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Firefox 57.0 Released

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Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#371

Post by placeybordeaux »

bobcall wrote: post #367

This will be the first version of Firefox that I won't be using. The final straw with me was the "Studies" integration. I've wanted to stop using Firefox since Pocket and EME was integrated, but I have failed to find anything else that works for me. I can no longer pretend to trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Firefox team, given their track record over the last few years. In our current era, the browser has become…

Could you elaborate on how the second source is about censoring/tracking users?

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#372

Post by pmoriarty »

chimeracoder wrote: post #320
throwanem wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the bickering is "I want XUL and nothing else" I don't know that that's fair. The discussions I've seen and participated in have revolved around equivalency, not identity. > how many of those lamenting the absence of some API have actually told Mozilla what they need? The Vimperator devs and some users have been very clear on that point. > Mozilla has been very responsive and helpful. Not everything was pos…

> I don't know that that's fair. The discussions I've seen and participated in have revolved around equivalency, not identity. I've developed a couple of Firefox extensions. One of those was an e10s-compatible replacement for Vimperator, because Vimperator relied on XUL[0]. (Vimperator broke long before Firefox 57, because e10s broke backwards compatibility with some extensions long before Firefox 57 did). The old ex…

"As someone who's written Firefox extensions that are no longer available due to the switch, I'm disappointed that this had to happen. But as a Firefox user, I'm much happier having Quantum and Electrolysis (e10s), and if the tradeoff is between those two directly, I'd choose Quantum + Electrolysis over those extensions."

Well, I'm a Firefox user, not an extension developer, and Pentadactyl happened to be one of the extensions that made using Firefox bearable. Now that it's permanently broken, I'll be moving to another browser which can offer a similar experience: Qutebrowser.[1]

[1] - https://www.qutebrowser.org/

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#373

Post by marbletiles »

cvburgess wrote: post #53

Anyone know how the new FireFox compares on battery-life? Safari crushes Chrome on this front currently, but I'm curious how FireFox compares now.

It's really pretty terrible, on Mac at least -- there's a bug about it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 which is being tracked for v58.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#374

Post by Silhouette »

Yoric wrote: post #357
Silhouette wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My browser and extensions did useful things yesterday that they do not do today. Who changed something in the meantime? Obviously I paid nothing for Firefox and Mozilla owes me the same nothing in return, but if it wants to keep users and remain significant, breaking arguably its main advantage might not be the best plan.

If you're interested, I explained above https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15696184 why the switch was necessary. As a Firefox user (and dev) I believe that breaking some extensions today in a clean manner that will let us maintain compatibility in the future is way prefereable than randomly breaking extensions with every single version of Firefox, as this has been happening forever. Plus this break has set us free…

I was a software guy long before I was a web guy, so I completely understand the desire to clean up internals.

Unfortunately, as a user, the bottom line is still that if I update I will receive very little benefit and lose a lot of very useful functionality. It's not just the odd extension for me, it's things I use every day that are the most important reason I've stuck with Firefox.

I accept that I'm probably in a minority and that Firefox is going to go with what makes Mozilla money and pays the bills, which in turn probably means what attracts larger user demographics at the expense of the rest of us.

Mozilla in turn will have to accept, as I'm sure it does, that it's going to turn off power users and that it's going to prompt legitimate questions over why anyone would go with Firefox, even with these developments. The obvious alternative for most people, Chrome, already had the performance and architectural advantages, but previously lost out on flexibility and privacy concerns, and unfortunately Mozilla just surrendered a significant part of those advantages.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#376

Post by seanalltogether »

rodorgas wrote: post #319
seanalltogether wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit annoyed by the dark header bar now, they previously only used that for private windows, now it appears they use it for both.

Firefox never made that distinction. What you describe is a Chrome beaviour. I think it'd be better if Mozilla copied it.

You might be right, I swap between the Firefox and Chrome for home and work stuff and maybe I'm getting things mixed up.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#377

Post by vocatus_gate »

bobcall wrote: post #367

This will be the first version of Firefox that I won't be using. The final straw with me was the "Studies" integration. I've wanted to stop using Firefox since Pocket and EME was integrated, but I have failed to find anything else that works for me. I can no longer pretend to trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Firefox team, given their track record over the last few years. In our current era, the browser has become…

FWIW Palemoon (https://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml) is a fork of Firefox that attempts to maintain a power user environment and negate some of the ridiculous changes Mozilla rolls out. Updated pretty regularly and works more or less as well as vanilla Firefox. I've been using it on Linux Mint and Windows 7-10 for years now.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#378

Post by amirmansour »

Yoric wrote: post #252
cvburgess wrote: post #53

Anyone know how the new FireFox compares on battery-life? Safari crushes Chrome on this front currently, but I'm curious how FireFox compares now.

For Firefox 57, the team has been working essentially on improving CPU, GPU and memory usage, as well as concurrency. I know that some people have been looking at energy, but that's not where most efforts were spent. I hope that our next priority becomes energy. Stay tuned :)

That's great to hear. For a lot of users, Chrome is not the competition, but rather Safari, because Safari is energy efficient and privacy conscious. If Firefox can get as energy efficient, or even just close enough to Safari then it becomes THE clear winner.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#379

Post by dec0dedab0de »

jrs95 wrote: post #350
msla wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's impossible to put the tabs beneath the address bar, or to have actual toolbars. Decades of UI/UX knowledge, down the drain. Usability is gone.

> toolbars Man, am I glad that UI/UX knowledge went down the drain

Toolbars are better than almost any alternative as long as they were honestly designed for completing a task. They got a bad rap because of all the spyware that average users were accumulating.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#380

Post by mook »

Yoric wrote: post #281
wpietri wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you'll hear a zillion complaints, but I really appreciate you folks doing this. I've been using a beta version for the last few months on one of my computers and it's so very much better. I can't wait to have it everywhere. As long as you're here: I was told that the old extension API was way too broad, locking in a lot of design choices that were not really considered from the "do we want to maintain this f…

(thanks :) ) > As long as you're here: I was told that the old extension API was way too broad, locking in a lot of design choices that were not really considered from the "do we want to maintain this for years and years" perspective. And that the new one is much more focused and considered. Is that the case? Definitely. The old extension mechanism was basically "here is the toolkit we are using to build Firefox, com…

I believe IE also had extensions (the channel bar in Windows 98, and later toolbars and ActiveX that partly lead to Firefox becoming so popular). It certainly didn't have as much flexibility as XUL though!
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