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Firefox 90

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Re: Firefox 90

#341

Post by blaze33 »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #173
bergheim wrote: post #122

I think Firefox news is what I comment most on here. I don't know why. Well I guess I do. Web browsers, javascript etc is front and center here - which somewhat means the digital world. All my friends use Chrome, and think I'm weird. I think _they_ are. They care about human rights, at least I think they do. But, having Google, an ad company, dictate how our window to the digital world looks like, is now _way worse_…

The general mass of humanity never does things because they're "right": Ethical, Forward-Thinking, Better For Society etc. They do them because they're easy. To the extent that wide social change ever happens, it only happens because the path of least resistance shifted from one thing to another. If you despair for the actions of the masses, never try to reason with them. Skip straight to assembling a good marketing…

> The general mass of humanity never does things because they're "right": Ethical, Forward-Thinking, Better For Society etc. They do them because they're easy.

Already in 1947, Georges Bernanos wrote: "it's always more profitable to satisfy man's vices than his needs" in his essay "France against Robots" (La France contre les robots, no idea if there's a good English translation though). Slightly off-topic but I can't recommend this book enough, it's quite forward-thinking and the chapters on freedom and privacy in an increasingly technological society might interest some of you here. I especially remember a brilliant rebuttal of the 'nothing to hide' argument that is still relevant nowadays.

So yes, I agree with you, good ideas by themselves rarely happen to actually change how things work. Like you said "a good marketing campaign" might be more impactful. Is there still hope? I've had this question for quite some time now: how do you efficiently implement some change in a system that won't cooperate? Seems to me that it requires some hacker mindset to find how you can exploit the rules of the game to trick the system into working towards your goals.

I've been given a great book full off details about what should be done if we are to improve our world in the coming decades, but it's a bit of a let down for me: what should be done is rarely a secret, how you actually manage to pull it off at scale is the real issue.

Re: Firefox 90

#342

Post by jonsneyers »

simondotau wrote: post #291
yboris wrote: post #123

The feature I'm most looking forward to is JPEG XL or .jxl (pronounced "jixel") - the new image format that will replace JPEG in 2022. It's in Firefox nightly: https://caniuse.com/jpegxl but the sooner it's in the regular release, the sooner we can all start experimenting with it and using it. https://jpegxl.info/

A great codec but a terrible and unmemorable name—from the group that gave us JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, JPEG XS and JPEG XT. Why take a great codec and name it "XL" which is the Euro/English moniker for extra large? What's so extra large about JPEG XL? Jixel is a great name though. My advice would be for them to quietly rename it Jixel, Jixl or Jxl.

Its media type is image/jxl, the suggested filename extension is .jxl, and the reference implementation is called libjxl. You might notice a pattern :)

Re: Firefox 90

#343

Post by gilrain »

fleddr wrote: post #308
40four wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this a logic fallacy. It’s a false/ incomplete comparison. Mozilla is not an advertising company. They have no incentive to track users or invade privacy. Their whole ethos as a company is pro-privacy obviously. Yes, they take take money from Google to make them the default search engine on a fresh Firefox install. They are a big company with lots of employees (less as of recently) that need to be paid, and t…

Pragmatically speaking, you're right. Something needs to keep the lights on. Further, even if they did not set Google as the default search engine, surely many users would configure Firefox as such. The browser isn't compromised, but their principles are. When you compromise your principles or apply them very selectively, you lose credibility and authenticity. A fitting example of this is their Facebook container. Th…

> but there is zero evidence of him ever projecting this private belief in the workplace in any way harmful to anybody at all

Materially supporting a public, political campaign intended to remove my civil rights is NOT private behavior and IS harmful to me. I agree with the rest of your post.

Re: Firefox 90

#344

Post by simondotau »

fleddr wrote: post #299
simondotau wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Effectively Apple, an enemy of the open web, is our only savior against a full Chromium monopoly. Apple actively sabotaging and blocking the progress of the web, is our "hope". Caution: the following is a controversial opinion. You could see it another way—which is that Google, through Chrome, is trying to define what "progress" is by unilaterally pushing new web features into Chromium as quickly as they can. If "p…

This assumes that Google is actively pushing improvements to the web that are largely useless or solely beneficial to Google itself. I believe that to be far from the truth, minus a handful of exceptions. I believe a better and more capable web is the only still "open" platform developers have if they don't want to submit to app stores. You could of course support the idea of a more conservative pace, as dictated by…

I’m not saying the changes themselves are necessarily bad, I’m saying the rate of change and the rapid increase in complexity benefits Google at the expense of anyone who dares to compete with them.

The web used to be more like the Linux kernel; today it is a fully captured corporate-led platform where only billion dollar companies can play. The problem isn’t that Apple isn’t keeping up with Google; the problem is there aren’t more entities like Apple pushing back.

Re: Firefox 90

#345

Post by ric2b »

berniemadoff69 wrote: post #168
40four wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t mean anything. It’s a tired attack that gets repeated over and over, but has nothing to do with the values and goals Mozilla/ Firefox represent.

I think if I learned Greenpeace was single-handedly funded by Exxon, my reaction wouldn't be to say 'that doesnt mean anything'

It can mean many things, depending on their actions.

If they were just taking Exxon's money to do good things and Exxon thought it was a great PR move but still completely failed at building a good image that would be a massive win for Greenpeace in my view.

Re: Firefox 90

#346

Post by ric2b »

brundolf wrote: post #248
joelthelion wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a side note, I don't understand why nobody uses Firefox on Android. It's an excellent browser, has ublock which is fairly rare on mobile. Why not use it?

I briefly used it on Android. The scrolling momentum was all wonky, totally different from the rest of the system, and using it was unbearably unpleasant for me. I resorted to digging into developer menus and manually tweaking parameters, trying to get it to feel remotely good, and eventually I gave up. I don't understand why they would make it so, but that's the sole reason I stopped using it, despite being otherwis…

> I briefly used it on Android. The scrolling momentum was all wonky, totally different from the rest of the system, and using it was unbearably unpleasant for me.

That was fixed a while ago, I recommend you give it another shot.

Re: Firefox 90

#347

Post by ric2b »

asoneth wrote: post #239
aembleton wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In our dashboards, Firefox does not even exist. Where are your dashboards getting the data from? I use Firefox, but like many Firefox users I use uBlockOrigin so I block requests to trackers like Google Analytics and StatCounter.

That may be true that dashboards are under-counting Firefox, but the ultimate impact is the same. Without some kind of evidence that more than a trivial number of hits come from Firefox why would any small business pour time into catering to an audience that might exist instead of pursuing one that does ?

Firefox sends an easily identifiable user-agent string with every request.

If businesses want to operate on bad data (analytics that depend on JS), that's their fault.

Re: Firefox 90

#348

Post by fleddr »

gilrain wrote: post #343
fleddr wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pragmatically speaking, you're right. Something needs to keep the lights on. Further, even if they did not set Google as the default search engine, surely many users would configure Firefox as such. The browser isn't compromised, but their principles are. When you compromise your principles or apply them very selectively, you lose credibility and authenticity. A fitting example of this is their Facebook container. Th…

> but there is zero evidence of him ever projecting this private belief in the workplace in any way harmful to anybody at all Materially supporting a public, political campaign intended to remove my civil rights is NOT private behavior and IS harmful to me. I agree with the rest of your post.

I understand where you're coming from, and agree it's a morally questionable stance. Not only that, also a foolish one, as the legalization of gay marriage seems an inevitability, like a domino-effect.

I too am puzzled by how denying somebody this right that in no way negatively affects him, is something to put your weight behind.

That said, it is private behavior. He didn't use company funds, express the belief publicly or acted in any negative way towards the LGBT community in the workplace, this is confirmed by Mozilla leadership, so not my take on it.

People are free to have any private belief or donate to any campaign privately, as in, this is well within the law.

Re: Firefox 90

#349

Post by etc-hosts »

the version of firefox previous to Firefox 90.0.1 (90.0.0) worked with Google Meet and my company's firefox profile. I was very excited about not needing to use Chrome anymore.

I'm using Firefox 90.0.1 now... I get no sound or video in Google Meet. I had the same problem with recent versions of firefox.

I have to use Chrome now for google meet.

Re: Firefox 90

#350

Post by kaza_ »

akho wrote: post #301
efraim wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use ctrl-tab to switch between tabs and it shows a thumbnail of each page.

Does not show thumbnails to me. I'm aware of ctrl-[shift]-tab. It is too slow if you have more than a few.

It shows thumbnails if you have enabled "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order" in settings
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