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Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#221

Post by airstrike »

brink wrote: post #153
jessemillar wrote: post #129

> With this update, Firefox is introducing scroll anchoring, which ensures that you’re not going to bounce around on the page as these slow-loading ads load. While I love the idea of videos not automatically playing, I'm almost more excited for the scroll anchoring feature.

Same. Have you ever tried to click a link only to accidentally click something else because the page won't stop loading? It's infuriating.

This happens to me every single day on the Windows 10 start menu and on my iPhone using the swipe-down search on the Home screen.

Why in God's green Earth the developers who implemented these don't cache obvious local results (like app names) to quickly return them is beyond me, and why the position of the results has to move after the fact is even more maddening

I typed "Arro" for an app I use last night, it took a moment to show up and when I went to click it, the web results populated so I accidentally clicked on "arroz con gandules". Sounds lovely, but I am certainly not expecting that to be the autocomplete...

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#222

Post by bzbarsky »

k_sze wrote: post #118
rebelwebmaster wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kill…

You have to keep in mind that a large fraction of Firefox users are still using 32-bit builds on Windows.

For those users, the memory a process can use is capped at 2-4GB (depending on whether the OS itself is 32-bit or 64-bit and a few other things).

The most common OOM crashes on Windows are running out of virtual address space, not running out of actual physical RAM.

In that context, having more processes in fact gives you more address space and reduces the chance that you will run out.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#223

Post by copperx »

jessemillar wrote: post #129

> With this update, Firefox is introducing scroll anchoring, which ensures that you’re not going to bounce around on the page as these slow-loading ads load. While I love the idea of videos not automatically playing, I'm almost more excited for the scroll anchoring feature.

> I'm almost more excited for the scroll anchoring feature.

If we could get this feature on mobile and desktop operating systems, I would be soo happy. I probably click/tap on something just before it moves about fifty times a day. Having the fastest devices only helps a little.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#224

Post by ghostly_s »

Someone1234 wrote: post #198
skrebbel wrote: post #182

My company makes pluggable chat software. I'm sad about this development, because it means that we can't audibly notify users anymore when someone writes a message to them. I wonder whether there's a way around that, but I don't see it.

Some of your competitors have been using it for a fake "ding" sound and a generic message when you visit a site. So while I sympathize a little, it is for the greater good.

GoToMeeting is now doing this, even when you are loading their site for the purpose of launching a meeting, so you get the pleasantry of an obnoxious sales support bot "notification" ding blaring through your speakerphone system.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#225

Post by benj111 »

anoncake wrote: post #171
ceejayoz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email clients, sure. Word processors? Only if you're requiring something like Markdown. Video chat seems right out, unless you're permitting a Flash solution, which would be severely cheating.

> Word processors? Only if you're requiring something like Markdown. You havent heard of LibreOffice?

Everything old is new again.

'offline' apps, 'local' cloud. Its the future!

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#228

Post by Marsymars »

woogley wrote: post #190
maxaf wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video tends to eat deeply into the metered data plans of many Internet users.

the alternatives (gifs, frames advanced by JS) are even more bandwidth-heavy

If sites escalate to gifs or frames advanced by JS, I'll escalate to blocking gifs or JS.

Autoplaying video is not acceptable.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#229

Post by IronBacon »

chronogram wrote: post #4
skykooler wrote: post #2

"System title bar is hidden by default to match Gnome guideline for Linux users" - which part of the UI does this refer to exactly? Does this mean that Firefox will now be hiding the page title?

So that it looks like the Windows version: title bar and tabs are together. The close and minimise buttons are to the side of the tabs. I believe this isn’t enabled for KDE Plasma. If you like a separate title bar like the old version of Firefox, then use the hamburger menu, choose “customise” and check the box for the title bar.

Unfortunately, it doesn't pick up the actions associated, for example, to the "double-click" or "middle-click" or at least not on my desktop.

Someone knows if it's customizable in the config menu, searching the obvious "titlebar" reports only two not useful entries?

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#230

Post by hombre_fatal »

anoncake wrote: post #142
dymk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll probably just have to agree to disagree re: "JS does more harm than good". I have at least 5 progressive webapps open right now, none of which could work without javascript. Of the other 20 websites I have open in other tabs, none are being annoying or aggressive, and I'm not even using an adblocker.

They could be proper applications instead.

That has downsides of its own.

For example, url sharing / deep linking goes out the window. I can't share what I'm looking at in macOS' Maps.app like I can on the Google Maps website, pure downgrade.

I also don't want to download an application for everything. Very few things deserve a permanent spot on my computer. I have much less control over desktop apps than I do a website.

Or look at macOS' News.app. Another downgrade from reading news in a browser tab. It has no tabs. There's no right-click. It implemented its own back button. It only supports the few news sources that come preinstalled on it. I can't add my own. Why would I prefer this?

Obviously native applications have their place, but let's not suggest there aren't trade-offs.

What's odd about your posts is that you suggest it's an inconvenience that you might have to disable Javascript. Maybe you have to use NoScript or uMatrix or uBlock. But at least you have the option and this sort of control over the web browser. If a native application does something that you don't like, you have basically zero recourse beyond uninstalling it or begging the developer to change something you could've done in the browser with a quick browser extension or CSS tweak.

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