Hacker News Reader

Comment by dstaley | Hacker News Reader

Whenever a new Firefox release drops, my favorite thing to do is to see if this (now ten-year-old) bug [0] is finally fixed.

Spoiler: it isn't.

This bug (and many others similar to it) are one of the main reasons I dislike using Firefox. It just feels out of place on macOS. I'm fine with non-native UI elements as long as they're not elements as fundamental as the select dropdown and the right-click menu.

Edit: Turns out this bug has been fixed, but only if you have Electrolysis [1] enabled [2].

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=402625

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis

[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=402625#c32

View on HN

My favorite thing is coming to the HN threads to read the "tried it out to see if <personal hangup re: obscure app feature 6 people use> is fixed (meaning works the way I want it to work) but it's not, therefore the entire project A SHIT" posts.

The fact that this one then acknowledges that the bug is actually fixed if you use the browser in the recommended mode gives it extra points.

Electrolysis isn't enabled by default, so I don't think it qualifies as "the recommended mode".

Furthermore, I never said "the entire project is shit". Firefox is a great piece of software, but I don't use it personally because of the issue I mentioned, among other issues in the same category (like the right-click menu looking different compared to other right-click menus, or not integrating with the macOS spell-check system).

Electrolysis has been enabled by default since Firefox 48. Source: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule.

> As of Firefox 54+ (early 2017), our Multi-Content process model is currently being tested on Nightly (4 processes). Four content processes will be enabled on 54 Aurora and if stable enough, we will begin to roll it out in Firefox 54 Beta experiments.

This seems to be the case because I downloaded Firefox 53 for the first time on my new MacBook Pro and e10s wasn't enabled. I had to go to about:config and enable it manually.

You may have an extension blocking it. Get the addon compatability plugin.

Firefox 52 shipped with e10s enabled by default for all users except those who are on Windows XP, have a windows machine with a touchscreen, or have extensions that are not compatible with e10s. It uses one browser UI process and one web content process.

Firefox 54 has e10s-multi, with multiple web content processes.

If you go to about:support in your Firefox 53, the "Multiprocess Windows" item in the first section ("Application Basics") should tell you why e10s is disabled for you, if it's disabled.

The only thing it says for me is "0/1 (Disabled)". [0]

Edit: Ah, so this is weird. It looks like e10s isn't enabled when you first run Firefox. You need to quit, and then relaunch. On the second launch e10s is then enabled. This explains why I thought it was disabled by default (since it was my first time running Firefox on this machine).

[0] https://gist.github.com/dstaley/b17ce52947cf520ca793d545daee...

"Disabled" means there was an explicit pref set to disable it.

I can't tell from over here what preferences you changed and in what order and when. You said "I had to go to about:config and enable it manually"... did you restart after that? e10s pref changes require a restart to take effect. What was the state of the preferences before you did that, if you remember?

In any case, glad to hear it's working for you now.

  Electrolysis isn't enabled by default

It is enabled by default, you just may have a plugin installed that is blocking it. The plugin(s) could be multiprocess compatible but unmaintained and missing the multiprocess=true flag in its package.json.

You can go to about:support to see if multiprocess is truly enabled. If not, go to about:addons and start disabling extensions until it does work.

Electrolysis is enabled by default on Mac, Windows, and Linux except for users that have some incompatible add-ons or use Windows touchscreens or a11y. Those issues are being fixed.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule_and_Status

Your standard of quality is whether a web page looks like it's not a web page?

The standard of quality is if you can build applications that behave as if they were native with a browser.

Considering stuff like Electron and co, that's not an unusual request.

Do people actually make web pages that try to look native to the OS they're loaded on? That is a lot of effort to reimplement GUI toolkits and I can't think of anything I've seen that does it.

I'd say the real way to look native in firefox involves XUL, even if it is getting removed.

Well, considering the web is replacing native toolkits more and more, there better be, eh?

Either you can build something looking native in the web languages, or Electron and co habe failed already.

http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/bikeshedding.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com