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Firefox 42 Arrives With Tracking Protection, Tab Audio Indicators
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 42 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Notable additions to the browser include tracking protection, tab audio indicators, and background link opening on Android. The new private browsing mode goes further than just not saving your browsing history (read: porn sites) — the added tracking protection means Firefox also blocks website elements (ads, analytics trackers, and social share buttons) that could track you while you're surfing the web, and it works on all four platforms. The feature is almost like a built-in ad blocker, though it's really closer to browser add-ons like Ghostery and Privacy Badger because ads that don't track you are allowed through.
It looks like the current marketshare is under 12% and in a decline.
"Notable additions to the browser..."
Stop adding shit!
The builds are available for anyone in the know. Just not yet directed from download page.
Waiting on partner before it gets publicised.
Seriously, this is becoming a major problem. It's not even funny. If I go to cnn.com, it doesn't mean I want to WATCH cnn. If I wanted that, I'd turn on the fucking TV.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/... release notes for the nerds.
now if mozilla could only remove the targeted advertisement feature, the video chat, and firefox sync we'd be getting somewhere. Firefox used to have a code of ethics and 10 user rights, but those went right out the window once that sweet sweet Google cash started rolling in.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I find these stats to be more in line with what I'm seeing with many of my websites. The 12% you mention is high for Firefox. It's most likely closer to only 8%.
But you are correct, Firefox's market share does continue to decline month after month, with no end in sight.
My question is, when the fuck will Mozilla realize that everything they've done since Firefox 4 has been universally disliked?
I mean, how much further does Firefox's market share have to decline? Does it need to hit 5%? Or 1%? Or are they just going to drive head-on into 0%?
Mozilla totally missed the boat on mobile. Firefox for Android is universally disliked, and has at most 0.1% (yes, that's a fraction of 1%!) of the browser market. Chrome for Android has over 15%, and iOS Safari has over 5%.
Mozilla has repeatedly ignored what users have wanted for Firefox on the desktop. Despite a huge outcry from the community, all we've gotten is one unwanted change after another. Mozilla trashed Firefox's UI. They trashed Firefox's usability. They put ads into Firefox. They forced in totally unwanted and unnecessary social media integration. They still haven't done much to improve Firefox's remarkably slow performance or its excessively high resource usage.
Desktop Firefox is the only product that Mozilla offers that even has a small number of users. Since they abandoned Thunderbird, we've seen that gradually become avoided by users. None of Mozilla's other efforts have seen much success. Persona is a failure. Servo is perpetually going nowhere. Rust took forever to get to 1.0, and now that C++14 is out and is better there is no need for Rust. Let's Encrypt has been taking forever. Firefox OS has gotten some of the most scathing software reviews ever seen, and is seeing no uptake.
With its continually dropping share of the market, at some point soon Firefox is going to become completely irrelevant. It's close enough, as it is. Once that finally happens, Mozilla's influence will evaporate. The small number of remaining Firefox users are the only thing keeping Mozilla even remotely relevant. When Firefox's market share percentage is measured on one finger, nobody will care what Mozilla and its handful of users will think about the direction that the web is taking.
The saddest thing about all of this is that it's something that Mozilla has done to itself! It wasn't Microsoft, or Google, or Apple, or Opera, or anyone else who destroyed Firefox. It was Mozilla, and Mozilla alone! Even Firefox's users can't be blamed, because they did what they could and protested each and every awful change that Mozilla has forced. It's all so goddamn unnecessary!
No kidding it continues to decline. There's two main reasons:
1. Go to google.com and you det an advert for chrome. So, the world's largest advertiser it heavily avertising on one of the highest traffic sites in the world.
2. Chrome is installed on the majority of mobile devices, and that's now a HUGE segment, and hardly anyone seems to install a better browser on their phone.
I'm inclined to say the latter is more important. If you look at the stats on wikipedia, the decline of firefox mirrors the rise in mobile devices, not the rise in chrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, massive advertising campaign and aggressive bundling from one of the largest companies in the world? What chance do they stand?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Instead of linking to blogspam, why not link to the actual release notes?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/42.0/releasenotes/
The tracking protection only appears to work in Private Windows. It should work by default if you want it to, with or without Private Windows. I have NO interest in being tracked regardless of mode unless I opt-in to such tracking. (can't imagine me doing that but I should control the option)
That would be a more valuable feature to me. There are times when I start firefox and I know there is a tab that is going haywire but I can't figure out which one it is...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Silly timothy, that's not how you use porn sites!
Fight for your bitcoins!
Back to 'vi' and editing directly the config.xml.
The new version still has the same choices for updates as always:
So, yes, it comes with optional forced updates. You can either set your preferences or continue living in the past as you wish.
Surprisingly fairly easy to use the new No Tracking windows.
That given, I should warn you that your actual keyboard, mouse controller, and CPU GPU are all directly accessible by the NSA GCHQ CSES and all the other p3rvs.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
None of my plugins are dead, and my old add-ons appear to all be working, too. That's really important to me, because the only reason I use Firefox is for the value added by the add-ons, especially NoScript, Ghostery, PrivacyBadger, AdBlock, and FlashBlock. It seems like Mozilla has finally figured out how to stop changing the add-on API with every damn release, for which I am very grateful. I used to have to wait a long time to find out which of my old extensions would need upgrading before updating Firefox. Or I'd spend a day editing a handful of XPI files to change the supported version numbers, because the changes were never actually dependent on the app version. But it's all fixed now, so that makes me happy.
There's only one toolbar button you'll really want to get rid of, some stupid "share" button shaped like a paper airplane.
One piece of shit they've left in is the broken UI idea that tabs should be above the toolbars and bookmarks. Tabs represent windows and should be associated to the display window itself, not to the container. It's one of those usability factors that makes Chrome suck so bad, yet here comes Mozilla to copy someone else's stupidity. Sigh.
John
Is there another browser that can be configured like FF with the Tree-Style tabs add-on? I've gotten so used to having the tabs along the left side of the browser, that I can't stand using a browser with them across the top. I tend to have a lot of windows open, 14 at the moment. And currently have 7 to 22 tabs open in each window. If I'm researching something, that number can go up more. When the number of tabs gets past 8 or so, it's too difficult to figure out what's in them if they are across the top. I can resize them to be wider if they are along the side.
I've looked at PaleMoon, but it won't work with that add-on, and I couldn't find one that worked. Chrome also doesn't seem to allow for it, or at least the last time I looked. Nor do any of the other dozen or so browsers I've tried.
Thanks in advance.
How do you make money to keep the project going? Well, you have to have some give and take (*cough* yahoo default search engine *cough*).
Firefox has ~10% market share and is not installed as a default in Windows, IOS, OSX, or Android. Google does not recommend it every time you run a search on a non Chrome browser either. 10% is pretty damn good all things considered.
The doom and gloom claim is simply wrong. Sure, they may leverage some technology better than others but moving to the point it's not relevant? Last I checked, Steve Balmer as not running them into the ground too. (sorry, easy MS shot and I took it)
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It should be a plugin. I don't want it, don't need it, and it gets in my way because it's on by default. I've deactivated it on three systems this week alone.
That's exactly why it should be available to you as a plugin.
Firefox was created because Mozilla (now seamonkey) was too bloated. The stated design philosophy of FF was that a browser should browse the web, and have no other features except as provided by way of rich plugin support.
I don't run FF without SDC and Noscript. But I wouldn't dream of inflicting my needs on everyone else who runs the browser... apparently the devs of sync, pocket and hello feel differently.
Strange, I see it just the other way. I believe the address bar belongs to the tab that's opened thus the tabs should be above it, the tool bar is so small it resides right of the address bar and again, it's main functions are for me on the active site/tab.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
One piece of shit they've left in is the broken UI idea that tabs should be above the toolbars and bookmarks.
Why is that a broken idea? I only have one tool bar, and it contains the address bar and search box, along with the adblock pro, ghostery, etc. All of those functions are applicable to the currently displayed tab; the little number in ghostery for example is how many things were blocked in the current tab. The address bar is the address of the current tab, etc.
Even the home button and bookmarks are navigation controls that apply to the current tab. (although multi-tab bookmarks are an exception to that -- but I don't use those.)
Really the ONLY things that don't really semantically belong "inside the tab" is the settings hamburger menu and the the downloads button. But wasting space above the tabs for just those two items is silly; and I don't object them in the tab.
I certainly do not think tabs below the address bar makes any real sense at all. So why do you think its "broken"?
There are lots of things I think are broken, but that's not one of them.
Probably not too many extensions to worry about until FireFox 44 - that is where the current usage of "let" and "const" will be deprecated. That change breaks almost everything. Any extension that doesn't get an update for FF44 will (likely) no longer work --- Most FF extensions that I've unpacked use least one if not dozens of let's and const's. I had to downgrade Nightly to 44.0a1 (2015-10-05) within the last three weeks --- I haven't tested a more recently Nightly since almost none of my "active" extensions have gotten an update to resolve that issue yet.
I wonder how well the tracking protection really works.
Just looking at the huge amounts of ways that your browser can be fingerprinted - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Finge... - it seems virtually impossible. To start with they already have your IP and there's about a dozen other standard parameters the uniquely identify you. Then there's some crazy shit, like checking system clock time skew.
> yeah who needs security and compatibility?
I dunno, why not ask every user of Windows who thought the same thing about Window Updates, and suddenly discovered a 4GB download forcedon them for an O/S they don't want?