Live data from Hacker News

Firefox 57.0 Released

mozilla.org

231–240 of 836 posts

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what's holding me back from changing mostly. Honestly, lastpass is great for me but I almost wish built in browser password managers were better. I used to use Google Chrome's password manager but one time I synced with another computer or phone and everything got erased and there was no undoing it. I lost everything. Maybe syncing is better now but after that sync that thought "hey let's make sure everything…

High time that passwords management was integrated into the OS, where it belongs. These days its not just sites, but hundreds of apps too that want your passwords, and browser based extensions can't interface with other apps. On the other hand a standalone password manager has at best a flaky interaction with web pages inside a browser window, and often has to be supported by an in-broswer extension, adding to comple…

I really doubt a Microsoft Windows integrated password manager could be conveniently accessed from Android, OSX or Ubuntu.

In fact, I imagine almost every OS vendor would try some form of lock-in.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#232
post #65

I just upgraded. It completely changes the chrome of the browser on OSX and it is _absolutely hideous_. There are a lots of unnecessary animations that I find very jarring. I don't know if there's a way to change it back yet. UPDATE: There is a "Customize Firefox" button which allows modifying the theme, which fixes the colors, but not the shape of the tabs or the animations. UPDATE: In about:config, you can disable…

Thank you for sharing how to disable the blue flash when opening new tabs. I have the same complaints you do, though I'm running Windows 7.

I also notice now that when I close a tab the screen flashes white. This is very distracting when closing a tab with a dark background.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#235
post #7

Hopefully most of the missing extensions will be developed sooner rather than later. I have 15 extensions installed, 14 of which are "Legacy". The most critical one, Tree Style Tabs, has been converted. That was the key blocker that prevented me from seriously using Chrome. But many more remain; Cookie Controller, RefControl, some kind of Classic Theme Restorer equivalent (to get a menu bar back for Bookmarks, at a m…

I'm using Tile Tabs WE now instead of Tile Tabs, since that no longer works. Tile Tabs WE does it's tiling by opening new windows as a workaround, but I feel like that kind of misses the point. Does anyone know of any alternative? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs-we/

Ironically more Servo features could actually make this work better than the XUL version, such as supporting GL/CSS 3 transforms on the components.

Take a look at Servo's current UI for how this could work.

Of course this doesn't help much with Quantum in its current state.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#237
post #181

For those who look for NoScript replacement, uMatrix[0] (from the maker of uBlock Origin) has got you covered (with "A Desperately Needed User’s Guide"[1]). [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/umatrix/ [1] http://adamantine.me/index.php/2015/11/18/umatrix-desperatel...

Tried this. It was too complicated and slow enabling every subdomain by hand.

It is a little fiddly to set up at first, certainly.

There are a few tools to make it easier though: if you're dealing with a site that uses a lot of semi-random subdomains (like googlevideo or cloudflare), it's possible to just whitelist the whole domain and get all the subdomains automatically (and then block individual subdomains if you want).

It might be defeating the purpose, but you can also change the "scope" of the changes you make by clicking the blue button in the upper left corner of the panel. You can choose the scope from current domain, current subdomain, or global "*". If you select global, you can, for example, unblock the various youtube/googlevideo related embeds/iframes/xhrs there, and then youtube embeds will work on every site.

The one thing I wish the addon would do is sync my black/whitelists through Firefox Sync so I didn't have to either redo everything on a new computer, or go to the trouble of exporting/importing them.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the webextension APIs are still under active development. So just because the APIs don't exist yet doesn't mean that they won't ever.

> Note that the webextension APIs are still under active development. In which case, switching to webextension support exclusively is premature at this point, don't you think? It would have been better to wait until the API was robust enough to allow 99.99% of legacy extensions to be ported.

Unfortunately, this would have meant no Firefox Quantum.

As a Firefox dev (I'm still working at Mozilla, although not much on Firefox atm), I have seen many, many occurrences in which I couldn't optimize codepaths, or even in some case fix bugs, because the old extension mechanism made it impossible.

Consider the necessary steps:

1. realize that an internal API is broken;

2. come up with a new non-broken API;

3. port all the internal code using the non-broken API;

4. add a compatibility layer between the broken API and the non-broken API;

5. check all the existing add-ons to find out which ones use the broken API;

6. hope you didn't forget any add-on;

7. attempt to get in touch with all the add-on developers;

8. repeat 7. many, many times, until you are sure that the add-on developers that do not respond have simply abandoned their add-on;

9. negotiate a transition plan with the add-on developer with whom you have managed to get in touch;

10. land the patch that you have written now 3-4 months ago;

11. maintain both the broken API and the non-broken API (and their tests) for ~1 year, until you are reasonably sure that all add-on developers who intend to migrate have done so;

12. maintain (and test) a downgrade path for people who switch between versions of Firefox;

13. finally land your code;

14. realize that you still have accidentally broken some add-ons and people are (rightfully) unhappy because "Firefox broke my add-on";

15. it's 18 months since you wrote your 2-lines patch, you can finally get rid of the dead code and tests and move to something else.

This was one of the reasons for which the Chrome teams managed to be faster and more efficient than the Firefox teams (well, that and a bazillion dollars to hire way more people). The add-on architecture is the main reason for which projects such as multi-processes only landed ~8 years after we had working prototypes and some other performance projects never landed at all.

So, yes, removing the add-on architecture is definitely painful for a number of Firefox users, but I believe that we could not postpone it any further, even if it meant that some useful addons could not be ported immediately. Also, for what it's worth, we have postponed it by something like 7 years already :)

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#239
post #7

Hopefully most of the missing extensions will be developed sooner rather than later. I have 15 extensions installed, 14 of which are "Legacy". The most critical one, Tree Style Tabs, has been converted. That was the key blocker that prevented me from seriously using Chrome. But many more remain; Cookie Controller, RefControl, some kind of Classic Theme Restorer equivalent (to get a menu bar back for Bookmarks, at a m…

And thankfully Vimperator is getting ported to: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tridactyl-vim...

Very basic functionality already works.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the webextension APIs are still under active development. So just because the APIs don't exist yet doesn't mean that they won't ever.

> Note that the webextension APIs are still under active development. In which case, switching to webextension support exclusively is premature at this point, don't you think? It would have been better to wait until the API was robust enough to allow 99.99% of legacy extensions to be ported.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN