Firefox 2022’s top features | Hacker News Reader

Firefox 2022’s top features

blog.mozilla.org

163 pointsmikece94 comments

Firefox on Android has been a game changer, because being able to use UBO with a browser is a necessity now, so I appreciate that work.

Overall this highlight set looks quite good, the introduction of several security feature reduces the need (but doesn't completely eliminate the need) for their Multi-Account Containers extension, which is also an important tool.

I notice no mention of their bizarre 'colorways' experiments which just validates to me that it is a waste of time and importantly their limited resources.

Keep up the good work, Mozilla! (Except colorways)

> Except colorways

It's not even so much that that was bad—except in the way all FF updates are a little bit bad, since they like to hit you with useless pop-ups or spammy extra tabs that auto-focus next time you open the browser—as that it was weird.

Making a huge deal out of adding themes—a feature FF had years and years ago, except that they were much better then—was so strange. They acted like it was some kind of big deal and I was over here like... wait, did you guys cut that feature at some point? It was like Microsoft making an announcement about adding a Start button, and all the copy reading like they didn't even realize that was something they'd already done.

The time-limited aspect was also odd (and, in that case, a little bad, in that I think many found it off-putting).

Firefox still has themes: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/themes/

Huh. Makes it even stranger, then.

Did we lose the ability to change buttons sizes and icons and padding and placement and such when they started cutting out XUL some years back? All those themes just look like background images, and it seems the demo images they use for them don't even display real buttons or other UI elements (which makes sense if you can't change them anyway, and don't want to have to regenerate those images every time FF modifies those).

You can still style every aspect of the UI by editing a userChrome.css in your profile folder, and enabling some setting.

This is hidden and undocumented because Mozilla now have a terrible attitude towards users.

Ah, cool. I do miss the days of using easy-to-install themes to stick with older UI if I didn't like the direction the UI was going (Firebird 0.7 FTW—though the Firefox 1.5 UI was pretty good too) but it's nice the functionality's still kinda there, if not the ease of use.

[EDIT] I'm not up on this stuff in FF because it's my minutes-a-week secondary (read: for non-Apple operating systems) browser, and hasn't been my hours-a-week primary browser for nearly a decade, so I don't bother to customize it much anymore, but it is nice knowing some stuff I used to like about it is still there in case I ever go back to using it as my primary.

I use this feature, but I don't mind that it's hidden because there are no stability guarantees for such themes, new versions of Firefox can and do break them.

I agree with you across all your points: positive, critical and kudos. Having to occasionally use a browser without ad blocking (or container isolation) is unbearable. The original internet has largely died but Mozilla has made it's passing slightly less terrible.

I don't think “colorways” is a particularly demanding experiment as far as Firefox is concerned. Firefox has a built-in theming system, they just created a few more built-in themes that are only available for a limited time. I could probably have created “colorways” in <1 week despite not knowing anything about browser themes/extensions.

What is UBO?

Ublock origin, an adblocker

uBlock origin, the adblocker

uBlock Origin.

Ads on mobile are generally a big impact to user experience (small screen, data limits) so blocking them is a killer feature for Firefox android.

Brave also blocks ads, and by default.

Because Brave's business model is to replace the website's advertisements with their own, and give you monopoly money crypto tokens.

Just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Not even close.

Brave ads are optional, and way way more subtle than normal ads, they don't even appear in the website itself, it just a small notification!

And most importantly, you get paid!

Paid? Or given a crypto asset of questionable utility?

If you exchange the crypto asset to fiat right away you don't care about the utility of the crypto itself.

How much does it cost to make that transaction, and how difficult is it compared to buying something with a credit card at walmart.com?

I believe Brave's crypto features are opt-in; if you don't want to use them because it's too much of a hassle to actually use that crypto or convert it to fiat you don't have to, you can still enjoy its built-in adblocking.

Not only that it uses better sandboxing and security features especially on Android systems. Brave also protects you better against fingerprinting than FF+UBO. Firefox for Android is not nearly as secure as Chrome and Brave on Android.

Source:

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

https://grapheneos.org/usage

Good job on PDF editing updates, it is really convenient when you don't need an additional PDF program and can do everything in browser. You know what is also convenient? Adding web apps to desktop, so you can use web application like MS Teams without installing huge application. Also, with Teams desktop app being deprecated in favor of PWA, this would be very useful for many businesses. And finally, how is video conferencing support going? It is really inconvenient to switch to another browser or use yet another application to communicate with co-workers. I thought proprietary video streaming implementation should've been decommissioned around this time and only open standards left supported?

Sorry for what seems like another long rant, but thinking about business use, those two small features could help onboard quite a few new users, and retain current users.

Regarding streaming, I know that zoom and meet.jit.si work. I think we can safely assume that if any other service blocks Firefox it is not for technical reasons.

Do you know about the Progressive Web Apps for Firefox extension? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-fire...

I switched to Firefox on Android this year.

Tab groups is one thing that frustrated me with Chrome, it resulted in multiple tabs to the same site being open in multiple groups and finding them being a multi click process. In firefox, I don't have tab groups and my tabs close every 24 hours.

uBlock makes many websites more palpable, saving 8% of requests, even Decentraleyes is saving some requests, and Dark Reader is much nicer if you're on you're phone at night, no longer looking at a flashlight (i also have a profile for warmer light during the day).

Enhanced tracking protection seems to be working better than Chrome - as I'm avoiding some targeted ads (confounded though that I did a tracking preferences cleanup on major ad networks)

I probably have to use Chrome for about 20% of my browsing still though, especially when intents get involved.

All I want for Xmas are tabs that look like tabs.

(Oh and to show link targets in tooltips instead of having to look down where the status bar was. There was an extension that did this I think but was broken in the transition to the new model.)

Enable legacy customizations and fix it in userchrome.css.

I can't say mine is the definitive answer by any means, but it's in my GitHub if you want an example.

https://github.com/torstenvl/userChrome.css

i use your config! its cool to re-stumble on this again

Hey! Glad you find it useful. I spent probably five hours yak-shaving/bikeshedding on it one weekend afternoon and figured it would be nice if maybe it'll save some other people some time tweaking the UI.

If you edit your userChrome.css you can get them back. Mine looks completely normal now. I think it was this[1] that I used.

1. https://www.userchrome.org/firefox-89-styling-proton-ui.html

All I want for christmas is for them to reallow extensions to modify the browser UI.

Unfortunately we don't really celebrate christmas here in Israel, so I guess FireFox will never get that functionality back...

Mozilla just isn’t in the Christmas wish-fulfilling business, regardless of country.

I installed tree style tabs and would never go back to horizontal tabs. I had to use my partners computer yesterday and opened a new tab, but had to go back to the previous one after, how does anyone find anything with horizontal tabs?!

So yes do yourself a favour and install a horizontal tab manager. That actually would be an immense usability enhancement if Firefox integrated it.

I use tree tabs already. But not on my work machine where it doesn't make sense (can only access a few sites). I want tabs to look like tabs even when looking at that machine or during a zoom call and PM is sharing a screen.

Can't think of a reason why tabs shouldn't look like tabs everywhere by default.

Ctrl-Tab shows them in recency order, which makes horizontal tabs survivable. (But yeah, I use TST too.)

I love Firefox. I use Firefox on Android with UBO. However, I wish they allowed about:config tweaks and user.js so we can have full control of our browser on mobile. To adjust about:config I'm forced to use Firefox Beta on Android.

I think going forward to be consistent with Firefox's values, the user should be allowed to turn off telemetry etc via about:config and I hope they make this available in the future.

I use android with worse hardware just to use Firefox with addons. As chrome and safari are moving further from usability, it would only be better for Firefox. Android Brave is a good contender though

What have you seen from Safari that looks like "moving further from usability"? I get that it's missing features that Chrome and FF have, but its general direction seems to be toward greater usability, at least as far as features and changes I can recall.

Not trying to pick a fight or "sealion", just curious what you mean because I truly don't know.

Maybe moving away is the wrong word, and I actually mean the iOS. I can't use safari on other platforms. I can't install the original version of other browsers, they r just reskins of safari. So no I'm not using ios

OK, cool, that makes sense. Wasn't trying to nitpick your wording or anything, was really just like, "wait, what are they doing that's making it worse, that I've not noticed?!"

The blog post describing their effort to implement fillable PDF forms is well worth a read: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/10/implementing-form-filling-...

I've been using it for some of my work for a few months now, after a multi-year hiatus because it always, no matter which version I installed, slowed to a crawl after a short while of use. Now that I've restarted using it.......... Same damn thing as before: If I open more than a couple of tabs and leave it running for a couple hours, the whole thing slows to a crawl. This problem has persisted for me across nearly a dozen laptops over several years. I don't think it's specific to something I'm doing wrong. (though I'm happy to be corrected on this so I can finally fix that thing and use firefox regularly)

Chrome on the other hand can be open with dozens of tabs (yes I'm a tab hoarder, sorry) and run just fine. I don't like Google in so many ways, but damn is it hard to argue against using chrome over FF when FF keeps being so damn stupidly shitty on lightness of use.

My daily work laptop is admittedly pretty low-spec, but if one damn browser doesn't make it crawl, why should it be so hard for the other damn browser that promotes itself so heavily to pull off the same thing?

Conclusión from this little corner of the browser user space: Firefox, get your shit together finally please? It's been over a decade, you've had plenty of time to stop fucking basic things like lightness of performance speed up.

Can you gather, upload, and share a profile of the slowness using https://profiler.firefox.com/?

I can't say I've experienced this (at least not regularly) ever since I returned to Firefox a few years ago. I'm a degenerate tab hoarder (usually two or three hundred). I actually switched back to Firefox after I tested and saw how much better it handled my shameful tab hoarding than Chrome did at the time (which would slow to an usable mess).

I'm guessing it just has something to do with the differences in sites we visit because I use Firefox on 4 different devices, both macos and Windows (5 if we count Android) and don't have this issue at all. Sending a profile their way as the other person replying said would probably help get this fixed.

> I've been using it for some of my work for a few months now, after a multi-year hiatus because it always, no matter which version I installed, slowed to a crawl after a short while of use.

I am surprised to hear this. I had this complaint a few years ago too, but today, I currently have about 105 tabs open right now, all fully loaded and it's running fine. I am running on an Apple Macbook so maybe that's the difference? I run Chrome and similar number of tabs result in my fans turning into jet engines.

Does Mozilla CEO still earn 3 million dollars a year?

As per her publicly released 2021 Mozilla financial disclosures, she now makes $5,591,406.00 for the year of 2021.

See here: https://imgur.com/a/HVDX7Jz Or here: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990...

That's outrageous! I'll have to keep using Chrome because Google's CEO only makes $80M/yr and he's a dude, which is much more reasonable.

Should they reduce pay and have somebody less experienced take over? If that person does well, they will end up leaving for a better paying company

And not one mention of their most important feature: Colorways.

The text on that feature equating a color theme to diversity was hilariously bad

What’s missing from firefox is a native way to organize tabs into groups, like on chrome browers

There are different ways to do that and having plugins gives us options. I like the way Panoroma Tab Groups does it. Others like Tree Style Tabs.

Funny, not being able to keep groups away is a dislike I have of android.

The main reason I keep going back to Edge (besides general "this website only works in Chromium..." frustrations) is the built-in vertical tabs and tab groups. Really a nice way to organize stuff; Arc does it mostly the same way.

I love Firefox, especially on Android so that I can use UBO. I am amazed that it doesn't have a larger install base!

That out of the way, does anyone have info on where Mozilla spends it's money? Is it still mostly on non-firefox vanity projects, and execs?

Here’s hoping for a 2023 where they finally figure out how to get containers to work on Firefox for iOS. The other features are nice - but the fact that there isn’t any of the weird auto-login stuff that Chrome does between browsers and websites and that you can box different types of sites is great. Plus, they’re committed to a world with content blockers where necessary.

It’s not always great. Heck sometimes it’s barely even good - but there are times when only one option is all around passable - and I’m finding that’s usually with privacy and Firefox.

My preferred features to enable Firefox to be on the user's side again:

    0. Delete all promotions/advertising.
    1. Delete Pocket (make it a regular optional Firefox extension.)
    2. Delete user studies.
    3. Delete analytics and other anti-privacy features.
    4. Opt out of everything by default.

And:

    5. Fix autoplay blocking so that it actually works.
    6. Add blocking for modal javascript windows and slide-overs.
    7. Disable "referer" entirely by default.

If Firefox supported digital signature (e-signing) PDFs then my work would switch to it immediately. Fuck Adobe. Supposedly Edge is gaining this.

Edge’s PDF tools are great, I use it a lot to fill out non-fillable docs.

If it got a reasonable implementation of e-signing… wow.

One 'feature' seems to be that one of the recent updates made it so that I can no longer stream 'protected' video content on my displays hooked up to my macbook :) For now I can skip the stupid continuous question to update, but its quite annoying.

I see they've recently removed the dismiss button on homepage recommendations. So I've turned off the recommendations. On the plus side, as I started closing tabs with determination, I counted over 9000 across two windows. Not bad, firefox.

Sadly, the PDF tool is not as good as Edge's. There is still a lot to improve.

Firefox is such an incredible browser for developers, with all those CSS tools and the multi-account containers so you can be logged into the system under development with multiple accounts at the same time.

What are Mozilla Corporation's and Mozilla Foundation's source of revenue these days? That would give me a better idea of who they are working for.

Also, when they start seriously blocking ads by default (with opt-out), e.g. by doing the equivalent of installing UBO and Privacy Badger; and when they start letting regular extensions run again (not WebExtensions) then we'll talk.

BTW - In case you didn't know, regular extensions can still run just fine within FF. Internally, the UI and the glue code are simply regular extensions. It's basically the support-scaffolding for loading your extensions that's been removed. Or, in other words, they didn't even cripple their browser that much, they basically just decided to stop letting you use extensions.

Um, no. "Regular" extensions used XUL. XUL is mostly gone. "Regular" extensions worked by directly modifying the code that controlled the browser and content, sometimes by decompiling existing functions and patching them with search & replace. Now the content is in its own process, the extension is in a sandbox, and the only code you can screw up with search & replace is your own extension's.

The browser has been "crippled" into a much better architecture.

But yes, there are some seemingly arbitrary restrictions on what APIs are exposed. Some are to save people from themselves, some aren't implemented because of the maintenance burden or resource cost, and some are a result of bad prioritization and/or lack of vision. Reasonable people disagree about what falls into which category.

> Um, no. "Regular" extensions used XUL

They can use HTML and Javascript, same as Firefox' internals;

> XUL is mostly gone

... but the UI capabilities stay the same. It's just like that for extensions.

> Now the content is in its own process, the extension is in a sandbox, and the only code you can screw up with search & replace is your own extension's.

That approach is the whole problem: The view of extension code as somehow inferior to Firefox' own code. Those are both applications, not the code from some website run inadvertently when you visit a web page, but something you installed because you wanted to have run.

> some aren't implemented

Everything is implemented - inside FF. It's just arbitrarily being kept inaccessible to extensions.

Note that, in Thunderbird, a small hole-in-the-wall has been implemeneted, for loading regular extensions, and they are able to run with full privileges and do the work they need to be doing.

Wish they would look at the text rendering issues on non-hidpi displays. The text is really pixelated compared to edge

I tried to delete google servers in safe browsing config. Firefox will just put them back. Talk about privacy

I use Firefox on iOS because it has a dark mode toggle. A browser without it would be unusable.

My only issue with Firefox is that where I work Chrome is king and so I have to test a lot of things on a Chromium type of Browser and everything looks a tad different on Firefox.

So I when I need speed and not the weight and bloat of Chrome I fall back to Brave browser.

So all in all: I barely use Firefox these days.

But back in 2004 - 20010 Firefox was king for me.

Sounds like you are going to be using it for years to come.

Where are built in vertical tabs? I don't want to have to trust some unknown extension dev and I want to turn off the horizontal tabs with a menu click.

Why doesn't mozilla care about making a better browser?

Anyone who has more than 6 tabs open at once (i.e. everyone except grandma) should be using vertical tabs.

Once the horizontal space runs out the tab list is converted to a vertical drop down list.

Some people like the tree tabs. Vanilla for me.

You dont have to trust the unknown dev. Tree Style Tabs is a Mozilla-recommended addon. The "recommended" badge means that Mozilla reviews the addons code and vouches for its security and performance. Similar to ( or even better than) the Debian repository

Mozilla's approach is in my opinion correct and fitting the open-source spirit. Mozilla shouldn't unnecessarily bloat their core codebase with features not everyone will use. ( For example i personally dont use vertical tabs). However, I do wish that Mozilla would review more addons like they used to in the old days when they had more resources. Of course it is still better than the wild-west that is Chrome's addon marketplace.

Good point. I am a Sidebery user because you can turn off the "tree" aspect of the tabs (the whole point of vertical tabs is to allow you to see enough characters of the tab's name to know at a glance what it is - the last thing I want is to pad those available characters with space).

All the same, vertical browsing is so clearly superior, that it should be built in to the browser. Mozilla not only fails to build it in, they also require ridiculously complex steps to eliminate their dumb horizontal tabs.

Firefox on Android is really great

What's even better is Iceraven

Well I dislike Firefox (just less than the alternatives), but credit where it's due; these are mostly nice features.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com