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Firefox 57.0 Released

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Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#311
post #179
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…

There is a similar plugin(like Tree style tabs) for Chrome - Tabs Outliner https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk... I was a Firefox zealot before they decided to go in this direction. For me Chrome does all the things FF does but much faster(at the moment).

this plugin is bad. What is Chrome doing seriously :/ I've tried it a decade ago and it was still the same shit.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#312
IMO, it sucks now.

I like the awesome new speed even on my old Sandy Bridge, but the death of ANY possibilities to add features to the browser UI is not worth it. Really.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit annoyed by the dark header bar now, they previously only used that for private windows, now it appears they use it for both.

You can change it to "light" in the prefs :)

Yeah I just tried that and it changes the private window to light as well. I guess it doesn't matter much cause i don't use private much, but it's weird they have removed that distinction now.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#314

Just installed it, looks like the update overrode my previously set default of a blank "new tab" page in favour of their overly fancy, ad infested "new tab experience" page. Looks like it's time for another scan of about:config for any other nasties they decided to sneak in there this time.

I would be happy if I could just get a new tab that responded to addon defined gestures and hotkeys.

Best solution so far seems to be to use the New Tab Override addon and point it to a blank page somewhere online.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mentioned in the release notes: "AMD VP9 hardware video decoder support for improved video playback with lower power consumption"

How many users have AMD laptops?

AMD graphics. And since we were talking about Macs, the answer is "a lot"

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#316
post #124
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right thing to do would have been to work on those extensions BEFORE breaking users' experience.

Most of these were done by users scratching their itch. And I'm confident that's exactly why we'll get most of those experiences back.

Not necessarily. WebExtensions by design don't work on firefox pages, nor do they have full access to the browser like the old addons used to have. There are a few requests our there to get the needed access added, but Mozilla is basically going to let those rot: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#317
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I would add to this, if it is possible, integration with keychain

This was possible until today and FF57 with the "Keychain Services Integration" plugin -- but it can't be ported to WebExtensions. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/keychain-serv... I will miss it and I'm not sure what to do next.

I have all my passwords in OS X Keychain too (why would you use an external password manager when your OS comes with a perfectly good one). I did not switch from Safari to Firefox until I discovered above addon many years ago, and I won't upgrade to 57 until Mozilla either fixes the SDK so the addon can be ported or (better) integrates into OS X Keychain like a well behaved Mac application should.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#318
post #29

From the announcement post [1]: > As part of our focus on user experience and performance in Firefox Quantum, Google will also become our new default search provider in the United States and Canada. Does that mean the deal with Yahoo! has lapsed? And is there a new deal with Google, or no deal at all? (And what would be the revenue impact of that?) Edit: Just saw an announcement for this as well [2], with no word abo…

I'd say that the most sensible choice in the absence of any payment, considering FF sensibility and message, (i.e. according to me) DDG would be the most sensible default. (edit : clarify)

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#319
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…

I'm a bit annoyed by the dark header bar now, they previously only used that for private windows, now it appears they use it for both.

Firefox never made that distinction. What you describe is a Chrome beaviour. I think it'd be better if Mozilla copied it.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#320
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't exist, sure, but most of the bickering is "I want XUL and nothing else". And how many of those lamenting the absence of some API have actually told Mozilla what they need? By all accounts Mozilla has been very responsive and helpful. Not everything was possible, but the problem lies mostly not on their side.

> most of the bickering is "I want XUL and nothing else" I don't know that that's fair. The discussions I've seen and participated in have revolved around equivalency, not identity. > how many of those lamenting the absence of some API have actually told Mozilla what they need? The Vimperator devs and some users have been very clear on that point. > Mozilla has been very responsive and helpful. Not everything was pos…

> I don't know that that's fair. The discussions I've seen and participated in have revolved around equivalency, not identity.

I've developed a couple of Firefox extensions. One of those was an e10s-compatible replacement for Vimperator, because Vimperator relied on XUL[0]. (Vimperator broke long before Firefox 57, because e10s broke backwards compatibility with some extensions long before Firefox 57 did).

The old extensions "API" was essentially a way to plug into arbitrary parts of the Firefox codebase. A Firefox developer has previously said that "[previously] the entire codebase was our extensions API".

That's not scalable or maintainable in the long-run, and I would assume that any software developer who's worked on a moderately-large project would appreciate that allowing arbitrary entrypoints and coupling makes it impossible to do literally anything without breaking some part of that extremely ill-defined API.

It's really, really unfortunate that moving towards a modern approach to browser extensions meant breaking work that people had put in over the last fifteen years, but... there's literally no other way to do it. Firefox was the first non-experimental browser to allow browser extensions, and there are both benefits and costs to being first-to-market. In this case, the downside is that they ended up accruing this technical (maintenance) debt.

As someone who's written Firefox extensions that are no longer available due to the switch, I'm disappointed that this had to happen. But as a Firefox user, I'm much happier having Quantum and Electrolysis (e10s), and if the tradeoff is between those two directly, I'd choose Quantum + Electrolysis over those extensions.

Or, to put in XKCD form: https://xkcd.com/1172/

[0] https://github.com/ChimeraCoder/electrovim

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