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Firefox In 2018: We'll Tackle Bad Ads, Breach Alerts, Autoplay Video, Says Mozilla (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Firefox maker Mozilla has outlined its 2018 roadmap to make the web less intrusive and safer for users. First up, Mozilla says it will proceed and implement last year's experiment with a breach alerts service, which will warn users when their credentials have been leaked or stolen in a data breach. Mozilla aims to roll out the service around October. Breach Alerts is based on security consultant Troy Hunt's data breach site Have I Been Pwned. Firefox will also implement a similar block on autoplay video to the one Chrome 66 will introduce next month, and that Safari already has. However, Dotzler says Firefox's implementation will "provide users with a way to block video auto-play that doesn't break websites". This feature is set to arrive in Firefox 62, which is scheduled for release in May.
After Firefox 62 the browser will gain an optional Chrome-like ad filter and several privacy-enhancing features similar to those that Apple's WebKit developers have been working on for Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention. By the third quarter of 2018, Firefox should also be blocking ad-retargeting through cross-domain tracking. It's also going to move all key privacy controls into a single location in the browser, and offer more "fine-grained" tracking protection. Dotzler says Mozilla is in the "early stages" of determining what types of ads Firefox should block by default. Also on the roadmap is a feature that arrived in Firefox 59, released earlier this month. A new Global Permissions feature will help users avoid having to deny every site that requests permission for location, camera, microphone and notifications. Beyond security and privacy, Mozilla plans to build on speed-focused Quantum improvements that came in Firefox 57 with smoother page rendering.
After Firefox 62 the browser will gain an optional Chrome-like ad filter and several privacy-enhancing features similar to those that Apple's WebKit developers have been working on for Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention. By the third quarter of 2018, Firefox should also be blocking ad-retargeting through cross-domain tracking. It's also going to move all key privacy controls into a single location in the browser, and offer more "fine-grained" tracking protection. Dotzler says Mozilla is in the "early stages" of determining what types of ads Firefox should block by default. Also on the roadmap is a feature that arrived in Firefox 59, released earlier this month. A new Global Permissions feature will help users avoid having to deny every site that requests permission for location, camera, microphone and notifications. Beyond security and privacy, Mozilla plans to build on speed-focused Quantum improvements that came in Firefox 57 with smoother page rendering.
will still bitch and moan, because they're too stupid to see that the adblocking is on the rise BECAUSE of their own inability to nderstand the importance of vetting ads, because of their insistance of continually increasing the resource usage, trackking of users, and continually choosing to up annoying-ness of ads... and I don't buy for one second that "oh, they make the ads more annoying because of adblock." Bullshit, ads were this bad well before adblock became popular. I remember browsing the internet in the early 2000s.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Video Autoplay completely breaks websites from a usability standpoint.
There are zero times I look up an article on a website where I would prefer to watch a video over READING a story. That's AFTER. If I feel I need to.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
What replacement for the lost revenue would you prefer as a way to cover the cost of writing and hosting the articles that you read?
A. Paywalls on most websites, causing your web searches to result in a lot more clicks on the back button
I wouldn't mind A since that would mean we're going to be treated as customers instead of as products and search engines/browser extensions would adapt to it
How many pages on The Wall Street Journal can I read with a subscription to The New York Times? Zero.
Let's assume that over the course of a month, you read two articles on each of 20 different pay sites, each of which demands (say) $5 for a 30-day subscription or $5 for 150 page views. How many people would be willing to pay $100 per month only for most of the subscription to go to waste?
C. Sites run by special interests offering heavily biased articles designed to push a specific narrative