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Firefox 58 Gets Graphics Speed Boost, Web App Abilities (cnet.com)
Mozilla released on Tuesday a new version of its Firefox Quantum browser, boosting its graphics speed and improving a couple of new technologies designed to make the web more powerful. From a report: The browser, version 58, is the first major update since Mozilla's recovery plan hit full stride in November with the debut of Firefox Quantum. Speed is of the essence in Mozilla's recovery plan, and Firefox 58 does better than its predecessor in some graphics tasks by splitting work better across the multiple processor cores that computer chips have these days. The result should be scrolling that's smooth, uninterrupted by the stuttering that in computing circles goes by the disparaging term "jank." [...] Firefox 58 helps with two new web technologies. One, called WebAssembly, provides for dramatically faster web apps. Firefox 58 can get WebAssembly software running faster so you don't have to twiddle your thumbs waiting as long after clicking a link. Another is progressive web apps (PWAs), an initiative that came out of Google to help make the web a better match for the apps we all drop on our phones.
I think there's a good amount of "written before me" attitudes causing problems.
Maintaining the code of someone else is seldom attractive to developers, who would rather make their own mark, and refuse to entertain the idea that what they create might be worse than what was already there.
Re-inventing the wheel seldom leads to an improvement on the circular shape, centered hub and perpendicular axis.
... if Firefox put back some of the lost functionality due to all the extensions that no longer work due to Mozilla's apparent race to be a Chrome clone.
The only thing that separated Firefox from the competition were the plugins (to be more exact, the power of these plugins) and Firefox threw it out and replaced it with lobotomized versions incapable to replicate the functionality of the previous versions.
So I will stay with Firefox 56 (the last sane version) as much as I can.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
So I will stay with Firefox 56 (the last sane version) as much as I can.
grandpa doesn't want to try a new brand of diapers
I'll stick with Waterfox. What made Firefox so great was the ability to bend it to my will. Webextensions takes away my abilities and replaces them with training wheels and a balloon. YAY! This update is just more hand waving "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" tactics.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Here's how Mozilla lost its 1st place in one of their last remaining bastions. "Speed is of the essence in Mozilla's recovery plan" the article says, but in reality what should be the essence for a recovery plan is to bite the bullet and admit they were wrong in deprecating what made them unique.
It's worse than that.
Many people who created extensions have given up and abandoned them. Its not that they don't want to re-write them, its because their extensions CAN'T be re-written to work with the new Firefox due to the internal changes that have been made.
And that leads to the real problem -- Firefox has always been shit, but, we were able to cover up all of its flaws and turn it into a good browser with extensions. Now that all my favorite themes and extensions no longer work, I'm just left with a shit browser that no longer works or looks the way I want.
Fortunately, there's still Palemoon.