Firefox 91
mozilla.org
mozilla.org
Thank you Mozilla for making a browser that respects me.
Plus for Firefox to grow in popularity/stay relevant you need people to care, and you need the browser to improve. Complaining is better than silence in that context.
> Plus for Firefox to grow in popularity/stay relevant you need people to care
Yes, and people care more when the browser developers care about them. Mozilla is intent on showing that only their design vision matters and customizability will go as soon as it slightly inconveniences them.
> and you need the browser to improve
But not all changes are an improvement.
Thank you FF team!
I am a Firefox user since Firefox 4 (2011). The thing is, that negativity was not there prior to 2017.
I'm guessing they are making the assumption that if they keep approximating towards a Chrome clone, that it will somehow reduce the friction of new users joining. This a colossal strategy mistake from corporate/product people.
They cannot compete with Chrome/Edge on a massively unleveled playing field. They either have some giant corporate deal to come pre installed on devices other than linux distros or they accept that it will be a niche browser that wins users over by having killer features privacy/foss ethos etc.
The decision of removing things that were previously customizable or remove features because only a few hundreds of thousands of people use, is alienating users. In the discussions I always read Mozilla staff arguing that this is a vocal minority but the reality is that irrespective of which statistics you look at they lost a huge chunk of marketshare last year.
The way they are refusing to engage with the community on this matter is creating a lot of frustration. WONTFIX is pretty much a meme in Bugzilla at this point.
Firefox needs to refocus on being Firefox instead of half-trying to compete with other browsers. We need browser diversity and we absolutely need non chromium browsers in particular. I hope they will turn this around and engage with the community and user voice.
Haters gonna hate, that’s just how it is.
The first? Newer display technology and processing power, allowed for more complex menus, decision trees, and visual effects/feedback.
The second? Computing was new, and we were still learning how to build basic, usable UIs.
Yet ever UI change distracts, causes lag for users, and the above two points are long factored in.
No one needs a fork to change. No one needs their remote control's volume button to change.
Worse, no one need it to change from one day to the next, on a weekly or even yearly basis.
Many users would be beyond overjoyed, if their browser UI didn't change for the rest of their life.
The back button doesn't need to move, become something else, leap from the top to bottom of the window, look wildly different as a default, behave differently.
Worse, almost every UI change I've seen in Firefox in the last decade, has been tiny little tweaks without any real value for the end user, yet alienated people.
And worse, forced on people. Way to keep market share.
Firefox could be #1 again, simply by firing every UI person, hiring developers with that cash, and just optimise, merge in new web standards (without creating or taking part in them), and fix bugs.
But I feel I must be critical, and loudly, else firefox may disappear.
It is criticism born from love.
I think that is the wrong end of the stick. People complain about Firefox not because they hate it. They complain because they care. It is the same thing with Apple or in fact any other brands. They want it to be better, they want to come back or keep using Firefox. And they want more people to use it ( for one reason or another ).
So the saying good there is no such thing as bad publicity. Firefox still getting the upvote to front page or being complained is a good sign many user or potential user still give a damn.
I still love Firefox, I just dislike Mozilla's management.
I use and love FF, but FF's market share is very low and shrinking. If they can't do anything to turn that trend around, web developers will ignore it, and it will become useless for many sites.
FF users have to wish/hope that FF rights this ship, and that means they can't afford to lose any more users (and really, that they must somehow reverse course and acquire new users). So every update feels really important - the shrinking user base is an existential threat to the browser.
This is true for many UI changes, but I'm not convinced it applies here. This blog post points out many specific deficiencies in Proton: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/firefox-89.html
The real negativity can be seen in the market that largely rejected this garbage browser.
uBlock works best in Firefox, and that is enough reason to keep using Firefox.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
It's really handy when having a private Microsoft account as well as an enterprise account. If I don't use this, my MS sessions get all mixed up.
Give me a 'garbage' container for general browsing that is flushed by default, but bespoke Netflix/Github/etc containers that retain cookies forever.
To independently clear on a container-basis, why not just delete the container? Stop treating your containers like pets and start treating them like livestock.
Unfortunately one of the services doesn't function properly on Firefox and so I have a constant nightmare of sign-in / sign-out / disable automatic sign-in (that somehow get auto checked) on de-googled Chrome.
This way I name windows after a project and as needed I'll move a tab there if I happen to open it in the wrong window.
As a tab hoarder this has really enhanced my organization and ability to find things again.
My overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude to the devs and people working on Firefox. It's the last bastion of Browser independence with super-high customizability.
I also tend to use Edge over Chrome now. MS has done a pretty good job of making that a nice experience, BUT they are also pushing some less palatable ones. For instance, t used to be simple in any browser to just open a blank tab. You could set _about:blank_ as the default page. Snappy load, no crap.
Try that on Edge now. It's basically impossible from the settings.
So Firefox will always be my main driver. To me one of its killer features -apart from the great extensions- is the ability to send tabs to other instances on other devices, or fetch the tabs or history from another device (if logged under a Firefox account).
Not that hard: https://imgur.com/a/yVBOnjY
clean new tab page: https://imgur.com/a/YdLyWrt
This is where you customize new tab
This gives empty page https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-new-tab-page...
Via https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftedge/forum/all/...
Also, for some reason, I setup a new machine today, with latest Win10 updates and the only section I have on that setting page is _New tab page_
The other two, _When Microsoft Edge starts_ and _Home button_ are not even there...
On the customize page you show, I don't even have a setting to turn off the bing search, quicklinks, etc.
I am sticking with Firefox simply because it is not Chrome, but this is silly. Why does the looks have to change constantly. The browser is where one ends up spending most of one's time these days and it is insane that I have to double-, triple-takes every time Firefox is upgraded.
Don't get me started on videos starting to auto-play after certain updates, "studies", etc. The past few years has been a steady downhill ride.
Update: Apparently, the theme I had settled on after the last update is no longer supported or some such. Setting it to "system" gave me back my light right-click menu. sigh
I use it for notes too, and being able to update and resubmit my last search easily. And it's probably the core reason why I can't leave Firefox. The tab sync/send is just better too.
I always miss having a separate selection clipboard when I'm on a non-X11 system. Such a useful feature yet missing almost everywhere.
Glad you got it figured out. The UX of the forced theme change should be improved, however!
Definitely problem on a author ends.
Turning it on/off isn't a solution, because then you'll lose the ability to use Windows sign-on when you do want it. The login flow itself is just poorly designed.
Although my bigger pet peeve by far right now is that every time I login to Microsoft Teams, it gives me a prompt ("Allow my organization to manage my device") that would essentially allow my employer to take over control of my personal machine (default: On, also a dark-pattern "Yes" box).
What are catch up paints? A quick search didn’t turn anything up
I have to assume it's some kind of batching? like an requestAnimationFrame style system. Or some kind of "debounce" to enable less paints?
I'd too like to learn more!
See also this bugzilla entry: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675614
>Firefox now automatically enables High Contrast Mode when "Increase Contrast" is checked on MacOS
>Firefox automatically detects if you are using a High Contrast theme and displays everything in your high contrast color scheme. This overrides all other other browser or web page settings, and it affects the Firefox interface itself (all menus, windows, and dialog boxes) and the content of any web page you visit.
Yes, I have some "Increase contrast" enabled on Mac OS because the Mac OS dark-mode theme is too low contrast.
But I didn't ask for all my web pages to displayed like that. Yikes.
I eventually found that I could override changing colors in the advanced colors menu.
Now it's not like FF is inferior in all other ways, it is actually a pretty good experience. But TST is the big one for me, can't live without it.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/
It combines a vertical tab bar with grouping and containers and more.
If I ever need a "Chrome(ium)" I use Edge which has build in vertical tabs support (dont know if google chrome has this as well but it didn't last time I used it)
EDIT: Is is at least possible to add some sort of tab border? The lack of contrast between tabs was the reason I had disabled Proton.
https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix is a really good set of styles to make proton usable (borders, icons, less padding, etc).
I had to merge it with some of my own customizations. So be aware of that if you already use the Profile chrome directory
I use FF developer so I'm a bit ahead of everyone else.
You can fix it with some userChrome.css changes. I'm scared to touch it for fear of fucking my 'tabs on the bottom' css.
I've been a user since the Netscape Communicator days.
Well OK, I'll probably try some userChrome stuff before really switching. But the new tabs are really unusable on my computer.
I also strongly dislike the new tabs as they're totally disconnected from the actual pages they're a tab for with whitespace, less contrast as you mention as well which an issue if you don't have great eyesight. I guess they're willing to lose even more market share over this, which seems pretty silly considering what their trajectory has been...
I've not been bothered by a lot of UI changes as each update has allowed them to be reverted quite easily.
It seems that every update has me swearing for 15 minutes until someone on HN helpfully points to a solution, but not this time. GRR.
I can't distinguish the current tab anymore as well if lighting conditions are less than perfect or if I sit at an angle from the screen.
Or here, same issue, 19 years ago https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=173667
(I get that things change, I just thought it was funny)
You can use policies.json to stop Firefox from nagging you to update Firefox.x
Congratulations to my friends north of the border! It's a slippery slope for the UK government, first firefox gets it's own scots locale, next 2ndIndyRef :)
> first firefox gets it's own scots locale, next 2ndIndyRef :)
Altho ye're jokin—an A'm a supporter o Scots independence—it wad be guid gin spikkin Scots wis no langer seen as political.
Monie minority languages in the UK hae muckle stigma anent thaim. A juist wiss they war aa seen as /normal/, insteid o controversial (like politics).
Tae be clear, A'm no blamin you.
I didn't know this used to exist, but my few tests say I like that feature.
Hmmmm ... Does this mean "HTTPS Everywhere" is no longer needed?[1]
And, of course, it freaks out with the previously saved self-signed cert installed on my WiFi router. ... sigh
Ah yes, I don't want anyone to eavesdrop on my pr0n!
Edit: to clarify, I find it weird that this has been limited to Private Browsing, when most people don't even use it for anything but adult websites. The feature is good and should be available for regular browsing too.
It can be enabled for all windows, but it was not enabled at all when the feature was first rolled out in v83. Presumably they wanted to allow time for any bugs to be shaken out before imposing it by default in any circumstance. It seems plausible they could enable it in regular windows as well in the future.
That way they can roll it out to all Firefox users, and if something breaks, users can always fall back to non-private mode until it's fixed.
The assumption that whatever is being served on :443 is HTTPS with the same content as what is being served on :80 HTTP is wrong. It might practically be true >99% of the time, but some websites will still break for no good reason.
Probably not quite - I can't easily find an exact reference, so take with a grain of salt, but my recollection is that HTTPS Everywhere includes some slightly more sophisticated transforms (ex. for annoying sites that serve http://www.site.tld but HTTPS on https://secure.site.tld).
It's not as powerful/flexible/configurable, but certainly ticks some of the boxes.
Right now you have to type '@', then the partial host match, then the query. Minor, I know, but <Shift>+2 (two fingers going in different directions) is less ergonomic to reach for than <Tab> (pinky can reach for that alone while all other fingers remain on home row).
try {
foo();
} catch (e) {
throw new Error("details", {cause: e});
}I have to say that I really don't like that "switch to tab" thing if typing in a URL to a tab that's already open. You get yanked out of context, can't hit back anymore, it makes the previously neighbouring tabs impossible to find, and it's harder to open two copies of the same website when you need to. I guess most people probably don't care about those things
1200 bugs!
Lots of people complaining about superficial issues that would be easily solvable if only Firefox offered power users what they want (preferably with a better design than XUL). "Normal" people don't give a crap what browser they're using, most don't even know what a browser is. Mozilla is killing Firefox by neglecting the few who care about it. It's these dozens of small things that add up and make Firefox not stand out.
I keep hearing the Firefox codebase (or Gecko, or Servo) isn't very modular and makes it hard to pursue such a project, and I don't doubt it. But aren't there enough of "us" out there to make a concerted effort? Could anyone with enough knowledge of the codebase say more than just "it's hard", maybe offer an outline of what would need to be done?
> I keep hearing the Firefox codebase isn't very modular and makes it hard to pursue such a project, and I don't doubt it. But aren't there enough of "us" out there to make a concerted effort?
There's been plenty of people making such an effort, but yeah it does appear to be "hard". If you're interested in following previous work, some relevant links:
- Overview of Myk Melez's efforts in this space https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/
- https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ (official but Android-only)
- https://github.com/mozilla/qbrt
It may also be worthwhile reading about CEF which has become something of a defacto standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework
That could be quite cool. So, Scots Gaelic, yes? Preserving a rich cultural history?
From https://www.mozilla.org/sco/
"We mak the internet saufer, soonder, and faster fur guid"
What the actual arsing F, Mozilla?
edit: well, maybe, I must admit I didn't know of a canonical written form of modern Scots. It still looks an awful lot like sco.wikipedia.org, which is a grotesque parody written from the US. You'll forgive some suspicion.
Scottish Gaelic would be "gla".
Modren Scots, unfortunately, disna hae ae orthography, altho it haes a wheen o credible an similar yins. We'd probably hae a mair official orthography gin Scots hidna been surpressed for hunners o year, an insteid we lairnt it proper in the scuil.
> It still looks an awful lot like sco.wikipedia.org, which is a grotesque parody written from the US. You'll forgive some suspicion.
This is a pish opinion. Firefox wis owerset intil Scots by twa talentit fowk.
Unfortunately, the Scots tongue haes ower monie gowks that leuk doun upo it. Either they cry that Scots is ‘no a real language’ or somehou that Scots spikkars are no spikkin ‘real’ Scots.
I've had problems recently with banking/finance sites and Wix.
Personally I'm a big fan of Fedora.
When you run a Zoom or Google Meet call on Firefox it uses 40x the battery of Safari.
What do you mean nothing about performance?
I joined the same 2-person Zoom call from all 3 browsers on my MBP just now... If you have more people call in, like 10 or more on the call... that's when Firefox really melts your computer and you the energy usage skyrocket.