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Firefox 61 Arrives With Better Search, Tab Warming, and Accessibility Tools Inspector (venturebeat.com)

On Tuesday, Mozilla released Firefox 61, the newest version of its web browser for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android platforms. The release builds on Firefox Quantum, which the company calls "by far the biggest update since Firefox 1.0 in 2004." VentureBeat: Version 61 brings TLS 1.3, the ability to add custom search engines to the location bar, tab warming, retained display lists, WebExtension tab management, and the Accessibility Tools Inspector. Mozilla doesn't break out the exact numbers for Firefox, though the company does say "half a billion people around the world" use the browser. In other words, it's a major platform that web developers have to consider.

29 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Tab warming? by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

    I am guessing this means "preloading tabs"? Ugh. Just stop already.

    1. Re:Tab warming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      no, just faster switching between tabs. The rendering engine starts the process of rendering the next tab as soon as your mouse begins to hover over it

      I switch tabs with the keyboard, you insensitive clod.

    2. Re:Tab warming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      That and getting rid of the Pocket spyware.

      Disable Pocket for Firefox

      If you prefer not to use Pocket for Firefox, follow these steps to disable it:

          - In the address bar, type about:config and press Enter.
                      The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I accept the risk! to continue to the about:config page.
          - Type pocket in the Search box above the list of preferences.
          - Double-click the extensions.pocket.enabled preference to toggle its value to false.

      Note: Disabling Pocket does not remove Recommended by Pocket entries, if present, on the New Tab page. If you would also like to remove those Pocket recommendations, click the cogwheel at the top right corner of the New Tab page and uncheck Recommended by Pocket. See Hide or display content in New Tab for more information.

    3. Re:Tab warming? by Bradmont · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is what I do to. My first reaction after looking up the buzzword was, "People use the mouse to change tabs?"

    4. Re:Tab warming? by Teun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Indeed we use the mouse to switch tabs, how else to quickly jump from tab 14 to tab 48?

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    5. Re:Tab warming? by Rolgar · · Score: 2

      Especially when touching every tab in between will make them all start loading and could bring your machine to a crawl depending on what those tabs are.

  2. Anyone else love pegging? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My personal test case will be with the UniFi 5.7/5.8 Controller web interface page. I've found consistently under the last few versions of Firefox that, while it's fine for at least an hour, if I leave it up constantly for ease of monitoring then after a day or two the Firefox process inevitably ends up pegging an entire core. There is no video whatsoever or any particularly fancy graphical usage, and while they may be doing something odd internally (I haven't had time to really dig into it) I'm not sure Firefox should end up in that state there over time. It's relatively easily repeatable though (will take a day but requires no interaction on my part) so I look forward to testing it. Although if it does resolve the problem I'll be mildly bummed whatever fix it was didn't make it into ESR, but so it goes.

  3. does TAB MIX PLUS work already ? by gDLL · · Score: 2

    that is what *I* want to know...

  4. Last version of 52ESR by xack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Anyone who needs 52ESR will be out of luck soon as its the last patch cycle. Those with Windows XP, XUL and NPAPI requirements are affected. Also Chrome is discontinuing Marvericks support, which also throws perfectly working Macs into the trash. Don’t give me the “it’s old” spiel, Mavericks is less than 5 years old.

    1. Re:Last version of 52ESR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I too support projects with unskilled developers numbering in the single digits.

  5. Firebug? by TJHook3r · · Score: 2

    C'mon, how about some better Dev tools please?

    1. Re:Firebug? by bjdevil66 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Former Firebug user here: No, the Firebug replacement doesn't have the community extensions that made Firebug better, but I've found that the built-in Firefox replacement has come around to where it's solid enough as a replacement. And it's definitely not as buggy as Firebug was at times.

      The tradeoff of a few extra add-ons for the speed and better stability is a fair tradeoff, IMO.

  6. Can I turn that shit off? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I like my browser meek and docile, not aggressively second-guessing me and doing all sorts of crap "just in case". It already does too much!

    How about a way to stop all javascript when the tab isn't active? Or a way to block javascript by domain, instead of having to rely on an adblocker? Opera has had that last one for ages.

    1. Re:Can I turn that shit off? by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      How about a way to stop all javascript when the tab isn't active?

      To what end? Revert the usefulness of the browser back to the early naughties? You do realise that the browser is now a core OS component right, and your tabs are actively running applications right?

      If you don't like multi-tasking, install DOS.

  7. Re:I object to tab warming by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2

    (I should point out the Canadian version of Tab is made from real maple sugar and baby seal hearts)

    (and Canadians are socialists, not commies, there's a difference)

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  8. 5.27% market share by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ever since Nov, 2017 when they broke the extensions, their market share has gone down each month. They are currently at only 5.27%. They are irrelevant.

  9. Re:Looking forward to nearly all of this! by arth1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Tab Warming" sounds like a great, well thought out feature! Yay!

    Not necessarily.
    Do you want the rendering of the current page to slow down because you flicked the mouse out of view, which happened to be over a tab?
    Do you want the machine and network to slow to a crawl because you dragged the pointer across a great many tabs on the way to the one you wanted, and they all start rendering?
    Do you want even higher memory/CPU use for a product that's already considered seriously bloated?

  10. Go to ESR 60.1 by williamyf · · Score: 2, Informative

    Dear all:
    Tired of google changing the browser, moving the interface around and breaking things Every 6 Weeks?
    Tired of microsoft changing the browser, moving the interface around and breaking things Every 6 Weeks?
    Tired of using safari and not having support of big boy tools, like iLO, IPIMI and the web consoles of Orocle and SAP?

    Welcome to the wonderful world of Firefox ESR.

    Current ESR (60) will be supported for about a year, with no new features or UI changes, only security patches and bug fixes. It has the full power of Quantum (which means more or less performance parity with the other browsers).

    The version released today is 60.1, which means that ESR 60 has been in the wild for a couple of months now, allowing time to iron any rough edges, and includes a Fix for tab_selected so it works when headerURL is not set (uplifted to 60)...

    Also, since the "Great breakage" of PlugIns and Add-ons happened in FireFox 53, chances are most of your plug-ins and extensions already have been ported (or have suitable equivalents).

    As we speak, I am downloading it, and will install it over ESR 52, after I delete as much as possible of all the NPAPI Plug-ins that litter my Computer (Citrix, saba-meeting, WebEx, iLO, Huawei IPIMI, etc).

    ESR Is the best balance for people who use the Browser as a Tool to "get things done", and not as an entertainment/media consumption.

    --
    *** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
  11. Re:How much more electricity will "tab warming" us by mrclevesque · · Score: 3, Informative

    "How much more electricity will "tab warming"

    Minimal.

    Firefox Tab Warming explained:

    https://www.ghacks.net/2018/01...

  12. Why whould anyone want this? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From TFA:

    There’s also a small update to extensions built using the WebExtension API. WebExtensions can now hide tabs and manage the behavior of the browser when a tab is opened or closed.

    And how do I disable it? Seriously, why would we want the browser to do stuff like this? Just what I need, more seemingly random things happening that I can't see and/or presumably control ...

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Why whould anyone want this? by CrashNBrn · · Score: 3, Informative

      For extensions like, Tab Mix Plus, Tree Tabs, Tree Style Tab, etc. If you don't install extensions that manage tabs then don't worry about it.

    2. Re:Why whould anyone want this? by radarskiy · · Score: 2

      "If you don't install extensions that manage tabs then don't worry about it."

      It's reasonable to assume that extension that explicitly states that it will try to manage your tabs will try to manage your tabs. How do you know that an extension that is claiming that it isn't trying to manage tabs won't try to manage your tabs?

      Now, a snarky response might be that it a user doesn't trust an extension then the user shouldn't be installing it, but that a) just pushes the problem up the stack to "How does a user determine whether an extension is trustworthy", b) needs to be repeated constantly as extensions update, and c) doesn't account for plain old bugs.

  13. Re:Marketing speak by SeaFox · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If 15% is your cutoff, only Chrome will count: http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

    Yeah... that's pretty much how they think.

  14. "the ability to add custom search engines..." by SeaFox · · Score: 2

    the ability to add custom search engines to the location bar

    I've been doing that for years now. Did Mozilla forget about their own feature, one of the features that keeps me on Firefox, I might add?

  15. Silly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Use trve Norwegian Vivaldi, instead of shady Chinese Opera.

  16. Re:Marketing speak by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2

    Exactly. Firefox fans might like to think that "it's a major platform that web developers have to consider." Sadly, my analytics disagree. For example, I just checked a leisure-related B2C site I run. Mobile is dominant in this market, so the main Android and iOS browsers rank highest as you'd expect. Of the desktop browsers, Chrome is biggest with nearly half the market share, and most of the rest is split between Safari and IE+Edge between them. Firefox comes just above the 1% mark looking at all traffic.

    I'm sorry to see things going this way, because Safari is like the new IE and I don't think it's healthy for the future of the Web for Google to have so much influence. But the reality is that for sites like this, Firefox is not even close to being a major platform, and since we have bills to pay, our development effort has to follow the user base.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  17. 11.55% of desktop and 0.3% of mobile by tepples · · Score: 2

    Your Net Marketshare link with Firefox at 9.92% is narrowed to desktop as opposed to mobile. If you likewise narrow StatCounter to desktop, Firefox is at 11.55% (source). The negligible (0.3%) mobile usage share of Firefox for Android (source: StatCounter) is probably dragging down the overall numbers.

  18. Re:How much more electricity will "tab warming" us by Waccoon · · Score: 2

    Nothing in that article suggests "minimal" other than the usual marketing BS. In fact, it works exactly as I expected it to, which is far from minimal.

  19. Re:Looking forward to nearly all of this! by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    Exactly. These silly acceleration features are exactly what cause responsiveness issues, not solve them. Every good UI programmer is supposed to know this.

    What an absolute daft reply. UI responsiveness issues come up when a lot of activities queue at the same time. Starting some of them earlier and delaying others is one of the main ways to improve this responsiveness and has been part of the speed improvements from everything like UI design, background service management, kernel schedules, and even CPU design itself.