Wow, Damn Hello is back even though I disabled it.
Gee, Thanks.
Firefox 36.0 released
191–200 of 256 posts
Re: Firefox 36.0 released
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, who do you think you are to question my font configuration skills (hint: nil), second, as mentioned earlier, there are ways to have 'better' font rendering. The thing is it requires a PhD in Linux display stack and frankly I don't care. I tried to care though, and it backfired at me (emacs was fubared, and that's a deal breaker), and this default config, even subpar, is pretty enough and stable enough. Lastly,…
> there are ways to have 'better' font rendering. The thing is it requires a PhD in Linux display stack Not really. Just learning about how to adjust preferences for FontConfig. Antialiasing, hinting and subpixel rendering have a lot of effect on the visual appearance especially. You can read about it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration#Font... There can be also some monitor specific tweaks…
I did try arch wiki advices, I got some results but I didn't really understand what I was doing and had lots of undesired side-effects (emacs buffer redraw failed, screenshot aliasing failed,...) so I dropped everything and used stock config.
The xml config files seems overly complex (I admit, I suffer from acute xml ad-formatem) for my tastes.
I tried to diff manjaro linux /etc/fontconfig actually, just to see what they were doing right to have such nice visuals and couldn't find anything.
It's in the same basket as some famous audio server, which I replaced by it's very naive ancestor.
Re: Firefox 36.0 released
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone know of a brief list of workarounds/schemes/optimizations that probably won't be needed (or will be less needed) with http2? (or just add to this list) - css sprites - monolith js/css-files - rotating through 'alias'-subdomains for resources - trimming cookies / cookie-less domains (for request-headers)
Sprites and concatenated js/css are still useful. HTTP/2 lets you make 100 requests over a single connection, and that's a lot better than making 100 requests over 100 connections, but it's still not going to beat one request over one connection.
That would be an interesting thing to benchmark, particularly since separate resources can be cached independently.
If you're using every single image, line of JavaScript, etc. as soon as the page loads, a single large file will probably still be faster. If, however, you have a mix of things which are only used for optional features, not on every page, etc. there's room for some nice improvements because independent resources can be loaded immediately whereas a huge concatenated JavaScript file has to wait for the entire transfer before it can be safely executed. If your site really needs jQuery and 90 plugins to work at all, that doesn't help, but if a fair amount of your code can be loaded independently the overall load time can be shorter if some of the code executes while other resources are still fetching rather than waiting until it has everything.
The independent fetch + caching is also more valuable for repeat visitors who have cached copies of everything which didn't change – i.e. if you only touched an icon in the footer of your page, the experience is better if your header logo displays instantly out of the cache rather than having to wait for an entire sprite to reload.
Re: Firefox 36.0 released
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there are ways to have 'better' font rendering. The thing is it requires a PhD in Linux display stack Not really. Just learning about how to adjust preferences for FontConfig. Antialiasing, hinting and subpixel rendering have a lot of effect on the visual appearance especially. You can read about it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration#Font... There can be also some monitor specific tweaks…
I did try arch wiki advices, I got some results but I didn't really understand what I was doing and had lots of undesired side-effects (emacs buffer redraw failed, screenshot aliasing failed,...) so I dropped everything and used stock config. The xml config files seems overly complex (I admit, I suffer from acute xml ad-formatem) for my tastes. I tried to diff manjaro linux /etc/fontconfig actually, just to see what…
On Debian defaults are all under /etc/fonts
About general idea of what all those settings are, here is a brief overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_rasterization
FontConfig rules can even be applied to Web fonts, which at times can be messed up by default. Example of such rule for fixing some mess on DuckDuckGo:
@font-face:DDG_ProximaNova
true
lcddefault
Without the rule: https://i.imgur.com/SsicEFJ.png
With the rule: https://i.imgur.com/Ehh0rZU.png
Re: Firefox 36.0 released
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
THIS. Developers on HN with problems have the requisite skills to be able to file good bugs.
I've been filing bugs for years yet the QA of the product is still at unaccepatable levels. FF's constant passing of the buck is bothersome. When they can't blame extensions they blame people for not participating. Yet somehow Chrome/Chromium exists just fine without me writing big reports for it, same for Safari, IE, etc. FF just has poor QA. That's a problem and all the excuse making actually hurts the product as F…
"When they can't blame extensions they blame people for not participating."
Extensions are commonly blamed because of the way that Firefox implements extensions.
They essentially become a fully integrated part of the browser with full privileges. When extensions do things that they shouldn't be doing (but can anyway, because what's stopping them?), the extensions are blamed.
Of course there have been many lessons learned from a decade-old extension ecosystem. Other, newer browsers have benefitted from those lessons (ie. Chrome). Mozillians know the problems with the current extension model but the hard part is having the resources to do something about it.
"Yet somehow Chrome/Chromium exists just fine without me writing big reports for it, same for Safari, IE, etc."
SOMEBODY is writing bug reports. FWIW, there are what, 50000 Google employees, a majority of which could be dogfooding prerelease Chrome and filing bugs. Mozilla has 1/50 of that to dogfood Firefox and depends heavily on its community to make contributions.
Re: Firefox 36.0 released
#196I'm presently in the middle of an experiment to use Firefox (and its Developer Edition) as my primary browser when performing my duties as a web developer. So far... It's been kind of rocky. Daily usage of the browser isn't that bad, but the developer tools are lacking compared to Chrome. A good example is the Network tab. In Chrome, I need only have the developer tools open to capture information about requests. In…
As I understand it, add-ons are updated more slowly than their Chrome counterparts because Mozilla actually reviews the code of each add-on offered from their store to attempt to validate it's not doing anything naughty. Google and Apple make these types of promises, but really they approve things after a cursory glance and then respond to any user complaints that may come in.
Which is really what Firefox needs to do as well. This is one of my main pain points as a Firefox Extension developer and a turn off for most I know. Rather than keeping people wait for 15 or so days for approving their add-ons, they should rather improve their automatic code checking tools as much as they can, and stop at that (and have a better extension flagging system).
The problem with current system is more if our add-ons are based on a specific website like mine. When that website changes, it breaks my add-on and I upload the fix immediately. But Firefox takes days to approve it, making my add-on look bad in public.
Re: Firefox 36.0 released
#197OSX Voiceover support has "improved" but is still pretty broken. Anyone know if Voiceover support is on the roadmap? Would ditch Safari in a minute if Firefox had proper Voiceover support. Considering how much attention Mozilla gives to accessibility...
Firefox accessibility bugs are listed here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=34298...
Re: Firefox 36.0 released
#198Semi-OT: is anyone on HN using a "alternative" Browser such as Midori or Vivaldi on a daily basis? I love what Midori is doing but it still crashes on me to often.
Is Vivaldi out yet? I thought it was only just announced a couple weeks ago.
Re: Firefox 36.0 released
#199Re: Firefox 36.0 released
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, you might be looking at a screenshot that has font settings (hinting etc) which work on the originating display and fail on yours. No reason to jump to snarkiness.
You do realize the screenshot is an image right?
Yes, but font hinting takes advantage of the specific subpixel layout of your LCD (e.g is the order RGB left-to-right, top-to-bottom, two greens and forming a square, etc). If you take a screenshot and look at it on another monitor, it's quite possible for it to look awful because your RGB subpixel layout and the source differ.