Firefox 26 is released
mozilla.org
mozilla.org
This is pretty cool
I tried convincing my coworkers to disable java and failed (we are not developers).
It means I can actually have a full java plugin installation and just activate the applets I know are safe!
I can have my java and eat it, but people can't make it eat me :)
If the developers at mozilla can't verify the security of the applet, how on earth would my grandmother be able to?
Note: This is not an attack against mozilla in particular, almost all vendors does this (e.g. "antivirus: wanna allow suspicious file?" or "browser: invalid certificate". These questions are asked as if everyone is a computer scientist. We developers need to start formulating these questions so they can be answered by a normal person.
Note 2: I guess it's better than doing nothing at all, since it might stop some drive-by attacks.
[1] http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/firefo...
Update: seems so http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/blog-images/australis-...
why didnt they take this chance to fix this, chromium does it>
Let's face it, the Linux version will only show the window frame if you choose to draw it: not all do (with tiling wm's it's pretty rare, even). Firefox is easy to customize, which allows every distribution to match it looks to whatever theme they use. Linux doesn't have the DE like OSX and Windows do.
\o/
arg.
Content providers weren't jumping to more double their storage costs or deal with another immature toolchain so I rather suspect we'd be where we are now: Flash got an extra couple years reprieve until everyone accepts reality and implements H.264. This is particularly true since no matter WebM's merits it was going to be worse when transcoded from the H.264 almost everyone is actually uploading.
The real fight needs to be over the next generation of codecs. If H.265 has serious competition there's a lot more reason to believe things will go differently, as they did with e.g. Opus where the open solution was also better in addition to being free.
OT: Check out http://mpv.io/. It's a forked mplayer2 with native support for libva:
mpv --hwdec=vaapi --vo=vaapi
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=806917
Gstreamer 1.0 is a work in progress.
:'(
Then again I do like that I can watch more YouTube Videos in a reasonable resolution now. Most webm transcodes are just available in low quality.
Actually, youtube as a repository of material for download works much better than youtube as a streaming site.
A little know fact that no one seems to mention about this tool is that, the name notwithstanding, it also supports many other sites besides Youtube (use --list-extractors for a full list, currently 108!)
[1] http://retinizer.mikelpr.com/ [2] http://chpwn.com/apps/maximizer.html
That said, I'd love a Firefox plugin that dumps the YT url directly to youtube-dl.
If they had more marketshare, they'd have won. The open web would have won.
Quite happy with this one. I had to develop an offline web-based application a few weeks ago and it really bugged me that I had to allow the application to use the offline cache.
I would like to enable the prompt.
I'd guess your request probably isn't very common, so you probably wouldn't get the same potential attention that you would get if you were to go to bugzilla.mozilla.org and file a bug there.
The issue is that I use stock Mozilla build (I prefer it to Iceweasel on Debian), so I just placed it in /opt, but I don't want to give write permissions to the firefox directory to my primary user (it's kind of bad security wise). Because of no write permissions, updating UI can't update the browser naturally, unless I run it as root. And manual mar + updater method isn't nice either.
Potentially there can be some better ways for updating:
1. Firefox can work with policykit and request authorization for updating (if user has it - it can ask for password). That's much better than running as root.
2. updater CLI tool can detect all the settings, channels sources and etc. from Firefox local DBs, and instead of forcing the user to manually grab some mar file, it can go and perform all that automatically. updater can be run with sudo still, but avoid all the manual steps.
Both these methods would be much neater than what I usually do now.
Running firefox not as root is a good idea, but keep in mind that if a user run an evil application, that user is utterly compromised.
Also, running a browser (or anything as complex as a GUI app, but especially anything as wildly complex as a browser) as root is probably a bad idea security-wise anyway.
Yes, that's why using mar + updater is probably the only "right" option, but it's way too manual. I even thought about writing some script which would extract http sources for mar file based on the current update channel but didn't figure out yet where it's configured.
It lets you put multiple versions of the same program in /opt or anywhere else (say, /opt/firefox/25, /opt/firefox/26, etc) and config one of them to be the system version (soft links all the bins and man into /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/share/man, etc), then swap between versions, rollback if there's a problem, etc as necessary with a single command: `update-alternatives --config firefox`.
It works very similarly to those Ruby version managers, RVM and RBENV, by holding multiple versions somewhere out of the way and soft-linking the chosen one into the system folders. So similar in fact, that the Debian repo RBENV package has been rewritten to use Debian Alternatives instead of its home-brewed linker code.
Takes some upfront setup but that's scriptable and reusable for all subsequent versions [2], and is well worth it, especially for programs where you don't want to use the Debian repo version, don't want to install a 3rd party .deb, and don't want to compile directly to your system folders.
[1]: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianAlternatives
[2]: https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/tree/master/install/h..., https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/tree/master/install/j..., https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/tree/master/install/s...
Debian uses the 'ESR' versions (long-term support, for enterprises etc) of firefox as it's stock browser, as it's impractical to review the latest and greatest every few weeks for security. The above link gives you the appropriate lines to add to your apt sources.list to get whichever version you like for whichever flavour you're running.
This gives you Iceweasel though, not Firefox, however the only difference is the branding.
Why do people use Firefox? Most users claim extensions. What breaks extensions? Frequent updates. Effectively annulling the most compelling reason to use Firefox.
This is certainly my experience. Pentadactyl, the most compelling reason for me personally to keep using Firefox is more broken than not. Every single update in the last year has broken it and sometimes in non-trivial ways, and stretching my patience to the limit. If I have to abandon Pentadactyl, I really don't have a reason to use Firefox anymore.
UI changes proposed in Australis are not something to look forward to either esp. if you like hiding Firefox UI elements and basically just keeping undecorated minimal window with Pentadactyl.
I switched back to Firefox because it became faster than Chrome (from my user experience, I don't know about tests and whatnot)
Many of these updates are helping them stay fast and haven't resulted in any bloat (yet), so at least from my perspective, great!
In my mind, the quicker iteration on features and improved code quality that came from rapid releases is well worth breaking a year-old addon, especially one as invasive into the browser as Vimperator.
Addons written with the Add-on SDK (aka Jetpack) are also much more stable across versions, though they're not the browser-transforming beasts that Vimperator is.
I don't really like web browsers as a platform, but I don't think restricting the pace that new features are released is productive.
Haven't had any of my 15 extensions break in 20 releases. I don't expect any breakage any time.
The reason for rapid release is that they need to get new features out to load stuff properly like google docs, yes.
The main reason to use firefox IMO is that its as fast or faster than others (and has all the features of course) AND has this: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ to tip things on it's favors.
Also, I'm using Australis and its just fine. I switch back to release sometimes and I don't really notice the difference anymore. I do prefer the australis tabs contrast.
And Site Compatibility for Firefox 26, https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/26/Site...
Of note, images with EXIF rotation data are now rotated correctly! And you can inspect :before and :after elements in the built-in inspector finally.
You can see the current status for just about everything here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344614 As you can see from reading some of the linked tickets not all of the remaining work is trivial – there are questions about the spec, compatibility with webkit, etc:
type=color: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=547004 type=number: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344616 type=date: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446510
It's oddly gratifying to see bugs that old getting fixed...
Is that related to advertisements? Would it be possible to develop a plugin or a GreaseMonkey script that would allow to play every YouTube video in HTML5 with Firefox? If yes, does it exist?
No need for Flash anymore, works on every video
1: http://s-macke.github.io/jor1k (had to edit in the link as the ':' and '-' keys don't appear to be working)
EXIF rotation and ability to use gstreamer for video are massive feature improvements that may result in slower page generation, but the returns are far more significant.
not everything has to be 'better, faster, smaller' making things generally better with _no_ regressions is difficult enough.
And you're absolutely right; the fact that there are additional features/improvements and I get to keep the same (awesome) performance from FF 25 is very impressive and laudable. I can enumerate several FOSS projects for which this sort of thing is an issue.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=css%20t...
However I'm not an expert regarding those graphs.
Chrome on the same hardware is at 80MIPS for me, so I think Firefox is doing OK here...
<video>
<source src="foo.mp4">
<source src="foo.webm">
</video>
And a smaller download than downloading the new version.
For example right now my Firefox 26 with about 20 tabs is being reported by "top" as using 2190MB VIRT and ~1030MB RES. VIRT reports the total amount of memory allocated, including memory that's shared between processes, including memory-mapped files, including virtual memory, including the loaded shared libraries, or anything that takes up address space, but address space is not real, the measure is next to useless. RES is the relevant measure, which in my case reports about 1 GB, however that's a little misleading too because it also counts memory that's shared between processes, although in my case I think 1 GB is an accurate measure. And if you're using some kind of GUI that doesn't specify exactly how it calculates memory consumption, then you can't trust what it says.
Second, free memory is unused memory. Browsers are caching stuff for example. Unused caches in memory-strained systems end up being flushed to disk. The kernel is quite efficient in flushing memory pages on disk and reloading them later when needed. That's why it's very hard to tell how much memory a process needs to be usable.
If you want to claim that some application leaks memory, then you need to look at growth. And if you want to claim that it's a memory hog, then you need to take a look at how it behaves on top of memory constrained systems.
In my experience, Firefox is very memory efficient, which is why I'm using it and not Chrome. And I'm on the beta channel now, so I've been on Firefox 26 since a week ago and it's OK.
I can confirm that Firefox regularly runs out of memory and dies on a system with a total of 1G of ram and 512M data segment limit.
I leave gmail and lots of other tabs open all the time.
(Mostly I suspect they are better able to find the leaks on Windows, no idea why that would be)
I use OSX's Activity Monitor to see the mem usage.
I was trying to do this for ages using plug-ins, nothing works- was told to run nightly- but I need this browser.
can't wait until it makes it's way into repo's :D
Firefox 26 hangs at start up. CPU stuck at 100%. Almost 1 GB of ram used with 1 tab open (I can't even open a new one).
What happened, Mozilla?
I'm giving up with this browser.
(if you can)
1. Have you tried troubleshooting Firefox via Safe Mode? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-is...
2. If troubleshooting via #1 doesn't help, consider using the Profile Manager[1] to create a new, blank profile and see if your problems reproduce there.
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Profile_Manager
1. I used to be in love with Firefox. So much.
2. A few web searches turn up tons of other problems [1], maybe mine also. Maybe not.
3. At this point, this is not just a one shot problem to sort out. This is something mining my daily productivity.
Then again I tend to load multi-hundred page PDFs.
1. is really slow, especially for long documents or ones containing large images (so, e.g., for lengthy scanned documents it's frequently just unusable);
2. renders less nicely, scanned text again being particularly awful;
3. on at least one machine I have, prints documents very badly (text comes out all fuzzy, as if the anti-aliasing is messed up somehow);
4. it has no facing-pages view.
I keep using it because (a) it's the default and I'm lazy and (b) in principle I like the idea of supporting a completely free PDF viewer. But compared even with Adobe Reader (still more something like Sumatra or Foxit) the experience is grossly inferior far too often.
> Russian bisexual activist Irina Putilova is released from detention and taken off fast-track asylum list
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/12/10/godzilla-trailer-i...
Headline 'Godzilla' Trailer Is Released
There are very many other examples of native English speakers using released like these two examples.
"X is released" is the most common way I've seen native speakers write it, though there is a common trend on the internet in the last few years (which may be largely driven by non-native speakers) to reverse the usual role of subject and object of the verb "release" and say "X releases".
"X has been released" is, AFAICT, far less common than even the new "X releases" construction.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=is+released%2C...
Hey, "is released" is more common than "has been released"!
Version numbers don't have to mean something. They're just numbers, after all.
I think it's partly security-through-psychology; if Joe User's installation quickly winds up three versions behind, he'll be more motivated to update or to allow an update.
time based: Ubuntu 12.04
increment the major number: Chrome 31
increment the minor number, never or rarely changing the major numbers: Linux 2.6.39
None of these solutions work well.
[1]: http://semver.org/
Major releases break the API, so programs that depend upon them may not work. Minor releases add or improve features while preserving existing functionality. Patches fix bugs.
This is exactly why having version numbers is important. Even if the number becomes arbitrary, it's existence is necessary to build dependency trees.
Aside: I'm not certain, but it seem as though Firefox does have a major.minor version scheme: my user-agent reads "Mozilla/5.0 ... Firefox/25.0"; Firefox 5.25 is probably the most correct.
Firefox 3.6: Let's see what's new!
Firefox 4: oooh pretty UI (at least that's what most thought)
Firefox 26: sigh another one?
I think only every 10 versions should be news. Since they moved to this useless release cycle (basically replacing bugfix releases with major releases), we should shift our news upvoting from major releases to major-major releases (i.e. treat the decimal sign as if it were 2.6x instead of 26.x).
Numbers aren't intrinsically important – what would be really nice is saving the announcements for specific features of note.
True, so yeah I stand corrected about that. Now, can we tell Mozilla this and get off this ridicul^H^H^Hrapid release cycle?
Still, I don't see the difference between 1.0/1.01/1.02 and 1.0/2.0/3.0 -- it's still "3 versions". I say version numbers are bullshit, codenames doubly so.. just make it the release date or build number and be done with it. Automate it, and let no human ever think about it again. It's just an identifier for a specific changelog entry after all, and has no meaning by itself.
Version numbers are still useful as literal milestones (well, allmost... it would be 6-weeks-stones, but no such thing exists).