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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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
NoScript for Firefox 57 will be released today. Just wait a while.
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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.
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.
.
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.
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.
What's wrong with the way bookmarks have worked forever?
Many people appear to prefer to use tabs to provide the functionality that bookmarks were designed for. So we end up with situations like Firefox OOMing on a 32GB workstation, but it appears to be what the users want.
Perhaps if the bookmark toolbar saved a screenshot of each site, and used that both for hover actions and as a preliminary muted background picture while the site loaded, some tab users might discover bookmarks?
Although a cascading menu hierarchy might still put some off as too complex. That was apparently the rationale for getting rid of the cascading Windows start menu.
... 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.
gobs of blank space in the toolbar for no reason
You can use the Customize tool to customize the interface and remove the blank space. Either right-click in the space on the toolbar and select Customize or go via the Hamburger menu -> Customize.
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:
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.
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've never really got the using-tabs-as-bookmarks thing. To me they've naturally filled different roles for as long as we've had them. But then I've used browsers for as long as there have been browsers, way back when bookmarking was a great innovation and browsers didn't provide tabs yet. If you've only ever used tabbed browsing then I can see why you wouldn't make the same distinction as someone like me.
Interesting analogy with the Start Menu. For me, the biggest UI advance in Windows 7 was the introduction of the new style of task bar and jump lists. On Windows machines, I've barely touched the Start menu since. Instead, I invariably have icons for all my main applications pinned to the task bar, and then important files, directories, etc. pinned on the jump lists for many of those. I guess I browse the web in much the same way.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
The new firefox release moves it further away from Chrome by going back to square tabs and reversing the Australis UI regressions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The reason the old extension API had to be broken was to increase security and allow for sandboxing. Sandboxing and multi content processes are the two must haves if you want security. So all of these people who like the old extensions system have been a cause of preventing Firefox was addressing its security problems and sandboxing the content code. The content code is now sandboxed by default on Linux which is highly recommended.
What are you talking about? The bootmarks in google chrome are utterly retarded. No adjustable resorting by alphabet or date? You've got to be kidding. I love the Firefox bookmarking system, its far, far better than Chromes nonsense. You can sort the bookmarks any way you need to and at any time.
I can't imagine doing this. I prefer to have a bookmarks list with date, title, etc columns with being able to sort the bookmarks by selecting the sorting column.
C'mon people. Everyone here seems to know what would make the most perfect flawless browser. Why has no one here done it?
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
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.
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".
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.)
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.
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
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).
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
Now that I am using it, it does have an ugly interface. Seems very quick.
While the speed increase really does seem noticeable, especially with my billions of tabs open, the lack of Tabmix means I might as well use something like Vivaldi instead. Here's hoping 58 will get tab rows working again.
me: NoScript, Classic theme restorer, Cutebuttons, Hide Tab Bar, Status-4-Evar, Tabs on bottom, etc
NoScript is on the way. You can modify the UI in the Classic Theme Restorer style with CSS and similarly for CuteButtons.
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.
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.
What's wrong with the way bookmarks have worked forever?
It's extremely primitive and can't do anything more advanced than hold an URL. Possible new features I'd like to see:
* notifications when a webpage gets updated
* full-text search through the content of bookmarks
* thumbnail view of all the bookmarks
* ability to sort them by host, directory, last access, last update, etc.
* temporary bookmarks that fade away when not actively accessed
* automatic bookmarks of pages frequently visited
* save the actual content of the webpage when you bookmark it, not just the URL
* ability to bookmark subsections of a webpage
* ability to bookmark the complete current state of the browser (all the tabs, form data, etc.)
* better ways to sort and cleanup bookmarks
There is a whole lot of things that one could do to make bookmarking a lot more powerful and useful. What browsers currently do is hardly more advanced than what Mosaic did 25 years ago. It's also not just bookmarking, the history suffers from much the same problems.
There's some suspicion
Your suspicions are laughable and false.
Is it the same?
Seriously, people have kept insisting that uBlock and NoScript would be available for the new API, but I've not heard anybody discuss whether any compromises had to be made to get them working. It's been known for a long time that ad blockers for Chrome don't work the same way as on Firefox, specifically because of the API differences.
ad blockers for Chrome don't work the same way as on Firefox, specifically because of the API differences
Yes, Firefox's WebExtensions API extends beyond Chrome's in various ways including this one. uBlock Origin works better in Firefox 57 than possible in Chrome (gorhill is the developer of uBlock Origin). Firefox's webRequest API was extended for NoScript's use (NoScript will be released in a couple of days).
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.