Am I reading this right? They're going to launch a browser update that removes support for most extensions and claim it's an upgrade?
Fuck this is so frustrating.
Does this just enable all scripts loaded by that site, or does it allow filtering by domain the scripts themselves are loaded from?
E.g. when browsing site.com you want to allow site.com (and often sitestatic.com or something), but still not allow doubleclick.net even though it's loaded by the same page.
It's generally better to use ublock origin on it's own than to use ublock origin with umatrix or ublock with noscript. Mainly because ublock origin comes wiht neutralising anti-adblock scripts that would get blocked if you combine it with a separate script blocker.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/706xrr/umatrix_vs_...
Here is a good tutorial on how to use ublock origin in advanced mode.
A classic example of the baffling transparent corporate bare-faced lie. Nobody is going to believe it's ready, so why on earth say that?
It's such a questionable decision. I understand that addons take a while to support, I understand for most users it's still an upgrade since they don't use extensions, I understand that at some point you need real users instead of just beta-testers. But they're taking a huge step backwards for user freedom. It's a bad look for Mozilla.
I'm disappointed. I wish they'd develop the apps in parallel until they had actual feature parity. Even if the old version of Firefox got pushed to a separate app; I'd be fine uninstalling Firefox and reinstalling 'Firefox Classic' from Mozilla. I feel like they don't really understand what the community response to this is going to be.
See: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/706xrr/umatrix_vs_...
(I would also suspect, without concrete evidence, that an average default mobile browser user has more valuable data on their phone - Firefox seems like the browser of choice for the same sort of refuseniks who would still do most of their online banking and what-not on PC only rather than installing their bank's app)
And they're going to restore extension functionality, so the power users who depend on extensions can keep the current version and wait if they wish.
I put the odds of that somewhere around the same as the odds that GNOME Screensaver will ever support any of the xscreensaver demos it claimed it would … which is to say, I'm not holding my breath.
Unfortunately, web browsers are one of the few applications where "keep the current version" is not a viable option. Web browsers are very exposed to every web site they visit (including code injected by ad networks), and once a new version is released, many serious vulnerabilities on the previous version are revealed (for instance, https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/known-vulnerabilities... is the list for Firefox). Keeping an old version can be a serious security risk.
It's not like they're "removing" it, they rewrote half the browser and not all of the APIs are hooked back up yet. They're going to be added back eventually.
A lot of corporate communication wizards might be required to dress this up as something else than direct removal.
For most users this is a distinction without a difference.
It's a Preview release for a reason. Mozilla aren't exactly pulling a KDE 4 here.
Given that any changes have to work their way through the Beta channel, too, there's not much time left for landing changes in Nightly that will still make it into the first Release version... so the first official Release version that will be pushed out to everybody will indeed be in an unfinished state.
Breaking people's experiences and worfklows in an extreme way is demonstrably not high on their list of concerns.
Can't things be a work in progress?
The issue is when you push a work in progress as a replacement for a finished solution
Another bitter thing about this is that as much as the new Preview UI is slicker, it's actually browsing noticeably slower on my Google Pixel.
(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla but not on our Android browser)
I don't see them listed in about:crashes though, so I'm unsure how to follow up about them.
From there GitHub project it doesn't sound like the only thing that won't meet feature parity in the new version.
That being said I am using nightly preview and am really enjoying it and would recommend it.
And if you still want all those extensions you could always fork the current version like waterfox.
The reason I've heard is that the new GeckoView architecture requires piping each and every WebExtension API through a Java layer (that naturally doesn't exist on desktop). So it's some amount of manual work per API entry. The definition of the MVP only included critical extensions like reader mode and uBlock. And there's still a fair bit of other work remaining for the MVP, so nobody can spare time for noncritical tasks.
Whether that's the right definition of the MVP, and how many resources we'll be able to spend on it post-MVP (especially post-layoffs)... your guess is as good as mine, I'm going by the same public info you have.
Extensions are a pretty important distinguishing factor of mobile firefox, though.
Mozillas own FAQ on the subject, with many more questions in the comments there: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/02/11/faq-for-extension...
If you don't want things to break occasiinally just use normal Firefox not a pre-release
> At that time, other add-ons will be supported (although there’s a chance that some of the ones you currently have installed will not be supported.)
I don't know what else you can expect? That add ons will never be deprecated?
>I don't know what else you can expect? That add ons will never be deprecated?
I thought we went through the whole round of destroying support for non-WebExtensions so that we wouldn't have to do this ever again.
This update will initially include support for one of the most popular extensions..."
Having support for exactly one means you don't support the others. They also say "Additional extensions will be supported in subsequent releases", which implies they aren't supported initially. Also supported by someone's link to https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/02/11/faq-for-extension..., thanks for that.
It's phrased in a way that avoids saying outright what they are actually doing (dropping support), though.
Anyway, I dont use firefox due to speed but as I dont want any of google products on my phone, regardless of how fast they are. It is not about speed. It is about having some dignity within survailance capitalism. And I am filtering everything trough mitm proxy so I dont need ublock. For the fingerprinting part... I wont update untill they fix this mess.
Of course I usually have JavaScript disabled.