Firefox 20 Arrives With Per-Window Private Browsing, New Download Manager 181
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla on Tuesday officially launched Firefox 20 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The improvements include per-window private browsing, a new download manager in the Firefox toolbar, and the ability to close hanging plugins without the browser hanging. The new desktop version was available as of yesterday on the organization's FTP servers, but that was just the initial release of the installers. Firefox 20 has now officially been made available over on Firefox.com and all users of old Firefox versions should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on the official Google Play Store. The changelogs are here: desktop and Android."
Android version STILL missing privacy (Score:1)
Firefox still needs better privacy controls on android. Instead of necessitating an extra step for a private browsing experience, why not make it that way by default? Or at least, have that as an option? Firefox still won't let me choose a homepage of my own, and instead displays a 'top sites' page everytime I startup. I don't want my history tracked, ever, for any reason -- and yet there is no way to turn this off (in the v20 beta at least).
Version 23 (Score:3, Informative)
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-central/firefox-23.0a1.en-US.win32.installer.exe
So what did they take away now? (Score:1, Insightful)
Every time I upgrade to a newer version of Firefox, there's always some unwelcome surprise lurking in the shadows. From past experience:
- Butt-ugly default skin
- Fucking with the location bar icon
-"Tabs on top" option gone
- Outright refusal to run an outdated plugin on Flash (for various reasons, 11.2 is the last version that will work on portable Firefox)
- Broken extensions, always broken extensions
- Removal of status bar
- Default zaniness with hiding and showing the back/forward button
So what did they tak
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I notice that they retained the "I'll just randomly decide to hide the browser window you're looking at under all the other windows on your desktop" 'feature', though...
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty much everything you and the GP poster mention are either options that can be configured (I still have a separate stop button, and URLs display the protocol at the front), things that can be fixed with add-ons (status bar), or things that aren't an issue (The theme I chose quite a few versions ago is displayed after every update with no issue, and "Tabs on Top" has been configurable through a context menu for as long as the option has existed, but once you set it, it's done, so who needs a menu?).
The
Re:So what did they take away now? (Score:5, Informative)
You can disable that by going to about:config and setting browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false.
There's always been a separate stop button, you just have to customize the toolbar so that the stop button is ordered before the reload button, otherwise it "combines" them into a single reload/stop button. http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2142587 [mozillazine.org]
Basically you right click the toolbar, select customize, then drag the stop button to the left of the reload button, and viola... separate buttons (yes it's retarded).
Re: (Score:3)
More retarded: I've now spent enough time customizing Firefox to simply act more like it used to that there is no conceivable way that I will ever be able to rebuild it from scratch.
Fun.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey AC, nobody cares what you have to say.
Or at least I don't care. And only I know the one, true way to read /..
Re: (Score:2)
There's always been a separate stop button, you just have to customize the toolbar so that the stop button is ordered before the reload button
Just be aware that you won't be able to do this after the upcoming changes to make customization more user-friendly go in. The address bar (and buttons to the left of it, including back/forward) are outside of the customizable area, so you won't be able to split out the stop and reload buttons (or prevent the back/forward buttons from merging with the address bar by placing something between them).
Embarrasing (Score:5, Interesting)
seriously ?, the new download "manager" is nothing of the sort, it manages nothing, as soon as i click the downloads button it opens the entire library (and the cpu sucking waiting time for it to open), which is asking to show me ALL my history, bookmarks AND downloads in a whole another window, not a little onobtrusive window like before, and no that terrible chromeless!!? overlay doesn't count, good job iam not disabled egh ? what a total waste of time
as for information, it wastes space like nothing else, 200px tall rows for 1 line of 12px text ? (the name of the downloaded file whoo), no extra info or details about the download at all other than apparently its on my hard drive, no exact link, speed, time completed, size, referer, server details etc etc
absolute garbage, an embarrasment to mention it other than WTF have you done ?, and iam looking for a replacement addon as we speak HALP
Re:Embarrasing (Score:5, Informative)
You'll also need to customize the toolbar in order to remove the new downloads icon though. Also the "new" download manager is still accessible via History menu &> Show All History after making the above configuration change.
Re: (Score:2)
Wish I had some mod points to push your answer higher. Thanks for the information.
Re: (Score:3)
The rows are huge because they also have to accommodate the status bar and status info on active downloads, and somebody decided that rows shouldn't change height based on whether a download is active or not. I fixed it by doing "#downloadsRichListBox > richlistitem.download { height: 0em !important; }" which makes the rows for inactive downloads take up the same amount of space as they did in the previous download UI.
Of course, the design is still poor for space usage. Most users will prefer to have the
Not to be jaded, but... (Score:2)
Re:Not to be jaded, but... (Score:4, Funny)
...I'll wait for version 20.0.1 which will be released, if history is any indicator, on Thursday.
I don't know... I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Re: (Score:2)
...I'll wait for version 20.0.1 which will be released, if history is any indicator, on Thursday.
Called it (albeit a week off). Firefox 20.0.1 released Thursday, April 11, 2013.
Just sayin'...
Doesn't have $x feeture :) (Score:1)
DownThemAll (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Added bloat for people who don't want it? Seriously these are whole dedicated programs which already integrate with every popular browser. Why would you re-invent the wheel and at the same time screw up something that has beauty in its simplicity. ... Or rather had beauty in its simplicity, the new download manager is atrocious.
Re: (Score:2)
Adding support for segmented transfers is not bloat... I don't want the full downthemall, but I want people with cross-atlantic connections to be able to just download and get their max speed they are capable of without having to get a third party plugin or application. Since there are download managers out there, it just proves that the download manager built in is broken....
The external download managers do other things also that do not need to like manage logins or have smart captcha support, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Since there are download managers out there, it just proves that the download manager built in is broken....
What a ridiculous assertion. Just because Ferraris exist doesn't mean a Toyota Corolla is broken just because it's slower.
Hell the whole existence from Chrome was a godsend as it focused Mozilla on improving the speed and resource hogging that Firefox 3 was horrendously known for. Yet here we are requesting yet another feature that you may only *think* everyone wants. Contrary to popular belief some of us don't care for fancy crap. Some of us run versions of uTorrent from back when it lived up to it's names
Re:DownThemAll (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Try GNU Emacs!
Tabs (is an anagram of stab) (Score:2)
I still can't stand the way FF mobile handles tabs. I want to see all my tabs without having to press a button yo open the tabs menu.
It might be an appropriate means of dealing with low-res or small screens, but not on tablets 7" and up. Until that changes, I can't see FFm being my regular mobile browser.
Download Manager (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why Mozilla never just worked with the author of Download Statusbar [mozilla.org] to integrate it. That extension has been one of the most popular addons since it was released in 2004. In fact, the addons site show it is currently the 7th most-used plugin with 1,930,345 current users.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand why Mozilla never just worked with the author of Download Statusbar to integrate it. That extension has been one of the most popular addons since it was released in 2004. In fact, the addons site show it is currently the 7th most-used plugin with 1,930,345 current users.
The license of Download Statusbar isn't compatible with Firefox's license. From the add-on page:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-statusbar/license/0.9.10 [mozilla.org]
Source Code License
Custom License
Copyright 2011 Enzymatic Software, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Re: (Score:2)
Version 0.9.6.3 (released 2008) through 0.9.7.2 (released 2010) was under the MPL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-statusbar/license/0.9.7.2 [mozilla.org]
The licence for versions prior to that aren't documented on the Addons site.
Firefox 20? (Score:2, Funny)
They're up to Firefox 21 already? I wonder what features this new Firefox 22 contains, and whether it's worth getting this Firefox 23.
Has anyone downloaded Firefox 24 yet? I want to know if Firefox 25 is any good.
(Hope I'm not falling too far behind in my version numbers since starting this post).
Re: (Score:1)
Has anyone downloaded Firefox 24 yet? I want to know if Firefox 25 is any good.
Next week!
and Opera says... (Score:1)
*sigh*
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, I've been doing it in Firefox since I can't remember. It's called the -no-remote option. With a little scripting around it, every Firefox window is its own process in its own home directory. I can make permanent ones (I have one for Slashdot, for example) or temporary ones.
And still no Windows sandboxing (Score:4, Informative)
Unlike Chrome and Internet Explorer on Vista/7/8, Firefox doesn't run a child process in a sandbox to better protect the browser against exploits. Firefox runs entirely as a normal user process, and thus can access anything that regular processes can. An exploit running as an ordinary user can steal your bank account passwords and act as a zombie almost as effectively as an exploit running with root access.
I stay with Firefox only because I dislike tabs. Unlike Chrome, Firefox still has an option to open links in new windows instead of tabs.
It's Firefox Tuesday! (Score:5, Funny)
Time to close all your browser windows.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh?
Firefox restarts bringing up all the old windows and tabs.
Re: (Score:2)
It's fucking annoying isn't it. I leave Firefox open for, well, until I have to restart it due to updates. I have a modern computer, running a modern OS, and the only time I restart my computer is for kernel updates. But, I still have to restart Firefox every few weeks because they insist on making a new version.
I used to think that the people complaining about Firefox switching to a Chrome-like quick update were just complaining for the sake of it. Now I can see a major disadvantage to it.
For Per-Window, Should be Per-Site (Score:4, Interesting)
What I want is private browsing a on a per-site basis. So when I am on the NYTimes, there is one cookie store for the NYTimes (and all the embedded stuff on the NYTimes pages) and when I am on ESPN it is a completely seperate cookie store for ESPN and embeds. That way if both NYTimes and ESPN use some of the same trackers, each tracker gets a different cookie from me based on the site the tracker was embedded in.
Re: (Score:2)
You can turn off third party cookies and, even better, apply some NoScript action to stop the tracking sites from monitoring your browsing habits.
Re: (Score:2)
I use Request Policy which gives even better control than NoScript. The problem with both of them is that you still have to know what 3rd party sites are trackers and whcih are necessary for the site to work correctly. Sometimes those 3rd party sites are both - like googleapis.com. With per-site private-browsing you wouldn't have to think about it - and the trackers would get their cookies so they wouldn't know to try ever more sneaky ways to track you.
Re: (Score:2)
You can turn off third party cookies and, even better, apply some NoScript action to stop the tracking sites from monitoring your browsing habits.
A long time ago (before the FF days), when I was using IE6, it had an option to disable third-party cookies as well.
However, when it blocked cookies, it would display an icon on the statusbar which, when clicked, showed what cookies were blocked and allowed whitelisting them on a case-by-case basis.
I really miss that functionality. Is there something like that in FF?
Re: (Score:3)
Per-site would also allow me to have one Google profile for youtube.com, and another for gmail.com, and a third for google.com. This would fight attempts by Google to merge all of my activity under one profile.
Re: (Score:2)
Wiredlogic offered some advice on turning off third-party cookies. I'll go one step further and suggest you install CookieMonster (or another cookie manager addon), NoScript, and RequestPolicy, and block almost all tracking by default. OK, so RequestPolicy isn't the easiest addon to use, and a lot of sites are hosted at WordPress.com but have their own domains, so you still have to whitelist the WP.com CDNs a lot, but still.
As well, learn to use and browse with different profiles. It's not as convenient, bu
Re: (Score:2)
Hope there's more tweaks than that in v20 (Score:1)
Hey, Mozilla. Fix your craptastic PDF viewer. I just spent the greater part of today trying to undo the S-storm the Firefox built-in PDF viewer did to a slew of network printers when users in my company's tax department tried to print PDF documents from investment sites - using the native PDF viewer. It magically caused a 5 page document to clog up the print queue with over 20000 pages of garbage on over half the printers in that department and it completely vapor locked the printers until I was able to get
hurray (Score:2)
Terrible. (Score:2)
Glad I'm still using Firefox 14 and have disabled updates. Looking at the UI for Firefox 20, I see an awful looking theme almost identical to Chrome, and an inferior download manager. It looks wholly inferior to what I have now (I have the Firefox 3 theme enabled so no nasty monochrome interface).
Re: (Score:2)
It still doesn't keep cookies separate (Score:2)
Still does not teleport any goats (Score:2)
Chrome can teleport many goats per second, firefox not even one.
Is 20 hanging routinely for anyone else? (Score:2)
Is it just me? I updated to 20 as soon as I saw this article (from mozilla.org) (Win7 64 bit) and Firefox immediately stopped working. No matter where I go, example: yahoo.com or youtube.com, Firefox will sit there not responding and will eventually pop up that a script is misbehaving. Clicking on either "continue" or "stop script" and the results are the same -- it'll go back to "not responding" and eventually the popup will return. Chrome and IE work fine going to the same sites. (Or as fine as IE ev
Re:like it's 2008 all over again (Score:5, Informative)
Chrome had it for 5 years now...
Nice troll, but as Chrome didn't exist 5 years ago, somewhat implausible.
Re: (Score:1)
Initial chrome release was September 2008. That's 4 years and 7 months ago... Legitimately rounded up.
Re: (Score:2)
So, what, nearly 5 years then?
Re: (Score:2)
4 and a half, if you count the beta of Chrome, which I personally wouldn't consider a fair comparison. But if you're being sloppy about timings, you can be about other things. Hell, does Chome even have per-tab private browsing now, let alone in 2008?
And that index is disturbing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, that's freaky.
I routinely delete things like download history when I've no further need for the files, partly as a tidiness thing and partly as a privacy thing. (This is a work machine that I use for my consulting/contracting gigs, including screen sharing for presentations/teleconferencing from time to time, so both tidiness and discretion are often called for.)
Suddenly, when I go to Tools->Downloads, there's a whole list of everything I downloaded since forever, not least a few potentially sensitive financial records and a whole trail of breadcrumbs identifying clients and various commercial research I've been doing on their behalf. The files are long gone, of course, but it's a good thing that lot didn't show up in the middle of a screen-sharing session with a different client.
What's more disturbing is that despite being reasonably careful about these things, or so I thought, Firefox has apparently been keeping a detailed record of these downloads even though I'd been clearing the old Downloads dialog regularly. What else is it storing away somewhere that I don't know about?
Re:And that index is disturbing... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And that index is disturbing... (Score:4, Interesting)
This may make me stop using firefox permanently if they are keeping hidden duplicates of all the logs. Seriously, where were these things logged and why did it never delete it with the other history logs?
Did we just find a secret government backdoor? /tinfoil hat
Deleting all != deleting selectively (Score:2)
Oh, stop it. I have five machines, all configured to delete browsing history, download history, and cookies on exit, and not one of them have shown what you three have described.
Of course not; you're not doing the same thing as we are describing.
You're talking about auto-deleting the entire history of a certain type.
But we don't want to do that, because most of the time the history is useful. We're talking about selectively deleting individual items from the history that are sensitive for whatever reason, and then those items coming back again after this update in the exact same screen where they were gone before, as well as obviously not having been deleted properly originally eve
Re: (Score:2)
I checked my stuff and I have no history of anything. Because that's how I set the privacy settings; to wipe everything on browser close.
Re:And that index is disturbing... (Score:5, Informative)
Which is OK until you hit Ctrl+Shift+T or open History->Recently Closed Tabs, which apparently keep these things around even if you've explicitly deleted them from your history.
I just opened a second window for the first time since upgrading to Firefox 20 a few minutes ago, and it even tried to reopen a page I was working on earlier today, which I clearly haven't visited for several hours because it's an admin UI hosted on a device that's powered off right now. I have absolutely no idea why it chose that page to open, and not any of the dozens I must have visited since. In fact, I have no idea why it tried to reopen any old pages at all, though I had restarted Firefox a couple of minutes earlier after updating various extensions so perhaps that was something to do with it.
Re:And that index is disturbing... (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like they've broken Private Browsing as far as extensions are concerned as well.
I use Lazarus to avoid losing form data if things crash, and it used to automatically disable itself in Private Browsing mode. I've just confirmed that since updating to Firefox 20 this doesn't happen any more, even though the relevant Lazarus option is still set the same way.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Making private mode per-window is a major infrastructural change.
You don't see any problem with a browser auto-updating in a backward-incompatible way, with serious potential implications for users' privacy? Or you do, but even though the major reason Firefox is any good as a browser is the extension ecosystem, you think that it's OK to arbitrarily move the goalposts and expect everyone's installed extensions to magically stay up-to-date at the same time? The whole "breaking extensions every update" thing got old a long time ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Expecting the browser to hold u
Re: (Score:3)
It's up to extension writers to ensure their product works with the new releases, not the other way around.
Sorry, but that policy is just plain daft if you're going to push out automatic updates every five minutes.
Firefox is a good browser primarily because of its support for extensions. Many of the most useful extensions aren't written by professionals and aren't going to be actively maintained every few days on the off chance that Mozilla will push a breaking change in the next update.
If you kill that ecosystem, you kill Firefox. It probably is as simple as that.
Expecting the browser to hold up just on the off chance it might break [random-extension] is ludicrous and impractical.
Nonsense.
The rest of the software industry has b
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but that policy is just plain daft if you're going to push out automatic updates every five minutes.
They're once every 1 or 2 months and most of the time they have minimal impact to extensions, sites or users. This particular change involves a major refactor and was well projected to anyone in the development community or beta channel. It's too bad if this extension was caught out but I see no reason whatsoever Firefox should be backwards compatible for the sake of it. Wait the massive day or two for them to pull their finger out and fix their extension.
The rest of the software industry has been successfully using major-minor-point release or version-service pack-patch strategies for decades. Among other things, this tiered approach has clear advantages for developers, who know when APIs can be relied on to be stable and when they might break. It also tends to limit breaking changes to major versions, which means they don't happen too frequently to keep up.
The rest of the software industry eh? The Linux kern
Re: (Score:2)
The Linux kernel offers no guarantee to modules that they'll work with a new point release. You know what happens if your module doesn't work with a new kernel? Tough, fix it.
Well, no, you're ignoring the other possibility: users don't get to have both a newer kernel and a useful module at the same time. Coincidentally, I spent much of today in a meeting about a development team in very much that position, where an entire project is potentially being delayed because sorting out basic Linux functionality is now the critical path. So you're really trying that argument on the wrong guy today. :-)
You're also glossing over the inconvenient truth that most people don't build their own
Re: (Score:2)
Well, no, you're ignoring the other possibility: users don't get to have both a newer kernel and a useful module at the same time. Coincidentally, I spent much of today in a meeting about a development team in very much that position, where an entire project is potentially being delayed because sorting out basic Linux functionality is now the critical path. So you're really trying that argument on the wrong guy today. :-)
Yes you do have to get the module and the kernel at the same time or all bets are off. An old module will probably work with a minor point revision but there is no guarantee it will. Anyone who uses the binary blobs against the kernel (e.g. NVidia, VirtualBox guest additions etc.) would know this all too well. And that is why the first thing most people do after an update is reinstall their proprietary drivers which usually involves running a script which compiles a shim module to compensate for any differe
Re: (Score:2)
Compatibility is fine where it makes sense. But this particular thing was a major refactor.
Then perhaps it was unwise to push it out to millions of users?
This is the first problem I see with your whole analogy with the Linux kernel: when the Linux kernel is updated, nothing automatically pushes breaking changes out to every Linux machine. In fact, doing so would be crazy, as you'd compromise half the servers on the Internet and sysadmins would storm your building and do very unpleasant things to you for trying.
Come to think of it, your whole Linux kernel parallel is rather a bad example anyway, b
Re:And that index is disturbing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, remarkably it turns out that grown-ups use the Internet for things that need privacy other than the one you're thinking of. In this case, I was looking at every bank account number for my company, since among my recent downloads were records from on-line banking to do our taxes and the files were named after each account. Sorry if that wasn't the giggly story you were hoping for, but when you're old enough to have a bank account and a job of your own, I'm sure you'll understand.
Re: (Score:2)
However... an end user shouldn't have to do that though.
I tell FF to clean out all my history bar cookies when it closes - do these phantom download entries persist through that ?!
-Jar
Re: (Score:2)
I do the same and I just checked: No it doesn't.
Re: (Score:2)
The second list was always accessible through the History menu. I did know about it and I didn't think its a bug.
But there was no equivalent to the History menu for downloads. The closest equivalent seems to be Tools->Downloads, which is exactly the screen where things were shown before, which offered a UI to remove them from the list, but which then put removed items back again after the Firefox 20 update.
Re:like it's 2008 all over again (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds a bit different since Chrome supports one private browsing cookie store, and one general cookie store. If you have two private browsing chrome windows (or tabs) they both use the same private browsing cookie store.
Firefox now sounds like it supports multiple private browsing cookie stores, so you could login to the same site 3 or 4 or however many times with different private windows, whereas with chrome you can only login twice at the same time.
Re:like it's 2008 all over again (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Just tested this, and the second private browsing window automatically picked up the login session from the first private browsing window.
Re: (Score:3)
Correct. All Private Browsing windows share the same session. Once the last Private Browsing window has been closed, though, the session is discarded. Open a new private window and you'll have to log in again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:like it's 2008 all over again - NOT (Score:1, Informative)
Firefox has had private browsing longer than Chrome has had it. The difference was that you could have a normal and incognito Chrome window open at the same time, Firefox was all or nothing.
Chrome was playing catch up a long time ago. It's a game of leap frog. Chrome is now in the back seat.
Re: (Score:3)
> Chrome did not initially have incognito, that came later.
WRONG. It was there since day 1. It was even in the fricking comic -- page 22. [google.com]
Re: (Score:3)
HOW did this get modded +5 Informative? It's blatantly WRONG. Incognito has been in since Chrome launch. It was one of the main advertised features of the damn thing.
6 more to go. (Score:5, Insightful)
So Firefox is now at 20, Chrome is now at 26.
Looks like they are finally going to reach their goal of overtaking chrome.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember when version numbers were in the format a.b.c, and actually meant something? God, I miss those days....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is 'brazillian' a unit of measure?
Re:Version 20? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
They switched to a rapid-release schedule of a new full version number every few weeks as of v5 in summer 2011... I can't tell you when we actually went from 9 to 10, though -- I'm on the auto-updating beta (or the auto-bloating, to be snide about it) and the new numbering system makes all of the releases blur together.
3.11 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When did that happen? I thought we were still in single digit version numbers or was that last week?
Firefox devs have contracted a severe case of "me-too-itis" from Chrome.
Fools not to adopt good ideas. Same goes for Chrome.
Re: (Score:2)
And since when this version number escalating thing is a good idea?
Re: (Score:2)
Firefox devs have contracted a severe case of "me-too-itis" from Chrome.
Hopefully someone will find a cure soon; "me-too-itis" can be fatal when not properly treated.
Re: (Score:2)
Firefox devs have contracted a severe case of "me-too-itis" from Chrome.
Yes, it can't have been that it's obviously more convenient not to scrap your current browsing session in order to open a private window, or that users actually wanted this.
Re: (Score:2)
Uhhh...what? What do you mean? I'm confused...
Re: (Score:3)
I can't drive 55. I can't run 55 either, but that's an entirely different issue...
Re:FAP FAP FAP (Score:5, Funny)
v21 will have auto-sausage-fapping capability - it'll even wipe up after you
Re: (Score:2)
Re:BIGGER NUMBERS (Score:4)
point release = bugfix, security fix
major release = new features
Seriously, its not as if this hasnt been answered about a zillion times already.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For vertical tabs, I think Opera supports them. [opera.com]
Not sure exactly where you turn them on because I haven't used it in ages.
Chrome seems to provide extensions that support it [google.com], but I am extremely doubtful of the browser now --trying to just get AdblockPlus was useless because it's not designed for my computer setup or something like that. It used to work some months ago (using Rockmelt)