Live data from Hacker News

Firefox 51.0

mozilla.org

101–110 of 154 posts

Re: Firefox 51.0

#101
post #39

This release seems to help on the UX side of things regarding logins, along with improved efficiency. Some of the highlights: * Users can view passwords in the save password prompt before saving them * Firefox will save passwords even in forms that do not have “submit” events * A warning is displayed when a login page does not have a secure connection * Improved video performance for users without GPU acceleration fo…

Does that address the instances where you can click login and save password, but the next time you go to log in, it won't remember your username and password?

Re: Firefox 51.0

#102
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kabyle has about 20 times more native speakers than my native language, Icelandic. In contrast I have been using software in my native language for as long as I remember. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabyle_language

Well, Kabyle looks like the language of a minority in Algeria. On the other hand, Icelandic is the national (and official) language of a sovereign state. In other words, Icelandic has more cultural and financial backing, which is why it's more widespread. By the way, I'd really love to visit Iceland some day. My cousin went there a few years back and he said it was amazing!

I can confirm that Iceland is amazing. I've actually never met anyone who's been there and didn't think it's amazing.

The only downside is that you'll always want to go back, and you'll always have a part of you be sad that you aren't there.

Re: Firefox 51.0

#103
post #2

Flac playback and more work on E10s, this is a pretty sweet release. Switching to Skia on linux for rendering is interesting too, I wonder how this affects rendering performance and correctness vs cairo ?

I was using Skia in Firefox on Linux for a while already. It works OK. I also force layers acceleration, since it still blacklists Mesa it seems.

Re: Firefox 51.0

#104
post #75
post #33

The WebGL demo "After the Flood" linked in their release summary post is really beautiful. I don't play games but this technology is very impressive. Try it for yourself if you're on an updated Firefox (51+): https://playcanv.as/e/p/44MRmJRU/

Very cool demo. Worked fine on my 2015 rMBP even if Ultra settings ran at about 10 FPS. The web really has come a long, long ways.

Hell, I got 8 FPS on Ultra on my 2013 Air (that's on Firefox 52.0, though). The Firefox 52b UI feels much snappier than the 51b UI, for some reason, which is fantastic, because my main annoyance with 51 was the sluggish UI. The whole browser would freeze while one tab was loading.

Re: Firefox 51.0

#105
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they use Skia now? I would have expected them to rather switch to WebRender.

Gecko was already using Skia on Windows and Mac, so enabling Skia on Linux helps consolidate the graphics code. WebRender is actively being ported to Gecko (the "Quantum Render" project), but it is a large effort and won't ship until late 2017. It's an all-or-nothing feature, so it can't be enabled incrementally.

I wonder if Quantum plans to use Vulkan for rendering when it's available?

Re: Firefox 51.0

#106
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gecko was already using Skia on Windows and Mac, so enabling Skia on Linux helps consolidate the graphics code. WebRender is actively being ported to Gecko (the "Quantum Render" project), but it is a large effort and won't ship until late 2017. It's an all-or-nothing feature, so it can't be enabled incrementally.

I wonder if Quantum plans to use Vulkan for rendering when it's available?

It seems it will happen eventually, but not at this time[0]. There are likely higher priority changes which need to be made.

[0] https://github.com/servo/webrender/issues/186

Re: Firefox 51.0

#107
Firefox continues its commitment to privacy with this quiet change found in the developer notes [0]:

> For privacy reasons, both BatteryManager.chargingTime and BatteryManager.dischargingTime now round the returned value to the closest 15 minutes (bug 1292655).

See [1] for an explanation of how the battery status API can be used to track you.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/51#Chan...

[1] https://www.hackread.com/smartphone-laptop-battery-invading-...

Re: Firefox 51.0

#108
post #5

Was using Firefox from a very long time , but for some reason recently Firefox is very slow on my machine . Even chromium starts up slowly . Google Chrome opens the fastest and is very light on resources .

If you are on Linux, it might help to run profile-cleaner [0] on your Firefox install to vacuum and reindex the assorted sqlite databases it uses. Probably wont help general performance, but might help startup time.

[0] https://github.com/graysky2/profile-cleaner

Re: Firefox 51.0

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading that article in 2014, I switched to Firefox. I used it from that point until just a few weeks ago when a program bypassed my defaults and launched Chrome. And I immediately remembered why I preferred Chrome and how much more responsive it feels, and how it handles plugins and per-tab processes and uses a quarter the memory somehow. So now I'm back on Chrome. Felt good to be on FF for awhile, felt like I…

> and uses a quarter the memory somehow. I thought Chrome was famous for being a resource hog. It consumes more RAM on my Windows PCs, though I confess I use more tabs than are viable in Chrome....

Chrome is a resource hog for me, on macOS and Windows. But Firefox is only slightly better in my experience. I last tried it about 3 months ago.

Re: Firefox 51.0

#110
post #57

From 2014: "Choose Firefox now, or you won't get a choice later" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579163

After reading that article in 2014, I switched to Firefox. I used it from that point until just a few weeks ago when a program bypassed my defaults and launched Chrome. And I immediately remembered why I preferred Chrome and how much more responsive it feels, and how it handles plugins and per-tab processes and uses a quarter the memory somehow. So now I'm back on Chrome. Felt good to be on FF for awhile, felt like I…

> how it handles plugins and per-tab processes and uses a quarter the memory somehow.

Swings and roundabouts. I find chrome uses much more memory, and the plugins I care about (tab group view, NoScript) don't have effective parallels in chrome last I looked. I also have a pet hate for any application which decides that it needs its own look-and-feel and you should discard your own window decorations.

Also, the mozilla entity is much more about preserving freedom, and I think that's worth the minor inconveniences you get from webdevs who think that chrome is the only browser in existence.

Post reply on HN