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Firefox 62.0 Released

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Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#231

Post by tomc1985 »

BuckRogers wrote: post #183
tomc1985 wrote: post #163

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...

I wasn't aware that Chrome did that, but I'm generally wary of Google anything and always have been. I'm a longtime Firefox(/DDG) power user, since it was Phoenix. I never left even when Chrome was hot, of course I've done testing on and off over the years but was never impressed with Chrome. I'm one that if just accepting anything, would use a platform's native browser (Edge, in my case) before Chrome, as native bro…

Don't run desktop Chrome on any kind of embedded environment with a metered connection ;)

We had to blacklist google in the devices' firewalls to make all the transmissions stop

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#232

Post by tomc1985 »

Endy wrote: post #207
tomc1985 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we had XUL (which was awesome), now it's gone

The community still has XUL thanks to Pale Moon.

XUL the platform should still live on, unless Mozilla pulled the devkit

Hmm, now to check up on xulrunner....

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#233

Post by tibu »

baby wrote: post #191
nine_k wrote: post #21

Not related to this particular release, but I wish Mozilla implemented tree-style tabs as core feature (or at least provided core API). The current "Tree style tab" plugin in indispensable for me, but has to be a hack, however exquisite, especially around tab context menus.

I'm still baffled at the number of people who have no idea that tree style tabs exist. If more education was given to people about this plugin, it would probably be a core feature of Firefox.

I have to check this out now. I'm one of those who haven't heard about tree style tabs until now

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#234

Post by Endy »

interfixus wrote: post #228
Endy wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The community still has XUL thanks to Pale Moon.

Not really. I stuck to Pale Moon for a while, but it gets untenable: Stuck with dead extensions, or ancient versions of live ones. Left behind with no support for essentials like grid-view display, which the Pale Moon maintainer seems to consider a kind of personal affront. And knowing with close to absolute certainty that you are setting yourself up with a variety of gaping, unpatched security holes.

I haven't found it to be untenable. Then again, it seems that you're worried about maintaining the bleeding edge, and I'm, well, the exact opposite of that. My mantra in terms of technology has been "If it ain't broke, stop trying to fix it" for the last, oh, 4 years or more.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#235

Post by PurpleRamen »

StillBored wrote: post #201
unethical_ban wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anyway, how much effort does it really take to maintain a text field on a bookmark entity? My thought too! Legacy extension APIs are one thing. An extra DB column / key:value pair is nothing.

If you think about, how this simplifies anything, you will start to understand the mess that is the FF codebase (not that chrome is noticeably better, particularly if you try and build it anywhere outside of ubuntu/x86_64).

It's not a mess, it's just a case of "not used by me, so remove it". Instead of improving the feature they let it rot away, like so many others, and then ignore that people still used it. Really sad.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#236

Post by sjellis »

simias wrote: post #107
phakding wrote: post #23

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 also remained loyal to Firefox but I think there's a mentality aspect to it: when a website loads slowly I'm quicker to blame the website than the browser. As such when I'm frustrated by my web experience I tend to think "man, I need to stop using this garbage website" rather than "well, time to use a faster browser". Because surely my octocore gaming PC with 16GB of RAM should manage to display text and images jus…

> when a website loads slowly I'm quicker to blame the website than the browser

You'd probably be right, too: the current browsers are marvels of technology that keep getting better, whilst the Websites are getting worse.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#237

Post by sjellis »

tomc1985 wrote: post #229
phakding wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poss…

So in your culture one is supposed to be grateful for free things unquestioningly? Why does culture need to be brought into this? If, one day, churches started handing out rat poison to the hungry instead of food; are the hungry entitled to happily eat that rat poison because it is free? The problem is that Firefox makes these promises and builds a platform (in this case, old-school XUL-powered extensions), builds a…

Mozilla Foundation is actually a non-profit organization, not a profit-making business. Due to US laws, the work is done by "Mozilla Corporation", which is totally owned by the Foundation, but this is a non-profit that promotes the open Web.

Increasingly, that means having a Web browser that is secure and fast, even at the expense of taking out features that some users really wanted. I've been using Firefox since the start (you can find my name on the famous NYT advert), and they have not removed a single feature that I care about.

On the contrary, I am now happier with Firefox that I have been for many years.

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#238

Post by tomc1985 »

sjellis wrote: post #237
tomc1985 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in your culture one is supposed to be grateful for free things unquestioningly? Why does culture need to be brought into this? If, one day, churches started handing out rat poison to the hungry instead of food; are the hungry entitled to happily eat that rat poison because it is free? The problem is that Firefox makes these promises and builds a platform (in this case, old-school XUL-powered extensions), builds a…

Mozilla Foundation is actually a non-profit organization, not a profit-making business. Due to US laws, the work is done by "Mozilla Corporation", which is totally owned by the Foundation, but this is a non-profit that promotes the open Web. Increasingly, that means having a Web browser that is secure and fast, even at the expense of taking out features that some users really wanted. I've been using Firefox since the…

Some is never enough in software any more to keep anything. Development always has to cater to the majority case and lowest-common-demoninator. Users don't want sophisticated tools and platforms, they just want stupid appliances! Optional features? Forget it. Things that might take some study to learn? Axed. Who would ever want that?!

It really makes me sick. Tyranny of the majority writ large. (And while I write this from within Firefox, I am definitely not a very happy user of it any more.)

You're right about Mozilla's nonprofit status -- but it is easy to forget about with all the various business partnerships they seem to enter. It makes me wonder just how much of this nonprofit is really spent funding development/advocacy...

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#239

Post by darekkay »

nathcd wrote: 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…

If anyone relies on bookmark descriptions, look into my Static Marks tool [0]. It goes beyond descriptions: every bookmark may include multiple notes and other bookmarks. There is no import feature yet, though (but the latest move by Mozilla makes me want to implement this soon).

[0] https://staticmarks.com/

Re: Firefox 62.0 Released

#240

Post by dao- »

394549 wrote: post #194
dao- wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what is 'a significant share' when we are talking about power users. It basically means: worth tailoring to, given precious UI space and limited developer resources. Of course there's no fixed share that "worth tailoring to" can be translated to universally. It's a judgement call. Do you think 50% of power users used this feature? How about 10%? 5%? 1%? I doubt this one even met the 1% bar. Would you a…

> It basically means: worth tailoring to, given precious UI space and limited developer resources. How much precious developer time is required maintain a user-facing text field on an entity with only a handful of other fields? Certainly not enough to properly justify a feature regression with user-data loss. > Do you think 50% of power users used this feature? How about 10%? 5%? 1%? IMHO, you're thinking about power…

> How much precious developer time is required maintain a user-facing text field on an entity with only a handful of other fields?

The description removal blocked improvements to bookmarking that will actually affect a significant share of users:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?maxdepth...

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