Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Quantum Arrives With Faster Browser Engine, Major Visual Overhaul (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 57, branded Firefox Quantum, for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The new version, which Mozilla calls "by far the biggest update since Firefox 1.0 in 2004," brings massive performance improvements and a visual redesign. The Quantum name signals Firefox 57 is a huge release that incorporates the company's next-generation browser engine (Project Quantum). The goal is to make Firefox the fastest and smoothest browser for PCs and mobile devices -- the company has previously promised that users can expect "some big jumps in capability and performance" through the end of the year. Indeed, three of the four past releases (Firefox 53, Firefox 54, and Firefox 55) included Quantum improvements. But those were just the tip of the iceberg. Additionally, Firefox now exclusively supports extensions built using the WebExtension API, and unsupported legacy extensions will no longer work, the company said.
Anyone else seeing large gaps to the left of the address bar and to the right of the search bar?
Also, the new tabs look a lot uglier...
Big jumps and the bookmark functionality is stuck in the 70s.
Just sayin'.
The Quantum is the smallest possible increment. Always remember that when someone tells you it's a quantum leap in performance.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The beta has felt quite a bit faster than my old default (Opera). With an official release Firefox has regained default status. I've used it since back in the Phoenix days. Then they got stale and Chrome was faster. Then it got stale and Opera was faster.
Hurray for competition.
I switched to Chromium some 4000 releases of Firefox ago, and I haven't been sad. As far as a browser that just works, Firefox isn't significantly better, and often is worse at this point.
"The goal is to make Firefox the fastest and smoothest browser for PCs and mobile devices"
It can't be, the capabilities of those devices span orders of magnitudes in compute power. It can't be equally fast on both, while having the same feature set. The trend towards platform convergence seems to wave in and out, and each time it sucks.
Finally tally: about 2/3 of my regularly used extensions don't work with 57 and don't currently seem to have a similar replacement available.
Sadly, a performance boost just isn't work losing that much functionality for me. :-(
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Why does every change start with a new or changed interface?
When it loses the whole POINT of the program? The add-ons are what made Firefox worth using as a primary browser. With the switch to the new version, they made all previous plugins incompatible, and most of the add-ons that I'd prefer to use won't be ported over, mostly out of disgust/disinterest by the developers, or simply that the tools are no longer available to accomplish the task anymore.
This is somewhat akin to a new version of Steam coming out, that disables all Steam games until a new version of each game comes out requiring XBox One controller-only controls. They decided keyboard/mouse was potentially insecure. Sure - some users will celebrate this, but it kind of defeats the point of the platform at large. Eventually, it might get good again - but you're throwing away too much now to be worth that.
Can't believe it.
Dumbasses.
If I wanted to run a browser that looked like Chrome, I'd run Chrome, not some suckup second-rate copycat.
These things sound good, but I stopped using Firefox primarily because it regularly gets trounced by security researchers. Nothing is perfect, but the alternatives have been rated much higher. I'd like to see more in regards to those gaps being resolved. Now that I've said that, I guess I should read the article to see if they talk about that. ;-)
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Just browsed over 20 #NewFirefox tweets and I haven't found a single praising tweet that wasn't posted by a Mozillian. That's shameful and sad.
.
I've reverted to Firefox 56.0.2. Unless the plug-in situation changes for the better, Firefox 56 will be the end of my use of Firefox.
Because the new Firefox window title bar is so dark on macOS, the Slashdot icon looks weird when it is not the active tab. It has little white dots in the corners. Compare to other rounded corner icons (like YouTube) and they look fine.
.
The headline for this release should not be that it is two times faster, but that a very significant amount of functionality has been lost.
witnessing 11/14 as the day the web was lost.
Boohoo. We're doomed! I have only 6,231 add-ons to choose from with more being added every day. How ever will I survive?
Strange, I have been waiting for this with anticipation. I don't give a crap about how ugly software is. I want it to work. If your extension can't be converted, it doesn't have the support it truly needs.
Apart from the very dubious decision to put gobs of blank space in the toolbar for no reason, at least I like the visual design better than Chrome and Australis
Lack of extensions is rough, and new limitations to existing extensions is also tough, hopefully fixed over time.
Performance seems solid too.
I'm actually hopeful for Firefox for the first time in a while. Will see if that holds up over extended usage.
I have only 6,231 add-ons to choose from
I already went through the search page for add-ons. The three I searched for had no functional equivalent. Nothing even close.
... If your extension can't be converted, it doesn't have the support it truly needs.
And that shows the fundamental flaw in Mozilla pushing functionality off onto the plug-ins while boasting about the functionality supplied by the plug-ins. Mozilla apparently wants to have its cake and eat it too.
This isn't a Firefox 57 feature, but for all FireFox users I recommend Options - Tracking Protection - Change Block List - Disconnect.me strict protection. The strict protection is arguably bettern than an ad blocker, since it leaves unintrusive ads that support a site but blocks the garbage ones. I don't mind if a site is financed with ads, because server time isn't free.
On Slashdot, the ads at the top that tried to stick themselves over the article, that intermittently tried to inject malware and redirect you to other pages, and that showed me whatever I last looked at on Amazon -- those are gone. Instead, I just see the "Slashdot Top Deals" on the right side and bottom. Those aren't so bad, and if they pay the bills then great.
Until I selected this option, I was browsing in private windows 75% of the time. Now I can go back to normal browsing, which is a slight convenience. If enough people do this, maybe the ad companies will start to figure out that injecting malware is less profitable than an unobtrusive ad.
Sad but true. Of course the Mozillian solution of "doesn't matter, just be happy" works with the former issue. The latter though...
Pros:
Cons:
Well, if there is add-ons that have full Vimperator/Pentadactyl functionality I couldn't find it.
Until there is one I will be on Waterfox.
Still using ESR. Took qupzilla for a test drive for a while because it still had the separate search engine toolbar element and wasn't going to drop ALSA support AFIACT, but it's still just a bit too broken for use on some of the sites I visit.
Someone had to do it.
Try using the functionality when you have over a thousand. You should also note the vaunted add-on capability rarely addresses any deficiencies.
I am getting cuts everywhere from all the sharp edgy comments! I wanna join in!
Hurr durr me extension developer is too shitty to update their extension so Firefox sucks!
Read this post... go to about firefox, updated 56 to 57 ... wait some seconds then puked !
What's the problem with managing over 1,000 bookmarks with the way they've traditionally worked? I probably have at least that many, and they're neatly organised in folders that I've built up over the years. This has the same downsides as any hierarchical filing system, and possibilities to link bookmarks from multiple places in the tree and to search the whole tree would be welcome enhancements, but the basic functionality works fine as far as it goes.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Generally when a browser boasts of speed increases I sort of shrug because it's rarely obvious. Typically I'm more limited by the speed of the connection than by the browser processing speed. However this time it Firefox actually does appear to work notably faster. I'm not particularly impressed or offended by the visual changes but they are fine I guess. But I am actually (pleasantly) surprised to see how much quicker it works. I use Firefox as my primary browser so it's nice to see a change for the better. Hopefully nothing important broke in the process...
So if you want to customize shortcuts, their own help articles recommend that you use an add-on called 'Menu Wizard'...that isn't compatible with this version of the browser.
Also, it renders the most OBNOXIOUSLY large scroll bars for Tweetdeck, no matter what the text scaling size is. It's just visually offensive, and no other browser seems to do it. Even MS Edge reduces the size of the scrollbars as you modify the scaling, despite it not rendering the correct, rounded scrollbars.
I've also had to restart it twice because it got confused about my proxy settings or something and stopped being able to load pages. The out-of-the-box experience just isn't any good.
I like the new blue background/white text on tabs and menus. Much easier to read than before. Also there are weird gaps between the buttons/URL box and also the search/button group on the right. Annoying but not crazy annoying.
I generally keep 20 or so tabs open, and once a week or so everything will grind to a halt. If this update keeps that from happening I'll be happy. I'm a creature of habit, and I keep certain tabs open in FF and others in Chrome, and I don't really want to change. FF hasn't made it easy over the last few years though, I understand why so many people jumped ship.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Creimer's are tuckered out from yesterday. Probably can't post until tomorrow.
So much marketing hype trying to save a dying dog. Too bad the underlying reason for it's demise have not been fixed They'll fix enough to get a handful of uses back before it's eventual demise. Meanwhile, they lose a handful because most all plugins are broken. Now that the plugins system is compatible with Chrome, why use Firefox at all because any plugin works on both. Shoots self in foot.
Pentadactyl hasn't been updated since 2014.
And even back then their releases were sporadic.
Nightly builds stopped in 2016.
If the developers don't give a shit about keeping it up to date, why should firefox?
Let's be honest. Extension authors have known for a year this was coming.
They've had enough time to update their shit.
If the hooks don't exist anymore to do what you want, that's one thing.
But even in those cases you could have talked with firefox devs to see if their was a solution.
Most of these extensions are now dead simply because their developers stopped updating them years ago, and people are only now noticing.
C'mon people. Everyone here seems to know what would make the most perfect flawless browser. Why has no one here done it?
I have used Firefox almost since inception. But Mozilla fell behind the game. They focused too much on being Silicon Valley political pundits while the browser fell by the wayside and Chrome rose dominance. Now, I doubt that they can ever recover their former glory.
Brave offers a unique value proposition in that it addresses the economics of monetizing the web in a way that preserves privacy and is good for publishers. Will it work? I have no idea, but it is the only browser that is really INNOVATING the browser experience in a big way. The mobile apps are great. The desktop still needs a lot of work.
Installed on Win 7, won't even bring up google. What a waste of time.
Thank you for keeping up, thank you for being non profit and open source and thank you for offering a cross platform alternative independent of advertising companies and OS vendors.
This is important work.
Thank you ðY(TM)ðY.
Dennis Onstenk
The best browser is Microsoft Edge, by a country mile. It's faster than ANYTHING else, uses less ram, renders more effectively and is just simply better in every way. I've tried varius open sores browsers but they inevitably suck. Chrome is okay, but it sends god knows what personal data to Google with every click and Safar is only available for apple type systems.
Unstable and slow, same thing happened to me with the Developer Edition which was resolved in 58.
Not a fan of the black inactive tabs but was able to change the theme to light to fix that. Really not a fan of the tab animation and have yet figured out a way to get it back to the old behavior.
Obvious bug in network web console showing all traffic in milliseconds to the 12th decimal place but without the decimal.
All too often with these updates I end up having to purge FF off my PC and reinstall. Then it is another half hour to change all the privacy problems like automatic connections, prefetching or some stupid UI change. I will just use Palemoon or the Developer Edition for now.
Getting tired of this shit.
It's open source.
I'm for foing back to patches. Works for the kernel too.
There just needs to be a conflict/comparibility resolver.
Very little functionality has been lost. Web-extensions can do most of the things the old API could. If you're missing something maybe you should complain to whoever chose not to maintain your extension, and by extension (pun intended) be thankful that they are finally getting forced to do a code review as the cesspool of poorly written buggy memory leaking garbage extensions that haven't been updated in a long time is well and truly overdue to be scrubbed out with chlorine.
For me, the new Firefox isn't missing a single feature of the previous one. Unless you count and insecure and slow add-on API that has held back development for many years as a "feature".
So I upgraded. It has been a disaster! Most of my extensions are now broken, including several critical ones needed to ensure safe browsing on today's malicious web. The UI changed, and I can't see any benefits, but it sure is annoying having to get used to this new appearance for no good reason. Maybe it's faster than earlier Firefox releases, but it still feels terribly slow compared to Chrome and Edge. If this awful experience is the best they can do, then I'm done with Firefox. I'm going to switch to Chrome today, and I hope I can find replacements for the extensions that Firefox has needlessly broken.
I'd been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix (itself a fork of the Mozilla codebase), but now I've moved over to Waterfox, so all my extensions still work and I have a modicum of control over the UI. It imported my old Firefox profile with only a few minor config issues. (I had also looked at moving to Pale Moon, but it has a lot more compatibility issues than I want to deal with.)
This 'fuck off and die' attitude that you Firefox developers and supporters have is why Firefox's share of the market is now only around 2% to 3%. You treat Firefox users so terribly. You belittle them and downplay, or even deny, the serious problems affecting Firefox. No sane person will put up with this disrespectful mistreatment. They just use Chrome instead, and get a better experience than they get when using Firefox, and without becoming victims of your terrible treatment.
waterfoxproject.org is the future of the massive legacy firefox userbase and extension
meanwhile you can wait a year for all the new firefox extensions to catch-up
way too many I need as a developer that are not available and won't be for awhile
He may be too tired to defend himself so I'll just say it for him
Creimer never said he would marry a child bride although he asserts that it would be legal if he did. (He is not a lawyer)
All he said is that if you bequeath your possessions to a village in Mexico they'll let you marry an "underage sweet thing" (he did not say child bride!!)
He also wants us to know that he checked and he believes he has enough money to do this but never said he would.
He was never going to do it! It's just the thing that him and his co-workers at the FBI like chatting about.
Let's not let an inconvenient fact get in the way of our stupidity guys.
Another quick one liner from Creimer that offers nothing to the discussion. I've spotted several affiliate links that I've flagged, you are done for chris. Slashdot has spoken, we don't like you. Leave.
Ayyy joeyyy buttafuco over hereeee
Touché
Just noticed if you let it set as your default browser it changes your html file icons on your hard drive to the new Firefox logo with a black background. It is really hard on the eyes. Who the heck creates file icons with black backgrounds? Can someone at Mozilla please supervise what changes the children are making to the code before release into production. thx
I've spotted several affiliate links that I've flagged, you are done for chris.
Those probably belong to Slashdot management. Did anyone think it was a coincidence that creimer stopped posting affiliate links after his account got deleted and Slashdot management implemented the Amazon OneLink code on the front page in September?
Memory usage on this thing is TERRIBLE. 7 tabs open, and it's using 1.3 GB of RAM. I have the same 7 tabs open along with 16 more in Chrome, and it's using 1.0 GB of RAM. I never thought I'd see the day when Chrome has better memory usage than Firefox. And that's after disabling every extension on Firefox (which I didn't do on Chrome).
Is Firefox Sync feature still lacking two factor authentication option?
Anyone else seeing this?
Christopher, my love,
Never mind those "hump leg" trolls.
I am deeply sorry. I didn't feel well lately but I am better now since I had my meds adjusted. I am sorry that I called you all sorts of names and I feel truly ashamed of myself.
The python click script you wrote for me my sweet love for my pheromone revenue stream web site suddenly stopped to work.
Could you come visit me in my studio so we could look at it?
Signed:
Your sweetee who will love you for ever.
P.S. when I posted there was a funny form that asked me to retype the word "biceps" in a text field. That's funny and I went to look at your new picture again and got turned on. Please contact me ASAP.
Christopher, my sneaky sweet love, I think that you modify the truth a little bit but I won't tell anybody ;-)
Never mind those "hump leg" trolls.
I am deeply sorry. I didn't feel well lately but I am better now since I had my meds adjusted. I am sorry that I called you all sorts of names and I feel truly ashamed of myself.
The python click script you wrote for me my sweet love for my pheromone revenue stream web site suddenly stopped to work.
Could you come visit me in my studio so we could look at it?
Signed:
Your sweetee who will love you for ever.
P.S. when I posted there was a funny form that asked me to retype the word "biceps" in a text field. That's funny and I went to look at your new picture again and got turned on. Please contact me ASAP.
This 'fuck off and die' attitude that you Firefox users have is why Firefox's share of the market is now only around 2% to 3%. You treat Firefox developers so terribly. You belittle them and downplay, or even deny, the serious improvements to Firefox. No sane person will put up with this disrespectful mistreatment. They just focus on security and performance, and get a better feedback than they get when listening to you, and without becoming victims of your terrible treatment.
Why wasn't the application "show my password" management upgraded? I know this is a security risk, but many folks at home are using this application.
Found the solution to return the page loading tab animation to the old behavior.
"page load status symbol in each tab"
https://support.mozilla.org/en...
"It seems developer edition (edition 57) has changed the little "spinning wheel" page load status symbol in each tab from the "spinning dots" to a single dot that goes back and forth (left to right). Is there any way to change that back to the "spinning dots"? "
It requires editing or creating userChrome.css" .( Instructions here on how to find and edit userChrome.css: https://support.mozilla.org/en... )
background-image: url("chrome://global/skin/icons/loading.png") !important;
animation: unset !important;
}
filter: grayscale(100%);
}
@media (min-resolution: 2dppx) {
background-image: url("chrome://global/skin/icons/loading@2x.png") !important;
}
}
Seems to be running more smoothly now which appears to have coincided with disabling AdBlock 3.6.0 and replacing it with uBlock Origin.
After tweaking and researching the last few hours it would not be so bad if the old extensions were still around with the top two for me being Firebug and Firepath. Dev Tools are getting better but still are slower and lack of the functionality.
I still prefer the older Firefox for the UI and really hate Chrome, such a shame the newer versions of Firefox are trying to become Chrome. One starts to think maybe the developers are begging for jobs at Google.
What a time waster, back to Palemoon again for now.
You treat Firefox users so terribly.
Maybe it's just the language barrier.
I tried running it on Win7 at work and it hung every time I tried to open the menu or use autoscroll. Tried rebooting, uninstalling/reinstalling, deleting profile (after backing it up, of course); no luck. Finally rolled back to the ESR version. I haven't seen anybody else reporting this problem; has anybody here seen anything like that? Any suggestions?
I really wish they'd stop pushing that.
I feel so naked and exposed, ublock and host files/DNS are blocking only a tiny percentage. How could they release FF 57 without NoScript.
And then its one thing to lose the ability to use session manager, but about:home no longer has the most of the function that it use to, including restore previous session... But they've included the f-uped Pocket crap along with other social media crap.
Does Mozilla ever listen to their user base?
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
What have the Firefox devs accomplished? Firefox is still horribly slow compared to Chrome. Firefox still uses way more memory than Chrome. Firefox now has lots of broken extensions. Firefox still has a terrible UI. The Firefox devs don't deserve any respect. All they've managed to create is an inferior browser that users dislike. The Firefox devs should feel shame.
With all the addons we can (still) use, having multiple rows on width constrained monitors is essential. But 57 killed off the multirow addon and userCSS hacks aren't cutting it.
Firefox prided itself on customization, yet they can't do simple things like having separate bookmark and addon button bars.
Now that I am using it, it does have an ugly interface. Seems very quick.
me: WOW!! this is so fast. Finally on par with Chromium (Opera) or Chrome itself
myself: yep fast is grreat!
me: uh-oh it just FUBAR'd all of my legacy plugins
myself: You knew this was coming. It even said so in advance
me: never thought I'd see the day Firefox die
myself: Well ok, lets have a look at those plugins
me: NoScript, Classic theme restorer, Cutebuttons, Hide Tab Bar, Status-4-Evar, Tabs on bottom, etc
myself: most of those plugins are appearance related not content
me: yes I like the way the browser looks circa 1994 Netscape Navigator and I want to keep it that way
myself: in 1994 you were 17. You just turned 40 grow up!
me: I like what I like and I'm sticking to it
myself: do you like to look at the browser or the content it is displaying
me: dang it!! why are you trying to make me look like and old fart!
myself: no you just did that to your self
Does it still suck memory like my ex-wife sucks dick?
Firefox was getting so slow that I almost made the switch to Chrome. Google Maps was lagging for 5 seconds on any pan or zoom. Facebook regularly froze up. Scrolling on many news websites lagged considerably. This new update made a difference. Mozilla should be applauded for making this work despite having the cards stack against them.
It killed all my extensions - all the little tools and add-ons I rely on are broken, missing and don't work. It killed my classic browser skin, completely obliterating the layout I prefer, am most comfortable with and used to.
Okay, so.. the backend stuff may be nice. But the frontend is a piece of junk. And since that's the part I have to look at, I just don't see the point in using this.
Switched to Waterfox. Got all my stuff back. Screw Mozilla until they come to their senses.
Okay, I have to ask. You are all over this comment section like shit on a blanket, spamming youtube links, and in general claiming that everything is still fine. What's your deal?
...
like shit on a blanket
Dude, I think you need a training course in how to sleep. I'm confident you're doing it wrong.
Bundling Chrome with every single piece of Windows software is what caused Firefox's market share to drop, not anything related to either Firefox or Chrome.
There's some suspicion that "theweatherelectric" is yet another account belonging to notable Slashdot troll "creimer"/"cdreimer". There are similarities between the writing styles, including the frequent use of irrelevant links. The high number of comments being posted, along with their defense of Mozilla, are also suspect.
I like it so far - yes, I hear those here on extensions (NoScript isn't up as a 'webextension' yet, only 1 I use since it helps me find script src tags to block for hosts, lol - it's GREAT that way & hosts block everything faster & way, Way, WAY BEFOREHAND in kernelmode (superior & more efficient)) & NetFlix silverlight won't work either HOWEVER: Other than those 2 items, Hey - I like it!
* No questions asked - it IS faster (even vs. Palemoon, CyberFox & Waterfox).
(It IS an improvement - a needed one vs. Chrome/Webkit based engines)
Opera 12.18 64-bit, my "go-to" favorite for decades is starting to 'break down' on some pages (EMCA script std. based - appears things are changing is all so it's not as capable - yes, does HTML5 too, but NOT to the extent the more modern browsers do or as well due to that imo) so, I need to check out NEW things, this IS one of them.
APK
P.S.=> Only a matter of time for those to be ported is all - I can handle that personally... apk
Well the speed boost works. For a while I've been experiencing a 3-5 second lag when scrolling down social media pages. That's gone now.
Still no NoScript - maybe by week's end.
There's some suspicion
Your suspicions are laughable and false.
It's really all I care about. Everything sounds great - speed, security, memory use, safer plugins, etc., but if I can't manage it it, isn't going on my computers. And if I'm not going to allow it in the office, I probably won't use it at home either.
Ok, so it is 2017 and Firefox does not have the ability to change the default zoom level. What a fucking joke.