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Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

theguardian.com

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Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#261

Post by lcall »

soulofmischief wrote: post #254
lcall wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure when you last checked, but about:config is its own tab. It was last I checked also, but felt awkward to use, and then you have to know what settings to look for, as opposed to having them in the UI (all can be easily overcome, but it is a little more work i think, maybe not enough to matter for some use cases or if I just forced myself to get used to it). Is it possible to define ongoing exception lists th…

about:preferences is a tab now, too. Cookie options could be maybe a wee bit more complex, however an addon will make up the difference. > I don't know fully, but for any of those I definitely have to think more, as the user, and there is (probably?) more room for error due to complexity. On a properly configured distribution, these things should all just work out of the box. Honestly, barring the update frequency is…

Which Linux distributions configure any browsers (reliably, by default, without me having to know extra stuff) so that it cannot read or write files from any directories the user has access to (allowing, say, only /tmp and ~/Downloads and ~/.cache or the like), and so that if it makes inappropriate system calls (any except those on a whitelist) they fail?

As a longtime (and grateful) Debian user, I remain impressed with OpenBSD's relative lack of privilege escalation bugs in the base system, and "only 2 remote holes in the default install [since about 1996]": we can have different views of course but their constant auditing and general approach to correctness and security over adding features does make me feel better. :) Not trying to start a flamewar though (that would be bad; I fear I might be talking like a fanboy now...).

I appreciate your comment.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#262

Post by yoasif_ »

ken wrote: post #204
ragequitta wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to think of a UI difference in chrome or safari that is meaningful, can't come up with one. Can you elaborate?

You mean UI issues with Firefox, compared to Safari? Gosh, where to start? - Standard keyboard shortcuts for text editing still don't work. That alone is a dealbreaker for me. - The toolbar(s) don't look or work like standard toolbars. The standard toolbar editor is missing, too. - Tabs don't look or act right, either. They're actually styled like Windows XP tabs. - The scroll bars look good, but scrolling doesn't wo…

> It doesn't use the standard localization setting. It has its own, but half of Firefox doesn't even seem to use that, because even though my System Preferences is English, and my Firefox language preference is English, and even my Firefox content preference is English, it's showing half the UI in Japanese still. The context menu is half English and half Japanese!

That sounds totally unexpected. Can you open a bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi including the details from your about:support page?

Something sounds broken and I'd expect a fix.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#263

Post by lcall »

santicalcagno wrote: post #249
lcall wrote: post #192

I hope Firefox succeeds, as I like the idea of not concentrating yet more power in few hands, but, on OpenBSD, I use Iridium (Chromium derivative), so I see these benefits, and am wondering what Firefox would add for me, privacy- and security-wise: 1) Iridium doesn't send info to Google like Chrome does (or that is the idea); 2) It is easier (last I checked) than with Firefox to leave some config tabs open so I can q…

> 3) OpenBSD adds pledge/unveil system calls from the browser, to prevent it from reading/writing files where it should not (plus I browse under a different user than I do other things with high confidence there will not be a privilege escalation; also they say the pledge/unveil support is easier to implement in Chrome/Iridium than in Firefox because of the cleaner separations of concerns in the code organization (my…

Good to know; thanks.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#264

Post by greggman2 »

alwillis wrote: post #259
greggman2 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

browser extesions are a privacy feature. my browsing is much more private on Firefox with ublock origin then on no extension safari. As for Safari using less power and ram on mobile there is no evidence that Firefox would uae more of either since Apple doesn't allow it to run. As far as we know if other browsers were allowed to run some might compete on power and ram. As for security, chrome on desktop has a superior…

>browser extesions are a privacy feature. my browsing is much more private on Firefox with ublock origin then on no extension safari. All things being equal, you shouldn't have to rely on extensions in 2019 to protect your privacy. The goal is to preserve privacy by default--no extensions required. The vast number of users don't install them or wouldn't know which ones to install. Brave is secure out of the box and d…

I know this false based on all the ads I see in webpages in Safari that I don't see when in Firefox with UBlock Origin. Every ad I see was served by the ad company. Safari might be blocking cookies but it's not letting me block the ads which is all that's really needed to track.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#265

Post by ImprovedSilence »

johnsea wrote: post #236
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, I'm muscle-memoried into cmd-' and cmd-; for tabbing right and left, I like using those keys, and this is across pretty much everything I use (I suppose chrome and terminals, mostly..). It's firefox, there's probably an extension for it, but that takes work to find and feels kludgy. good to know about the density, thanks.

In the mac settings about keyboard/shortcuts, you can define program specific shortcuts; e.g. take the exact name from the firefox menu for the 'next tab' action and give the shortcut you want.

Right, so that's part of my gripe. in keyboad shortcuts, i've got global (all applications) shortcuts for select/show next/previous tab. Those dont map to firefox. Fine, but Firefox doesn't have a menu title for next tab, so setting a shortcut for a non-named function doesn't work. I've tried the documentation(https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perf...), using "go one tab to the left" doesn't work. It's just way more effort to figure out than it needs to be for a browser in 2019.....

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#266

Post by Aaronn »

Vinnl wrote: post #134
jeena wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sync of passwords, tabs, history, bookmarks, etc. as far as I know Firefox is the only browser which allows me to run my own sync server.

Is that not all possible with WebKit as the rendering engine? (In other words, doesn't Firefox on iOS already do all that?)

Yes Firefox on iOS does already do that.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#267

Post by carapace »

xenocyon wrote: post #185
carapace wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, crack open your history books and recall that the entire point of corporations is the relatively-risk-free exploitation of other people's resources (or even they themselves, as slaves.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company - - - - By contrast, most religions are not poor and do a lot of good works. - - - - Some people, like Bill Gates, make a lo…

You're getting downvoted, but it's true: the most conventional path for corporations to make money at large scales is to privatize profit while socializing externalities. This has been true for at least a half millenium and continues to be true today.

FWIW, it's got 2 points. It seems bizarre to me that that comment got flagged. Maybe the mention of religion?

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#268

Post by alwillis »

greggman2 wrote: post #264
alwillis wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>browser extesions are a privacy feature. my browsing is much more private on Firefox with ublock origin then on no extension safari. All things being equal, you shouldn't have to rely on extensions in 2019 to protect your privacy. The goal is to preserve privacy by default--no extensions required. The vast number of users don't install them or wouldn't know which ones to install. Brave is secure out of the box and d…

I know this false based on all the ads I see in webpages in Safari that I don't see when in Firefox with UBlock Origin. Every ad I see was served by the ad company. Safari might be blocking cookies but it's not letting me block the ads which is all that's really needed to track.

Safari doesn’t block ads currently; that’s true.

Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention stops the cross-site tracking, fingerprinting, etc. by ad companies.

The ability to block content is built-in to macOS and iOS for 3rd parties to use.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#269

Post by [deleted] »

foldr wrote: post #56
k1m wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a likely explanation when it comes to Assange. The Guardian has been terrible, and even its previous star reporter Glenn Greenwald (who won them a Pulitzer on the Snowden reporting) has been extremely critical. See for example https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-gua... Brought up again earlier this month: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1191681248453943296 That piece of fake news…

What makes you so sure it's fake news? No-one really knows for sure whether or not that meeting took place.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#270

Post by leadingthenet »

saagarjha wrote: post #224
ken wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean UI issues with Firefox, compared to Safari? Gosh, where to start? - Standard keyboard shortcuts for text editing still don't work. That alone is a dealbreaker for me. - The toolbar(s) don't look or work like standard toolbars. The standard toolbar editor is missing, too. - Tabs don't look or act right, either. They're actually styled like Windows XP tabs. - The scroll bars look good, but scrolling doesn't wo…

Yeah, it’s kind of depressing how much better it could be with just a touch of Cocoa; these shortcomings are readily apparent so it wouldn’t even take that much to improve it. I wonder if Mozilla could solve this by just hiring someone who’d focus on improving platform UI to the point where it was competitive with Chrome…

Even Chrome isn't competitive with Safari, UI-wise. It's plagued with many of the same issues as Firefox on macOS, last I checked.
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