Firefox 67.0 Released

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/67.0/releasenotes/

by Spydar007 • 7 years ago

528 255 7 years ago

qxcbr• 7 years ago

Suspending unused tabs

Didn't they already do that? I remember receiving a spinner whenever I changed between tabs very often since they introduced that multi-process thing.

More power to you with every update

*Except when we decide to remotely execute code on your computer using Studies/Normandy/whatever

johnchristopher• 7 years ago

Didn't they already do that? I remember receiving a spinner whenever I changed between tabs very often since they introduced that multi-process thing.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

It seems to be something different than discarded tabs.

sp3322• 7 years ago

The spinner is not for discarded tabs. That's when the main window is trying to connect to a different back-end process than the one you were using for the previous tab.

whyagaindavid• 7 years ago

if anyone from mozilla is reading hn, the link on the pop-up box 'Get the Lockbox app' go to 'apple appstore' even if I click on the Google Play icon.

callahad13• 7 years ago

Thanks for the heads up! We'll get that fixed.

darkpuma2• 7 years ago

"Suspending unused tabs"

I'm curious to see how aggressive this is. If it's good enough to render my tab suspender extension obsolete, that'd be fantastic.

revskill• 7 years ago

On Chrome, i use the Great Suspender which does the trick.

It's the ONLY extension that i keep there.

Great to see it's built-in Firefox.

chupasaurus• 7 years ago

I'm curious to see how aggressive this is.

It's in the config parameter's name: browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory. Boolean, works only on Windows for now.

skykooler2• 7 years ago

Ah man. Hope this makes it to Linux and especially OSX soon!

tilolebo• 7 years ago

Any idea when Linux will be supported?

I'm using the Auto Tab Discard extension for now, but having a native way to handle this for Linux users would be great.

corobo• 7 years ago

Somewhat eerie.. I recently installed a tab suspender because a tab crashed or lagged out so I killed its process

This version of Firefox is obviously because of me :P

helb• 7 years ago

Firefox will now detect if your computer’s memory is running low, which we define as lower than 400MB, and suspend unused tabs that you haven’t used or looked at in a while.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/05/21/latest-firefox-rele...

asark• 7 years ago

This really needs to be an OS-level toolkit thing, like on iOS. It's nutty to have applications inspecting system memory use to figure out if they should take pressure off. Ideally I'd be able to suspend entire desktop sessions and all the applications in them, then open a new, clean one, then go back to the old one later. Task-based (work, vacation planning, book research, et c.) GUI session suspend/resume is my #1 most-wished-for feature for a desktop OS but it needs that basic app-suspension support, integrated by the app makers themselves, to work.

gerbilly2• 7 years ago

I tried to see if letterboxing was enabled, but it didn't seem to make a difference.¹

Does anyone know whether they included this feature, and if so how to enable it?

1: https://browserleaks.com/javascript still detects my window size down to the pixel.

mbrubeck3• 7 years ago

Set the "privacy.resistFingerprinting" pref to "true"

gerbilly2• 7 years ago

I had that setting set to true since before the update.

Every site that mentions letterboxing claims this is the setting to use to enable it.

However, unless I misunderstand, it does not seem to enable it.

johnp_• 7 years ago

`privacy.resistFingerprinting.letterboxing` is currently a separate setting since it's still rough around the edges. Not sure if it works on Release, I have it set on Nightly.

arusahni• 7 years ago

Congrats to Mozilla on shipping WebRender[1]! Just Nvidia on Windows for now, but I'm looking forward to the restrictions being relaxed - the perf improvements have been significant on my end.

1: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-f...

yash1th• 7 years ago

related hackernews discussion

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19969216

hiccuphippo• 7 years ago

You can enable it manually with the following:

To turn on WebRender, go to about:config, enable the gfx.webrender.all pref, and restart the browser.

vbuwivbiu• 7 years ago

if you enable it & restart on another platform will it work ? how would you confirm it's working ?

backpackway• 7 years ago

Save passwords in private browsing mode

While this might be handy when visiting your favorite paid porn site, isn't this counter-intuitive? When I am in private mode, I expect nothing to be saved.

mbrubeck3• 7 years ago

In both private and not-private windows, the browser asks the user whether to save each password. Nothing is saved unless you explicitly click the Save button.

pbhjpbhj2• 7 years ago

Ok, but I think the parent is wondering in what situation you'd want to store in the browser details of a site you'd visited, but still use private mode to "hide" that you'd visited?

What data does the password use retain? IIRC password store retains the "time first used, time last used" and displays that visibly.

In short what's the use-case or user story that fits this feature?

yitchelle• 7 years ago

Are the passwords from private and non-private browsing mixed, or are they isolated from each other?

vanderZwan2• 7 years ago

And are the private ones stored in a way that can't be easily viewed, unlike the non-private ones?

neogodless• 7 years ago

Yeah - I still think it's crazy that when using (mobile) Chrome, if you poke around in bookmarks, it will remember what folder you were in. So there's some hint of where you've been if someone else would then go to use Chrome bookmarks.

You might argue that if you really want private browsing, don't use bookmarks, but I feel that's a weak argument.

lugg• 7 years ago

Sounds like we need a guest mode where nothing saves but add-ons work and a privacy mode where things are privacy driven and only certain add-ons work.

pavon2• 7 years ago

In addition to using private mode for visiting sites that I don't want saved in my history, I also use it as a poor mans sandbox for visiting sensitive sites (like my bank), to avoid potential cross-site-scripting attacks while visiting those sites. For this use-case, saving passwords is very useful. In fact, my biggest complaint with private mode in Firefox is that my preferred password manager plugin (bitwarden) doesn't work in private mode.

vmarsy• 7 years ago

Why not use Firefox multi account containers[1] for this use case? Having one banking container or even one per bank would have the same effect, without the annoyances of private mode?

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

c0vfefe2• 7 years ago

Give the Privacy Badger extension a try.

zimbatm• 7 years ago

Firefox 67 also the first browser that ships with `prefers-color-scheme` (aka dark mode) after Safari.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...

And it does the right thing and disables the feature when enabling the resist fingerprinting option.

I did a small survey and only very few websites have developed a second dark theme: https://zimbatm.com/DarkMode

megous3• 7 years ago

BTW, cheap-ass dark mode can be made by:

  filter: invert(95%) hue-rotate(190deg)

on <body> and perhaps fiddling with some backgrounds, to avoid transparency.

Crosseye_Jack2• 7 years ago

As someone who codes dark mode first thanks for the lazy “OMG, my eyes...” mode ;-)

Breadmaker• 7 years ago

Color Bookmarklets https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/color.html

escapecharacter• 7 years ago

I'm curious, why 190deg and not 180deg ?

czechdeveloper• 7 years ago

Interestingly this works only if you have background color explicitly set. Otherwise you still get light background.

droobles• 7 years ago

nice.

chias• 7 years ago

This has amusing effects on avatar images / pictures of faces. I wasn't quite mentally prepared for what I looked like with non-inverted colors but light shadows and dark highlights.

Edit: This is my dog: https://i.imgur.com/1ECupVA.png

ncmncm12• 7 years ago

Dark mode, for the first time ever, has legitimate, objective reasons to want, now that we have pure LED displays: a black LED pixel consumes no energy.

copperx• 7 years ago

You must mean OLED. And no, there are almost no desktop OLED monitors in the wild.

noisem4ker3• 7 years ago

That was also the case with CRT displays. If a pixel is to stay black, no electron must be emitted to light up its phosphor.

This Google search frontend has been around long enough to claim it helped save considerable amount of energy on that principle:

http://www.blackle.com/about/

What they report about LEDs and CCFL isn't entirely correct, however. It may become in the future.

Technicalities aside, what once could be regarded as an environmental measure, today is a much more practical battery saving strategy.

celrod• 7 years ago

I regularly get migraines, where "bright" lights are searingly painful to look at. When the symptoms aren't too bad, dark themes on a text editor are okay, but light themes are not.

Migraines aren't an uncommon problem.

I think that is a fairly objective reason driving the preference.

Harvey-Specter• 7 years ago

Don't most dark themes actually use dark grey rather than black? The material design dark theme guidelines [0] were posted recently and recommend dark grey as the primary surface colour.

[0] https://material.io/design/color/dark-theme.html#

arthurfm• 7 years ago

a black LED pixel consumes no energy

At last years Android Dev Summit, Google provided some interesting stats on how much power dark mode saves.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/8/18076502/google-dark-mode...

[2] https://youtu.be/N_6sPd0Jd3g

geekles• 7 years ago

The new Microsoft Edge has prefers-color-scheme as well.

saagarjha3• 7 years ago

But Chrome itself doesn't, interestingly?

toddsiegel• 7 years ago

Ahem, HN. I bet most of your dedicated users (albeit who also use FF or Safari) would benefit from this.

saagarjha3• 7 years ago

Is there a way to test a specific color scheme from the web inspector instead of having to change the system appearance?

callahad13• 7 years ago

I'd expect controls for this to improve in the future (e.g., https://bugzil.la/1547818), but for now you can use this add-on to force a dark scheme: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/dark-mode-website-s...

Or, in about:config, set the hidden ui.systemUsesDarkTheme to 0 for light, 1 for dark, and 2 for no preference

saagarjha3• 7 years ago

Interestingly that page doesn't support prefers-color-scheme itself ;)

buildzr2• 7 years ago

I did a small survey and only very few websites have developed a second dark theme: https://zimbatm.com/DarkMode

Add YouTube to this list, it's got a pretty good dark theme that can be easily enabled now.

simongr3dal• 7 years ago

They have a dark mode but it’s activated with a toggle in the interface, and not with the prefers-color-scheme media query.

bhauer• 7 years ago

I put one together for TFB [1] a little while ago and used the prefers-color-scheme media feature in anticipation of it being supported more broadly. I'm super happy to see that added to Firefox.

[1] https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/

rugk• 7 years ago

Yeah, prefers-color-scheme is a really nice thing!

I have even also made an add-on for Firefox that you can use to toggle that dark mode directly in your browser (not only at OS level): https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/dark-mode-website-s...

nerdponx• 7 years ago

I'll be interested to see all the clever ways this will be used to fingerprint users and browsers.

alanh• 7 years ago

Psst: Night Eye is a browser extension that has really, deeply impressed me by managing to give almost every website and web app a good-enough 'night mode,' surpassing all the quick-hack filter() solutions and more common extensions like Darken. https://nighteye.app/

modzu2• 7 years ago

reviews for that look harsh. its limited to 5 sites?? another alternative is (shameless plug) this one:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/night-light-m...

its open source :)

lostmsu• 7 years ago

I am using Dark Reader extension. It is available for both Firefox and Chrome. Has advanced settings, like grayscale, contrast, etc.

blitmap2• 7 years ago

It's frustrating to me that browsers lend themselves so willingly to being fingerprinted, and it's up to the user to stay aware of and keep ahead of these new avenues.

I wish there were 4 modes:

- Standard/light mode

- Dark mode (website has facilities to test for this and style accordingly)

- Dark mode with fake or unknown values advertised to the website

- Dark mode with a user-custom filter applied (like below) that the website cannot test for (it sees untransformed computed styles)

filter: invert(95%) hue-rotate(190deg)

noisem4ker3• 7 years ago

It's frustrating that we've come to a point where websites can track users by knowing how they set up their browser to render pages. Such information should have no way nor reason to ever be transmitted back from the client to the server in the first place.

hd4• 7 years ago

WebRender is gradually enabled by default on Windows 10 desktops with NVIDIA graphics cards

Does this mean Webrender in Stable can now be force-enabled for non-Nvidia graphics cards on Windows 10? The language is a little unclear. AFAIK Webrender is available to anyone using Nightly by force enabling it.

ncmncm12• 7 years ago

It would be better if they offered a way to really turn it off. Firefox has got very crashy in environments that have no access to a GPU.

e1ven• 7 years ago

Could you set set gfx.webrender.enabled to false?

cbrewster• 7 years ago

Currently it will only be enabled on Windows machines with Nvidia GPUs. So this shouldn't be an issue for environments with no access to a GPU.

jamienicol• 7 years ago

gfx.webrender.force-disabled=true should do the trick.

Though we shouldn't be attempting to switch it on without a GPU, if you could file a bug that would be great.

jdlyga• 7 years ago

I've tried to switch to Firefox, but I keep running into rendering engine issues with certain sites. It's like it's 2005 again.

fghtr• 7 years ago

Which sites?

Wowfunhappy• 7 years ago

Can't say I've had this problem...

acdha• 7 years ago

Which sites? They actively pursue compatibility issues but it's pretty rare to see non-Google sites which only work in Chrome.

cweagans• 7 years ago

coda.io goes out of their way to only work in Chrome for some strange reason

Silhouette• 7 years ago

it's pretty rare to see non-Google sites which only work in Chrome.

Unfortunately that hasn't been my experience in recent months. A noticeable number of random sites I come across, sometimes including quite important ones, Just Don't Work in Firefox.

Is there a quick way to send a link to such sites/pages, if someone at Mozilla is interested in investigating why?

I think it's important to note that this behaviour isn't necessarily due to anything wrong with Firefox. It could simply be because Firefox is better at blocking unwanted content than certain other browsers and that feature is working as intended, but the kinds of sites that rely on hostile content also tend to break if those scripts are forcibly blocked by the browser.

cesarb• 7 years ago

Change to extensions in Private Windows: Any new extensions you add to the browser won’t work in Private Windows unless you allow this in the settings.

Does this mean that adblocking (and other safety-related) extensions will suddenly stop working on private windows, unless the user knows it has to go to the settings and enable them again?

octosphere3• 7 years ago

Does this mean that adblocking (and other safety-related) extensions will suddenly stop working on private windows, unless the user knows it has to go to the settings and enable them again?

Looks like it, although if you don't know how to configure your extensions, then why even use them in the first place?

Chrome has been doing this for a while now. You have to check the 'Allow in incognito' button for the extension to work in private mode.

bepvte• 7 years ago

Previously installed extensions before this update will not be disabled automatically, only new ones

jplayer01• 7 years ago

Looks like it, although if you don't know how to configure your extensions, then why even use them in the first place?

Because uBlock Origins et al. are incredibly useful for your average internet user who know fuck all about configuring extensions but benefit far more from it? What is this unnecessary elitism?

Sane defaults are really important for people who don't know anything about the internet, much less privacy or security (see any number of examples of ad networks delivering malware). Adblocking not working in private mode isn't a sane default. The vast majority of people have no idea what any of this means or how to do any of this. Doesn't mean they're any less deserving of protection.

cbsks• 7 years ago

No. The extensions that are already installed will still work in private windows. It’s only newly installed extensions that are disabled in private windows by default

Grue3• 7 years ago

That still doesn't solve a problem of a user installing the browser for the first time, installing adblock, then going to a porn site in private mode and getting a faceful of malware-ridden ads. Who thought this is a good idea?

jobigoud• 7 years ago

I'm interested in the rationale behind this default. What about extensions make them a possibly bad fit for incognito mode?

DCoder2• 7 years ago

The fact that they can still hoover up your browsing data the same way as in normal mode.

Google Chrome has defaulted to disabling extensions in incognito mode as long as I can remember:

Allow in incognito [ ]
Warning: Google Chrome cannot prevent extensions from recording your browsing history. To disable this extension in incognito mode, unselect this option.

octosphere3• 7 years ago

It probably has something to do with (some) extensions not being very privacy friendly. Some extensions spy on the user in return for the utility the extension provides (remember the Stylish addon fiasco recently?). I'm not certain of the reasoning behind the decision. Also: it's possible to enumerate/detect what addons are installed in a browser with javascript (and thus fingerprint the user), although I think that bug was patched in Firefox and Chrome.

rasjani• 7 years ago

What addons are installed is one criteria of bowser fingerprinting.

ncmncm12• 7 years ago

Running Firefox under Qubes has become increasingly frustrating, as tabs crash whenever (apparently?) they try to use WebGL, or anything that depends on access to a GPU. More and more, Firefox seems to depend on GPU access (or something?) and fails hard when it's not there.

javagram• 7 years ago

Isn’t it possible to disable gpu in about:config?

ncmncm12• 7 years ago

about:config certainly has lots of settings to turn off, but I manifestly have not found enough of them, if indeed any number is enough.

testvox• 7 years ago

Yeah I had to disable gpu acceleration on Firefox in parallels. Otherwise it rendered black boxes for elements with certain styles.

driverdan• 7 years ago

That sounds like a Parallels / driver problem, not a Firefox problem.

ncmncm12• 7 years ago

I would love, love, love to see black boxes instead of crashes.

riskable• 7 years ago

To be fair, that sounds like a bug in the graphics driver or OpenGL ICD/libraries. GPUs are a bit special in that they have the power to hose your entire running OS (force a reboot due to a hard hang) no matter what OS you're running. It's just the nature of GPUs and how their drivers work... With direct access to memory and allowing user space applications access to their hardware features.

In other words: Probably not Firefox's fault. The Firefox devs probably started adding support for accelerating more stuff via the GPU via OpenGL calls and if your driver has issues with any of those calls (e.g. bad application auto-detection) it can cause things to crash or have undefined behavior.

Not much the Firefox devs can do about it but report the bug anyway. At the very least they might be able to figure a workaround.

callahad13• 7 years ago

if your driver has issues with any of those calls (e.g. bad application auto-detection) it can cause things to crash or have undefined behavior.

If I understand it correctly, that's one of the perks of WebRender: by using the GPU more like a game engine would, we're relying on code paths that tend to be better tested / more reliable.

akavel• 7 years ago

"Enable FIDO U2F API, and permit registrations for Google Accounts"

Oh! Didn't expect that! Does this mean YubiKeys will now be working in GMail on Firefox?

Together with all the other stuff, this starts to look like a really important and major release of Firefox.

lholden• 7 years ago

Yep, though technically one could enable this before now by tweaking the about:config security.webauth.u2f setting. (Which is something I've been having to do for a while now).

As a side note... the way Google handles U2F is somewhat out of spec. For example, you haven't been able to register a u2f device with Firefox on google. I wonder if that's been worked around with this release? That would be great!

Otherwise, u2f has worked perfect with sites like GitLab and GitHub for example.

phillc733• 7 years ago

about:config security.webauth.u2f

I still have this set to Value: "false" in Firefox 66.0.5 and it's working fine for Google Accounts.

Edit: I'm pretty sure I registered by Nitrokeys with Google back in 2017 using Chrome, so I'm just referring to signing in with them.

amluto• 7 years ago

the way Google handles U2F is somewhat out of spec.

Somewhat? As I understand it, it doesn’t even pretend to be fully specified. Chrome shipped it without going through the normal intent to ship process.

geofft3• 7 years ago

Yes, that's what they worked around in this release and you can now register a U2F device with Firefox for Google Accounts. See their announcement blog post https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2019/04/04/shipping-fido-u... and the mozilla.dev.platform Intent-to-Ship post: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/q...

tl;dr (as I understand it): existing Android phones using NFC/Bluetooth U2F devices only speak the old U2F protocol, not WebAuthn, so if Google switched to WebAuthn registration, then you wouldn't be able to log into your account on Android, and they want to wait until all those Android devices die off. (Apparently it's in the part of Android that needs vendor updates, not in Google Play Services, so this reduces to the previously unsolved problem of Android OS updates on old devices.)

phillc733• 7 years ago

I have a U2F Nitrokey and noticed it's been working in Firefox 66.0.5 for the last few weeks. I thought it was just an announcement I missed. I can confirm it works signing into a Google Account.

will42742• 7 years ago

This is an anti-feature. Firefox enabled a deprecated standard because Google couldn't be bothered to move to the current standard. Classic catering to the big players.

geofft3• 7 years ago

They held off for a very long time, and I'm glad they did that. I'm also glad they switched, because the alternative is that either you don't use the most effective security option available or you stop using Firefox, both of which seem like even bigger long-term problems.

judge20202• 7 years ago

I can't find the source, but I believe they didn't upgrade to the newer standard due to some combination of existing keys and ChromeOS.

stevekemp2• 7 years ago

When I upgraded from 66.0.5 it created a new profile, rather than keeping my existing passwords/histories/extensions.

I'm not going to use firefox sync, so it seems like there will be a painful migration ahead.

callahad13• 7 years ago

We're defaulting to profile-per-install to make it easier to run different versions side-by-side, but you can still manually specify your original profile.

Docs on the profile manager are at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

...or, as a super weird hack, you can set the envvar SNAP_NAME=firefox to get the old behavior (see https://github.com/mozilla/nixpkgs-mozilla/issues/163 for context)

groovybits3• 7 years ago

Just curious, how large is the benefit of this? Does the average user run multiple versions of Firefox side-by-side?

I consider myself a power user in many things, but never have I felt the need to run different versions of my browser simultaneously.

sdfjkl• 7 years ago

Go to "about:profiles" and make your old profile ("default" by default) the default profile again, then restart Firefox.

This was indeed a fucking terrible way of doing this: "Hey, we've just hidden all your profile data from you and to get it back you need to sign up to our web service!"

acemarke• 7 years ago

It looks like that may be related to FF now creating a separate profile for every installation. That was apparently targeted for FF65 originally, then bumped to FF67:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla.dev.platform/hVeJS...

bzbarsky• 7 years ago

That's really odd. Had you used that profile with a post-67 nightly at some point or something?

Some more information about the profiles involved here would be really useful. Are you willing to file a bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ ? If you do and give me the link to it, I'll get people who know the right questions to ask involved...

stevekemp2• 7 years ago

No, I always upgrade to the latest release when I spot it, but I don't try nightlies or anything other than releases.

I take a backup of ~/.mozilla and just download the new binaries to /opt/firefox. (Well I download and update a symlink.)

markdog124• 7 years ago

We have seen great growth in the use of AV1 even in just a few months, with our latest figures showing that 11.8% of video playback in Firefox

Where are people playing AV1 videos?

YouTube released an AV1 playlist long ago, and haven't added a single video since release: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyqf6gJt7KuHBmeVzZteZ...

Besides that, I've only seen a few in the wild.

markdog124• 7 years ago

It does seem YouTube has AV1 videos, at least for lower resolutions (720p and lower)

markdog124• 7 years ago

I've even found some in 5k, although they don't play back hardly at all. Performance not there yet.

eclipseo76• 7 years ago

Youtube has more AV1 videos than that playlist. My fav Youtuber has AV1 videos in 720p and it's not a huge channel.

clarry2• 7 years ago

How do I tell if a given video playing in my browser is AV1 or something else?

radcon2• 7 years ago

I can't find much info on the fingerprint protection. Has anyone tested it thoroughly? Do we know if it's effective against current fingerprinting methods? Can we actually rely on it, or will it simply be a matter of days/weeks before websites adapt to defeat this protection?

danShumway• 7 years ago

I don't think it's sufficient yet to stop someone determined, but I do think it's a step in the right direction, particularly when combined with a VPN. I'm looking forward to the letterboxing improvements.

Anecdotally, I get a lot more captcha's when it's turned on. I regularly log in to sites and get prompts telling me I need to enter email confirmation codes. I signed up for a service recently that auto locked my account immediately on signup because of "abuse detection".

To be clear, I take those as positive signs. My rough metric is that if privacy invasive sites are mad at me, I'm probably doing something right. So that's certainly not hard proof that it's effective, but it's at least circumstantial evidence that websites that I know fingerprint me get irritated when I turn it on.

radcon2• 7 years ago

I agree, those are good signs.

If these fingerprint protection tools are effective, my main fear is that websites will simply say "Disable your fingerprint protection if you want to proceed", much like many sites currently do with ad blockers. Or if they don't spell it out in plain English, they'll make you jump through so many hoops that you'll switch it off just to end the suffering.

Trying to interact with any major website using the TOR browser has been a complete nightmare. If you aren't blocked outright, you face CAPTCHAs at every turn.

bengerbil• 7 years ago

My favourite side-effect of fingerprinting protection is that local timezone is hidden, so that web consoles at work run in the one true timezone.

jwang2019• 7 years ago

Firefox 67.0 does run faster and consume less RAM compared to previous versions.

skykooler2• 7 years ago

New streamlined worker debugging in the JavaScript Debugger with the new Threads panel.

This is great news!

Aaargh20318• 7 years ago

Does this release include javascript MDS mitigations ?

mccr8• 7 years ago

Yes, though they were only necessary on OS X.

ianopolous• 7 years ago

It would be super awesome if Firefox can implement writable streams:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1474543

vanderZwan2• 7 years ago

That means that one of the most obscure performance regression bugs I've ever found in Firefox is also fixed: property lookups on numbers being slower for values recognized and optimized as integers by the JavaScript engine than for regular doubles.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1523633

mtgx• 7 years ago

It includes the Facebook container, but not the Google container?

sp3322• 7 years ago

Where is that mentioned?

kpremote2• 7 years ago

Apologize if this is not the right place to ask for help.

Two days ago when I began to develop a web site backend, a strange thing happened. Visiting "mydomainname.com" in Firefox v66 gave me back error message saying site not found, but visiting "mydomainname.com/index.html" (or index.php) would be fine, the content of that page was returned.

After one hour struggle, I used another browser (and my phone) to open "mydomainname.com", and it worked fine! It returned the index.html page. So it's not the issue of the default file setup.

Did I miss something obvious? I felt stupid. I am now using Chrome but I would like to come back to Firefox. Thanks for any help.

cpeterso• 7 years ago

Does the error happen in a Private Browsing window? Maybe Firefox cached some "site not found" result it shouldn't have? This sounds more like a server configuration issue than a Firefox bug.

kpremote2• 7 years ago

__Edit: I installed the lastest Firefox v67, the problem is gone. It works great.__

Thanks. no it's not in a private browsing window.

I also asked other people to visit the site(mydomainname.com) from their computers and phones, all worked fine.

The hour long struggle left me with painful memories. :) I never had issue like this previously in Firefox or other browsers. On that day, Chrome and IE worked without problem on my computer (Win 7 32bit), so the computer should not be the culprit.

That leaves Firefox v66 standing. I don't know why.

pcunite2• 7 years ago

Under about:preferences#general, I can't disable checking for updates? Is there a way to do this under about:config?

svnpenn2• 7 years ago

Its a known issue (for 13 years)

https://superuser.com/questions/1432983/-/1432993

pcunite2• 7 years ago

This feature has changed from the last version I was using (62.02). The option "Never check for updates" is now missing.

classics2• 7 years ago

Is RSS still too hard for Firefox?

OrgNet2• 7 years ago

Users will no longer be able to upload and share screenshots through the Firefox Screenshots server.

I kinda liked that feature, hopefully they replace it with another cloud provider for when you need to take a screenshot for sharing

nklops• 7 years ago

Still no improvement on macOS. Don't know why don't they make it a priority as I have to use Chrome (Safari is missing some stuff that I need).

windsignaling• 7 years ago

Ha, it's becoming my routine now whenever Firefox is announced on HN to search for "mac" in the comments. Waiting for that day when someone finally says something different.

I really want to stop using Chrome, but unfortunately Firefox just doesn't work as well.

redsparrow• 7 years ago

I'm the same but using Vivaldi while I wait...

roryokane2• 7 years ago

What do you mean “no improvement on macOS”? Most of the new features listed in these release notes could be considered improvements, and I assume that the macOS version of Firefox 67 has all those features, the same as on other platforms.

I think you had in mind a specific aspect of Firefox that you wished would be improved, but you forgot to explain what that feature was. What is the missing feature that leads you to use Chrome?

aeonsky• 7 years ago

I think its obvious he's talking about the fact that Firefox is unusable on MacOS (on scaled resolutions). And it seems Mozilla has no ability to fix this for a large portion of their potential clientele.

darkhorn• 7 years ago

https://webauthn.io Fingerprint reader works with Microsoft Edge but it doesn't work with Firefox.

bscphil3• 7 years ago

Firefox 67 should be the first version to fix permissions request spam: where tons of websites request your location (common enough that it's become a meme) or for permission to send you notifications.

Before Firefox 67, if you choose to hide these notifications by default, there's no way to change this later for individual sites without (a) knowing the site needs this information, and (b) going to Firefox's preferences menu to add an exception.

Now, a small icon will appear next to the lock icon when Firefox automatically denies a permissions request. You can click that icon and grant the request. This means that permissions are now easily configurable without those spammy popups appearing on so many websites!

I liked this feature so much I actually backported it to Firefox 66, and I can say it's an amazing quality improvement.

tomcatfish• 7 years ago

I'd like a way to manually enable a plug-in for a specific site. I have sites that won't request flash that require it, and it's a pain to turn flash to allow all to view the site and then turn it back off.

If this setting exists and I'm missing it, someone please tell me.

bscphil3• 7 years ago

Can't you right click on the site, click "View Page Info", go to permissions, and give the site the permission to run Adobe Flash?

I'm assuming this setting still works, but I kind of doubt there are too many people who install and test it these days. I don't think I've encountered a site that requires flash in years.

bscphil3• 7 years ago

Additional information: I've found that it requires the following key in about:config to be set to true.

    permissions.desktop-notification.postPrompt.enabled

A good site for testing this (requires javascript): https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html

sridca• 7 years ago

Is there a reason why I should switch to Firefox if I already trust Google to act in good faith?

fourier_mode• 7 years ago

https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/19/google-pulls-android-sup...

roryokane2• 7 years ago

Only Firefox supports extensions that provide an alternative interface to the tab bar. Alternative interfaces such as vertical tabs or tree tabs are very useful if you have many tabs open in a single window. Examples of these extensions:

• Tab Center Reborn – https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/tabcenter-reborn...

• Tree Style Tab – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

• Tree Tabs – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/

m463• 7 years ago

Does anyone know how to turn off "Extract Canvas Data" by default?

Ayesh• 7 years ago

I use Firefox's password manager, and their new LockWise extension gives a fresh breath to password management. Nice work!

jeremiahlee• 7 years ago

Have you ever wanted to reset a HTML element’s style, as if it no styling had been applied? That’s what the `revert` CSS keyword does and you can now use it in Firefox 67. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/revert

Firefox 67.0 Released

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