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Firefox 153.0 Beta

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21–30 of 66 posts

Re: Firefox 153.0 Beta

#21

- extremely stupid question but please entertain me here a bit - why dont any of the modern browsers open and load pages instantaneously anymore, why does it take seconds? - is this because of backward compatibility support where you are supporting html, css and JS features all the way back to the 90s - apart from gecko and v8 why dont we have browser engines? - are you familiar with anyone building an entire browser…

if a website's bundle is https://endtimes.dev/why-your-website-should-be-under-14kb-i...

Re: Firefox 153.0 Beta

#22
post #2

> Firefox now verifies and displays Qualified Website Authentication Certificates (QWACs) in accordance with eIDAS regulations. Interesting that they just buried this in the middle without even a screenshot, considering how hostile Mozilla has been to the proposal in the past[0]. Considering that they previously made quite strong arguments that implementing QWAC would undermine security by completely bypassing the ex…

> This switched to "neutral" without addressing the underlying issue, seemingly just to satisfy some users asking for parity with Chrome out of a convenience argument.

Well... millions of Chrome users played guinea pigs for WebUSB and the security issues proved to be theoretical in the end, while (particularly in the Arduino/ESP32 community) more and more people were pissed off at the lack of these features in Firefox.

Re: Firefox 153.0 Beta

#23

> It is now possible to merge multiple PDFs by dragging a PDF into the PDF sidebar. > It is now possible to add images as new pages within PDFs using the Firefox PDF editor. I have always found it odd that browsers are also PDF editors increasingly.

Not odd until you try to open a PDF in Windows.

[dead]

Re: Firefox 153.0 Beta

#24

- extremely stupid question but please entertain me here a bit - why dont any of the modern browsers open and load pages instantaneously anymore, why does it take seconds? - is this because of backward compatibility support where you are supporting html, css and JS features all the way back to the 90s - apart from gecko and v8 why dont we have browser engines? - are you familiar with anyone building an entire browser…

> with all the GPT hype of late, why havent we seen a single GPT yet capable of building a browser engine from scratch supporting the last 20 years of html, css and js specs?

Macsurf is a browser project for Mac OS 9 leveraging LLMs[1] to do this. Tbh it makes sense for this given how time-consuming (absurd? Though the fact it exists tickles me) it'd be otherwise for essentially a single person to support the scope of web tech it does for such an incredibly niche userbase.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48339534

Re: Firefox 153.0 Beta

#25
post #2

> Firefox now verifies and displays Qualified Website Authentication Certificates (QWACs) in accordance with eIDAS regulations. Interesting that they just buried this in the middle without even a screenshot, considering how hostile Mozilla has been to the proposal in the past[0]. Considering that they previously made quite strong arguments that implementing QWAC would undermine security by completely bypassing the ex…

So that's basically state legalized and enforced MITM and scamming framework (unless I'm mistaken about tech details)? Yay for progress, I guess... :(

Re: Firefox 153.0 Beta

#26
post #2

> Firefox now verifies and displays Qualified Website Authentication Certificates (QWACs) in accordance with eIDAS regulations. Interesting that they just buried this in the middle without even a screenshot, considering how hostile Mozilla has been to the proposal in the past[0]. Considering that they previously made quite strong arguments that implementing QWAC would undermine security by completely bypassing the ex…

I hope they do the same for the file system access API!

Re: Firefox 153.0 Beta

#27

- extremely stupid question but please entertain me here a bit - why dont any of the modern browsers open and load pages instantaneously anymore, why does it take seconds? - is this because of backward compatibility support where you are supporting html, css and JS features all the way back to the 90s - apart from gecko and v8 why dont we have browser engines? - are you familiar with anyone building an entire browser…

> why dont any of the modern browsers open and load pages instantaneously anymore, why does it take seconds?

If we are talking about a blog page, just a static html - it should take some ms. No problem here.

But if we are talking about some heavy pages and fetch requests to other places, well...

Or simply a page with f 10Mb header image.

>apart from gecko and v8 why dont we have browser engines?

gecko (Firefox), blink (chrome and friends), webkit (Safari, Kagi and some other, mostly linux distro browsers) are the only stable ones. Servo and Ladybird are on the way, but it will take quite some time for them to mature.

>are you familiar with anyone building an entire browser engine from scratch?

Ladybird. No idea about specifications.

>with all the GPT hype of late, why havent we seen a single GPT yet capable of building a browser engine from scratch supporting the last 20 years of html, css and js specs?

Well, aside from the fact that this will be a one expensive project - you (someone) will have to test this code anyway. Also this: https://ladybird.org/posts/changing-how-we-develop-ladybird/

Re: Firefox 153.0 Beta

#28

> It is now possible to merge multiple PDFs by dragging a PDF into the PDF sidebar. > It is now possible to add images as new pages within PDFs using the Firefox PDF editor. I have always found it odd that browsers are also PDF editors increasingly.

It's odd and I'm not sure I love it compared to a nicely-done dedicated viewer (macOS Preview, SumatraPDF, whatever comes with GNOME or KDE). That said, I'll pick the in-browser tools over Adobe Reader every time.

That's not a fair comparison. The first one gives you space to stretch your legs, the other once stretches your legs on a medieval rack.

Re: Firefox 153.0 Beta

#29

> It is now possible to merge multiple PDFs by dragging a PDF into the PDF sidebar. > It is now possible to add images as new pages within PDFs using the Firefox PDF editor. I have always found it odd that browsers are also PDF editors increasingly.

Many URLs start with http(s): and end in .pdf. If we define web browser as http browser rather than html browser, then viewing PDFs fits the concept. My web browser also displays plain text, video, audio, etc., so http browser seems accurate and html browser plainly inadequate.

And regardless of logical fit for geeks (who understand the paragraph above), users clicking a .pdf URL may find it much more convenient if it just opens in their browser like any other http page, rather than downloading, opening in another window, getting lost between the MDI browser and separate SDI of the PDF file, etc. Why not treat PDF as just another web format?

To me, more strange is Firefox adding PDF editing features to its core, rather than as add-ons. Users can't edit HTML or any other media without extra tools. Many pdf reader apps can't do some of these things (afaik). Why invest developer time in PDF editing?

Re: Firefox 153.0 Beta

#30
post #6

> It is now possible to merge multiple PDFs by dragging a PDF into the PDF sidebar. > It is now possible to add images as new pages within PDFs using the Firefox PDF editor. I have always found it odd that browsers are also PDF editors increasingly.

I think it's a function of the endless tussle between browser-as-an-OS and the OS they run on. For example, I absolutely hate that there's no option in Firefox to only use the OS print dialog. Instead I am force to click print, then click "use system print dialog" every time. I seems to remember reading a bug report where Firefox deemed this intentional and wontfix. After all, if you leave Firefox to print something,…

print.prefer_system_dialog = true in about:config does what you want, i think.
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