Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#291

Post by scoutt » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:55 AM UTC

f4stjack wrote: post #261

Good move, congrats on surviving the second armag-add-on finally BUT I won't be moving from chromium until Firefox (or Mozilla) explains: - why am I opted-in to a Studies program in Firefox's default state? (With no explicit information about what it is) - what does app.normandy.enabled switch do and why is its default value is True and doesn't change to false when I explicitly state I don't want to be in the Studies…

It is interesting the quantity of studies they push to their opted-in normandy students.

Take a look at https://normandy.cdn.mozilla.net/api/v1/recipe/

Looking Glass is a collaboration between Mozilla and the makers of Mr. Robot to provide a shared world experience

Mozilla wants to know more about knowledge and opinions of news on the Web.

Etc.

There are also links to what seems to be internal documentation.

It shocked me the interest and the infrastructure they have just for collecting information. This is not just a couple of developers trying to figure out what feature is used and/or studying bugs.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#292

Post by dmos62 » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

napsterbr wrote: post #284

f4stjack wrote: post #261

Good move, congrats on surviving the second armag-add-on finally BUT I won't be moving from chromium until Firefox (or Mozilla) explains: - why am I opted-in to a Studies program in Firefox's default state? (With no explicit information about what it is) - what does app.normandy.enabled switch do and why is its default value is True and doesn't change to false when I explicitly state I don't want to be in the Studies…

> why am I opted-in to a Studies program in Firefox's default state? (With no explicit information about what it is) I came here to mention exactly this. I don't mind the certificate issue (as long as there is a post mortem and they learn something from it). I was wondering how my addons came back automatically (without me having to upgrade to 66.0.4) and I found out about this studies thing, which I never consented…

> what browser am I supposed to use from now on?

There's actually quite a few. This Wikipedia list [0] might not be the best curation, but it carries my point, somewhat. For example, I've really enjoyed the power-user browsers, like surf, luakit or uzbl.

I know you were expressing the fact that we're stuck between Firefox and Chromium, because they're the only browsers able to keep up with the rapidly moving web stack and provide a fluid user experience at the same time. My point is if you're willing to compromise on that, you actually have other choices.

Oh I do hope to see the day when there's a variety of browsers, all equally compatible with the day's web. Doesn't seem like we're moving in that direction though.

Personally, I tolerate Firefox, because I want some of the extensions, namely Dark Reader and ublock. Dark Reader doesn't really have alternatives, as far as I know, and I find that network level blocking isn't effective or ergonomic enough to replace something like ublock origin. If I solved these two problems, I'd jump ship to surf immediately.

Just to finish my rant; the other day I was experimenting with text browsers for rendering simple sites like thefreedictionary or HN. Their ability to do that is quite abysmal. I think that says a bit about the state of web's accessibility.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#293

Post by rndgermandude » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:03 AM UTC

Yoric wrote: post #110

wvenable wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this also worked for me on Android. Not sure why the downvotes.

Probably because this workaround consists in deactivating add-on security.

No, it does not. David, this is just wrong. Existing add-ons do not become suddenly insecure.

What it does is allow you to install add-ons not signed by mozilla. Essentially the same thing as installing software not originating from the iOS and/or Mac AppStore, or the Ubuntu/Fedora/etc distro repositories, or the Windows Store, or the Play Store.

The signing stuff might protect some less tech-savvy users from installing "You need this codec to play this porn video" malware add-ons, same as the other walled gardens I listed do too (tho most I listed have still a door in the wall that you can unlock and open yourself, unlike Firefox Desktop).

But that's it. It is a "seal of approval" scheme saying that mozilla reviewers decided something is secure enough and has an OK quality (and wasn't forced to remove by US laws/authorities courts yet), implemented using DRM. It reduces the chances that users will install something malicious by accident/incompetence.

If users still run their add-ons from AMO, then there is no difference. Unless a bad actor can either MITM AMO connections or compromise the AMO servers. At which point the users has a lot more problems already than potentially malicious browser add-ons.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#294

Post by a_imho » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:05 AM UTC

svnpenn wrote: post #241

beezle wrote: post #175

So nothing for those of us still running 56 beause Quantum trashed our extensions (and there are still not equivalent availale)?

https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bkspmk/addons_fix_for_...

Why is it so hard for moz://a to provide something similar as an official workaround? Here is the cert, import it and you are good to go. Instead we have the opt-in to studies and update your browser nonsense and no fix for days.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#295

Post by johnsea » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:07 AM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #288

floatingatoll wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that these statistics would, presumably, exclude all users who disable telemetry in Firefox. Since many of those outraged at the interruption to addons seem to overlap frequently with those who object to and disable telemetry and studies on principle, their departure over this incident could well have no impact whatsoever on the metrics you linked above. It must be a nightmare for the Firefox team to have a mino…

Their departure where? Considering the group in question I can't imagine them wanting to switch to Chromium or Opera.

Where do you see issues with Brave or Vivaldi?

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#296

Post by sam_goody » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:16 AM UTC

batiudrami wrote: post #217

baalimago wrote: post #82

About time. Embarrassing bug. The only reason i didn't permanently swap browser is because of the lack of alternatives since none has the functionality I apply through the addons.

I haven't Switched yet but I fired up my Vivaldi install and have been impressed. A lot of little annoyances that I got used to with the new extension restrictions aren't there because the functionality is built in (like mouse gestures and tabs on left). I first started using Firefox as my default when I unzipped a version of Phoenix off a CD which came with a computer magazine.

I installed Vivaldi, and moved shortly back to Firefox. The two things that did it:

1. I accidentally saved the wrong password to a site. When I went to fix it, it said I needed to login to my Google account to change my stored password.

Wait, wat?! You are sending my passwords to Google, unencrypted, without telling me?! Thai is not acceptable, aside from - What else are you sending?

1b. I see that it saves non password fields without my asking me to save them, and sending that to Google as well. Hmmmmm.

2. It has twice crashed and lost all my open tabs (yes, I have a tendency to keep many open tabs).

Also, for all I know, they are selling my bank account login. Research into the history of Vivaldi (semi fork of Opera) and its dev team left me unsatisfied who they are and that I can trust them.

It probably sends less data to Google than Chrome (which gets every single page, its contents, how long it was open, etc. but is hardly a contender if you want a browser and not just spyware.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#297

Post by johnsea » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:19 AM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #265

fraudsyndrome wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on the reddit thread when it happened - was super confused as I just updated my firefox and it happened at a very similar time frame so I assumed it was from the update I personally found the issue trivial, my main addon is ublock origin. There was a workaround using about:debugging and installing UBO on there which worked so it's not like the fix was a long process. Being committed to a single browser, if anyo…

I too use only two extensions, uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere and the hotfix pushed by Mozilla re-enabled them within half an hour of disabling. I do sympathise with those who apparently lost the settings of certain addons, notably Container based ones. Fortunately I always found the UX of Containers so clunky that I never bothered. Sticking with Firefox as an open competition to the browser monopoly is critical…

Mozilla fine tuning some of their practices is as critical. These hn threads might give good pointers by concerned, well-meaning users.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#298

Post by rasmussondk » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:24 AM UTC

Our extension sets https://www.givero.com as the default search engine. After the extension got disabled and re-enabled, searches now default to Google.

So this fix is not complete.

Our efforts in getting Firefox users to install our extension has been in vain. "Luckily" we didn't have many users yet but imagine the amount of money this will cost bigger search engines like DDG, Qwant, etc.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#299

Post by ntp85 » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:27 AM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #265

fraudsyndrome wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on the reddit thread when it happened - was super confused as I just updated my firefox and it happened at a very similar time frame so I assumed it was from the update I personally found the issue trivial, my main addon is ublock origin. There was a workaround using about:debugging and installing UBO on there which worked so it's not like the fix was a long process. Being committed to a single browser, if anyo…

I too use only two extensions, uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere and the hotfix pushed by Mozilla re-enabled them within half an hour of disabling. I do sympathise with those who apparently lost the settings of certain addons, notably Container based ones. Fortunately I always found the UX of Containers so clunky that I never bothered. Sticking with Firefox as an open competition to the browser monopoly is critical…

> Sticking with Firefox as an open competition to the browser monopoly is critical now more than ever before.

I think this fact cannot be emphasized enough. Or we'll have the 90s monopolized web again: "Optimized for Chrome" - not that there'd be a lack of websites already doing that as of now.

Re: Firefox 66.0.4 is out, fixes disabled add-ons

#300

Post by jaipilot747 » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:29 AM UTC

mrmondo wrote: post #174

The fix doesn't seem to work if you've been using Firefox Beta (67.0b16), or if you then install Stable (66.0.4) and sign in to sync - all addons are still marked as "legacy" and not enabled. However, if you find each one in the store and (re-)install them - they work again and their data is back intact as expected.

Just in case someone misread this like I did, you need to reinstall each add-on. Not FF Beta itself.