That should apply to a lot of software, not just Firefox. More icing is pointless if the cake is falling apart. (Unless you use concrete or spackle for icing..!)

Re: I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

I've consistently found iceweasel to run better than straight Firefox. I have no idea why because the only thing modified should be the mozilla specific artwork. I would do some benchmarks but my Debian laptop is at home today.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[jfengel]

Unfortunately, I've found that increasing numbers of sites require those cross-site scripting just to render themselves. It's not uncommon for a site to require enabling literally dozens of other sites. It can be hard to tell which of those are content, which are navigation, which are ads, and which are tracking. At least some are starting to detect when you're selectively disabling the ad servers and metrics sites, and refusing to render at all.

In general, I'd prefer to avoid those sites entirely. I do understand their need to foist off ads on me, which is why I haven't run with AdBlock. I just want to disable antisocial behavior like animations, which make the content hard to read. But I can think of a few sites which have useful content that require me to let more things through NoScript than I'm really comfortable with.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Lennie]

The real question is:

Why are you still using Windows ? ;-)

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the slowness is certainly caused by the nature of current web content, but Firefox's stability and performance are indeed a mess.

Ever since the OMTC (Off Main Thread Compositing) was implemented for Windows, the browser has been prone to random lockups that usually resolve by right clicking somewhere in the browser window. I guess Linux users have been spared for now since the feature is too broken on Linux to enable by default. One can only wonder what their standards for "too broken" are, exactly.

Oh, and disabling OMTC causes segfaults since the codepath has already suffered some rot.

I'd gladly use their HTML5 video support instead of the 0day-prone Flash plugin that drops frames at 10% CPU usage, but it almost inevitably segfaults after about 10 minutes of video playback. The discussion on their bugzilla suggests it's leaking graphics resources and crashes (so hard it can't even pop up the error reporter) when it can't allocate more.

I can't imagine this browser being usable for anything for long if stuff like this will just keep building up.

Re:I've posted this 1312 times

[Anonymous Coward]

" It's 2015...... native 64bit as default already, for fucks sake."
fuck you too, if you do 64, it doesn't mean others do

security enhancements?

[Obfuscant]

Unless they've put back the easy way of disabling javascript, their "security enhancements" are meaningless. There are too many web pages that hijack the browser using js and don't let you get to any "about:config" pages but will still allow preferences to be changed...

Re:security enhancements?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh lord, here we go. Let's bitch about them removing a nigh-useless toggle that messes up the experience for less-resourceful users, just because WE are more important and installing a superior addon is beneath us. Why should I be the one to have to install addons, amirite?

Re:security enhancements?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there is security deterioration. The support of http/2 means that now web servers will be able to push unwanted objects to your browser. I'm not sure whether NoScript and AdBlock Plus will still work properly or not.

Whoever "pushed" that feature into the http/2 standard is a world class idiot at best.

Re:security enhancements?

[Obfuscant]

Let's bitch about them removing a nigh-useless toggle

If you've ever been stuck on a page that won't let you go anywhere and every attempt at leaving mucks up other tabs, then you wouldn't call turning off javascript at that point useless.

that messes up the experience for less-resourceful users

Oh, lord, here we go. Another idjit who thinks his definition of what "the experience" should be must be the experience for everyone else.

Why should I be the one to have to install addons, amirite?

If you don't want to install an addon, feel free not to install an addon. Don't tell others that they should be forced to install an addon to DISABLE something that could be disabled natively, and until someone decided that other people's "experiences" must be carefully controlled was a simple checkbox in a preferences window.

Re:security enhancements?

[Em Adespoton]

You forgot "WE would rather have that toggle than install NoScript".

THE ENTIRE POINT of Firefox was that if you wanted a feature, you could just add it on.

Now let's move all the extra features into add-ons so that the default browser is a browser only, and I'll be happy. Oh, that and make the relationship between "Add-ons" and "extensions" more obvious. After all -- you have to go to the Add-ons menu to adjust your extensions -- but you can only "get add-ons" and not extensions, because....

(and I'm sure it's worse in other localizations).

Re:security enhancements?

[Em Adespoton]

I've never been stuck on a page that won't let me go anywhere.

His entire point was that HIS experience doesn't need to be the same as yours, or anyone else's. The DEFAULT one should be sane for most use cases though.

As for installing addons to disable something, the only point against that is not having those things enabled by default. But as most of the web these days doesn't work without at least some level of javascript, having a dumb toggle default to either position is pretty much useless. They COULD have a "js manager" like their cookie manager, where you could disable js for specific websites or uris you've visited, and that would be an improvement. Or a "This page requires JavaScript from these external sites -- would you like to enable it?" dialog with checkboxes on first entry to any JS-enabled page with external scripts But the global toggle would be useless unless it was in your face, and even then it would seriously mess up any other tabs you have open.

Think about ways of improving things, not ways of adding more options that just cause things to break in yet more interesting ways.

Re:security enhancements?

[Anonymous Coward]

The client can choose to cancel the sending of pushed resources. Read the spec.

Re:security enhancements?

[Obfuscant]

The DEFAULT one should be sane for most use cases though.

It was. "Enable javascript" was on by default.

But as most of the web these days doesn't work without at least some level of javascript,

Most of the web works just fine without javascript. Those times I had to disable it to get away from a page that was using it maliciously, I often forgot to turn it back on and found the "browsing experience" to be much more pleasant.

Saying that "most of the web doesn't work" unless you have javascript is another way of saying that "your web experience should be what I tell you it has to be".

having a dumb toggle default to either position is pretty much useless.

That's just silly. Having a toggle that defaults to "on" gets you your "javascript enabled" experience that you want newbs to have while still allowing others a choice.

But the global toggle would be useless unless it was in your face,

That's also silly. You propose a complicated by-page or by-site manager, but decry a simple "off" toggle as ... useless?

Think about ways of improving things, not ways of adding more options

I was already an option, quite simple. And it was a detriment to remove it, except to those who feel that controlling the viewer's "web experience" belongs in the hand of the site programmer and not the viewer.

that just cause things to break in yet more interesting ways.

I consider breaking malicious web pages to be a good thing. YMMV.

Re:security enhancements?

[Anonymous Coward]

>If you've ever been stuck on a page that won't let you go anywhere and every attempt at leaving mucks up other tabs, then you wouldn't call turning off javascript at that point useless.

I never said turning off JS on a specific page was pointless. But a global toggle sure is. Please try to make an actual point you can defend before you start calling others idjits, idjit.

>Don't tell others that they should be forced to install an addon to DISABLE something that could be disabled natively

Uh huh. You don't want to install addons, therefore less proficient should continue to suffer because you want Mozilla to leave a stupid option in there for you specifically. Great logic there. In the meantime thousands of users have figured out that NoScript and other addons are MUCH better than what was ever built into Firefox for these purposes. So... thanks for wasting everyone's time, including your own.

Re:security enhancements?

[zidium]

So we can bring back PointCast?! Man, I used that service ALL THE TIME in the mid-to-late 1990s!!! I actually still miss it.

Re:security enhancements?

[Em Adespoton]

Interesting selective response.

I proposed a complicated by-page or by-site manager as something that won't break other open tabs. Feel free to propose something better, like NoScript.

The global toggle breaks things. This was obvious in the bug reports from the time when it was removed, and I have personal experience to back that up. It doesn't work with all the other modern features.

The fact that it DID work for you in a specific use case back when it existed doesn't say anything about today. I challenge you to make an add-on that does only one thing: toggles Javascript. Then use it for a while, and see what the results are. Unless you browse the web with only one window open and don't use multiple tabs, you're going to run into problems in short order -- I run into problems even when using NoScript, which has more advanced features to mitigate the issues resulting from Javascript vanishing unexpectedly on loaded pages.

Breaking malicious web pages is good (not going to them is also good) -- breaking banking pages, search pages, webmail pages, etc. is not so good.

You know what my replacement for the JS toggle was?
If a page starts messing with me, I close my browser down completely. When I re-launch, I uncheck the page that caused the problem and load the rest of my tabs. I then add said page to AdBlock. Problem solved.

Re:security enhancements?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clever replacement. Personally I just bookmarked about:config?filter=javascript.enabled so now instead of opening up the preferences and navigating to the checkbox, I just middle-click the bookmark to double-click that pref line, and reload the necessary page.

Re:security enhancements?

[Anonymous Coward]

JS toggle removal is one of the reasons I still actively block auto-update and have a pre-FF 24 install on my multi-version setup (portable editions and manually-frozen old nightlies, if you're interested).

Amusingly, nobody is complaining about Ye olde feature in https://support.mozilla.org/en/questions/981640
There used to be a toolbar button for toggling Images in some alt browsers in the nineties. Saved a lot of ram and page load time, and is still the only tolerable way you can use mobile browsing today on 2G speeds (along with JS off)

Re:security enhancements?

[Em Adespoton]

Yeah; I made extensive use of the "toggle images" button back in the day. I generally browsed with images off, and only loaded them when I needed to.

Re:security enhancements?

[Em Adespoton]

Also an excellent solution :)

Re:security enhancements?

[Obfuscant]

Interesting selective response.

I responded to what I found relevant.

I proposed a complicated by-page or by-site manager as something that won't break other open tabs. Feel free to propose something better, like NoScript.

I responded to your complicated system by pointing out how overly complicated it was. I proposed something better.

The global toggle breaks things.

Yes, I know. If you disable jt, it breaks every webpage that relies on javascript to do anything useful. It also breaks every website that relies on js to do malicious things. That's good.

The fact that it DID work for you in a specific use case back when it existed doesn't say anything about today.

Since it still works today, yes, today's use case is adequately covered. I still have systems with that version and they run just fine. Nothing is broken. Having the option to turn off js didn't break any pages. Why would it? They don't know you have the option unless you use it to stop them from doing something malicious. If that's the case, then boo frigging hoo the page is broken by turning off js.

I challenge you to make an add-on that does only one thing: toggles Javascript.

I shouldn't have to learn how to write a full add-on to do something that WAS THERE AND WAS REMOVED, just to TURN OFF something. That's ridiculous. And the problem is that if the malicious website is preventing you from getting to any other pages you are probably going to have trouble getting to the add-on.

-- breaking banking pages, search pages, webmail pages, etc. is not so good.

Here's an idea. What about DON'T TURN OFF JAVASCRIPT ON PAGES THAT AREN'T MALICIOUSLY TRYING TO HIJACK YOUR "WEB EXPERIENCE"? It's that simple. Really. There's no reason to turn it off for banking, search, etc unless they are doing something bad.

I run into problems even when using NoScript, which has more advanced features to mitigate the issues resulting from Javascript vanishing unexpectedly on loaded pages.

You run into problems because you have a add-on that's playing games with what sites can and can't use what code. It's much simple to say "no javascript". You know how many times I've run into problems with javascript "vanishing" on loaded pages? ZERO. At WORST the page complains about not having javascript and I just go turn it back on. A couple clicks of the mouse and solution achieved.

You know what my replacement for the JS toggle was? If a page starts messing with me, I close my browser down completely.

And when you start back up it reloads all the pages, including the one that you wanted to get away from. And it takes the time to reload all the other pages. Yes, I've sometimes seen the "Oops" page that first asks which pages to reload, but more often than not it just reloads everything. And if the js is messing with other pages, you get the messed result right back.

It is just more convenient and less time consuming to turn off js when necessary than to kill a browser session and wind up back where you were.

I then add said page to AdBlock.

What does this have to do with blocking ads? Where did you get the idea that ads are the only malicious web pages our there?

Re:security enhancements?

[Em Adespoton]

One last response, and then I stop, as you've obviously got an axe to grind and my pointing out the original reasoning isn't going to change that.

I shouldn't have to learn how to write a full add-on to do something that WAS THERE AND WAS REMOVED, just to TURN OFF something. That's ridiculous. And the problem is that if the malicious website is preventing you from getting to any other pages you are probably going to have trouble getting to the add-on.

See another response to my comment; a bookmarklet that does what you want. However, the idea behind the add-on is that it sticks a button in your toolbar, so you don't have to "get to the add-on".

Here's an idea. What about DON'T TURN OFF JAVASCRIPT ON PAGES THAT AREN'T MALICIOUSLY TRYING TO HIJACK YOUR "WEB EXPERIENCE"? It's that simple. Really. There's no reason to turn it off for banking, search, etc unless they are doing something bad.

The JS toggle in settings is global. If you have multiple tabs open, it gets turned off for ALL tabs, not just the malicious page. But then on the other side, loading a banking page in the same browser as a potentially untrusted page at the same time isn't really a good idea in the first place.

This global toggle wasn't an issue back when it existed, as web pages would load their JS on load, and that would be that -- so you'd just turn JS off, reload the malicious page, and you're done, without affecting the other pages. Nowdays with REST and dynamic page content, this doesn't work -- you disable JS and the next time an active script goes to pull down some other data and run it, things will fail in unexpected ways. You're pulling the rug out from under the scripts, and unless they were all coded well (most aren't), you're going to find that toggling the JS causes you to have to start your other tabs from scratch, potentially losing data.

And when you start back up it reloads all the pages, including the one that you wanted to get away from. And it takes the time to reload all the other pages. Yes, I've sometimes seen the "Oops" page that first asks which pages to reload, but more often than not it just reloads everything. And if the js is messing with other pages, you get the messed result right back.

It is just more convenient and less time consuming to turn off js when necessary than to kill a browser session and wind up back where you were.

Sounds like you should complain about THIS. With my settings, I always get the Oops page, and can always uncheck the bad page and keep the others. And my copy of firefox takes as long to close and re-open like this as navigating to the Prefs/Options and toggling JS would take. One of the benefits of modern Firefox is that it caches the other tabs, and doesn't re-load them to refresh data until it needs to, which really speeds things up (and also means that even if the Oops page somehow didn't come up, you can still close the malicious tab, as scripts haven't started running on it yet after load).

What does this have to do with blocking ads? Where did you get the idea that ads are the only malicious web pages our there?

I recommend you take another look at AdBlock; it's much more than just an ad blocker. I have a bunch of filters in there for known malicious path fragments (including things like invoice.php and the like) -- it's a great way to prevent your browser from loading uris you never want to see.
Most people just "set and forget" AdBlock Plus, but there's a lot more you can do with it, such as blocking malicious sites or malicious site content, based on heuristics and regex substrings. I believe there's even a blocklist you can subscribe to that's all about the malicious stuff, instead of just about ads.

If you click on the widget and select "Open Blockable Items" on a malicious page, you'll get a listing of all items loaded for the page, and you can block any of them from loading. So for example, i

Re:security enhancements?

[Obfuscant]

as you've obviously got an axe to grind

My only axe to grind is with someone who treats me like an idiot because I don't think I should have to write an add-on to do something that used to be a simple checkbox menu item. Someone who thinks THEIR solution to a problem they've never come across is so much better.

The JS toggle in settings is global. If you have multiple tabs open, it gets turned off for ALL tabs, not just the malicious page.

Do'h. I know that. So what? Once you get rid of the malicious page that you can't get away from while js is active, TURN JAVASCRIPT BACK ON. It really is that simple. Three simple steps: 1. Turn js off. 2. Escape the malicious page. 3. Turn js on.

If some other webpage cannot survive with javascript off for ten seconds and you may lose so much precious data because of it, just imagine how much precious data you'll lose when you have to kill the browser and reload the page from scratch.

But then on the other side, loading a banking page in the same browser as a potentially untrusted page at the same time isn't really a good idea in the first place.

You make it sound like I'm saying I go visit my bank and then decide to go look at malicious websites just for fun. That demonstrates a complete lack of comprehension of the problem and is patently insulting to boot. You're the one who brought up loading banking pages after a malicious web page gets control. I told you how you solve the incredibly difficult problem of having a banking page that needs js -- by simply not disabling js when you go there.

This global toggle wasn't an issue back when it existed, as web pages would load their JS on load, and that would be that -- so you'd just turn JS off, reload the malicious page,

Now I know you're trolling. Why the fuck would I reload a malicious page once I've managed to get away from it? The goal is NOT to be there at all, not to see what it looks like without javascript enabled. But then, you've said you've never been on one, so you don't know.

And my copy of firefox takes as long to close and re-open like this as navigating to the Prefs/Options and toggling JS would take.

I understand. You got yours. A feature THAT YOU WOULDN'T USE ANYWAY cannot be tolerated because ... I don't know, because you might lose control of your own mouse and wind up using it and not know why all your favorite websites no longer work like you want them to? You think that it should be impossible to have a simple option to do something simple and you want to force others to create an add-on. Your machine and network connection is fast enough to reload twenty or thirty tabs so killing the browser and hoping you uncheck the right miscreant if/when you get offered the chance is the only option anyone needs.

And I get that you think other people are too stupid to be able to manage a simple checkbox to turn javascript off. You make that clear when you talk about deliberately going to malicious websites while I'm doing my banking ("But then on the other side, loading a banking page in the same browser as a potentially untrusted page at the same time isn't really a good idea in the first place.") or how I want to reload the malicious web page I've just managed to get away from. Stop treating other people like idiots because they want an option PUT BACK (not created, just put back) that you don't intend on using.

Every reason you have for not allowing a simple option to disable javascript boils down to two: it might break some web page if javascript isn't on, and nobody could be smart enough to turn javascript back on when going to such a page. To the first, boo friken hoo, and to the second, <expletive deleted>.

Re:security enhancements?

[Em Adespoton]

OK; I said I wouldn't respond again, but I can see that you're definitely reading more into a number of my statements than I was putting there... especially the bit about the banking -- I was implying that intelligent people (including you) wouldn't be doing that in the first place, so this isn't really an issue for you, and the checkbox method would work. Someone admitting you have a point usually isn't calling into question your intelligence.

And your conclusions as to the points I was making are way off. I'll let you re-read them without assuming that my comments are an attack on your intelligence, and you can figure out what I was actually saying. The problem is that the underlying architecture has changed such that "putting back" the feature would cause it to behave differently than it had before it was removed. It has nothing to do with whether people can handle making the decision or not.

Stop and Reload

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they move the Stop and Reload button back out of the address bar to where it was before? What a stupid change in UI - who's idea was this?

Sha1 signed DSL is now a gray triangle

[Anonymous Coward]

Users no longer see a padlock on sha1 DSL. They beat Google to production with this.

ARGH! They removed -remote!!

[Mike Van Pelt]

Dang. I use this a lot.

Crap. Crapity crapity crapity crap.

Re:ARGH! They removed -remote!!

[Mike Van Pelt]

Never mind... firefox -new-tab www.mozilla.org apparently works like firefox -remote "openURL(www.mozilla.org, new-tab)" used to. (At least, for my use case.)

Oh, awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

So what new bloat is included in this version and what do I need to do to turn it off??

Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

What in the hell is Firefox Hello and how do I get rid of it.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello is just an interface for the HTML5 WebRTC standard. To disable this HTML5 spec behaviour go to

about:config?filter=media.peerconnection.enabled
 
and double-click that pref line to change the value to false.

You're welcome.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps a bit extreme way to get rid of a useless button.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't just get rid of the button, Mr Pessimism. It disables the browser from even attempting peer media connections at all (it's in the name!). Just because you can't see the button on the toolbar does not mean it isn't running, just in case you change your mind or use the option from the dropdown menu.

Re:Hello

[Michalson]

Using this setting is more then just removing a button. WebRTC allows a number of privileged network commands to be run (with very poor protection against misuse), including one that can be exploited to enumerate of all your network end points. That means a web page can see your internal network addresses (for example your intranet IP address and any secondary or virtual interfaces). This can even reach behind a VPN or TOR connection, defeating just about any IP privacy guard.

If you have WebRTC enabled (it is by default in Chrome and FireFox) you can visit this demo by Daniel Roesler which runs some WebRTC code to get your IP address(es). If you are on a VPN you'll notice that it can sniff your real IP address, and if you have multiple network connectors (such as if you run developer virtual machines or servers) you'll see those segments too.

https://diafygi.github.io/webrtc-ips/

Apache has mod_spdy

[dwheeler]

I agree that Apache web server support is vital if HTTP/2 is to get much use. That said, the mod_spdy plug-in for Apache supports SPDY, and has been accepted into Apache trunk. See: http://googledevelopers.blogsp... https://svn.apache.org/viewvc/...

Since HTTP/2 is based on SPDY, it seems likely that this plug-in will be tweaked to support HTTP/2. That said, I suspect the Apache Foundation would say something like, "patches welcome".

It's there for a reason.

[westlake]

WHY IS THIS IN A BROWSER AT ALL?!!!
I know the answer to that last one: because VOIP is part of the increasingly bloated and useless HTML 5 spec and this uses the new HTML 5 VOIP junk.

The short answer is that in an increasingly mobile, device and app-oriented world, the geek's plain vanilla web browser is well on the road towards extinction.

It comes down to a choice: If the geek wants the "open web" and not the "walled garden," the web browser must have all the functionality of the app world, including VoIP,

Re:It's there for a reason.

[ravenlord_hun]

Doing everything from Firefox is just settling into another walled garden. Try again.

Re:It's there for a reason.

[gbjbaanb]

not if its a walled garden that all the browsers (and W3C) specify and support. Then its a club that you can join if you like.... or go back to sitting on the steps outside whining at passersby, who don't really care.

I think you can generally blame Google for this, and I think one day they will wall off their part (in a Microsoft-eque de-facto standard) and then we'll be really unhappy with the internet.

Re:It's there for a reason.

[ravenlord_hun]

Not even relatively simple CSS rules work uniformly across browsers. What makes you think they'll properly handle VOIP calls? I'd bet my hat that a Firefox user will more than likely need to call another Firefox user to not run into issues.

Firewall through the Firewall?

[davidshewitt]

I updated Firefox on my windows machine and the Windows firewall dialog popped up and asked me to allow Firefox. I declined it. but WTF?! Why would a browser need to open up ports? This seems like quite a security risk. Anyone else seen this?

Re:Firewall through the Firewall?

[rsmith-mac]

WebRTC or Firefox Hello, perhaps?

Re:Firewall through the Firewall?

[Dagger2]

Nope. Bug 1054959: it's searching your network for Roku or Chromecast devices so you can fling videos and tabs to them.

Re:Firewall through the Firewall?

[MobyDisk]

Why would this require opening a port? I skimmed through the bug and didn't even find a mention of opening ports. Is this part of the discovery protocol for Roku or Chromecast?

Re:Firewall through the Firewall?

[Dagger2]

Yeah, it looks like the protocol involves sending a UDP packet to 239.255.255.250 port 1900, and waiting for any devices to send a packet back. The return packets will come from the devices' unicast address rather than the discovery multicast address, so you can't rely on normal state tracking to let the return packets in automatically.

The bugs are a bit convoluted, because there's a lot of them and this code originally landed for Mobile before being ported to desktop. There's Bug 1090535... the actual discovery code lives in SimpleServiceDiscovery.jsm.

The tabs

[Hognoxious]

Less of the trivial nonsense. What we all want to know is how round the tabs are.

undoing accidental mod

[Anonymous Coward]

undoing accidental mod

/. IS worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes it is. Instead of just answering the guy's question, the slashtards just had to use the good ol smartassed LMGTFY.

built-in PDF viewer is disabled

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox Hello ("video and voice calls directly from the browser!") is what they were working on?! Please, gimme a break. I updated this morning, and the *built-in PDF viewer* is disabled in FF 36. So today it's easier for me to make a video call than display a PDF document in my browser.

What about making it more stable?

[Blain]

And leaving the new features to the extension-writers? Isn't that what this was supposed to be, back in the days of Phoenix?