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Firefox 60 released

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Re: Firefox 60 released

#221

Post by kungtotte »

unethical_ban wrote: post #140
malfeasance wrote: post #3

Pocket Sponsored Stories will appear for a percentage of users in the US. Read about our privacy-conscious approach to sponsored content If you can't roll out a feature without violating EU privacy laws, you're not employing a "privacy-conscious approach."

This is the first post I've seen that defends CDPR wholeheartedly. From everything I've heard, it's an overly broad, draconian code that is written to destroy any company the EU wishes.

You could go read the text of the GDPR if you wanted to know what it was, instead of going off what you've heard.

Re: Firefox 60 released

#222

Post by Sylos »

yborg wrote: post #67
morsch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla owns Pocket. They're not calling them Pocket Sponsored Stories to be cute. You, too, can now buy screen space in the premiere open-source browser: https://getpocket.com/sponsor I think it's a disgrace.

I wish someone with the time would start producing a "De-Mozilla'ed" fork a la Chromium. I think Firefox has gotten to that point, things like this and the Mr. Robot fiasco indicate the project needs to be saved from itself.

Chromium is not a de-Googled Chrome. This is: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

Well, it's trying to be. It's still millions of lines of code and tens of thousands of design decisions made by Google.

The same would be true for your wish of a Firefox-fork, though I'm not sure there's that much sense in it, since what Mozilla has been doing has not infringed on privacy. You'd be patching out things that are harmless.

Re: Firefox 60 released

#223

Post by newscracker »

catach wrote: post #143
newscracker wrote: post #11

The enterprise part is great to see (though it was something that seemed long overdue). I recently noticed on a Firefox mailing list that Mike Kaply (of Kaply Consulting, a company that helped with enterprise deployment and configuration of Firefox) had officially joined the Firefox team. Mike's presence is going to make Firefox in the enterprise much better. On Firefox 60, I'm still not on board with the newest vers…

On the one hand, the FF webextension API is under continual development [0]. On the other hand, "almost everything" previously possible does not seem not a realistic expectation since it'd mean the ability to change almost every single atom of browser behavior. [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/04/02/extensions-firefo...

Considering that Firefox pioneered the extensions concept among the masses and had a wide variety of terrific extensions (and still has) as a key differentiator, and since many users have appreciated Firefox for this reason (even if they didn't care much about FOSS), Firefox must continue to push heavily on this front.

Of course, everything that was possible before wouldn't make sense in the web extensions platform (for security and other reasons), which is why I said "almost everything". But things like tab management (even Tab Mix Plus on web extensions is only in beta now), session management, etc., are highly important to the browser UX for a lot of Firefox users. They're highly sticky factors as well that prevent users from switching to another browser.

I've also seen some people who deploy and use Firefox in enterprise state that they're going to be on ESR 52 for quite sometime, with one of the reasons being some extensions not being available (or ported) on web extensions.

I'm not going to blame Mozilla or the Firefox team for the current state of affairs. But knowing what we know (with the advance notice on web extensions), the main advantage of Firefox on the extensions front shouldn't be lost. If anything, this piece needs to be accelerated further and also have the Mozilla Firefox team drive new features and abilities in web extensions that make other browsers look outdated.

I'm a die hard Firefox fan, and would always be cheering it on to thrive and grow.

Re: Firefox 60 released

#225

Post by forapurpose »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #134

One killer feature from Safari missing still is 'Show tab overview' with thumbnails of all your tabs ... anyone know of a well maintained plugin that does something like this? I think it should be built into the browser.

I just came across the link below and remembered your comment:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tip-tab/

It was runner up in a Mozilla add-ons contest:

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/05/08/firefox-quantum-e...

Re: Firefox 60 released

#226

Post by Sylos »

pmoriarty wrote: post #77
yborg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish someone with the time would start producing a "De-Mozilla'ed" fork a la Chromium. I think Firefox has gotten to that point, things like this and the Mr. Robot fiasco indicate the project needs to be saved from itself.

What's the Mr. Robot fiasco?

An extension popped up in the extension list, which did nothing at all, but had a weird name that made people panic they had somehow gotten malware.

And it was pushed as part of an unpaid marketing campaign for Mr. Robot. Which people thought was Mozilla cashing in big time by installing an extension they didn't want. It was done on a friendship basis. Mr. Robot has been pushing Firefox and so Mozilla wanted to give something back.

Which was a fun little easter egg that Mr. Robot fans could have activated. It would have flipped some words on webpages upside down as reference to Mr. Robot. Which, again, it didn't do, it did nothing unless you specifically went into about:config and activated it there (which is what Mr. Robot fans should have figured out themselves).

This also resulted in a discussion of how it's unthinkable that Mozilla can install an extension without asking you.

...in their browser that people are ok with them auto-updating, through which they can push even less restricted code than in an extension, and that completely invisible.

So, it was a fuck-up on Mozilla's part (in that the extension was visible in the extension list; if that wouldn't have been the case, it wouldn't have been a problem at all), but man was it blown out of proportion by journalists and know-it-alls, who just have to show that the innocent-thought Mozilla is evil.

Re: Firefox 60 released

#227

Post by jamesgeck0 »

antisthenes wrote: post #113
superkuh wrote: post #79

I haven't tried Firefox since version 47 and haven't used it as my main since 37. I gave 61 (dev edition) a spin yesterday. All the extensions that make the browser usable for me were like 1990s geocities pages: "Under Construction" if they existed at all. They were just placeholders that lacked most features with links to bugzilla pages to vote for features to be added back into Firefox. Garbage collection was prett…

It was usable as a main browser at some point between 4.0 and the current quantum (read - when 90% of the useful extensions were axed and the only advantage over chrome was thrown out) I can't tell whether it's mostly web 2.1's fault or Firefox's gross mismanagement and stubbornness

Firefox still has an edge over Chrome here; Mozilla continues to add new Web Extension APIs for frequently-requested functionality. For example, this release added tab hiding, making it possible to build extensions that add Panorama tab groups.

Anyway, maintaining the old extension API wasn't sustainable. Many older extensions broke repeatedly due to refactoring efforts like Electrolysis. These refactors ultimately resulted in some of Firefox's current speed gains.

Re: Firefox 60 released

#228

Post by Sylos »

kodablah wrote: post #26
malfeasance wrote: post #3

Pocket Sponsored Stories will appear for a percentage of users in the US. Read about our privacy-conscious approach to sponsored content If you can't roll out a feature without violating EU privacy laws, you're not employing a "privacy-conscious approach."

> If you can't roll out a feature without violating EU privacy laws, you're not employing a "privacy-conscious approach." Correction, 'you're not employing a "privacy-conscious approach" by EU standards'. The EU does not define for the world what privacy-conscious means.

Sure, but Mozilla's standards are far beyond what the EU demands, too. Which they are in this case as well, as this is not privacy-invading at all.

Re: Firefox 60 released

#229

Post by _ZeD_ »

kodablah wrote: post #26
malfeasance wrote: post #3

Pocket Sponsored Stories will appear for a percentage of users in the US. Read about our privacy-conscious approach to sponsored content If you can't roll out a feature without violating EU privacy laws, you're not employing a "privacy-conscious approach."

> If you can't roll out a feature without violating EU privacy laws, you're not employing a "privacy-conscious approach." Correction, 'you're not employing a "privacy-conscious approach" by EU standards'. The EU does not define for the world what privacy-conscious means.

...and yet it does...
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