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Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#71

Post by jfb »

dman wrote: post #69
jfb wrote: post #68

That's a cool blog post, and kudos to the Mozilla people, but I have to wonder about the mindset of the user whose stuck with Firefox even as his setup was unusable to the point of needing to install a restart button add-on . I mean, I know from being habituated to a given routine, but that seems particularly self defeating behaviour, especially considering that decent alternatives to Firefox exist?

I have a bunch of custom addons that I have written for my workflows - moving to other browsers is not an option because they arent as easily extensible as firefox.

That makes sense. Speaking as someone who bought MachTen just to host Emacs on a Macintosh in the bad old days, I am sympathetic. I just am much more of a consumer of browsers than someone who relies on them to hack with.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#72

Post by kalid »

suprgeek wrote: post #18

I am very happy that the Firefox team has finally managed to lick this issue. When at every occasion I used to raise this issue, the typical Mozilla Evangelist would answer: "It is because of the add-ons". My counter to this was that the whole Raison d'être for Firefox is its add-ons community. You cannot claim that there are great benefits to this approach while simultaneously ignoring the problems caused by it. Bet…

I agree. It was extremely frustrating to see the argument "Firefox is awesome because of the add-ons. Oh, you have problems? Why are you using add-ons?".

You can't have it both ways! (Also: users don't care what subsystem is causing the problem, it's your brand which suffers)

That said, I'm happy for them and I'll start giving FireFox a shot again.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#73

Post by drzaiusapelord »

jhatax wrote: post #19
conradfr wrote: post #6

As a webdev who use Firebug (and Adblock) a lot, I'm so glad about this. FINALLY ! However they are three years too late about that, from a market share perspective.

Firefox lost market share because Chrome was a leaner, faster, and better browser. I have started to hear more stories about folks switching back to Firefox because a lot of their issues with the browser have been fixed. And based on independent review sites like Tom's Hardware, there is no longer an appreciable gap in the performance of Firefox and Chrome. As regards market share, Firefox's market share would be in…

>Firefox lost market share because Chrome was a leaner, faster, and better browser.

Not to mention secure. Sandboxed PDF reader, java whitelisting, sandboxed and auto-updating flash, etc while FF and IE were arrogantly telling users "Fuck you, update your own add ons, they're not our problem" even when all the exploits were from these add ons. Now IE and FF ape some of these features. I can't wait to hear the next angry Asa Doztler diatribe aimed at enterprise IT admins and their demands. Asa is a roadmap on how to lose users and quickly become 3rd best.

Good to hear FF is starting to get competitive again. I hope this trend continues.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#74

Post by azakai »

pilif wrote: post #34
bru wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One is closed source Actually, so is Chrome.

The differences between Chrome and Chromium are minimal - aside of Chrome bunding some mostly unwanted plugins: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoog...

That list appears to be incomplete. For example, there is a windows-specific closed source software renderer for WebGL that is in Chrome and not Chromium.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#75

Post by freehunter »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #73
jhatax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox lost market share because Chrome was a leaner, faster, and better browser. I have started to hear more stories about folks switching back to Firefox because a lot of their issues with the browser have been fixed. And based on independent review sites like Tom's Hardware, there is no longer an appreciable gap in the performance of Firefox and Chrome. As regards market share, Firefox's market share would be in…

>Firefox lost market share because Chrome was a leaner, faster, and better browser. Not to mention secure. Sandboxed PDF reader, java whitelisting, sandboxed and auto-updating flash, etc while FF and IE were arrogantly telling users "Fuck you, update your own add ons, they're not our problem" even when all the exploits were from these add ons. Now IE and FF ape some of these features. I can't wait to hear the next an…

I always wonder why Firefox gives the option to update Java and Flash et al when it never works. Has anyone ever gotten plugins to update from within Firefox?

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#76

Post by freehunter »

pilif wrote: post #34
bru wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One is closed source Actually, so is Chrome.

The differences between Chrome and Chromium are minimal - aside of Chrome bunding some mostly unwanted plugins: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoog...

Good lord those comments gave me a headache. How do people manage to find that page if they can't manage to figure out what Chrome or Chromium are in the first place?

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#77

Post by bzbarsky »

rexreed wrote: post #26
twodayslate wrote: post #9

I used to be an avid Firefox user. I switched to Chrome because it was faster and had all the same extensions I used on Firefox. Why should I switch back? Chrome is still faster no?

I am also a happy FireFox user, but recently I have found a growing number of websites that won't even let you use their functionality unless you are using Chrome or Safari (Fluid for one: https://www.fluidui.com/editor/live/ ). It must have something to do with FF's support of certain capabilities, although specifically what I'm not sure. This is pushing me to use Chrome for those reasons - so I hope that FF fills w…

Half the time the UA sniffing has nothing to do with capabilities and just has to do with people only wanting to test in one browser and use only one set of prefixed CSS properties...

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#78

Post by dman »

jfb wrote: post #71
dman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a bunch of custom addons that I have written for my workflows - moving to other browsers is not an option because they arent as easily extensible as firefox.

That makes sense. Speaking as someone who bought MachTen just to host Emacs on a Macintosh in the bad old days, I am sympathetic. I just am much more of a consumer of browsers than someone who relies on them to hack with.

Just looked MachTen up - http://www.tenon.com/products/mt1.jpg made me nostalgically remember afterstep which was the first window manager I used in linux.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#79

Post by rhizome »

crestfallen wrote: post #53
rexreed wrote: post #25

The about:memory feature is useful to get a glimpse into what extensions and tabs are chewing up the most memory, although I haven't had much luck in FF 14 using the GC/CC to correct that. I hope that FF 15 gives the user a bit more intuitive view and control over the memory consumption on tabs and addons/extensions.

Sure, for technical users that might be a nice value add. In fairness though, a regular person shouldn't have to care--Firefox should just work, stay responsive, etc.

In fairness though, a regular person shouldn't have to care--Firefox should just work, stay responsive, etc.

In fact, that isn't fair. Software has never been like that, and it's irresponsible to represent to non-technical users that it's possible.

Re: Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

#80

Post by rhizome »

freehunter wrote: post #75
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Firefox lost market share because Chrome was a leaner, faster, and better browser. Not to mention secure. Sandboxed PDF reader, java whitelisting, sandboxed and auto-updating flash, etc while FF and IE were arrogantly telling users "Fuck you, update your own add ons, they're not our problem" even when all the exploits were from these add ons. Now IE and FF ape some of these features. I can't wait to hear the next an…

I always wonder why Firefox gives the option to update Java and Flash et al when it never works. Has anyone ever gotten plugins to update from within Firefox?

Ha ha, "install missing plugins" is such a zombie feature, I hope some (ex-) development manager from Mozilla cringes every time they see that on a new installation.
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