Firefox 27 Released: TLS 1.2 Support, SPDY 3.1, SocialAPI Improvements 167
jones_supa writes "Mozilla has released Firefox 27 for Linux, Android, Mac, and Windows (download). One of the big changes is enabling support for TLS 1.1 and 1.2 by default. Firefox 27 also supports the SPDY 3.1 protocol. Developers got some new toys: support was added for ES6 generators in SpiderMonkey, the debugger will de-obfuscate JavaScript, and style sheets can be reset by using all:unset. Mozilla also announced some new social integration options. In addition to all these changes, the Android version got some UI improvements and font readability upgrades. For a future release, Mozilla is currently testing a new approach for Firefox Sync in Nightly builds. They recognized the headaches involved with how it works, and they're now opting to use a simple e-mail and password combination like Google Chrome does. In the old system, users were forced to store an auto-generated authorization code, which, if lost, would render their bookmarks, passwords and browsing history inaccessible. "
WebApi/WebPayment (Score:4, Interesting)
I want to see WebPayment lift off. This could be a huge enabler for small internet businesses. Any news on that?
Re:Yes, but have they fixed the crashes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe it's me, but Firefox 26 would crash at the drop of a hat
Tried running it in "safe mode" without addon's and see how that goes?
Firefox still crashes for me when it runs out of memory due to buggy javascript in either an addon or on a page. For example we use FinalBuilder at work, and the build control page has a massive memory leak in the javascript (sucky dom handling in web 2.0 crap) causing FF to run out of memory if I leave the page open over night.
Other than that it's been very stable on all the machines I've used it on for many years now (and that's both Windows and Linux).
Re:Too late, switched to Chrome (Score:5, Interesting)
What we really need is "Firefox Classic": a maintainable fork that takes the Firefox code base and strips it down to the essentials, without social networking add-ons or any of that garbage. Sort of like how Firefox itself originally forked off of the Mozilla Application Suite, come to think of it.
Enough of the social media garbage (Score:5, Interesting)
Firefox Memory and CPU Hogging bugs: 20 Excuses (Score:3, Interesting)
I first reported that problem about 10 years ago.
Mozilla Foundation
Top 20 Excuses
for Not Fixing the
Firefox Memory and CPU Hogging bugs
These are actual excuses given at one time or another. They are not all the excuses, just the top 20.
1) Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly build. [The same memory and CPU hogging bug has been reported many, many times over a period of TEN years.]
2) Yes, this bug exists, but other things are more important. [The bug eventually causes Firefox to take 100% of the power of one CPU, and makes Windows 7 unusable, even after Firefox is killed. The bug affects the heaviest users of Firefox, those who do a lot of research online.]
3) Yes, this bug exists, but it is not a common occurrence. [Numerous users have reported the bug. See the links.]
4) Works for me. [The bug is complicated to reproduce, so the developers did a simplified test, which didn't show the bug.]
5) No one has posted a TalkBack report. [If they had read the bug report, they would know that there is often no TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too, or a TalkBack report is not generated. TalkBack does not generate a report if Firefox is hogging the CPU. TalkBack cannot generate a report if the bug takes 100% of the CPU time.]
6) If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug. [They didn't bother to reproduce the bug using the detailed information provided.]
7) This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is invalid. [The other bugs aren't specified.]
8) You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. [But the same use does not crash any version of Chrome or Opera.]
9) I don't like the way you worded your bug report. [So, he didn't read it or think about it.]
10) You should run a debugger and find what causes this problem yourself. [Then when you have done most of the work, tell us what causes the problem, and we may fix it.]
11) Many bugs that are filed aren't important to 99.99% of the users.
12) If you are saying bad things about Mozilla and Firefox, you must be trolling. [They say this even though Firefox and Mozilla instability is beginning to be reported in media such as Information Week. See the links to magazine articles in this Slashdot comment: Firefox is the most unstable program in common use [slashdot.org].]
13) Your problem is probably caused by using extensions. [These are extensions advertised on the Firefox and Mozilla web site, and recommended.]
14) Your problem is probably caused by a corrupt profile. [The same bug has been reported many times over a period of five years. One of the reports discusses an extensive test in both Linux and Windows that used a completely clean installation of the operating systems, not just a clean profile. The CPU hogging bug and instability was just as severe.]
15) If you are technically knowledgeable, you can spend several hours (or days) trying to discover the problem: Standard diagnostic - Firefox [mozillazine.org]. [Firefox has "Standard Diagnostics". It has become accepted that some users will have severe problems. !!! ]
16) I won't actually read the (many) bug reports, but I will give you some complicated technical speculation. [This pretends to be helpful but, on investigation, is shown to have nothing to do with the bugs.]
17) It's understandable that Firefox developers become defensive when users report so many problems. [Translation: Firefox management is childlike, not adult.]
18) To spend smart developers' time going over reports of bugs generated by analysis tools would be a