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Firefox 25 is released

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Re: Firefox 25 is released

#221

Post by Surio »

acdha wrote: post #129
Surio wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super annoying, yes! I completely agree with you. It's not just Firefox being the culprit here though... .NET is the same, and so is Chrome, and the list can grow like a mayor's coat-tails! Also, here's a genuine usecase for a truly offline installer... What if you are the "resident software/pc maintainer" of your extended family.... In such a case, would it not make better sense to have one complete download, then c…

The automatic updater takes care of all of the use-cases you mentioned better – why waste time manually copying files around when your relatives could be running the update days before you make it over with that thumb drive? That said, they do make the full installers easily available (google “Firefox offline installer”) should you need to update a ton of computers behind a slow connection.

In case, you missed it, the moot point in the parent thread as well as my agreement is this: "an offline installer should be a de-facto proviso, rather than being buried somewhere else." In other words, The fundamental issue in this rant of course is, "Why the hell should I do all that? Make it available in the front page!"

For sure, lycos/ddg/ask-jeeves/bing "Firefox offline installer" is an option that is not lost on us luddites :).

But did you also notice the parent comment: "Googling for things like "firefox standalone redistributable offline install" are a road to nowhere"? ;)

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#222

Post by grn »

Changelog:

    NEW Web Audio support (https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/10/songs-of-diridum-pushing-the-web-audio-api-to-its-limits/)
    NEW The find bar is no longer shared between tabs
    CHANGED If away from Firefox for months, you now will be offered the option to reset it to its default state while preserving your essential information
    CHANGED Resetting Firefox no longer clears your browsing session
    DEVELOPER CSS3 background-attachment:local support to control background scrolling
    DEVELOPER Many new ES6 functions implemented
    HTML5 iframe document content can now be specified inline
    FIXED Blank or missing page thumbnails when opening a new tab
    FIXED Security fixes (https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox.html)
The ES6 features are:

    new ES6 math functions
    Map#forEach and Set#forEach
    Array.of
    Number.parseInt and Number.parseFloat

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#223

Post by acdha »

Surio wrote: post #221
acdha wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The automatic updater takes care of all of the use-cases you mentioned better – why waste time manually copying files around when your relatives could be running the update days before you make it over with that thumb drive? That said, they do make the full installers easily available (google “Firefox offline installer”) should you need to update a ton of computers behind a slow connection.

In case, you missed it, the moot point in the parent thread as well as my agreement is this: "an offline installer should be a de-facto proviso, rather than being buried somewhere else." In other words, The fundamental issue in this rant of course is, "Why the hell should I do all that? Make it available in the front page!" For sure, lycos/ddg/ask-jeeves/bing "Firefox offline installer" is an option that is not lost…

> he fundamental issue in this rant of course is, "Why the hell should I do all that? Make it available in the front page!"

They could make it more obvious but, really, the audience for that page doesn't really include people who are familiar with technical issues and have made the calculation that it would be faster to download the full thing & copy it around.

> But did you also notice the parent comment: "Googling for things like "firefox standalone redistributable offline install" are a road to nowhere"? ;)

I did – and part of the point is that that's an unnecessarily complex query. Removing any of the redundant words (e.g. "firefox standalone installer", "firefox offline install") produces the correct result as the first hit. ("redistributable" appears to be the problem as that term hits a bunch of spam download sites)

In other words, that search query was itself an attempt to micro-optimize something which turned out to be unnecessary – rather like the entire post.

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#224

Post by BlackDeath3 »

ahoge wrote: post #203
BlackDeath3 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't wait for Firefox 150!

I know you tried to be funny, but this "150" actually means something very specific. It's +125 of those steps. That's way more meaningful than +7 major releases. Just look at other software. Sometimes it takes 1 year. Sometimes 6 or even longer. Sometimes the changes are very minor or purely cosmetic. Sometimes the changes are very drastic. Sometimes it's even a complete rewrite. I don't see how that's any better. Ba…

What I said doesn't imply that I find the idea silly, but "Firefox 150" does indeed sound silly to me. However, what you say seems to hinge on the idea that each of Firefox's steps are consistent in their impact. Is that true?

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#225

Post by ahoge »

BlackDeath3 wrote: post #224
ahoge wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you tried to be funny, but this "150" actually means something very specific. It's +125 of those steps. That's way more meaningful than +7 major releases. Just look at other software. Sometimes it takes 1 year. Sometimes 6 or even longer. Sometimes the changes are very minor or purely cosmetic. Sometimes the changes are very drastic. Sometimes it's even a complete rewrite. I don't see how that's any better. Ba…

What I said doesn't imply that I find the idea silly, but "Firefox 150" does indeed sound silly to me. However, what you say seems to hinge on the idea that each of Firefox's steps are consistent in their impact. Is that true?

Of course there is some variation. There are always some bigger features which take their sweet time. However, there is always a constant stream of smaller fixes and improvements.

Also, if there are ~86 releases per decade, those features and improvements are of course far more evenly spread compared to some product which only released 4 versions in the same time span. (IE6 was released in 2001 and IE9 in 2011.)

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#226

Post by skore »

ksec wrote: post #55

With All of their effort shifted to Firefox OS. Dont expect much improvement with Desktop Firefox in the short run.

> Dont expect much improvement with Desktop Firefox in the short run.

You do realize that you are commenting in a thread about a short-release-cycle release that adds a good number of improvements while you're also able to check on the improvements coming up in the next releases?

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#227

Post by piyush_soni »

wpietri wrote: post #210
piyush_soni wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, even after any graphics (WebGL) related improvements, on my Windows machine Firefox still lacks in graphics performance when compared to Chrome. If I open the new Google maps, it is very slow when compared to Google Chrome. Wonder what is the reason for such huge difference in panning/zooming performance. What is Firefox lacking here? Anyone knows more about it?

The other day I noticed that Google Hangouts just doesn't work in my Firefox anymore, helpfully suggesting I switch to Chrome. The cynical person would suspect that Google's dedication to a level playing field is starting to weaken, and that they're just not going to worry about making popular Google tools work well except for Chrome.

Humm ... that's strange. It still works in my Firefox 24 and 25.

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#228

Post by kevingadd »

qwerty_asdf wrote: post #198
kevingadd wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large downloads dramatically decrease the number of users who get from a download page to actually running an application, even for web browsers. As a result, any steps you can take to make an install process faster or easier will have a tangible impact on the number of customers you have (and any revenue potential that results). Mozilla, like any other company, has salaries to pay, so they would be foolish to make t…

> Large downloads dramatically decrease the number of > users who get from a download page to actually running > an application I think I almost entirely agree with you on that. > they would be foolish to make things worse for the > majority of users I'm arguing that this provision (clearly pointing the way toward an offline install) would not make things worse for anyone. > just to make them slightly easier for theo…

As I explained in the parent post (which you failed to parse correctly - was my English too complex? I'm not the greatest at writing clearly), the advantage of the new streaming installer is that all user interaction is frontloaded, not that it adds new UI. I don't know why you thought I was claiming the ability to pick an install directory is a new feature.

Anyway, my point re things like the blacklist and webgl rasterizer is that the browser is not completely installed without those components. The offline installer is missing key features and components of the browser; things that show up on feature lists that web applications can rely on. Without the WebGL rasterizer, WebGL demos won't work in your offline-installed copy of Chrome in your VM without hardware accel. Without the GPU blacklist, on some configurations Firefox will be nonfunctional (or worse, crash your machine) because it attempts to do acceleration on a broken driver. Audio/video codecs are another area where it's no longer possible to realistically ship 'everything' in a single offline installer.

If you simply want an offline installer for a bare minimum browser that can do a stripped down subset of HTML5, it's still possible to deliver that. But the amount of the 'web' that works in that bare minimum installation will keep decreasing.

P.S. The reason Firefox has to install a service is because it's not possible to install updates cleanly in any other fashion on UAC-enabled Windows. Your alternatives are installing into %AppData% (like chrome does, which removes the ability to pick an install dir and has other gross consequences) or requiring the user to UAC elevate every time an update installs. As I stated in the parent post, not installing updates puts users at risk when you're dealing with a web browser - the attack surface is enormous.

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#229

Post by nnethercote »

wpietri wrote: post #217
nnethercote wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... It puts tabs on the side, where they take up low-value horizontal screen space instead of high-value vertical screen space. And you can read the tab titles them even if you have lots of tabs open. And it groups them into trees -- links opened with a middle-click from one tab become children of that tab -- and you can collapse/expand trees. Try it, you wo…

Wow, just trying it now. So much better than existing tabs. I suspect it's going to take a lot to rewire my brain to use this, but it's clearly worth it. Any tips on how best to use it?

I rarely collapse sub-trees; I rarely have enough tabs open for that to be needed. And I set the prefs so that if I close a parent, the first child takes over as the parent of the tree.

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#230

Post by baby »

dgdnt wrote: post #215
baby wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Tree Style Tab and you'll see how hard it is to leave Firefox.

Long time lurker but I had to comment on this. Just yes. God yes. It's absolutely must-try if you are the can't live without TabMixPlus type. Mission critical if you do any kind of ticket management/research at work. I frequently convert coworkers with the combo. Bonus: https://addons.mozilla.org/EN-us/firefox/addon/context-searc...

context-search is also a must, combined with :

* adblock plus

* adblock plus popup

* multirow bookmark plus

* text link

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