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Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

blog.mozilla.org

111–120 of 574 posts

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#111
post #28

> Scroll anchoring keeps content from jumping as images and ads load at the top of the page That's a nice little quality-of-life improvement. It's a little annoyance that you don't really consciously notice because you're so used to it, but I recall reading about Chrome adding a similar feature and suddenly realising how annoying it is when you're reading something, and then suddenly it jumps out of your view due to…

It's even worse on mobile, with variable load times. It's in fact maddening that it has to jolt you while reading an article - because ads and images are very very important (more important than the content). I love reader mode on FF mobile, I click it as soon as the icon appears next to the URL.

It's also a nice bonus that you get to read the article before the obnoxious Oath pop-ups begin.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#112
post #42

Whenever Firefox is automatically updated through my package manager, any open instances refuse to load any new pages or tabs until I restart Firefox . Needless to say, this is absolutely infuriating when I'm in the middle of something important. Does anyone know how to disable this feature?

I always ran into this, but I noticed yesterday when I upgraded Firefox (from 64 to 65, bit behind I guess), it didn't do the crashing on new tabs thing. Maybe they sorted that out finally.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it to accidentally mute my computer and accidentally cancel loading web pages.

I use it to accidentally open Siri.

I've removed the Siri button and put launchpad there instead. Somewhat less annoying.

It's occurred to me that I should find out how to make a placebo button and put there, but I haven't prioritized it.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#114
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it to accidentally mute my computer and accidentally cancel loading web pages.

I've had to remove a lot of the stuff from mine because, turns out, when I hit certain modifier'd key combos with my left hand I tend to rest my right ring finger at the top of one of the number keys... close enough to the touchbar to trigger it. Didn't know that about myself, but now I do, and I've had to clear out about half my touchbar to keep it from being a problem. Turns out if you press "play/pause" on there,…

Gotta love users working around selling points. Now what could that say, Apple? Could it be?! No! The users are doing it wrong.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#115
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a feature and you can't disable it, previously it'd just crash. I think it's to do with the content workers being `exec`d from disk each time instead of forking from a master.

It's never crashed on unix for me after an update. Sounds like a Windows problem however.

It used to crash under Linux, when you updated it while it was running, and then opened new window or a tab. Now it shows a message that you need to restart.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#116
I have been using Firefox on macOS for a while but firefox is not well-integrated with the OS. Scrolling, downloading files, playing video/audio and many more have different convention from Safari/Chrome. Also, I am trying to avoid using Firefox on battery because it is a killer.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#117
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases you want to set one size and let the other calculate itself based on the aspect ratio of an image. And this is not know prior to loading and can't be specified in any other way. So you get jumpy behavior during load on most responsive websites and slow connections. It's hard to fix in JS too.

If only there was a way to know the aspect ratio of an image at the time of website authoring...

I personally dislike the complexity of having to use the server-side calculated dimensions.

``` object-fit: cover ```

comes to mind as a client-side solution I used in the past for this problem

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#118
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would mean smaller impact per crash, not fewer crashes though.

Could reduce out-of-memory crashes if fewer sites are sharing the same process.

I don't quite understand how that can be possible.

At the end of the day, you're still aiming to load, in FF 66, just as many tabs as in FF pre-66. FF's total memory usage should be about the same whether you're using 4 processes or 8. Sure, if each FF process now takes care of fewer tabs, then when OOM does happen, the FF processes have a lower OOM score and are less likely to get killed. But something will get killed regardless, just maybe not FF. That's like trying to avoid punishment after a prison brawl by keeping your head low: someone will get punished regardless, just maybe not you.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#119
post #75
post #28

> Scroll anchoring keeps content from jumping as images and ads load at the top of the page That's a nice little quality-of-life improvement. It's a little annoyance that you don't really consciously notice because you're so used to it, but I recall reading about Chrome adding a similar feature and suddenly realising how annoying it is when you're reading something, and then suddenly it jumps out of your view due to…

On mobile I feel this constantly, mostly due to the lack of adblock. Somehow like 70% of any news site I get linked to by hn feature constantly loading ads that stop me from being able to read anything...

Firefox Focus was a godsend to me for this exact reason. I genuinely did not use any mobile devices to browse the web because it was just a hostile experience, but since Focus has come out I can join the rest of the world.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#120
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would mean smaller impact per crash, not fewer crashes though.

Yes, technically. But the user experience is fewer tabs crashing, which I'd argue is what user's care about. You notice a crash because of the tab's "oh no" screen, not by watching `ps`.

I see. That starts to make sense if you explain it that way. Users who don't think about the multiprocessing model will just see fewer dead tabs when a FF process crashes, and that could feel like "fewer crashes".
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