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Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

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Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

#241

Post by theonemind »

hackuser wrote: post #171

An hypothesis about much of the criticism for this change, and similar movements of outrage on the Internet. It's amateur social theory and goodness knows we don't need more of that, but I haven't seen it said like this: People naturally feel anger in their lives (about home, work, politics, health, etc.) that is not socially acceptable to act on; to varying degrees, they need an outlet. It's not a new phenomenon; so…

Well, you may be right about the outrage. I don't have any outrage, and I want to see competition in the browser space, and I actually use firefox. I am, however, as a "power-user", mostly annoyed by the direction Firefox has gone in. It often feels like they're apeing Chrome, especially since Australis took a very similar feel to the Chrome UI. If I wanted to use Chrome, it's over there.

No outrage, and for all I know, they've made the best moves to maintain their marketshare, but once the extensions get comparatively neutered, the only things keeping me on Firefox are inertia, the awesomebar (I haven't played with chrome a lot, but Firefox's awesomebar works really well, and I use '*' to narrow it down to bookmarks all of the tmie), the real dialog boxes for managing history and bookmarks (vs Chrome's pseudo webpage thing), and inertia.

So I can understand the frustration of 'power-users' with their changes, which seem aimed to make it a more mass-appeal product.

Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

#242

Post by mtgx »

exceptione wrote: post #12

Ouch, the comments over there are extremely negative. As mozilla is our last bastion of hope between advertising giants it pains me to see mozilla having an increasingly hard time to sustain a positive brand image. It is crazy if you think about it, because Mozilla is the last giant that respects its users. It has a very good proposition with regards to privacy and user-interest alignment. There are still tons of les…

It's innovator's dilemma. The same thing that made Mozilla popular ("advanced" add-ons) is what kept it from moving to the "dumb" Chrome extension model that Google's browser adopted a long time ago. The older add-on model is what kept it from having better security and having less memory problems for so long.

Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

#243

Post by beerbaron23 »

throwanem wrote: post #181
hackuser wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is impossible to recommend Firefox in any case, because it performs so poorly compared to Chrome ... I understand that this is your experience, but what is the basis for saying this is generally true? It's not my experience; theoretically, can't I also say my experience is generally true?

The experience of Firefox getting slow over time is hardly unique to me. In any case, if it weren't a relatively common problem, it seems unlikely Mozilla would rearchitect the browser to alleviate it, especially given that some users are very distressed by the side effects of the change.

I'm betting it's your addon's/extensions/plugins causing the problem. A bad extension can bring Firefox down to it's knee's just like anything else programmed by Auntie Thelma.

Download Firefox 51.0.1 then in the URL box type "about:support" then look for the line that says "Multiprocess Windows - 1/1 (Enabled by User)" that indicates whether electrolysis is enabled. If it says "0/1 disabled" you will have to manually enable it.

Next you want to check to make sure your WebGL, WebGL2 and GPU rendering is accelerated under Graphics. If that's all good and your GPU is listed, go scroll up to the top right and click "Refresh Firefox"

when you restart it, go back into "about:support" and make sure everything is loading fine. Then you can head over to test it out http://beta.unity3d.com/jonas/WebGLBenchmark/ and then you should behold the power! Firefox should benchmark and run websites very noticeably faster than other browsers. The only exception is Firefox's inability to render forum list heavy sites (It chokes on them), so all other browsers will out perform it on Facebook, Flickr and 500px for the time being until that gets fixed. In fact if you are a heavy Facebook user, Safari performs the best with it, and if your on Windows then Opera gives the best Facebook performance. You can also type in "about:performance" to get a rundown if any plugins are fucking you around.

Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

#244

Post by GraemeLion »

barrkel wrote: post #233
msbarnett wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except in this case it's like removing the bed so I can't hypothetically transport large quantities of nitroglycerin (addons with tracking) No? That's not what's motivating this at all. The problem is the XUL/XPCOM API are fundamentally incomposable with completely sandboxed per-tab processes a la Chromium and other isolating security changes, because of assumptions they impose on Firefox internals. If you turn on…

Sufficient extension points with APIs to reimplement the interesting addons should have been made available and working years before dropping compatibility. From the conversations happening around the most popular addons, that has not been the case. It may be that the old APIs need to die; but this way isn't the way to kill the old API. You need as near to complete overlapping for a long time to get people to port ov…

But this is not a secret. This has been discussed repeatedly for at least 5 years now. The current XUL methodology CANNOT sustain, and everyone knew this.

But everyone also knew Mozilla was famous for putting off being confrontational, so nobody actually thought this was going to happen, so nobody really communicated with mozilla on what would be needed to avoid this happening. Now Mozilla has finally set a date (which maybe they won't push back YET AGAIN), and people who've not been doing work on their extensions in preparation for this, or who did not talk to Mozilla about what they need when Mozilla repeatedly asked for that information, are suddenly afraid that they're going to be left in the cold.

Mozilla does almost absolutely everything on public lists. This is all completely readable. The common thought was "they're not really ever going to do this, so we don't really need to present them with what we need, because we know they won't do this." So what else can Mozilla do? Nobody actually believed they were going to really set a cut off date. Everyone thought it'd just be pushed back over and over like it always has been.

Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

#245

Post by beerbaron23 »

exceptione wrote: post #148
throwanem wrote: post #144

I get that there are a lot of people here who are really concerned that, without XUL and XPCOM, there will no longer be a reason to choose Firefox over Chrome. What I think they overlook is that, right now, it is impossible to recommend Firefox in any case, because it performs so poorly compared to Chrome that no one will take such a recommendation seriously. I've been using Firefox since back when it was still calle…

I am wondering if I'm lucky but my foxes are always fast, even with 100 tabs. Both on Linux and Windows boxes. You are not the first one who complained about the speed here, so I am wondering whether our difference is due to bad luck or good luck.

If your a power tab user, then Firefox is the only browser that can keep up with the 80 or so tabs I always have running, other browsers will will halt to a crawl if I attempted that, either immediately or within a couple days. Firefox allows me to power tab my way through a couple months before I have to restart it, it's just that good.

But there are people that experience the opposite and it's usually due to a shitty extension they have installed. Firefox will fall back to software and disable HW acceleration if an extension is coded like dogwood. In that case the user should check in "about:support" to make sure their GPU HW composting is enabled, that's usually the culprit. "about:performance" will list the extension that's causing the performance issue. Another issue is that Firefox has a hard time rendering Facebook in comparison to other browsers, since most people have Facebook loaded at all times it would for sure give them the illusion that Firefox is slow. I am still looking for a solution for that issue...

Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

#246

Post by thatguy0900 »

kibwen wrote: post #142
McCirculaire wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it better? just the two links I'm going to give should be enough to give you pause : http://www.cvedetails.com/product/3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html?... http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?v... During 2016, Firefox had 53 code execution CVE reports. Chrome had 2 . Firefox only has around 8% of the browser marketshare. Chrome sits between 44% and 60% depending on the source. So it's not a cas…

And Firefox is less secure and slower because (drumroll, please...) the major architectural changes required to improve on those fronts is completely stymied by the desire to maintain backwards compatibility for addons. Firefox is at last forced to decide between being a bad but very extensible browser or a (hopefully) good but less extensible browser. IMO, the choice is pretty obvious.

But chrome is already a great and less extensible browser, which is the point. If chrome is great and less extensible, and Firefox is good and less extensible, there's little reason to use Firefox unless you just don't like Google.

Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

#247

Post by GraemeLion »

Royalaid wrote: post #213
jdlshore wrote: post #206

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…

This seems to have been poorly communicated by the Mozilla team and it is a shame bevause e10s is a a real improvement

See, I don't think it was poorly communicated by the Mozilla team. I've been reading their volunteer emails and their public facing blogs, and seeing their commentary on e10s all along.

What HAS been a problem is that they keep pushing it back because they don't want to upset the applecart of the legacy apps, and thus, e10s has basically become stalled by fear. And they didn't really do much to push back on that until very recently.

I think the main problem is, people look at e10s refactoring for their extensions, and thought it would never need to happen. That Mozilla would always just offer a 'back door' for them. I think that the XUL heavy extensions thought the same thing. The problem is, those two areas are the areas where a lot of the instability and issues come from, and the only way to solve those issues is to excise the code completely.

Mozilla's problem isn't communication. It's that people never seem to believe them, and they kept pushing it back.

Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

#248

Post by 4bpp »

jdlshore wrote: post #206

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…

Thanks for the lengthy explanation, but my impression is that most people's assessments in here are of the form "Firefox is slow, but it has better addons". The choice you present therefore actually boils down to

A) Continue being slow and have better addons;

B) Become fast at the expense of worse addons (probably worse than Chrome rather than merely the same, as more users generally means more developers).

Is it really sensible for FF to give up its advantage with the stable minority of users who care about addons enough that they would weigh FF's addon advantage higher than its speed deficit and try to beat Chrome on its home field? Certainly, other FOSS projects that tried to do similar things (Gnome 3) have only managed to garner vitriol in exchange for no meaningful increase in adoption.

It's also worth keeping in mind if you hope for FF to compete with Chrome over users with the same value function that especially in the US, there are now many websites that actually only have been tested with Chrome and perhaps Safari and IE, and hence are broken in Firefox.

Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

#249

Post by beerbaron23 »

chrisper wrote: post #220
jdlshore wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The extension I was using was ublock:origin. When I went to about:support, it showed e10 as enabled.

in about:support is your GPU composting enabled under graphics? I would recommend to refresh Firefox on that screen as well. Also you can check "about:performance" to see which extension is fucking you over.

I would recommend using adblock plus instead, as it is many leagues faster than UBlock Origin in Firefox since version 48 I believe (They optimized their code with Mozilla a couple months ago). Just make sure you go into the adblock plus filter preferences and uncheck "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" problem solved.

Re: Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

#250

Post by kuschku »

GraemeLion wrote: post #244
barrkel wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sufficient extension points with APIs to reimplement the interesting addons should have been made available and working years before dropping compatibility. From the conversations happening around the most popular addons, that has not been the case. It may be that the old APIs need to die; but this way isn't the way to kill the old API. You need as near to complete overlapping for a long time to get people to port ov…

But this is not a secret. This has been discussed repeatedly for at least 5 years now. The current XUL methodology CANNOT sustain, and everyone knew this. But everyone also knew Mozilla was famous for putting off being confrontational, so nobody actually thought this was going to happen, so nobody really communicated with mozilla on what would be needed to avoid this happening. Now Mozilla has finally set a date (whi…

> The current XUL methodology CANNOT sustain, and everyone knew this.

Yet we still don't have a replacement for even a tenth of what it could do today!

Once Firefox 57 is released, I'll lose the ability to use Firefox at all, and won't be able to regain it for several years. Just because no one though to consider what APIs one might have to provide before deprecating the old ones.

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