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Firefox 69.0 Released

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Re: Firefox 69.0 Released

#241

Post by Amezarak »

bovine3dom wrote: post #122
feanaro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I think you're right. Mozilla has been fighting a slow war on all powerful UI customization. See: the recent killing of Tridactyl.

Reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated :) You can still install Tridactyl in a normal installation of Firefox by following the instructions on our readme [1]. Admittedly, that may cease to be the case if Mozilla ever tire of us; people in locked-down corporate environments would then find it hard or impossible to install Tridactyl but we'd make it as easy as possible for everyone else. On topic, I'd argue…

Firefox gained the marketshare it did because power users relentlessly evangelized it to non-power users.

There was some of the same phenomenon with Google, but the real difference is that Google pushed Chrome very strongly on the biggest web properties in the world, had it packaged in some other software installers, and advertised it. That's why Chrome has the market-share it does today.

Mozilla appears to now be courting the ordinary user market without having either the passion of power users driving it, or the world's biggest web properties shilling it.

To this day, visiting google.com (#1 website) in my default browser pops up a large notification informing me I need to switch to Chrome to 'hide annoying ads and protect against malware on the web.' Visting YouTube.com (#2 website) pops up a slightly less annoying notification on the bottom that says "Google recommends using Chrome, a fast and secure browser."

I haven't been able to figure out for years now how they think this is going to work. Ordinary users are going to do what their IT administrator/IT friend says, use the OS default, or use products recommended by massive marketing campaigns.

Re: Firefox 69.0 Released

#242

Post by asadotzler »

jahlove wrote: post #212
slater wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish they'd once and for all drop Pocket. At what point do they understand that it's a failed experiment if they constantly have to re-enable and/or "ship" an "experience"?

or at least make it an extension. But they know people would uninstall it if they were given the option.

People are given the option to disable it in Options/Preferences and most of them don't. What makes you think implementing it as an extension with a similar disable capability just in the Add-ons Manager instead of Options/Preferences would be any different?

Re: Firefox 69.0 Released

#243

Post by rhizome »

Aardwolf wrote: post #54

> The Block Autoplay feature is enhanced to give users the option to block any video that automatically starts playing, not just those that automatically play with sound. Good. I know a news website that was on purpose disabling sound on videos to prevent that. So not only does it autoplay, you need to click to unmute anyway to actually hear it! Why do news websites want to shove autoplaying videos on people's throat…

Why do news websites want to shove autoplaying videos on people's throats so much, what's wrong with playing at any time when you want?

Because forced exposure to advertising pays better than letting you decide when to consume it (if you ever do).

Re: Firefox 69.0 Released

#244

Post by pedantsamaritan »

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #130
tasty_freeze wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fantastic news for people, like me, who spend a lot of time with $10/GB hotspot data prices. I'd click a link to a 5KB news article only to find it streaming HD video of talking heads reading the article.

> 5KB news article On what site do you find "5KB news articles"? Pretty much all news sites that I know of load a gigantic amount of useless and obnoxious JavaScript, CSS, images, etc. with or without video.

Wikipedia Current Events portal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is 40K for me with cached data.

Re: Firefox 69.0 Released

#245

Post by ferzul »

gfodor wrote: post #95
Operyl wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are mostly hating the advertising on the New Page from Pocket, not Pocket itself these days. EDIT: Here's a screenshot of the feature specifically that people dislike these days: https://imgur.com/a/p2rD4AY While it can be disabled, it can be said that people are a bit annoyed that the browser that is "Privacy Focused" is shoving ads down your throat. While we as technical users can figure out how to disable i…

Advertising, tracking, and privacy are three separate concerns. We conflate them due to the way current advertising networks work: they track you, storing + analyzing the data in centralized servers (which violates your privacy), to deliver ads. You can deliver ads without tracking (for example, contextually based upon the page you are looking at, without any storage of that information or historical state.) And you…

the data can be processed locally, but when my browser says, “get me the ad about debt relief”, it's leaking private info. that's why contextual ads are always better.

Re: Firefox 69.0 Released

#246

Post by ferzul »

Grue3 wrote: post #78
veidr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm even OK with this feature, just not with the we're shipping a new “New Tab” page experience that connects you to the best of... drone-speak T_T

Yeah, the best New Tab experience is about:blank.

i dunno, i liked the old one that had the frequently visited sites list in it. the new one that insists on showing me some article i read and then finished confuses me tho.

Re: Firefox 69.0 Released

#247

Post by rhizome »

acdha wrote: post #163
Aardwolf wrote: post #54

> The Block Autoplay feature is enhanced to give users the option to block any video that automatically starts playing, not just those that automatically play with sound. Good. I know a news website that was on purpose disabling sound on videos to prevent that. So not only does it autoplay, you need to click to unmute anyway to actually hear it! Why do news websites want to shove autoplaying videos on people's throat…

> Why do news websites want to shove autoplaying videos on people's throats so much, what's wrong with playing at any time when you want? There was a bubble awhile back when advertisers were being told that video had better metrics, and all of the news sites jumped on higher-paying ads. That seems to have tapered off as advertisers noticed poor returns and learned that Facebook had been massively misrepresenting the…

It won't de-pivot, advertising techniques are a ratchet and they all become yet more products or options that agencies & sites provide. We'd still be getting popunder Netflix ads from Zedo if browser makers hadn't shut that functionality down.

Re: Firefox 69.0 Released

#248

Post by Const-me »

la_barba wrote: post #233
Const-me wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using OSX, but I have some ideas. An app tells an OS it gonna use OpenGL to 3D render stuff. Generally, the OS doesn’t know whether it’s a competitive 3D shooter where each FPS really matters, or a web browser which only uses OpenGL to render a few textured quads. If the OS will default to slower integrated GPU, users will be unhappy, they want 3D performance. So the OSes typically power up the faster GPU in such…

I guess I was thinking of this from a heterogeneous architecture standpoint (e.g. big.LITTLE) . You have differently-capable compute resources, and you need to pick the one thats best suited for the work-load. Rather than the app talking directly to the hardware, I suppose the OS should let the app pick its work-load type, similar to letting it choose a process scheduling priority.

Unlike ARM cores, GPU code is expensive to migrate between them. Two GPUs have different ISA, each GPU driver compiles platform-independent bytecode like DXBC or SPIR-V into proprietary instruction set. VRAM can contain many GB of data, when migrating, everything needs to be copied. The asymmetric ARM cores at least have same RAM, and very similar instruction set.

These issues make live migration impractical. AFAIK, modern OSes don’t do that, the GPU is fixed at the moment an app creates D3D or GL context.

Picking the best GPU for the job can be tricky. By the time the app creates a 3D rendering context, the OS has no idea what it’s going to render.

Write a code that renders something simple, then downloads the frame buffer from GPU back to system RAM — Intel will probably be faster, for nVidia that copy back is expensive because PCIx, for Intel very cheap, no PCIx IO, just memcpy.

Even exposing an OS API where apps can request high or lower power GPUs is still unreliable. An app which does very simple rendering can sometimes demand way more resources, connect a 5k monitor and simple rendering can become too expensive for intel due to count of pixels. A game which reports it needs a lot of GPU power will be very light workload in 10 years from release, perfectly suitable for low-power integrated GPUs.

Re: Firefox 69.0 Released

#249

Post by maccard »

ferzul wrote: post #240
_coveredInBees wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing you can turn it off? If you're not paying Mozilla for their browser, it seems weird to me to bitch and complain about ways Mozilla explores to generate some revenue without selling out their user's privacy. Especially when they make it very easy to opt out of the thing you don't like. Comments like yours are what makes me very nervous about the future for Mozilla. They are still entirely at the mercy of Go…

where's the button that gives me the paid version, and is it just a donation or a version that gives me a better, ahem, experience?

You can make a donation, and turn off the feature. That means everyone who can't/doesn't want to make a donation can still have the same experience as you, and you can still support FF.

Re: Firefox 69.0 Released

#250

Post by acdha »

rhizome wrote: post #247
acdha wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do news websites want to shove autoplaying videos on people's throats so much, what's wrong with playing at any time when you want? There was a bubble awhile back when advertisers were being told that video had better metrics, and all of the news sites jumped on higher-paying ads. That seems to have tapered off as advertisers noticed poor returns and learned that Facebook had been massively misrepresenting the…

It won't de-pivot, advertising techniques are a ratchet and they all become yet more products or options that agencies & sites provide. We'd still be getting popunder Netflix ads from Zedo if browser makers hadn't shut that functionality down.

If advertisers aren’t seeing returns, they’ll eventually shift spending since video ads are expensive to produce and place. I wouldn’t bet against them finding something even more annoying, however.
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