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Firefox 39 Released, Bringing Security Improvements and Social Sharing
An anonymous reader writes: Today Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 39.0, which brings an number of minor improvements to the open source browser. (Full release notes.) They've integrated Firefox Share with Firefox Hello, which means that users will be able to open video calls through links sent over social media. Internally, the browser dropped support for the insecure SSLv3 and disabled use of RC4 except where explicitly whitelisted. The SafeBrowsing malware detection now works for downloads on OS X and Linux. (Full list of security changes.) The Mac OS X version of Firefox is now running Project Silk, which makes animations and scrolling noticeably smoother. Developers now have access to the powerful Fetch API, which should provide a better interface for grabbing things over a network.
I already abandoned ship for Palemoon after they changed the search bar.
Installed Chrome recently because EVERY BLOODY STUPID TAB I open in Firefox stalls the entire browser for eternity. And that includes Slashdot tabs.
I know that a lot of it is because everyone+dog feels obliged to dump 3.5GB of unwanted slop from other sites on my client for every page visited/updated - and that's AFTER the blockers have whittled it down.
But Chrome at least lets me read stuff almost as soon as the page renders.
This was exactly the reason that gave the final push to ditch Firefox for me as well. Seriously, how can a page that's seen by millions of people everyday - Amazon - bring Firefox to a crawl and the devs instead of fixing the problem keep adding video chat to the bloated thing? It's just insane.
Installed Chrome recently because EVERY BLOODY STUPID TAB I open in Firefox stalls the entire browser for eternity. And that includes Slashdot tabs.
Not having that problem here. It's Iceweasel but it should behave identically to Firefox. Lots of extensions. A five year old CPU and only 4GB of RAM. Two instances open (in different desktops) each with about a dozen tabs open. No freezes - ever.
Do you have Ad-block enabled? NoScript? (I find those two extensions tend to actually speed Firefox/Iceweasel up on many sites).
Have you tried Qupzilla?
Chrome (and Chromium) seem to be a bit quicker but not enough that I want to give up all the extensions I use.
Don't know how I feel about social sharing built-in - if I can't see it or notice it I probably don't care (I'll wait and see).
Here we go, the usual slashdot moan-fest when there's any Firefox news.
You know what, guys? Get over it.
Let's step back and look at the available browsers, shall we?
* Chrome: Google are getting more and more hungry for your personal data. If you trust them with it, use Chrome. I don't. Oh, and judging by the number of sites I'm seeing now that say "this site works best in Chrome", it looks like we might be heading back to the bad old days of the browser wars. Devs, please stop doing this: I for one do not want to be forced to use Chrome just because you happen to like it's new shiny features.
* IE/Edge: Sure. Actually, it's a decent browser. But are you ready to forgive the past? No? I thought not. This is slashdot, after all. And yes, they're probably after your personal data too.
* Safari: Yeah, right. You're using Safari are you? Wake me up when Apple starts actually doing some dev work on it again.
* Opera: Hahahahahaha. Oh, sorry. Is Opera still a thing?
* Firefox: Aparently, despite all the above, everyone still wants to hate Firefox. Oh well.
I won't be going back to Firefox until they have proper threading. I wish I could, I've tried a few times, but it just bogs down so much and so quickly if you open a bunch of tabs. No problem in Chrome. I used it for something like ten years before I finally tried Chrome and was blown away by the speed difference. Why are the working on this other stuff when such a fundamental problem, a problem they've acknowledged and worked on some, remains? I know it's hard to fix in such a complex codebase, but at least from my experience and what I've heard from others, it's a crucial issue affecting whether people use Firefox or not.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
the browser dropped support for the insecure SSLv3
**fake gripe mode engaged**
Oh great, now I have to have at least one machine on my network with an older web browser so I can manage those older network devices that still use SSL3- or other-broken-security-protocol-based web-management.
Now maybe my company's bean-counters will understand when I say "it's time to replace that 5-year-old photocopier/scanner/printer since we can't simultaneously run the monthly usage reports and keep our computers as secure as we would like."
**end fake gripe mode** ...but seriously...
This (removing support for broken protocols) is a good thing, in that it will make sure that all the computers in my business that do NOT need to run those billing reports are up-to-date with respect to security. I can keep my eye on the one machine (which I will likely re-build as a VM) that needs to have a less-than-secure web browser and make sure that nobody uses that web browser for anything except running these reports. There isn't really any need to replace this copier as long as the cost to the business of keeping that one computer with the old web browser up and secure is close enough to zero to be mere "noise" in the budget, which it is, at least for now.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.