211–220 of 336 posts
I use Firefox because of 2 things: 1) vimperator 2) single process handling multiple tabs (I typically have upwards of 40 tabs open at a time) Firefox is in the process of removing plugins like 1) so that it makes it possible to remove 2). Wonderful.
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I'm extremely worried about Rikai-chan/sama. Rikaichan allows translation of Japanese words simply by hovering your mouse over. It works much better than entering words into an online dictionary, since nearly every free JE-EJ dictionary uses the same source, and if a conjugation isn't translatable it will cut the word off giving the meaning and then letting you easily highlight the conjugation to figure out the meani…
Same here. Is the Lookupbar (Alt+Del) possible to do with WebExtensions? I think it would have to be recreated in the DOM and inserted into the web page.
Okay, I read through the entire comment tree and I didn't see a single top-level comment explaining why they're doing this. So I'm going to give it a shot. If you don't run an ad-blocker, and you go to a typical commercial web site (say, nytimes.com), Firefox can be incredibly slow and laggy. Scrolling is janky and the whole experience is just bad. The whole browser can lock up. This is because Firefox's UI uses the…
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> I want the addons to have full control over my browser I can assure you that you only want this if you can guarantee that your add-ons only do what they claim, don't have security vulnerabilities, and are never acquired and maliciously updated. Otherwise, a permissionless add-on model means a bug in TreeStyleTabs could potentially be used to exfiltrate your entire password database, plant malicious binaries on your…
"Firefox will not have this limitation." Can you clarify/elaborate? Last I heard, UI modification by web extensions was still unconfirmed at best.
Is there a quick way to check whether or not specific add-ons are supported in the new version? I'm addicted to tree based tabs (100's of them open at the same time) and Scrapbook. Without those two I would have a very hard time to get through my workday.
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A car analogy is perfect here. Google Chrome is kind of like a sedan, something convenient for most people. Firefox is kind of like a pickup truck, less convenient for a lot of people but more powerful and useful for the people who need them. This move is kind of like a pickup truck manufacturer realizing that sedans are more common than pickup trucks, then thinking sedans don't have beds in the back, and removing th…
A more accurate metaphor would involve the sedan have modern safety features the lack of which make the truck increasingly risky to drive but which the truck is unable to adopt without shedding technical limitations imposed by the bed.
I'll just use the Firefox LTS until it stops working with the modern web. By then hopefully the issue will be solved (perhaps by me, as I'm a dev).
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> but there's no right that says that Mozilla must be the one to maintain that code. And there's no right that says I have to use FF. They are giving up one of their big advantages.
From where I stand, it looks like they're trading one of their big advantages for a massively reduced maintenance burden which will unquestionably allow them to compete better on every other front. It may or may not pan out, but I think we can all agree that some change of trajectory from the past few years is needed if Firefox hopes to stay relevant. You're free to think that Mozilla leadership is incompetent, but i…
Source on me saying that? I think they are making a few dumb decisions, but that's putting a lot of words in my mouth.
FF has very few advantages. They aren't competing on speed, mind-share, ease-of-use and now they aren't competing on reliability of add-ons. I get that this can help them focus, but pushing away their limited user-base is like using an axe to help a sinking ship.
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> I want the addons to have full control over my browser I can assure you that you only want this if you can guarantee that your add-ons only do what they claim, don't have security vulnerabilities, and are never acquired and maliciously updated. Otherwise, a permissionless add-on model means a bug in TreeStyleTabs could potentially be used to exfiltrate your entire password database, plant malicious binaries on your…
> Firefox will not have this limitation Is that a statement about future Firefox visions or Firefox 57? I assume you know the gritty details while I'm a rather confused Firefox power user / fan / advocate (using .. addons that are affected, vertical tabs/tree style tabs plus vimperator/pentadactyl mostly). The outrage The Internet™ seems to feel is probably not about XUL being deprecated/killed. I'd say no user cares…
You're basically correct about the APIs, though. Developers of some popular add-ons don't know when or if the APIs they need will be implemented. Support for migrating gradually (embedded WebExtensions) was just released in 51 and will be gone in 57 -- not even a full ESR cycle.
Developer burnout is a problem, too. This comes right after many of them put in significant work making their now-deprecated code multiprocess-compatible, which came after mandatory extension signing, which came after a bunch of UI changes. It's not surprising some of them have quit.
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A car analogy is perfect here. Google Chrome is kind of like a sedan, something convenient for most people. Firefox is kind of like a pickup truck, less convenient for a lot of people but more powerful and useful for the people who need them. This move is kind of like a pickup truck manufacturer realizing that sedans are more common than pickup trucks, then thinking sedans don't have beds in the back, and removing th…
A more accurate metaphor would involve the sedan have modern safety features the lack of which make the truck increasingly risky to drive but which the truck is unable to adopt without shedding technical limitations imposed by the bed.
I'd argue that they are able to adopt a better security model, they are choosing not to.
I 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).
Legacy extensions prevent multiprocess support, which causes Firefox to be sluggish and laggy. If you disable the extension you installed, you'll probably see a big difference in Firefox performance. This is why they're disabling those extensions.