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

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

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.

11 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Don't forget Firefox Hello! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...)

    1. Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello! by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

    2. Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello! by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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! :) ]

    3. Re:Don't forget Firefox Hello! by dns_server · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  2. I've posted this 1312 times by AbRASiON · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:I've posted this 1312 times by AFCArchvile · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      "Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
    2. Re:I've posted this 1312 times by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  3. Re:ARGH! They removed -remote!! by Mike+Van+Pelt · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.)

  4. Re:Hello by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Firewall through the Firewall? by davidshewitt · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?

  6. Re:What about the 87% of 'sad' feedback reports? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.