Firefox 48 Released With Multi-Process Support, Mandatory Add-On Signing (softpedia.com)

Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox v48, touted as one of the most important updates the browser has ever received. With the new version, Firefox starts migrating users to using mullti-process threads (e10s, Electrolysis), and it is also the first version to ship with Rust component. In addition, Firefox is now also making add-on signing mandatory. From a Softpedia article: Announced last year, Electrolysis, e10s, or multi-process support is Firefox's ability to process core browser operations separately from the content viewed on a Web page. Multi-process support allows a page to crash without bringing the entire browser down with it and improves the browser's overall performance. e10s rollout will take place in two phases, first in Firefox 48, and it will finish in Firefox 49, set for release on September 13, 2016. Mandatory add-on signing refers to Firefox preventing users from installing any add-ons that have not been approved by Mozilla's testers. This is something similar to what Chrome employs, but Firefox users have been spoiled all these years, always having the capability of installing any add-on they've desired. Rust is a programming language that's a revamped and improved version of C++ but that protects developers from accidentally including dangerous memory bugs in their code. It achieves this by how the language was constructed and by how developers write the code.

Comments

for a minute there i thought i had freedom.

[nimbius]

Firefox users have been spoiled all these years, always having the capability of installing any add-on they've desired.

Yes how pampered a life I've led in my fantasy-land where the computer performs in accordance with my instruction. oh i was a fool to think personal computing would remain my own personal fucking shangri-la. Thank god Mozilla has come to the rescue and spirited me away from this dubotcherous land of sodom called personal computing. But hey, you know, whatever it takes for your corporate masters to reign in ad blocking, cookie whitelisting, and script blocking. I just cant wait to watch another taylor swift autoplay video.

Re:for a minute there i thought i had freedom.

[Barefoot Monkey]

I don't find it hypocritical at all. If I want to use addon that isn't signed I can simply send it to Mozilla to be signed. It's quick and easy, and has no cost. I can do this for as many addons as I want, whether the addons are my own creation or somebody else's. Alternatively, I can use the developer edition, or a nightly, or the current ESR version of Firefox where this ceases to be an issue at all. With Windows 10 I have none of those options - getting a driver signed by Microsoft is prohibitive, so there's simply nothing I can do. Being completely different situations with nothing more than a superficial similarity, having a different reaction for each is quite reasonable.

Re:Whoops

[chefmonkey]

Ah, I follow your logic: "Whoa. Firefox is now better in performance and memory footprint than Chrome. But it has THE EXACT SAME ADD-ON SIGNING POLICY AS CHROME, so... you know... fuck it. I'll stay on the worse browser."

Re: Mozilla's starting to get back in shape

[cfalcon]

> No per tab processes means no real sandboxing at the kernel level.

This change seems to be about stability more than security. Remember, if a browser process is owned, it is still running with all the permissions of the browser process. It can certainly go dick with other processes running, such as other instances of the browser, your email client, etc. But a crashed process that runs everything with threads is, everything is crashed, while if different tabs are there own processes, you lose that tab.