Firefox relies on gstreamer for H.264 support on Linux. You mustn't have H.264 support installed in gstreamer (or you have an old Firefox build without gstreamer support), such is the hassle of patent royalty-bearing codecs. VP9 has made good progress and hopefully AV1 will finally cement royalty-free video formats as the standard on the web.
Basilisk, Pale Moon, and WaterFox all depend on Firefox because their development teams are far too small to keep up the development of a fully-fledged browser. They're going to have to rebase on the latest Firefox code eventually. No doing so will mean the browsers stagnate and fall even further behind.
Additionally, the XUL based add-ons will need developers to maintain them. No one is going to be interested in doing that in the long term because the user base is too small. NoScript is a good example of this. Giorgio Maone has committed to maintaining the old XUL based version of NoScript until June, 2018 after which he'll just focus on the current WebExtensions version.
Works fine for me in HTML and plain text mode using Thunderbird 52.5 and Microsoft Excel on Windows 10. Maybe it's a Linux specific issue or perhaps specific to the spreadsheet application you're using.
Basilisk, Pale Moon and Waterfox is preserving XUL in the browser
Only in the short term. They're all dependent on Firefox's upstream development so in the long term they'll become like Firefox is now or they'll stagnate and die.
Even if it could perhaps be disabled, it will likely be impossible to remove all traces of its code from one's system.
WebAssembly runs on the JavaScript VM in your browser just like JavaScript does now. You don't need to "remove all traces of its code" from your system, just clear your browse cache and any cached copies are gone. If you don't want to run WebAssembly (or JavaScript) then just use an extension like NoScript or uMatrix to block it.
But it still has to be able to detect that the code is even there.
It's just a block list. Specifically, this block list. You can make use of the NoCoin block list in, for example, uBlock Origin.
Opera isn't doing anything particularly special here and it's a shame that they don't give the block list author any credit in the blog post (though they do in the comment section and in opera://about/credits in Opera 50 beta itself).
make NoScript and other real tracking protection not work anymore all in the name of "speed."
Firefox has tracking protection built-in. Set it to "always" and it will be on in both normal and private browsing modes. NoScript works in Firefox 57+ and the author of NoScript says Firefox has "the best Browser Extensions API available on any current browser".
Your claims don't match up to the practical realities. Just use Firefox and be happy.
Meh. There are 7,799 extensions available for Firefox 57+ at the moment. Doesn't seem like Firefox is "without extensions".
Now I use Waterfox and there is also Pale Moon
Why? They're just older, slower versions of Firefox which are unsustainable in the long term. They'll both eventually become like Firefox is now because they are both dependent on upstream development.
Most of the services people use regularly would not exist.
"Service"? Facebook, for example, is a surveillance platform. It exists to provide intelligence to advertisers. It exists to silo and isolate and mediate its user's experience of the web. It exists to treat you like cattle. It exists to extract profit from the control of attention. If Facebook dies, so what? Nothing of value will be lost. So called social media is bad for you, which is why Facebook is now launching its counter-narrative to try to convince you otherwise.
Mark Zuckerberg thinks web users are dumb fucks. Is he right?
forked from FireFox 4, at 1/10th the size of Mozilla's current crap, and supports everything Quantum does
Seems unlikely. I just installed Firefox 4. None of the benchmarks on Browser Bench worked and the page itself didn't render correctly. I went to YouTube and got a message saying "Oops, your web browser is no longer supported.” I ignored the message and tried to play some videos anyhow but nothing worked (maybe it would work if I installed Flash, but YouTube works in the latest Firefox without Flash). I tried Vimeo and none of the videos worked there either.
And it's actually faster.
Didn't seem to be. Page load and render seemed slower and was frequently incorrect. Firefox 4 is too far behind these days. Just use the latest Firefox and be happy.
I suspect after several years the games, if unmaintained to the latest whiz-bang JS frameworks, will bitrot and newer browsers will cease supporting older javascript feature.
Slashdot Mirror
Firefox relies on gstreamer for H.264 support on Linux. You mustn't have H.264 support installed in gstreamer (or you have an old Firefox build without gstreamer support), such is the hassle of patent royalty-bearing codecs. VP9 has made good progress and hopefully AV1 will finally cement royalty-free video formats as the standard on the web.
Which browser (version and OS you're running) are you using? I don't have Flash installed and all the videos worked for me.
Why do you think Pale Moon depends on Firefox?
Basilisk, Pale Moon, and WaterFox all depend on Firefox because their development teams are far too small to keep up the development of a fully-fledged browser. They're going to have to rebase on the latest Firefox code eventually. No doing so will mean the browsers stagnate and fall even further behind.
Additionally, the XUL based add-ons will need developers to maintain them. No one is going to be interested in doing that in the long term because the user base is too small. NoScript is a good example of this. Giorgio Maone has committed to maintaining the old XUL based version of NoScript until June, 2018 after which he'll just focus on the current WebExtensions version.
Impossible to know. You don't include enough detail in your comments.
Works fine for me in HTML and plain text mode using Thunderbird 52.5 and Microsoft Excel on Windows 10. Maybe it's a Linux specific issue or perhaps specific to the spreadsheet application you're using.
Your fears are totally warranted
Meh. Doesn't look much different to the current UI. His fears are overblown.
Every point release in the past two years has reduced functionality.
What functionality has been reduced?
Basilisk, Pale Moon and Waterfox is preserving XUL in the browser
Only in the short term. They're all dependent on Firefox's upstream development so in the long term they'll become like Firefox is now or they'll stagnate and die.
On Firefox, I installed NoMiner - Block Coin Miners.
Why? You could just use uBlock Origin with the NoCoin block list. What does NoMiner do for you that uBlock Origin doesn't?
Even if it could perhaps be disabled, it will likely be impossible to remove all traces of its code from one's system.
WebAssembly runs on the JavaScript VM in your browser just like JavaScript does now. You don't need to "remove all traces of its code" from your system, just clear your browse cache and any cached copies are gone. If you don't want to run WebAssembly (or JavaScript) then just use an extension like NoScript or uMatrix to block it.
But it still has to be able to detect that the code is even there.
It's just a block list. Specifically, this block list. You can make use of the NoCoin block list in, for example, uBlock Origin.
Opera isn't doing anything particularly special here and it's a shame that they don't give the block list author any credit in the blog post (though they do in the comment section and in opera://about/credits in Opera 50 beta itself).
They do. Set Firefox's built-in tracking protection to "always" and it won't load them at all.
make NoScript and other real tracking protection not work anymore all in the name of "speed."
Firefox has tracking protection built-in. Set it to "always" and it will be on in both normal and private browsing modes. NoScript works in Firefox 57+ and the author of NoScript says Firefox has "the best Browser Extensions API available on any current browser".
Your claims don't match up to the practical realities. Just use Firefox and be happy.
Probably because Firefox 57 broke almost every single plug-in
Ghostery and Privacy Badger both work with Firefox 57+ and so do 7,799 other add-ons. Your narrative doesn't hold up.
Speed is useless without extensions
Meh. There are 7,799 extensions available for Firefox 57+ at the moment. Doesn't seem like Firefox is "without extensions".
Now I use Waterfox and there is also Pale Moon
Why? They're just older, slower versions of Firefox which are unsustainable in the long term. They'll both eventually become like Firefox is now because they are both dependent on upstream development.
And 3.5 billion years later life spends its days on Slashdot. Progress?
I don't have to imagine it; I've already experienced it.
And another example of this is what happened to James Blake, professional tennis player.
Most of the services people use regularly would not exist.
"Service"? Facebook, for example, is a surveillance platform. It exists to provide intelligence to advertisers. It exists to silo and isolate and mediate its user's experience of the web. It exists to treat you like cattle. It exists to extract profit from the control of attention. If Facebook dies, so what? Nothing of value will be lost. So called social media is bad for you, which is why Facebook is now launching its counter-narrative to try to convince you otherwise.
Mark Zuckerberg thinks web users are dumb fucks. Is he right?
Without advertising, the web wouldn't exist.
Of course it would. The web existed before web advertising and the web would continue to exist without web advertising.
You've been sold a lie and, tragically, you have believed it.
And then they'd have the same problem.
As in, they put their own code into it.
Cool, where can I download it? It is hosted on GitHub?
forked from FireFox 4, at 1/10th the size of Mozilla's current crap, and supports everything Quantum does
Seems unlikely. I just installed Firefox 4. None of the benchmarks on Browser Bench worked and the page itself didn't render correctly. I went to YouTube and got a message saying "Oops, your web browser is no longer supported.” I ignored the message and tried to play some videos anyhow but nothing worked (maybe it would work if I installed Flash, but YouTube works in the latest Firefox without Flash). I tried Vimeo and none of the videos worked there either.
And it's actually faster.
Didn't seem to be. Page load and render seemed slower and was frequently incorrect. Firefox 4 is too far behind these days. Just use the latest Firefox and be happy.
This is basically the same thing.
Except Windows 10 on ARM has x86 Win32 compatibility. That's a huge difference.
How's that going to perform
It performs well. The x86 compatibility layer is fast enough that x86 and ARM binaries run well together.
This is going to be a terrible user experience which will quickly earn a terrible reputation.
Doesn't seem to be. Maybe try it out first.
I suspect after several years the games, if unmaintained to the latest whiz-bang JS frameworks, will bitrot and newer browsers will cease supporting older javascript feature.
DHTML Lemmings still works and that was last updated in 2004. I'm using Firefox and DHTML Lemmings was released before Firefox was.