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Firefox 59 released

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Re: Firefox 59 released

#221

Post by Silhouette »

sp332 wrote: post #219
Silhouette wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the differences among different machines I use with Firefox installed, it is certainly possible that extensions are causing a lot of the degradation since Quantum, but I'm not sure assigning blame is interesting or useful here. The fact is that my experience as a Firefox user is now much worse than it was before. The new extension model was supposed to make things faster, more secure, more reliable, but sadl…

The new extension model makes better extensions possible, but it isn't going to make good extensions appear out of thin air. It's not going to stop a buggy extension from causing FOUCs or slowing down the rendering of a page. I don't want to make excuses if you're having a bad experience though. But I'm hopeful about the future of Firefox.

The new extension model makes better extensions possible, but it isn't going to make good extensions appear out of thin air. It's not going to stop a buggy extension from causing FOUCs or slowing down the rendering of a page.

OK, but surely it should at least isolate buggy extensions so they can't compromise the browser itself? Wasn't better security and stability in the presence of bad extensions a key selling point of the new extension model? In practice, Firefox was failing to shut down and restart cleanly for me perhaps one time in three since Quantum, having been solid as a rock until that point. (I say "was" because I haven't yet seen this problem since updating to 59 the other day, so it's possible that that particular bug has now been fixed.)

Likewise, if it makes better extensions possible, how come the only observable difference so far seems to be that various things that extensions used to be able to do are no longer possible? It's looking like a classic case of going all-in on a big software rewrite, but finding that a lot of little details have been overlooked and useful functionality has been lost as a result.

Re: Firefox 59 released

#222

Post by louiz »

jerheinze wrote: post #118
childintime wrote: post #45

Sadly no news on the Web-extensions front. Several of my extensions continue broken.

> Sadly no news on the Web-extensions front Did you actually read the release notes? Quoting: > Enhanced WebExtensions API including better support for decentralized protocols and the ability to dynamically register content scripts. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/01/26/extensions-firefo...

Yeah, so, nothing really useful when what you’re waiting for is proper keyboard customization.

Re: Firefox 59 released

#224

Post by sp332 »

Silhouette wrote: post #221
sp332 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new extension model makes better extensions possible, but it isn't going to make good extensions appear out of thin air. It's not going to stop a buggy extension from causing FOUCs or slowing down the rendering of a page. I don't want to make excuses if you're having a bad experience though. But I'm hopeful about the future of Firefox.

The new extension model makes better extensions possible, but it isn't going to make good extensions appear out of thin air. It's not going to stop a buggy extension from causing FOUCs or slowing down the rendering of a page. OK, but surely it should at least isolate buggy extensions so they can't compromise the browser itself? Wasn't better security and stability in the presence of bad extensions a key selling point…

The main feature of the new model is that it has less functionality than the old model. Firefox is betting that it can enable close to 100% of the functionality that users actually want via clean APIs instead of opening up literally every internal aspect of the browser to extensions. There will be bugs, but specifying APIs makes them easier to fix.

The advantages are speed, security, ease of installation, ease of development since more thought was put into the APIs, compatibility with Chrome extensions, and better compatibility across platforms since extensions now use less native code. Those benefits are "observable". The downside is that you have to wait for Firefox devs to think though the security, performance, and usability aspects of every bit of functionality an extension dev wants, and then wait for the new or updated extension to exist.

Re: Firefox 59 released

#225

Post by beezle »

Kliment wrote: post #155
jimktrains2 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that kept me from upgrading was TreeStyleTabs, but there is a non-XUL version of it which works fairly well. While it is a pain, it's not as if Mozilla removed XUL support with no warning. What addons are you missing? Perhaps we can find updates or replacements?

Session manager is the main one that's missing for me. Nothing else can reliably selectively restore a session with full history and unloaded tabs on startup after a crash for me.

Likewise, I will not go further with firefox until there is a working session manager. The one supposed alternative that is compatible has poor reviews and appears unreliable.

I might add that I was a nightly user for over 30 prior versions.

Re: Firefox 59 released

#226

Post by beezle »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #220
Kliment wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Session manager is the main one that's missing for me. Nothing else can reliably selectively restore a session with full history and unloaded tabs on startup after a crash for me.

Interesting. I've never had an issue with the built-in session restore functionality. I'm not dismissing you, but asking what issues you've had with it (so that I can watch out for them.)

the add on can make multiple dated session stores and you can pick which to restore from.

Re: Firefox 59 released

#227

Post by Silhouette »

sp332 wrote: post #224
Silhouette wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new extension model makes better extensions possible, but it isn't going to make good extensions appear out of thin air. It's not going to stop a buggy extension from causing FOUCs or slowing down the rendering of a page. OK, but surely it should at least isolate buggy extensions so they can't compromise the browser itself? Wasn't better security and stability in the presence of bad extensions a key selling point…

The main feature of the new model is that it has less functionality than the old model. Firefox is betting that it can enable close to 100% of the functionality that users actually want via clean APIs instead of opening up literally every internal aspect of the browser to extensions. There will be bugs, but specifying APIs makes them easier to fix. The advantages are speed, security, ease of installation, ease of dev…

Those benefits are "observable".

Not yet, they aren't. In fact, the exact opposite has been observed here, many times already. This is my point.

As you say, I'm sure we all hope that the situation will improve in the future, and then maybe the sales pitch for Quantum will start to look a bit more realistic. Until then, sad as it makes me, Firefox will remain relegated to primarily a testing tool on my system, because today other browsers are simply better in every way that matters.

Re: Firefox 59 released

#228

Post by forapurpose »

saberworks wrote: post #188
driverdan wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking 3rd party cookies causes very few problems. I've blocked them for many years and have seen fewer than 10 sites it caused problems with. For those you can whitelist the domain.

My experience has been the opposite. It breaks every Amazon Pay integration and a lot of Paypal integrations as well. It also breaks online banking for the two credit unions I use, both of which seem to use some 3rd party service to run their backends. And then just whitelisting the domain isn't a great solution because then that means they can drop any 3rd party cookies, not just the desirable ones. So suddenly my o…

> whitelisting the domain isn't a great solution because then that means they can drop any 3rd party cookies, not just the desirable ones

Try something like uMatrix or similar add-ons. They allow you to configure rules similar to application firewalls:

  cookie * * DENY
  cookie * 1stparty ALLOW
  cookie creditunion.org finserv.com ALLOW
Great interface too, at least what I've seen on uMatrix: Most rules are configured with one click in a 'matrix' of hosts and applications.

Re: Firefox 59 released

#229

Post by Kliment »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #220
Kliment wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Session manager is the main one that's missing for me. Nothing else can reliably selectively restore a session with full history and unloaded tabs on startup after a crash for me.

Interesting. I've never had an issue with the built-in session restore functionality. I'm not dismissing you, but asking what issues you've had with it (so that I can watch out for them.)

Sometimes, usually after a crash, firefox will restore an empty session. Session manager has a working backup in those cases.

Re: Firefox 59 released

#230

Post by crtasm »

ci5er wrote: post #212
crtasm wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine the majority of discord users don't share their phone numbers with the channel.

Well, if you don't know me well enough to have my phone number, you certainly shouldn't have the privilege of making my computer beep at me, whenever the hell you feel like it. But, that's me. Maybe you like people interrupting you. (Or maybe you like interrupting people because you think you are too important to wait en queue.)

I'm not suggesting your position is wrong, just that like IRC there's going to be lots of discord users who have a use for some kind of notification but would never want to give their number out.
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