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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

#271

Post by jimmaswell »

Slowly but surely the creative potential of the web is eroded until nothing is left but plain text and ads, to thunderous applause. Gross overreaction after gross overreaction and now we're in a state where extensions are a shallow husk of their former glory, you need to jump through legally vague ridiculous hoops to do anything involving user data, a vast trove of great Flash content is no longer accessible to the average user, web apps with sound and video aren't allowed to work seamlessly without an obnoxious "click here to let the webpage do what it should be able to do anyway" button, and various other unnecessary restrictions. How soon until it's the default that you need to give a website permission to display images and you need a license to make a webpage? That's the direction it feels like we're heading in. I'm saddened that the golden age of the web is probably behind me, but at least I was alive for it.

I went over the subject here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087332

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#272

Post by anoncake »

ahoy wrote: post #162
diminish wrote: post #130

At the end unless Firefox doesn't block JavaScript, it won't have much effect. Actually it's also time to ban JavaScript after horrendous front end frameworks made simple page loads slow, energy and time consuming.

If we just ban cars no one will get in any more wrecks.

While public transportation is safer than cars, I dont think accidents are completely avoidable.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#273

Post by anoncake »

StavrosK wrote: post #247
dymk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the GP is referring to not being able to install non-signed add-ons in non-developer versions of Firefox.

I don't know, my non-dev version has an "install addon from file" menu item.

Are you sure Firefox doesnt check the signature if you use that menu item?

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#274

Post by tehlike »

saagarjha wrote: post #238
tehlike wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean clients i can hardly update, and most often clunky as well? I dont see the improvement. I can use web apps on any platform without waiting for the company to do it. I refuse to install apps on my devices.

> You mean clients i can hardly update, and most often clunky as well? I dont see the improvement. Is better performance and more features not an improvement to you?

What more features? All can be done in javascript, without making users install garbage, without spending extra resources. I prefer companies spend their resources on improving the product instead of implementing same thing thrice.

What most people dont realize is web apps are a boon to linux people. Most companies would not develop for linux at all.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#275

Post by dredmorbius »

wongarsu wrote: post #95
megous wrote: 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...

There are such things as dynamically sourced, or generated, images. On-the-fly-computed SVG data visualisations might be such a case.

Generally, I'd agree that authoring time is some 9X% solution, though there remain edge cases.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#276

Post by swebs »

ceejayoz wrote: post #158
anoncake wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email clients, word processors and video chat would be very much possible without Javascript.

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.

You can upload and download video streams just fine without any Javascript.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#277

Post by dorgo »

rosege wrote: post #236

This it's great and I'm looking forward to trying it. I'm currently in Europe and every webpage now pops up a message about using cookies. If they could work out a way to say accept to all these automatically too that would be awesome as well.

There is an addon for firefox: "i don't care about cookies" which removes such popups. I think it works well, because I can't remember cookie-popups on desktop.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#278

Post by o10449366 »

freehunter wrote: post #34
Vinnl wrote: 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…

Wouldn't it be nice if browsers or servers could reserve that space even if it's not loaded? Like "this is going to be a 500x200 image so let's load 500x200 pixels worth of empty space until it's fully loaded" and avoid jumping.

This drove me insane with the WSJ mobile app. I stopped using it because I would continuously lose my place in the article as the various advertisement blocks loaded in.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#279

Post by hombre_fatal »

saagarjha wrote: post #257
hombre_fatal wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

> I can't share what I'm looking at in macOS' Maps.app like I can on the Google Maps website, pure downgrade. But you can? For example, https://maps.apple.com/?ll=36.103117,-103.901438&spn=0.00098... > 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…

Your maps.apple.com example is perfect: the recipient needs to have an Apple device and Maps.app to see the link. It's like a peek into how things might've been in a dismal alternate reality.

Now try this: https://goo.gl/maps/dvhDpd93gJs

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#280

Post by cpeterso »

k_sze wrote: post #71
xtreak29 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.erahm.org/2019/03/13/doubling-the-number-of-conte...

Thanks! While that post addresses the reason why we can double the number of processes, I think I'm still missing the reason why we should double the number of processes (aside from performance reasons). I mean, the release notes made it sound like more processes is more stable than fewer processes (unless I'm misreading it). How does doubling the number of processes result in fewer crashes? If we manually force FF 6…

Fewer tabs running in more processes reduces the likelihood of OOM crashes, increases security (because less likely a security vulnerability will allow JavaScript on one page to read memory from another page in the same process), and might improve responsiveness because Firefox can lower the OS priority of processes that only contain background tabs.
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