Firefox 33 Arrives With OpenH264 Support 114
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 33 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions include OpenH264 support as well as the ability to send video content from webpages to a second screen. Firefox 33 for the desktop is available for download now on Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. Full changelogs are available here: desktop and Android."
More bloat, less marketshare (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:More bloat, less marketshare (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, since it traces back to Netscape, its becoming one with its origins.
Re:More bloat, less marketshare (Score:5, Funny)
All versions of Netscape had a menu bar. Firefox long since passed Netscape's degree of awfulness.
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FFS. It's a configurable option. If you want Firefox to have a menu bar, just turn it on and stop whining.
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I'm not whining. But until and unless "classic compact" catches up with the nasty new interface, I'm not upgrading either.
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I haven't looked into it in detail, but Firefox still feels less bloated than Chrome. I'm using 31.1.1 ESR.
Javascript rendering seems faster on Firefox than Chrome also.
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...Firefox still feels less bloated than Chrome...
I was comparing to the time before the recent development fiascos (new UI, etc.). Firefox just seems to be getting larger and larger and larger.
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It appears the Firefox developers are looking to please themselves, and not the users, because the Firefox marketshare is dropping in spite of all the additional bloat being added.
Sour grapes much? (Score:1)
It not catering to your whims precisely doesn't make it bloated, not make Mozilla not care about their users. It's fine to be upset that it isn't fondling your balls just right, but stop reaching for such petty and obviously incorrect excuses to hate Firefox for that.
Its marketshare dropping has nothing to do with the UI, since usage rose after the release that introduced the revamped UI. The marketshare is dropping not because of fewer users. Actually their userbase has grown, just not as quickly as Chrome
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I never said that is was bloated because it does not cater to my whims.
... not make Mozilla not care about their users not make Mozilla not care about their users...
Nor did I say that it not catering to my whims means that Mozilla does not care about its users.
Re:More bloat, less marketshare (Score:5, Insightful)
Breaking everything out into a plugin because the system only allows SO much and native code is rarely an option due to the plethora of exotic hardware firefox runs on. Do you want to decode advanced compressed video or decrypt cpu intensive encryption in a lowest-common-demoninator interpreted language on an ARM device with 256 MB of ram that runs like a 486? I don't.
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My 486 didn't have that much RAM. And I can tell you todays mobile devices are much more capable than it. Last year I brought back a Pentium III from the dead, installed free software and none of the browsers were able to render medium to complex pages due to the javascript. But my HTC android from three years ago could. Seriously, the devices you carry around have some serious horsepower, don't belittle them because of their size.
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It would be nice, if the Mozilla provided a official 64bit Windows build. Quite likely it would get more positive impressions than their "improved search experience" (whatever that means) or "qubic bezier curves editor". If they could also try to make the browser windows' Javascripts to run in parallel, so the whole browser would not get frozen and unresponsive when a single advertisement script decides to loop forever. Please, please make one release where there would not be a single new or removed feature
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It would be nice, if the Mozilla provided a official 64bit Windows build.
Done. [ghacks.net]
If they could also try to make the browser windows' Javascripts to run in parallel, so the whole browser would not get frozen and unresponsive when a single advertisement script decides to loop forever.
and done. [mozilla.org] You're welcome.
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It's scheduled for Firefox 37, to be released at the end of March next year.
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64-bit and rock solid and steadily improving. I have no complaints.
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How does Waterfox differ from Mozilla's 64 bit test builds?
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Mozilla has had nightly 64-bit builds for many months now, but nobody wants to use them to help test and get things working more quickly
You have this backwards. Mozilla tried to kill 64-bit Nightly builds two years ago, even though about 50% of Nightly users were using them at the time. Those users (somewhat predictably) weren't too happy and complained, and Mozilla eventually left 64-bit builds running, but disabled crash reports and automated testing, and refused to commit paid dev time to keeping it compiling or passing the tests. Plus they originally planned to automatically migrate those users to 32-bit, though that never actually happ
Caveat, baseline and high profiles only? (Score:2, Informative)
Finally (Score:2)
Firefox finally supports H.264 playback. No need to support WebM anymore.
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Don't we need to not use the high profile format to support older devices anyway?
Finally (Score:1)
Nope, the amount of misinformation on this is mindblowing. The patents covering this still exist and there's no guarantee that MPEG LA won't begin charging for streams in the future. What's more, You're supposed to be paying for the patents to encode and decode the format, they've just made the streaming gratis.
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and there's no guarantee that MPEG LA won't begin charging for streams in the future
Sure there is.
http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MP... [mpegla.com]
Where the title is:
MPEG LA’s AVC License Will Not Charge Royalties for Internet Video that is Free to End Users through Life of License
Finally (Score:5, Informative)
At least for as long as Cisco is willing to pay maximum royalties to MPEGLA, and as long as you are willing to pay royalties to MPEGLA, and you bought properly licensed h.264 encoders, and you made sure not to shoot commercial video on consumer grade cameras (which don't come with commercial MPEGLA licenses), etc...
The weakest link is Cisco - MPEGLA is most certainly going to look towards raising that h.264 cap in the coming years, and the only reason why Firefox can support h.264 is because it's Cisco's binaries. I'm assuming you remembered to get your MPEGLA royalties in order, or at the very least you are distributing non-commercial video and are hoping that MPEGLA continues their moratorium on royalties for non-commercial internet video.
Or you can just use WebM, and not pay anyone. But then you don't play on IE or Safari, because Apple and Microsoft have been ardently against royalty-free video formats for various reasons. (Microsoft because they think MPEGLA is indestructible; Apple because they don't want to put hardware WebM decoders on their phones)
Just upgraded, lost cookies (Score:5, Interesting)
Just upgraded then with that grim sense of foreboding that I now get with Firefox upgrades ("what's going to stop working this time? how is the UI I've been using for many years changed now?")
I lost all my cookies - upon reload after the upgrade, I noticed I was logged out of a bunch of websites (including anything using Google Accounts and Slashdot). YMMV.
Re:Just upgraded, lost cookies (Score:4, Interesting)
YMMV
My certainly did. It restarted and reloaded my tabs, including this one, without a hitch.
that grim sense of foreboding that I now get with Firefox upgrades ("what's going to stop working this time? how is the UI I've been using for many years changed now?")
Just curious, what has been breaking for you? What UI features have changed in some significant way since Australis? I only ask because I switched back to Firefox from Chrome when Australis hit and have seen nothing but positive improvements with each release.
Re:Just upgraded, lost cookies (Score:5, Insightful)
Just curious, what has been breaking for you? What UI features have changed in some significant way since Australis?
SINCE Australis? Nothing major. In a recent version they changed the right click context menu to include icons for reload/back/forward, which irritated me - change for the sake of change. (Also the keyboard shortcut for Private Browsing no longer works - might be a plugin? Not sure.)
Things like that seem little but when you've been using Firefox for years - which I have, every day, for work - little changes like that mean the platform loses a lot of stability, which is one of the things that is most important when you're trying to get things done.
I'm not at all opposed to new features. I don't even care about feature bloat that much. But they should be opt-in. And at the very least, you should be able to opt-out without having to install some third party plugin. Having a new UI/UX forced on me just feels ... rude.
Australis prompted me to install Classic Theme Restorer [mozilla.org] so I could restore the browser to the way I'd been using it for /years/. (Here's my +5 post about why I disliked Australis [slashdot.org].) Enough has been written about Australis so I won't whine about that any more.
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Thanks. Having returned to FireFox after years of Chrome, I'm not likely to notice, or be irritated, by those kinds of changes.
Re:Just upgraded, lost cookies (Score:4, Interesting)
I just like applications to go along with the UI guidelines set by the OS. Chrome breaks that, and so does the new Firefox UI.
Simple things:
1 - Menu items visible right under the title bar
2 - A title bar that can be double-clicked to maximize or restore the screen
3 - Minimize/Maximize/Restore buttons where the OS says they should be. (Chrome hard-codes them to the right side of the top of the window.)
4 - If you allow customization of the top of the screen, as Firefox does, why can't I hide the Open Menu widget when I'm showing the menu items otherwise?
Tabs in titlebar (Score:1)
At least for #2, you can fix that in Firefox by setting browser.tabs.drawInTitlebar to false in about:config.
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MS Windows is still the dominant platform, and it doesn't seem to have any guidelines or standard widgets anymore. Every app seems to use s different set of widgets and owner-drawn window decorations are a plague in certain spaces like anti-malware and anti-virus. MS themselves started this trend by using a different set of widgets with every release of MS Office. I just laugh when people talk about Linux apps being all different and not fitting into together. Windows is at least as bad these days, if no
Meanwhile, on Pale Moon (Score:2)
After the Australis debacle I decided to move my Windows machines to Pale Moon. The change has been surprisingly painless, I could pretty much copy my Firefox profile wholesale without a hitch. All of the extensions work too and the interface is such a relief.
Now to find something similar for my Mac...
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I used Firefox with Classic Theme Restorer before moving to Pale Moon. CTR helps, but it wasn't able to undo all of the crappiness that Australis brought. For example, the new tab design in Australis meant that very narrow tabs (anything below ~60 px) didn't work well anymore. I used the Custom Tab Width extension to adjust the minimum tab width. After Australis, there would be a ghost region around each tab, making the tabs overlap each other.
CTR also didn't bring back the Status bar. Having status text ov
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Over the past few years, the Mozilla foundation hasn't given the impression it'll listen to user feedback at all. If the rivers of vitriol over the Australis UI changes haven't had any effect, why would I bother giving them one more data point?
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Then they replace their UI code so they do all of those things
Nope, different projects. Australis wasn't part of any of those.
and because you don't like it missing some features
More like, Mozilla deliberately killed some features because they thought we were too stupid to handle them, and when people asked them not to, they basically said "sod off, we don't care".
Would you rather have a browser you can still customize away from the defaults, or something like Firefox 2 or 3, where you have to sacrifice a lamb to change the UI substantially
Hm. I'm on Firefox 3.6 and it's a ton easier to customize than Australis. I prefer to have my stop and reload buttons between back/forward and the address bar. On 3.6 I just do it, on Australis I can't do it at all. Same deal with a bunch of other stuff. I gu
SeaMonkey v2.29... (Score:2)
I upgraded v2.26.1 to v2.29 over a month ago, and my history got corrupted and I had to export and import bookmarks.html aftere reinstalling v2.26.1 (still on it). Also, v2.29 had sorting problems with its addressbooks. Thunderbird has the same problems from what I read. There are many QA issues lately with Mozilla products. :(
No way will I support Firefox ever again (Score:1, Insightful)
After what the Firefox board did to the creator of Javascript (Brendan Eich), I think everyone should simply ignore Firefox and let them die as a warning to all other companies unable to tolerate diversity of thought.
Never forget.
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I just hope Pale Moon starts keeping more current. Recent IEs are pretty good, but naturally Windows-only. I'm trying to live a Google-free life, so Chrome is out.
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I'm not smart enough to contribute code to the Mozilla project, but does throwing a few bucks there way now and then count?
It's all going to suck once all browsers are fully DRM complaint, so I don't really see the benefit in one over the other at the moment. I use Epic Privacy Browser most of the time, but there are things that don't work there, so I'm stuck.
Tell me something: If I use Chrome, with all the DoNotTrackMe and Disconnect and Privacy Badger and https everywhere extensions enabled, am I still
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throwing a few bucks there way now and then count?
I bought a copy of the Mozilla browser once. Remember when?
It's all going to suck once all browsers are fully DRM complaint
Nothing will be worse for browsers being able to play Netflix crap like Flash or Silverlight. Flash especially needs to die the death.
I use Chrome, with all the DoNotTrackMe and Disconnect and Privacy Badger and https everywhere extensions enabled, am I still doing any favors for Google?
Pretty sure Chrome always sends every URL you type to Google, though it would be neat if you could disable that (in IE and FF you turn off the features that warn you of well-known attack sites). There are chromium ports that claim to be entirely evil-free, but I haven't looked into them as I just don't like Chrome'
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Grrr. "play Netflix without crap". Can't seem to type today.
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You know, I really don't get the importance of "Netflix in the browser". Why is having a Netflix app such a big problem for people? I mean, if I want to participate in Netflix's business model, OK, I'd be happy to buy into their app and their DRM, just like I do on a mobile device. But I hate the idea of this "DRM by default" that is being planned for HTML5 (at least the way I understand it).
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Because Netflix is something like 1/3rd of internet traffic. If you haven't worked on a standards committee this might not be obvious, but the point of a standard is to document what the big players are doing, so that the little guys can interoperate. It's a descriptive, not proscriptive, process. A standard that the major players don't actually follow is worthless, and a failure of the committee.
It's simple not the role or purpose of a standards committee to spout stuff like "we won't standardize X beca
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Does Chrome send my URLs to Google even if I'm in incognito mode?
So, let me make sure I've got this right: Chromium is just the rendering engine and Epic can use it to make a privacy browser but Chrome is the Google flagship browser with all the phoning home written in. Chromium is open source, but Chrome isn't. Is that right?
You don't have to take the time to answer, I'll go look it up. I need to learn these things. I'm trying to unplug myself as much as I can from companies like Google, but I don't w
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Just answer me one thing: are you religious?
Not at all, and I FULLY support gay marriage (as in I have been a part in a ceremony of a gay friend to his partner). I just don't support witch-hunts in any form.
The fact you want be to qualify that is pathetic.
Even if I WERE, why would you bring that up - it just proves my point on the dangers of intolerance. You have chosen to demonize an entire group of people simply because of how they want to live, which makes you no better than any religious evangelist pr
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Is that the same Brendan Eich who posted in his personal blog, that "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader."? Yeah that's why I am waiting for when your explaination that the reputation of the CEO never affects how the community or the public views a company ....nope CEO reputation affecting company reputation never happens (Gates, Jobs, Musk)
Oh and yes that the Firefox board forced the overall community to attack him soon after the board chose him as CEO -- because the board tota
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Is that the same Brendan Eich who posted in his personal blog, that "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader."?
Yes, because the board were entirely against him. Even LGBT workers at Mozilla supported him, but the board would not - he resigned "voluntarily", because he had no support from the people who cared only about the witch hunt, not Mozilla.
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Uh, I don't think a large number of them refused to work under Eich. He had been at the organization for years.
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After what the Firefox board....
Where to start, where to start... First off there is no firefox board. Mozilla Corporation has a board, as does Mozilla Foundation.
Having followed this, rather closely, I can assure you that Brendan made the decision to resign, the message was delivered by internal email.
Later in an internal meeting the board explained that they had strongly recommended and hoped that Brendan would ride out the storm.
Any allegations that the board force Brendan to resign is pure fiction. Sure, I can promise you that th
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Mozilla is not a political organization. It about building a better free and open web.
That's hilarious.
How so... I'm not afraid to say that I support Mozilla, and that I'm very very very very far from agreeing most Americans on serious and important political issues. You now the kind of issues where America murders innocent civilians. I could go on... But Mozilla is not the platform for these issues.
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You know why no one likes you Millennial SJW fucks? Because you preach "tolerance" but are utterly incapable of tolerating anyone who doesn't think exactly like you.
This place was so much better before the fucking Millennials invaded.
oh, the irony
Epic (Score:1)
Epic Privacy Browser is the way to go.
https://www.epicbrowser.com/ [epicbrowser.com]
Netscape (Score:1)
Yet another FF release.
Yawn.
Meantime, Netscape Navigator is 20 years old today.
Two Browsers, Two Goals. (Score:3)
Every time I've used Chrome, it's constantly nagged me to sign in to Google services, asks to change what mailto: does and in recent versions (on Windows) they've included a notification icon that ties in with Google Now. I feel Chrome gets a free pass on a lot of this stuff because it's considered fast. A lot of that perception is in UI responsiveness as the millisecond rendering differences are practically indistinguishable. Firefox should really consider moving away from XUL.
Firefox is a run by Mozilla (an NFP) who can only justify it's existence by making a good browser. Firefox needs to improve on a few fronts, but it's still a browser for the people. The only incentive they have is survival (which mean people using Firefox). The Mozilla Foundation has clearly become overly bureaucratic and focused on the survival of it's own bureaucracy to the detriment of their software. It needs a good shakedown. There are too many people looking for things to do - go to mozilla.org and check out the half-dead list of projects and 1000+ employees.
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I feel Chrome gets a free pass on a lot of this stuff because it's considered fast.
I don't think Chrome is getting any free pass. The endless bitchfest on here is just as bad for Chrome as it is for Firefox. The thing about Chrome is that some of the things that people are most vocal about are also some of the features that other people care.
I use Chrome for the dead simple and automatic syncing between all accounts, my desktop and my phone, and the information I voluntarily give Google helps make my day easier. I search for the local Mitre10 store on my desktop at work, when I get to the
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I also use Chrome and other Google services, for the same reasons. I'm selling a bit of privacy to buy a gigantic helping of convenience. It is very likely that that particular bit of privacy was imaginary anyway.
Oh no, someone is going to use my search requests and subsequent clicks for statistical purposes, when will the madness end? Google doesn't give a shit about anyone individually, they want broad statistics so their ads can hit the largest possible interest groups.
Finally, single-word search isn't broken (Score:1)
Kudos to Mozilla for fixing a really [mozilla.org], really [mozilla.org], really [mozilla.org] annoying [mozilla.org] bug [mozilla.org].
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A copy of a commercial codec that nobody but neckbeards will use.
Why all the hate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every time there's a new Firefox release, I sit back and watch a very vocal group spewing the same old tired rants and lies:
Besides that let me tell you some of the positive things that none of you assholes mention, because you like to talk out of your ass without even using the damn browser - it has the best looking and most intuitive developer tools out of any browser, a fast and feature complete Android browser with extensions, the best extensions out there out of any desktop browser, they offer an awesome email client and let's not forget that Mozilla is one of the best and most trustworthy organizations out there.
Nice but.. (Score:1)
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