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Firefox 58

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Re: Firefox 58

#191

Post by rpwverheij »

tdumitrescu wrote: post #22
k__ wrote: post #7

Switched back to Firefox a few months ago and I'm blown away by the speed. Last time I had this feeling after switching to Chrome from Firefox years ago, haha. Besides videos everything works like a charm. Somehow some videos won't start and sometimes I get a message that the video format could not be read, never had this issue in Chrome.

Yeah, the browser has gotten snappier. But then I pop open the dev tools and they're unbearably slow - like I simply can't do real dev work in FF anymore, have to use Chrome. It may be that I tend to do a lot of development with Web Components, which FF still doesn't have natively (though Custom Elements are live in 59/nightly, right?!), but either way it seems like a failing of the tooling that it beachballs for 5-1…

same here. Am considering switching over to firefox for main browsing, but development is def in chrome for now. Last time I checked FF console warnings still brought me to the compiled JS file instead of the actual source file through sourcemaps. Did that change yet? (very limited internet atm so cant check)

Re: Firefox 58

#192

Post by Sylos »

thinkingemote wrote: post #163
dschep wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in any notes: they removed the Android widget. Coincidentally, so did DuckDuckGo today. :(

What is the "android widget"?

A widget that users could place on the homescreen of their launcher.

It had a shortcut to open Firefox itself, one to open a new tab and one to a lightweight search interface.

Re: Firefox 58

#193

Post by Sylos »

kuschku wrote: post #124
mdellabitta wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't disable telemetry in the Developer Edition for some reason, so I've gone back to Stable.

The official response — I asked — isthat by downloading dev or nightly you "automatically opt-in" into telemetry, because no one would download these "if they didn't want to help developing Firefox". I've simply replaced all URLs in abou:config with https://example.invalid/ , that makes sure telemetry is off.

Do you remember when you asked that, roughly?

The DevEdition used to just be a dub for Aurora, a.k.a. the Alpha channel. And from that viewpoint it does sort of makes sense to enforce telemetry, as that's the whole point of providing Beta/Alpha/Nightly builds. (Not sure, if it really needs to be enforced, but it does cost them money to provide the download infrastructure for all the people using those builds and if they don't get usage data back, that's costing them money.)

With the Alpha channel gone (the DevEdition is now based on the Beta channel) and the DevEdition really being specifically built for webdevs, it does not make sense to enforce telemetry there, and it might very well just be an oversight that they haven't changed that in the DevEdition build.

Re: Firefox 58

#194

Post by Sylos »

tomsmeding wrote: post #67
bonsai80 wrote: post #58

I've gotten into a habit of checking into all the performance boosts on Firefox release, but I almost missed the best feature of the release: Tracking Protection! It's buried under Preferences -> Privacy & Security -> Tracking Protection I've been using Privacy Badger for a while and today installed DDG's new Privacy Essentials. Does anyone know how the new Firefox feature compares to these other 2 options regarding…

How is "tracking protection", as nice as it may be, a "performance boost"?

Paper detailling the "as much as 40%" figure that Asa Dotzler mentioned: http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SPW2015/W2SP/papers/W2SP_201...

Re: Firefox 58

#195

Post by Sylos »

bonsai80 wrote: post #58

I've gotten into a habit of checking into all the performance boosts on Firefox release, but I almost missed the best feature of the release: Tracking Protection! It's buried under Preferences -> Privacy & Security -> Tracking Protection I've been using Privacy Badger for a while and today installed DDG's new Privacy Essentials. Does anyone know how the new Firefox feature compares to these other 2 options regarding…

Tracking Protection uses the blocklist provided by disconnect.me.

I haven't yet had time to look into DDG's Privacy Essentials, so can't comment on that. But Privacy Badger functions by having a more limited list out of the box and then while you're browsing, it's observing the behaviour of loaded scripts and such, and then dynamically blocks them, if they seem to be tracking you. So, in the long run, it catches more obscure tracking scripts, though there is also something to be said about it needing this time to understand that a script is tracking you.

Then in addition, Privacy Badger also eats up cookies from trackers and blocks social media buttons (or rather replaces them with a non-tracking version). Tracking Protection is just a dumb blocklist, so if you are looking for an all-in-one solution, Privacy Badger is the better choice.

Re: Firefox 58

#196

Post by Sylos »

technojunkie wrote: post #15

Did canvas fingerprinting blocking make it to this release? There were many articles saying it might or will happen and I can't find anything backing this up in the release notes. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=firefox+58+canvas+fingerprinting&t...

Well, you'll notice soon enough, if it does get shipped. So many webpages cause that prompt to pop up, it's kind of ridiculous. Frankly might be a reason for them to hold off on shipping it, it's not user-friendly at all to get that smacked into the face, seemingly at random, with no conception of what will break or what's to gain when blocking it.

One of the most prominent pages that makes that prompt pop up is GitHub.

Re: Firefox 58

#197

Post by callahad »

godelski wrote: post #190
callahad wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've seen this on select AMD ( https://bugzil.la/1417442 ) and Nvidia ( https://bugzil.la/1422850 ) video cards. What GPU and driver version are you running?

Too late to make an edit, but I am still experiencing the issue on the Windows version and FF58 https://screenshots.firefox.com/5GyCe8xjvqM7XVYj/www.faceboo...

Doh! Missed your followup. Looks like the exact same card and driver version are mentioned in Bug 1422850 (https://bugzil.la/1422850), and that disabling hardware acceleration should temporarily fix it.

I'd suggest signing into Bugzilla and following that bug so you get email updates when it changes status.

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