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Firefox 62.0 Released

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171–180 of 275 posts

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#171
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little hard to believe a Firefox power user over any real length of time would be totally satisfied with it; they've been ripping out much-loved features right and left and stuffing it with mandatory sponsored add-ons. Still, it doesn't force report megabytes worth of data per day to the mothership, unlike Chrome...

As much as I don't like Firefox with each new release, the alternatives are worse. So I've settled for FF until it falls far enough to lose the title of "least worst browser". But I've quit suggesting it to others. They can use Chrome all they want.

> suggesting it to others

When majority of power users stop suggesting it to users around them, Firefox has no future anymore.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#172
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the trend is one way, and one way only: The paring down of choise and usefuls public features. ...and creating APIs so that extensions can handle the functionality instead.

Creating XUL, really? You cannot create an restricted API for everything, the very point of extensions, plugins, addons is community is always bigger than your developers team, and much, much more diverse. The 'long tail' effect is what extensions community is about, not '90 per cent of users'. 90 per cent of users might need just a couple of the same extensions, the other 10 per cent of users need a thousand of diff…

You can't create a UI that makes everyone happy either.

For example, extensions that use the tabs WebExtension API are significantly more varied than the removed Panorama feature.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#173
One thing I still miss from Safari is 'Show all Tabs' which would give you thumbnails of open tabs. There is nothing built into FireFox that is equivalent. I have looked at some of the extensions, and they are in various states of support or waiting for FF to implement some API. The dropdown menu showing the tab titles becomes pretty useless after a certain number has been reached.

I'm amazed in 2018 it seems tab management (> 20 tabs) is still so awful.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#174
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which account, as I've documented before, is insecure; you should not have a Firefox account and should not store passwords, browsing history, bookmarks or any other privacy- or security-related data with Mozilla's system. (short version: Mozilla can target you with a small piece of JavaScript to steal your password, then use it offline to decrypt your data)

I remember tour comment at the time, but cannot find it right now. Do we know if Mozilla is planning anything to fix this?

> Do we know if Mozilla is planning anything to fix this?

Nope, so far as I can tell they are invested in their current approach. In fairness, I will admit that it trades security in order to get a slight improvement in usability.

If they'd just make it impossible to log in via JavaScript, and only through the browser UI, then they could increase the security. But they won't do it.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here with exact same quote in clipboard, ready to grumble. Not that this is in any way an essential feature to me, but the trend is one way, and one way only: The paring down of choice and useful public features. Firefox of ten years ago was UI-wise a far superior product to the sorry quasi-Chrome of today. I no longer use it with any kind of joy or excitement because it's somehow best . I use it because everyth…

> the trend is one way, and one way only: The paring down of choise and usefuls public features. ...and creating APIs so that extensions can handle the functionality instead.

> ...and creating APIs so that extensions can handle the functionality instead.

If they were actually doing that, I'd be first in line for their defense, but they aren't. Additionally, they keep shoving in features that should be extensions.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#176

With all these posters complaining, am I the only one who is totally satisfied with Firefox? I never had many issues using firefox. I did use Chrome briefly, but came back to firefox. If it matters, I mostly use firefox on Debian Linux and am also not a web developer.

It's a little hard to believe a Firefox power user over any real length of time would be totally satisfied with it; they've been ripping out much-loved features right and left and stuffing it with mandatory sponsored add-ons. Still, it doesn't force report megabytes worth of data per day to the mothership, unlike Chrome...

May be it's because I come from a different culture, I am not so entitled. Firefox is free, as in speech and beer. It also doesn't phone home with your private data as a payload. That Is good enough for me to be happy. If something doesn't work for me, I find a workaround or a plug-in and am happy again. If there's something needs to be fixed, I write bug reports.

So it might seem to you that no power user could possibly be totally happy, I am happy to prove you wrong.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#177

With all these posters complaining, am I the only one who is totally satisfied with Firefox? I never had many issues using firefox. I did use Chrome briefly, but came back to firefox. If it matters, I mostly use firefox on Debian Linux and am also not a web developer.

I'm also very happy with Firefox, and I usually keep FF, Safari, and Chrome all open all the time. I use one Firefox for work, Safari for random browsing, and Chrome for certain special-browsing or special-web-app cases where it either works better in Chrome or I just want keep it more available via alt-tab.

My only real complaint is that `about:config` preferences have no descriptions, despite their names not always being descriptive. Chrome's `about:flags` is much better in this regard.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#178
post #39
post #13

I'm a die-hard Firefox fan. While all my colleagues develop in Chrome, I'm the weird one who uses Firefox and always catches some problem in rendering when testing. But recently I installed an 4K monitor. I use the Latest Windows 10 and have an GTX 1050 graphic card. The Firefox on this resolution is VERY slow. I have no problem in Edge or Chrome. Please, if any dev is around, check this use case.

I have performance issues on Mac OS when it wakeups and attached to external monitor. Some tabs start to eat memory and CPU, until I kill process... it look like very old issue with scaling but it's not fixed

Do you have a link to the issue? I encounter similar problems regularly. I restart Firefox regularly because of the memory use. Also, it chews on the CPU more than other browsers when seemingly idle.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#179
post #77
post #38

> Removed the description field for bookmarks. Users who have stored descriptions using the field may wish to export these descriptions as html or json files, as they will be removed in a future release. Does anyone know if there's an explanation for this somewhere? Between removing live bookmarks (a simple feed reader) and this, it seems like they're paring down user-facing features. I don't think these are the feat…

The Firefox bookmarking implementation is unnecessarily complicated and I'm guessing very few features are actually used. It's a maintenance burden, I'm not surprised they want to slim it down. To give you an example of a maintenance burden in the bookmarking system, the bookmarking system uses a bunch of synchronous APIs. Mozilla is trying to cut down or eliminate use of those APIs, to reduce UI hangs among other re…

The relevant comment from Bugzilla thread

> Nonetheless, I'd argue that it's a matter of PR among the subset of users most likely to champion Firefox.

> When the reading list functionality just vanished on me one day and I rushed to make a backup of reading-list.sqlite in case it got deleted later, it did not leave me with a very good impression of Mozilla. (rather than, for example, seeing that it had been migrated to a folder in the bookmarks store.)

> (In fact, I'm currently working on an external utility, to be integrated via WebExtensions, to store all persistent state which I don't feel I can trust Firefox to preserve when 52 ESR drops away. This approach to retiring bookmark descriptions only leaves me feeling more justified in the view that I can't trust Mozilla with my data.)

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#180

Why remove descriptions from bookmarks? I know they're not the most useful thing, but I don't get the benefit of removing them.

They spent lots of money on Pocket and are increasingly pushing people to use it. Making the built-in bookmarks worse is an easy way to make Pocket look better by comparison.
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