Experimental Firefox Feature Lets You Use Multiple Identities While Surfing the Web (techcrunch.com)

Firefox web browser has a new experimental feature that allows a user to segregate their online identities and sign in into multiple mail or social media accounts side-by-side without having to use multiple browsers. From a TechCrunch report: This new "container tab" feature, which is now available in the unstable Nightly Firefox release channel, provides you with four default identities (personal, work, shopping, and banking) with their own stores for cookies, IndexedDB data store, local storage and caches. In practice, this means you can surf Amazon without ads for products you may have looked at following you around the web when you switch over to your work persona. As the Firefox team notes, the idea behind this feature isn't new, but nobody has figured out how to best present this new tool to users.

Comments

Firefox profiles

[Anonymous Coward]

just use those.

Re:Firefox profiles

[TemporalBeing]

(Firefox profiles) just use those.

This is using the profiles, just differently and oriented around tabs instead of user-launched processes.

Re: Firefox profiles

[ArmoredDragon]

Why not just have a per-site identity? In other words, tracking cookies become worthless because they can't follow you from site to site. And then within each site, allow multiple identities if desired (think private browsing, only data is retained if you desire it.)

Re: Firefox profiles

[surmak]

Yes. That would be awesome. You might need to add in the ability to merge side identities, or temporarily switch a tab to the identity of another site for those cases where you need to do so.

Re: Firefox profiles

[corychristison]

In other words, tracking cookies become worthless because they can't follow you from site to site

This effectively does that... just in a tab. Which is a lot easier for the average user to understand.

one minor adjustment

[Anonymous Coward]

As the Firefox team notes, the idea behind this feature isn't new, but nobody has figured out how to best present this new tool to users while maintaining the ability to track the user's online presence across all platforms .

ftfy

CAPTCHA: truest

Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably best not to have a porn profile, but to have a separate computer away from any computer used for banking.

Re:Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps your porn profile is used as your bank's secondary verification

This long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe its just me, but why didn't we have this feature built into browsers long ago?

Re:This long?

[XXongo]

Yes, this sounds really useful. I don't necessarily want all the sites I visit to know all the others.

Re:This long?

[cfalcon]

If you want this now, you can have it. Simply have more than one profile, and tell the browser to start with a new instance using the new profile. This lets you make shortcuts / launchers / whatever that can be entirely separate, even if using the same browser.

For instance, I have two launchers for pale moon, one for general browsing, and another for email:

The first is the default with the "-new-instance" flag:
palemoon %u -new-instance
The second specifies a different profile:
palemoon -profile "/home/cfalcon/.moonchild productions/email_only" -new-instance

You can make as many of these as you like, and the action of "making a new profile" is just mkdir, and then point it to the new directory. You can also set a different theme in each profile, allowing you to know at a glance what is what.

Chrome has a similar feature:
google-chrome --profile-directory=(whatever)

And firefox even has a profile manager:
https://developer.mozilla.org/...

The topic of the article is probably a way to make this easier. The method will definitely be less secure to some degree, but as long as they don't remove the existing standard way of doing things, it will improve privacy for people who can't be arsed to set it up the current way.

Re:This long?

[Alumoi]

Ever heard of Selfdestructing cookies?

Re: This long?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also put the DIMMs in the microwave and drill through the hard drives, which is effective also. Be careful where you hide your CD-ROMs though...

Simple

[bazmail]

Every window should be using a fresh cookie store/indexdb. All tabs on a particular window would share these. Remove ability to strip tabs out into new windows.
No need to explain anything to grandma users etc whats happening. It just works.

Re:Simple

[dmomo]

That would suck for people who use a multi-monitor workflow, or sites that legitimately make use of new-window / popups. Grandpa would sure have trouble grasping why it just DIDN'T work.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean by a fresh cookie store/indexdb for every window? When I close a window, is that profile gone forever? If not, how does it know which profile to use when I open a new window? Do I have to manually select a profile each time I open a window? If this is the case, then two windows can presumably use the same profile (so not *every* window has its own profile). What about sites that make legitimate use of opening new windows? What if I simply don't want the clutter of multiple Firefox windows? That is, after all, why tabbed browsing came about in the first place.

Further, the per-tab profile allows you to essentially get per-window profile if you want it: simply open your "personal" window, your "business" window, and your "porn" window, then make the first tab opened in each correspond to the correct profile. Presto, you've got a "personal" window, a "business" window, and a "porn" window.

Re: Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Fix the popup blocker IT DOES NOT WORK.
Salt the browser profile, so instead of the correct res being reported, a representative resolution is reported instead. Instead of all the fonts being reported, the common subset is reported instead.

Re: Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, probing for fonts was a stupid idea in the first place. There should be 3 font options: mono, sans, and serif. The browser should ship pleasant defaults and if the user wants everything to look like pretentious shit, the user can change it to papyrus.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Pop-ups need to die

Re:Simple

[thegarbz]

No. Lots of people like different things going on in the same Window. Personally I like the IE approach (I just threw up in my mouth but l'll deal with that shortly), where windows are colour grouped by opening additional tabs.

That way I can use my separate identity with e.g. Facebook and Twitter but the cookies and identities follow the "open in new tab" action but don't leak to other tabs in the same browser.

Now where's my mouthwash.

Nice!

[ADRA]

Now I can troll on Slashdot without opening multiple browsers! This will increase my net comment trolling and 'cute animal liking' productivity at least 100%..

Re: Nice!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to meet you and have lots of gay buttsex together. When are you available for this?

Arguing with myself on /.

[jfdavis668]

Great! That will make it much easier to have an argument with myself on /., or boast the score on my own posts.

Re:Arguing with myself on /.

[grantham]

No it won't..

Re:Arguing with myself on /.

[jfdavis668]

Oh, yes it will...

Astro-turfers delight?

[DoomHaven]

Won't this feature just be mainly used by astro-turfers to better use their sock-puppet accounts?

Re:Astro-turfers delight?

[cfalcon]

No, it will not.

Re:Astro-turfers delight?

[DoomHaven]

Well, I guess you make an irrefutable argument.

Re:Astro-turfers delight?

[cfalcon]

Right now, you can easily create any number of profiles, and you can automate them with scripting if you are a weapons-grade shill. Someone who keeps their site as shillfree as possible has additional tools, such as looking at the IP and browser-sent metadata. Someone who doesn't do that is already helpless before existing tech.

So it doesn't change the game in that department at all, nor does it escalate some fight. This is just to make your life easier. It doesn't make the life of sock puppeteers easier.

Re:Astro-turfers delight?

[DoomHaven]

Thank you for backing up your statement with information!

This won't protect against Fingerprinting.

[dmomo]

And it doesn't claim to (this is mentioned in TFA). If privacy and security are concerns, don't consider this feature. It's a great way to help companies to correlate your online identities. With browser finger-printing, it wouldn't be too tricky for them to merge your online activity.

However, what if this were to be extended so that each contextual container allowed it's own settings / plugins / configuration / auto-complete / history data? This would at least make it equivalent to using different browsers with the convenience of sharing a tabbed interface.

Re:This won't protect against Fingerprinting.

[Anonymous Coward]

This won't help fingerprinters. They already know you because of the other problems in modern browsers. All this will do is give you a tiny bit more control over sites that don't yet use fingerprinting techniques.

How about...

[b0bby]

I'd like to see a feature that lets me go more than a day or two without having to restart FF because it can't resolve a DNS address, while Chrome and even IE have no such problem.
Now get off my lawn with your experimental features!

Why only 4?

[Okian Warrior]

I'm not a usability expert by any means, so can anyone tell me why only four identities?

That seems pretty limiting to me, it should be the end user's choice how many identities to use.

Why not something simple like each *window* have separate data that's shared between tabs? Then you don't have any UI changes or usability problems.

Or is "it just works" an Apple patent or something?

Re:Why only 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe they meant it ships with 4 predefined identities, and you can add/delete/edit them as you want.

Re:Why only 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want to read the summary a bit closer. It provides you with four *default* identities; you can create your own additional identities if you wish.

Re:Why only 4?

[vux984]

I'm not a usability expert by any means, so can anyone tell me why only four identities? That seems pretty limiting to me, it should be the end user's choice how many identities to use.

The fact that it comes with four doesn't automatically imply that advanced users can't define additional ones, or customize the list.

Even if it is limited to four, the fact that an experimental feature in nightly lacks that configurability doesn't imply that if it makes it to release it would still hard limited to four.

In other words, its good feedback, but its a bit early to "fail" the feature over it.

PS it sounds like its actually currently 5, the four named containers plus the 'default' container.

Why not something simple like each *window* have separate data that's shared between tabs? Then you don't have any UI changes or usability problems.

Some websites including banks, financial trading platforms, government tax authorities, insurance sites, business CRM/CMS sites... SalesForce and SAP and other line of business web apps come to mind. That would break all of them them.

Or is "it just works" an Apple patent or something?

No, but a prerequisite for 'it just works' is that it has to actually works.

Re:Why only 4?

[dmomo]

"Why not something simple like each *window* have separate data that's shared between tabs? Then you don't have any UI changes or usability problems."

That could be confusing for people who WANT multiple windows that share sessions. I use a multi-monitor workflow, for instance. Some sites use new windows (often as popups) as part of their functionality.

Re:Why only 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be surprised if 4 is a hard limit. I am assuming that Mozilla is using the basic architecture that Firefox has had since day 1 (given that Mozilla had it before) of starting it using different profiles. As it is, you can define any number of profiles. In the Mozilla days, you could easily switch profiles from the menu. Since Firefox, you need to do that from the command line. But basically, if this only taps into that existing architecture and puts it back in the menu, then the same Profile Manager should be able to let you define any number of containers. Given the fact that Firefox has ALWAYS allowed you to defined multiple profiles that you can use simultaneously, I'd be disappointed if they made this "new" feature less capable than the one my current version of Firefox already boasts.

Of course, it may also be that this is separated from the current implementation in that they might share a common pool of extensions. But if that is the case, I'm not sure about the implications regarding separation of information between containers. It's certainly pretty separate between profiles.

Re:Why only 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is "it just works" an Apple patent or something?

Definitely not. This Mac is the worst piece of garbage I've ever owned among computers.

Different but not better?

[petes_PoV]

multiple mail or social media accounts side-by-side without having to use multiple browsers

I like having (to use) multiple bowsers for this. It means I can have a different desktop icon for each one. Want to do "general purpose" surfing? use the default. Want to log in to FB? Use a firefox that has a different database, history, cookie location and remembered passwords - not quite a sandbox, but good enough.

And so it goes on. It is quite easy and sounds more straightforward than that stuff about containers.

Re:Different but not better?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is likely to be a way to set up separate desktop icons to launch instances of Firefox using a specific identity if you so wish. I can see your point about the more complete segregation when using separate browsers, but personally I'd consider it messy doing it your way. As the summary says, the different identities do have separate cookie stores, caches etc, so it sounds to me like they'd be pretty close to being as good as using separate browsers.

Re:Different but not better?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is likely to be a way to set up separate desktop icons to launch instances of Firefox using a specific identity if you so wish.

Right-click
properties
Shortcut tab
"Change Icon" button

Exact details will differ between civilized OSes. Uncivilized OSes may have this association stored in home/ui/dsktp/cns/lk as what appears to be a plaintext file but mixes plaintext and binary flag characters without warning.

Re:Different but not better?

[GargamelSpaceman]

You could still do that with commandline options that specify a profile.

What I do with firefox is I have different profiles and select one using the profile manager.

Then I have different skins for each profile, so I don't accidentally type something into the wrong window and embarass myself. I have a 'red profile' for shitposting ( actually Samurai Jack themed ) and a green profile ( green for money ) that I use my real name on, and do banking and buying stuff. My red profile doesn't get my credit card number or my name.

This has been needed for a long time

[brwski]

Cookies, etc., should never be able to see each other without permission. Let's hope this trend continues.

Re:This has been needed for a long time

[dmomo]

What trend are you talking about? How do cookies see each other? Cookies for a given domain are meant to be given to the server by the browser along with an http request. That domain is allowed to set cookies upon an http response. This is how it works now and has worked for quite some time.

Re:This has been needed for a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

In Fact I'd like to see a 'random' mode where artificial or garbage cookies are used instead of 'real' ones.....

Re:This has been needed for a long time

[ChadL]

Which is why domains all include www.example.com/web_beacon.png at the bottom; then they contract with example.com to get a list of what other domains you have visited.
Because this feature seperates them the work example.com cookie won't be shared with the Slashdot example.com cookie.
Some browsers allow disabling 3rd party cookies, but that tends to cause issues with SSO and isn't the general default. I currently use self-destructing cookies which causes cookies out-of-scope to vanish, which also solves this issue.

Tracking

[tomhath]

It would have made tracking you a bit more difficult. They must have finally worked it out with Google and Facebook.

Re:Tracking

[holiggan]

If you want to prevent tracking, on Firefox,Ghostery and uBlock Origin are your friends :)
That and a nice hosts file will keep you out of a lot of trouble :)
This new Firefox feature sounds really sweet, this makes a lot of sense. If all the Operating Systems can support "multiple users", why can't our browsers, in 2016, support segregation of web sessions?
Make the frontier the Window, the browser instance, the tab, I don't care. Just give us the option to have multiple identities when connected and that's a huge step forward.
The "incognito" or "private" mode was a step in the right direction, but that makes the total number of simultaneous identities to 2: the incognito window and the normal one.
I believe this is a good step on the right direction, decoupling the sessions from all the "infrastructure" (cookies ,history, etc.) is the foundation to later add all the customization and segmentation we might want. Again, on any modern OS, you will get your own "partition" of the system configurations (registry or configuration files), so in essence, the browsers must go the route of the OS: enable multiple identities, running segregated on the same machine, without interfering with each other.

Re:Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but Firefox has always had this feature in a sense given the multiple profiles available. I have been using the command line start to firefox for ages using different profiles for each instance to log in to the same service under various identities. I suppose this makes access to this feature that always existed (even before firefox, although it was easier to access without restart in Mozilla). It seems like going back to the good old features rather than implementing a new one.

These multiple profiles are the main reason I have never even considered switching away from Firefox (or at least a Mozilla based browser) as my primary browser.

Re:Tracking

[GargamelSpaceman]

I have firefox set up to start with the profile manager and my family selects their profile when they launch. it's easier for the livingroom TV that we all use ( especially for little ones ) if we don't need to sign in with a password, but can just click our own profile. Also I have a profile for shitposting and a seperate one for doing stuff as myself.

The only annoying thing is the clickbox that asks if you want to not show the profile manager any more that is periliously close to the ok button.

If anyone clicks that, then firefox doesn't show the profilemanager even if you tell it to on the command line unless you manually edit the profiles.ini

I wish they would get rid of the don't show the profile manager checkbox since the profle manager doesn't show anyway unless you explicitly ask for it on the command line ( or by editing the firefox shortcut )

Re:Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

Remove the trailing / from your anchor link

Re:Tracking

[haruchai]

Meant href not anchor

Re:Welcome to Chrome in 2011

[jenningsthecat]

Chrome has had "profiles" since Chrome 16. They do exactly this. not approximately. exactly.

Incorrect. Profiles, (which, BTW, also exist in FF, and have for a long time now), allow one to launch separate instances of the browser, with separate settings, extension, cookies, etc. FF's latest nightlies allow for different profiles within the same browser instance, so you only have to start your browser once to have multiple profiles available simultaneously.

I won't try this new feature, because I abandoned FF proper when they forced Australis on users. But if the feature ever makes its way into Pale Moon, I'll be happy to have it - I make extensive use of profiles, and it would be nice to have them all in one browser instance.

Re: Multiple identities on the most insecure brows

[Anonymous Coward]

Yadda, yadda heaps of ado for nothing. Go back to peddling google/microsoft spyware, you're behind the schedule.

Signed
      Management

uMatrix

[CrashNBrn]

uMatrix (replacement for Ghostery, AdBlock|uBlock, etc) - blocks by default:

All 3rd party cookies.
All 3rd party scripts.
All iFrames.

Re:uMatrix

[mrchaotica]

RequestPolicy Continued - blocks by default:

Literally every 3rd party request, including images (e.g. tracking pixels).

Re:uMatrix

[CrashNBrn]

I used to use Request Policy, it has a generally more user-friendly interface (in the beginning). RPc also has more limitations than uMatrix - you need more rules and more micromanagement with RPc to achieve site-compatibility. So I ran them side by side for a while, until I got the hang of uMatrix, and kept up with RPc on GitHub, but it's development is very slow.

RequestPolicy - even before it was forked was pretty awesome compared to AdBlock and co, but uMatrix just takes it to another level - most general users likely don't care about that level, and will just (primarily) use the standard block lists.

Incognito mode

[NeoXon]

I have been using Incognito mode for quite many years mostly because of having to log in to more than one gmail accounts simultaneously. The only thing that I miss is the ability to have them all in one window in different tabs. But on the other hand having different accounts in different windows can be also considered as a feature, as it greatly helps in separating tabs showing data from the same account. It also enables me not have to push that annoying sign in with a different account link, because it always loads a fresh login page as if I have never been to gmail.com before.

Simultaneous Multiple Personality Disorder?

[mschwanke97402]

Kewl! So, I can, like, flame or troll myself on Slashdot?

Re:Simultaneous Multiple Personality Disorder?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kewl! So, I can, like, flame or troll myself on Slashdot?

maybe someday your mama will let you open more than one app

Re:Simultaneous Multiple Personality Disorder?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you just did. ;-)

Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no secret that Firefox's market share has dropped to almost nothing. The latest browser market share stats show Firefox at maybe 6% to 7% of the market. That's well below desktop Chrome and Chrome for Android, even when both are considered separately. Firefox, across all versions and all platforms, is used only about as much as Opera Mini, or individual versions of browsers like IE 11 and Safari for iOS 9.3.

Of course, Firefox is the only reason Mozilla ever had any relevance.

Yet it's like the Firefox devs have done everything they can to drive away Firefox users. They've forced many unwanted UI changes on Firefox users, while also not improving the performance of Firefox. Hell, they even embedded ads into Firefox itself at one point! As Firefox has tried to poorly imitate Chrome, more and more Firefox users have moved to other browsers. After all, if you're going to get a shitty Chrome-like experience when using Firefox, you might as well just use real Chrome and at least get a shitty experience that's fast and doesn't use as much memory!

The only way I think that Firefox could possibly redeem itself is if the UI was reverted back to a usable state (we're talking Firefox 3.5), and the focus veered hard to privacy. Firefox's salvation could come from providing users the most secure and private browsing experience possible. It should become their main focus.

I don't think they'll ever manage to, say, make a browser that's more lightweight and faster than Chrome. So they might as well at least focus on something they could potentially do, which is make Firefox as impregnable as possible to the online tracking that happens today.

Re: Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. The statistics include both, desktop and mobile, together. Firefox for desktop is doing fine, better than Chrome. But mobile is another story. Since most websites today are viewed from mobile browsers, it changes stats greatly in favor of browsers included with those platforms.

There is no stats about browser installations, but only website hits.

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[mrchaotica]

The only way I think that Firefox could possibly redeem itself is if the UI was reverted back to a usable state (we're talking Firefox 3.5), and the focus veered hard to privacy. Firefox's salvation could come from providing users the most secure and private browsing experience possible. It should become their main focus.

First of all, I completely agree with you about the "veer hard to privacy" idea.

Second, as a user of Phoen^WFirebir^WFirefox since about 0.5, who just lets the thing update instead of trying to customize it extensively (except for installing my favorite extensions, of course), it's been so long since 3.5 that I don't remember what the old UI was like anymore. Could you remind me what was so great about it?

Re: Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can somebody mod down the parent comment please? It's full of bullshit.

There is no stats about browser installations, but only website hits.

What the fuck are you talking about?

It doesn't matter how many fucking browser installations there are if nobody uses them!

I have Firefox installed. But I don't fucking use it because it's shit!

So I'm not a Firefox user, even if I have it installed.

The stats that the parent gave are very relevant.

Here they are in case you can't find them: http://caniuse.com/usage-table

The statistics include both, desktop and mobile, together.

It doesn't fucking matter what device somebody uses to browse the web.

A web user is a web user is a web user.

Firefox for desktop is doing fine, better than Chrome.

Desktop Firefox has about 7% of the market. That's for all versions.

Desktop Chrome 50 alone (yes, just a single version!) has about 20%. So that's about 3 times Firefox's share.

Even Desktop Chrome 49 alone has just over 4%. That means it's comparable to Firefox's total share.

And that's not including all of the users of other versions of Chrome!

Firefox is not doing well on the desktop.

But mobile is another story.

This also does not represent just how awful Firefox for Android is doing.

It has 0.04% of the market! That's even less than half of Blackberry Browser 7's share, which is 0.09%!

Chrome for Android is at 18%.

Since most websites today are viewed from mobile browsers

That's utter bullshit.

It's about 30% mobile and 70% desktop, even today.

Most mobile users use apps, not web sites, and there are still far more desktop users of the web than there are mobile users.

Even then it doesn't matter.

Firefox is getting its ass kicked on both the desktop and mobile.

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[GargamelSpaceman]

Why must I go to palemoon to get 64 bit firefox?

Also, the money they get from Yahoo comes at a price. They are driving away casual users who will be annoyed about 5 times by being herded to Yahoo and then switch browsers rather than remove yahoo from their search list ( I don't hate yahoo, but I end up removing any trace of it to avoid getting it accidentally if yahoo is paying for this, then do they realize it's hurting them? )

Having driven away all their casual users, then why not appeal to savvy elites with privacy and other features that give them some advantage over the proles?

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[arglebargle_xiv]

And that's the strange thing about this: For the first time in I-don't-know-how-many-years, Mozilla are making a Firefox change that's actually useful, and that (I assume) users will appreciate. What's happening? How did this one slip through?

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[Isca]

I always seem to get Mod points on days I don't have anything I really want to give points to.

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need Palemoon to have 64-bit: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/

It's been available for some time: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/12/15/firefox-64-bit-for-windows-available/

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[jez9999]

Second, as a user of Phoen^WFirebir^WFirefox since about 0.5, who just lets the thing update instead of trying to customize it extensively (except for installing my favorite extensions, of course), it's been so long since 3.5 that I don't remember what the old UI was like anymore. Could you remind me what was so great about it?

- Full theming
- Fully customizable buttons and URLbar
- Status bar that buttons could be moved to
- Bookmarks sidebar
- History sidebar
- Tabs on bottom available

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[Vlijmen Fileer]

Precisely the only two things in your list that are actually great, not just visual candy, are I think available in Firefox now:
- Bookmarks sidebar ctrl-b
- History sidebar ctrl-h
Using those all the time.

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[Vlijmen Fileer]

"How did this one slip through?"
Yes, LMAO too.
So unexpected that I was actually immediately wondering about what hidden corporate interest or developer insanity could be involved this time. Because seeing past experience, it must be something like that, right?

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[yuvcifjt]

Wow, what an amazingly ignorant comment.
Where do I start?!

I was going to write a long reply, but I don't think anyone is even reading this post any more, so I won't bother wasting my time.

I will however say that Mozilla has contributed more to the open web than any other company!
Secondly, Mozilla is a tiny non-profit (charitable) organisation, mostly volunteers, and yet people have the audacity to complain and compare to a multi-billion dollar spying corp empire like Google?!

Of course, Firefox is the only reason Mozilla ever had any relevance.

erm, Mozilla championed (along with Opera) the development of the latest web standards, including HTML5, CSS3, and especially Javascript (EMCAScript) which Google so heavily rely upon but never give back to the community.
Secondly, they woke up everyone to the evil tactics of Microsoft to make the web into a proprietary standard (same thing Google is now trying to do after ripping-off the code for Apple's Safari). And Mozilla championed and helped to standard the web and raise awareness of W3C as well as Accessibility standards and developing for all browsers, not just Internet Explorer.

With regards to the UI, it was developed after much research and feedback from users and how they use their browser.
Yes, there's many things I don't like about Australis (the new browser UI), so that's why there's a great extension (Classic Theme) to customise the browser to however you want.

Amazing how idiotic some people are and how few brain cells they have... or just amazingly ignorant unable to see past their own nose.

Re: Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[yuvcifjt]

Chill out troll, you're going to have an aneurysm.

caniuse.com is a pretty rubbish place to get stats,
here, go direct to the source instead: http://gs.statcounter.com/

I'd like to remind you, Firefox is a non-profit charitable organisation with a miniscule amount of funding for how much they have contributed to the open web and privacy!
Remember, they championed web standards compliance and the importance of the W3C and accessibility guidelines at a time when Microsoft wanted to make the web into a proprietary model, a bit like what Google is trying to do now.

And now Mozilla along with Opera are the ones who are championing the latest web standards, especially HTML5, CSS3 and 4, and especially Javascript (EMCAScript) upon which the entire web is built.

I shouldn't need to remind you that Google is a multi-billion dollar spying corp empire who's pumped an enormous amount of marketing power into their reskinned Apple Safari (AppleWebKit) rip-off, and you're comparing goliath to david's little baby kid?!

What I also find amazing is that Microsoft were heavily fined for bundling IE into Windows, but when Google advertises their browser all over Google.com (the window to the web for most people), and bundles Chrome into Android OS or their laptop OS, that's perfectly fine!
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Google is one of the biggest bribers... errr, I mean, "lobbyist" to the US Government?

Wake up retard.

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[yuvcifjt]

Easily fixed using the great Classic Theme Restorer extension, which I've used ever since Australis (new skin) went live.

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[yuvcifjt]

You need to remember that Mozilla is a non-profit charitable organisation which is a miniscule mouse compared to its competition, especially from one of the world's biggest multi-billion dollar spying corp empire Google (who are coincidentally, the biggest bribers ("lobbyist") to the US Government).

Since no one ever donates to Mozilla, how else are their full-time staff and devs supposed to live in a world run by money?!

But you do make a good last point however, which is that since they can't appeal to the masses like the billions Google spends on Chrome adverts, Mozilla could however go down a different direction. But to be fair to Mozilla, they are trying to become more privacy focused, but again, they can only do so much because that's like going against the hand that feeds them!

Re:Firefox needs to veer hard to privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

>noone ever donates to mozilla

I do

Good start, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cookies aren't the only way advertisers identify users. What about adding many of the other pieces (UA string, list of extensions, HTTP_ACCEPT Headers, language support, time zone, etc.)?

I'd like to see the browser randomly change as many of these as possible (don't even make them unique to the same session).

See https://panopticlick.eff.org

They missed one

[esperto]

I think they missed the most important one... Pr0n.
I know the private/incognito mode is for that, but if you gone create default profiles, let's not be prude about it.

Not very useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Most ad networks use much more than cookies & cache to identify you.

Flash cookies, user agent, screen resolution, installed fonts, plugins, etc.

Here's an open source library to do exactly that:

https://github.com/Valve/finge...

Re:Not very useful

[Anonymous Coward]

None of those things are inherently un-spoofable. We're long overdue for a fingerprint killer, maybe this will kick things off.

Good News!

[albinobluerhino]

I'm very happy to see Firefox adding a good feature.

Mozilla is government pressured

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as soon as they take away the ability to spoof time zones in Firefox (45+), they hand you a false sense of ability to be multiple people in one browser.

The scale of "cooperate or we will kill your family or ruin you" right now is epic. Not only is Mozilla given directives by US intelligence agencies, even Debian Linux has FBI employees.

Re: Mozilla is government pressured

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain. Not saying you're wrong - you might be on to something:

    Debian -- Details of package fbi in sid
    https://packages.debian.org â sid â graphics

Re: Mozilla is government pressured

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI feel like they have to have their nose in everything. It is a narcissistic agency. Whereas Debian is open source and you can see the source code at any time, the FBI feel the need to stack the deck in their favor. It lends to the justification of their existence. They are a corrupt agency and have a huge number of international moles throughout their operations.

Given the nature of narcissism and corruption, they are each self-serving their own personal interests. There is no like-minded cohesion among the whole FBI. So what you have are those who assume to themselves "power" in a business sense, misguiding subordinates based on their own personal whims. If a supervisor has a notion that a corporation has an ability to thrive in the US without bowing to the "bureau" they assign agents to get hired into that company. Simply put, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Debian has a large user base. Ubuntu is based on Debian and began as a somewhat third world Linux available in parts of the world where free software is a very good thing. Neither are the best Linux but Debian is the tortoise of the tortoise and many hares. Given the slow release cycle of Debian it has gained a loyal group of users that just hate to have to update all the time.

To your point, Debian is an internationally used OS. Many countries use Debian on what you would call critical operations. The US is one of those countries. It is akin to the Microsoft spyware debacle but being open source it does not have the same ramifications. Having FBI (US Gov) employees working in companies opposing Microsoft's market share is an approach to not only monopolize their preferred spyware in closed source Windows, but to sabotage open source. They play both sides of the field. Example: nobody wants systemd yet there it is.

Too cumbersome for everyday use

[Anonymous Coward]

No need for this unless you're doing nefarious deeds with a fake identity. Either log in to the websites to do your business, or don't use them.

Before Profiles

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Before FireFox had profiles, there was the MultiFox add-on. I used it. I liked it. It was easy to use. Unfortunately, Mozilla made a change that made it impossible for MultiFox to work, claiming the functionality was more properly implemented inside FireFox than as an add-on.

Unfortunately, it's taken far too long for Mozilla to do it.

Re:Before Profiles

[GameboyRMH]

Same here, now I can only have the private window before I have to open another browser.

However I've found that plugins aren't properly isolated across profiles. For example if you have a normal and private window open and temp. allow a site in NoScript in one, the change takes effect in the other. Not good. A fix for this might be more useful than the container tabs.

Why Firefox is falling behind Chrome

[Tony Isaac]

This might be one of the reasons Firefox has been losing market share to Chrome. Chrome has had this feature for some time already, I use it every day to manage my home and work accounts. Even bookmarks are managed separately for each account.

It's good to see Firefox catching up. It's a great browser, I hope they don't stop there!

Re:Why Firefox is falling behind Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome simply doesn't have this feature. Firefox has had addons for years that allow this kind of control, and Chrome doesn't really let you get that far. It does have an incognito mode, which other browsers (including Firefox) adopted many years ago. Contextual identities aren't the same thing, and neither are profiles.

The 'Killer Feature' to bring back FireFox

[Anonymous Coward]

Lord knows how many times ive signed in/out close/restart and restart log in/out back again from various sites - 'private' or not - in an attempt to 'keep things private'. This might just be the 'Killer Feature' I need to keep me using FireFox - yes, I may be the last one here to still use it: last of the Mahicans - instead of going to another browser.

Privacy Badger

[tiagosousa]

Why not just have a per-site identity? In other words, tracking cookies become worthless because they can't follow you from site to site.

You have, in effect, described EFF's Privacy Badger addon. It works heuristically to block cookies from leaking from their original domains, except when told otherwise (some exceptions are included by default -- so-called yellowlist, check out "How does Privacy Badger work?" section). I've been using it for some time and seems to work very well with little breakage. Rarely have to whitelist something.

Re:Privacy Badger

[Burz]

No, the idea is to simply switch the entire context (Mozilla profile ...or meta-profiles) whenever the domain in the location bar changes.

Browsers really should have been designed to have one cache / cookie db / history per visited site. That means referenced third-party content would see something different (a different 'identity') depending on what site you're actually 'at' in the location bar. The only exception would be the browser itself, which could populate the location bar history using all the sub-histories.

Asshat webmasters inflate Firefox stats

[knorthern knight]

There are a lot of asshat webmasters that design websites that play "stupid webmaster tricks", depending on the user agent they sniff out. I use Pale Moon, a Firefox fork. For updates, it tends to revbump the version # by +0.1 when Firefox increments by +1.0.

Net result is that Pale Moon 26.2 is approximately equivalant to Firefox 39 or 43 or whatever it's at now. Go to an asshat website, and it refuses to let you in, whining about an "out-of-date unsupported browser". Yet if you lie to the website, and change the user agent to Firefox 43, it works just fine. I'm sure this happens with various other browsers, too.

Unfortunately, that strategy is self-defeating. The asshat webmasters look at their access logs, and see more Firefox hits and fewer "other browser" hits, which they then use as an excuse to "block all other browsers because they're only a fraction of a percent".

Re:Asshat webmasters inflate Firefox stats

[yuvcifjt]

Generally, all "Gecko" browsers are clubbed together into Firefox stats, as far as I know.

I really don't understand why people use Pale Moon when it offers nothing over Firefox?!
If you really love the old look of the browser, you can simply get the Classic Theme Restorer extension and customise the browser UI as much as you want (which I also use).

Bring up profile manager from command line

[knorthern knight]

> The only annoying thing is the clickbox that asks if you want to not show
> the profile manager any more that is periliously close to the ok button.
>
> If anyone clicks that, then firefox doesn't show the profilemanager even if
> you tell it to on the command line unless you manually edit the profiles.ini

This works in Pale Moon, and should work in Firefox, too. From the commandline

firefox -no-remote -ProfileManager

will bring up the profile manager dialogue. If it works from the command line it'll also work from a linux bash script in an xterm or a .BAT or .CMD file in a Windows Dos Box. You can even have a "program launcher" launch the appropriate profile. E.g. my Slashdot profile is launched with

palemoon -new-instance -p slashdot

You should be able to create a similar Firefox shortcut on the Windows desktop. I currently have 21 profiles for various forums and tasks. Execute

firefox -help

to see what parameters are available.

Re:Bring up profile manager from command line

[GargamelSpaceman]

That did work, but I think that disables firefox sync which I do not want to do.

according to docs -no-remote disables sending or accepting of 'remote commands' which I believe are sync. I like sync.

So I am still stuck editing profile.ini whenever someone clicks that blasted checkbox

Random Agent Spoofer

[Anonymous Coward]

I user the Random Agent Spoofer plugin. It uses a different user agent every time I open Firefox.

The interesting thing is just how many javscript afflicted websites fail or malfunction when fed different user agents.