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Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

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Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#181

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

rjzzleep wrote: post #60
forsythe_ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the entire point is that Mozilla has depended on people "like you" to stay relevant for years and knows that's not a great long-term growth strategy compared to appealing to the general populace who cares about things like customizable themes.

Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet because of its identity politics. It's actually addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy works. Given that a huge number of Chrome users probably come from societies that actively despise…

> Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet because of its identity politics. It's actually addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy works.

I'm pretty sure Chrome is the most common browser on the planet because Google abused its market position in search and mobile (Android) to shove it down people's throats, helped along by bundling it with other installers. Everything else was secondary.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#182

Post by marcosdumay »

jjulius wrote: post #125
zuhsetaqi wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any source for that story? I also heard of it but don’t know if it’s made up or not and couldn’t find a source

I was as curious as you, and found this: >While the fact that the census 1939 inquired Jewish ancestry is a well known fact in historiography its significance for the identification of individual Jews in the context of the Shoah has been disputed. The thesis argues that a population register introduced in 1939 - the People's Card Index (Volkskartei) - was essential in the identification of German Jews. Consulting new…

So, the information that killed people was actually one that people overlook even in hindsight?

That puts the comments around here saying "what use can they make of X and Y?" on a new light.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#183

Post by zeppelin101 »

causi wrote: post #161
zeppelin101 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. It's my main browser on Android for years now and it works great.

Have you actually tried a different one lately? I tried Vivaldi and was astonished at how much snappier it is. No more weird crashes on launch. No more Desktop Mode button that breaks if you hit the Back button. No more failed attempts to dismiss a tab because using your phone in landscape mode made it adjust the swipe length to six damn inches long.

I haven't tried other browsers lately. I agree that FF is less snappy compared to Chrome, for example, but I have a fast phone. I haven't experienced those issues you talk about - maybe it's just my luck! I particularly like the ad-blocking abilities of FF.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#184

Post by coldpie »

perlgeek wrote: post #173

I've long wondered why there wasn't a command-line option to open an URL in a new, private window. Hope this comes with this new desktop button.

The following worked for me on macOS. Found it at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/CommandLineOptions

    firefox -private-window https://google.com/

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#185

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

cptskippy wrote: post #150
proactivesvcs wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Priorities like mentioning PDF editing before sickly doublespeak about...theming.

Do people think it's one person implementing Theming, PDF editing, and Privacy Mode protects; and that he just needs to re-prioritize his backlog? Why can't developer of difference capabilities contribute in different ways? I'm a competent developer but I will never be kernel module, crypto, or netcode competent; does that mean I should just forgo contributing to anything?

If it's implemented by volunteers then yeah let them work on whatever they want. If it's implemented by paid employees at Mozilla then it's up to them what devs they're hiring, and if they spend their finite budget on devs reimplementing theming then that's totally on them.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#186

Post by BiteCode_dev »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #171
sabellito wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use FF Android every day, including watching videos, and haven't noticed the "unstable garbage pile". Are you being hyperbolic?

On Firefox Nightly, I randomly get tabs that break and show an interactive version of the previously switched-to tab until you restart the browser, dragging a text handle to the left of a Hacker News comment crashes the entire browser, etc.

Breaking news, unstable version is unstable.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#187

Post by insanitybit »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #181
rjzzleep wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet because of its identity politics. It's actually addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy works. Given that a huge number of Chrome users probably come from societies that actively despise…

> Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet because of its identity politics. It's actually addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy works. I'm pretty sure Chrome is the most common browser on the planet because Google abused its…

Mozilla could have gone to OEMs like Dell and said "We'll pay you to pre-install Firefox" but they didn't, Google did. I wonder if that would have cost more or less than the yearly bonuses the CEO takes?

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#188

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

zamubafoo wrote: post #112

To give some perspective, Microsoft is doing better with VS Code than Mozilla is doing with Firefox. * There are no sponsored ads every time I use common functionality (like opening a new tab) * At least VS Code has a easily available settings page to turn off telemetry To do something half way similar, Firefox requires you to venture into `about:config` where you get a "Here be dragons" message to scare users away f…

> At least VS Code has a easily available settings page to turn off telemetry

You sure about that? They look pretty similar to me.

   - https://www.roboleary.net/tools/2022/04/20/vscode-telemetry.html
      - "It looks like you cannot shut telemetry off 100%. These settings will
        opt you of most data sharing scenarios; but not all data sharing
        scenarios."
      - Apparently even VSCodium can't kill it all
         - https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#disable-telemetry

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#189

Post by causi »

zeppelin101 wrote: post #183
causi wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually tried a different one lately? I tried Vivaldi and was astonished at how much snappier it is. No more weird crashes on launch. No more Desktop Mode button that breaks if you hit the Back button. No more failed attempts to dismiss a tab because using your phone in landscape mode made it adjust the swipe length to six damn inches long.

I haven't tried other browsers lately. I agree that FF is less snappy compared to Chrome, for example, but I have a fast phone. I haven't experienced those issues you talk about - maybe it's just my luck! I particularly like the ad-blocking abilities of FF.

I still use Firefox for high-risk browsing like porn or piracy, but for regular browsing the adblocking built into Vivaldi or Brave works just fine.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#190

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

WallyFunk wrote: post #135
standup wrote: post #7

The "privacy" provided by so-called private browsing mode is just a smokescreen considering how much device fingerprinting is going on. And widespread surveillance of the Internet backbone not just by intelligence agencies but now private organisations like Team Cymru. It would be better if we spent the resources on a next generation anonymity network to replace Tor, or some kind of alternative data transport like ra…

> The "privacy" provided by so-called private browsing mode is just a smokescreen And to add insult to injury, browsing artifacts are sometimes remembered in Windows' pagefile and other parts of the OS. Even on Linux, if your distro cares to add stuff to swap, it will dump browsing sessions in plaintext to your hard-drive, incognito/private mode or not. This is why people need to use TailsOS[0] if they're really conc…

That's not really on the application, though; "the OS can write your RAM to disk" is outside of Firefox's control.
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