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.

Comments

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

uBlock Origin, Duck Duck Go Plus, Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, No Coin, Decentraleyes, Smart Referer, Link Cleaner. NoScript coming back Very Soon Now(TM). What else do you need?

Re:Yes

[luvirini]

> What else do you need?

Classic theme restorer.

Re: Yes

[taxman_10m]

Chatzilla.
http://chatzilla.hacksrus.com/

Re:Yes

[Khyber]

The need to not need any of that shit in the first place.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

GP was clearly referring to NoScript not being ready. How about the ability to change shortcuts so those of us with fat fingers and tiny keyboard don't have to worry about accidentally pressing Ctrl+q instead of Ctrl-w when trying to close a tab in a private window?

Why do we have yet another Firefox article? How often should we repeat the same posts over and over again?

Re:Yes

[Luthair]

Ditto, Firefox has stayed my preferred browser. Though I still use Chrome because I prefer the devtools.

Re: Yes

[WalksOnDirt]

Ouch! That's terrible!

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I only need NoScript. I've already installed uBlock (updated from AdBlock Edge). Thank you for the other suggestions. I'm missing "My Homepage" (opens my homepage in each new tab), and MyBookmarks (puts all my bookmarks on my homepage). At the moment I'm using "chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksPanel.xul" as my homepage and clicking on home whenever I open a new tab.

Re:Yes

[0100010001010011]

Below someone complained about the placement of the reload button.

What button do you use on the UI that doesn't have a keyboard shortcut to do the same thing faster?

I took everything out of the toolbar, turned on menus and now you can get to anything from the keyboard.

Re:Yes

[ShanghaiBill]

What else do you need?

Selenium. Web automation used to be the only area where Firefox was clearly superior. But they broke it with FF version 54, and there appears to be no plans to fix it.

Re:Yes

[luvirini]

I want to see the tabs.

A quite a while back they made the theme so that you cannot you see them, but classic theme restorer fixed that.

Also I do not use any special keyboard shortcuts(except new tab and find) and have most moved to impossible key combinations so they are not accidentally triggered. It is really annoying when you try to paste with ctrl-v and bookmarks pop up and such..

Re:Yes

[Dutch Gun]

Now, if Slashdot would change its favicon to use transparent corners instead of white corners, that one tab of mine wont look so funny.

Ahaha, that was bugging me too!

I wasn't actually expecting to like this update. I can live with the UI updates, although I'd characterize them as "not much different". Fortunately, the few add-ons I used upgraded seamlessly, and the browser seems pretty snappy.

Overall, I think it's an improvement, but I certainly wouldn't dismiss the annoyance of those who don't like the UI or lost their favorite add-ons.

Re:Yes

[phayes]

It's fast, but are you seeing problems with it like I am? As an example here on slashdot's Interactive Discussion system (D2), with FF57 I can no longer click on low modded article headers to expand them.

I have a similar problem on Ars Technica forums.

I can adapt to all the other new changes but if FF57 breaks essential functions I'll be moving to chrome in short order.

Re:Yes

[Barny]

Exactly.

Further:
DownThemAll
PasslFox - the big showstopper for me
NoScript - "but it will be out later today!" only works for so long
Custom Tab Width
(there are others, but those amount to what has already been mentioned)

Until I can avoid productivity loss due to "yet another UI redesign syndrome" that Mozilla seems completely focused on imposing every other release, I will stay on FF 56.02

Re:Yes

[Streetlight]

Seems to me I read that the person who wrote Classic Theme Restorer probably won't rewrite the extension because it requires some kind of access to the Firefox code (UI code?) he can't make use of.

No Classic Theme Restorer no Firefox 57 for me. Also Colorful Tabs, Six or Not and Calomel SSL Vlidation are very useful, but not sure they work or not.

Re:Yes

[xeoron]

Gmail claims cookies are blocked, yet all other Google sites see my account

Re:Yes

[PixetaledPikachu]

Below someone complained about the placement of the reload button.

What button do you use on the UI that doesn't have a keyboard shortcut to do the same thing faster?

I took everything out of the toolbar, turned on menus and now you can get to anything from the keyboard.

Even so, all he have to is just open customize mode and drag the reload button to wherever he wants it to be, which is what I actually did, because I like it to be on the right side of the address bar

Re:Yes

[ArmoredDragon]

They also copied Microsoft Edge's hideously ugly tab design. While they had the good sense to not adopt the now discredited flat UI (who thought that was a good idea to begin with?) they still use the boxy UI object paradigm, even though that has been discredited just the same as flat UI.

Re:Yes

[Darinbob]

I did notice that when I updated some plugins to the new approved API of the moment, that adblock changed settings to start letting all the ads in. Ie, I had approved ads only, then there was a new option in that to disallow approved ads that do tracking; clicked that box and all the ads go away (ie, back to approved ads only but there are still no ads visible anywhere, which presumably means there are no approved ads that don't do tracking).

The other big snag now is that noscript is not working with Firefox 57 yet... which may be why all the web pages seem to slow much slower than they used to in older versions, despite the claims of improvement.

Re:Yes

[Darinbob]

I can see them, but I had to change theme from default (light pages, but dark tabs that are black on black), to the "light" theme which looks like I remember except for the square shape and not being as wide as they should be.

Re:Yes

[Darinbob]

But before the release came out, all the info I could find indicated it would be ready when 57 was released. I suspect that was the plan but it didn't turn out that way. Mozilla should have worked with noscript dev as it was one of the must-have extensions that so many people use, and make sure it worked on day one.

Re:Yes

[Darinbob]

I don't mind it that much. I have a flat style UI anyway since I'm on OSX, and prefer that to all the flash. But the frivolous switch to new icons was silly; but then almost everyone does that, it's like they need to invent a new incomprehensible icon before they can get their UX badge.

Re:Yes

[theweatherelectric]

Mozilla should have worked with noscript dev

They did.

Re: Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Keyboard "shortcuts" are useless. I am not a concert pianist. I dislike switch back-and-forth between track ball and keyboard.

Re:Yes

[Darinbob]

So why didn't it work on the first day?

Re:Yes

[Jazoray]

this is why i run firefox as a user who has no write permissions in the folder where the firefox files are

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

a legit 'video downloader' would be nice to have back, too. and not those shams that use a web server to pull the video from youtube or vimeo, etc either, but one that directly downloads the resolution you want and, if a separate file or stream, the audio quality you want and pieces the bits back together if necessary.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, it's unbelievable how you Firefox fanatics treat Firefox's users and extension authors so terribly.

The Firefox devs go out of their way to intentionally break Firefox's extension system for no good reason, and then force this release on the world prematurely, yet you somehow blame the extension authors when their extensions that worked perfectly fine with Firefox 56 don't work with Firefox 57?!

On one hand, I can't believe you're actually being serious. But on the other hand, you are a Firefox fanatic, and this isn't the first time that Firefox fanatics have legitimately and honestly behaved in such an atrocious manner.

It's no wonder users and extension authors are fleeing Firefox at such a rapid pace. You Firefox fanatics subject these victims to insane levels of abuse, and these victims really don't deserve any of it.

Re:Yes

[Lotana]

I miss the status bar! This release broke the Status-4-Evar plugin.

Re:Yes

[El_Muerte_TDS]

A lot of things can still be fixed manually via userChrome.css
See https://github.com/Aris-t2/Cus...

Re:Yes

[p91paul]

So you are telling us that we can obtain the same things that used to be done with an extension with dozens of options by modifying an obscure file, possibly having to restart the browser every time to check if our edit is good or orribly breaks the UI? Oh that's nice. /sarcasm

Re:Yes

[markdavis]

> What else do you need?

Flashstopper
Environment Proxy
Classic Theme Restorer

Re:Yes

[lurker412]

Big speed improvement for me, too (Win7 64bit). I was a bit pissed that it broke a couple of extensions (Back to Top, Fxif) without warning me first and giving me a choice. I did find replacements, though the Back to Top one is not as good. I'm not quite used to the new tab look, but I suppose that shouldn't take much longer. The speed makes up for the rest. Haven't seen any bugs yet, but it's only been a day. FWIW.

Re:Yes

[6Yankee]

They broke Selenium?! You mean I'll have to fill out my time sheets by hand again? No thank you.

Re:Yes

[coastwalker]

Regarding NoScript - I have tried uMatrix as a replacement and so far I like it better because it is easier to use having a reload button right there in the block popup. The only thing I am missing currently is a password exporter/importer so I can backup my passwords to a camera card. I imagine I will find a password manager that can do that at some point thought, there are plenty of those.

Re:Yes

[fafalone]

No, not fanaticism. Just rationality.

Not either. You're a Mozilla employee shilling to defend 57.
Look at this dudes comment history, all he does is post in threads about 57 telling us how great it is.

Re:Yes

[TuringTest]

You're not alone, and the ideological aligns with the pragmatics. It seems too many people have forgotten what happens when a monoculture browser engine takes hold of the web for a decade.

Re:Yes

[theweatherelectric]

You're a Mozilla employee shilling to defend 57

Nope, incorrect. This is getting a bit sad. Sort your life out, son. You've gone wrong.

Re:Yes

[bingoUV]

How do you see the tabs? I can't see more than 10 tabs properly until I use one of the plugins for vertical tab bar - either Tab Mix Plus, and Tree Style Tab have been working for last few mutilations by Firefox team - but they don't seem to have made it to 57.

Re:Yes

[reboot246]

Default Zoom Level 7.7

The replacement, Zoom Page WE, doesn't work worth a damn. I ran Firefox 57 until I couldn't stand it and reverted back to 56.

All Zoom Page WE 7.1 does is make the page taller by increasing the font size, and the "fit to width" doesn't fit to width at all - still too much white space.

Re:Yes

[gshegosh]

Those I can hardly imagine parting with: - Slide eliminator ("Eliminator slajdów"), an extension that turns multi-page image galleries on news sites into single page - FireGestures - there is an alternative using WebExtensions, but it doesn't work with right mouse button, so useless for me - FEBE - used once in a while, but it's tough to lose this profile migration tool - GreaseMonkey - I'm lazy so I use it less and less, but it's still useful - HttpRequester - gotta find other tool now - Status-4-Evar - already stopped working some time ago, I miss a classic status bar I guess almost everyone has at least one extension that s/he got used to during all those years and that is now lost. Sucks a lot even if FF57 is overall a better browser now.

Re:Yes

[maelkum]

Why wouldn't you want to use keyboard shortcuts? I'm genuinely interested as I'm on the other end of the scale and am doing pretty much everything via keyboard.

Re:Yes

[xenobyte]

Classic Theme Restorer
DownThemAll
Working gestures on Linux
Proxy switcher

Re:Yes

[houghi]

They do not need you cookies. Look at Brower Finger Printing.

Re:Yes

[avandesande]

I've been using firefox since forever and have no problems with update. Sounds like people are looking for problems....

Re:Yes

[theweatherelectric]

Good grief this is lame. I recognize that powerlessness you feel in your life leads you seek out some kind of catharsis here, but do you recognize it? I hope so. Self awareness is the first step!

Re:Yes

[theweatherelectric]

one that you're quite comfortable with apparently

Comfortable? No. Used to? Yes. It's an unfortunate consequence of the bitter experience of Anonymous Cowards with nothing to say, nothing to contribute, and nothing worth reading.

Re:Yes

[theweatherelectric]

Fuck Trump

Well, hey, whatever turns on you I guess. You're very brave for owning your sexuality. You go, girl!

fuck you

I'm flattered but you're just not my type. It's not you, it's me. Don't worry. I'm sure you'll find yourself a nice man one day. Stay strong!

Re:Yes

[TWX]

It's because change under-the-hood is not recognized as such by nontechnical users. They change what the user sees because that's what the user can tell is new.

It's a damn shame too. I don't think that in the Microsoft world much improvement was made beyond the original Windows 95 UI. Apple's first OSX UI was also good. Neither has made significant forward progress and if anything have made backward regress.

Re:Yes

[xchknfrmr]

Java. I can't use Firefox to access any of our enterprise systems now.

Re:Yes

[PReDiToR]

Have you any thoughts on Sandboxie?

Re:Yes

[kinocho]

You obviously have not had to deal with the retarded sycophant author of no-squint plus. A truly needed add-on for many people. He is either retarded or maybe he is twelve.

Re:Yes

[barbariccow]

I've been using it for about a month. Works great. Compiling a native, profiled version now (MOZ_PGO=1 on xvfb) for extra geek points.

Re:Yes

[doom]

What else do you need?

Classic theme restorer.

It's All Text

But what I really want is a promise to make this the last Big Wave of Breakage. And maybe an acknowledgement that Austrailus was a stupid debacle, a promise that they're going to treat users with respect, and hence treat their customizations with respect... and it would be really cool if they would stop telling me about Software is Hard, and what I'm asking for is totally impossible, and stop calling me names like whiner and luddite.

This kind of thing seems completely beyond mozilla.org, though... Not holding breath.

Re:Yes

[Jerry]

You do know that you can turn off the popups in the preferences.

Re:Yes

[x_t0ken_407]

Tab Groups is the only thing I'm missing dearly at this point. I've worked around that with multiple windows, but it's not the same. Hopefully it comes around soon.

Re:Yes

[Darinbob]

Yes, life in the corporate world sometimes means you ship a product that doesn't work. Usually you get a chance to yank out the broken features and schedule a bug fix release for a month later or such, but I have seen broken stuff sent out because someone dictated a date to ship by.

Now it's usually not so bad because the release notes will tell what is broken, and the customer can delay the install. Or the product may allow a way to rollback to the previous version (ie, uninstall then download the previous version). Neither of those worked for Mozilla very well; the release notes and other sources claimed noscript was ready, and there's not a very obvious way how to get back to the previous version (I have solved this in the past by restoring from backups).

Re:Yes

[Darinbob]

How many last week? Also those numbers should be categorized into "must have", "useful", and "random fluff". Just like the number of apps on a smartphone is not a meaningful metric.

Re:Yes

[oldmacdonald]

NoScript has an auto-reload on changes to permissions setting, so you don't need the reload button.

Re:Yes

[farble1670]

The Firefox devs go out of their way to intentionally break Firefox's extension system for no good reason

There of course was a reason, but don't let that get in the way of your AC rant. I'll let you google it.

Re:Yes

[theweatherelectric]

Okay, but you've already moved the goalposts.

I didn't move any goal posts, the developer of NoScript did. First he said day and date with Firefox 57, then he said "later this week". Read his blog post.

Compare and contrast NoScript with uBlock Origin. uBlock Origin shipped ahead of Firefox 57's release, NoScript didn't. uMatrix shipped before Firefox 57's release, NoScript didn't. In the end, it's up to NoScript to deliver. If uBlock Origin and uMatrix can, NoScript can too.

Re:Yes

[theweatherelectric]

other sources claimed noscript was read

Those "other sources" being the author of NoScript himself. No much anyone can do when the developer changes his own release date.

Re:Yes

[theweatherelectric]

How many last week?

Well, on the 7th of November there were 5,924 add-ons available, on the 14th there were 6,231, and right now there are 6,491. Plenty of add-ons were ready prior to Firefox 57's release.

Also those numbers should be categorized into "must have", "useful"

18 of the top 20 add-ons by user count are available for Firefox 57 (counting Firebug which is no longer developed as it has been integrated with Developer Tools and NoScript which will be released soon).

Re:Yes

[lionel77]

How do you see the tabs? I can't see more than 10 tabs properly until I use one of the plugins for vertical tab bar - either Tab Mix Plus, and Tree Style Tab have been working for last few mutilations by Firefox team - but they don't seem to have made it to 57.

I already switched to Vivaldi some time ago, because it has a ton of cool features in addition to native vertical tabs, but for Tree Style Tab, there is a new version that is actually compatible with Firefox 57. That new version actually got automatically installed when Firefox updated itself on my Mac.

The extension is a complete rewrite, and because of security restrictions, it is no longer able to hide the regular, horizontal tab bar at the top. This is a kinda ugly and also means that you no longer get an increase in the vertical space that is available for content, which was always a nice bonus. Aside from that, the new Tree Style Tab seemed to work well in my brief test.

Re:Yes

[Lothsahn]

No, I haven't seen any problems like that. It really has been rock solid for me, although I'm not using Ars Technica forums. Slashdot has had no issues for me either.

Re:Yes

[Lothsahn]

I hated the tab look when it came out (see some of my earlier posts). I switched to the "light" theme and have gotten used to them since. Doesn't bug me now.

Re:Yes

[opk]

What else do you need?

Context Search is the main one I'll miss. I was able to replace all my other plugins so, e.g. Saka Key replaces VimFX and Cookie Autodelete replaces Self-destructing cookies.

Re:Yes

[eric_harris_76]

NoScript is coming back "very soon now". Not soon enough. I'm really missing it.

On the plus side, Unfriend Finder is working now. I wonder if that will go away after NoScript comes back?

Re:Yes

[eric_harris_76]

Wise. Wish I'd waited a week or three. Or more.

Re: Yes

[TJHook3r]

Firebug was essential in the web automation business... Imagine if Excel suddenly removed Pivot tables with no warning!

Re:Yes

[Antiocheian]

If uBlock Origin and uMatrix can, NoScript can too.

You clearly don't know what you are talking about, but if you did you wouldn't be shilling for Mozilla.

Re:Yes

[theweatherelectric]

Maybe you should read what the NoScript developer said over a year ago. Or are you going to claim that he knows nothing also?

No

[fbobraga]

Debian: ESR here

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Mint ESR here. Still trying to work out how I'm going to handle the extension apocalypse. I haven't even tried 57 yet. It's irrelevant how fast it is if it's missing most of the functionality.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

It's irrelevant how fast it is if it's missing most of the functionality.

This x 1000000000

Although Mozilla has massively fucked up Firefox, unfortunately, there's a bigger problem. The things that made Firefox popular in the first place don't matter to the majority of people today.

The average user doesn't care about tree style tabs, won't notice a performance difference, doesn't know what memory is and doesn't even know Firefox exists. Or Chrome, for that matter. It's just "the icon on the desktop that opens Facebook",

Re:No

[hawguy]

The average user doesn't care about tree style tabs, won't notice a performance difference, doesn't know what memory is and doesn't even know Firefox exists. Or Chrome, for that matter. It's just "the icon on the desktop that opens Facebook",

Isn't performance pretty much the *only* thing the average user will notice? (Well, that, and whether or the browser works on Facebook).

Re:No

[unrtst]

Isn't performance pretty much the *only* thing the average user will notice?

No. They won't notice it in this case, because the performance margins between browsers are now so small that you can't notice without something timing things for you, or loading a very intensive (very complex dom or javascript or combo) side by side in FF and some other browser. You're not going to notice if it's faster than chrome if you're not even sure what browser you use.

IMO, this is why MS Edge failed to take off. Who cares about its performance, if it breaks on many sites and, when broken, even offers to show that site in IE instead. If a browser kept telling me to use a different browser, then whatever benefit it may have had to begin with, isn't really worth it cause of that rigmarole.

Re:No

[darkain]

"Huh, Facebook must be having issues today", as the user exclaims while having 200 tabs open, using 100% RAM and forcing HDD swapping. This is seriously the mindset of the average user. It is the website's fault for poor local performance from bad programming in local applications and/or poor local system management.

Re:No

[ChunderDownunder]

Perhaps Mozilla should offer an official APT mirror, as Chrome has.

Re:No

[tepples]

Discordapp.com is usable in Chromium and unusably slow in Firefox ESR 52.

Re:No

[Hal_Porter]

To be fair everything is Facebook's fault though. Facebook did 9/11, caused the Holocaust and is the reason your dog got hit by a car and died.

Re:No

[goose-incarnated]

The average user doesn't care about tree style tabs, won't notice a performance difference, doesn't know what memory is and doesn't even know Firefox exists. Or Chrome, for that matter. It's just "the icon on the desktop that opens Facebook",

Isn't performance pretty much the *only* thing the average user will notice? (Well, that, and whether or the browser works on Facebook).

You're confusing Performance with Performance difference. A performance difference can often be imperceptible, while performance is perceptible, always.

Re:No

[zwarte piet]

Well, technically there is no good reason to keep all these tab running. If they haven't been used recently they should just be frozen and swapped out or moved to a database. Then it shouldn't matter much how many tabs you use.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

GreaseMonkey

Greasemonkey is compatible with Firefox 57. Tampermonkey is also available.

Re:No

[trawg]

Ah interesting, thanks. It looks like they created an entire new version just for v57 (v4.0) and my current Firefox version (v3.17) is not linked to it, so it just looks like it's deprecated. Good to know!

Re:No

[thegarbz]

They won't notice it in this case, because the performance margins between browsers are now so small that you can't notice

Yes, now it is. Prior to the work Mozilla has been doing recently that was definitely not the case. Not only was it not the fastest for simple loads but far more importantly it didn't scale, didn't isolate, and a heavy workload very quickly brought down the entire browser. There's more to performance than rendering a screen in a single tab.

Users won't notice going forward, but some people (myself included) actually left Firefox due to performance.

Re:No

[AmiMoJo]

Last time I used Edge it was weirdly unresponsive, similar to its predecessor Internet Explorer. You click to open a new tab, and there is a slight delay before it opens. Once it starts opening it's nice and fast, but the disconnect between your input and it reacting makes it feel very sluggish.

Re:No

[leeosenton]

MS Edge: If you have a menu item named "Open in Internet Explorer", it might be a clue that the browser isn't ready for prime-time.

Re: No

[Hal_Porter]

I bet the driver of the car used Facebook

Re:No

[FrankHaynes]

When I have even just a couple complex sites open in Firefox tabs (Twitter, Facebook, Weather Underground) it gobbles up memory like it's nobody's business. Perhaps that's just crappy scripting on the part of the site developers, but since the web browser is now a de facto operating system it's up to the browser to manage that crap so it doesn't become a problem.

It used to be we had to reboot Windows daily to keep it usable, now I have to reboot just to clean out the heap space, swap area, and give Firefox a new lease on life so that it doesn't bog down like the pig that it is. I hope this brave new world works better, but I can't upgrade until NoScript is ready.

Re:No

[thegarbz]

I don't really care about memory providing it is released when it is done. Firefox may not be the most memory efficient ... well actually that can't be said. Depending on the benchmark of the day it either wins or comes second to Chrome. Not that it matters either way. RAM is disposable these days.

Re:No

[Thelasko]

...or loading a very intensive (very complex dom or javascript or combo) side by side in FF and some other browser.

Every site is very intensive these days.

Re:No

[Aighearach]

Right, when you have just a couple sites open FF has long used more memory, because they optimized for a different case; when you have lots and lots of tabs open! And it does really well at that, best of class.

Personally, I don't care if it uses a small or moderate amount of memory when I'm not asking very much of it, I care how much it uses when I ask a lot of it!

Re:No

[Aighearach]

I use noscript and also uBlock Origin and uBlock Matrix and very very few sites are intensive, even the ones I let run some small percentage of the JS they wanted to run!

Re:No

[Aighearach]

Exactly! I always have a few hundred tabs "open" but as long I restart the browser once a week, no problem.

Re:No

[FrankHaynes]

That's not the point. I'm running Win7 and I guess it doesn't do such a great job at memory management either, so between Firefox being a pig and Windows not knowing how to allocate more than about 2GB of the 16GB I have in this 64-bit desktop machine it's pretty worthless to me. Firefox just up and crashes when it consumes much more than about 2.5GB or so. And I only have NoScript and uBlock Origin installed, nothing else and I avoid heavy sites when I can.

I don't care how much memory it uses either, but it must use it in such a way that Firefox doesn't bog down and become useless, or worse, crash altogether.

Re:No

[lahi]

You are not alone with that usage pattern. (And I am happy to see that neither am I, after all.)

I was "forced" to upgrade to 57 yesterday, due to that restart, unfortunately.
Since then, many of the tabs in my ~50 browser windows just won't render. They remain blank, or flicker with various black rectangles that. New tabs are the same. Occasionally it works, and a page gets displayed.

I am seriously considering downgrading to 56. This is on Xubuntu 17.04, an i5 CPU machine with 16 GiB RAM. (So _that_ shouldn't be the issue.)

Re:No

[thegarbz]

Indeed Firefox becomes unstable when loaded, but the answer is not to reduce memory usage, but to find the root cause of the instability. The memory usage of a modern browser is related to the modern internet experience. In that one regard, Firefox is actually performing quite well.

Re:No

[Aighearach]

I'm running 50.1. If anything purports to tell me I have to upgrade, I'll be going Back to the Future with a fork! :)

Re:No

[kamathln]

You can always download newest Firefox manually and run it in a separate folder. It can even use your existing profile - though you may have to re-enable the older extensions when you switch back.

Nope

[plover]

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.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

pre-57 NoScript -> 57 uMatrix (it even imports a NoScript backup)

done!

Re: Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Have to agree. Was (still is) a big fan of NoScript, and found uMatrix nice and slick, although the UI will take some getting used to.

Re:Nope

[aevan]

*helping Old Man with some issue on his computer
"I'll just load up firefox to che..."
"No! I don't use that. I use that blue moon one"

My only complaint with Pale Moon atm is with regards to Youtube and live streams: having to kill Asynch MSE for WebM MSE gets annoying fast, and seems to not always work either.

Re:Nope

[drinkypoo]

I switched back to Pale Moon, and so far it's been working very well. Maybe in a year or so I'll try Firefox again, and see if everything is working properly. Like extensions.

Re:Nope

[ArchieBunker]

I ask this question every time and I will ask it again. Produce some packet captures of Chrome exhibiting this behavior. I'm waiting.

Re:Nope

[GrahamJ]

The NoScript guys say an updated version will be out by the end of the week.

Re:Nope

[somenickname]

I keep hearing this mantra about "OMG no NoScript!". Apparently people don't realize that the script blocker in uBlock Origin is *far* superior to NoScript. It was updated for the new Firefox months ago so, it's had plenty of time to brew. You can thank me later: https://github.com/gorhill/uBl...

Re:Nope

[donaldm]

I ask this question every time and I will ask it again. Produce some packet captures of Chrome exhibiting this behavior. I'm waiting.

I can do that for Windows 10 even after I have opted out of the so-called "help"?? features. How can anyone trust an operating system that can spy on them?

I have never had a problem with Chrome (it's easy to turn off tracking if you want) or any of the other web browsers (e. Firefox, QupZilla, Konqueror) I use.

Re:Nope

[ChunderDownunder]

Yeah, I found noscript too tedious to whitelist every site I needed.

Firefox 57 has tracking protection - is that a new thing? I know it used to be on in Private mode but it is on regular windows too now.

Re:Nope

[Hal_Porter]

uBlock Origin in "I am an Advanced user" mode is awesome.

Re:Nope

[antdude]

Why not stick with Firefox ESR if you love the old FIrefox?

Re:Nope

[Darinbob]

If you don't whitelist sites, then how does it know which sites to allow through? Does it have it's own whitelist that you have to accept?

Re:Nope

[ChunderDownunder]

There may be some pre-approved list for noscript, I don't remember as it was a while ago that I tried it. But I found with the average web page loading a dozen or so AJAX requests, it was a pain having to check which individual script was responsable for loading the page content and which others were simply to serve ads.

I'm too impatient for that. :)

The defaults of u block origin seem close enough, if not perfect.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

uBlock Origin (as a web extension) can no longer block requests originating from the browser itself and extensions. I have yet to check if this includes the Google Analytics requests from about:addons.

I did use uBlock Origin (as a not-web-extension) before 57, though. That blocks internal requests fine.

Re:Nope

[gpig]

Privacy Badger still works, and since it blocks trackers, it blocks most ads (especially the annoying javascripty ones)

Re:Nope

[amorsen]

Not only does it do NoScript better, it also does RequestPolicy better!

Thank you so much, I had no idea that uBlock Origin could do those things!

Re:Nope

[clarkholmes]

Thanks for posting this. I had no idea uBlock had this capability.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not stick with Firefox ESR if you love the old FIrefox?

I thought it stood for 'Firefox Eric S. Raymond'.
Crap. It don't.

Re:Nope

[doom]

Yes, I use Pale Moon a lot, too. I think the people who are really impressed with how fast Quantum is haven't been using anything else recently-- everything was faster than Austrailus, because it was a piece of garbage, and the UI ideas they inflicted on us around then were stupid, and the bold New Ideas it was connected to all flopped (remember the mozilla version of an app store? No one else does, either).

To answer the OP's question: I didn't "switch" because I don't just use one thing. I'm posting this with a Firefox Nightly (I think they call this 59 already, dunno how they figure), and it's OK but I need to jump through some hoops still to get a replacement for "It's All Text" working, and while the firefox shills-- I mean enthusiasts this is a minor annoyance, it's still an annoyance.

Re:Nope

[mlw4428]

Well I recommend unplugging your computer if privacy is most important to you. Your ISP knows. Your VPN provider knows.

Re:Nope

[Thelasko]

I don't know when that might be, but if it isn't soon, I'll have to switch to Pale Moon.

I tried to switch to Pale Moon for Android, and now none of my Add-ons work. I don't see how it's an improvement.

Re:Nope

[Aighearach]

pre-57 NoScript -> 57 uMatrix (it even imports a NoScript backup)

done!

Personally I won't touch most of the `web without both!

Re:Nope

[Aighearach]

It isn't about patience, it is about if you want to decide the source of content is low quality and switch to another source!

If I do a web search, I usually choose three results from the first page and open them in new tabs before even looking at the first one; one in three is about what I expect to be reasonable and sufficient quality. The ones that appear tedius can just be closed rapidly, no need to spend time there. It seems to me that I actually save time this way.

If you're willing to turn on whatever they want to make you turn on to use the site, then you can't expect to actually have the protections or conveniences from blocking because the bad actors can just throw extra marbles on the floor and you'll instantly turn off the protections to restore convenience.

Re:Nope

[Aighearach]

Oh, right, that's why I don't let browsers update themselves! Thanks for reminding me. ;)

Re:Nope

[ArchieBunker]

My desktop has 16GB and rarely does usage go above 4GB total. But then again I don't have 200 tabs open like some of you nut jobs. I don't think Chrome has ever froze on me. It might have crashed maybe five times in as many years.

Re:Nope

[Canned Cooked Meat]

Went through the super annoying process of joining just to come back and thank you.

yes and yes/no

[foradoxium]

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.

Yes

[Caesar Tjalbo]

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.

Partially

[DRichardHipp]

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.

Re:Partially

[TeknoHog]

I still need to recompile for my primary desktop (Ubuntu 16.04).

Well, that seems weird. I use Gentoo and FF 57 was available as a binary.

But on the topic, I only switched from FF to Chromium fairly recently, and there's one simple feature I miss from FF and many other browsers: middle click pasting of the URL anywhere on the page. Having to carefully paste it into the address bar now feels idiotic in the same way that moving windows in Windows requires grabbing by the title bar (apparently, they missed the part of the desktop metaphor where you can move a paper document by poking it anywhere you like).

Re:Partially

[reiscw]

If you are running Ubuntu 17.10 it has been updated.

Re:Partially

[Outta_the_way_peck!]

Just updated my Win10 work laptop. After it restarted none of the menus or mouse over text would display. Had to restart it as administrator.

No. And don't want to.

[HiThere]

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.

Yes and No

[fahrbot-bot]

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.)

Re:Yes and No

[fahrbot-bot]

Sorry... s/WebAssembly/WebExtensions/

Yes because it's in my updates

[HalAtWork]

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.

Firefox was my tried-and-true browser...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Firefox was my tried-and-true browser...

[0100010001010011]

Who doesn't use a keyboard short cut for reload?

First think I did was take every button out of the toolbar and turn on the old menus.

Re:Firefox was my tried-and-true browser...

[Zontar The Mindless]

Who doesn't use a keyboard short cut for reload?

*raises hand*

Re:Firefox was my tried-and-true browser...

[caseih]

I use shift-reload all the time, to get firefox to ignore it's cache for the reload and get me a completely fresh copy. I suppose there's a keyboard shortcut for it, but I've never learned what it is.

Re:Firefox was my tried-and-true browser...

[hoover]

Shift-F5 maybe? (chrome on Linux here, seems to work)

Re:Firefox was my tried-and-true browser...

[tomtomtom]

Pocket integration on desktop is stupid (bloat which most people don't want) but it's a lot worse on Android. The blank tab page as of 57 now fills with advertising from them. It's getting a lot of 1-star reviews on the Play Store for that.

Re:Firefox was my tried-and-true browser...

[Rolgar]

Esc to cancel loading a page
F5 to reload
F6 highlight the address bar (then type the destination you want) (F6 actually cycles between address, bookmarks? then back to the page)
Control T open a new tab
Control W to close tab
Control Shift T reopen the last closed tab
Control Tab go to the next tab
Control shift tab go to the previous tab

I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of at the moment.

Re:Firefox was my tried-and-true browser...

[doom]

Control Pagu Up and Control Page Down cycles through open tabs.

Someone in reddit's firefox group got modded down for mentioning these. Reddit is really weird.

Re:Firefox was my tried-and-true browser...

[Aighearach]

As with almost all binary actions on the computer, I use both. If I'm already typing or have been typing recently, I'll use the keyboard. If I'm only switching between documents or reading something, I might sit farther away and use a mouse. If I'm using a mouse to scroll through a PDF viewed in the browser, and the rendering hangs, it seems silly to change positions to use the keyboard instead of clicking the little icon.

Re:Firefox was my tried-and-true browser...

[Aighearach]

I often use the mouse for things, but in emacs I hit M-x and then type out the command. I can't be bothered to memorize shortcuts. I might even reach for the mouse to use the menu if I don't remember the option name.

In vim if I need an option, I just quit and load the file in emacs. ;)

Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Nope.

[Aighearach]

Their main competitor is funding the development. I don't think they need any time machine to change how that is expected to work out.

Nope, switched to chrome

[robocord]

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!

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[theweatherelectric]

give in and switch to the path of least resistance

Which is.. to keep using Firefox? Firefox's WebExtensions API offers more than Chrome's does (see the browser comparison tables). The claims that Firefox is a "Chrome clone" are silly.

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 (and it will use it when it gets released in a couple of days).

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[Billly Gates]

give in and switch to the path of least resistance

Which is.. to keep using Firefox? Firefox's WebExtensions API offers more than Chrome's does (see the browser comparison tables). The claims that Firefox is a "Chrome clone" are silly.

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 (and it will use it when it gets released in a couple of days).

This reminds me of the old Emacs joke posted here. It goes Yeah I love Emacs. It's a great OS it just comes with a shitty text editor.

As a browser webkit beat it a very long time ago regardless of plugins. To me I view Firefox like RealNetworks realplayer or winamp. I heard both are better or were I should say, but who cares this is 2017 the world has moved on. I have not run it many years and neither have my coworkers. My 70 year old father is the only person I am aware of who still uses it.

I do not mean this as offensive to the remaining Firefox users. I really don't. I was once a fanboy since the days of Phoenix. I realistically do not see it mattering anymore nor ever coming back just like the legacy products listed above. ... ok Emacs is still going strong with the older IT nerd crowd and is not going away:-).

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[Darinbob]

I'm still a bit anti Chrome because of it's marketing approach to partner with other applications so will automatically install Chrome on their behalf, or use a small opt-out that is overlooked by may users. This is anti-social behavior. Every few months I find myself uninstalling it yet again from my mother's computer. Far more often than I am uninstalling yahoo search bars or even MacAfee trial versions.

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[Antiocheian]

It seems that using whatever young people are using is sufficient merit for you. Your father has to be wrong because (the only factual statement in your posting) is 70 years old.

Not that I care to defend Firefox anymore, but wouldn't it be refreshing for you to face your own age and accept the fact that time passes and you should stop worrying about it ?

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[markdavis]

>"Congrats Firefox dev team! You've made it so much like chrome that there's no longer any reason to use it!"

1) Is not a binary blob
2) Is community developed (although sometimes hard to tell)
3) Contains no Googleisms and Google tracking
4) Far less likely to contain back doors
5) Still has more UI control options
6) Promotes browser diversity and choice

Had you said "Chromium" instead of "Chrome", that would have helped with a few of the above, but still not really deal with all of it.

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[Billly Gates]

It seems that using whatever young people are using is sufficient merit for you. Your father has to be wrong because (the only factual statement in your posting) is 70 years old.

Not that I care to defend Firefox anymore, but wouldn't it be refreshing for you to face your own age and accept the fact that time passes and you should stop worrying about it ?

I made the biased assumption based on some evidence that older people are resistant to change as the brain ages it's willingness to learn and memorize new things diminishes. I am 41 and am an old far. True I have trouble with newer GUI's as it is compared to younger folks.

But I noticed when a change is positive the older people for example also LOVE IE as an example because anything else looks funny. XP was GOD posts here were mostly older folks.

Time does pass yet I am careful to move with it when I see a benefit. But there is a big gap in opinion with mobile apps on Windows 10. Young people thing that and flat UI's are neat and useful. Older folks have an opposite reaction with some even preferring the Windows95 classic look which the ones I have met are near 50 and over. They swear they no more than the younger folks thru wisdom when it looks so dated.

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[fafalone]

You're just shilling at this point, scroll up near the top of this thread for a number of posts that list all the things that are broken and never coming back, both whole plugins and functionality within plugins. Not to mention the UI and removal of built in options that make it more like Chrome all the time. And WebExtensions will never allow modifying the UI, just like Chrome. You've cited a couple minor features that aren't nearly enough to make 'Chrome clone' an inaccurate description after 57.

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[fafalone]

God damn look at theweatherelectric's comment history, I nailed it, every single comment this dude has made is defending the changes in FF57. THIS GUY IS A PAID SHILL.

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[labnet]

Undoing moderation

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[Rakarra]

Nope, just rational

Sorry, a guy who posts FF defenses THIS MUCH on EVERY SINGLE Firefox thread on Slashdot for months on end is not rational. He's either a "true believer" (IE, not rational), or well(or poorly)-paid.

Re:Nope, switched to chrome

[theweatherelectric]

He's either a "true believer" (IE, not rational), or well(or poorly)-paid.

No, it just seems that way to you because you've lost perspective. Maybe get out in the world some more and broaden your experience of life. Narrowness is never beneficial.

Unfortunately yes and then back.

[luvirini]

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.

Re:Unfortunately yes and then back.

[Zontar The Mindless]

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.

Ever since they inexplicably moved the tab bar away from the pane of the viewer and tried to make it impossible to put it back where it belongs, I've known this to be a lie.

Re:Unfortunately yes and then back.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/13/customize-firefox-57-with-css/
Your welcome.

Re:Unfortunately yes and then back.

[luvirini]

So having to tweak a number of CSS files to fix something that the developers broke on purpose in version 29 and still have not fixed to this day. UGH. Really user friendly. No wonder Firefox is losing market share.

If the browser is supposed to be so customizable why is there no UI setting or a direct fix even now more than 3 years after they broke it?

At least with the classic theme restorer you could just install the extension and forget for more than three years that the developers hate the users.

Re:Unfortunately yes and then back.

[Darinbob]

Change the theme to "light", their default made the tabs bar have the dark setting.

Re:Unfortunately yes and then back.

[golden_donkey]

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.

Click hamburger menu on the right > Add-ons >Themes>Light. It is not intuitive though. One of my colleagues updated and his browser is blue as his Windows theme is blue. Mine is black. I like the new version as it is much faster. I use RSS and usually in the morning I click open all in tabs (usually 50 tabs) and the browser gets very slow. I notice that Slashdot pages load a bit faster now. But let's hope speed is permanent and it is not due to browser restart :)

Yes

[Lothsahn]

Love it. Fast and fixes rendering issues I had in FF 56.

No Upgrade Here

[xbytor]

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.

Love it!

[blahbooboo]

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.

Re:Love it!

[blahbooboo]

+1

I'm running the new FF on 3 machines now and it's great so far! I do want NoScript but since so many sites are so horribly broken I've mostly run NoScript permissive. really zero complaints so far. I did wonder what is that weird space between the icons (back/forward/reload/home) and the URL bar. Like if they left justified it then they could show more of the URL.

You can remove that space. Right click on it and select remove from toolbar

Re:Love it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla seems to think it is.

You do get that for any application that renders stuff, rendering new stuff faster than the refresh rate of the display is pointless, right? As far as I can tell, all the "speed" enhancements come from a new rendering engine. (There are other stability enhancements that come from killing the old XPCOM extension framework, but those shouldn't make the browser "faster.")

So, yeah, we're talking about frame rates in a browser, because Mozilla seems to be talking about how fast Firefox Quantum can render pages.

Re:Love it!

[hyades1]

You would be my dream client.

You: "I want x, y and z.

Me: "You may have x. I will not give you y. I will give you something sort of like z."

You: "Thank you for telling me what I can have. I now understand I did not need y anyway. My request for y deserved to be turned down. And clearly you know more about z than I do, and your somewhat close copy will obviously be better."

Me: "Oh...and get used to DRM. It's baked in and you may not refuse it."

You: "Thank you again. Do with me as you will."

Re:Love it!

[theweatherelectric]

Me: "Oh...and get used to DRM. It's baked in and you may not refuse it."

Go to the settings in Firefox -> General and scroll down to "Digital Rights Management Content" section. Uncheck the "Play DRM-controlled content" box and voila! DRM refused.

Re:Love it!

[hyades1]

Thank you for missing the point so completely.

Re:Love it!

[theweatherelectric]

theweatherelectric is a Mozilla-employed shill

Nope, false. Your paranoia has led you astray, kid.

Re:Love it!

[Toad-san]

Ditto. Just waiting for NoScript.

Re:Love it!

[Aighearach]

I gotta say, he clearly understood the point.

You said, "and you may not refuse it," and he corrected you.

If it is still bad without the lie, maybe you could make the case again, but without the lie?

Re:Love it!

[fafalone]

Yeah, because non-employees would totally use their account to only comment in articles about FF, only to talk about how good WebExtensions are, going back 2 full pages in your history. You're not a shill, you're just obsessed with the greatness of WebExtensions, how could I have possibly concluded otherwise! It's so great lots of people make it the only thing they post about for months and months and months, without any ulterior motive at all!

Re:Love it!

[theweatherelectric]

without any ulterior motive at all!

As I say, you're suffering paranoid delusions. Seek help, son.

Re:Love it!

[fafalone]

Yup, keep name calling to distract people from realizing my description of your comment history is factually accurate, and the excuses for why anyone besides an employee would have such a history are far fetched.

Re:Love it!

[theweatherelectric]

Yup, keep name calling to distract people

There is no distraction. You are paranoid.

If you won't see a mental health professional then at least buy yourself a tin foil hat. You'll feel better.

Re:Love it!

[fafalone]

Ok, say I'm paranoid. Turns out that paranoid isn't a synonym for wrong. And everyone who fact checks my claim will see it's a sound conclusion based on the evidence. So I'm paranoid, and my paranoia led to investigating your post history, which revealed what you are.

Re:Love it!

[theweatherelectric]

Ok, say I'm paranoid.

I have and you are a paranoid delusional. Acknowledging your mental illness is the first step to recovery. You are very brave to confront your illness.

Re:Love it!

[fafalone]

Good news, I'm going to be ok. All of your dodging of the substance of my delusions has calmed me and reassured me that I'm right, so all is good in the world. Thank you for implicitly admitting that you can't refute my claim, therefore I'm right; it's quite liberating to confront ones delusion and find that it's actually true, and thus my mental health has never been better. You've helped a great deal, Mozilla staffer.

Re:Love it!

[theweatherelectric]

your dodging of the substance of my delusions

There is no substance to dodge. The lack of substance is what makes them delusions.

This is becoming pathetically sad. You have obvious disability and there's no value in continuing this. It's like kicking a puppy. Pointless.

Re:Love it!

[fafalone]

Uh oh, it looks like your accusations of me being delusional came from insecurity about your own delusions. Even though you were mean to me I'll try to help you... your comment history is there, everyone can see it, if you can't, first get some meds for your hallucinations then we can continue. Let me know when the hallucinations have stopped, then we can dive in to your central delusion, that anyone other than an employee would dedicate himself exclusively to defending a software feature against criticism, to the exclusion of all other conversation. You can get better!

Re:Love it!

[theweatherelectric]

Some sad cases can't be cured, you poor thing.

Re:Love it!

[fafalone]

Gee look at that, acknowledging you can't be cured, and still having empathy for me having to deal with you. Class act.

Re:Love it!

[theweatherelectric]

"I know you are but what am I"? Please, that is beyond pathetic.

Re:Love it!

[fafalone]

If only I had the sophistication of argument to just cry "delusional" over hard facts I can't refute.

Re:Love it!

[theweatherelectric]

Your "facts" are delusions. Calling them delusions is the most charitable description possible.

Probably eventually

[mpeskett]

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.

Re:Probably eventually

[billyswong]

This is probably what I will end up with too. Switching to any Firefox fork is still worrying for me. Websites often don't test with those minority browsers so I will risk sites breaking if I switch and they can't keep up with the latest HTML/Javascript tech. Although I will miss Classic Theme Restorer, and some other old classic extensions. Curse you Google. My conspiracy theory is Google funded Mozilla so that Firefox can be crippled. There is no technical reason why they can't expose the full feature set Classic Theme Restorer want in WebExtension

Yes

[89cents]

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.

Moving to chrome

[Presence Eternal]

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

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Yep!!

[David_Hart]

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.

Re:Yep!!

[fahrbot-bot]

I don't like that they moved the refresh button to the left of the URL. I preferred it on the right.

The Refresh button is now outside the URL bar and you can move it via the Customize screen like some of the other UI buttons.

Re:Yep!!

[David_Hart]

I don't like that they moved the refresh button to the left of the URL. I preferred it on the right.

The Refresh button is now outside the URL bar and you can move it via the Customize screen like some of the other UI buttons.

Cool!! Thanks for the tip!!

Brief

[valley]

Brief RSS reader...

Have been on the ESR channel since 10.0...

[williamyf]

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.
 

Yes, primary Android browser for 3months now

[bjamesv]

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.

Firefox 57 finally pushed me over to Chrome

[ugen]

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.

Re:Firefox 57 finally pushed me over to Chrome

[ugen]

While you are trolling, I will respond because I think it makes a good point :)

I suspect that Firefox may support the same API (thought existing addon authors adamantly state it does not). However, if I am to use the same API, I'd rather use it in a faster, more efficient and (due to its popularity) better supported browser. That is to say - whether Firefox supports such an API is irrelevant at this point.

Firefox had a distinctive advantage of a unique flexible design and API access to all aspects of browser implementation. They chose to remove this advantage in favor of standardization. Now there is no longer anything about Firefox that makes it a better choice.

Re:Firefox 57 finally pushed me over to Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

And the sad thing is, given the number of people modding you as +1/interesting, I'll bet you're typical of the kind of person here on Slashdot who is constantly complaining about Mozilla's faults without actually knowing what you're talking about. Huzzah for the nerd crew!

Maybe you should do some research before claiming someone doesn't know what they're talking about. This bug report https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1291841, which has been open for over a year, is one of the issues preventing cookie manager extensions from working. Sounds like extension writers are out of luck for now, there isn't even a timeline for when this will be fixed.

I'll bet you're typical of the kind of person here on Slashdot who is constantly complaining about others' faults without actually knowing what you're talking about. Huzzah for the nerd crew!

Re: Firefox 57 finally pushed me over to Chrome

[ugen]

Very aware, so much so that I spent several days auditing Chrome by watching traffic in Wireshark, to see if it sends anything anywhere I do not expect it to.

I found that with appropriate basic configuration Chrome does not "phone home" and, generally, does not expose any more information than Firefox did (possibly less, actually)

Ironically, google.com cookies and local data are permanently blocked in my Chrome copy ;)

Re:Firefox 57 finally pushed me over to Chrome

[Menchi]

I haven't been using Firefox that long, I migrated from Opera 12 just a few years ago when the company was taken over and all the old devs were fired to make Opera a Chrome reskin. From that perspective I baffles me that Firefox just scrapped all of its old extensions. I don't think most of its current userbase were using Firefox for its clunky default UI or its sluggish rendering engine. I sure wasn't, I was using it for its amazing wealth of extensions. Most of which are gone now and some of which will never return because the new API does not support the required features. I've considered migrating to Vivaldi (a Chromium mod by some of the old Opera devs) for a while now but the main thing that stopped me was the lack of a Cookie manager that had the features of the Firefox extension Cookie Monster (and of course the old Opera 12). Your thing looks exactly like that, was that your inspiration? I'll try it later today, if it works you'll be my personal hero for at least a week.

Re:Firefox 57 finally pushed me over to Chrome

[dunkelfalke]

Except it is not quite the same API.
You see, I had one classic Firefox addon that was perfect for my specific use case. A couple of months ago when it was foreseeable that classic addons would be switched off, I switched to Chrome at work and to Opera at home. You see, Chrome has a similar extension, and while it is not nearly as comfortable as the old Firefox one, it is still sort of usable. I've just installed that particular Chrome extension in Firefox 57 and it doesn't work, so apparently there is enough difference in the API.

Re:Firefox 57 finally pushed me over to Chrome

[doom]

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.

Whoa. You mean they didn't tell you it's all your fault, you don't know what you're doing, and it doesn't matter because it'll all be fixed after the next Great Scheme is implemented?

I quit filing mozilla bugs a long time ago.

(My favorite was the guy defending the unix installer's right to delete everything in the installation directory without warning... notably they eventually dropped that installer.)

Oblig. PSA

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Oblig. PSA

[Presence Eternal]

I think you mean Vivaldi. But thank you for the PSA, I totally forgot about Chromium based browsers.

Switching to Brave Browser

[Anonymous Coward]

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/

Re:Switching to Brave Browser

[Antiocheian]

That seems interesting. Does it give you any compatibility headaches ?

Re:Switching to Brave Browser

[TWX]

From my point of view, the only thing Mozilla seems to be actively challenging Google on is who can change version numbers the fastest.

Re: Switching to Brave Browser

[Antiocheian]

OK thanks. I'll definitely try this one.

Yep

[jemmyw]

Yes. Next question?

Yes!

[jon3k]

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.

Loaded question

[slack_justyb]

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.

Re:Loaded question

[Presence Eternal]

The Luddites had very good reasons to hate the industrialization that threatened their culture, economy, and way of life. Their opponents were brutal and made inferior textiles with a high human cost. The Luddite rebellion failed, and the horrible treatment of textile workers has continued pretty much unabated to this very day. It's a silly thing to trot out when "progress" has more steps back than forward.

Firefox 57 fixed problems I didn't have and took away things I've used for years. 56 worked well on everything from my i7 gaming rig to my ancient Pentium laptop that shipped with vista and 2 gigs of ram. I kind of wonder if this "57 is fast" stuff is a bunch of benchmark fluff, but it could be I'm just insensitive to browser latency. Stability, now that has been a very real problem in the past. Stability was also flawless on all my machines in 56.

If 57 is delightful for you, cool. Me, I lost extensions that've been part of my daily life, I gained nothing, and I think that's a perfectly damn fine reason to be annoyed with it. Not to mention all the extension developers who got shafted. Feh, Luddite indeed.

In Firefox's favor though, Fakespot on Chrome costs 2 dollars a month for a glorified link opener. What the frak?

Re:Loaded question

[hyades1]

Thank you for responding to that idiot better than I could have. Most Firefox users didn't go in that direction for raw speed and a new GUI every frickin' week. In the early days (and yes, I was an early adopter) it worked reasonably well and featured a consistently-increasing number of add-ons that let you turn it into a browser that did exactly what you wanted. At the time, it was really the only choice for people who wanted to customize their web-surfing experience.

Fast forward to now...The only thing that has kept me from dumping Firefox completely (I use Pale Moon mostly, but there's some sites it just won't render properly) is Classic Theme Restorer. Now, apparently, the developer is being given the cold shoulder by Firefox.

So screw 'em. I'll keep my current version for those rare occasions when I need it and use an alternative for everything else. Mostly that will continue to be Pale Moon. When I really care about privacy/security, I don't bother with "Private Browsing" on either of them. I just use Epic.

Re:Loaded question

[StormReaver]

Mods, I await your flamebait scores....

I was going to mod you up until I got to this point. Since I don't like encouraging poor attempts at moderation manipulation, I'll just refrain from moderating your comment at all.

Re:Loaded question

[Antiocheian]

It doesn't use the abomination that is XUL.

Mozillians are not to be taken seriously.

Re:Loaded question

[theweatherelectric]

Are you trying to criticize a namespace identifier? Do you understand what you're looking at? Do you get the joke?

Re:Loaded question

[doom]

If 57 is delightful for you, cool. Me, I lost extensions that've been part of my daily life, ...

And me, I've long since gotten tired of mozilla telling me I'm a weird character who cares about some odd issue that no Normal User would care about-- I'll say I'm a weird character, I'm still using mozilla code after decades of this kind of crap--

The latest round of people who sure do look like shills going bonkers in /r/firefox modding down anyone who dares say "palemoon", for example, that hasn't impressed me much either.

Re:Loaded question

[UnknownSoldier]

> They fix the slowness and now everyone bitches about broken extensions.

Oh look, someone who is whining about their special case of Speed is more important then Functionality .

Guess what, your use case is NOT my use case.

Ignoring other people's reasons doesn't make yours magically "right" -- only "right for you."

> It's clearly a violation of whatever made up principals our Luddite collective deemed to be the gospel so many years ago.

Ad Hominem and Straw Man fallacies much?

If you actually watched documentaries, such as the The True Cost, you would quickly see that modernization exploits MORE people.

/sarcasm Because anyone who is against "Change for the sake of Change" is "clearly" a Luddite.

Get off your fucking high horse already.

Re:Loaded question

[Antiocheian]

The Mozillian is trying to understand my point.

Re:Loaded question

[theweatherelectric]

You don't have a point, dude.

Re:Loaded question

[slack_justyb]

Oh look, someone who is whining about their special case of Speed is more important then Functionality .

You'd have a point if it was just me harping about speed. But literally for the last upteen years folks have gotten on here and said "THE NUMBER ONE FUCKING REASON THEY DON'T USE FIREFOX WAS BECAUSE OF ALL THE FUCKING SHIT THEY FIXED." Now that it's fixed suddenly, everyone wants to whine about something else so kick rocks dude. Your functionality was broken at version 4 and needed a swift death. If your plugin or extension didn't port when they got the memo well ahead of time, then there's not much help for it. A whole lot of folks made the jump and had zero, ZERO problem.

Ignoring other people's reasons doesn't make yours magically "right" -- only "right for you."

I was totally cool with XUL and felt that there could be some tweaking that could be done in maybe around v60-v70 we'd have something, but now looking back. I'm pretty glad they just decided to not even go down that road. However, don't confuse my position as it being MY reason. At some point I just got tired of getting on here and hearing the same old shit over and over again. It's like when I get on here and hear shit about systemd. I'm so over the stupid knee jerk and then when people don't have that reason anymore, suddenly it's something else.

Ad Hominem and Straw Man fallacies much?

Pointing out a group of folks who swear off advancement because their afraid of advancement isn't me attacking any person's character. It's me point out something that actually exists. People have gotten on here and said shit like "UNIX or die", have made comments about the monolithic nature of Linux distros of the Microsofting of Linux. It would be Ad Hominem if I was trying to implicate something that wasn't explicitly known to everyone who visits Slashdot. And you aren't even using Straw Man correctly. Especially when you bring...

If you actually watched documentaries, such as the The True Cost, you would quickly see that modernization exploits MORE people.

For fucks sake dude, we're talking about modernizing web browsers, this isn't a fucking treatise on the perils of modernizing the world. You gotta pull it together and stop extrapolating.

Because anyone who is against "Change for the sake of Change" is "clearly" a Luddite.

Yeah, in the context we're talking about, because I feel like I need to clear that up for you since I wouldn't want you to take what I'm about to say and try it out on things like health care or politics or some shit like that, but in the context of web browsers it's a take the pasta and throw it on the wall, see what sticks kind of game. The sames true for Linux and the things that distros have been trying out lately. But I see people get on here and bitch about how shit slow X11 is, wonder why drivers are sort of on par with others, and then blow a full on gasket when someone says Wayland. You people said you wanted it fixed, they fucking fixed it, and now you all are saying "NOT LIKE THIS!!". WELL SHIT, it's OSS, get off your damn asses and get to coding. That way you can change it the way you want to change it.

Get off your fucking high horse already.

I'll give you that one, that one is true and perhaps I'm riding it a bit hard, but goddamn if it doesn't get old to hear nothing but bitching about something that everyone ASKED FOR. Yeah, it wasn't the exact way you (in the general sense not pointing you specifically out) wanted it to change but there was literally SIX YEARS between 4 and 57 for anyone feeling frisky to do something ANYTHING about it in a way that didn't kill the old cruft. No one took up the mantel, so here we are. If you don't like it, that's cool, you don't have to accept it. It's open source and Firefox clones are a dime a dozen, by all means port yo

Firefox Edge edition

[networkzombie]

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.

Re:Firefox Edge edition

[tepples]

Why do I need an account to use Pocket?

The account is used to synchronize the links stored in Pocket on one of your devices that runs Pocket with the links stored in Pocket on another of your devices that runs Pocket. How would you recommend that this be accomplished without an account?

Re:Firefox Edge edition

[networkzombie]

From Mozilla.org: "Pocket strips away clutter and saves the page in a clean, distraction-free view". Why can't I have a clean distraction-free view without an account?

Re:Firefox Edge edition

[Barefoot Monkey]

From Mozilla.org: "Pocket strips away clutter and saves the page in a clean, distraction-free view". Why can't I have a clean distraction-free view without an account?

You don't need an account for that. I think you tripped over the fallacy of the inverse. The whole point of Pocket is to save the page so that you can view it on any other device that is connected to the same account. The quote you refer to says that an effect of Pocket is that the page gets saved in a de-cluttered form, but it doesn't say that Pocket is the only way to get that de-cluttered view, because it isn't - if you want a clean distraction-free view without an account then just press the "Enter Reader View" button on the URL bar. It's the icon that looks like an open book.

Probably okay

[jamej]

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 and No

[E-Rock]

Yes, then I found out they broke the QuickJava extension, which is the only reason I use FF. So now I'm going back.

Better managed alternatives

[Futurepower(R)]

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.

Firefox is my browser of choice.

[iCEBaLM]

Firefox is, and has been, my browser of choice.

Need NoScript

[GrahamJ]

Waiting for a NoScript update, then I’ll jump.

Re:Need NoScript

[evanh]

Me too. Rolled it back immediately.

Been switching back and forth

[ebh]

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.

No discernible difference that matters

[mschuyler]

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.

perversely impressive

[JackSpratts]

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.

Breaking Things since 2011

[Excelcia]

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.

Re:Lags for every new Tab

[Teun]

I don't see this behaviour, the new tab/page opens right away. (Kubuntu)
This behaviour seems a little faster than the previous versions.

Re:Firefox is now my "B tier" spare browser.

[Teun]

Strange, FF never or hardly ever crashed on me but the first hour after I upgraded it has crashed two times, the next two hours it behaves well...

I Tried it

[hduff]

I'm trying FF57 for 64-bit Linux.
Facebook brings it to a screeching halt.

Re:I Tried it

[vandamme]

I'm running Ubuntu MATE and Mint Cinnamon, and FF57 runs OK ... most of the time... on Mint, but brings Ubuntu to a crawl after ten, twenty minutes. I usually have GMail open, and a couple other tabs, but haven't figured out what slows it down to unuseability. I switch to Chrome, and GMail runs fine. I wonder how that could happen.

Yes I updated

[Teun]

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.

Re:Yes I updated

[szo]

Is it possible to put the tree-style tabs on top (in place of the native tabs)?

No, I have not switched

[hackel]

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.

Re:No, I have not switched

[zwarte piet]

No Netflix for you then.

Re:No, I have not switched

[doom]

No Netflix for you then.

Or for me. Life is possible without Netflix.

Not yet, thanks

[Miles_O'Toole]

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 on the 2008 15" MacBook Pro...

[antdude]

... 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!

I'm warming up to FireFox again

[Tony Isaac]

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.

Re:I'm warming up to FireFox again

[markdavis]

>"- Firefox added the ability to block auto-play video. *That* won me over."

Except it doesn't really work right and we are still waiting for it to be fixed (2 years and counting). For some of us, it is critical. In the meantime, the "Flashblocker" addon fixed it all.... and now THAT won't work in 57+ (and never will):

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...

Stopped me from switching to Chrome

[MTSranger]

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.

Kinda on the edge

[yurikhan]

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.

Yes

[jimbo]

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

[ChoGGi]

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...

bottom line: the browser is not faster

[Jazoray]

who cares if a website loads 200ms faster when fighting the deteriorated user experience takes 10 seconds longer?

No update till my ad-ons work

[nanoflower]

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.

Yes

[SlithyMagister]

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.

Re:No. And don't want to.

[HiThere]

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.

no - i'll wait

[ajkieser]

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.

Fantastic

[jasonvan]

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!

It's FAST!

[gerald.edward.butler]

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.

Re:It's FAST!

[x_t0ken_407]

Same. Once the replacement get's in I'll be happy. For now I'm working around it with multiple Windows, which isn't HORRIBLE.

Re:Love it! (me too)

[Anonymous Coward]

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'm trying

[livvydun]

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.

No and I won't

[Antiocheian]

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.

No

[trawg]

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?

Performance

[stereoroid]

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.

Great!

[jouassou]

I was skeptical at first to them breaking the plugin ecosystem, but I'm very happy with the results:

• * Some websites which required Chrome now work in Firefox again (e.g. HTML composition of emails in Outlook365, which I sometimes need for work);
• * It is indeed faster than the previous Firefox versions;
• * For once, I actually like the UI upgrade (you can edit the toolbar to remove the gaps);
• * All my plugins were either ported or had good replacements available already.

Regarding plugins, my current setup is:

• * Tree Style Tab;
• * FoxyProxy Standard;
• * Cookie Autodelete;
• * Decentraleyes;
• * Disconnect;
• * uBlock Origin;
• * Smart HTTPS;
• * I don't care about cookies.

Mmhmmm

[slashmydots]

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.

Still on 56.0.2

[ET3D]

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.

It doesn't look bad

[CustomSolvers2]

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.

What else?

[fafalone]

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.

Re:What else?

[Mamaeh]

Besides the lack of many useful extensions, as already cited, there is the absolute lack of flexibility in configuration.

They got rid of the "extension bar" where I kept all extension buttons at the bottom of the screen. Now they just throw all those buttons along the address and search bar, squeezing everything. Not happy with this they inserted some undesirable icons (like save to pocket and other trash) that we are not able to get rid of. It looks like the developers all uses 4K display, despising completely the comfort of notebook users.

I do notice an increase of speed, but the uncomfortable feel increased orders of magnitude more.

It makes me desire to give a try to other browsers, perhaps there is some that I can make comfortable to use.

Re:What else?

[dublin]

This is probably headed to being a monumental cock-up. The browser is the only application that really matters much on any platform anymore.I've been a dedicated Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox user for years, but breaking extensions is losing me.

There are really only two things keeping me on FF the last 10 years: TabMixPlus, combined with the only browser on the planet that doesn't fall over with 400-500 tabs. This allows non-sucking session management to make sure you (almost) never lose all those tabs. (My tab sessions are my most frequently backed-up files. And yes, I know about bookmarks - I have tens of thousands of those, in hundreds of categories. I'm typing this into one of the 380-something tabs I have open at the moment. It's the way I prefer to work, and my tools must serve me, not the other way around...)

Not sure I'll switch to 57 soon, if ever - it's guaranteed to break all kinds of things, and I imagine reverting will be a far from trivial process. FF has gutted me several times in the past couple of years - losing tab groups was the biggest. If I'm going to have to go to all the trouble to learn, find extensions for, and configure a new browser, I'm not sure there's really any reason to stay in the Firefox fold - they're not giving me any reason at all that I can think of...

I'm not giving Google any more influence over my life, so Chrome's out - maybe Brave is the best bet these days...

Re:What else?

[daisybelle]

It turns out that I can roll back to FF 54 to get TabMix Plus to work... but then I don't get to use FoxClocks. I have to choose between the two. Thankfully I don't seem to need DownThemAll any more, but this is still pretty rotten :( It drives me absolutely nuts to have to fricking click on things all the time - just let me hover my mouse over a tab to choose it! And close them in the order I want! And move the stupid close tab cross from off of every. single. tab.

I love TabMix Plus. I may never upgrade FF again.

It's been years since I posted anything on /. But this had to be said.

Re:Yes -- No

[Ying Hu]

+ 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 switched away, using vivaldi now

[skela]

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 did not care about me, so..

[CptLoRes]

I stopped caring about them and left.

Already on 59

[paolo.redaelli]

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

Poor management: People don't understand.

[Futurepower(R)]

"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.

Yes!

[Per Wigren]

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.

uMatrix

[Koen Lefever]

NoScript - "but it will be out later today!" only works for so long

Check out uMatrix, you might find it far superior to NoScript.

Re:uMatrix

[FrankHaynes]

Not ready for prime time, maybe?

https://hackademix.net/2017/11/14/double-noscript/#comment-37398

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Luddites

[wonkavader]

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.

Yes, and I love it

[damaki]

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.

YEP.

[jf_moreira]

And, despite the pleasant visual changes, my tabs now take 3x more time to load. Phuck.

No

[l20502]

Will just keep using 52 ESR until 57+ is mature enough.

Waiting for OSX keychain integration

[mitchy]

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! :-)

Off topic

[Mats Svensson]

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...

XMarks?

[MMC Monster]

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.....

Missing: Scrapbook, NoScript, etc - Re:Yes

[c120plus]

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.

No: Some add-ons still legacy

[Ted Stoner]

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.

READ FIREFOX'S PRIVACY POLICY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Davis, before you make an asinine claim about Firefox like:

3) Contains no Googleisms and Google tracking

you should read Firefox's privacy policy!

That way you'd see that it contains stuff like (emphasis added):

Location data to Google's geolocation service: Firefox always asks before determining and sharing your location with a requesting website (for example, if a map website needs your location to provide directions). To determine location, Firefox may use your operating system’s geolocation features, Wi-fi networks, cell phone towers, or IP address, and may send this data to Google's geolocation service, which has its own privacy policy.

and

Webpage and technical data to Google’s SafeBrowsing service: To help protect you from malicious downloads, Firefox sends basic information about unrecognized downloads to Google's SafeBrowsing Service, including the filename and the URL it was downloaded from.

and

On iOS and Android: Firefox by default sends mobile campaign data to Adjust, our analytics vendor, which has its own privacy policy. Mobile campaign data includes a Google advertising ID, ...

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".

Re:READ FIREFOX'S PRIVACY POLICY!

[markdavis]

>"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".

While some of the information you gave is clearly relevant and informative, I will add:

1) You can't be sure what you have in a binary blob like Chrome. And even if you ARE sure at the moment, all it takes is one auto-update for that to change.

2) You can turn off both location and SafeBrowsing in Firefox in about:config (and I do). And there is no need to wait for them to be triggered, first.

3) There are a LOT more "Googleisms" than just the two you listed (not interested in Mobile, although that can be relevant). And it is far more likely that in Chrome, it will do things with certain settings turned on that do other things, too. Think the way Facebook figures out who you are without even being logged in. And some of the Googleisms can't be disabled UNTIL you are presented with some dialog while it is already enabled (like Safe Browsing).

And you certainly don't have to be an asshole when replying, either:

>"Mark Davis, before you make an asinine claim"
>"So don't give us this bullshit"
>"is full of bullshit."

But I guess that is to be expected today by many people who post anonymously? In any case, here is a site with some things that can be done to maximize privacy in Chrome:

https://www.howtogeek.com/1003...

we have to hope it honors those settings. I don't have any evidence to the contrary, however.

Re:READ FIREFOX'S PRIVACY POLICY!

[Rakarra]

and that AC correctly called you out and showed how you were blatantly wrong. Then instead of owning up to your mistake, you gave us a bunch of nonsensical excuses and denial, and worse, you make this false accusation about that AC allegedly being "an asshole"

You can make a good point and be factually correct and informative and still be an asshole about it.

I'm happy

[jlnance]

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.

It Depends

[Thad Boyd]

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.

Still on Chrome as firefox sync sucks

[DECTerm]

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

Re:Firefox 57 is shaping up to be a disaster, I th

[TWX]

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.

Re:Firefox is now my "B tier" spare browser.

[maelkum]

I only have about 50 tabs open in Chrome right now.

Here, fixed that for you.

Mozilla decided, and we get to live with it

[Eadwacer]

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.

Yes

[Cid Highwind]

KeeFox was the last "old API" extension I was using, and they have a web extension version now.

Still Waiting on Slashdot Browser

[Merk42]

The One True Flawless most perfect browser that makes everyone 100% happy that everyone here claims could exist.

stop fucking with my browser

[Tom]

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?

who cares, it's a browser

[brausch]

Yes it updated. Yes it works fine. For most users, it doesn't matter. Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari are all ok.

Works fine for me

[MpVpRb]

Seems faster

Yes

[Jerry]

and on my laptop it is at least 2X faster.

Yes

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

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.

No go with WebEx

[GaryGregory]

The dev ed v58 still does not work with Webex screen sharing. grr...

Amazing

[Jerry]

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.

Not without Tab Mix Plus

[Bill Hayden]

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.

Re:Not without Tab Mix Plus

[iive]

I do recommend you to try "Tree Style Tabs" and place them on the side of the window.

The extension is been ported to WebEx, but it seems that FF57 doesn't have the API to hide the original tab bar and you have to do that manually. That API is scheduled for FF58.

If you stay with FF56, then AMO will offer you the XUL version, not the WebEx one. That's what I run now.

Same here, it always has been... however

[gosand]

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.

Opera then, Opera now

[gx5000]

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.

Switch? No. Upgrade? Hell yes!

[imperious_rex]

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.

PaleMoon Here

[kjhambrick]

Nope.

I gave up on FF last year and I've been a happy PaleMoon User since Dec 2016.

Re:Bad Flash Support

[theweatherelectric]

It's a big disgrace to abandon flash instead of fixing its problems.

You'll have to take that up with Adobe. When the developer of Flash is abandoning Flash, why should anyone else support it?

Pale Moon for me

[threc]

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.

Tried the built-in Screenshot function?

[wyoung76]

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.

Yes ... unfortunately

[fygment]

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!

It's Fine

[WeatherWizard]

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.

Firefox 57

[volmtech]

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.

Waiting would have been a

[eric_harris_76]

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.

PaleMoon.

[kamathln]

{ 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.

Re:PaleMoon.

[kamathln]

https://www.palemoon.org/

Minus-Ons

[jman.org]

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.

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 /. 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.

(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.

Firebug

[TJHook3r]

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.

Downgraded to Android Firefox 56, lost all my tabs

[FeepingCreature]

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.

I have and I really miss my extensions!

[MooseOnTheLoose]

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.

Re:I have and I really miss my extensions!

[MooseOnTheLoose]

Also, just found one more extension that may help Tab Mix Plus users:

Open Link with New Tab https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

I haven't actually tried it because when you go to install it, it says that it requires your permission to access your data on all websites, and since I'm not really certain how Firefox extension permissions work, I don't know if that actually implies some kind of security risk.

If you read the comments a lot of people are berating the author because it won't open bookmarks in new tabs, but that can easily be accomplished by adding a Firefox preference; you don't need an extension for that anymore. http://techdows.com/2017/09/fi...

No

[oldmac31310]

And will not.

No! Have not switched 57! AND I WONT!

[LucasTaylor]

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!