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Firefox 36.0 released

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Re: Firefox 36.0 released

#241
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why 4096-bit RSA certs when you can have ECC certs?

There are installations which don't support ECC, usually due to hardware limitations, but do support RSA-4k. Often this cert is the trust anchor for various other uses than just SSL, so the result is you end up using RSA-4k instead of ECC. There's also folks who don't entirely trust ECC because it's "too new". To be fair, RSA isn't broken, and 4k is sufficiently big to be safe even with a partial break.

> There are installations which don't support ECC, usually due to hardware limitations

Isn't RSA much more computationally expensive than ECC? What hardware can do RSA but not ECC?

/me sits down to be schooled

Re: Firefox 36.0 released

#242
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the certs are otherwise valid, but the problem is that once Firefox has seen a cert for a given address, if another address presents an identical cert, the second address cannot be browsed to without shutting down the browser and deleting the entire cert store. Other offenders off the top of my head: BMC interface on Intel boards, HP iLO for blade management, F5 load balancers. Yeah, they shouldn't be doing that,…

I find it curious that the people complaining about this don't instead install valid certificates. That was routine for us even a decade ago because otherwise you're literally training your admin staff to ignore errors and enter sensitive passwords every time a security warning pops up. That's never good and it feels dangerously close to professional negligence when it's a password which gives privileged access to a…

People probably don't install valid certificates because they can't. Consumer routers (think Linksys) are locked-down devices and things like SSL certificates are baked into the firmware. I'm curious what sorts of cheap devices you bought supported custom certificates; were they consumer-oriented? (That wasn't rhetorical; actually interested.)

Personally, I usually end up using plain unencrypted http instead, which is a net negative in terms of security (doesn't even protect against passive adversaries), but that seems to be what the SSL implementers prefer.

Re: Firefox 36.0 released

#243

Not quite related to this particular release, but I kind of wish sync for extension data wasn't Opt-In. Having to hunt down the option to turn on Sync for each extension explicitly and not even having that option for some extensions makes for a rather poor user experience. Also, as someone who customizes the browser layout rather extensively, I'd like to see layout settings included in Sync as well (which toolbars ar…

Totally disagree I find the present trend towards opt-in-by-default to be an anathema. It's totally unreasonable that I should have to start up applications in a sandbox after each upgrade and/or hire a team of lawyers to go over the EULA/TOS to find what new & interesting ways have been found to sell my personal info. (Responding to your general point btw rather than specifically against Mozilla, who compared to the…

For what it's worth, I was talking specifically about Sync's behavior for extension data, and wasn't trying to make any general point about opt-in-by-default.

Re: Firefox 36.0 released

#245
As an OS X Yosemite user I'd love to go back to Firefox from Safari, but the memory usage just isn't good enough. i get over an hour more battery life with Safari compared to Firefox. Please do something about this.

Re: Firefox 36.0 released

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You don't like the challenge of trying to click on a micron wide checkbox on your new 4k laptop screen? That's half the fun, I say.

On a 4k screen I find that setting layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to ~2 works better than zooming.

yeah, but that doesn't make checkboxes any bigger either.

Re: Firefox 36.0 released

#248
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are installations which don't support ECC, usually due to hardware limitations, but do support RSA-4k. Often this cert is the trust anchor for various other uses than just SSL, so the result is you end up using RSA-4k instead of ECC. There's also folks who don't entirely trust ECC because it's "too new". To be fair, RSA isn't broken, and 4k is sufficiently big to be safe even with a partial break.

> There are installations which don't support ECC, usually due to hardware limitations Isn't RSA much more computationally expensive than ECC? What hardware can do RSA but not ECC? /me sits down to be schooled

Since I can't edit:

EDIT: Unless you're referring to embedded systems that can't be updated?

Re: Firefox 36.0 released

#249
post #242
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it curious that the people complaining about this don't instead install valid certificates. That was routine for us even a decade ago because otherwise you're literally training your admin staff to ignore errors and enter sensitive passwords every time a security warning pops up. That's never good and it feels dangerously close to professional negligence when it's a password which gives privileged access to a…

People probably don't install valid certificates because they can't. Consumer routers (think Linksys) are locked-down devices and things like SSL certificates are baked into the firmware. I'm curious what sorts of cheap devices you bought supported custom certificates; were they consumer-oriented? (That wasn't rhetorical; actually interested.) Personally, I usually end up using plain unencrypted http instead, which i…

I've definitely run into consumer devices which allowed me to upload an SSL cert somewhere in the advanced settings but mostly I was thinking about the people on the bug commenting that their enterprise network, server management, etc. gear had bad certs. Even in the late 90s you could do this because .mil/.gov and many corporate purchasing contracts tended to require it.

Re: Firefox 36.0 released

#250
Years after switching to Chrome, I've given FF 35 another chance as my main browser in the past week.

The major drive was Chrome's poor handling of dozens of open tabs, which was slowing down my Macbook to a crawl (8GB Core i7 2012 13" Retina on Yosemite) way too often. "The great suspender" extension helped somewhat, but it felt like a lot of manual work for something I believe the browser should handle much more smartly on its own.

Firefox is better in this respect, with sane native behavior like not trying to restore 100+ tabs in parallel upon restart, and extensions like UnloadTab that automatically suspend tabs after some timeout.

However, I'm about to switch back to Chrome :

- I only have 3-4 active tabs in FF at the moment, but as I type this I can feel noticeable lag, and firefox+WindowServer fighting for CPU.

- Embedded video is jerky and looks like it's 10-12fps no matter what the site. Going full screen fixes it, but still..

- No FF extension I've found integrates Google Translate as seamlessly as Chrome does.

I'm not looking forward to handling dozens of tabs in Chrome again, but its baseline performance for everything else is noticeably better for me.

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