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Firefox 64 Released

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Re: Firefox 64 Released

#361

Post by drbawb »

JohnFen wrote: post #300
drbawb wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Block by default, and not ask by default? That seems unfortunate to me, and will definitely break one of my services for Firefox users. I have a site which coordinates watching videos amongst a party of people. To the browser heuristics it looks like "autoplay" (the host starts the video manually, and some scripting on the page kicks it off for everyone else and works w/ the backend to maintain something resembling s…

"I realize autoplay gets a lot of flak due to large corporations using it to further their aggressive marketing campaigns" Not just because of that, although that is the most egregious example. Personally, I find any autoplay at all to be objectionable. It doesn't matter if it's an ad, a YouTube video, or anything else.

I respect your opinion but sadly my service just does not work any other way. You don't go to a theater and choose when the projectionist starts the film, or when the actors start playing, or when the musicians start their concert: the venue / director / manager determine that ahead of time. You don't go to a party and choose what music the host plays, though obviously one hopes the host would value your input should you choose to speak for or against a particular set list. -- That is what my service sets out to create: a shared virtual environment where people can experience media, together, in realtime, as opposed to it being a solitary experience.

If useragents remove my ability to start playing content on behalf of my users (who have already agreed to that by clicking past the event banner) then my service will have to move to a non-web platform. Though we have a difference of opinion hopefully you can see why I find that prospect to be distressing: I love the web, and I hate to see it effectively sunsetting my application.

Re: Firefox 64 Released

#362

Post by acdha »

aeonsky wrote: post #329
acdha wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true but not what this thread was about. The person I responded to above was making a very broad claim, which is wrong, and jillesvangurp agreed with the observation and added a general point which is correct. There is a specific issue affecting a subset of people with less common configurations but that doesn’t make the sweeping claim true or the recognition that browser performance issues are notoriously poo…

Scaled resolution option is so widely used that it might as well be broken entirely.

Do you have data supporting that claim?

Re: Firefox 64 Released

#363

Post by derefr »

lucideer wrote: post #270
amarsahinovic wrote: post #261

I really wish they would implement tab stacking, that is the feature that I really miss from the old Opera, here is a video of how it looks in case you don't know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWpJvg8icmM I've tried to find an extension for FF that does this, but so far I was unable to find one.

The big issue here is that Chrome's extension API (which Firefox adopted) doesn't allow this directly, so any extensions trying this need to: 1. rebuild the UI from scratch 2. rebuild basic tab handling behaviour from scratch 3. build tab stacking on top of that 4. (ideally) hide Firefox's existing tab bar And there's two issues with the above steps: (a) 4 hasn't been possible with the new extensions API sofar (it wa…

I'm not clear on why you would want TST as an extension rather than built into the browser chrome. It'd be like wanting the tab bar, or the address bar, to be an extension. Those things belong in the browser chrome; they're what the browser chrome "layer" is for. Just dig into the Firefox code and add TST to the browser itself. (It wouldn't be all that much work; it'd just be 1. adding "parent" and "children" properties to tab model-objects; and 2. adding a TST sidebar view-controller, fed from the same data-binding that backs the regular tab bar.)

Re: Firefox 64 Released

#364

Post by drbawb »

mancerayder wrote: post #360
drbawb wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked. I was one of those users, as I have Nightly installed. I hope you don't seriously think me clicking "no" on the majority of those popups in any way equates to me saying "videos should never autoplay." -- Hell I used my own service and approved one of those dialogs for it. You should be careful how you read into statistics: there is a huge dif…

You're a benevolent site amidst a maelstrom of websites who eagerly want users to hear and see things that they didn't expect. And very large publishers are perhaps the most guilty. News websites, Facebook ads, and typical websites with some announcer voice yapping away with music in the back, trying to get your attention to Buy something. So why stop at a pop-up for AutoPlay video? "The website has requested permiss…

While I can understand the distaste for "dialog overload" the alternative being proposed here is that my service is broken for my users, or they go into `about:config`. My average user doesn't know, or care, what `about:config` is, so that's a non-starter. (Many of them are lost just going through the usual Preferences.) -- Plus I wouldn't want them to enable autoplay globally just to use my service.

At least with the webcam/microphone/notification APIs the average user has a chance at understanding what's going on, they are not being given the same choice here, and that's what I take issue with. Believe me I get it: every week there's some site that makes me go "what on earth do they need push notifications for?" -- I'm still happy to make that choice, though.

If this is about giving the user's more control over what they see: then the setting should not be hidden in about:config, full stop. I know this may be lost on the HN crowd, but doing that relegates the functionality to a small fraction of power-users.

Re: Firefox 64 Released

#365

Post by CamperBob2 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #238
kiriakasis wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is supporting direct feedback. How can mozzila know which features are useful in your opinion? how should they know that you wanted [feature X]? Maybe they are also in the wrong if the telemetry is excessive, but the alternative is to never deprecate any feature ever.

They could ask.

And receive answers like, "A faster horse."

Re: Firefox 64 Released

#366

Post by patleeman »

lucideer wrote: post #270
amarsahinovic wrote: post #261

I really wish they would implement tab stacking, that is the feature that I really miss from the old Opera, here is a video of how it looks in case you don't know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWpJvg8icmM I've tried to find an extension for FF that does this, but so far I was unable to find one.

The big issue here is that Chrome's extension API (which Firefox adopted) doesn't allow this directly, so any extensions trying this need to: 1. rebuild the UI from scratch 2. rebuild basic tab handling behaviour from scratch 3. build tab stacking on top of that 4. (ideally) hide Firefox's existing tab bar And there's two issues with the above steps: (a) 4 hasn't been possible with the new extensions API sofar (it wa…

For 4, you’re able to hide the Firefox tab bar with some css in userChrome.css now. I’m using tree style tabs and have hidden the default tabs as my daily driver.

Re: Firefox 64 Released

#367

Post by mancerayder »

mancerayder wrote: post #360
drbawb wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked. I was one of those users, as I have Nightly installed. I hope you don't seriously think me clicking "no" on the majority of those popups in any way equates to me saying "videos should never autoplay." -- Hell I used my own service and approved one of those dialogs for it. You should be careful how you read into statistics: there is a huge dif…

You're a benevolent site amidst a maelstrom of websites who eagerly want users to hear and see things that they didn't expect. And very large publishers are perhaps the most guilty. News websites, Facebook ads, and typical websites with some announcer voice yapping away with music in the back, trying to get your attention to Buy something. So why stop at a pop-up for AutoPlay video? "The website has requested permiss…

If this is about giving the user's more control over what they see: then the setting should not be hidden in about:config, full stop. I know this may be lost on the HN crowd, but doing that relegates the functionality to a small fraction of power-users.

You know what, I think we agree! That's two votes for "move some stuff out of top-secret about:config and into Settings where the mortals can actually use it, it's useful for them."

Re: Firefox 64 Released

#368

Post by baroffoos »

lugg wrote: post #303
preommr wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implying there's some intrinsic reason browsers can't have customizeable scrollbars.

It's called usability through famiarity. Customising UI elements is a usability antipattern. Per [1], predictability and familiarity are key in creating usable interfaces. Making things look nice "because you can" doesn't necessarily mean you should. > When designing your interface, try to be consistent and predictable in your choice of interface elements. Whether they are aware of it or not, users have become famili…

Have you ever seen a game built entirely out of default OS windows and buttons? If you are building an accounting program, sure use all the defaults but if you are building a piece of art I think you can afford to change a scrollbar.

Re: Firefox 64 Released

#369

Post by bastawhiz »

zapzupnz wrote: post #32
Zekio wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on Windows you will always have a white scrollbar even with dark theme enabled in Windows and firefox, and if you are then on a dark website the scrollbar is basically a beacon of light

Given that WebKit recently added "Dark Mode" support, it would likely be sufficient for Firefox to do the same and simply recolour the scrollbar itself, rather than trusting CSS artists to do it sanely and properly.

You're assuming the only scrollbar is on the far right-hand side of the screen. There are plenty of inline scroll bars and scrollbars in parts of the UI that are not adjacent to "native" chrome. Always using the OS default does not make for a good experience.

Re: Firefox 64 Released

#370

Post by pmoriarty »

trulyrandom wrote: post #345
pmoriarty wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your web browser is compromised, that's malware running on your system right there. A compromised web browser doesn't need X to control the rest of your system. It can usually already write all over your system and perform all sorts of other attacks, including substituting applications, paths, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc.. not to mention try kernel exploits and the like -- not that they'd need to on a single-user system,…

> It can usually already write all over your system and perform all sorts of other attacks Not necessarily. Properly sandboxed applications like Chromium have a seccomp filter, separate pid/user/etc namespaces and bind mounts setup to isolate themselves from the rest of the system as much as possible. > Anyway, if a typical user's browser is compromised, they're already completely screwed It really depends on which p…

If the browser as a whole has not been compromised, then internally it should be able to deal with the clipboard the same what that Wayland deals with it.

For instance, only the currently focused tab should have access to the X clipboard.

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