Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New | Hacker News Reader

Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

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72 pointslforrest81 comments

Still my favourite browser by far. I usually have 3-4 windows open and up to several hundred tabs and Firefox handles this better than anything else.

With the "Tree Style Tab" extension you can manage tons of tabs in a comfortable and ordered way.

Hopefully someone will take on the enormous undertaking that will be fixing Panorama/Tab Candy to work properly. Where's Santa? That's all I want for Christmas.

I can't fathom a reason for "several hundred tabs" unless your job specifically requires you to open that number of tabs for some (albeit strange) reason.

Just hazarding a guess, but I've noticed that people who have $TEXAS tabs open tend to use tabs the way I use Instapaper -- as a means of tracking interesting content they want to remember to read at some point.

I realize this is OT, but speaking as a tab hoarder, there's no justifiable reason for the behavior. And I'm not exaggerating when I use the term hoarder -- it's the same principle as hoarding physical goods, since the personal justification is always "they're important and I might need them someday". At any given moment I have 2 windows with about 30-40 tabs each. I even downloaded a chrome plugin called session buddy that lets me restore previous windows in the event of an accidental computer restart.

The unfinished reading weighs me down every day, but I keep them open anyway. Some days I get productive and read a half dozen tabs, but never anything substantial. It's an embarrassing "problem."

Awesome / useless plugin idea: an artificial time bomb that removes the tab and all traces of the website from your history after being open longer than some period of time (e.g. one week). Obviously a bookmark circumvents this dilemma, but the problem itself isn't rational to begin with.

I use them as a replacement for bookmarks. My browser chrome is ridiculously small, just tabs, so no bookmark bar, and if I did bookmark everything into the bookmark system (which is hidden under several mouse clicks), I'd have to keep it organised, whereas tabs are at least in chronological order (approximately), which is more useful than alphabetic order when I'm looking for something without knowing what it is called.

Pretty much this. I keep tabs as temporary bookmarks, usually related to projects I am busy with at the time. I have regular cleanups where I bookmark any tabs that are long term keepers and delete the rest.

How many people here have stuck with 3.6? It looks like it's only a few percent of FF users (<1% of all users).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox

It was a really long road but with 3.6 essentially gone and silent updates, developers can worry a lot less about legacy in the Firefox world.

There are a few dozen support staff employees at my company still using Firefox 3.6, as that is all the vendor of our product supports. Luckily, they are on a local network, with no Internet access from these machines.

Anecdotally, I have an oddly large population of vistors to my site with Firefox 9. I don't know what changes were made to how Firefox updates around that time. But it seems like the update train has unwittingly left few users behind.

As a reference, Firefox 9 is the version in the packages repo for FreeBSD 9.0-STABLE and it's probably the same for a fair number of other oses that peg versions on release.

That is correct, only a few percent of active Firefox installations still run 3.6, and the majority of those are active less than once per week.

One of the primary reasons I switched to Chrome was due to the awesome syncing abilities with Android Chrome.

Does anyone know if Firefox Mobile has matured to a point where it doesn't lag incredibly due to the huge memory footprint on Android?

It has. They semi-recently switched from XUL to native Java, which has made it as fast (maybe faster?) compared to Chrome or Browser on Android. Definitely worth checking out again.

My only real complaint with Firefox Mobile is that it doesn't play that well with Intent filters like the one the YouTube app uses to catch http://*.youtube.com/* requests. That said, I'm not sure how to fix that without introducing the annoying per-link popup asking me if I want to use Chrome or Firefox.

I still use FF, but switch to Chrome for JS heavy stuff. Even amazon.com is laggy on FF. The things that's stopping me from switching to Chrome full-time is the Extensions that FF has. I can really customize things to work exactly the way I want. My biggest gripe about Chrome is that the download bar at the bottom doesn't go away when you finish a download.

Still not the feature I'd like in there: A way to open link here instead of in new tab or window

Hasn't that been a feature from day one. Are you sure you haven't got the option ticked that forces links to open in external tabs/windows?

If I right click on a link, I see options "Open link in new tab" and "Open link in new window". What's missing there is "Open link in this tab", to circumvent these pesky websites that configure every single link to open in a new tab/window.

Ah yes, the case where the site forces a new tab. That would be a useful option.

Workaround: Drag the link to the address bar.

Sounds like a trivial extension.

I have a bookmarklet script that removes any "target" attributes on anchors, but it may be harder to circumvent "new window" URLs if they're initiated via scripting.

I hope they keep plugging away at making their developer tools better. I use Firefox as my main browser, but I often have to switch to Chrome because Firebug's performance is pretty crappy even on my Ivy Bridge laptop (with 16GB of RAM).

We are indeed plugging away on the tools (and they are getting better each release :)

Firebug will be getting faster as well as they are working on putting Firebug on top of the new debugging API in Firefox (which has much better performance than the old).

My solution is to create various profiles for my different browsing needs. I have my "webdev" profile which has a lot of web development extensions including firebug, I also have my "main" profile for most browsing, the "wastetime" profile and some other profiles.

While my main profile is open most of the time, I can open webdev using "firefox -profileManager -no-remote" for some javascript debugging and close it when I am done without messing with my other open profiles. If I get bored I might fire up "wastetime" to browse some websites, or the "noextensions" profile to check a website with no extensions (sometimes noscript, better privacy, adblock plus, ghostery or even pentadactyl might mess up some website that I visit).

A really cool bonus is that with each profile I can save the opened tabs, so for example I have a "coursera" profile and it has all the tabs I need for the course I am taking (functional programming with scala). So, when I am studying I only need to open that profile either by itself or in addition to other profiles.

I wish they'd just bump the version number to 30 then save major revision numbers for major revisions. I don't see anything in here that would warrant anything but a bump from 15 to 15.5 under the old Firefox revision standards.

Yep, same feeling here. There seems to be a new trend of a shifted decimal point: "beta"-ish feel until version 10, and a .1 version bump is now a new release.

I think it's time to cut this 'version number' debate. Mozilla has been pretty clear about the plan to use such a system. The only problem was from enterprise users which Mozilla has addressed. The background auto-update is in the stable builds now, should be enough to keep FF updated. I am really tired of this versioning non-sense. Users complained, Mozilla addressed legitimate concerns. Now it's just a difference in perspective. Seems like the new system is actually helping Mozilla put out updates faster. Lets move on.

I know they've been very open about why they're using major revision numbers for minor features. I don't like it when Chrome does it either. I just don't like the arms race that is developing to have the higher revision number. I just get a little disappointed when I see a new major number and the changelog is minor additions and bugfixes.

Just because Mozilla has their reason for making the change doesn't mean everyone has to be happy about the change. I'm not complaining about Firefox, I'm complaining about the number, and the corruption of what that number is supposed to mean.

I don't see this as an arms race at all. (Heck, it took a major outcry just to convince Mozilla to show the version number in a place where normal users could find it.)

I agree that it's a redefinition of what "version number" means: now it's essentially date based, rather than feature based (though the two are obviously correlated). But I can't see any obvious reason to read "redefinition" as "corruption". It's just different, and both Mozilla and Google had sensible reasons for making that change.

In fact, their decisions may make it worth questioning those assumptions more broadly. Is there a chance that your version numbering method is causing subtle problems for your own development process?

The fact that you're talking about "major revision number" means that you're still thinking about this from the old perspective. There is no "major version number". There is just a number that gets incremented with each release. They could have just as easily used the date as version number. Now I'm thinking that maybe they should, just to get rid of this senseless discussion.

The Linux kernel does it too. Ubuntu and Gnome do a steady release as well, just not quite as rapidly. Chrome isn't alone by a longshot.

This rapid release schedule is just the most efficient way for these teams to deliver new features in a stable way. Taking 1-2 years to land code in the next major, stable version of the product just isn't practical anymore.

People get way too hung up on the actual number.

> I just get a little disappointed when I see a new major number and the changelog is minor additions and bugfixes.

Don't be. There will be no "major additions" anymore. They will now release small features, quickly. So no major feature bump. Hence no need to wait for one either. It's like a number of small steps instead of one giant leap.

It's worth mentioning that the complete bug list is a lot larger: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/16.0/releasenotes/bugli...

Indeed, there seems to be 1989 bug fixes!

How come no one complains about Chrome version numbers?

In a reply to someone else, I did complain about Chrome's version numbers. That too bothers me. I have to imagine this issue is similar to people who complain about Windows RT's app model. Apple did it from day one, so there are few complaints. Microsoft switched to it just to keep up, which causes a lot of complaints. In this situation, Chrome is Apple who did it from day one without causing a major fuss, and Firefox is Microsoft who switched to it to great fanfare in order to keep up with the competition.

I think even the Firefox team would agree with you in saying that their version numbers are now meaningless. Which is why they are slowly removing the version number from every user visible interaction.

The point is that Firefox never wants to ever have a "major release" again. Small frequent changes work much better for everybody. So what are their options? Keep incrementing the minor number? The major major number then becomes meaningless and you end up with absurdities like "2.6.39".

I think the solution they chose is much better than the one Linus chose. What's the difference between 2.6.39 and 3.0? About the same as 2.6.38 to 2.6.39, and 3.0 to 3.1. Eventually they'll get up to 3.BIG and he'll call it 4.0 for no particularly reason.

The thing is, given the Firefox project's new development model, their old versioning scheme makes absolutely no sense. Deciding which version numbner to bump would be completely arbitrary and exactly as informative as just using a single number that tells the user "this version is newer than the one with a lower number", which is the only useful information they can convey using version numbers.

Would you also be one to complain about the Linux kernel versioning scheme? It conveys exactly as much information as Firefox' does and works on the same principle. They just happen to have that extra first "major" number there, but it exists only for compatibility reasons. The change from 2.6.39 to 3.0 was exactly as "major" as pretty much every "point" release since 2.6.0. Yet I don't see people complaining about the version numbers every time a new kernel version is released.

I had originally included Linux in my complaint, but removed it because I didn't want to open that can of worms.

Linux versioning now makes more sense--in that every new release is a minor release. Fits better with the historical use of such numbers.

So it adds Webapp support, but the Firefox Marketplace is not yet open to the public, is this correct?

That is correct. The Firefox parts have to land before the Marketplace can open, otherwise the Marketplace is useless.

Is 16 worth installing? Firefox used to be my favourite browser, but I stopped using it when the almost daily install and "reload or disable" addons cycle became too painful.

That cycle should be invisible now. It updates silently in the background and should only notify you if an extension gets disabled.

And unlike in previous eras of Firefox, extensions are not typically disabled by the version bump.

They should only get disabled if the use a feature that got removed.

Yes. I switched to Chrome for a while because of performance, and for my use cases, they are back close enough to parity. I would also recommend Aurora, which gets newer features faster, but is much more stable than the nightly binaries.

Was hoping for HDPI support, doesn't look like this update includes it.

It will likely be in Firefox 18. It is on Nightly right now.

HiDPI is available in Aurora this week (the code that will become Firefox 18).

Thanks, will checkout the Aurora build when I get a chance.

Tabs in separate processes is the only thing I care about when considering switching back to Firefox. As long as a single poorly coded site or plugin can freeze or kill the entire browser, I simply cannot use Firefox.

i am worried. even though it touched 16, it still sucks most of my memory and slows down the system and drains the battery immediately (1 hour of power)

Firefox still needs to improve its memory usage.

Check what extensions you are using. Firefox by itself uses much less memory and is very fast now.

Can you be more specific about the kinds of problems you are seeing? Can you reproduce these problems in safe mode? You should file a bug at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ and put [MemShrink] in the whiteboard.

I cleaned up a lot of my extensions, and the memory usage went way down. I still get leaks where having a dozen or so tabs open will, over time, use up much of my free memory. This happens in Chrome as well, so I just keep that in mind and occasionally restart the browser.

Why does Firefox's roadmap look like "copy everything that Chrome has"?

If Firefox users needed (or wanted) marketplace for (web) apps (or any other Chrome feature) they'd already be using Chrome ...

Web Apps are a very real part of the future of the web. The fact that this space exists in the first place whereby there was only desktop apps previously should be testament enough to that. I may not personally agree with Mozilla in regards to the role of web apps, but I think that we all agree, it's better to be in a position to allow users to make their own minds up rather than go off of what a few loud naysayers want.

If Wev Apps are a very real part of the future of the web why isn't there a standard for that? Or in another words, if it is the future why haven't they all sat down and agreed upon a standard??

This way we'll be begging jQuery for Web Apps or some other abstraction layer that will do all the dirty work of cross browser compatibility...

I don't see a standard for Web Apps on http://www1.webplatform.org/ anywhere ...

Did you take the week off? http://www1.webplatform.org/

All I see there is another "dry as bone" index of all web technologies, like there aren't enough of those on the Internet already ...

Most of Web Apps are already in the standard (appcache, indexeddb, etc.) and I know there has been some communication around manifest formats (but I'm not directly involved in that).

Generally speaking, though, the difference between one definition of "web app" and another is very small, in terms of what the platform has to support.

I'll also note the perspective that sometimes it takes a couple of implementations before the "right" solution is known. Many evolutions of the web standards have followed varying implementations being played with in the field.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Open_Web_apps_and_W...

After being a FF user for so many years (since at least there was no hype behind it among average users), I caved in to Chrome finally and completely. Moved my bookmarks (lost tagging), history and sync, all to Google.

So, that's great for you and all, but what the fuck does it have to do with the article?

> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

I would totally have said that face to face. :)

I'm the same that I'd have no problem saying that sort of thing face to face, however this doesn't change the fact that what you said wasn't civil - the face to face part is an addition, not a definition of "civil".

I know one person's opinion doesn't matter, but I owe it as my duty to tell a parting friend that I am parting ways. Given that this friend has no interest in taking people's opinions (there is no official mechanism in place to take opinions), HN is as good as any other place to make statements.

Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with the article or not? Perhaps something is lurking behind the shadow you may want to look after?

Thanks for putting some context on your content. I too was wondering what you were getting at with it. In regards to Mozilla "not listening", did you file bugs for your ideas/gripes?

No, I didn't and I wouldn't. I already mentioned, as an average user .... I don't think average users care for bugs or gripes via reports.

In any case, given that my comment is being treated like any other noise, here's a few words to make it distinguishable...for whatever it is worth and for whoever that cares.

1. Whatever the heck is happening with Tags in bookmarks? Is anyone working on adopting any standards? People don't realize but holding up your bookmarks in FF via Tags is a death trap. Chrome apparently is not willing to support the tags and you will be stuck with FF if you care deeply about Tagging your bookmarks. Besides, FF for long has stopped innovating (read developing) their Bookmarks Manager.

2. Speed: No matter what anyone says and no matter the reasons, Chrome is certainly speedier. Besides, in my example (I use only two add-on and limited number of tabs) my hard drive spins and makes noise whenever I am on FF and it is absolutely silent when I am on Chrome (please don't blame my profile for it, I use multiple profiles and I know how to clean etc).

3. Syncing on Chrome is as straightforward as it should be and they also encrypt data.

Just a few on top of my list.

How can they listen if you're not actually talking. It's like buying a product from China and then moaning in your living room there's a defect rather than actually telling them.

> 3. Syncing on Chrome is as straightforward as it should be and they also encrypt data.

Firefox Sync is also straightforward (and syncs with Firefox for Android as well) and is also encrypted.

While I was interning at Mozilla last summer, I developed this design and prototype for a new bookmarks manager: https://github.com/cleercode/mozaic Also worked a bit on Panorama.

Unfortunately, didn't really get any momentum (mainly because there's just a long pipeline of things that are higher priorities), but maybe it'll go somewhere in the future. I agree that it's a weak point.

I guess I'd question what a bookmark manager is used for. The search is so good, that I only ever interface with bookmarks through the URL bar.

Is that an effort to merge bookmarks and Panorama?

>Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with the article or not?

For the simple reason that noise drowns out signal, and because every damn article mentioning Firefox brings out someone saying the same thing.

If you had in some way brought it around to this particular release, your comment would have been on topic. Maybe there's a particular feature you've finally given up waiting for. Maybe some recent change in the UI that you dislike. Whatever! Don't just post empty blather, though.

("Fuck" here is simply used as emphasis, to indicate that I am exasperated by the prevalence of such empty comments.)

"every damn article mentioning Firefox brings out someone saying the same thing."

Agree, but people making such comments are also real and they may be as exasperated as you are.

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