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'See the Future Firefox Right Now' (cnet.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the back-to-the-Firefoxhttps://news.slashdot.org/story/16/10/28/1720255/mozilla-announces-quantum-a-new dept.

"Mozilla is prepping a new version of Firefox in an effort to rally in the race for browser supremacy," writes CNET's Matt Elliott, who decided to test drive a new nightly build of Firefox 57 which "promises fast speeds and a new look." An anonymous reader quotes their report: Firefox 57 has added a screenshot button in the top-right corner... It highlights different elements on a page as you mouse over them, or you can just click-and-drag the old-school way to take a screenshot of a portion of a page. Screenshots are saved within Firefox. Click the scissors button and then click the little My Shots window to open a new tab of all of your saved screenshots. From here you can download them or share them... The bookmark and Pocket buttons have been moved from the right of the URL bar to inside it, but the Page Actions button is new. Click it and you'll get a small menu to Copy URL, Email Link and Send to Device. The Page Actions menu also has bookmark and Pocket buttons, which seems redundant at first but then I realized you can remove those items from the URL bar by right-clicking them. You can't remove the new, triple-dot Page Actions button...

As with any prerelease software, Firefox Nightly 57 is meant for developers and will likely exhibit strange and unstable behavior from time to time. Also, there is no guarantee that the final release will look like what you see in the current version of Nightly. For example, I have read reports that the search box next to Firefox's URL bar may be on the chopping block. It's part of the design of the current Nightly build but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets dropped between now and November since most web users have grown accustomed to entering their search queries right in the URL bar. Just as you can with the current version of Firefox, however, you can customize which elements are displayed at the top of Firefox Nightly 57, including the search box.

8 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. We can already see the future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately, it doesn't look too bright.

    1. Re:We can already see the future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The web is changing faster than ever. Do we hate Firefox for changing to the new technology or hate them for being OLD and sticking with the OLD technology?

      They "killed off a bunch of useful plugins" or are they switching to the new standards instead of being left behind by Safari, Opera, and Chrome? Are those plugin developers even still actively developing their code? A new plugin should run on Chrome and Firefox with this new system. That seems to be an advantage that developers will like.

      Firefox has to stick with the new standards in security and multiprocessing threads. Or do you not want security and performance?

    2. Re:We can already see the future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Are those plugin developers even still actively developing their code?

      Why should they have to? their code works just fine and is free of bugs.

      A new plugin should run on Chrome and Firefox with this new system.

      So what you're saying is that there's zero reason to use firefox anymore.

  2. Hopefully by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hopefully I'm not the only one, but I kind of lost faith in 'modern' browsers when they started hiding the menu and status bar by default.

    Car analogy: Our engineers have found we can make the windscreen 30% larger if we remove the dashboard and AC controls, brilliant!

  3. Versioning thing must have bit them in the Ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's hard to get excited when numbers get too high too fast. No one cares for the next suckfest of features.

  4. Each OS has a different snipping tool by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Screenshots... I mean, really really? Because snipping tools and the old print screen button weren't enough?

    What set of instructions to start a snipping tool works on all supported Windows versions (including versions after the deprecation of MSPaint), all supported OS X/macOS versions, and all major X11/Linux distributions? Unlike the snipping tool that may or may not have been included with your operating system, one in Firefox would work on all major desktop operating systems.

  5. Re:Why isn't Mozilla shitting its collective pants by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Failing market share aside, Mozilla is the ONLY major browser developer that doesn't have a profit motive to fuck us all over. Once they're gone, it's profit motivated browsers, top to bottom.

    Chromium-derived browsers are cute and all, but let's not kid ourselves that they are at Google's mercy when it comes to technical decision-making.

  6. Re:Why isn't Mozilla shitting its collective pants by iampiti · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd mod you up but I've already commented.
    Google has lots of reasons to want to control the web (and spy users) and thus Chrome was born. Also, they'd rather you use Android apps than websites
    Microsoft also wants you to use their platform (Metro/Win32 Windows Store apps) rather than websites.
    Apple likewise with iOS and OS X.
    Mozilla are the only ones that they'd rather you use websites than their closed platforms.