Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#411

Post by clb4mf » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #410

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #409

Firefox needs to be the browser OF something, something super simple: privacy, security, convenience, etc. "Reduce Your Online Annoyances" is a bit of a mouthful. Being the browser of "Support Us Or Google Will Own Everything" is likewise not compelling for the vast majority of users. Firefox has the functionality, now it needs to cement its narrative.

“Firefox, the browser without shitware”?

They run ads on the front page and install addons remotely into their users' computers. They are everything but "without shitware".

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#412

Post by basch » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

tzhenghao wrote: post #394

I think the core problem is still tab clutter. Every time I hop onto my iPad to do some light browsing, I have less anxiety. I don't keep many tabs open on mobile/tablet, but I'm already counting 8 opened here as I'm typing on my laptop. Sure, almost everything mentioned in the article is problematic. Then again, maybe it's just us programmed to hit Ctrl-T too much over a decade...

There needs to be a complete overhaul of "how i got here, back/forward, where i want to go, things i want to read, things i want to flip between, things i want cached so when i click they dont load, i want to purge the tab from my current workspace, i want to purge this site from the history."

Navigation (forward/back), history, tabs, bookmarks et all are all trying to do various forms of the same thing, and their overall relationship to each other is fundamentally broken, because each individual component is too rigidly defined and isolated.

I should be able to click between a couple buttons to see how tabs are 1) related to each other from a time/clicked/navigation history perspective 2) workspace perspective 3) topic perspective

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#413

Post by rch » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

tzhenghao wrote: post #394

I think the core problem is still tab clutter. Every time I hop onto my iPad to do some light browsing, I have less anxiety. I don't keep many tabs open on mobile/tablet, but I'm already counting 8 opened here as I'm typing on my laptop. Sure, almost everything mentioned in the article is problematic. Then again, maybe it's just us programmed to hit Ctrl-T too much over a decade...

Opera's tab groups and save browsing sessions made the interface a lot more convenient for me... I tend towards the high end of open tabs.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#414

Post by bobbyi_settv » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

I love that we continue to refer to private/ incognito browsing as something mainly used "when you’re planning a surprise party or gift".

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#415

Post by ehsankia » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

tzhenghao wrote: post #394

I think the core problem is still tab clutter. Every time I hop onto my iPad to do some light browsing, I have less anxiety. I don't keep many tabs open on mobile/tablet, but I'm already counting 8 opened here as I'm typing on my laptop. Sure, almost everything mentioned in the article is problematic. Then again, maybe it's just us programmed to hit Ctrl-T too much over a decade...

I like the experiment Chrome is running with "switch to tab" [0]. For most content, I would say it's probably faster to find the content again than search for it in a hay of tabs. I also like extensions like SimpleUndoClose [1] which let you search your recently closed tabs. This way, use my closed tabs as a way of "storing" tabs I may want to access in the near future again, rather than keeping them open.

I would definitely love to see more experimentation around this area.

[0] https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/07/24/chrome-experimentin...

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simpleundoclose/em...

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#416

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

hannob wrote: post #89

benol wrote: post #74

Considering the recent "Spectre is here to stay" paper [1], can anyone comment on whether Firefox should be considered secure until the work on process-per-site lands (I believe they are working on it)? [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05178

> can anyone comment on whether Firefox should be considered secure until the work on process-per-site lands No and Yes. No, theoretically there could be spectre vulns. Practically we have seen zero spectre-based attacks in the wild. It's not a big deal.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#417

Post by r3bl » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

jordanpg wrote: post #397

Still does not block autoplay on cnn.com, which is my acid test for this. UPDATE: Yes it does, but it's not enabled by default. (?)

It's not enabled by default immediately, but I've heard it will be in less than a week.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#418

Post by make3 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #407

Honestly, Reader Mode, in built ad blocker, tree tabs, and containers make Firefox so streamlined for me. I think that Google sites must not be thoroughly tested on firefox though! Vanilla Gmail (no add-ons or theme, but not the basic HTML version) isn't too fast. Not as fast as it used to be a year ago on Chrome either, but not as bad as FF.

or bad on purpose. chrome doesn't let you block ads on mobile after all, and Google is an ad company.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#419

Post by holy_city » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #244

an4rchy wrote: post #159

Does this include Netflix? It's been getting really annoying to have random videos your mouse is on, as you scroll, start playing automatically.

Netflix is horrible for this. It's even worse on a smart TV, where navigation is already cumbersome enough without auto-play videos starting every time I'm on a menu item for more than a second.

I've noticed buffering and locking issues on Roku as well. There's too much crap going on when you're trying to browse, to the point where my TV misses lags on user interaction while it tries to load a video for autoplay, making it impossible to even navigate the app. Sometimes I can't even use the app at all.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#420

Post by pcwalton » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #368

JoshTriplett wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Networks are thousands of times faster in bandwidth, but they don't have thousands of times less latency. Software is actively working to overcome the limitations of latency, such as with HTTP/2, HTTP/3, and TLS 1.3.

For a page load, why should latency matter once you get below 50 ms? The problem isn’t latency, the problem is that the software stack makes tons of round-trip requests to display some text and images. The modern web makes X11 seem like it was designed by a demoscene coder.

X11 doesn't even do any image compression. X11 seems fast because everyone uses the DRI and/or MIT-SHM extensions to hack around the fundamental brokenness of the protocol, at the cost of network transparency. :)