Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 321 posts

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#231

Post by tweetle_beetle »

bityard wrote: post #120
forsythe_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter argument: is it actually worth getting this upset over themes? Yes, the marketing behind it is stupid because it attempts to correlate some deeper symbolic meaning to the act of choosing colors for your web browser. But as a fellow Firefox advocate, I would rather Mozilla plays around with these sort of corny marketing concepts as a way of gaining market share rather than rely on Google's patronage ad-infinit…

I would rather Mozilla put their time and money into actually improving on the things they _used to_ to better than Chrome and IE, like building a vibrant and diverse community, listening to their users, focusing on giving the user control over their own browsing experience, and being first to market with privacy features. It feels to me like they just ran out of either the will or the engineers to do the hard innova…

> ... listening to their users, focusing on giving the user control over their own browsing experience ...

To play devil's advocate, that may well be exactly what they're doing. I've always used Firefox, but I'm aware that I'm not a typical user andmy interests likely don't align with mass adaoption.

I've said it before when Firefox has released new features that the HN crowd aren't interested in - there's not enough of you (us) for your opinions on [ themes ] to matter. And if this is a quicker way to grow adoption then it's a good thing in the long term.

I don't have access to statistics to qualify whether or not this is the case and contribute to making it harder to evaluate by turning off telemetry and never using Google ads, so I can't exactly complain.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#232

Post by sfink »

Spivak wrote: post #13

Everyone in this thread complaining about colorways has got to be a meta-commentary on bikeshedding. This feature isn't for you. But anyway, I'm sad that HTTPS default and isolated cookies are turned on only for Private Browsing (sorry, "Guest Session" from that other silly HN thread, "private" apparently implies you have a rank in the military while using) when both these features aren't super disruptive for general…

> I'm sad that HTTPS default and isolated cookies are turned on only for Private Browsing

You might want HTTPS-only mode (bottom section of about:preferences#privacy ). I kind of thought isolated cookies were already the default, as per https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-rolls-o... but maybe I'm missing a nuance?

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#233

Post by traceroute66 »

hn92726819 wrote: post #78
traceroute66 wrote: post #51

What I want to know is have Firefox fixed the show-stopper bug with their implementation of Private Windows yet ? In Firefox, if I login to something in one Private Window, and open a second Private Window, my session is maintained (e.g. login to Protonmail on one, I open a second private window and I'm already logged in). So I assume Firefox is sharing cookies and whatnot between Private Windows. Brave doesn't do th…

I think it's pretty clearly not a bug. Chrome behaves the same way. Private session is cleared when all windows are closed. I am curious though. What happens if you drag a private tab into its own window? Is state shared with the original private window? How is this communicated to the user? And what if I drag a different private window tab into the new private window? Does each tab retain it's original window? Edit:…

> Edit: you might be interested in the Firefox add-on Temporary Containers. You can open a new tab in its own container that isn't shared with anything else

Thank you for the suggestion but....

"Containers are disabled .... when Never Remember History is selected in your privacy settings."

Which is a bit of a shit limitation. ;-(

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#234

Post by sfink »

xg15 wrote: post #50
Spivak wrote: post #13

Everyone in this thread complaining about colorways has got to be a meta-commentary on bikeshedding. This feature isn't for you. But anyway, I'm sad that HTTPS default and isolated cookies are turned on only for Private Browsing (sorry, "Guest Session" from that other silly HN thread, "private" apparently implies you have a rank in the military while using) when both these features aren't super disruptive for general…

I think what annoys me is that Mozilla (like many other companies) has co-opted the "social movement/political activist" aesthetic without actually engaging in any activism. Private browsing mode is a prime example of that. The current improvement is absolutely miniscule for the amount of bravado they perform around it - but even if you accept it's useful for some, you could ask why private browsing mode exist at all…

> not add those to the normal browsing mode?

Because it breaks a lot of web sites, and removes functionality that most people want for most of their usage?

I want my browser remembering where I've been so it can suggest it to me when I want to get back to it. I especially prefer my browser remembering it rather than some server knowing it, or having to re-do searches which is less convenient and means I'm telling the search server what I'm up to.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#235

Post by grangerg »

traveler01 wrote: post #102

I want to like and use Firefox. Seriously, I really do. But when will they fix the performance of the browser? They're spending devs time on useless crap instead of being improving the engine, which clearly needs improvements. For example, I wanted to send some thousands of pictures to Proton Drive (doesn't have a sync App yet) and tried doing it in Firefox. It literally started to take all the computer RAM (my compu…

I used to wonder the same about Chrome. Try using a Chromebook with less than 4GiB RAM. You can handle 2 simultaneous tabs/apps---if you choose them well. It's due to this behavior alone that I never consider Chromebooks; by the time you find one with enough RAM to handle Chrome, you're in the price range of a "real" laptop.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#236

Post by grangerg »

kotlin2 wrote: post #98
emptyparadise wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the ISP still know that you're connecting to Google, however?

Your ISP would know the IP address, but not specifically that you were connecting to google.com.

Even without rDNS, they're almost certain to know of at least one DNS name that goes with the IP address you're connecting to. Even if not, they can label/categorize/group it by ISP and/or approximate location.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#237

Post by insanitybit »

dylan604 wrote: post #209
insanitybit wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Has any non-ad driven piece of software ever used this inorganic growth hack? Admittedly, it has been a long long time since I've suffered using an OS burdened with this kind of malady, but it was definitely where I learned about how apps are not as "free" as one might be led to believe. It was these types of apps and the damn browser toolbar installs that were dark-UI/hidden installed when installing a completely di…

I don't know who has or has not used that approach, but if you're going to say "Chrome is popular because it did these things" I'm going to wonder why Mozilla didn't do those things. I remember the first time I downloaded Chrome was because I got some item in Runescape for doing that. Why didn't Mozilla do that?

Mozilla has hundreds of millions of dollars at minimum, very likely billions. It's absurd that they're failing so miserably, and it's obscene that their CEO has taken increasingly large 8 figure bonuses while the company has floundered under her leadership.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#238

Post by odiroot »

wlesieutre wrote: post #72
hbn wrote: post #9

> Last year we launched Firefox Colorways, a new desktop feature that allowed our users to express their most authentic selves and bring joy while browsing the web > “‘Independent Voices’ are the voices of the past and present that create a better future,” said Keely Alexis. “I chose this [analogy] as my inspiration for the collaboration because it feels authentic to me but it also aligns with Firefox and the vision…

> “‘Independent Voices’ are the voices of the past and present that create a better future,” said Keely Alexis. “I chose this [analogy] as my inspiration for the collaboration because it feels authentic to me but it also aligns with Firefox and the vision that we can make the world better, on the internet and beyond.” Hooli is about people. Hooli is about innovative technology that makes a difference, transforming th…

There's a great Polish saying for this occasion: a fish rots from the head down.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#239

Post by monlockandkey »

marcodiego wrote: post #12

I have to repost it aagain: Firefox: the last remaining mostly independent, maintained and reasonably popular browser. Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd still use it for the above mentioned reasons.

I have said this before, but I will repeat again:

The entire internet discourse is filled with "Chrome evil, use Firefox". Go to any browser discussion on the internet and 99% of the thread is "just use Firefox or Firefox is the best". You would think that everyone uses Firefox. The internet is a bubble. Reality is Firefox usage is pathetic. 32 MILLION people have STOPPED using Firefox in the past 4 years. The browser only has a 3.16% market share.

https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Chrome is a good browser. Can be considered objectively better than Firefox given its superior performance, equivalent if not slightly better resource usage, web compatibility and integration with the Google ecosystem (which the vast majority of internet population use (excluding niche tech circles)).

I have no vendetta against Firefox. At the end of the day, it is just a browser and that is a personal preference. But people act like it is some sort of saviour that will bring them to the light. There is such an aggressive tribal mentality with browsers. It makes no sense as all browsers look the same, feel the same and have the same functionality. Just a matter of preference given your needs, and for 70% of the population, Chromium delivers.

Re: Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade

#240

Post by rhn_mk1 »

coldpie wrote: post #162
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. X sniffs my connection. 2. X learns my address uses Firefox on Linux. 3. X sells the data to Y, whom I never visit. 4. Y correlates the IP with Z's subscriber data, and adds Linux to my shadow profile. As the sibling said, the burden of proof is on them. They are the ones who push that on users when there's no technical need.

Surely that same information is made available by visiting any website, no?

Yes, except the attacker gets it without visiting the attacker's web site.
Post reply on HN