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Slashdot Asks: Have You Switched To Firefox 57?
Yesterday, Mozilla launched Firefox 57 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. It brings massive performance improvements as it incorporates the company's next-generation browser engine called Project Quantum; it also features a visual redesign and support for extensions built using the WebExtension API. Have you used Firefox's new browser? Does it offer enough to make you switch from your tried-and-true browser of choice? We'd love to hear your thoughts.
It updated itself. All my webpages now have more adverts, more pop-up windows, and is probably mining bitcoins in the background. My thought is: It should have been delayed until the more popular addons were ready.
Debian: ESR here
Not until I can block everything that leaks out, like I do with NoScript today. I don't know when that might be, but if it isn't soon, I'll have to switch to Pale Moon.
Privacy and script blocking are far more important to me than speed or stability.
John
Been using all these features for years now in Chrome.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I have on my work computer but FireFTP no longer works so I'm not so happy about that. Guess I have to start using filezilla..
Other then that I really like it. I'm not sure it'll make me stop using Chrome though as I use Google Play Music and that website has extra features when used in Chrome.
Went from 56.0.2 straight to FF ESR... Too many extensions have been broken by dropping the old plugin APIs, many with no ETA of when they will work with the new system (if ever)
It already was my tried and true browser of choice but now I needed userChrome.css to make tree tabs look decent. Those massive performance improvements mean fuck all if you live in a far corner of the world.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
Newer laptops have been updated (MacPro, Lenovo Win10) but I still need to recompile for my primary desktop (Ubuntu 16.04). Works fine for me. Firefox has been and continues to been my favorite browser.
52.5.0 will suffice until the v57 bugs get ironed out and more extension get 'fixed'.
It's a walking keylogger and spy central with ZERO respect for the user. Fuck this shit.
Every recent Firefox update has caused problems with a redesigned GUI. Admittedly up until now I've been able to work around it, but having to work around it is not something I enjoy. If there were a decent alternative I'd use it. Unfortunately, the closest thing I've found to a decent alternative is Konqueror, and that's not great. But if they cripple the bookmarks in the sidebar or make the menubar even more unusable I may be forced to change.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yes on systems I don't use that much and No on my primary system. I'm waiting for NoScript to finish its WebAssembly port. On the other systems I'm experimenting with uBlock Origin and uMatrix. (I may end up running all three with NoScript and "Allow Scripts Globally" enabled to just take advantage of its ABE, ClearClick and XSS protections, etc... letting uMatrix and uBO do the rest.)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
But I'll see if I can live with it. I'll often choose UI stability, but Firefox's UI has not changed too much. If I don't like the changes, I'll go elsewhere. What else can I do? I don't want to use an out of date browser with security issues.
Twinstiq, game news
Dropping legacy plugin support breaks many (popular) plugins for me... converted from 56.0.2 straight to FF ESR
Then they started doing stupid stuff like moving the stop/reload button into the address bar and to the right side of my screen. After years of going to the upper left I had to rethink my actions. It is nice to see they moved it back with 57 but it still has pocket built in. Most of my extensions were no longer supported either.
For now I'm sticking with Chrome. They haven't moved the stop/reload button since I have been using it. The developer tools are pretty decent too. Firefox is decent also but once you start learning one you tend to stick with it.
I'm a longtime Firefox user, and I've been annoyed as anyone about the bone-headed UI decisions in past years. But there, at least, you could use add-ons to revert back to a sane user interface, restore the status bar, and the like.
But killing your core, essential feature that makes your product actually worth using over any other browser? Did some cruel time traveller come back in time to ruin Firefox from within or something - I can't see a motivation on the part of those who would do this.
I've stuck with firefox for a long time, but they've finally removed the last few things that were better than chrome, so it's time to give in and switch to the path of least resistance.
Congrats Firefox dev team! You've made it so much like chrome that there's no longer any reason to use it!
Firefox updated itself to 57 and made tabs impossible to see again.
They broke that quite a while back, but before 57 you could use "classic theme restorer" to make them visible again. But 57 stopped it from working and there is apparently no fix.
So had to switch back to 56.
And then they also brag about a lie on their website "Set up Firefox your way. " when you cannot even set tab borders anymore.
FF52 ESR on gentoo. Xmarks is still broken.
Love it. Fast and fixes rendering issues I had in FF 56.
-=Lothsahn=-
This is all about the add-ons and customization. They can make it the fastest browser by an order of magnitude but if they break things that I consider vital then I won't upgrade.
I am probably in the minority here (this place loves to complain) but I love the update. The new GUI is great once I got used to it and set the Dark Theme, plus it is noticeably faster. As for extensions, most of the ones I use are supported, and the ones that didn't i discovered i either didnt need or had functionality replacements available in the browser now that I didn't realize since never looked.
I just installed Pale Moon on this Linux Mint laptop.
Migrating myself and everyone that I manage computers for to Pale Moon. I wait for them to contact me with "WTF?".
Firefox was always my "tried and true browser of choice", but it's been running continuously since before 57 came out so it hasn't updated yet.
When it does I'll lose some extensions I really quite liked, so I'm hanging on to see if they receive updates. I expect the more popular ones will in time, and the more obscure ones I wouldn't be able to replicate by switching browser anyway - so either way I expect to end up on Firefox 57, possibly with some switching to alternate or equivalent extensions in the process, possibly somewhat pissed off by the fact that I needed to.
Speed and memory improvements are obvious, which is nice. I was a bit worried since the lead-up releases have been noticeably slow and unresponsive. The UI changes took about ten minutes to get used to, except I still go to the wrong spot to click the "home" icon as I haven't customized it yet. I used few add-ons so only one plugin was an issue for me, and Firefox now does those functions itself with a bit of configuration.
Well I've always been a Firefox user and felt it was getting slow and bloated, but I am loving this update. I did a speed test this morning from www.speed-battle.com and peacekeeper.futuremark.com and Firefox 57 beat out Chrome 62 by quite a margin in most tests. Now, if Slashdot would change its favicon to use transparent corners instead of white corners, that one tab of mine wont look so funny.
If I'm going to be forced to deal with the loss of extensions I've been using for years, it'll be with people who didn't break extensions I've been using for years.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've upgraded to 57 on my primary system and my work system.
KeePass works fine and NoScript should be available soon. The one add-on that I use a lot that does not work with it is Capture & Print. I have a workaround, but this add-on did exactly what I wanted with no extra bells or whistles. I'm crossing my fingers that it will be updated as well.
As for Firefox itself, I don't like that they moved the refresh button to the left of the URL. I preferred it on the right. The GUI is now more inline with the Windows 10 UI and other flat minimal style GUIs which I'm now used to. Pages load fine and I haven't had any problems with it yet.
Brief RSS reader...
I got progressively more annoyed how much Google is spying on me.
This was a perfect opportunity for me to switch back to Firefox. No regrets.
Why cahnge now? I am on ESR 52.
But, normally, I got the next ESR as soon as it hit mozilla servers, and manually installed, without waiting for the update system to offer it to me. The last few months of the life of the ESR was hell, mostly because developers check for the browser, and consider the ESR "Old, insecure and Unsupported" (which is NOT TRUE), so websites throw a lot of warnings and render incorrectly...
This time around, though, I'll hold tight until july 2018 to get it when the dust settles. Too many rabbits in the grill.
I am looking forward for all the under-the-hood changes, and imporvements in speed and security. And all my Extensions are compatible... I do have a LOT of NPAPI Plug-Ins, but I do not mind getting rid of a lot of that crap when the time comes (good ridance WebEx, Citrix, sharepoint, GoogleTalk and SabaMeetng!)
But, My browser is a WORK tool, I can not be re-adapting to new quirks and changes in the UI each and every 8 weeks or so....
So, to all you guys on the standard release channel, thank you very, very much for doing the Gamma Testing for us. Yes, you get to enjoy the new features sooner than anyone else, but then again, If I wanted fast releases, I'd go for chrome.
BTW I use a mac. So Edge is not an option (at 1 release every 6 months is more stable), and Safari is crap (unpredictable update schedule, very few plugins, not crossplatform). So, FireFox ESR it is.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Yes on systems I don't use that much and No on my primary system.
Similar mix of yes/no, but my yes *is* a primary system.
Firefox Nightly is my daily-driver browser on Android with 57.0a1 as my primary mobile browser for nearly 3 months now (I'm now on 58.0a1). FF Nightly seems to be the only way to get a feature-rich open browser with automatic updates if your device does not have Google Play app installed.
Nightly and 57/58 is definitely an upgrade over the previous mobile Firefox. Works great with uBlock Origin & Video Background Play Fix add-ons, which is about everything needed on mobile. As for no - I've not bothered to update Firefox on any workstation I use, home or office (or at least haven't noticed or cared what version is running). Chrome or Chromium is primary on all workstation, except for one daily Debian system with a little-used Firefox browser.
I've been using Firefox "since it all began" (and Mozilla before then, and Netscape when that was the thing - yes, that's a long time ago). My primary reason for sticking with Firefox through thick and thin was the wide selection of addons, in particular those designed to guard privacy and clean up my web experience.
With the move to webextensions there was little left to distinguish between Firefox and Chrome. My main reservation wrt. Chrome was presumable lack of ability to programmatically control cookie access list (i.e. allow/session only/deny sites ability to set cookies from an extension). Authors of Firefox cookie manager extensions (such as Cookie Controller) stated that doing so is not possible in Chrome.
Finally, I figured I'd give it a try. Less than 20 minutes of searching helped me find an API to control cookies from a Webextension. I wrote my own (and put it up in Chrome "web store" - "Cookie ACL manager"), and we were in business shortly.
While doing that, found a few bugs (not critical but def. needing some attention) in cookie and site data handling. Reported these through Chrome bug reporting site and was positively surprised by developers actually reading and responding (and, hopefully, fixing them soon). By comparison, never got Firefox developers to fix anything.
So - I am sorry Firefox, it's been a good 20 years, but now we must part. Farewell.
I am sticking with and supporting Firefox since several beta versions ago. This is a first for me in the many years since it became bloated and unusable. It's all brand new and for those complaining about plugins, complain to those who make the plug-ins in question. Question their loyalty to freedom. Or does George Soros and crew pay your bills? Is that happening here now too? There is plenty of that going on.
It was not long ago that the Mozilla foundation was demonized for supporting those bitches in Antifa. All because the lent financial support to an encrypted communications program that they just so happen to use. Wow did that ever get spun around in the most manipulative of ways. Move to make a difference or quit your bitching and go prey to Google. Sure, there are alternatives that ALL have deficiencies as a mainstream browser. Think hard about what that means as I bleed "karma" over this post.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Obligatory public service announcement...
For anyone who's still annoyed at FF for any number of reasons, chromium is still a valid choice
CHROMIUM, NOT CHROME.
If you're one of the resident /.ers that complain about spyware on every single win10 story, chrome is almost (but not quite) as bad. Why I read through the comments and still see supposedly tech savvy individuals unaware of this is beyond me.
For three reasons:
1. The core security/privacy functionality is built tightly into the browser by default: HTTPS upgrades, script control, ad blocking, fingerprint protection, etc. No add-ons and depending on third party developers for these vital functions needed.
2. It is the only browser company really doing serious innovation, and that gives it the best chance to actually challenge Google. Plus, how is Mozilla going to challenge Google when it once again depends on Google for almost ALL of its income?
3. Lighting fast and operates in an intuitive UI. I no longer need to mess with all the configurations I had to in Firefox to get it how I wanted it. Brave makes it super easy to toggle things on and off without sorting through an about:config to harden the browser.
https://brave.com/
Yes. Next question?
It's fantastic. Long time Chrome user who made the switch, running Nightly for several weeks now. More stable and faster than Chrome ever was. Couldn't be happier. Only use a few plugins (Vimium, Tree Style Tabs, uBlock, etc) so it's been a very painless process to switch.
Apparently the answer according to Slashdot is Mozilla can suck balls no matter what they do. They fix the slowness and now everyone bitches about broken extensions. I get it, everyone is butt hurt about Firefox 3.5 not lasting one hundred millions years. Seriously, FF 57 is faster, extensions, no wait let me correct that, NoScript is coming and it'll be even faster. It doesn't use the abomination that is XUL. But no, the massive tectonic changes that everyone wanted back in 3.5 days, those *finally* get done and (right now) everyone just bitches about NoScript. Color me unsurprised that the comment section over at Slashdot just becomes a "Why I hate _____" section. Because that's all Slashdot is now, a forum for people to tell other people why they hate whatever free technology they've been giving with zero effort on their part. How whatever this new shiny thing will never compare to whatever thing it was meant to replace that was invented oh so many moons ago. It's clearly a violation of whatever made up principals our Luddite collective deemed to be the gospel so many years ago.
I mean, dang. It's damned if you do and damned if you don't on Slashdot. Mods, I await your flamebait scores, but its like everyday this place descends further into old tech guys yelling at each other about the good old days.
I tried it. I thought it would be a big improvement with all the hype, but it looks like MS Edge. Unused space next to the home button, it shares data by default (that sucks), has multiple buttons to save a page as favorite (why?), the "Find" toolbar is on the bottom (why?), it still doesn't switch to new tabs by default, and NoScript doesn't seem to work yet. Why do I need an account to use Pocket? Better yet, why is there a help page instructing how to remove the Pocket icon? I would like fewer icons, not more. At least F12 works well.
1. Looks too much like Edge. 2. Gooned up my book marks. 3. 1 & 2 have left me half pissed off. 4. I'm sure its better.
Yes, then I found out they broke the QuickJava extension, which is the only reason I use FF. So now I'm going back.
Alternatives:
Waterfox portable.
Pale Moon 64-bits
Pale Moon 32-bits
Pale Moon Portable
Ghostery does not install in Pale Moon, so I use the Disconnect extension. Disconnect's interface is not as well-designed.
Whenever I click on a link to open it in a new tab, there's a significant lag before the tab opens. About 5 seconds.
After that, the page loads quickly. So I don't know if they're cheating on the "page load" speed to make it look good after the tab opens or there's some issue with opening new tabs.
It's a case of the Developer Knows Best(TM) attitude.
I suspect most of the Firefox developers must either be Chrome users, or wish they were Chrome users to ship this...
They're a well funded, large organization. This release would have been killed if they had a user lab environment.
***They could at least make the link to download the previous version easy to find.***
It was my primary since it came out basically, I've posted about it, easily 20 times on this site.
It's too little too late, the performance of the application and stability were simply unacceptable, I tried and tried and tried, so hard. Alas it was not meant to be.
I am nothing short of an -extreme- browser, sorry but it's just my workflow. I 'only' have about 50 tabs open in Chrome right now.
Firefox was taking up to a full second to switch tabs.
I always knew Chrome was faster but Firefox had the plugins I needed, specifically Tab Mix Plus, giving me fine grain controls over how tabs open, how they close and what hotkeys do what. (I use hotkeys, relentlessly) however with some effort, I finally found 2 or 3 plugins to recreate (most) of my Firefox usability, in Chrome, without the atrocious performance or crashes.
It's extremely extremely unlikely I'll ever go back sadly. The recent changes damaging "tabs menu" "Tab Mix Plus" and other such plugins, means it has little to offer me.
Firefox is, and has been, my browser of choice.
Pinned at 56 for now, since 6 of the 13 extensions I use are not available for 57. Some say the APIs they need are simply not available any more.
I'll hang out at 56 for another few months. If Moz adds the right APIs and the extensions become available, I'll update.
Otherwise, it's goodbye FF. Been on the train since Netscape, so I'm sad to go. But if you break the very reasons I was using your browser, there's no more reason for me to use it.
I hope I'll get to stay.
Just tested the demo on the webassembly site. Horribly slow compared to Chrome on the same Debian installed AMD APU Gear.
NoScript is running late, DownThemAll is running a month or more late. I need those 2. So backdated to ESR (52.x) to wait out the carnage.
I nuked FF over 57 and now using Pale Moon. Them re enabling pocket after I specifically disabled it was the last straw that made me question why I put up with this constant UI redesigns.
Waiting for a NoScript update, then I’ll jump.
The user interface sucks huge donkey cock! I immediately uninstalled the damn crock of shit and replaced it with the ESR version.
Upgrading to 55 killed off my most favourite extension - In fact, I found it so basic a web browser function (Open In Background Window) that I'd forgotten it was a plug-in.
Until it quit working when I updated to 55.
Instead, I backgraded to 54, and have been perfectly happy since.
AC
Mozilla a long time ago offered enough to make me switch from my tried-and-true browser of choice, Firefox. The firing of Brendan Eich and the fact that they're now run by a bunch of mollycoddled crybaby SJWs. I'll take Brave over Firefox any day.
Except for downloading porn movies. Firefox is my default porn browser and that's all it's good for these days.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
I switched away from Firefox not too long ago - I got tired of having to quit, wait 30 seconds, and then relaunch twice a day because it gets so bogged down that I can't even type into forms due to the fucking beach ball coming up every 10 seconds.
Chrome doesn't do that.
Safari doesn't do that.
Brave doesn't do that.
Only Firefox does that. And I don't need it.
Why does every browser for the Mac have to suck shit? Safari is slow as fuck. Chrome eats memory like Cremier eats candy bars. Firefox spins itself out of control until you hit it's reset button. Haven't used Brave long enough to figure out if it's shit or not. Why can't we just get a browser that runs fast without spying on you, leaking memory, and circling the drain?
I've switched back and forth between Chrome and FF whenever Gates's Law caught up to one but not the other. Been on Chrome for a few years except at work where I have to use FF ESR[1]. I really don't have a huge preference either way. FF57 seems snappier, but I really miss NoScript (coming RSN) and Tab Mix Plus (maybe not so soon).
[1] At least we no longer have to keep IE6 around for old broken corporate web apps.
First World Problem. Took a few seconds so had to have been pre-downloaded. Differences are not worth the energy to worry about. Meh? Don't care.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
browsers are now basically scaffolds for my extensions. 57 borked them all. every single one - it was actually impressive in a perverse way. i rolled back to 56.
- js.
The've been doing this since 2011. Mozilla has been quite content to shed any technical merit they had for almost any reason at all. It all started when they saw Chrome beginning to become successful, and immediately decided to emulate Google's development environment. They adopted Google's rapid release and versioning method on a project that was neither technically nor culturally suited for it. They broke extensions by the truck load with that little gem, and instead of slowing down and letting the extension system catch up, their solution was to write a script that automatically scanned their extensions and just disabled the ones which hadn't caught up yet. Then they went all hell bent on adopting major UI changes that were demonstrably unpopular by the majority of its user base. And if alienating the extensions authors wasn't enough, many of the UI changes destroyed themes on back-to-back-to-back releases. It reminds me of one of my country's more famous prime ministers who, when he realized he'd alienated half my country, proceeded to give them the finger from his seat on a train. That's Mozilla. They alienate users, and then the ones who have stayed loyal they give the finger to.
All of this was in an attempt at emulating Chrome's burgeoning success. The problem is, they never figured out... you simply cannot surpass someone else by playing copycat on their methods. All they did was alienate their existing user base in favour of a product that could never be quite as good at being Chrome as Chrome was.
Mozilla had a great browser, and a great community. Someone spooked at Chrome's early success and decided that change for change's sake was necessary, and they have resisted every indication that they have made a mistake.
I recommend PaleMoon for a fantastic experience that is the best of what Firefox was in combination with innovation that makes sense and which takes into account its user base. It was originally a patch on an earlier FF ESR, they have since essentially departed from Firefox, though they still borrow some bits when it makes sense to do so. It's what Firefox should have been if they hadn't taken the detour into crazy six years ago.
Did Google sabotage firefox by injecting JS that fails to render this popular page on FF57?
I've been using palemoon for a while now. Since firefox stopped allowing unsigned plugins. I see no reason to go back.
It's All Text, Secret Agent, Privacy Settings, Restart, Live HTTP Headers.
Of the 28 plugins I'm using ATM, 25 are marked "legacy".
I'm trying FF57 for 64-bit Linux.
Facebook brings it to a screeching halt.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
and after 20minutes and 6 tabs (3 zillow, /.and yahoo mail) it filled 4GB of ram and stopped responding. I x-ed out and after 10minutes of nochange, I pulled the battery.
No etensions, add-ons templates or anything else and no other user software was running.
F-.Fail
I updated and it works.
The for me important plug-ins also work, Tree Style tabs, uBlock origine, the video downloadhelper, Ghostery and the JavaScrypt toggle.
Albeit Tree Style tabs still need a tweak to hide the old tabs, it should be done in a couple of days.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Quite happy
While I do use Chromium on occasion, Firefox has been my "tried and true browser of choice" since it was called Phoenix. I was initially quite annoyed about the deprecation of legacy XUL add-ons, however throughout the FF57 beta period, WebExtensions have popped up to meet just about all of my needs, and the performance improvements have been outstanding. Firefox continues to be the de-facto standard browser for the web. It is an indispensable tool, and a wonderful model for the entire software industry. Mozilla continues to lead the way in pushing for web standards.
My biggest gripe is the adoption of proprietary DRM technologies in Firefox (and every other browser). These technologies need to go. The web must remain open.
Sorry to be an unwelcome voice of sunshine here but I tried it and I like it a lot. Itâ(TM)s really fast. It has a smaller memory footprint than Chrome. The look is now clean and very modern. Prefs have been simplified. Yhe extensions I use all updated successfully. And Mozilla takes privacy seriously.
But Iâ(TM)m not dogmatic in my browser choices. I avoid Chrome because of Googleâ(TM)s horrendous disregard for privacy but Vivaldi is a nice substitute built on much the same code base and running any of the same extensions. And Safari syncs bookmarks nicely between desktop and iOS, which is convenient. (Firefox does too, of course, but it is still missing key features on iOS.)
All in all FF 57 is a âoequantumâ upgrade that I like a lot.
Firefox is one of my browsers, though not the one I use most often. Updates are turned off, and will stay that way until I have a very clear picture of what I will gain/lose by going to 47. The only reason I still have it is some of the add-ons. If they're disabled...hasta la vista.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
25 of my 30 extensions would stop working if I allowed the "upgrade" to Firefox 57. And there are no replacements. Firefox 56 crashes from time to time, and this will probably get worse, but when it becomes unbearable I could just as well switch to a decent lean fast stable browser like Vivaldi. I've been with Mozilla browsers since the very beginning; this is the end of the road.
... It has its original 2 GB of RAM, HDD, etc. except Mac OS X El Capitan v10.11.6. Very slow and old especially with Firefox. V57 was much faster I could tell!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I had used only Chrome for quite a few years. Firefox was just too slow. It struggled with simple tasks like scrolling down the page.
But in the last couple of months, two important things happened:
- Firefox started working on performance, bringing it in line with Chrome's performance
- Firefox added the ability to block auto-play video. *That* won me over.
I'm not totally on Firefox yet, but I'm more and more a fan.
Firefox was getting slower and slower to the point that I almost pulled the trigger to switch to Chrome. Firefox 57 appears to have fixed that. Stuff that used to lag a lot like Facebook and news websites are now fast.
When i HAVE to upgrade again i'm moving completely to chrome.
tired of your shit mozilla. so tired.
I updated on my home machine but not on my workstation.
What *stops* me from upgrading is the lack of a userstyle extension that synchronizes my styles. Not my external style subscriptions — styles that I wrote myself and have no intention to share with anyone. (The technical problem syncing these is that syncable storage is limited to 100KB per extension, and local styles can easily exceed that.)
What I will be *missing sorely* is opening a new tab by entering an URL or a search query in the address bar and pressing just Enter. I will have to train myself to press Alt+Enter instead.
What *saddens* me is that the story for extension UI now seems to be “roll your own in HTML and CSS”. This leads to every extension looking differently, using a different font and different widgets.
I like the new looks of the tabs, though. Praktisch, quadratisch, gut.
I have been waiting for it and returned to Firefox with 57. It's nice and speedy now and I prefer it over the other for ideological reasons. Replaced Lastpass with Bitwarden in the process and awaiting NoScript this week.
Apparently I'm one of the very few who doesn't give a damn how tabs look like, where they are, how menus are placed/organised/looks, etc etc. I'm a "heavy duty" browser user but can still work with any modern browser, such as any FF UI we've seen, Vivaldi, chrome, opera without feeling "workflow impaired". I just get to know them and make them work for me. I guess I'm flexible.
An internet blogs about a new version of a web browser that might be released eventually. The traditional markers of progress are still present: removing popular functionality, breaking the extensions that reimplement it, adding shitware and disabling its removal, and adding more databases. However, in an effort to modernize the project management, much progress has been made in the most important task: being Chrome.
http://n-gate.com/hackernews/2...
You are aware that some people use extensions they wrote themselves, right? We can't just wait for some other developer to port them to WebExtensions. We have to waste our own time learning WebExtensions and then rewriting our extensions on our own.
I have a number of extensions I've written over the years for my own personal use. I consider them a very important part of my browsing experience. But Firefox has gradually been telling me to "fuck off" louder and louder by interfering with my use of these extensions.
First it forced us to get them signed by Mozilla, or some idiocy like that, unless we toggled some about:config value. I wrote these extensions myself. I know they're safe!
Then Mozilla shit down our throats by taking away the about:config option, and forced us to use the Developer Edition, although all we wanted to use were the stable releases.
Now with Firefox 57 they've really screwed us over and we can't use these extensions at all, despite them otherwise working perfectly fine with Firefox 56.
So now we're going to have to rewrite them to use this goddamn WebExtensions model, even though we're being forced to do this involuntarily, and without even getting any benefit in return. (Don't give me bullshit about Firefox 57 being "faster". I've been using it, and it's still so much slower than Chrome.)
I don't even know if I'll actually be able to rewrite my extensions, since this WebExtensions model is crippled in many ways, based on what I've heard from a variety of other extension authors.
The critical thing to remember is that these extensions I had written were the only things keeping me using Firefox!
If I have to rewrite my extensions to be compatible with Chrome, then I have no need for Firefox any longer. I will switch to Chrome and not look back. Chrome is faster than Firefox. Chrome uses less memory than Firefox. Chrome's UI, as awful as it is, is a lot better than Firefox's awful new UI. And a glance at Firefox's privacy policy shows that it collects a lot of info and sends to to various recipients, so it's not really any better than Chrome.
So Firefox is effectively dead to me. I won't be using it directly. I refuse to use any of the forks of it. I want nothing to do with that software any longer. It's all toxic, as far as I'm concerned. I know I'm not alone. A lot of people will be abandoning Firefox, and almost no new users will start using it.
I think that Firefox has completely ruined its usability and reputation with Firefox 57. There is no coming back from this. It can't redeem itself.
who cares if a website loads 200ms faster when fighting the deteriorated user experience takes 10 seconds longer?
I haven't updated and won't for at least a month. That's when all of my ad ons should be updated. I had two ad ons that were 'upgraded' to the latest version even though I'm on FF 56. Those upgrades ended up taking aware features. Adblock Plus lost the ability to block many ads with their Web Extension version so I've ended up moving to Ublock Origin which seems to be working well. LastPass also lost a lot of functionality with their Web Extension version so I've downgraded to the last beta that works well with FF56.
That's another issue with both LastPass and AdBlock Plus. Neither company has given any guidance on when or if they will be feature complete in comparison to their previous version. At least with DownThemAll and NoScript I know where the devs are in their efforts to get a fully working version for FF57. I wish more devs would be forthcoming with how their efforts are going especially since FF57 is out and many people will be upgrading to it.
I don't use themes.
Ghostery and Tree-Style-Tabs both work.
No noticeable speed difference. Perhaps "blindingly fast" means that you can't see the difference.
I'm OK with it.
Based on the reactions I've seen to it so far, I think that Firefox 57 is shaping up to be a complete disaster. Perhaps even the worst disaster Firefox has faced yet.
There is a lot of negativity surrounding it. It's very evident when you read the comments here at Slashdot for the various stories about Firefox 57. People are not happy. Lots of users are reporting broken extensions, as was to be expected. I see very few comments suggesting it's faster, and the comments I do see are questionable (they seem to be from biased fanatics). The UI changes have not been well received.
There has also been a lot of negativity in the discussion at Hacker News and Reddit, although it may not be as obvious because of all of the downmodding and censorship that often occurs at those sites.
Now, we should remember that we've come to expect a negative reaction to new Firefox releases. Most of them have been awful. But the negativity in this case is worse than I think I've ever seen, except maybe around when the terrible Australis UI was forced on Firefox's users.
Firefox's market share is already really atrocious. It has only about 5% of the desktop market, and 0.25% of the mobile market. Those are absolutely terrible numbers. Even though they can't go much lower, I think they will be lower by the time next month's stats are out.
This was supposed to be a hugely important release. But so far it looks like everything about it has been a flop. Users are unhappy about the broken extensions. Users don't find it any faster. Users don't like the new UI. It's clear that a lot of users are now moving to Chrome or some other browser instead of dealing with these problems affecting Firefox 57.
I think we'll soon be looking back on Firefox 57 as the release that finally ruined Firefox beyond salvation.
Odd, it doesn't do that for me. I generally leave it up for weeks at a time. Of course, I do have javascript blocked by default, and don't have flash even installed. Perhaps your problem, well, *that* problem, isn't actually with FireFox.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I have switched to 57. with some websites even 56 became slow and unresponsive, forcing me to reboot the browser, and in some cases the computer. I have not had that problem in 57. Some UI changes I did not like, I changed the appearance with CSS.
So far, so good.
I have it installed (as a portable version) and briefly looked into it. As expected, most pre-57 extensions were disabled and for the moment there is a possiblity to a post-57 upgrade for just a few of them (AdBlock Plus is one of them).
But thats not the point. Since 57 and its changes were announced, many extension providers had either given up completely or stated (more or less explicitly) that the differences between pre- and post-57 are so immense that they can't provide at least part of the functionality of their extensions. One example for this was (about a year ago) a developer who stated that there would be no "master password" in 57 and beyond. Well... I've checked this with 57 (I never care about betas) and the master password is still alive and well. But actually the developer could have meant something different - the whole web extension environment is surely something very different, so it may well be that the extension can't use the master password to de-/crypt something locally within the profile environment. This kind of problems may arise for a lot of extensions and only time will show if developers will dive thru all of the hassles for their extensions.
There is a lot communication needed between users of a working stable post-57-version and developers - betas can't show a developer what a large userbase is experiencing. So it will at least take another year or so before anybody can say if extensions will be as firefox-eco as before.
Because versions after 51 had caused a lot of other problems for me (freezing for up to a minute...) and I use very old and outdated machinery, I stepped back to 46 portable for everyday use and will stick to this for some time.
With the new it's always the estrangement feeling and resistance to change. It is much quicker though, but some extensions don't work, and the icons for the ones that still does is gone, so no more easy view of ghostery or adblockers and the likes.
And the bookmark icon was removed (easy to add back).
Yeah, the conclusion... When my tabs turn back to color I won't hate it anymore...
Yep, encouraged a number of my more savvy users to do the same at my company. Every single one has mentioned to me later how much they are impressed by the speed. I've been a diehard FF user since 2004 or 2005ish and now I'm super glad I stuck with it through the rougher, more memory leaky times. Privacy is important and Chrome just creeps me out but now FF is faster and less resource hoggy than chrome? You bet I love it!
Wow! It seems like it is 5 times faster on everything. The only thing I miss is "Tab Groups". But it seems like replacements are on the way for that.
I'm waiting for NoScript to be ported and then I will switch.
I guess I will miss tab groups and video download helper, but I can live without those.
Without NoScript I might as well use chrome.
Totally agree!
The update is amazing, the speed difference is HUGE and the adblockers I use work as they always did. They always highlight speed improvement so I wasn't expecting much. At first it seems "ok that happened fast" but suddenly it's clear that everything you do is now MUCH faster.
To me it feels faster than chrome now which is damn amazing as I have WAY more tabs in firefox than chrome... I like the "new look" although I don't find it too different from the old look so it's not something I care about as much.
I'm pretty amazed that it hasn't crashed yet too. Firefox would crash almost daily for me and now it's working fine for a couple of days after a major update.
I was using chrome waiting for a usable version of firefox (for a long long time) so I'm trying it, but 2 things:
* my password manager add-on (and many others) is not updated for quantum yet,
* and I've a cheap old pc so firefox freezes very often (more often than chrome actually) for nothing (like open a new tab).
Don't know if I'll stay long with firefox but I always hated to use chrome, I'm not a big fan of opera and I really want to use firefox again so I'm gonna make an effort.
I'm done with Mozilla; although I'm currently on ESR, in a few months I'll be switching to Pale Moon or Brave or Otter Browser.
I've switched. It's running fine and I am not too bothered by the change. It also seems marginally faster and less memory hungry.
The only bugbear is that I can't reach standard menus using just a mouse anymore - must press alt to get the menu.
Does it still mandate pulseaudio for sound? In that case, I'm not even going to download and install it.
It's (almost) the same feature set as noscript and can also block stuff per site domain you're visiting (so block facebook.com everywhere except on facebook.com)
Five of the five addons I have installed are marked as Legacy so will not work :( One of them is NoScript, which I know is coming in the next few days, but it's actually the one I care about the least.
The others are:
FireGestures (for gesture controlling - amazing how you get used to this & how much difference it makes to your browsing experience). No update news but from comments it seems it's unlikely to be updated to its former glory due to deficiencies in the new API. There are partial replacements so not too bad.
GreaseMonkey (for modifying webpages on the fly). I mostly use this for minor work enhancements so not critical but it's a really useful tool. I think it's easily replaceable though.
QuickJava. A super useful tool that simply puts icons in the status bar allowing you to toggle on/off JS, WebGL, RTC, Images, CSS, Proxy, etc. Staggeringly handy.
Classic Theme Restorer. I will miss the UI flexibility the most.
I have maybe 12 other addons that I mostly leave disabled; only two of these have been updated, the others are legacy.
I am really torn; I want to stay up-to-date with Firefox but the reason I use Firefox is that I've customised it to my preferences. If I lose that ability and it's not replaced with something better - the speed is nice but I don't really care about it - then why would I update?
Interesting. That kind of behaviour is precisely why I switched from Chrome to Firefox.
I use Firefox for one and only one reason: NoScript.
Until that is made to work in Mozilla's Brave New World then I'm sticking with 56.
One of my computers is one of those cheap hybrid tablets that Walmart sold a few years ago, with the detachable keyboard. It's OK as a tablet for casual browsing while e.g. watching TV. It's a bit underspecced, and struggled to run Firefox, but FF57 is much better on it. Faster and memory usage is lower (so less swapping). My only annoyance is the lack of NoScript, but uMatrix is covering that requirement for now.
(this is not a
WebGL is still slow in Firefox. Just compare some demo like http://fernandojsg.com/lab/thiswayjs/ in both browsers. The framerate is terrible in Firefox; in Chrome it's pretty fluent on my system.
Regarding plugins, my current setup is:
I clicked one link from google results and the rerouter froze on a google-owned domain. So yes, I tried it. I bet the javascript engine STILL freezes up on Facebook too.
My Firefox is set to not auto-update. 56 performs quite well for my needs (better than other browsers and way better than Firefox versions up to 54), and I'm in no hurry to contend with massive changes. I'll wait until things settle down.
Perfectly happy with Pale Moon, which I've been using since they started forcing tabs on top.
I am using various browsers for different purposes and including different login credentials, one of them Firefox precisely dealing with this Slashdot account. I was reasonably happy with the previous version as far as it was working well for the simple tasks I was performing with it. Today, I opened Firefox to take my morning Slashdot dose and realised that it had been automatically updated (on Ubuntu 16.04). In principle, it does seem faster and with an appreciably different appearance. There are also some relevant changes in the blank-tab bookmarks which I might test at some other point.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
I'm waiting if Mozilla got sane again until i switch to FF back.
Considering what insane gui/addon/politics experiments Mozilla did to me, completely alientating my from firefox (using palemoon) i won't give Mozilla the benefit of a doubt this time. You have to PROOF to me that you got your sanity back.
How's about Tab Mix Plus? Which will probably *never* be ready, maybe a far less useful version at best.
GreaseMonkey is so radically changed a lot of scripts are likely to break, and authors may have long disappeared or otherwise won't re-write.
Another user mentioned CTR. Entirely disallowed.
DownThemAll lost a lot of functionality.
And we've just covered major addons. What about the hundreds, even thousands, of smaller ones? Yeah, maybe a lot of them could technically be rewritten, if the developer is still around, and is willing to rewrite it, which would often entail having to work with the Firefox devs to get new functionality added in (assuming it's even allowed functionality, a lot won't be). Since that's such a high burden, let's face it, a lot of those smaller addons are dead and never coming back.
Personally I really like Download Manager Tweak for example, but the feature of it I use will not be allowed in WebExtensions, and the author isn't interested in rewriting one with far less functionality.
Not to mention a lot of users who have upgraded have said quite a large number of advanced configuration options have been removed, because part of Chromification is the inexorable march towards stomping on user choice and dumbing things down, which Firefox has already been doing for some time now.
Bottom line is 57 destroys a lot of plugins and plugin functionality that are gone forever. Given that plugin ability is the primary reason a large part of the userbase is still sticking with FF, there's just no way the benefits are worth this loss. Mozilla thinks being more like Chrome with its hostility towards power users will gain them more users than they'll lose, but what incentive is there for someone to switch away from Chrome to an imitator? My money is still on this ultimately being proven a disastrous decision, because I've seen far more existing users who plan to stick to 56 or the ESR as long as possible then dump FF than users that want 57, and can't fathom a reason to expect any kind of new user influx.
+ Mozilla Archive Format - completely destroyed in the new form, with the "substitute" new extension by someone else a pile of lies (or sales talk);
+ a JavaScript toggle (there is one, but the better one didn't make it across the change);
The lack of the first is a deal-breaker for me, as I save a lot of pages. I'm pretty angry at its loss.
Nope, not upgrading.
I love the look and feel of Firefox 57, but unfortunately they removed the ability of one of the extensions that I am 100% reliant on to have a good web experience, namely Tab Groups. I have no problem whatsoever with them deprecating Legacy extensions, especially since its been 2 years or something since they started this process. Anyway, its sad, goodbye Firefox :(
Firefox is now on par with Chrome in terms of performance, not that it was sluggish or slow before, but with these improvements and the fact that it respects your privacy, which Chrome does not, makes it hard to recommend Chrome to anyone.
Privacy and security is a real issue these days, get a secure browser like Firefox and learn good security habits online.
57 is fast, looks different, but I have 3 extensions I can't live without
- distill has WEBEX but it doesn't work here
- newsfox is incompatible, no comparable replacement
- no good replacement for firegestures, gesturefy doesn't work
If these 3 are working (or have replacement) then I will switch to 57, it doesn't matter which browser I use all I care are the extensions.
Chromium has working distill and gestures, so if I find a good rss reader then I will probably move to chromium. In the mean time I've downgraded to 56.0.2 and will downgrade to 52 soon.
I stopped caring about them and left.
Not a chance. It breaks all the addons required to restore the UI to a usable state.
I'm already using Firefox Nightly which is currently 59. So I'm way ahead. :)
Ok, I do a little bugtesting, but it's well worth the effort
It upgraded by itself yesterday. ...
Plenty of visual spam, all my crucial extensions not working
- RequestPolicy
-NoScript
-Classic Theme Restorer
Switched back to 52.5.0 ESR will check in January.
"You simply can't escape poor management in the software world..."
When I said, "Better managed alternatives", I was being positive about some part of a very negative situation. I didn't make that clear. Pale Moon and Waterfox are better than nothing, but still part of a situation that is, overall, poorly managed.
Also, it is mostly hidden how Pale Moon and Waterfox are managed, and why.
I have been running the nightlies and betas for months and I love it. It made me finally come back to Firefox after using Chrome for about 5 years, then Opera for the last 2 years.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
So many people saying how bad FireFox became. Send it back for a refund - ask for your money back.
Oh, wait, you can't - because you never paid a cent for it. It p***es me off sometimes how people get so high and mighty about how a developer made changes to a product which they gave away and people are using for free.
NoScript - "but it will be out later today!" only works for so long
Check out uMatrix, you might find it far superior to NoScript.
/. refugees on Usenet: news:comp.misc
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Another myth about Luddites is that they were trying to stop progress/mechanization. They knew their jobs were toast. They wanted retraining and a new economic model which would take care of them and their families. The smashing of frames was a resistance act to lend power to their demands, not an end in itself.
And this is currently the bestest browser.
Yeah, I had to leave some minor extensions, but man, this browser still rocks. It is fast, it is lean. Just like Firefox, you have removed that ugly dark theme which makes no sense as 99% of websites have a light background. You have to disable pocket. You must remove the phone home to google analytics thingy. But what is great is that it is still my beloved browser which I can customize and tweaks to my needs and priorities.
I first used Firefox 0.6, left it during its dark ages (THERE IS NO MEMORY LEAK, YOU EVIL LIARS) then went back to it when the memleaks were removed for real and when Chrome has become a memory-hungry and personal data-hungry monster.
Firefox has never been so good, people.
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
And, despite the pleasant visual changes, my tabs now take 3x more time to load. Phuck.
Will just keep using 52 ESR until 57+ is mature enough.
This is a killer for me, I just have too many apps to deal with multiple copies of my creds scattered all about my laptop. It's also craptastic for managing access to said creds, too.
I know there are plugins "coming out soon!" and that soooo reminds me of the Windows 95 launch. In the most impolite way, that is! :-)
"The mind is a terrible thing to, um, uh, oh bollocks." -- Me
Has anyone here tried Coca Colas new non-cola flavored cola?
Personally I didn't like it, there are plenty of plain orange sodas already, I think
but fortunately they will keep selling the old one another 6 months.
Progress marches on...
Anyone know if XMarks works again? It's been bugging out the last few weeks.
I suppose I can switch to the Mozilla bookmark saving tool.....
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
My browser autoupdated and currently both scrapbook and noscript aren't available. Greasemonkey went away, too. Noscript missing means that a lot of surfing no longer works - some of my most visited sites suddenly complain about ad blocking (which I don't do, just use disconnent to filter) - blocking javascript helped a lot, there. The loss of scrapbook means no more offline cache that jusk works. I'll wait until the weekend for noscript to come back, if it doesn't, I might use my secondary browser Vivaldi until the situation improves.
For me RequestPolicy is the main add-on I would like to work. I also rely on NoScript and FoxyProxy (updated I think). I have others too that are all marked as legacy, but not as critical. I will stay at FF 56 - auto updates turned off. Not good.
On the basis of your recommendation I tried switching from NoScript to uBlock Origin and found that it made a heck of a mess of my newspaper. I subscribe to the paper copy but more often than not read it online. But I can't stomach the incessant advertisements.
The difference was that it was far from obvious how to address the problem with uBlock Origin. Manually whitelisting is a nuisance with NoScript but it is easy and the interface is obvious and simple. I also tried adding uBlock Origin Extra but it made no difference.
So, sadly, no magic bullet yet.
Mark Davis, before you make an asinine claim about Firefox like:
you should read Firefox's privacy policy!
That way you'd see that it contains stuff like (emphasis added):
and
and
So don't give us this bullshit about Firefox not containing "Googleisms and Google tracking". Firefox very clearly does use at least two Google services, and using these services involves sending data to Google. And this "Google advertising ID" is clearly an example of a "Googleism" that has found its way into Firefox.
Anyone who claims that Firefox cares about its users' privacy is full of bullshit.
Given how Firefox uses services provided by Google, I don't consider it any better than Chrome. In fact, it may be worse, because clearly some people like you have been fooled into wrongly thinking that Firefox is free from "Googleisms and Google tracking".
for some reasons firefox seems to shine very much on linux
* fast as hell
* not google-made
* memory use acceptable (relaunch every 3-4 days seems almost necessary, even if no slowdown occurs)
* Client side decoration coming soon (CSD)
* did I say fuck google ?
I have been very happy with it. I knew it was supposed to be faster, but I was skeptical. It's one thing to make something faster on the cases for which it is particularity slow. It's a much harder problem to make something faster in general. You can call either faster from a marketing standpoint, but the second case is much more useful.
It has been noticeably faster for me, not just on one or two things, but on everything. That makes me very happy.
A lot of my addons were broken, but I knew this was coming.
FF suggested replacements for those, "Foxy Gestures", "Bulk Media Downloader", etc. But they don't do anything.
They've also added a bunch of crap in New Tab. To "guide" my attention to some place they think it would be beneficial.
kubuntu 17.04
Already switched from Chrome to Firefox in workplace. Other than some missing addons, I find it better with Firefox. Things are definitely lot faster with new Firefox but some sites load better in Chrome, especially the Google domains. Anyway I will soon move to Firefox in home. Not sure at this moment if Quantum is available for Android though.
My main desktop and laptop: No. I use NoScript.
My HTPC: Yes.
My work computer: I tried, and I had serious stability issues (it locked up every time I tried to open the menu or use autoscroll), so I rolled back to the ESR.
Switched yesterday, after finally finding a replacement for one of my critical plugins. The browser update itself is good, no complaints. I don't like my plugin replacement quite as well as the old one, but it's workable, and does have some advantages over the original.
I will stay on chrome, as the sync of firefox is slow *pathetic* and buggy. Sorry Mozilla, I m not living anymore on 90s and use the firefox on one system, or share my bookmarks/password by importing/exporting to a fuckin floppy, its 2017 and your sync is slow like I am connected to dialup, get a life
I think we'll soon be looking back on Firefox 57 as the release that finally ruined Firefox beyond salvation.
Depends on if they are capable of acknowledging the failures in it and learning.
There are a lot of 'failures', DOS 4 comes to mind, as do Windows Millennium and Vista.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Hosts files block remote scripts faster & more efficiently vs. either of 'em for the following enumerated reasons:
1.) NoScript (parses for script src tags)
2.) uBlock (uses hosts anyway, imitation = sincerest form of flattery, making it redundant + uBlock uses more resources to do so making it inefficient as well)
3.) BOTH operate out of slower usermode vs. hosts in FAR faster kernelmode.
4.) Neither's native to your system, hosts is native - NOT "illogic-logic" of "Bolting on 'MoAr'" in addons.
5.) Neither's does a FRACTION of what hosts do for more speed, security, reliability & anonymity online!
* Accept NO substitute for APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/
APK
P.S.=> I like FF 57 "Quantum"... apk
There's two issues, performance and the user interface. As far as the UI is concerned, what it looks like is Mozilla has opted to support people with a very linear lifestyle. They want a few pages, they want to look at them one at a time, and they want them available everywhere. If the world had started out on cell-phones, all browsers might look like this. To my mind, this is a step backwards. It’s like the browsers of the 90’s, only with synch. If you look at the links on a new tab, in a revived speed dial (only one tab, not multiple), on the library menu, all of them are pushing pages you looked at recently. It's no longer easy to open multiple tabs, which lowers my productivity -- at least until I get some new workarounds. As far as performance is concerned, it's a mixed bag. Yes, single pages load faster. Yes, the memory footprint is lower (but I haven't stressed it yet). However, I used to be able to open 20+ tabs at one time, and when I try that now, FF hangs. I get all the pages, but they are blank. So I'm working my way through the process....3 pages?....5 pages?.... The thing is, raw performance was never an issue with me (not that they asked). I'll have pages open for 15-20 minutes, and if they take an extra minute to load, that's OK My biggest gripe is, they didn't ask. They decided, and forced their decision on me. Am I going to ragequit? Not....yet.
KeeFox was the last "old API" extension I was using, and they have a web extension version now.
0 1 - just my two bits
If I have the same tabs open in Firefox and Chrome, use them the same amount, and only Firefox bogs down after a few hours, then the problem is with Firefox.
The One True Flawless most perfect browser that makes everyone 100% happy that everyone here claims could exist.
Yeah I did, and the main question I have: How can I set the interface back to look the way it used to?
I'm tired of stupid UI designers thinking they need to make their mark by fucking with established interfaces. Unless you have a revolutionary new thing - which you can offer as an option - don't fucking fuck with it. How difficult is it to put your ego behind general usability and familiarity?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Yes it updated. Yes it works fine. For most users, it doesn't matter. Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari are all ok.
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it." - George Santayana
Seems faster
I upgraded to Firefox 57 on my MacBook Pro, but not on my Windows computer. I am very disappointed that out of the 7 addons that I have installed, only one still works with Firefox 57. These addons that no longer work are privacy and security / cookie management and bookmark related. The fact that they no longer work in 57 is a deal breaker for me.
Over the past 6 months my older computer was increasingly choking on just about every website. I updated to Firefox 57 and now big pages (e.g. HumbleBundle) load and are usable in about 10-15 seconds. It doesn't keep giving the unresponsive script popups!
and on my laptop it is at least 2X faster.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Well almost... but I've only just started trying FF57 in the last few hours, but it is massively more responsive now and could quite easily win me back from Chrome.
The dev ed v58 still does not work with Webex screen sharing. grr...
Not FF57.
All the comments below which suggest that Mozilla is now a member of the 1984 Ministry of Truth.
Intell released a "Management Engine" in its CPUs in 2008 that cannot be removed. China makes essentially ALL computers on the planet today and they burn the ME code into the BIOS. ME runs at Ring -3, which means that it is below, and controls, everything on your Intel CPU driven computer.
ME is a complete stack, a CPU/BIOS within the CPU/BIOS that you access to boot your OS. That means that every OS on the planet is vulnerable to ME and ME is accessible to about every gov on the planet that threatened to cut Intel's access to their markets.
It no longer matters that BIll Gates gave Windows source code to China as a condition for doing business with 1/3rd of the planet's population, just a year after he claimed in Congress that Windows source had to be kept secret because it was a "National Treasure". And Congress bought it, probably because they were properly lubed.
In order to protect your computer from outside intrusion via ME you'll have to use me_cleaner or coreboot, both of which require to you to burn their firmware to BIOS, overwriting ME. Not 1 in 100,000 computer users know how to do that and most of those don't have the necessary hardware to do it safely and not brick their computer.
Oh, China also controls the kill switch that is in the ME. So, if there is a war with China you can expect most computers in the free world will suddenly die.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
I think we'll soon be looking back on Firefox 57 as the release that finally ruined Firefox beyond salvation.
Meh. I think it might be the complete opposite. I'd almost abandoned FF for Chrome on my crappy old desktop because the performance was going from average towards poor towards virtually unusable. Got FF57 this morning, it's like having a new PC. Everything's snappy, lower cpu use, lower RAM use. All my extensions work and I used the opportunity to review them and move from ABP to uBlock Origin, which is really good. No crashes/glitches slowdowns so far and I've thrown quite a lot at it. I'm happier with FF now at v57 than I have been for years.
I'm not the only one also, later down the thread, there's quite a lot of people with similar experiences.
In addition to NoScript, I'm still looking for a decent RSS reader. I'm currently using Bamboo, but in browsing through the current extensions, I didn't find a single one that works with Quantum.
Any suggestions?
As I type this, I currently have 70 tabs open in my Firefox window, which is pretty typical for me. Until there is an extension available to show these in multiple rows, I'll have to stick with 56 out of necessity.
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
About a year and a half ago it was hard to recognize it anymore.
So I switched to PaleMoon, which is much more like Firefox than Firefox. (think Coke vs New Coke)
I didn't break up with Firefox, Firefox broke up with me. I've moved on.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Suddenly, all the little desktop icons for web links I use have gone rather black, instead of somewhat orange. Importing the publisher's icon from each website seems as difficult as ever. Reloading from Chrome sometimes works. What am I doing wrong?
> What else do you need?
Tab groups.
Fortunately, the developer of Simplified Tab Groups says that Mozilla is working on putting back the necessary APIs, and he will update the extension when possible. (See Issue #60 - Port to WebExtensions.)
Opera then, Opera now, With a real speed dial (that can use folders).
Mind you I have six browsers installed (Flash update day is a pain) plus IE/Edge that I never use.
This is best Fox yet but still not enough to change over, Brave is cute and I will look further into it (Feels like Vivaldi or Safari for PC did).
Ghostery and ABP seems to still work ok too.
End of Line.
I haven't switched because I've stuck with Firefox as my main browser. Sure, I have installs of Edge, Chrome, and Vivaldi on my main PC but Firefox is where I do most of my web surfing.
I have really looked forward to the release of Firefox 57, and took it for a spin once the portable version came out. I am VERY impressed. It launches faster, uses 90% less memory than Firefox 56, and the UI changes are no big deal. Overall, I'm very pleased with 57 and once NoScript supports 57 I'll upgrade 56 and be completely on board with 57. Thanks Mozilla! I know Quantum was a herculean project (developing an all new browser engine from the ground up is no trivial endeavor), but the results are clearly worth it.
Yes, in the near-term the transition to Web Extensions will have its difficulties and some extensions will fail to make the transition. But does anybody expect XUL and Gecko to be supported forever? Gecko has been around since Netscape 6's release in November 2000! It's OLD and Firefox's performance severely lagged behind newer browsers. If it was to remain relevant and reverse its decline in market share, Mozilla had to kill Gecko/XUL and develop a better engine and extensions framework.
To the critics: Hey, I get it. Change can be a scary thing. Fortunately, nobody is forcing you to use 57 and options abound. Go ahead and use other Firefox derivative browsers (Pale Moon, Water Fox, etc.) or whatever other browser that floats your boat (Chrome, Chromium, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge, Brave, etc.). Hell, if you're feeling particularly nostalgic for the "good old days," then go with SeaMonkey and surf the web like it's 2001 all over again.
As for me, I considered switching from Firefox, as its performance became increasingly worse (1200 MB of RAM just after initial launch! WTF?). But version 57 represents a new dawn for Firefox and I couldn't be more happy about this upgrade.
works fantastically, noscript will be here soon.
Nope.
I gave up on FF last year and I've been a happy PaleMoon User since Dec 2016.
On the whole the new Firefox is really impressive (particularly the speed).
Briefly some Pros and Cons so far:
Pros:
* Speed gain is impressive, both in rendering and in response to button presses, etc.
* Layout just feels cleaner / snappier.
* MOST plugins appear to work.
Cons:
* Check defaults, particularly the privacy settings such as "Block Popups" (set off after update),
* Some plugins don't work (yet):
--- Selenium IDE (I use this a lot)
--- Privacy Badger (this may be fixed RSN (Real Soon Now))
* Firebug is "retired", replaced by Firefox Devtools, EXCEPT for
-- Event breakpoints (very useful for doing event-driven UIs)
-- BlackBox debugging
-- Have to explicitly add a plugin to clear FLASH cookies (LSO's).
i blocked updates after 55. i won't get it until i do an os upgrade and forget to block it again
Superior development environment to Chrome. However, the first thing I did with Firefox 57 was select another theme (the default theme is absolutely unreadable), turn off all the useless buttons that come re-enabled by default (especially Pocket - Dear Firefox, stop trying to push Pocket already), disable the combined URL + search nonsense, disable reader pane mode (again), and found the hidden configuration item that decided that 50 pixels wide was a sufficient minimum size for tab width and set it to a reasonable 95 pixels wide.
Firefox is very annoying every time they do a new release. It wastes my time disabling whatever newfangled feature I don't need in my streamlined workflow. I do appreciate the somewhat noticeable performance improvement this time around. However, the tradeoff in wasting my time with disabling stuff offset any good will they gained in the performance department.
Several years ago, I stopped using Firefox as my primary browser due to performance and reliability considerations, but I kept using it fairly routinely due to some nice extensions. I haven't minded all of their UI changes, which I believe have some good points and bad points, but are an overall improvement. Firefox is now useless for my routine uses, and so is useless to me. (The claimed reliability and performance improvements are not convincing enough a pitch for me to give it a new purpose.) My particular use cases are likely to be fixed, and so I am likely not permanently done with Firefox, but I certainly understand those who are.
ScrapbookPlus. I can d/l part of a site, tweak the html (admittedly a bit tricky sometimes), and convert with Calibre for an eReader.
If the developer sets up a GoFundMe, I'm in. Calibre gets an annual donation from me.
I enjoy the hundreds of thousands of flash games and animations every day. Firefox is already removing support for the awesome plugin even though they said it wouldn't happen until 2020. The day I can't run flash online is the day I abandon Firefox.
It's a big disgrace to abandon flash instead of fixing its problems. A lot of the negative reputation flash has gotten is based on ignorance btw, there is no reason why any informed person would dislike flash. I don't think it's right that a bunch of big companies band together and discard flash even though it is still heavily used. Please don't buy into the insecure/slow/unstable propaganda. Throwing away great technology just because you can't be bothered to fix any of its issues isn't good.
Functionality trumps bugs and performance issues every time. If I have to make a choice between two pieces of software that do roughly the same thing and one does something I need and the other doesn't. I will probably go with the one that does what I need even if it is not as reliable or efficient. Firefox is a perfect case in point. I have Opera, Chrome, Pale Moon, Safari, SRWare Iron, and numerous other forks installed, but I always made Firefox my go to even though Firefox is less stable (probably addon related) because of all the customizations. That was an acceptable cost.
Firefox is frequently slow, crashes, and causes all sorts of heck, but the Firefox addon ecosystem is second to none. Yesterday I had my first taste of the new WebExtension system. The experience was bad. First Stylish broke and all my user styles went kaput. I thought no big deal, should be some easy minor edits. Boy was I wrong. Edits that previously worked nicely in Stylish I had to move to userChrome.css and even then many still didn't cooperate. To make matters worse userChrome.css is going away too according to http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/sh... . Then I started reading Wladimir Palant's comments about the changes coming down the pipe with WebExtensions and I realized every extension in Firefox that I spend time with will likely be catastrophically and permanently broken. The only reason Firefox attracts any market share is because of niche addons users can't find in other browsers. The second all of that goes away is the second Firefox loses all relevance.
What do you get when you cross a mountain-climber with a mosquito? Nothing! You can't cross a scaler with a vector.
Frankly I don't understand Mozilla marketing Firefox the way it does. Yes fine its fast good for them, so it uses slightly less RAM in some cases then Chrome big deal. If RAM was a real issue for people Chrome would be at much less popular and its not. Mozilla is taking a cue from Microsoft on selling Firefox like Microsoft has done with Edge. Hasn't worked for Microsoft won't be any different for Firefox.
Browser seems very fast now, have not had time to profile however because already had to "firefix" a couple FF-specific bugs in my web app
The one add-on that I use a lot that does not work with it is Capture & Print. I have a workaround, but this add-on did exactly what I wanted with no extra bells or whistles. I'm crossing my fingers that it will be updated as well.
Have you tried the built-in Screenshot function? Click on the three-dots in the address bar, and select "Take Screenshot". It allows you to take a portion of a page or the whole thing. And it gives you the option to either save it locally, or upload it to share with others.
Does firefox come with built-in ad blocking? Then nope.
Extensions disappeared (yeah yeah not FF's fault right?)
Weird stuff like history being in 'library' o_0
BUT
when I finally closed it late yesterday, it's memory footprint was +5 GB. That was after a day with three open tabs: github, a google search, and youtube (streaming a series of concerts)
oh why was it open so long like that? Well I have to work with Chrome but my loyalty to FF means that I (used to) have it open for non-work stuff.
It's like Google had a 'mole' in FF to specifically torpedo the rival browser. Success!
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I have no clue about performance improvements. The visual appeal of the new version is horrible in my opinion. I switched back to version 56 in less than 30 minutes of using the newest version. Who is coding this stuff and why do they insist on such ugly, non-friendly UI. Perhaps it is time to start looking for alternative web browsers for my MacBook Pro. So sorry that Mozilla folks have just seemingly abandoned any good that they had been doing.
I'm a regular Firefox user. Just a few minutes to get used to the visual changes, but that's no biggie. Not crazy about the new rectangular page tabs, however that is a classic 1st World problem and something I should not complain about. Seems a bit faster. No issues, so I will keep using it.
Steve Hamilton AMS Meteorologist / Owner KHigh Internet Radio
Didn't have to switch, it just updated itself. Why do I use Firefox? The search bar. I use it to lookup words I need to spell or define. Whatever I type in there remains across tabs while things typed into the address bar disappear when that tab is closed.
57 moved a few icons but I did find them. It does seem faster and hasn't locked up so far. For a 65 year old casual user one browser is just as good as the next. Even if the search bar disappeared I don't think I would switch to Chrome or Opera for daily use. I do use them occasionally. I use Opera's VPN to hide my IP from Progressive web sites that have banned me. I use Chrome sometimes for web sites that won't display right with the custom settings I have on Firefox.
Upated, saw that only two out of ten extensions worked and went over to ESR. Waiting to see how this plays out.
It updated itself, even though that's not how my settings are. It's clunky and slows down my entire computer. When I check my computer's performance, I see FF hogging up between 60 - 80%. I've tried re-installing Quantum. Nothing changed. I tried reverting back to the previous version of FF and that was a disaster.
I'm using Chrome now (on the same sites and doing the same things) just so I'm not waiting 20 minutes for a "favorite" to load.
I hate it. I want the old FF back.
as soon as I saw it with the bright menu buttons and dark distracting tabs I immediatly downgraded back to 56, the new layout is disgustingly hidious and distracting
Waiting a week or three would have been a good move on my part. Give everyone more time to adjust.
NoScript really sped things up for me, apparently. Or maybe the new FF is just slow -- the opposite of what it was supposed to be.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
{ tl;dr Gnome:Mate-Desktop::Firefox:PaleMoon }
I myself am still in love with Firefox. I do miss some of the extensions that I use - like TabGroups. It was like a natural extension of my mind. But I can live through this transition.
For people who still want the older behaviour though, you can try PaleMoon. YMMV.
Firefox 57 - Death of Free Internet
Nagios checker is No more. So I stayed with 56
Over the past dozen+ years (going back to FF 1.something, when still on WinDoze), I have installed many add-ons. These days, around 30 survive, and while I'm sure some can be removed (for example, don't really *use* ColorZilla anymore), with nearly 90,000 users, my favorite by far, and the one most indispensable to daily use, is Tab Groups.
/. That group has about a dozen things in it, related to exploration of various stories I've read on the site. It's very handy being able to organize my surfing in that manner. The groups do get pruned from time to time, if after a bit I fail to follow up on some page that's been saved to a particular group, or when cleaning out base search queries.
As a "Legacy" add-on, it will, due to Mozilla's mandate, not survive the upgrade to v57.
It's more than just a bookmark or history manager, and there is nothing like the functionality it provides in the new FF. Containers don't cut it; don't want a huge vertical "Tree" view. Want that familiar icon that helps me organize my tabs into logical collections, letting me switch to a different group, or being able to right-click on a tab and move it to another group.
Some months ago its author announced he would not be converting it to WebExtensions, and has released its source code to the wilds of GitHub. I, alas, do not have the free time required to dig in and figure out how to perform the conversion.
I currently have 35 groups, one just for
(There are "Containers" in the modern FF world, and one very nice thing about them is keeping cookies, etc. separate. That's a *good* idea. Tab Groups does not do that, but I hope its successor does. Unfortunately, any WebExtensions add-on I've seen which employ them falls far short in doing what Tab Groups can.)
Am in general pretty loyal to my technology, so while they're on the machine, don't use Chrome, Vivaldi, Opera, etc. Am on Mac these days, so M$ browsers are out (even in the WinDoze days, they sucked. Anyone remember IE's skinned cousin Maxthon, which sucked ever-so-slightly less?)
Thus, FF it is, and until something so radically better comes along that I needs must re-evaluate my choice of browser (as did it, rising from the ashes of Netscape, which I had used since v2 back in the 90's), FF it shall continue to be.
I totally understand the developer's recalcitrance to re-write his entire app. I also totally understand Mozilla wanting to push their browser into the future, but feel they are falling into the all-to familiar trap of not only desiring that I use their code, but deciding for me how I should use it, as well.
There is no technical reason why Mozilla could not allow the performance hit of having legacy extensions remain functional. Sure, it will add bloat to the program (think multiple sets of libraries being needed to accommodate XUL or XPCOM as well as WebExtensions), but Mozilla should give developers more time than they have, to catch up with the new way of doing things, or let new faces take up the old code and convert it, rather than simply throwing years of good work down the drain.
The whole idea of an add-on is that a third parties may add functionality to a program which the original authors have not coded in to the core. (Just imagine how painful using *nix would be, without bash scripts.) While WebExtensions is much more secure (it limits what the add-on can "do" in modifying the core code's behavior), many, many popular extensions have already been written - and vetted - by Mozilla, using the older XUL technology.
While I agree that moving forward, new extensions should be forced to use this more secure way of doing things, Mozilla should also recognize the contribution of earlier add-on authors and allow older extensions to run if the end user desires it .
Thus, until something comes along which can provide the functionality of Tab Groups, and is written using WebExtensions, I have sadly been forced to turn off FF upgrade notifications.
Will it restore any of the useful web automation tools that make my life easier? Firebug and Firepath have both been killed off, and too many XPath bugs in the new Dev tools. Sorry Firefox, I've gone to Chrome.
All my desktops are safely running Firefox 52 and will continue to run it until I'm forced to switch to a Firefox fork that supports TabMixPlus, because if I have a choice between a browser without TMP and one with it, speed is basically a non-topic and security only a tangential consideration. What really fucked me was the Android auto-update to Firefox 57. Because the UI assumes it's themed in white, it forces the Android top bar white. So I can be reading a site with a dark theme, running Firefox with a dark theme... with a glaring white bar on top, shining like burning magnesium. This isn't just an annoying bug - it's a *showstopper*. It makes the browser straight-up unusable for a primary usecase: reading at night with the light off. I lost all my tabs when I had to uninstall Firefox 57 so that the APK install for 56 would work. But it was worth it.
At least 5x slower than Firefox 56. Compared on similar machines side by side. Disk usage and activity is off the chart. At startup it is using 10-15 MBps on an SSD and it continues for at least 3 mins. Loaded 4 EBAY web pages at the same time. Firefox 56 loaded and display the pages in 18 seconds. Firefox 57 took over a minute to finish the pages and close to 50 seconds before 1 page actually displayed data. Absolutely the slowest browser I have ever used. Might be time to switch to Opera or Vivaldi or Brave.
Far and away the one I miss the most is Tab Mix Plus. While you can use scripts and in some cases about:chrome preferences (such as http://techdows.com/2017/09/fi...) to get some functionality back, it was a whole lot easier to just set all your preferences in Tab Mix Plus.
The other one was Classic Theme Restorer. While some of that functionality can be obtained using CustomCSSforFx (https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx/releases/tag/1.3.0) it's a far more messy and manual process, and the options aren't all that well explained.
I have installed Waterfox (https://www.waterfoxproject.org/), which allows me to use almost all my old extensions, but I'm a little afraid of it since I know nothing about the developers or how seriously they take security. But for now, it's definitely an option for people who hate Firefox 57 and just want to get the use of their legacy extensions back. If as many people are upset about losing the use of extensions we've been using for nearly a decade (in some cases) as I am, Waterfox just MIGHT get a lot more popular. It would be interesting to know if their download count has suddenly skyrocketed. If you install Waterfox BEFORE updating to Firefox 57 and then have it copy all your settings from Firefox, it will look almost exactly like Firefox. Not all addon settings get copied, though (the addon itself gets copied, but not all the settings do for some addons), so you may have to change some of them by hand.
I updated to it last night. Played around with it for about half an hour, uninstalled and went back to FF 56 with auto-updates turned off. 57 sucks. The add-ons I rely on don't work. The screen layout is unreadable at my normal screen resolution. I've been using FF since the very first release, and nothing has swayed me to use IE, Edge or Chrome unless absolutely necessary. I'm now thinking that, once 56 really becomes out-dated and insecure, I'll move to Chrome. I'll hate it, but I'll hate it less than I hate FF 57.
I switched for all of five seconds. Rolled right back to 56.02 the second I saw I had no/crappy replacements for Tree Style tab, tab mix plus, all in one sidebar, download helper, and a handful of others. Much like I did when they first switched to the fast tracked updates back in version 4ish, I will hold onto 56 for as long as I possibly can. It is, despite the garbage it has become, still the best browser for my needs. If I can't have my tabs tree style down the left, I don't use it. Period.
Firefox 57 is apparently so fast it took me exactly zero seconds to NOT download it.
So powerful I've been enjoying Firefox 57 NOT being there since before Mozilla had planned for it.
So awesome it now completely blends with the competition.
And as I cancelled my monthly donation to Mozilla the day 57 arrived, I will now be 10€ richer each month.
What's not to love?
Many websites are slowing down and becoming nearly unusable. I'm assuming the lack of noscript is the cause.
I had a few cookie/privacy addons that dont have new versions and now my browsing is totally fucked up. It seems the settings for those addons still linger and now that functionality in the browser is just dead.
Cant login to ANY site, youtube shows me ONLY the video, nothing else. Me things they should have tested this a bit first.
I hate 57; only two of my extensions are now working, but my favs are not.
Hi, :-) and bold , bigger text for menus, but astuill need larger icons with text for the forward, back, home etc. buttons.
I have got my FF57 fixed up with tabs on bottum where they beklong
FF57 is by far the worst Firefox experience ever.
It is fast, that is true. But the user has to pay a huge price for this more in performance, which is not always noticeable at all.
I will go back to FF56 and when it stops being usable, I will switch to Chrome. FF57 is just a Chrome clone, so I will go with the original then.
And will not.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
After all this waiting, the new Firefox is a big disappointment. I am using it as my default browser because of some addons that all of a sudden became disabled. For instance, with TabMix Plus I've got used to automatically opening bookmarks and searches in new tabs and closing tabs by double-clicking, So I rolled back to 56 and disabled updates.
I did for about a month (including nightly and the beta). But I've switched back to Chrome. I love Firefox, but Chrome starts faster, the extensions are better (I rely on a really good Google Hangouts extension), and I really missed press-tab-to-search (shortcuts aren't enough).
After I installed version 57 a few days later the entire interface began changing colors. Ugly blue, then green, pink, etc, slowly rotating and with unreadable fonts and odd icons for each of my tabs. Surely 1: I'm not alone with this problem and 2: Please somebody tell me how to fix this God-awful ugly interface! I am having to use Microsoft as the Firefox is almost unreadable.
I plan to stay with the stable, ESR version of Firefox for the foreseeable future. I use Vimperator, which allows Firefox to be run very efficiently using a keyboard, but imposing a huge break in compatibility apparently not only requires a massive recoding effort, but makes some features impossible to recreate.
Ever since downloading Firefox 57.0 onto my MacBook Pro, the browser continually freezes and some how disables my laptop's ability to escape the program. In fact it disables my ability to access any of the laptop's drop-down menus. The only option is to manually shut down the computer by pushing the boot-up button and holding it down until the computer shuts down. NEVER had any such problem before. And when the browser is working, it's slower than molasses in freezing temperature.
57 is terrible, and 56 is no longer working (it won't open any sites entered from the address bar or bookmarks or from links between one page and another, only opens pages from search results). I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel and go to Chrome, but it's getting closer and closer now. I want to go back to 55 to give FF one last chance on my PC.
Well, that didn't work. I found 55, and it immediately updated to 57 before I could turn off the auto update feature. Mozilla, you really shit your pants on this update (sorry, it's a downgrade). Chrome here I come.
FF 57 is, for me, definitely not a Quantum leap, but rather another case of what didn't appear to be broken getting badly fixed. I have myriad complaints, but chief among them is: FF and Lastpass no longer play nice with each other. My Lastpass vault will no longer open within a private browsing window, most of my saved sites in Lastpass will no longer autofill and open, and now how have manually request autofill. Lastpass is aware of this bug, as is FF, but it seems neither one is going to take the initiative to fix it. Guess I will have to move on to Chrome...
I tested FF57 my second computer (the one not used by my kids). My conclusion: Firefox Quantum does not help me to protect my children! FF56 and previous did! ALL my parental control extensions does not work anymore!!!! ALL OF THEM! (Examples: Disable Private Browsing Plus, Public Fox, ProCon Latte, just to name a few...) I think that basic parental control related features MUST be implemented directly in the browser (they woud be password protected). Those essential features should be: 1) Disable Private Browsing menu option and keyboard shortcut. 2) Disable deletion of browsing history. 3) Disable the "disabling" or removal of any installed add-ons. 4) Disable starting Firefox in safe mode (including the keyboard shorcut). 5) Disable creating a new Firefox profile. Please sign my petition: https://www.change.org/p/https... Thank you very much!