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'See the Future Firefox Right Now' (cnet.com)
"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.
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.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look too bright.
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!
It's hard to get excited when numbers get too high too fast. No one cares for the next suckfest of features.
Firefox's last gasp to stay relevant is a screenshot button? Who the hell is paid money to come up with these ideas? Asking a magic 8 ball makes more sense.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
OK, few comments on the new "features":
1. Copy URL. Copying URLs is already trivial, either from the URL bar or by right-clicking on a link. Do we really need another way?
2. Email link. How does that differ from copy and paste into an email?
3. Bookmarks... really? So, like the bookmarks menu, only better hidden behind a heiroglyph?
4. Screenshots... I mean, really really? Because snipping tools and the old print screen button weren't enough?
5. A "triple-dot Page Actions button". Let me guess: more things that already exist in menus, now conveniently hidden behind heiroglyphs in a non-standard location?
6. "I have read reports that the search box next to Firefox's URL bar may be on the chopping block" it comes, it goes, it comes back again.
I would comment on pocket, but I'm to demotivated to bother googling what it does. Is this what progress is meant to feel like?
So why should I use this over Chrome? It sure looks the same to me.
As for tabs in the title bar, how does one even move the window now? There's almost no real estate left to even click on.
Mozilla: something that loads pages quickly, uses minimal system resources, is HTML5 compatible with no incomprehensible options and go with that.
Who cares about screen shots? There are OS functions for providing this.
After just looking at the screen shot in TFA I would say that you should get rid of 10+ icons (I count 17 of them on there) and you might have something.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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.
I had Firefox mobile + desktop installed last year, tried it for a few months and really liked it - However, their open tab sync service was down far more often than not. That single glaring problem drove me back to Chrome. I used the most recent Opera for a while as well, but Chrome still wins due the enormous ecosystem of very, very powerful extensions.
What's the word? Has Firefox fixed its tab sync problems between mobile and desktop?
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
I already have been seeing future Firefox for years. It's called Chrome.
Sounds like QNX
I have had a "print screen" key on my keyboard for decades.
Many laptops don't. Nor do desktop Macs. Macs instead use Command+Shift+3, which doesn't work on non-Mac computers.
It has worked fine for decades.
When was the last time the key actually did what it said, namely send a copy of the image on the display to paper?
Out of the box, Print Screen on Xubuntu opens a screenshot tool, but Print Screen on Debian Xfce does nothing. Instead, the user must manually associate xfce4-screenshooter with the Print key in Settings > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts.
Do these work (and how well)?:
uBlock Origin
Classic Theme Restorer
Tab Mix Plus
Self Destructing Cookies
Flash Control
Stop Youtube AutoPlay Next
Greasemonkey
Session Manager
Status-4-Evar
I don't need to know how to take a screenshot on OSX to be able to take a screenshot on my OS of choice (hint, it's exactly the same way as you do it for everything else!)
Someone else taking a screenshot of a web application to send to you may not be running your "OS of choice". This means you need to learn how to take a screenshot on someone else's OS of choice in order to explain to someone else over the phone or over text how to take a screenshot of a web application.
Firefox 57 has added a screenshot button in the top-right corner...
Just to let the Firefox dev know, there's also a Print Screen button on the keyboard. It's not that hard to find. Just look at the top row with all the function keys under the words like PrtScn, Print, Prt Scr, Prt Scrn or Print Screen.
It's also very easy to use, just click on the button and then release it. You can then paste your screen shoot on to any supported media and your screen shoot will be there in prefect condition. Just click on the button, it's that easy. You should really try it. /s
The latest web browser market share stats show that Firefox is in a terrible position right now. The desktop versions of Firefox only have about 5% of the market. Firefox for Android has only 0.04% (yes, that's way less than even just 1%!) of the market.
Chrome is over 50% of the market. Safari is at about 12%. UC Browser for Android is at about 9%. IE/Edge are at about 6%. So even in a best-case scenario, Firefox is now the 5th place browser.
With the Opera family of browsers and Samsung Internet at about 4% each, Firefox could soon find itself as the 7th place browser if it keeps losing users.
Firefox 57 is shaping up to be a disastrous release, due to the planned switch to only supporting WebExtensions extensions. This could very well cause breakage of a lot of existing extensions, some of which there are no WebExtensions-compatible equivalents of. This will likely cause many users to ditch Firefox in favor of some other browser. Some might use Pale Moon, while others will probably move to Chrome, Vivaldi, Opera, Brave or some other browser based on Blink or WebKit. So the possibility of Firefox losing a few more percentage points of market share in the near future is, I am afraid, very real.
In any sort of a real company, anything close to this kind of market share loss would result in panic and action. Heads would have rolled long ago. The existing staff would have been shaken up, if not completely removed and replaced. At the very least, a significant and in-depth inquiry would have been performed to figure out exactly what was going on to cause the drop in market share.
Yet I don't think we've seen any of this. It's like Mozilla is perfectly fine with Firefox's dropping market share. This is particularly strange, as Firefox is really the only product of theirs that people use. So many of their other projects have essentially been left to rot (Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Bugzilla), or were soundly rejected by potential users right off the bat (Persona, Firefox OS, Pocket, Firefox for Android), or have been spinning their wheels endlessly accomplishing very little (Servo, Rust). It's even stranger when we realize that Firefox is likely their only source of income. So keeping Firefox's share of the market up should be their biggest concern.
I don't know what the hell is going on at Mozilla, but it's almost as if they have no idea that they're becoming irrelevant at a very rapid pace. Or if they are aware, it's like they're not taking any sort of action to prevent Firefox from losing the rest of its users. In many ways it's like the opposite is happening; they're making changes that will only serve to annoy and drive away the few users who do continue to use Firefox.
It's almost surreal. Given how low Firefox's market share is getting, Mozilla should be in a state of total panic right now.
Captain: "Thiiis is the captain speaking. The crew has told me that several of you have been making quite a commotion, and I've got to say, folks, that it's really such a shame that grown people can act like that. Just to allay your concerns, the crew will be handing out questionnaires where you can write your concerns, and not just shout like mad people."
Captain: "...Alright, we've reviewed your complaints, and I'm pleased to announce, that we will be playing your in-flight movie featuring Pauly Shore, a man I just love to see in a comedy role, and think should allay any of your concerns. We'll be landing in Antarctica in seven hours."
Captain: "Yes, YES, your tickets WERE to go to Wisconsin - and that a reasonable concern, but we had another place we wanted to go, and I hardly think it's in your business to tell me how to run my airplane. Now, you can all calm down, with a lovely movie featuring Yahoo Serious."
Captain: "In an unforseen set of events, we seem to be running short on fuel. I'm going to have to ask that anyone on board who would like us to reach our destination please consider donating to us on paypal or by credit card. And please, no smart asses asking us to change destination - we already discussed this, and agreed on the importance of reaching cool, wonderful Antarctica."
Captain: "I've been told that Antarctica was the location we STARTED FROM, and that it wasn't actually necessary to circle the entire planet to return to there. Also, that donations don't create fuel. Well, listen people, that's thinking inside the BOX - and we need innovative thinking to get us where we need to go. And I'm honestly not finding these aggressive suggestions helpful."
Captain: "I've been told that we've never actually taken off - well see, that's what I'm talking about... why are you people taking me? I BARRED that door for a reason!"
Ryan Fenton
That honestly looks like a solution in search of a problem. If they don't know how to take a screenshot, they probably don't know/care what browser they're using, and the chances they're running Firefox at this point is extremely low.
The article says this, with added emphasis:
Does anyone have any more details about this Pocket nonsense?
Like where do these recommended sites come from? Are these recommendations based on sites that I have visited and bookmarked in some way, or are they recommendations of sites I haven't visited but that Pocket somehow thinks I might want to visit?
If these are sites I've never visited before on my own, how the fuck isn't this a form of advertising?
Or worse, how can I be sure it isn't a form of propaganda, with Mozilla trying to subject me to leftist ideology?
This reminds me a lot of their "Sponsored Tiles" debacle some time ago, where they essentially embedded advertisements into the browser itself.
They are more concerned about social justice and diversity. In fact, this is the end result of diversity for diversity's sake. Anyone of merit abandoned ship or was fired. All that's left are social studies majors, intersectional feminists, and Affirmative Action hires who were given 150 points free to their SAT scores.
Fuck Firefox. Let it burn.
Seems like they might be coming back from trying to be a Chrome-alike, and that's a good thing. Is that a return of the on-toolbar refresh button, grouped with the previously-and-once-again static navigation buttons? Did they really listen to complaints/suggestions from the sorts of people that drove their adoption via word-of-mouth in the first place?
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
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...
Is it saved within firefox, or do you have to "download them" from some spy-cloud?
If you didn't know how to bring up the menu bar with F10 (which I didn't, but I did know about Alt, of course) then how would you do that from the hamburger menu at the top-right? Looking at it now I have no idea how I would achieve the equivalent of: View -> Toolbars -> Menu Bar.
I was mostly just venting my spleen at all this new UX fashion victimhood crap. I do press Alt-F or whatever when necessary but it annoys me having to do it.
Fuck Firefox. Let it burn.
The twins of Mammon quarrelled. Their warring plunged the world into a new darkness, and the beast abhorred the darkness. So it began to move swiftly, and grew more powerful, and went forth and multiplied. And the beasts brought fire and light to the darkness. -- from The Book of Mozilla, 15:1
A new look? Seriously? I want the OLD look. Not the current "new look" with everything rigid, Chromified, and hidden, and not some new look that, no doubt, is just more of the same. Oh, and I still don't want tabs on top, damnit. How about CHOICE?
And I don't want or need a "screenshot" function in a browser. I already have the feature elsewhere... that works anywhere... and does more. Don't we all? More non-browser boat/code/bugs/memory/resources is not what I want! Perhaps make a nice official *ADD-ON* for those who want it.
Firefox is still the only major multiplatform, open-source, community-driven browser (sorry, Chromium doesn't quite muster). For that, I am grateful. But stop worrying about trying to look and behave like Chrome! Put your efforts in stability, speed, and performance... and throw in a side of REMOVING non-browser features and adding back more user control and options for the UI and THAT will keep your user base. No matter what browser people are using, Firefox is still VERY important for EVERYONE to prevent a dangerous browser monoculture.
If you ARE Chrome, then why should people keep using Firefox?
If you ARE Chrome, then why should people leave Chrome?
If you ARE Chrome, then why does browser diversity matter anymore?
Seamonkey is and always will be the superior browser...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Firefox 57 which "promises ... a new look." ... added a screenshot button ... Pocket button in the URL bar ... new New Tab page.
Great. New (or simple more) things to disable.
Also, I read elsewhere that the "screenshot" feature uses Firefox cloud storage - usage terms and conditions to which you'll have to agree.
Dear Firefox Team, How about concentrate on making a great (or even, at this point, good) *browser* - not kitchen sink.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I think TFA says it's removable.
It's hard to get excited when numbers get too high too fast.
Mozilla knew how ridiculous it would look; here's proof:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
I liked the old look. So I run Seamonkey.
I doubt panicing would help much, but what about fixing support for HTML5 date fields?
OTOH, if they hide the navigation, then that's the last straw for me.
Item 1 in "Websites that suck" is "DON'T HIDE THE NAVIGATION". - or it was on 1997. It still ought to be
If you can't navigate, it kind of defeats the whole point of the web!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The latest web browser market share stats show that Firefox is in a terrible position right now.
And that's why I use Firefox.
In the old days you just ignored IE only sites.
-- Cheers!
It is actually why I DON'T use firefox anymore. firefox is starting to only get "if we have time we will test it on firefox" from web developers as it just doesn't matter anymore. personally I need my browser to at least matter enough for people to bother testing their shit on it.
I have been using Firefox since the Netscape days but I'm quickly losing patience with it these last months. It was getting slower and slower, and they kept promising that it would be faster. The last version would be really fast, they said. I have it on my Macs, and on both of them it often just hangs for tens of seconds during loading a page. It's getting unusable so I am now thinking about switching to another browser, after more than 20 years. If version 57 turns out to be as bad as it sounds here, FF will be sent out the door.
Which brings me to my question: what is a good cross-platform alternative to FF? I need it to be able to synchronize bookmarks. And it has to be able to run Flash. I need that for my work, unfortunately.
-- Cheers!
As I write this I have two separate addons installed (currently disabled) that I've had for several years, both of which support taking screenshots of the browser, with slightly different features that made them better in particular circumstances.
(They are Abduction and FireShot if anyone is interested. It's possible I disabled them because they don't support multiprocess but I can't remember; they work fine for screenshots though.)
I don't know how the one they're talking about works but I suspect it's not going to be as feature complete as these. I find it hard to believe this is a hugely requested feature but who knows.
Incidentally, my latest Firefox problem is a simple version upgrade issue. I got the notice that v55 was available. As I usually do I dismissed it - I wait a day or two before upgrades unless there's major security implications.
When I went back to try to upgrade, the update dialog told me there's no update available. Searching for this reveals a zillion people having this problem going back over a decade so it's almost pointless trying to find what is causing it.
I asked them on Twitter & was impressed that I got a reply immediately - turns out there was a significant bug in v55 for users with an apostrophe in their (Windows) profile path. They sent me this pastebin as evidence.
During this time the website still says v55 is the latest version. I couldn't find public notice about this issue. I spent an hour or two trying to diagnose & figure it out so I find it annoying that they didn't make some other obvious public statement that v55 had been "pulled" from the updater while they fixed this bug.
Read about the Context Graph, where they explain all that:
Apparently it will work as a recommender system (like those in Amazon, YouTube or any other site with a See also... section), creating connections from the current site to places that others people have used together. IIRC their recent Activity Stream experiment in Test Pilot had a Terms of Service and Privacy policy explaining their data collection practices.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Link to the Context Graph
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Just right-click it and select "remove from address bar". There, saved you a trip to California.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
It's almost surreal. Given how low Firefox's market share is getting, Mozilla should be in a state of total panic right now.
I heard an advertisement for a Mozilla podcast. Maybe they're flexing into that?
If not, maybe they decided that their mission statement is complete and are just shuttering the windows and closing down completely. If so, it's probably unique in the annals of the business world.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
something that loads pages quickly, uses minimal system resources, is HTML5 compatible
Fast, cheap, good. Pick any two.
If you want pages to load quickly, you need to trade off memory for cache, off-screen tile rendering, Javascript JIT compilation etc.
If you want to use minimal system resources, you need to trade off speed having to re-load and re-decode stuff when you switch tabs or scroll down the screen or when HTML5/Javascript runs. And of course, add-on performance.
If you want HTML5 compatible, you need to support a very complex layout engine and rendering system, with animation and video support, so trade off against minimal system resource usage and page loading speed.
It's 2017. We really should have got past this idea that we need lots of free RAM all the time. Unused RAM is wasted RAM. I'd much rather it gets used for cache than sits idle, and of course if there is memory pressure in the system it will be the first thing to get purged.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's not hard to see exactly how this feature came about. On social media screenshots are everywhere. Screenshots of other posts, of videos, of web pages. Often the text is illegible because it's been through 97 JPEG compression cycles. So the focus group and telemetry says that people like screenshots.
Of course, people are dumb, so unless you put an icon there, make it glow, add a giant arrow pointing to it, and when they upgrade force-open a page with a screenshot of the fantastic new screenshot button, they won't know it is there. It's gotta be "discoverable", which in human-speak translates to "rammed up your arse sideways until you google how to disable it".
Maybe they should take a leaf from Google's book here. Google rarely makes any major changes to the UI or adds any new features to it. Most of the development is behind the scenes, making the internals faster and deprecating crap like Flash.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Eventually you will be boycotting everything and not have any friends, since eventually everyone does something crappy.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
If that's their vision of the future, they can fucking keep it for themselves.
#DeleteFacebook
I dunno. I'm pretty fat. I could use the exercise.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Firefox is open source, so fork the code.
You all seem to know the one true way to build a browser that everyone would want to use.
How about they fix the slow creep to 2.5GB memory usage which eventually causes the slowdown to near lockup, the fix is to to restart. It'd be nice to go more than a week without having to restart.
>> Why does starting (browser) become slower and slower
Taking a break from crapping on Firefox to actually answer a question.
Sometimes your local AV will hold things up until it scans the browser cache (and other temporary file spaces). Try trimming that and seeing if it has an impact on startup times.
Why didn't you mention the name of this programming language that they've created? I'm sure you do know that its name is Rust. But I'm sure you also realize that if you had given its name, you would have been rightfully modded down.
Slashdot isn't Hacker News, or Reddit, or Stack Overflow. We aren't naive. We see through the Rust hype. We know it's nothing special. We know it gives no advantages over modern C++, and actually has a lot of drawbacks.
Shit, Rust has only one implementation! C++ has two mature, independent open source implementations, several other less-mature open source implementations, and multiple independent commercial implementations. We can't take Rust seriously until there is more than one implementation.
It's also trivial to avoid memory leaks when using modern C++. Efficient, safe, well-tested, open source smart pointer implementations have been readily available for many years now. If the Firefox devs can't figure out how to use them, then switching to a totally new language they've crapped out themselves sure as hell won't help them! Rust makes C++ look simple and comprehensible.
You also didn't mention the name of their new rendering engine. As I'm sure you're aware, its name is Servo.
I encourage people to try Servo. It can be downloaded from here. Try the nightly. Their latest and greatest. And witness for yourself how terrible it is. If your experience is anything like mine, and I'm pretty sure it will be, you'll quickly be greeted with terribly broken page layouts, assuming Servo doesn't crash out first!
Despite being described as "modern" on the Servo home page, I can generally get a better browsing experience from IE 3, which is probably about 20 years old now.
Firefox's future is looking bleak enough as it is. If Rust and Servo are supposed to help Firefox, then I think we might as well start writing its obituary.
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.
What does taking a screenshot have to do with rendering Web pages?
Among other things, screenshots of HTML documents are a means of helping a website operator or web browser developer troubleshoot HTML documents that your machine misrenders. Right now, Mozilla's document about creating screenshots of rendering problems has to explain it five times, once for each operating system supported by either Firefox (X11/Linux, macOS, Windows, Android) or Safari-reskinned-as-Firefox (iOS).
Something something security. Because if you let people who design extensions do anything, then the extensions can do bad things, and just telling people they shouldn't install bad extensions isn't good enough for the 5% that already aren't switching because they like they're extensions, so they're going to do their best to alienate that 5% by breaking all of their extensions.
And I'm not supposed to care that they're breaking all the extensions (again) because chrome already has great extensions, which sounds an awful lot like an ad for chrome, and much less like a reason to stick with firefox.
I installed a version of Firefox 57 to play with, I don't see offhand what I'm supposed to do for a substitue for "It's All Text"-- I know there's supposed to be one, but addons.mozilla.org doesn't direct me to it.
(The beginning of the end for mozilla was Faarborg, and his tabs-on-top nonsense-- "First they hate it, then they love it": he was willing to do something to users that they hated, and they put him in charge?)
I particularly like trying to talk about this shit on the reddit group for firefox, where the rah-rahs mod down anyone who dares say a discouraging word: this does not make me feel better about the Mozilla Community.
(Yes, I do use Pale Moon, thanks for asking. The question is whether I'm going to switch from a Pale Moon/Firefox person to a Pale Moon/Chrome person.)
If you want HTML5 compatible, you need to support a very complex layout engine and rendering system, with animation and video support, so trade off against minimal system resource usage and page loading speed.
Yep. This is one of the major reasons why I don't care about HTML5 compatibility.
until the next update where you have to remove it AGAIN.
Now THAT'S a feature they should have:
Remembering setting from one version to the next.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Yea, I don't get it either. They've had at least a dozen stories here each with 100's of comments with viable concerns and even listing out what's needed. yet they continue to go in the wrong direction.
Stable, Secure, light and fast, and user is in control with add-ons for extended features. That's what the vast majority of people are screaming for.
I mean, how stupid can Mozilla be, when they devise a UI to screen capture when there is already a button on the keyboard. Which them trying to force the minimization of the title/menu bar ,and they go and add that?
They have done a lot, while I still occationally have FF crash, it's beeen the tabs, not the whole browser and simply reloading the tab means back in business. (I'm one of those with 100's of tabs)
Now as far as what everyone seams to be wanting:
Pocket... Remove or have it as a default add-on that can be completely removed.
Give the user more control over their web experience
Always the ability to view source or download(Including any image or video)
More control over scripts, cookies, and their use.(those are the most used extensions for a reason) especially 3rd party and untrusted.
Locking down the finger printing and tracking exploits. Like WebRTC, Screen/Window sizes, fonts, etc.
All your "new look" stuff has been crap. It's a chase down chrome and beat it, when your users don't want that.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
I think they are shitting their pants, and that's the problem.
Most of the changes Firefox has implemented over the past few years have that feel of panic about them.
Yep. The old becomes new again.
A few years back, there started to be more and more sites that require a specific browser to function correctly (Chrome, usually). I've taken to ignoring them. I also ignore sites that require Javascript in order to function.
Fortunately, the majority of these sorts of sites are of minimal value (to me) to begin with.
...the ability to do screenshots because there's never been a way to do that before. I can't tell ya how many times I've wanted to share what my browser window looks like with the rest of the internet. (Must be a feature intended for Windows users.) How about a feature that doesn't let one page's bit of crappy Javascript cause the entire browser to fall over?
Screenshots? Seriously?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I understand why they're changing it, and I don't have a problem with that.
My problem is the loss of functionality. I don't see how changing the API necessarily means that the browser has to become less capable.
focus groups are only really good at determining the LCD user. They do not tell the whole story. Despite what marketers will tell you, there is reason to have advanced functionality for people who aren't knuckle draggers (who often end up having to help the latter).
"First they hate it, then they love it":
he was willing to do something to users that they hated, and they
put him in charge?
This sentiment is something I frequently hear from UX people, and read in UX blogs and publications.
The UX community seens to have collectively decided that users are the enemy, and it shows in their results.
I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox because of one thing: Firefox has a setting that stops autoplay videos.
https://www.ghacks.net/2015/06...
I agree with most of your comment, particularly about how lack of classic extension support in v57 will be a huge problem for Firefox.
The worst thing about it is that at Mozilla they think they're going to win back a lot of users. Read this article to see what they think.
I think they're just delusional.
It's true that 57 will have some nice technical improvements but that won't likely attract many users back. Of the people who use Chrome or IE or Edge how many do because they're faster than Firefox? How many because it came with their OS (IE, Edge)/it was bundled with something else or publicited around all of Google's websites? (Chrome). Most of them, I'd guess.
How many non-geeks will even know or care that there's an improved version of Firefox? Not many I guess.
And one of the biggest reasons to use Firefox: Its unique extensions, will weaken significantly after 57 because many of them will stop working. And the reasons many won't be migrated to the new API is not only because of the huge work of rewriting them but because many aren't just possible with the new API.
They do have very good technical reasons for replacing the old API (too tied to the browser's internals, not compatible with multiprocess, etc) but when you have Fx's marketshare you just can't afford to do that.
I like what Firefox represents (a browser not controlled by a huge company, more independent) but their future looks very bad.
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.
fuck 'web applications'
If the choice is between developing a web application and a Windows application, good luck running the Windows application on anything but Windows.
If the choice is between developing a web application and a Mac application, good luck running the Mac application on anything but a Mac.
If the choice is between developing a web application and an X11/Linux application, good luck running the X11/Linux application on anything but X11/Linux or FreeBSD.
The performance enhancement would be great. If they made us choose between extension and performance for a while, that is OK. The screen-shot tool can be nice. There are different keys cross different operation systems. On mac, everything I have to google bfore taking a screen-shot. The thing I really hated was the look! It is essentially copy of chrome. Firefox through years has a slick and beautiful UI. Small back and forward buttons. Tiny reload button at the end of url. Everything really nice, this is one of their biggest advantages over chrome. I hope it is not too late to send them the message that their users do not like this at all.
That "customize" menu in Firefox is just a dog's breakfast; as my grandfather used to say, "it's all over the place like a mad-woman's poop". What's wrong with a standard popup window with tabs, combo boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, etc? With this new "customize" page/tab thingy I've got to look all over the place to try and sort out what's an option and what's not. It's just a joke.
I moved off of Firefox last year and went to Safari. I got tired of all of the changes and how the developers are seeming to use this as their own little project to try out their wish list instead of what the users are asking for. We don't want all of the UI and other changes or else there wouldn't be all of the plug-ins to make it turn back. Now they are getting rid of the plug-ins to get their way.
I only keep around a copy of Firefox because there's a few (and sadly growing) number of sites that are coding for Chrome only and Safari is having problems. I've even had a couple of sites come back and say just to use Chrome because that's what they build their site for when I told them of the issue. Having one dominant browser is not good.
As a dev: if I make it work in Firefox, it will likely work in all other browsers; if I make it work in Chrome, it might work in other browsers; and if I make it work in IE, it could work in other browsers. Lesson: using Firefox for dev reduces effort and widens your potential audience.
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
I've been using the Nightly FF for years... There was some issues when they first implemented separate browser processes per tab but generally it's been far better than a Microsoft program or OS. And bug tracking is open and fully exposes the developers and those using the software to a true sense of equality of information. The only down side currently is changes to the plugin structure which will take some time for plugin developers to catch up.
Perhaps not great for you mother but a good opportunity to participate in development and test for the rest of us.