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Mozilla To Remove Hello In Firefox 49 (softpedia.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the goodbye,-Hello dept.

Firefox's voice and videoconferencing add-on was described as "the first global communications system built directly into a browser" -- but things change. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: An entry on Mozilla's issue tracker opened on July 17 reveals ongoing efforts from Mozilla engineers to remove the Hello system add-on from default Firefox installations starting with version 49, set for public release on September 13, 2016. Mozilla added Hello to Firefox in version 34, released on December 1, 2014, and from the beginning, it was part of the browser's core code, but was moved in December 2015 into a separate add-on, one that came pre-installed with Firefox, making Hello its first ever system add-on.

Mozilla plans to remove Hello from the codebases of Firefox Beta 49, Firefox Developer Edition 50, and Firefox Nightly 51. Based on the currently available information, the deadline for the Hello code removal operations is for this Monday, August 1, after which the first Firefox builds with no Hello integration will be available for testing, and will ship out in the fall with the stable release.
The article suggests this may have been a space-saving measure, "since Mozilla is focused on rebuilding Firefox's code from scratch to keep up with speedier competitors like Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi."

12 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. A step back towards sanity by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Great! Now please remove Pocket and Australis as well, bring tabs back to their ergonomic place not on top, stop hiding "http://" from URLs as if it were a "default" protocol (it's not -- names like ftp.*.debian.org are assumed to be FTP even if they don't support FTP anymore), drop that annoying "reader mode", etc. (Yeah, there are extensions or about:config settings to mask most of those, but most users don't know that.)

    On the other hand, instead of copying Chrome, please work on actual security improvements, like DANE (currently marked "WONTFIX").

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    1. Re:A step back towards sanity by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Great! Now please remove Pocket and Australis as well, bring tabs back to their ergonomic place not on top, stop hiding "http://" from URLs as if it were a "default" protocol

      How is tabs not being on top somehow ergonomic? The titlebar is a waste of space; I'm glad they got rid of it.

    2. Re:A step back towards sanity by Leslie43 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This, so much this. All of it.
      If we wanted Chrome we would just use Chrome.

      Some of their steps have been infuriating, whoever is directing their development should have been removed a long time ago. I'll toss in another obvious misstep, and that was the decision to focus on 32bit instead of 64bit, how they thought that was a good idea is beyond me, luckily public outcry got them to pull their head out of their @ss.

    3. Re: A step back towards sanity by Bradmont · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Whoa whoa whoa.... Don't you dare touch reader mode. It is one of the best features on any browser at the moment. But I mean, who wants to be able to actually read an article without navigating all the crap and clickbait covering 90% of most web pages these days...

    4. Re:A step back towards sanity by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 2

      I created an image to deploy on shared workstations, using Firefox as the browser.

      Set history to delete at close, disabled password saving nags, hid useless Pocket and hello icons, disable their wretched PDF viewer, added uBlock, set search to Google, etc. Thought I had everything good to go.

      Deploy the image on a new machine a couple months later... "You haven't used Firefox in a while. Would you like to Refresh the settings, losing all the customization you added?"

      Why the fuck do they keep coming up with new features that just annoy you? Why do plugins feel they have to launch their webpage every time they're updated? Why can't the browser just get out of the way?

    5. Re:A step back towards sanity by JohnFen · · Score: 2

      The titlebar is a waste of space; I'm glad they got rid of it.

      Useless to you, maybe, but I find it useful enough that I use a plugin to put it back.

  2. keep up with speedier competitors by fustakrakich · · Score: 3, Insightful

    like Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi...

    and Seamonkey...

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:keep up with speedier competitors by dryeo · · Score: 2

      SeaMonkey is faster? It's a suite product based on Mozilla's products. :/

      Yes, though not as much as it used to be. Simple UI, none of this crap like hello, same Gecko and JavaScript engines. Most add-ons work or can be easily converted to work.
      Firefox became more bloated and slower then SeaMonkey around version 3, at least /. loaded much faster back then (might have been ver 3.5 or 3.6). Might vary on different platforms.
      Worth trying if you don't mind the old fashioned interface and perfect for grandmothers and such who freak out when every version of FF is different.
      Only problem is a shortage of developers so sometimes releases get skipped.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  3. Saves a step by nowsharing · · Score: 5, Informative

    Now when I install a fresh FF it will be one less thing to do in about:config...

    Disable Firefox Hello
    loop.enabled = false

    Disable Pocket
    browser.pocket.enabled = false

    Disable One-Click Search Bar     (no longer working)
    browser.search.showOneOffButtons = false

    Enable Firefox Tracking Protection
    privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true

    Disable Tab Animations
    browser.tabs.animate = false

    Disable Search in Url Bar
    browser.urlbar.unifiedcomplete = false

    1. Re:Saves a step by legRoom · · Score: 2

      Unlike Australis, Classic Theme Restorer is very configurable and allows elements from the new and the old theme to be mixed-and-matched freely. Visually, I am using the new theme, but I use Classic Theme Restorer to tweak various small things about it for better usability.

  4. More by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Bring back the real about:blank (and remove the gears in about:blank).
    Remove Pocket
    Remove Australis
    Remove safe browsing (i.e., calling-home to google for every site you visit). At least it should be opt-in, not opt-out.
    Remove Geo tracking completely (geo.enabled=false in about:config.) That should have been opt-in and not opt-out.
    Remove anything related to facebook. "social.manifest.facebook" and all the "social.*" settings - WTF do they need to be in my browser?\
    Set the default search engine to startpage or duckduckgo, not google.

  5. What happens when you make assumptions... by Leslie43 · · Score: 2

    How about you stop assuming things about people you know nothing about.
    My desktop, laptop, tablet, and server all run Linux, and I was an Android rom developer for several years.

    And by the way,
    Not every Windows user is an ignorant fool, it's people like you who give Linux a bad rep.