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Firefox 84.0

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Re: Firefox 84.0

#131

Post by IshKebab »

xyzal wrote: post #34
chinhodado wrote: post #11

I love Firefox, I use it everyday, I can't imagine using a browser without Tree Style Tab, or all the things that I can do in about:config. At the same time, I can't shake off the dreadful feeling that it will eventually die one day. The market share keeps falling year by year. What is the most realistic future for Firefox?

I can't understand why they still didn't put a "Support Mozilla" prompt anywhere.

It would be complicated due to Mozilla's structure. Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit that owns the for-profit Mozilla Corporation. You can donate to the foundation but they can't use the money for Firefox.

But the fundamental reason is that donations are only ever going to be a drop in the ocean. Google gives them $400m/year. Mozilla Foundation donations are like $3m/year. Even Wikipedia donations are only about $100m/year and they have way more users and push really hard.

Re: Firefox 84.0

#132

Post by jcranmer »

est31 wrote: post #40
chrisseaton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no idea they even still supported Flash?! I thought they changed their plugin API so many times that it would have been unsupported many years ago.

The extension API changed (web extensions). The plugin API is still NPAPI. There was a project to replace the API with the one that chrome uses, which has better sandboxing, but eventually they abandoned that project.

My memory may be faulty, but my recollection is there was never a serious attempt to replace NPAPI with Pepper. It was looked into, but it was concluded that the Pepper APIs were too tightly bound to Webkit's implementation to make it possible to implement, and Mozilla instead built their own out-of-process sandbox (which was sorely needed because Flash crashes were the single largest cause of Firefox crashes).

Re: Firefox 84.0

#133

Post by hollerith »

Vinnl wrote: post #92
eska wrote: post #24

Mozilla FAQ: > Will switching to a different browser allow me to use Flash? >No. Adobe and other browsers will also end support Flash at the end of 2020. Even if you install an older version of Firefox, the Flash plugin itself will stop loading Flash content after January 12, 2021. See Adobe’s Flash Player End of Life information page for more details Adobe: > Since Adobe will no longer be supporting Flash Player aft…

The reason it's disturbing is exactly why it's good that it went away. It was a proprietary plugin supported by a single vendor, so when that vendor chooses to stop supporting it, it's gone. We've been lucky that it's been supported for so long, in that regard. Although in practice it is still hard for independent parties to implement support for all relevant open web standards, at least they are open and already hav…

Allow me to rephrase what you wrote: It's good that Flash will abruptly stop working because that will force people to stop relying on software supported by a single vendor, the problem with which is that it might abruptly stop working, which would be bad.

Re: Firefox 84.0

#134

Post by ksec »

chinhodado wrote: post #11

I love Firefox, I use it everyday, I can't imagine using a browser without Tree Style Tab, or all the things that I can do in about:config. At the same time, I can't shake off the dreadful feeling that it will eventually die one day. The market share keeps falling year by year. What is the most realistic future for Firefox?

>What is the most realistic future for Firefox?

Realistic isn't a word I see often on HN.

It wont die. Google will keep funding it just to say they dont have a monopoly in browser market. But it will continue its path towards irrelevant by mainstream usage. They will continue to shrink the engineering as budgets are cut. Until no more silly 20% project and management goals that drains resources ( they wont have that luxury anymore ).

And someday Firefox will require a reboot, not its code base but from a management perspective.

From a user point view, Firefox will stay pretty much the same for another 5 - 6 years at least. Both the Browsers and its Cooperation. There are still quite few improvement coming from Rust Servo in the pipeline. So technically it should be competitive enough.

- From someone who has been watching / following Firefox since before its birth.

Re: Firefox 84.0

#135

Post by Snitch-Thursday »

bzb6 wrote: post #77
blindm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you sorely miss Flash, you can run it with Ruffle: https://ruffle.rs/

I tried it on archive.org and it’s not that good. https://archive.org/details/flash_badger On Chrome the animation starts lagging behind after a few loops so audio and video desync badly. On Firefox it’s much worse, since Firefox is naturally slower than Chrome so even the first loop is desynced already.

I just tried the above animation on W10 + uBo + Firefox 83. I went through 3 loops and it seemed to stay in sync. Then I hopped over to check this comment and came back to that tab, and it was out of sync at that time. So I think Tab Switching might be a challenge for Ruffle.

Clearly Ruffle is not perfect, but leagues, furlongs ahead of having to watch old flash content on YouTube via Unregistered Hypercam 2.

Re: Firefox 84.0

#136

Post by paulie_a »

chrisseaton wrote: post #86
paulie_a wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to adobe the plugin will stop loading content in January regardless of the browser

If IE and Windows are running the extension then I guess IE can tell it the date is anything it wants?

Hopefully adobe was smart enough to prevent that

Re: Firefox 84.0

#137

Post by haxiomic »

mdoms wrote: post #111
haxiomic wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check about:config apz.allow_zooming is set to true or do a fresh install and wipe all configs if that doesn’t do it, native pinch zoom was added in version 83

It's a fresh install and that's enabled. Let's be clear here: there is pinch to zoom. But it's an extremely half-assed implementation that is most certainly NOT native and feels terrible. I like Firefox but this has been a deal breaker for me for literally years. I don't understand why their zooming and scrolling can be so good on Android but so awful in Windows.

When you pinch does it jump between zoom levels in large increments or is it smooth? The large jumping was the old behavior – check about:config's browser.gesture.pinch settings are all empty and not mapped to ctrl+ or anything. I haven't tried on Windows but on macOS the native zoom is smooth and pretty good

As a last ditch attempt you could try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-touch-z...

But if that doesn't work it may hint that pinch gestures aren't being passed to firefox properly; try pinch zooming on maps.google.com, if that doesn't work then maybe there's a deeper issue going on

Re: Firefox 84.0

#138

Post by est31 »

jcranmer wrote: post #132
est31 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extension API changed (web extensions). The plugin API is still NPAPI. There was a project to replace the API with the one that chrome uses, which has better sandboxing, but eventually they abandoned that project.

My memory may be faulty, but my recollection is there was never a serious attempt to replace NPAPI with Pepper. It was looked into, but it was concluded that the Pepper APIs were too tightly bound to Webkit's implementation to make it possible to implement, and Mozilla instead built their own out-of-process sandbox (which was sorely needed because Flash crashes were the single largest cause of Firefox crashes).

This is the project I was referring to: https://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php?title=Mortar_Project&oldi...

Re: Firefox 84.0

#139

Post by koreanguy »

more useless features Firefox should add a feature using ffmpeg decoder that plays every codec and subtitles native in for html5, chrome is in the same camp both are adding useless features nobody but large companies use.

Re: Firefox 84.0

#140

Post by xnx »

chinhodado wrote: post #11

I love Firefox, I use it everyday, I can't imagine using a browser without Tree Style Tab, or all the things that I can do in about:config. At the same time, I can't shake off the dreadful feeling that it will eventually die one day. The market share keeps falling year by year. What is the most realistic future for Firefox?

Apache project? I feel like they could make more progress toward their goals as a fork of Chrome, like a "Chrome Pro" or something.
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