That's it, I'm going back to lynx! :P
Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported
91–100 of 336 posts
Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported
#92IMO Firefox has just 2 things to beat Chrome: better add-ons (like treestyle tabs) and politics (made by Mozilla instead of an ads company). They are burning the first one.
+1 to Treestyle tabs (buggy though it may be), and also Tab Mix Pro, which lets me clone tabs.
You can duplicate a tab in stock Firefox by Ctrl-clicking the reload button.
Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> has better addons The add-ons might be better, but XUL-based Firefox add-ons are not better. They essentially give full control of your computer to the developer of the add-on. There's no permission model. The "APIs" are mostly the internals of Firefox itself, and when Firefox updates, lots of add-ons break. Most add-ons can be ported to webextensions. The ones that can't probably shouldn't have ever been add-ons t…
But I want the addons to have full control over my browser, that's the whole point! It's my browser and I've tailored it to myself and my requirements. The one thing that is striking every time I try to use chrome/chromium is just how limited the addon functionality is and how much less freedom the user has. Have you seen "treestyletabs" implementation on chrome? It's a whole other window that has to be started and p…
> But I want the addons to have full control over my browser, that's the whole point! It's my browser and I've tailored it to myself and my requirements.
Owning the code that runs on your machine is your right as a user of open-source software, but there's no right that says that Mozilla must be the one to maintain that code. And nobody's asking you to maintain your own personal fork either: find all the other people who care about unlimited (if fragile) browser extensibility via unrestricted addons and form a community (or hell, a corporation) to collectively make the browser you want, starting from a fork of Firefox (or Chromium, or Midori).
If you believe that there are enough people in your position to make such a collaboration successful, then you're all set. And if you don't believe that there are enough people out there who care about unrestricted addons to make such a project viable, then--while I sympathize with your plight--maybe it makes business sense for Mozilla to drop support for unrestricted addons, especially due to the ways that this feature hinders all the other features that Firefox users are clamoring for: speed, reduced memory usage, speed, HTML5 adoption, speed, ES6+ adoption, speed, speed, security, and speed.
Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported
#94I am honestly starting to believe that Mozilla is trying to run Firefox into the ground. I am not sure if it's just bad decision making or if the decision makers themselves had been bought off by competition, but it sure does feel like this. Why do we need one more Chrome like browser out there? I specifically use Firefox because it's a) not chrome, b) has better addons. If you hamstring the addons and make everythin…
Badly performing addons are the main reason behind Firefox crashes. The majority of users don't use addons. Of those who use addons, the vast majority use just one: an ad blocker. Those addons work fine under new Firefox.
There are lots of reasons to use Firefox over Chrome. It's not designed to drive traffic to a search engine. It has far better privacy out of the box. It's a standalone browser that isn't tied to the operating system for things like personal certificates. It doesn't lock its settings to the operating system so you lose all your passwords, extensions, and extension settings if you move it from one PC to another like Chrome does. Etc.
Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported
#95IMO Firefox has just 2 things to beat Chrome: better add-ons (like treestyle tabs) and politics (made by Mozilla instead of an ads company). They are burning the first one.
Only about 250,000 users use the tab modification extensions that people keep claiming is Firefox's only advantage out of 10s of millions of Firefox users. Addons that greatly alter Firefox's behavior are the main reason for crashes. And maintaining XUL is hampering Firefox future development.
Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't rule that out either. It might be that it is in Googles best interest to kill firefox. Here is an alternative view I have in mind. The strategy to mimick chrome makes sense, because the masses think this is how the browser -- or as they call it the "internet" -- should look like. Its imho feasible to launch a television and internet campaign promoting firefox after the transition by stressing the privacy qual…
> The strategy to mimick chrome makes sense, because the masses think this is how the browser -- or as they call it the "internet" -- should look like. But that's what FF has been doing for the past ~5 years, and how has their share been doing? Not so well. Chrome has much more marketing behind it. And it comes from a name that people know and trust. Most people don't know who Mozilla is. And most people don't care a…
Everything you said is true. However,
> And most people don't care about avoiding Google.
...if that changes, everything changes. Thats the same thing with Signal and WhatsApp. I am positively surprised how easy it is to convert people to Signal and the momentum they are gaining.
Maybe they are betting on the very long term? Tbh, I would expect a more focused marketing from Mozilla if that would be the case. I am almost as much confused as you are.
Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
For now using Firefox ESR might be a good stopgap measure for you? That way you can use an old version with the old add-on ecosystem for at least a year longer, and still get security updates. I usually work on Debian Jessie which ships (a variant of) Firefox ESR, and it's very well-usable. I haven't noticed any differences between the latest Firefox on Windows and Firefox-ESR on Debian. The latest LastPass, XMarks,…
Yes, I an using it already since Vimperator is broken on the latest release of FF.
The situation with Vimperator is so sad, I can't use Firefox without it.
I don't like all those toolbars that clutter my screen estate, I prefer to browse the web full screen. There are a lot of projects using Webkit, and I also use elinks a lot, but I'd rather support Mozilla and Firefox by using the later when I need a graphical browser.
Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported
#98I installed Firefox a month ago, but it's just so sluggish and laggy. I only have one extension installed.
Well, today I just switched back to Chromium (but went with Vivaldi this time).
Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
But this is the fix. Instead of allowing open access to the internals of Firefox, which will never be secure, you use a limited API. It isn't difficult to imagine that they can expand this API later to allow things that aren't currently possible. It's a hard problem to fix and there will be pain getting there. And the theatre analogy is just silly. It's not like shutting down a theatre because someone got shot in it,…
This is a fix. It's not the only fix. I postulate that it's probably not even the best fix for Firefox. > Instead of allowing open access to the internals of Firefox, which will never be secure Android, iOS, and many other OSes do this all the time via rather granular ACLs. It can be done. All analogies are flawed - but Firefox is closing the theaters by completely killing off their add-on interface in exchange for a…
> Android, iOS, and many other OSes do this all the time via rather granular ACLs.
If it were that simple, then the Chrome team would simply have asked the Android team to provide their expertise in designing Chrome's extension API. And of course, it's not like Android provides apps unrestricted access to the hardware (there's a reason that people bother to root their phones). Firefox addons are currently less restricted than Android apps.
Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
VimFX works very well in FF51.
It's a very different experience. Some of us who use Vimperator use it not only because of the key binding, but also for the command-line, ability to modify the UI (e.g. :set gui=none), ability to put .vimperatorrc in .dotfiles and use it across multiple systems, and such. As far as I know, VimFX still not capable of all these functionalities (some due to difference in mission, e.g. not modifying the UI.) That said,…
I use this all day long on Chromium -
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cvim/ihlenndgcmojh...
I also use this in Chromium -
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wasavi/dgogifpkoil...
Note that they do very different things from each other AND that they are running Chromium which is a SUBSET of the plugin features that will be available in Firefox (if all goes well).