Live data from Hacker News

Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

hacks.mozilla.org

31–40 of 190 posts

Re: Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

#31
post #4

> Firefox Quantum’s new engine uses 30% less memory than Chrome This is a pretty appealing claim. I'm ashamed to admit that one thing that might keep me on Chrome is the trove of passwords in my sync'd up account. But I'll definitely give Quantum a test drive.

I switched to the beta a few days ago and it's crazy fast. I only use ublock origin so I don't miss any extensions, but I'm definitely not switching back.

Re: Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

#32
post #4

> Firefox Quantum’s new engine uses 30% less memory than Chrome This is a pretty appealing claim. I'm ashamed to admit that one thing that might keep me on Chrome is the trove of passwords in my sync'd up account. But I'll definitely give Quantum a test drive.

> I'm ashamed to admit that one thing that might keep me on Chrome is the trove of passwords in my sync'd up account.

I was the same until a few days ago when I finally took the time to switch to a real password manager. A HN'er recommended Bitwarden[0] and I have to say it was pretty painless and I am much happier knowing my passwords are with a third party (not that I have any real issue with Google but I did worry about having all my eggs in one basket as such).

I haven't paid for Bitwarden yet but I plan to providing it doesn't have a massive failure in the next couple of weeks. Looks like it will easily be worth the $10/year though.

Another added bonus is that their Android app is very decent as well and so far has worked with all my apps as well which is handy and not something I had thought much about in the past. Makes life that little bit easier although I don't have to enter app passwords much in Android it is nice to have the option now.

But back to Firefox - I checked out Nightly when it hit 57 a while back and was extremely impressed. It felt like a whole new browser. Not sure if I will switch from Chrome just yet but I am excited for the future of Firefox again.

[0]https://bitwarden.com

Re: Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

#33
post #2

Nice to see FF picking up momentum again. I don't want to use Chrome because I don't trust Google with my data (using Chromium right now). Can't wait to switch back, once it's GA.

Chromium also sends data back to Google... unless you use Ungoogled-chromium, but the latter has the issue of not being up to date (= missing recent security updates).

Re: Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

#34
post #18

NoScript is identified as a "legacy" extension. But it's the only one I use or care about. Hopefully it will be rewritten to work properly? To me, NoScript is sine qua non. It's the primary differentiating factor between Firefox and other browsers.

It's being migrated: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/08/01/noscripts-migrati... There's also uMatrix as a replacement.

uMatrix isn't a replacement for NoScript. uMatrix lets you do some javascript blocking, but has none of the other features of NoScript. Several of those features are not available from anything other than NoScript. Eg. I haven't seen any other content blocker implement anything like NoScript's surrogate scripts feature.

Re: Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

#35

I've been following https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/Firefox56AddonW... It's surprised me the amount some people rely on addons for their workflow and the amount of effort they will be going through to resist this change come 57. For my usage, I've found Firefox Klar/Focus (which I believe already include the speed improvements from 57+?) on Android and have been extremely impressed.

I'll be doing the same, staying on 56 for quite awhile. This transition has been very poorly managed by Mozilla. I understand the advantages to Quantum but they have left a very large percentage of their extension developers hanging. Web Extensions is not mature enough for many of the large extensions to be ported but despite that they are proceeding with this transition anyhow.

If I was an affected extension developer I would be walking away now. My user base is about to crumble and the best I can do is maybe offer a pale version of my extension in the new system along with a bunch of excuses out of my control. If perhaps WE does get the features I need, why go to the work to re-write? My users will be long gone.

Quantum is great, don't get me wrong. But the new APIs are too immature to be shutting down a huge number of mature extensions and the users that rely on them. It really makes me question the leadership decisions happening at Mozilla in general.

Re: Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

#36
post #8

Is there a long term plan from Mozilla to implement declarative and built-in (native-speed) content blockers like Safari? Would love to not have to use an extension to do this.

It's already in Firefox Developer Edition. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/

I have developer edition. I don't see it. Is it just like Safari's where you can get extensions that provide content blocking lists?

Re: Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

#37
post #23

I will badly miss vimperator. Yeah 56.0 works smoothly but without ability to use keyboard only that's hollow victory for me. Typing this in vim after viewing hackers news in w3m shows how desperate I am.

I'm not sure what features of Vimperator you're using, but if it's only about being able to navigate through your keyboard only, try Vimium-FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/?sr...

I will take a look, thanks. I am using basic set of open, tabnew, follow, bmark. Proper follow hint is very important.

Also the ability to redefine keys since I use colemak.

I was briefly trying chrome and cVim did seem promising but I prefer firefox.

Edit: I had to try it immediately and it looks very promising, thanks. Covers all the basic stuff I need.

Re: Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

#38
post #31
post #4

> Firefox Quantum’s new engine uses 30% less memory than Chrome This is a pretty appealing claim. I'm ashamed to admit that one thing that might keep me on Chrome is the trove of passwords in my sync'd up account. But I'll definitely give Quantum a test drive.

I switched to the beta a few days ago and it's crazy fast. I only use ublock origin so I don't miss any extensions, but I'm definitely not switching back.

Agreed. I switched to Nightly and it's completely stable and completely noticeably faster.

Re: Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

#39
post #32
post #4

> Firefox Quantum’s new engine uses 30% less memory than Chrome This is a pretty appealing claim. I'm ashamed to admit that one thing that might keep me on Chrome is the trove of passwords in my sync'd up account. But I'll definitely give Quantum a test drive.

> I'm ashamed to admit that one thing that might keep me on Chrome is the trove of passwords in my sync'd up account. I was the same until a few days ago when I finally took the time to switch to a real password manager. A HN'er recommended Bitwarden[0] and I have to say it was pretty painless and I am much happier knowing my passwords are with a third party (not that I have any real issue with Google but I did worry…

I like bitwarden at a high level, but there are tons of things that feel extremely janky with it.

Also for some reason, Firefox keeps complaining that bitwarden is freezing its UI thread.

Re: Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum

#40
I wish they would finally fix the annoying pinch-to-zoom which doesn't work properly like in Safari and Chrome...

(If you zoom on a site with text and images in Firefox the page layout gets messed up which makes it impossible to read...)

Post reply on HN