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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.
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.
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.
What's wrong with the way bookmarks have worked forever? By far my most used control in every browser I've used since the days of Netscape Navigator has been a bookmark toolbar that is set up like a menu of the sites I actually want to visit.
Maybe I'm weird, but most of the extensions and new controls in modern browsers seem to be useful primarily to turn off other modern developments that I don't want. For me, that last big UI improvements in browsers were introducing tabs and search boxes, and we've had those for so long that the earliest known source code was found in hieroglyphs on a cave wall.
Just give me good bookmarks, tabbed browsing, and a simple address bar and search bar with the basic controls for back/refresh/etc. and I've got a simple, effective browser UI that will do the job nicely, thanks.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That UI is at least equally crap as the Australis, but unlike previously, it can not be fixed anymore. For the last few years the FF installation procedure was completed by getting Ad block and Classic Theme restorer, where former fixed the web and latter fixed the browser. But after this new FF, the browser is terminally unusable.
the old extensions mechanism was insecure. Extensions could access all of the browser internals, plus the filesystem. No sandboxing, No security, No nothing.
The old extension API was great if security is of no concern for you.
I would never trust any of the extensions of the old API because of this, so removing the old API is not a downside if one is concerned about security.
For people who are concerned about security, removing the old API is a good thing. It will force a refactoring of the extension code into much more secure code and will smoke out a lot of insecure code, and make the extension systems much safer.
The idea of adding additional functionality through extensions was dubious at best via the old API, especially if third parties are adding the features rather than the Firefox developers, especially since it was becoming very hard to security review the extensions that were coming from third parties due to the high numbers.
Indeed. Having an extension system in which malicious extensions can hide that they're installed while monitoring everything you do on the Web was a pretty big security hole. That's why I'm glad Mozilla transitioned to the new system despite the loss of functionality.
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