Firefox 96

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes/

by NiekvdMaas • 5 years ago

508 368 5 years ago

marcodiego• 5 years ago

Not the first time I say this but I have to say it again: Firefox: the last remaining mostly independent, maintained and reasonably popular browser.

Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd still use it for the above mentioned reasons.

thesuitonym• 5 years ago

Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd still use it for the above mentioned reasons.

I agree with you, but luckily, it's not inferior!

egeozcan• 5 years ago

I hope I will never have to use Chrome again and I love Firefox but sometimes it's a PITA.

It surely isn't generally "inferior" but let's say it has character.

I always thought it just needs a bit more attention, and I'm willing to donate, but I don't trust Mozilla for routing what we give towards Firefox development.

rei_ayanami3• 5 years ago

Well it crashes my computer like 3 times a day on Linux, I now know its because of hardware acceleration, but I don't expect average users to keep using Firefox. I'm just getting tired of all the things that is happening to Firefox. Although I've been using it for the past 10 years, I might have to look for alternatives.

tester34• 5 years ago

idk

Google Maps performance seems to be way worse

I do wonder how's the WASM performance

ape4• 5 years ago

The developer section (or whatever its called, F12) is the best

mulmen3• 5 years ago

Mozilla is working as hard as they can to regress though!

I haven’t been excited for a browser upgrade in years. I see these announcements and I know I’ll lose time re-learning something or just missing old functionality that has been removed.

The Mozilla of 2022 is very much only the least evil option.

Ostrogodsky2• 5 years ago

I love Firefox over Chrome in almost every single aspect....except, I cannot shake the feel it still leaks memory like crazy. Open several tabs, then a couple of youtube tabs (you know how people are), eventually the machine is slow as molasses, you close 50% of the tabs (including the youtube ones) and you get back like 10% of the memory, so you need to restart the browser. That gets old, fast.

jl6• 5 years ago

I agree, but when you say last remaining, were there ever any other contenders in the “mostly independent, maintained and reasonably popular” category?

Konqueror (ancestor of WebKit) is the closest I can think of.

jfk132• 5 years ago

There was Opera, before it moved to the Blink world. Whether it was popular enough to count, I don't know.

chriswarbo• 5 years ago

Perhaps Opera, before it became another Chrome wrapper?

I still have a soft spot for Netsurf, Dillo, w3m and Lynx :)

ognarb• 5 years ago

Konqueror now use QtWebEngine by default but iirc correctly can still be used with QtWebKit and KHtml/Kjs. But the both are deprecated and will be dead in Qt6/KDE Framework 6.

It's just not sustainable for a small open source community to build an open source browser engine.

micromacrofoot• 5 years ago

Same here. Firefox and Mozilla aren't perfect (Firefox is fantastic), but I'm not going to give in to the Chrome dominance.

causality03• 5 years ago

You know, there used to be good things about Firefox *other* than them not being run by Google or based on Chrome. That's been a while though.

the_duke• 5 years ago

On Linux + Wayland Firefox very notably has the best performance for me ( except certain very JS heavy/Chrome optimized sites)

asabla• 5 years ago

Kind of, their multi-account stuff is truly a game changer in my day to day workflows. I just wish handling profiles were a bit better

wongarsu• 5 years ago

All browsers have gotten kind of sameish. I don't feel much difference between Edge, Chrome and Firefox (on Windows). A couple minor differences like Edge having native vertical tabs, where I have to go to a more powerful but less performant and less stable extension in Firefox, or Firefox having the sync feature I trust more. But overall it feels hard to find good reasons to use one browser over another. Firefox's multi-account containers are the only major feature I could name that makes a major difference.

danShumway4• 5 years ago

Firefox's anti-fingerprinting features are being pulled up directly from Tor, if you seriously want to resist fingerprinting in your normal browsing, you use Firefox. Additionally, Firefox has the best extension support of any browser. Ublock Origin works better in Firefox than it does in Chrome, today. Firefox containers also don't really have a good equivalent in other browsers; they are an incredibly useful tool for easy separation of site data -- and containers are exposed as an API that extensions can take advantage of. That kind of easy access to privacy controls matters because privacy controls have to be simple enough to use that people can actually use them day-to-day and not just once and a while when they're doing something sensitive.

On the developer side of things, Firefox also outperforms Chrome in its CSS developer tools; I use Chrome for debugging Javascript, I usually prefer to debug CSS and prototype layout in Firefox. There are other advantages, Firefox and Chrome kind of go in different directions in what they prioritize for developers.

But the extension support is the big one. Properly configured, Firefox will be more private than any other browser, including stuff like DeGoogled Chromium, because DeGoogled Chromium is still based on Chrome and is still missing the extension APIs that Ublock Origin uses in Firefox, it's still missing the anti-fingerprinting features from Tor.

People can debate a lot of stuff (I like Firefox's resource usage but performance is subjective and user-dependent), and people get mad about Firefox defaults and decisions the company makes (sometimes legitimately, Firefox often makes bad decisions), but just as a private browser, Firefox is objectively more capable today than any other full-featured browser I've ever seen. I don't think that's just my opinion, Firefox objectively has more privacy features and better privacy APIs for extensions.

cycomanic2• 5 years ago

Not being run by google is already a _very_ good thing. That said in my experience Firefox is much faster than chrome both on Linux and Android, on top of that I find the extensions available for Firefox much better as well.

awild• 5 years ago

Have been an active Firefox user for 15+ years and not had much trouble, even running on preview builds.

gertlex• 5 years ago

For me, automatic highlight all on mouse selection in an add-on, which Chrome doesn't have, has been the biggest reason I've preferred Firefox for years now. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/highlightall/

agumonkey• 5 years ago

Same. And I still wish Mozilla the best even though I'd like less focus on branding and appearances and more on solid work. But they'll do as they can.

-- sent from firefox nightly

melling• 5 years ago

I’ve been using the Nightly for years.

Help with the testing so they build a better product.

Someone12342• 5 years ago

The only reason we cannot have a single browser engine that everyone uses is governance and ownership.

That's the key problem with Chromium, it is largely under Google's thumb. If control of Chromium could be fairly split between Apple/Google/Microsoft/Mozilla/et al within a nonprofit, with no one party having ownership or override, Firefox could be Chromium based.

The thing a lot of people ignore is that having one OSS engine that everyone uses is the most efficient way for all parties. You just have to solve governance and ownership, which aren't technical problems (they're about power).

And, yes, standards would largely be dictated via this one monopoly-engine but again if governance and ownership were healthy that too wouldn't be problematic within itself (you could even include standards orgs/committees within the structure).

User choice would largely be the add-ins, unique settings, niche features, and UI (see Chrome Vs. Edge Vs. Brave, for example).

ethbr03• 5 years ago

The failure mode of a single shared engine is extremely brittle.

What would happen if that engine decided to ignore standards bodies? (coughMicrosoftAppleGooglecough)

What would happen if a single party managed to upsurp governance and obtain de facto single party control?

Better to have 2+ options, so there's always a "What if..." life raft.

123pie123• 5 years ago

daft question, but could mozilla fork Chromium and run it more openly?

VWWHFSfQ• 5 years ago

Google tried this with WebKit. But they had to fork it to Blink because Apple is a very poor steward of open source. So that will always be the problem.

samwillis3• 5 years ago

I disagree that this would be a good idea. I think it’s important that the Standard rather than an Implementation is the source of correctness.

Also, rendering engines are so tightly tied to the underlining drawing apis of different platforms this would be impractical and stifle innovation.

Safari, for example, is more closely tied to the drawing apis in iOS and MacOS, which in turn are tuned to the hardware Apple sells. This allows it to be more energy efficient, particularly on mobile.

You could abstracts the drawing with an intermediate api, but that prevents different browsers from experiments or moving toward different drawing architectures.

mfer• 5 years ago

The only reason we cannot have a single browser engine that everyone uses is governance and ownership.

Consider the governance and ownership angle a little more.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft are LARGE companies. These companies do things that many have ethical issues with. Putting a bunch of large companies in such a point of control is something that should give people pause.

Large multi-national companies aren't democracies and their end goals are fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders. These are often super wealthy or large funds.

phendrenad2• 5 years ago

Firefox doesn't help with this though. Chromium is technically superior, thanks to all of the money Google has invested in it. Chromium is open-source and there are many popular forks (Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, ungoogled). Those forks provide a much more robust "safety net" than Firefox does. If Google starts pushing something egregious on users, I'm sure Vivaldi and Brave would jump at the opportunity to promote their forks without that problem. And have you seem the Edge ads?

kaba0• 5 years ago

If you only have a single implementation of a standard, you don’t have a standard.

sfink4• 5 years ago

Incorrect. The easiest place to see where this breaks down is in backwards compatibility.

Web browsers need to be backwards compatible with the vast majority of web pages out there. That's half the point of the Web.

If you define standards by implementation, you can never fix bugs once web sites start using them. (If you think you can just tell web sites to suck it up, consider the vast number of configuration web pages burned into ROM. And yes, they do use new features.)

The standards themselves have this problem already, even though they're at a much higher level. (See Appendix B in the JS spec, for example.) The problem is far, far worse at the lower level of implementation.

Relying on a single implementation will quickly produce the next IE6. And if you think Google programmers (or any company X's programmers) are good enough to avoid that sort of thing, then consider how well resourced those programmers will become once there's no longer competition or even a basis for comparison.

Monoculture is bad, m'kay?

(More detailed argument: https://blog.mozilla.org/sfink/2013/02/14/browser-wars-the-g... )

dblohm74• 5 years ago

Would such shared stewardship of Chromium really help, though? I don't believe that a shared governance structure for Chromium would stop Google from going their own way with Chrome, while effectively yielding the same problems.

"Oops, we added this experimental feature to Chrome, now it's be come a de facto standard, I guess you all had better let us upstream it!"

EDIT: Or even worse, they stop upstreaming anything at all!

rvz2• 5 years ago

mostly independent

Not exactly 'independent' if >85% of all revenues is directly from Google in which when that funding was threatened by them, Mozilla caved and let go most of its staff and rushed to get that contract renewed.

They can't live without the money from their worst competitor.

I don't even think Mozilla takes itself seriously to be 'independent' or free from Google's money which that was promised by the Mozilla CEO 14 years ago.

So that was complete lies from them, wasn't it? Everyone knows they don't care about privacy at this point.

sfink4• 5 years ago

Not exactly 'independent' if >85% of all revenues is directly from Google in which when that funding was threatened by them, Mozilla caved and let go most of its staff and rushed to get that contract renewed.

That's not at all what happened. Source?

They can't live without the money from their worst competitor.

Probably true. We could switch to a different search engine (again), but I'd imagine it wouldn't be pretty.

I don't even think Mozilla takes itself seriously to be 'independent' or free from Google's money which that was promised by the Mozilla CEO 14 years ago.

False. (Source: I work for Mozilla.) I won't attempt a further argument here; it doesn't seem worth the attempt. I'll just say that in my daily experience, it's very very hard to detect any "evil Google overlord influence".

So that was complete lies from them, wasn't it? Everyone knows they don't care about privacy at this point.

... I think you might be reading too much into specific complaints. I agree that you can construct a narrative out of a bunch of events that makes Mozilla look bad.

Or, you know, you could construct a different narrative.

I guess people are drawn to what they want to believe.

duxup• 5 years ago

It’s my go to personal browser.

My admittedly anecdotal experience is that I find Firefox way more performant.

lenocinor• 5 years ago

I know this is painful to say and to hear, but below 4 percent is not reasonably popular anymore. It doesn’t mean Firefox isn’t a good browser or that you shouldn’t use it. But we shouldn’t pretend it is even semi-popular anymore. (Except among geeks where I think you can reasonably say it is popular.)

cartesius13• 5 years ago

Less than 4 percent is still a lot. You need 9 digits to represent the number of users Firefox has

jjtheblunt• 5 years ago

isn't Safari also mostly independent and popular?

willfiveash• 5 years ago

I've been using Firefox for a looong time. What convinced me to choose that over any other browser is the following: A. It ran on macOS AND Solaris (which I worked on for a looong time). B. It took awhile for the feature to arrive but eventually I was able to sync my bookmarks across both platforms (this made me so happy).

At this point, even though I'm not using Solaris anymore (sniff) I'm so used to it I don't feel the need to try anything else.

freediver• 5 years ago

Firefox: the last remaining mostly independent

~90% revenue coming from its main "competitor", Google. (not sure whether to put quotes there or not, the relationship is more akin of 'sponsorship')

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-202...

maintained

over 10,000 bugs, some going as far back as 2007

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIR...

reasonably popular browser.

3.91% market share.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Firefox may be the first love for many of us, but this description is a stretch of reality. And stretching reality for the last 10 years is what may have gotten Firefox in the downward spiral it is in. Time for a wake up call maybe?

berdon4• 5 years ago

Been using Firefox as my daily for 5+ years, couldn’t be happier.

This morning various websites stopped working (really random js failures). After lots of digging around…chrome works fine… :/ Waiting on a restart which hopefully fixes things so I can delete this line.

iKevinShah• 5 years ago

Weird. This[1] only mentions "We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load." while this[2] says "No notable changes." in Javascript section.

1: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes 2: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Rel...

berdon4• 5 years ago

Nope, restart didn't fix it. Seems like most CORS requests are failing; for example on LinkedIn.

berdon4• 5 years ago

Sigh. Switching from "Strict" to "Standard" in the Firefox security settings "fixes" it. Or disabling Enhanced Protection for the individual website.

ksec• 5 years ago

We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load.

Such an important detail that deserve at least few more sentence of marketing message or explanation. But the whole release note just feels like they couldn't be bothered anymore.

leecb• 5 years ago

The improvements seem to be in which thread WebRTC does work: moving more work to workers and off the main thread.

The release notes for alpha builds (e.g. [1]) link to this bug [2] "[meta] Update libwebrtc to new stable branch 2H2020", which as a number of comments about WebRTC using the main thread as its worker thread.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0a1/releasenotes/ [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112

stelonix• 5 years ago

This has been happening for god knows how many releases now. Release notes make it seem like it's a minor version update and I'm not sure there were that many changes since they don't and haven't been caring. I will still use Firefox since it's not Chrome, but what people have been saying is true: it's a facade so google does not get sued for antitrust/monopoly.

I don't know how to fix this, but I believe sometime down the road the EU is going to sue Google and also believe Firefox is going to be forked. Can't wait for both of those things to happen.

jakub_g2• 5 years ago

Release notes are generally very concise. They are typically followed up with a detailed blog on https://hacks.mozilla.org/

elithrar• 5 years ago

and also believe Firefox is going to be forked

Out of curiosity: by whom? I don't think this is likely at this point, short of some truly benevolent benefactor pushing tens of millions of dollars per-year into a competing foundation.

None of the "alternative" browser companies today built upon Gecko or forked Firefox itself, because _it's really hard to maintain a browser engine_. Mozilla itself barely manages to keep up, and Apple sort-of-does (and can riff off work on Blink due to WebKit's shared history). This is also why Chrome & Chromium tend to drive de-facto standards (some good, some not so good) with an implementation-first approach.

Building browsers is hard. Really hard, especially as we consume more media and build richer applications on top of the web. Dedicated teams for video & audio, WebRTC, Wasm, CSS, JS itself (huge, let alone the security challenges), etc.

germandiago6• 5 years ago

Though I do not like monopolies, how did Google reach this position? Is there any kind of abuse going on? Or it is just a better product?

I say so because I think there should be alternatives, but suing just for being better does not make any sense to me, if that is the case, of course.

dblohm74• 5 years ago

You know that site isolation shipped recently, right? That was a massive, massive amount of work.

yawn• 5 years ago

If you go back and look at previous versions of release notes, many are just as terse. This definitely isn't new.

CaioAlonso• 5 years ago

I've become conditioned to react to Firefox version announcements with 'I wonder how Mozilla has screwed up the browser this time'. Either by introducing useless features or by removing options I considered useful. I hope I'm wrong this time.

sovnade2• 5 years ago

This one seems to be mostly performance related with no/few functional changes.

jimmygrapes2• 5 years ago

I usually expect some relatively insignificant but highly maligned UI adjustment, like adding an extra pixel or two of padding or bouncing back and forth between rounded and square cornered tabs. After one of the more egregious changes awhile back I modified some thing (I don't even remember what it was anymore) and it's been fine since, but I still expect something to change every time.

legofr2• 5 years ago

They had a couple big blunders with the ugly border/expansion when clicking the address bar, and "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order".. both of these things should have never been the default (or at least we should've been given the option to select a default when they were first added, similar to what they did with the new color theme support), but besides that then I can't think of anything terrible and always happy to see new updates.

I would especially love to see deeper integration with their Multi-Account Containers add-on, e.g. allow us to tell a bookmark to open in X container, or allow us to always open X container based on URL path instead of just domain name.

codethief• 5 years ago

but besides that then I can't think of anything terrible

How about stuff getting removed from the right-click / context menu, e.g. "page information" or "site information" (or whatever it used to be called in English)? How about no longer being able to remove specific (i.e. single) cookies? How about no longer being able to install arbitrary extensions?

I've been using Firefox for almost two decades now and have generally liked it a lot but GP has a point: The fact that the Mozilla devs have repeatedly removed (or at least hidden) more advanced features really is annoying.

GreenWatermelon3• 5 years ago

I'm still traumatized from the time they broke all and I mean ALL extensions. I've only gotten back ti using Firefox very recently because I have an issue where chrome keeps hibernating, and nothing short if a complete restart of my computer fixes it.

mynameismon2• 5 years ago

and "Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order".. both of these things should have never been the default

Personally, Ctrl+Tab-bing cycling through tabs in most recently used order is greatly useful. Maybe its just me, but everytime I go back to Edge or Chrome, it becomes painful to the point I have to use the mouse for moving through tabs.

zecg• 5 years ago

Is saving the webpage (as PDF or MHTML or ANY BLOODY FORMAT) on Android back? It's incredible that that functionality just disappeared a few years ago and Mozilla is apparently ignoring user feedback.

kevincox2• 5 years ago

I tried this a week or so ago and don't think it is.

INTPenis• 5 years ago

My routine is send the tab to a PC device and do it there later. I love Firefox Sync so much I think I might just host my own backend server for it some day.

BadOakOx2• 5 years ago

I would love Firefox Sync too, but a lot of times it just doesn't send the tab I wanted (I always fallback to checking what is open on my other browser).

gildas• 5 years ago

It's still possible to install SingleFile [1] on Firefox Nightly but you will need, for example, another browser to display saved pages [2].

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/single-file/

[2] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7546

Siecje• 5 years ago

I'd like to be able to open PDFs with Firefox and search the contents for a string.

4cao3• 5 years ago

Version 93 back in October added sponsored search suggestions on by default, [1] without even explicitly mentioning it in the release notes. [2] Is there going to be a similar surprise this time?

I still use Firefox as the lesser evil, and I believe there are lots of great people working on it (to whom I am thankful) but to see how the project has been run by the Mozilla Corpo-Foundation in the recent years is really disillusioning. I would love to see a change that would put a stop to the incessant stream of anti-features, while instead focusing on staying true to the original goals of the project.

1. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest

2. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/93.0/releasenotes

iqanq2• 5 years ago

If you don't like nasty surprises, I recommend that you use Firefox ESR instead:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/

(In the same vein, if you use Windows, I recommend Windows LTSC)

2143• 5 years ago

Whoa, I didn't even know there was a Windows LTSC.

4cao3• 5 years ago

Thank you for your suggestions. I've been considering what to do about my Firefox setup for some time (switching to ESR vs one of the forks, which I have to research first). Thing is, I'm using a heavily-customized profile with lots of extensions, Violentmonkey [1] userscripts, containers (including Containerise [2], and Temporary Containers [3]), and a custom user.js (based on [4]), so I should also revisit the settings for all of these at the same time as it's been a while since I last did so. It's all on my to-do list but as the current setup works well, there's always something more urgent to do instead.

1. https://violentmonkey.github.io/

2. https://github.com/kintesh/containerise

3. https://github.com/stoically/temporary-containers

4. https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js

The LTSC suggestion is also good. I'm already using a heavily-debloated LTSC with lots of unnecessary packages removed (including the hidden ones, which are not supposed to be officially removable), and all kinds of customizations for privacy, security, performance, and convenience. While I'm satisfied with my setup (automated with custom scripts I've been maintaining since Windows 8), the number of hoops one has to go through to have their computer do what the user wants and nothing else, or a "User-Agent" that gives actual agency to the user these days is truly astonishing, and makes the goal unattainable for most people.

bdcravens2• 5 years ago

The only reason Mozilla exists is due to the money they take from Google, so making compromises is built into the company's DNA.

jgtrosh• 5 years ago

Google, Yahoo, Yandex, and Baidu

computershit2• 5 years ago

Librefox is a drop in replacement without the antifeatures.

https://github.com/intika/Librefox

Edit: I meant Librewolf, not fox.

3np• 5 years ago

There's also Librewolf. Would be curious to hear on takes if anyone has looked closer on both. Main difference is that Librefox doesn't really patch or fork Firefox itself - it's "just" config and extensions, whereas Librewolf is a more classic fork (though very close to upstream).

The default browser of Garuda Linux is a rebranded Librewolf build.

https://librewolf.net/

faeyanpiraat• 5 years ago

It seems like it comes with 3 years worth of CVEs aswell.

lordofgibbons• 5 years ago

I'm always hesitant to use such patched versions because you have to trust your security to some 1 random anonymous stranger on the internet.

Also because they tend to be someone's hobby project and when they get bored of it (as we all do) you'll be left with an unpatched security nightmare. Which is exactly what happened with Librefox. Looks like it was last updated 3 years ago and is abandoned.

https://librewolf.net/ seems to be a fork, but I have the same reservations..

tosh2• 5 years ago

We’ve made significant improvements in noise-suppression and auto-gain-control as well as slight improvements in echo-cancellation to provide you with a better overall experience.

Where can I find out more about this?

coldpie6• 5 years ago

From here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0a1/releasenotes/

I found this link: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112

Which contains this comment: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1654112#c371

Which explains that the improvements came from upgrading their libwebrtc library to version 2H2020. I wasn't able to find release notes for libwebrtc itself.

tosh2• 5 years ago

wow, ty!

wodenokoto• 5 years ago

We’ve made significant improvements in noise-suppression and auto-gain-control as well as slight improvements in echo-cancellation to provide you with a better overall experience.

What does that even mean?

sudosysgen3• 5 years ago

Better audio in calls using the browser, seems pretty clear to me.

Nextgrid12• 5 years ago

I was not aware that this is something the browser would do.

jwatt2• 5 years ago

These could be useful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_noise_control

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_gain_control

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_suppression_and_cancellat...

swills2• 5 years ago

Wow, didn't know it did this. I'm doing my own audio processing before it gets to the browser, so this is actively harmful. This bit:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox/Tweaks#Disable_WebR...

proved helpful. Wish I'd known sooner.

Nextgrid12• 5 years ago

Still no built-in uBlock Origin (or equivalent in-house implementation compatible with uBlock-style lists) in a browser by a company that claims to care about privacy.

brink2• 5 years ago

That's the kind of thing you don't want to be "in-housed" because then you end up being stuck with in-house politics. Install your choice of ad-blocking extension and be thankful you have a choice.

Nextgrid12• 5 years ago

It's kind of like releasing an operating system without the concept of user accounts (everything running as root) in 2022 and defending the choice by saying that you can install third-party extensions.

No, in 2022 a browser without uBlock Origin or equivalent enabled by default should be considered defective and a security vulnerability.

wtallis• 5 years ago

The blocking capability should absolutely be in-house, with only the filter rule sets outsourced.

neilsimp1• 5 years ago

At least it's still an option to install it though. Even on mobile.

kevincox2• 5 years ago

We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load.

Does anyone know the technical details here?

Croftengea2• 5 years ago

I switched to Waterfox a few months ago after infamous Proton redesign. I love Firefox in principle but hate UI redesigns for the sake of "fresh" look without improvements in usability.

Waterfox based on Firefox but with an old school compact UI and privacy features turned on by default.

SubiculumCode• 5 years ago

I like proton. THe menus are easy to scan. I don't have to learn a bunch of icon-function associations, I just scan the short titles. It's clean, but it doesn't diminish usability. It got rid of a bunch of clunky design choices.

funOtter• 5 years ago

I like their idea in general, but are you concerned that System1 ("[we] operate the world's most advanced Responsive Acquisition Marketing Platform") owns the project?

Croftengea2• 5 years ago

Yes, but the same concerns are applicable to Firefox given that Google is their major sponsor.

programmer_dude• 5 years ago

From wikipedia

In February 2020, Alex Kontos faced criticism over selling Waterfox to System1, an advertising company.[23][24]
In 2018, How-To Geek advised users to not use Firefox forks such as Waterfox because security updates take longer to be incorporated into the forks compared to Firefox.[25]

mrob3• 5 years ago

Here are instructions for customizing the Proton UI to imitate previous versions:

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

parhamn• 5 years ago

At the risk of being downvoted and called out for my potential biases, I don't really buy the 'last bastion of hope' argument re: FF. I spend most my day trying to create a competitive alternative to chrome.

Heres my main reasoning: I trust open source and the governance and operations around it. Chromium the engine is open-source licensed permissively, way more hackable than Firefox, and has a ton of organizations work on it actively (even more if you include derivative projects like CEF and Electron)

The web standards are still driven via committee, theres now just a much more reliable and stable reference implementation. The economic incentives are still largely there to be a relatively good open source custodian (forking is easy and probably a better place to start anyway). If anything it feels more Linux-like in that sense too (common compatible core with lots of room for forking/creating distros).

The anti-competitive practices are IMO things like Widevine and Google properties blocking non-whitelisted browsers, which we should be talking about. The chromium convergence doesn't quite feel the same to me.

Korici• 5 years ago

I like the custodian approach with the open-source software.

darkwater2• 5 years ago

Heres my main reasoning: I trust open source and the governance and operations around it. Chromium the engine is open-source licensed permissively, way more hackable than Firefox, and has a ton of organizations work on it actively (even more if you include derivative projects like CEF and Electron)

And what if they stop? Or what if they bring the development into something you don't like anymore? Hard forking a giant codebase like Chrome's is basically impossible for anyone nowadays, so you are stuck with Google's decisions for Blink and Chromium. We still need Firefox.

jefftk• 5 years ago

Developer notes: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Rel...

Highlights:

* CSS color-scheme support, which was the last of the major browsers:https://caniuse.com/?search=color-scheme

* Web Locks API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Locks_A... (Still not in Safari)

jakub_g2• 5 years ago

Re: `color-scheme` CSS prop: AFAIU it can be useful pretty soon, because Chrome is experimenting with forced dark mode for web content (i.e. the equivalent of "Dark Reader" extension, but natively built in the browser).

If your website supports dark mode and you want to opt-out from browser messing things up, this property is the one you need.

https://twitter.com/__jakub_g/status/1478847423913107456

lucasyvas• 5 years ago

Having not seen the Web Locks proposal before, it feels like a mistake. The ease of using the API combined with the intricacies of locking feels like substantial misuse is guaranteed (especially in a language dominated by learners).

We've only recently seen languages capable of being smarter about preventing concurrency issues at compile time, and JavaScript is not ready.

I suppose it could be nice to have, but I'm almost certain I'd be searching for ways to solve my problem in other ways before reaching for this.

Edit: The lock is acquired via a string as well - I'm sure that'll never collide in a third party library...

mmastrac4• 5 years ago

Cookies and localStorage are scoped by string and we've just learned to deal with it. Namespaces are hard and strings are probably one of the best of the bad solutions that don't massively increase complexity.

pmarreck2• 5 years ago

isn't "leader election" a big part of RAFT consensus?

So does this mean it's basically "partially-applied RAFT"?

I could see that becoming a problem

marwis• 5 years ago

Yeah, they should at least allow using symbols for name.

m0llusk2• 5 years ago

I wonder when it will get forced on me.

Was having trouble meeting some aggressive deadlines, so keeping a session going with mostly reference manuals loaded was important. But Firefox kept badgering me about 95.0.2 and providing a dialog with only Download and Dismiss options. Looked at the site and saw 95.0.2 addresses frequent crashes on c/e/z-series Bobcat processors running Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 which has no relevance to me. Then my Windows 10 box Firefox stopped bothering with the Download/Dismiss dialog and started updating directly. Only Windows security allowed me to stop it.

It is great that Firefox developers are making progress and releasing fixes, but they should really try to make the updating process more friendly and allow people who do not have outdated processors and operating systems to get work done without being interrupted by irrelevant junk. This may seem small, but having the operating system and all major applications constantly demanding updates and restarts is getting really distracting.

johnchristopher2• 5 years ago

So, true story: yesterday at work, trying to catch a web bug, linux musheen. Download different version of firefoxes, run them, check the web to pinpoint the regression between versions. Doing some pinpointing, running again a specific version with the bug. No bug anymore. 30 minutes later. "Ah, I see firefox auto-update itself by default, so when running again it's on 9$.$ something".

iggldiggl2• 5 years ago

PS: You know about mozregression? It's a tool for automating as much of that workflow of pinpointing a regression as possible – you just tell it between which versions you want to test and it then automatically downloads the appropriate builds and runs them and you just need to answer which builds were good and which were bad in order to narrow down the date range. Should be easily installable via python/pip.

gruez• 5 years ago

This may seem small, but having the operating system and all major applications constantly demanding updates and restarts is getting really distracting.

Because of the nature of vulnerabilities and software patches, that's not really possible. You pretty much need patches every few weeks to avoid getting exposed to vulnerabilities. That said, you can get ESR/LTS versions of software to keep the amount of non-security changes from breaking your workflow. For firefox this means switching to firefox ESR release.

m0llusk2• 5 years ago

What an odd response. I don't want an ESR release. I downloaded v95 and v95.0.1 because they had potential relevance. The 95.0.2 was a patch for crashes on old hardware and os configurations which have absolutely zero relevance to me. The download or dismiss dialog is clear evidence of intention to let users skip unwanted stuff. If it were supplemented with a why link to the release notes and a hard refusal option then that would work great. What you are endorsing is incompetence at release management and ignorance from users. This is much like the passive hostility of developers working on high end hardware and then wondering why ordinary people have such bad experiences.

BadOakOx2• 5 years ago

I haven't seen Firefox asking me about an update for ages. It just does it in the background and on next start-up it is updated.

hajhatten2• 5 years ago

On macOS, command-clicking links in Gmail now opens them in a new tab as expected.

How is this Firefox's problem? Isn't Gmail just a website?

SwiftyBug• 5 years ago

That called my attention too. Does that mean Firefox runs code specifically on Gmail?

wlpu• 5 years ago

Does Chrome?

coldpie6• 5 years ago

I found this link from another bug that was marked fixed in 96. It contains all bugs marked to be included in the changelog for 96: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?f1=cf_tracking_fire...

From there I found this bug relating to cmd-clicking links in Gmail: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1739929

You can find detailed discussion about what's going on there. I believe this is the ultimate fix: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/0fb0990124cf

It does not appear to be specific to Gmail, no.

frankjr• 5 years ago

As others have pointed out, not in this case but in general yes - browsers do have website specific fixes for compatibility.

Firefox: https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/d107bc8aeadcc816ba...

Safari: https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/86143cf226f227bac5ffad...

I'm not sure what's the file for Chromium but I bet there's something similar.

Isthatablackgsd3• 5 years ago

I loaded up my Firefox 95 in macOS and did the command-clicking link, it opens it as new tab just fine. Not sure why this fix is needed for this new version? Perhaps edge cases that are reporting this issue?

lagrave• 5 years ago

I have had this problem for years, and I am clearly not alone - see https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/151885/why-does-...

mikkelam• 5 years ago

I love firefox and use it avidly, but why does every firefox update keep trending on HN? I'm genuinely curious, most of these updates seem fairly minor

gostsamo• 5 years ago

Because there they are part of a bigger discussion around the web, chrome, and browser engine diversity. Browsing is a difficult problem and the existing solutions do not satisfy big part of the audience here.

stackbutterflow• 5 years ago

I love firefox too and I have a different question. Why is the general sentiment negative towards firefox on HN? While other threads are generally anti Google.

Karunamon3• 5 years ago

If I had to hazard a guess:

- The HN crowd were likely burned the hardest by Mozilla's continued dumbing down of the browser (you'll reliably see complaints about how it seems like new releases always remove or move things needlessly)

- Firefox is de facto a Google project. If Google says jump, Mozilla says 'how high' because Google holds them at budgetpoint.

- Mozilla's stewardship of Firefox has been abysmal. A history of unforced errors, with a result of a completely irrelevant market share. (While paying a CEO millions to do... what, exactly?)

- Talking out of both sides of their mouth wrt. privacy (telemetry, cliqz and hiding it, etc)

foxfluff• 5 years ago

I don't believe the general sentiment is negative. It's just that the subset with a negative sentiment are more likely to voice their opinion than those who feel neutral or good about Firefox.

sfink4• 5 years ago

I work on Firefox and have the same question. These release notes in particular didn't really seem to have anything worth commenting on, other than to wonder wtf they mean. And yet, here it is on the front page.

It does seem like it's mostly driven by people's desire to complain about Mozilla, defend Firefox, and/or opine about the direction of the web. Which is fine, though it's kind of funny that those discussions get attached to minimal release announcements.

(Don't get me wrong; it's sort of gratifying to have one's day job product showing up regularly on HN.)

mrleinad2• 5 years ago

Gave up on FF a month ago because it was just too damn slow, but I didn't want to go back to use Chrome because I don't want to have to install a ton of addons just to have features that should be baked in the browser by now.

I found Vivaldi and besides really minor things that I'd like to have, it looks like the perfect browser. Highly customizable, fast, and with full access to the Chrome addons. Not going back to either of the other two for the time being.

acdha3• 5 years ago

If you're finding Firefox to be noticeably slower than Chrome/Edge, disable extensions until you find which one is slowing it down that much. On a clean install they're very comparable in speed.

jwatt2• 5 years ago

Troubleshooting mode might have been useful for diagnosing what was making Firefox slow:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/diagnose-firefox-issues...

Karunamon3• 5 years ago

I really want to like Vivaldi, but it's just so damn slow. The multiple seconds delay when pulling a tab into a new window is infuriating.

GreenWatermelon3• 5 years ago

I tried vivaldi a while back, but ot suffered from being too slow/stuttery for me.

jillesvangurp• 5 years ago

So, you are back to Google dictating what you can and cannot have. Lets not pretend that Vivaldi has much influence over that (if any at all). They ship Chromium with trivial/irrelevant tweaks. If that makes you feel good, more power to you.

However, people underestimate the amount of influence Google has in the Chromium ecosystem. At this point it's their way or the highway (i.e. Firefox/Safari). None of the companies shipping Chromium based browser have either the competence, willingness, or team to ship a functional browser that is meaningfully different. It's just lipstick on a pig and magical thinking when it comes to privacy.

Firefox works well enough for me. If there are websites that work less well in it, I've long stopped caring about those. All the essentials that try to sell me stuff work just fine. Financial dependence does that. People put in an effort to make shit works when money is on the line.

mrleinad2• 5 years ago

The less addons I need, the better. As long as I can block ads with uBlock Origin and handle a few other small things, I'm good.

I gave up on my freedom a long time ago since I use gmail and outlook for everything. I leave those things to people more enlightened than me, I just want things to work.

eitland5• 5 years ago

We’ve also significantly reduced main-thread load.

Good.

Still waiting for a message about "fixed the extension API".

Lev1a• 5 years ago

"fixed the extension API"

What does that constitute in your opinion?

Because if it's "go back to XUL", that's:

1. never going to happen,

2. would invalidate A LOT of work that's been done to make Firefox more performant and more secure and reduced technical debt (IIRC XUL leeched into FF internals all over the place, making pretty much any sort of update to the browser into a breaking change for extensions)

Karunamon3• 5 years ago

Feature parity. There are still things you could do then and can't do now with this neutered 'hey-lets-be-like-Chrome' API that nobody asked for.

eitland5• 5 years ago

No, it is not going back to XUL.

But, it is amomg other things to make a function available that will remove the top tab bar or at least make it invisible.

Not exactly hard, I do it manually every single time I restart my Firefox Developer edition. (Yes, the chrome (i.e. frame) around the browser window is still written in markup. I go into it with inspector and enter display:none at the right place.)

boplicity2• 5 years ago

I very much want "reader view" to have a "true black" mode specifically for oled phone screens. This is extremely valuable for people who want to read on their phones, because the black pixels emit no light at all. Unfortunately, dark mode isn't true black, which means those pixels emit light, leading to more eye strain, and defeating the real purpose (IMO) of dark mode on phones.

mrob3• 5 years ago

In chrome/userContent.css in your Firefox profile directory:

  @-moz-document url-prefix("about:reader") {
  body {
  background-color: #000000 !important;
  color: #FFFFFF !important;
  }
  }

And set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true in about:config

boplicity2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure if it's possible to edit userContent.css in Android or iOS. Is it? I can't find a way to do it.

hedora• 5 years ago

I want this for all display technologies. I paid for as dark gray and consistent a black level LCD as I could afford, and set the brightness to as white as is comfortable. Why waste the dynamic range of the screen?

Gray on gray definitely increases eye strain for me.

webscalist• 5 years ago

does it still crash your OS if you delete a site (domain) that you frequently visited from history?

JshWright2• 5 years ago

I realize I'm just one person, but the dealbreaker for me is still the very minimal WebAuthn support. No soft tokens, and therefore no TouchID/Hello support.

The difference in friction between "Getting my Yubikey out of my bag" and "Pressing the TouchID button" is enough to keep me on Chrome.

AnonHP2• 5 years ago

I don’t know about TouchID support, but Windows Hello has been supported by Firefox for at least a couple of years or longer now.

I use fingerprint authentication on a laptop with Windows 10 and Firefox on sites that allow me to use this as the second factor.

There is also a flag in about:config (signon.management.page.os-auth.enabled = true) to make sure this support is enabled.

Initially I found that it wasn’t working, and then I went through troubleshooting mode (disable all extensions) and found an extension that was blocking this from working (I didn’t spend time on investigating why or if someone else had seen the same issue).

JshWright2• 5 years ago

That's for signing in to Firefox (as well as unlocking the built-in password store, I believe). I'm referring to using TouchID for WebAuthn (i.e. "a built-in Yubikey")

This is the Bugzilla ticket in question: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536482

nescioquid• 5 years ago

Every time a Firefox thread pops up on HN, I read through it hoping to learn the source of the persistent vitriol, which often comes off as entitled whining.

I once wrote a little app for myself and (what the heck) decided to release it under the GPL in case it might be of some small use to someone else. The emails I received were split between a very small fraction with useful feedback (and even a couple patches), a group of people who merely wanted to thank me, and the rest were various levels of upset and demanding. What an eye-opener that was.

What am I missing? People being defensive because they use some other browser? I'm truly mystified.

Nextgrid12• 5 years ago

One reason could be that active users of the browser are annoyed at the constant useless UI changes that break their workflow.

My reason is that I don't like Mozilla's false-advertising as a privacy-protecting browser which is absolutely not the case and gives a false sense of security to less savvy users that aren't aware that they need to change many settings and install specific third-party extensions to reach a semblance of privacy.

germandiago6• 5 years ago

I would like to have some insights, if possible at the level of privacy reached by Firefox compared to Chrome and what the best alternative for privacy is overall in which I can keep things usable.

Honest question, since I am not into this research that much. I am using Firefox right now on the basis that Chrome prostitutes user data as much as possible.

wackget• 5 years ago

Constant, needless, routine-breaking UI or UX changes. Really difficult to not get pissed off when features or hotkeys you've used for 10+ years are suddenly changed without warning and for no remotely justifiable reason.

marginalia_nu5• 5 years ago

I use Firefox, and have used for a long time. My history with the browser has been marred with weird and frustrating changes that break the work flow, going back to when Firefox 2 completely changed how the URL bar worked.

I just want a browser that works. Why does the UI keep changing every other year? I would be very happy if it looked like Netscape. I don't care how the window looks, it's a tool, not a fashion accessory. I don't want to have to re-learn how to do things I've done for 20 years every few months. Why can't I have a menu at the top of the window like other windows do? Why can't my browser follow the same UI-conventions as other native applications?

I just don't get why they keep changing this stuff. It wasn't bad. It didn't get better. It just appears to have been changed for the sake of changing things. That's frustrating.

There's also a lot of hypocrisy that rubs me the wrong way. Mozilla talks big about privacy, but have you tried turning off Firefoxes telemetry? It's like half a dozen checkboxes you need to hunt down, and even then I'm not sure it's entirely disabled. Yeah I guess it's only bad when other people are doing it.

marbletiles• 5 years ago

Just use Seamonkey if you want it to look like Netscape, surely.

dmos62• 5 years ago

To add my anecdote to yours, I've been with Firefox for some time and I weathered the changes fine. I might not be crazy about Web in general, but Firefox has been good to me and I have not found the choices they make to break my workflows. I guess I fall within the target audience of their changes.

ncann2• 5 years ago

It just appears to have been changed for the sake of changing things

Unfortunately it just seems to be the way things work now. People joke all the time about UI/UX designers needing to justify their salary, I guess it's not too far from the truth.

dblohm74• 5 years ago

Yeah I guess it's only bad when other people are doing it.

The "other people" don't do Telemetry like Mozilla does. You're making an apples to oranges comparison.

kehrin• 5 years ago

I don't care how the window looks, it's a tool

But don't you? Your entire post is complaining about how it "looks" :^)

ncmncm• 5 years ago

It is annoyance at Mozilla routinely eliminating features that had made Firefox better than competition, along with random UI churn that add up to make it less usable.

Decisions are made at Mozilla by a crew with only business school management training, and no personal awareness of engineering processes or possibilities. It is a lot like what has happened at Boeing.

That said, ten years ago it crashed all the damn time. So there's that.

GekkePrutser2• 5 years ago

I think Firefox is great. Running it here on FreeBSD, Mac, Windows. It works well.

Only thing I mind a bit is the hidden compact theme which makes me worried it'll disappear completely at some point. The standard mode is too big imo. But the way it is now in about:config is fine

But the browser works well, renders well and I love the E2E encrypted sync. I don't use any other browser anymore. No problems with crashes or sites not working.

Just wanted to say that because people who are satisfied tend to be less vocal :)

schleck8• 5 years ago

Pretty sure Mozilla's CEO isn't particularly well liked. She has a wage in the millions, which she insists is only fair for some family related reason, while Firefox' userbase has tanked.

eptcyka• 5 years ago

Unlike most open source code that's published online, it's damn near impossible to just go an re-implement your own browser if all available ones are not to your liking. Up until somewhat recently, Firefox has been the best browser for tech minded and privacy focused people, but it seems like Mozilla has lost their focus and are implementing features that their user base find questionable. I'll admit that some other features are very welcome, like containers and the like. But I do understand that their core userbase feel disappointed and whenever they see their best choice in browsers move all the more closer to the other subpar choices.

Specifically, people feel it was a let down to throw away the layout engine that was rewritten in Rust and drop the efforts to modernize other components too. There's a lot of people who feel let down with the deprecation and removal of support for older, more powerful plugin APIs.

And as for writing a browser on your own, lots of competent developers might implement an HTML renderer. I don't think a single person could implement a browser that's capable running youtube, banking websites, amazon, a fully features javascript VM, all the modern sandboxing and various web APIs (that now even include Bluetooth and USB).

I don't think bringing pitchforks to Mozilla will make them write better software or listen to users more, but I don't want to de-legitimize the concerns that some of their core audience might have. IMO, Firefox is still the best browser to use. Chrome and it's derivatives, please go.

iqanq2• 5 years ago

Firefox is important for the web. Mozilla is severely mismanaged, and that fact is ruining Firefox.

As an example, they keep asking for donations which they are not spending on Firefox development. It is that kind of stuff that people such as me are tired of. This has nothing to do with your experience releasing GPL code.

fleddr4• 5 years ago

Firefox's rapidly shrinking userbase likes to shoot themselves in the foot. There's always somebody whining about a tiny UI change they really liked from 7 years ago. The fact that the organization has existential problems seems less relevant.

Sometimes Mozillians help with the self destruction. Like last week, when Mozilla reminded people they take donations, including in crypto. Luckily, ex-Mozillians came to the rescue to carve a line in the sand on Twitter. Absolutely unacceptable. An online mob forms, likely of people whom never donated a cent, and Mozilla is pressured to stop accepting crypto.

They had been accepting it since 2014.

It doesn't matter if you hate crypto. If somebody else has crypto and donates this to Mozilla, that is a good thing for Mozilla. If one is bothered by environmental concerns, Mozilla did not mine the crypto. They are on the receiving end of a transaction, one that now will take place elsewhere.

Who needs enemies with friends like this.

fartcannon2• 5 years ago

Any chance we can have bookmarks back on a new tab page? Not 'recent' bookmarks. Regular, old, cultivated bookmarks.

bouncycastle• 5 years ago

2022 and still no native IPFS?

orf• 5 years ago

On macOS, command-clicking links in Gmail now opens them in a new tab as expected.

I wonder what happened here?

bunnythefifth• 5 years ago

Tangential, but every time I read "macOS" in FF release notes, I hope that this fundamental bug gets fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1600153

Gist: You click a link (outside FF, say from an app), and FF opens 2 windows - one with the link and other blank. I have no idea how is this acceptable for a browser as mainstream as FF.

JohnTHaller2• 5 years ago

I've been using Firefox and packaging it for portable use at PortableApps.com since before version 1.0. It's my daily browser on Windows and Android (yay extensions). And the best alternative to Chrome/Safari domination.

samtheprogram• 5 years ago

Haven’t used PortableApps in at least a decade, but wanted to say thank you. It was immensely useful at school, work and with multiple machines.

JohnTHaller2• 5 years ago

You're welcome! Glad it helped you out.

Andrew_nenakhov• 5 years ago

Oh crap, they broke backdrop-filter: blur. It was so beautiful, and now it doesn't work, despite being enabled in about:config.

Why are you doing this to me, Firefox Developers?

gcr• 5 years ago

When I saw the version number, I was expecting some retro nostalgic version of Firefox with Windows 95 window decorations and theming.

Oh well. Congrats on the release!!

TonyTrapp2• 5 years ago

I love Firefox, but I hate to see that they seem to have given in to the Chrome hegemony once again and hide the login realm message when doing HTTP basic authentication now. I still hate Chrome to this day for starting to do that, because you can no longer send people to a site protected by basic auth and expect them to know which credentials to fill in. Firefox was the last popular browsing allowing the user to read the login message provided by the server.

pxc• 5 years ago

What's the rationale for hiding it?

TonyTrapp2• 5 years ago

I don't know the true rationale, but if I remember correctly a Chrome dev provided some really dubious reasoning one the related issue tracker item, something like "someone could MITM the connection and change the basic auth message to 'please enter your YouTube credentials'". Well guess what, if I MITM your connection, I can provide a much more convincing HTML representation of the YouTube login page! I guess the grain of truth that was in there is that this is one of the few times where a server-provided string is presented as part of the browser's UI, but I am sure there are better ways to highlight that the browser is just quoting the server than outright not showing the message.

Edit: It seems like a dubious security report was the origin of this, not a developer: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=544244

iamwpj2• 5 years ago

I'm unimpressed with these commenters griping about the UI change or sponsored this and that. I don't think that's an honest standard you hold yourself to in any fashion and is simply not a functional way to live your life! What about your toothpaste packaging -- or gasp the product itself?! Things change all the time, you can be annoyed about it, of course! But accepting change is part of being a human in societies. "UI changes breaking my workflow" -- seriously? I don't buy it. I wish the conversations like this would fade because it encourages bad attitudes across the board -- I can't put my finger on it. Is it entitlement? Mozilla owes ME a good browser?

gerash• 5 years ago

Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1172/

Nextgrid12• 5 years ago

Things change all the time

Why do they need to change? The tab bar has been perfectly functional for decades, and the relatively recent change makes it worse in many aspects.

I don't mind changes that fix problems or introduce new useful features, but don't fix what ain't broke. And no, some designer/product manager somewhere having to justify their salary doesn't count as a valid problem in my book.

iamwpj2• 5 years ago

Don't perpetuate that type of logic. It's toxic to your peers and not good for society. It's shorthand for a phrase like "It works for ME, so don't change it for OTHERS." Also, this concept requires anyone making a change to justify it to you so you understand it -- even though the changes are for a product and user base as a whole. Most other people read and accept the change and either make adjustments or even switch products all without requiring a bespoke explainer.

Also, your comment about designers and product managers is pretty dismissive and leads me to believe that you aren't very appreciative how hard it is to get UI/UX right. Just because it's area you don't understand or don't practice within doesn't mean it's not important.

swills2• 5 years ago

I'm still annoyed they got rid of the option to not see the tab bar if you have only one tab open. For a while they kept a preference for it but of course eventually got rid of it. I say "of course" because similar things have happened with other changes as well.

It strikes me as dishonest to continually make it harder and harder to do something and then get rid of it on the grounds that "no one uses it".

floatboth• 5 years ago

Cookie Policy: Same-Site=lax by default

LET'S GOOOOO

The day web developers forget about stupid "csrf protection tokens" is coming \o/

rubyist5eva• 5 years ago

I love Firefox but I can't really use it at work because our front-end devs refuse to support it, so our application doesn't have scrollbars - and switching between browsers sucks.

Use it at home and all of my personal devices though, and will not be switching any time soon.

pmarreck2• 5 years ago

I've been using Firefox Nightly for a while now, had no discernible issues

efnx• 5 years ago

Funny, I thought “Firefox 96” might be a new Vaporwave artist!

peakaboo• 5 years ago

Not much innovation in new versions anymore but I'm still excited to be running Firefox.

It's something about using a browser written for privacy from day one.

soueuls• 5 years ago

I have read the blog post from Mitchell Baker -> https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

I uninstalled Firefox. I don't trust anyone who is trying hard to corner me into an echo chamber.

ajlburke• 5 years ago

I saw the name and thought it might be some kind of retro throwback to the 1996 version of Netscape Communicator. I was sort of looking forward to the integrated but awkward built-in mail client and newsreader.

mdoms• 5 years ago

Every time a new version of Firefox comes out I try it on my XPS 13 to see if two finger scroll & pan and pinch to zoom still feel janky and weird compared to every other app on my computer.

Yup, still weird. Still can only scroll either horizontally or vertically but not both at the same time. Pinching feels weirdly linear and zooming out still doesn't use the mouse cursor position as a central point but just zooms from the center.

It's 2022, why doesn't Firefox just behave like every other application on my computer with scroll and pinch?

Shadonototra• 5 years ago

Firefox development seems to be stagnating (despite pumping an insane amount of money to it /s)

I wonder where all the Google money goes? definitely not in firefox, otherwise it wouldn't have only just 3% market share

If they do pump money in firefox, then i guess it's time to replace the entire team, including the people at the top of the mafia, they are clearly incompetent

schipplock• 5 years ago

I'm using Firefox since Phoenix 0.1 :). I'm not giving it up! (I hate the look of the "new" tabs though :( (looks wrong on macOS and Windows, okish on Linux).

MikusR• 5 years ago

And it broke reopen recently closed tabs.

scrumlord• 5 years ago

Hacker News needs to rename itself to Crybaby News.

mdrzn• 5 years ago

"When printing, you can now choose to print only the odd/even pages."

It took 96 versions to reach this feature? Meanwhile, while browsing the web the whole browser becomes unresponsive anyway, even with 32gb of ram?

davidgerard• 5 years ago

annoyingly, it breaks the Lepton UI fix: https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

Firefox 96

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