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Firefox 25 is released

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231–236 of 236 posts

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#231

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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?

They work pretty much like normal tabs, meaning you can close them by middle clicking it, you can ctr+shift+T, ctr+tab, ctr+shift+tab, ctr+1, ctr+2...

you can close multiple tabs that are nested by closing the parent when its minimized.

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a Selenium user and I am genuinely curious: does the same thing happen on Chrome?

unfortunately, our ageing selenium scripts do not work on anything but firefox. Again I want to stress that Aurora works really well on most everything. I personally prefer Firefox to other browsers. But that doesn't mean that FF is perfect... nothing is.

I don't think anobody stated that Firefox is the perfect browser. Each browser has its strenghs and weaknesses but I am more keen to accept flaws on a browser that's opened by nature: that's why I have always been using Firefox, even when in term of performance it was way behind Chrome. Today I am happy that Firefox has caught up and is even doing much better in some area.

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Using Firefox 24, I just went to hangouts.google.com and clicked the "Available for your computer" button. "Hangouts won't work in your current browser. You'll need to download Chrome before installing Hangouts."

And a week or so ago somebody invited to a call was told he couldn't join in the version of Firefox he was using, which I'm pretty sure was up to date.

I avoid using it in Firefox; on Linux, it was performing terribly in FF but fine in Chrome.

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#234

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The plugin is quite dangerous, an "aggressive" stance sounds reasonable to me. But what would persisting with claims that Java plug-ins are always dangerous have achieved? By a similar argument, the Firefox team fixes several security vulnerabilities they themselves describe as "critical" in each new six-weekly release, so they ought to have advised users not to run Firefox either. Software has bugs, and security fla…

And some software has almost an order of magnitude more vulnerabilities while simultaneously being unnecessary for most folks. Oracle has been issuing ~50 per quarter recently, an incredibly long time to wait for critical fixes. In security, less is more. Now that Windows has become safer, the big targets are Java and Flash. It continues to be good practice to avoid standing behind big targets.

Firefox has had in the region of 30-40 advisories per quarter recently, hardly an order of magnitude more vulnerabilities than the ~50 you mentioned as the Java plug-in's recent record.

Also, as has been pointed out in numerous recent debates about Java, it might be unnecessary for most folks, but there are still many millions who use it routinely. Indeed, this is precisely why I think Mozilla's U-turn on this issue was a sensible move.

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#235
post #164

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Your wording could have been better but I have to agree with the sentiment that FF is the new IE. There are so many unfixed bugs that have been ignored for years. They just work on edge case new features instead.

Well, that's not true. I, for one, haven't work on any new feature in two years, only on fixing bugs and improving performance or safety. If you have a pet bug that badly needs fixing, though, I can help you get started, if you are interested.

Thanks for your work. I know there are people like you who work hard on fixing bugs but it seems to be the minority of Mozilla's effort.

Here are some open bugs which affect sites I work on, one which was opened in 2000. I don't understand how having a bug open for 13 years is acceptable.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63895

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688556

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=620691

Re: Firefox 25 is released

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ras…

  > 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.
Ah ha! Now you're speaking my language! That I understand perfectly!

It makes sense that Windows UAC has forced bad decision making. Windows, in general, is just a hideous, mutated mess nowadays.

Anyway, it's essentially a correct decision to never marry a browser to device drivers or hardware. The websites that count won't dare crash browsers due to hardware requirements. The browsers that count will fail gracefully, and tell the user that their settings are not compliant with the requirements of the page they are trying to view, before they ever crash. However one wishes to communicate the nature of highly specific user options, and then adapt to the long fragmented tail of hardware conditions, is beyond the scope of a "NORMAL" web browser (no-true-scotsman).

When requirements become that unforgiving, you've entered the realm of the highly specialized plug-in, or custom client-server software. It's cool that Firefox is brave enough to wade into those territories, and still deliver awesomeness, but the core necessities of the web browser should never be sacrificed, for fluff and sugar-coated eye candy.

I'm really not worried about the idea that "The Web" is changing. The sites that matter will always work with the bare minimum, with little more than HTTP GET and HTTP POST, even with JavaScript disabled.

The rest is just cruft.

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