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Firefox 36 Arrives With Full HTTP/2 Support, New Design For Android Tablets 147

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 36 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions to the browser include some security improvements, better HTML 5 support, and a new tablet user interface on Android. The biggest news for the browser is undoubtedly HTTP/2 support, the roadmap for which Mozilla outlined just last week. Mozilla plans to keep various draft levels of HTTP/2, already in Firefox, for a few versions. These will be removed "sometime in the near future." The full changelog is here.
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Firefox 36 Arrives With Full HTTP/2 Support, New Design For Android Tablets

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  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @06:16PM (#49123015) Journal
    I installed a recent version of Firefox in Google Nexus 5 phone. I could not install NoScript. Says not supported. I desperately need an alternative to Chrome in my phone. All kinds of pop-ups. Does this version support NoScript?
    • Dig around. Someone's ported noscript to Android: I'm happily running it.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Because until then...

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @06:29PM (#49123111)

    You can't play 1080p videos or higher from Youtube without it. This is the absolute last thing that's holding me back from removing flash altogether. I know they mentioned specifically enabling MSE for youtube only on the bugtracker page (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617), because of some issues but I don't see this in the changelog.

    • I'm running the Aurora build (v38) and no. That could be just debian testing, of course. :) But *I think* I have all the relevant codecs installed.

      MSE & H.264 is in red on https://www.youtube.com/html5 [youtube.com]

      I might wait for a kernel and xorg update - intel has native VP8 support for their Bay Trail Atom chips. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p... [phoronix.com]

      • MSE support is supposed to make it in 37. However they can't seem to get it right and it's likely it won't be in a shippable state in 6 weeks.

    • by Ark42 ( 522144 )

      I think it was backed out, due to problems (I noticed pretty major audio sync problems myself, but it otherwise seemed to play 1080/4K/60fps videos just fine on YouTube).
      You can go enable the prefs in about:config if you want to try it out. I'm pretty sure the code is all there, just turned off by default still because of bugs.

    • by BZ ( 40346 )

      MSE support isn't in Firefox 36.

      The Youtube-only thing is currently being targeted for Firefox 37, and enabling it in general for 38 or 39 once the standards-compliance issues are worked out.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @06:29PM (#49123119)

    Don't forget this version also comes with Firefox Hello! Firefox Hello allows you to voice chat with all your friends, right from your browser! You'll know about it because when you update to Firefox 36, Firefox sure as hell won't let you miss this new feature that you never wanted in a god-damned browser and will immediately remove from the toolbar because it's goddamned useless and WHY IS THIS IN A BROWSER AT ALL?!!!

    (I know the answer to that last one: because VOIP is part of the increasingly bloated and useless HTML 5 spec and this uses the new HTML 5 VOIP junk. In case you wondered when HTML 5 jumped the shark...)

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sexconker ( 1179573 )

      I believe this shit was introduced in the last version. And yes, it's absolutely useless fucking shit that shouldn't be in a fucking browser.

      • by dns_server ( 696283 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @09:10PM (#49124267)

        Webrtc is a standard that has been in the browser for the last year or more.
        What the button does is open a web page that calls the standard api's.
        Adding this button does not bloat the browser that much because the underlying api is already there.

        • The button is bloat. It bloats the UI by default. It bloats the overall package.
          The code to insert the button into the UI by default is bloat.
          The code to pop up a message telling people how great it is is bloat.
          The code to support the standard is bloat.
          The "standard" itself is bloat.

          I want a build of Firefox without this shit or any of the shitty recent additions like it. Disabling it (or however much of it you can) isn't a fix because it's still resident, still takes up storage space, still needs to be

    • by ChunderDownunder ( 709234 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @06:56PM (#49123299)

      You say bloat, I say functionality.

      Let's see there's skype (that requires installing a closed source binary from the evil empire), FaceTime (that only works on Apple hardware), Hangouts (that requires a Google account, and yes there are still people on the planet...) Other technologies exist but those are the most Grandma-friendly.

      Videoconferencing from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?

      • Videoconferencing from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?

        YES, in the same way that every user on the planet would probably want a calculator once in a while but that doesn't mean the browser needs to add one!

        • by asa ( 33102 )

          Videoconferencing from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?

          YES, in the same way that every user on the planet would probably want a calculator once in a while but that doesn't mean the browser needs to add one!

          Firefox comes with a couple of calculators built in. It has since before it was called Firefox.

      • by AuMatar ( 183847 )

        In *browser*? Abso-fucking-lutely. If Mozilla Foundation wanted to write the Mozilla Videoconfrencing app, that would be fine. But there is 0 reason to put it in the browser, and it only decreases security of everyone involved by having it in there. A browser should display webpages- period.

        • by narcc ( 412956 )

          Google WebRTC, then hang your head in shame.

          A browser should display webpages- period.

          The rest of the world disagrees with you. The web has been billed as an application platform since at least 1995.

          • by AuMatar ( 183847 )

            Those applications are all *drumroll* web pages. They are not video conferencing or any of the other crap Mozilla has been putting in there lately. Anyone who thinks those belong in a browser is a fucking idiot.

            • by narcc ( 412956 )

              Those applications are all *drumroll* web pages

              Only if you don't count 20 years worth of java, flash, etc. apps that previously enabled that kind of rich content in the browser. Like it or not, the web has been an application platform for at least the past 20 years. It's about time you got over it, and accepted the fact that the web simply isn't what you personally want it to be, and hasn't been for nearly it's entire existence.

              Anyone who thinks those belong in a browser is a fucking idiot.

              Or people who have had to deal with complex deployments and cross-platform development. A set of simple standards that signif

      • by jemmyw ( 624065 )

        skype (that requires installing a closed source binary from the evil empire), FaceTime (that only works on Apple hardware), Hangouts (that requires a Google account, and yes there are still people on the planet...) Other technologies exist but those are the most Grandma-friendly.

        free.gotomeeting.com. I work with the guys who make it. It's more grandma friendly than any of the above, share a link, straight into the meeting.

      • by Lennie ( 16154 )

        What I like about WebRTC is that it restores the 'end-to-end encrypted' part we had lost.

        Skype, Facetime and others were all sued by this company which has patents:
        http://arstechnica.com/apple/2... [arstechnica.com]

        They all made deals and changed the way their software worked instead of paying for the patent directly.

        Do you know what they changed ? They are no longer peer2peer applications anymore.

        And at least in the case of Skype, we know Microsoft can decrypt the calls. And we know they have at least automated systems whic

    • WHY IS THIS IN A BROWSER AT ALL?!!!
      I know the answer to that last one: because VOIP is part of the increasingly bloated and useless HTML 5 spec and this uses the new HTML 5 VOIP junk.

      The short answer is that in an increasingly mobile, device and app-oriented world, the geek's plain vanilla web browser is well on the road towards extinction.

      It comes down to a choice: If the geek wants the "open web" and not the "walled garden," the web browser must have all the functionality of the app world, including VoIP,

      • Doing everything from Firefox is just settling into another walled garden. Try again.
        • not if its a walled garden that all the browsers (and W3C) specify and support. Then its a club that you can join if you like.... or go back to sitting on the steps outside whining at passersby, who don't really care.

          I think you can generally blame Google for this, and I think one day they will wall off their part (in a Microsoft-eque de-facto standard) and then we'll be really unhappy with the internet.

          • Not even relatively simple CSS rules work uniformly across browsers. What makes you think they'll properly handle VOIP calls? I'd bet my hat that a Firefox user will more than likely need to call another Firefox user to not run into issues.
  • They make it sound (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    like HTTP/2 support is a feature and enhancement. http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2716278

  • by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @06:46PM (#49123241) Journal

    No more features.
    No more features.
    No more features.
    No more features.
    Stability, performance.Stability, performance.
    Stability, performance.Stability, performance.

    Did I mention Stability, performance?

    Stop.
    This goes for Firefox, this goes for Android (VERY much)
    Stop assuming there's always more powerful things coming. Stuff has slowed down the last 5 years. I can't believe how slow a modern browser can get on a decent machine. I shouldn't need 8 cores at 4.5ghz with 16gb of DDR4 or something ridiculous like that.

    Stop fiddling and start cleaning up.
    Oh and Firefox? It's 2015...... native 64bit as default already, for fucks sake.
    and this, ASAP.
    https://wiki.mozilla.org/Elect... [mozilla.org] A.S.A.P

    • by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @06:58PM (#49123321)

      Installing NoScript onto Firefox is one of the best things I've done for Firefox memory usage. It's also more secure since it stifles most cross-site scripting connections, drastically reduces load times since said cross-site scripting isn't being loaded.

      Then again, I'm still looking over at Pale Moon, and thinking that I should abandon Firefox entirely and shift my primary browsing over to Pale Moon. It accepts Noscript, and doesn't even need Classic Theme Restorer or Status-4-Evar installed, since it never messed with the UI, and never removed the status bar. (I don't know if Firefox 36 still has this problem, but Firefox 35, 34, 33, etc, all had an issue where a new window would sometimes result in the status bar not appearing. I like seeing a status bar in a windowed program, since it does what it says on the tin: provides status cues, as well as providing far less annoying insight than hovering the mouse over something and waiting for a tooltip to appear.

      • I've switched to waterfox, the thing never crashes. Uses a shitload of ram but never crashes. Also noscript - but the performance is still subpar, quite subpar.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        The 64bit Pale Moon implementation borks PNG graphics. AFAICT it fails to render yellow entirely.

      • by jfengel ( 409917 )

        Unfortunately, I've found that increasing numbers of sites require those cross-site scripting just to render themselves. It's not uncommon for a site to require enabling literally dozens of other sites. It can be hard to tell which of those are content, which are navigation, which are ads, and which are tracking. At least some are starting to detect when you're selectively disabling the ad servers and metrics sites, and refusing to render at all.

        In general, I'd prefer to avoid those sites entirely. I do und

    • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      I'd be happy if they fixed bugs that IE and Opera don't have, some of which are a decade old and have 'won't fix' attached.

      How many hundreds of millions do they have sitting in the bank and they get all stupid and decide not to fix bugs! Firefox is going to end up like Netscape 4.7.

      • Firefox is going to end up like Netscape 4.7.

        Firefox has an IM client built in now. Clearly, you're using the wrong verb tense.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @07:16PM (#49123479)

      The modern browser isn't slow due it itself. The modern browser is slow due to the online experience bloating.

      HTML5, fancy graphics, all elements on the screen moving relative to each other, every object being dynamic, pictures, did I mention dynamic objects? The constant reliance on a link between server and client to send push messages, and of course all the dynamic objects.

      If you disable javascript and break most of the webpages then browsers run quite blazingly fast. It's not a Firefox related problem that the internet now demands the browser to be a borderline operating system with built in media player.

      Maybe slashdot could release an autoplaying video description of why this trend is such a problem.

      • by rHBa ( 976986 )
        Actually I've found the Android version of FF performs significantly worse than the default Android browser (on my Nexus 7). This page includes a parallax scroll effect with a massive background image at the bottom:

        http://www.authenticasia.net/ [authenticasia.net]

        On FF Android it is very glitchy depending on how fast you scroll, on the default Android browser it works fine.

        I do however get your point about eye candy bloat, fashion before function etc...
        • by AuMatar ( 183847 )

          Define "default android browser". Each OEM ships their own- Google has one, but so does Samsung. If you have a Samsung phone you've never used the default Android browser.

          • by rHBa ( 976986 )
            I did say it's a Nexus 7 so it's the standard Android browser (com.android.browser - Version 4.4.4)
      • by narcc ( 412956 )

        It doesn't have to be that way. Get web developers to stop competing with one another on how many frameworks and general-purpose libraries they can cram on a single page to do something better handled with CSS. It's like a plague.

        You can have a fancy site with lots of "dynamic" elements than is efficient and performant. It actually takes significantly less effort than forcing a bunch of buggy and bloated "time saving" libraries to work together.

        • It's not that simple. One way or the other we're not going back to the "good old days" of the internet. Even the supposedly lean pages for mobile like m.slashdot.org is far larger and more resource intensive than the desktop version of Slashdot from the 90s.

          Did I mention video on Slashdot? Even if you write super efficient pages we still demand our browser to be a full media player capable of 1080p video playback (or even 4k as per some YouTube content).

    • I confirm that: I use Windows with 2Gb RAM and Firefox is barely usable, thus I switched to Palemoon, but I'm not very satisfied either.
      Chrome is even worse, and IE is out of question.
      I tried Opera, Seamonkey and K-Meleon, but prefer Palemoon.

      On my wife's computer, it's even worse: she has a 1GB computer with nothing installed, and Firefox is absolutely unusable !
      I switched her to Qupzilla.
      She doesn't browse heavy flash sites, so why should we need 4 Gb+ to use gmail and do basic browsing ?

    • Single Core 1.46Ghz, 8GB of RAM (complete overkill). 64bit Linux, iceweasel process has NEVER used more than 1.5GB. 3 tabs open currently sitting at 341.3MB

      Are you just trolling or is there some mysterious combination of extensions and addons that requires an 8 core box?

    • by narcc ( 412956 )

      I can't believe how slow a modern browser can get on a decent machine. I shouldn't need 8 cores at 4.5ghz with 16gb of DDR4 or something ridiculous like that.

      I have several older computers in a public lab (P4, 1-2gb) that run FireFox exceptionally well. (Chrome, oddly enough, barely runs at all. The reverse used to be true.) You don't need 8 cores at 4.5ghz and 16gb of DDR4 or "something ridiculous like that" A nearly 10-year-old computer with FireFox seems to cope well enough with the modern web.

      • I would hardly define opening "About:blank" in a single tab, web browsing.

        • by narcc ( 412956 )

          Yes, yes, very funny. Humor is a great way to cope when reality challenges your preconceptions. Just don't forget that it's merely a coping mechanism and that you'll need to accept the world for how it is eventually.

      • I agree, I tweaked a few settings on my work FF (as work laptop is 4GB) and it shows 245MB private bytes used with 6 tabs open and doesn't show nay signs of slowness compared to the default 'cache up loads of stuff' settings.

        I think the most important is the sessionhistory stuff as that can multiply how much back button pages are stored, per tab!

        browser.cache.memory.enable;false
        browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers; 2
        browser.sessionstore.max_serialize_back;5
        browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo;5
        browser.ses

    • by Malc ( 1751 )

      I switched to Chrome a few years ago because I was fed-up with Firefox's monolithic single process architecture. With a single process I have no way to tell which tab is draining my battery, which is a bigger issue than the constant memory leaking. The devs at Mozilla and Netscape before it have never really understood the benefits of multi-processing.

      My laptop failed a few days ago so I'm on an old machine I haven't used for three years, but seeing as Firefox is the default I thought I'd update it and gi

    • That should apply to a lot of software, not just Firefox. More icing is pointless if the cake is falling apart. (Unless you use concrete or spackle for icing..!)
    • by Lennie ( 16154 )

      The real question is:

      Why are you still using Windows ? ;-)

  • Unless they've put back the easy way of disabling javascript, their "security enhancements" are meaningless. There are too many web pages that hijack the browser using js and don't let you get to any "about:config" pages but will still allow preferences to be changed...
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Oh lord, here we go. Let's bitch about them removing a nigh-useless toggle that messes up the experience for less-resourceful users, just because WE are more important and installing a superior addon is beneath us. Why should I be the one to have to install addons, amirite?

      • Let's bitch about them removing a nigh-useless toggle

        If you've ever been stuck on a page that won't let you go anywhere and every attempt at leaving mucks up other tabs, then you wouldn't call turning off javascript at that point useless.

        that messes up the experience for less-resourceful users

        Oh, lord, here we go. Another idjit who thinks his definition of what "the experience" should be must be the experience for everyone else.

        Why should I be the one to have to install addons, amirite?

        If you don't want to install an addon, feel free not to install an addon. Don't tell others that they should be forced to install an addon to DISABLE something that could be disabled nat

        • I've never been stuck on a page that won't let me go anywhere.

          His entire point was that HIS experience doesn't need to be the same as yours, or anyone else's. The DEFAULT one should be sane for most use cases though.

          As for installing addons to disable something, the only point against that is not having those things enabled by default. But as most of the web these days doesn't work without at least some level of javascript, having a dumb toggle default to either position is pretty much useless. They COUL

          • The DEFAULT one should be sane for most use cases though.

            It was. "Enable javascript" was on by default.

            But as most of the web these days doesn't work without at least some level of javascript,

            Most of the web works just fine without javascript. Those times I had to disable it to get away from a page that was using it maliciously, I often forgot to turn it back on and found the "browsing experience" to be much more pleasant.

            Saying that "most of the web doesn't work" unless you have javascript is another way of saying that "your web experience should be what I tell you it has to be".

            having a dumb toggle default to either position is pretty much useless.

            That's just silly. Having a toggle that defaults to "on" gets you

            • Interesting selective response.

              I proposed a complicated by-page or by-site manager as something that won't break other open tabs. Feel free to propose something better, like NoScript.

              The global toggle breaks things. This was obvious in the bug reports from the time when it was removed, and I have personal experience to back that up. It doesn't work with all the other modern features.

              The fact that it DID work for you in a specific use case back when it existed doesn't say anything about today. I challeng

              • Interesting selective response.

                I responded to what I found relevant.

                I proposed a complicated by-page or by-site manager as something that won't break other open tabs. Feel free to propose something better, like NoScript.

                I responded to your complicated system by pointing out how overly complicated it was. I proposed something better.

                The global toggle breaks things.

                Yes, I know. If you disable jt, it breaks every webpage that relies on javascript to do anything useful. It also breaks every website that relies on js to do malicious things. That's good.

                The fact that it DID work for you in a specific use case back when it existed doesn't say anything about today.

                Since it still works today, yes, today's use case is adequately covered. I still have systems with that version and they run just fine. Nothing is broken. Having the op

                • One last response, and then I stop, as you've obviously got an axe to grind and my pointing out the original reasoning isn't going to change that.

                  I shouldn't have to learn how to write a full add-on to do something that WAS THERE AND WAS REMOVED, just to TURN OFF something. That's ridiculous. And the problem is that if the malicious website is preventing you from getting to any other pages you are probably going to have trouble getting to the add-on.

                  See another response to my comment; a bookmarklet that does what you want. However, the idea behind the add-on is that it sticks a button in your toolbar, so you don't have to "get to the add-on".

                  Here's an idea. What about DON'T TURN OFF JAVASCRIPT ON PAGES THAT AREN'T MALICIOUSLY TRYING TO HIJACK YOUR "WEB EXPERIENCE"? It's that simple. Really. There's no reason to turn it off for banking, search, etc unless they are doing something bad.

                  The JS toggle in settings is global. If you have multiple tabs open, it gets turned off for ALL tabs, not just the malicious page. But then on the other side, loading

                  • as you've obviously got an axe to grind

                    My only axe to grind is with someone who treats me like an idiot because I don't think I should have to write an add-on to do something that used to be a simple checkbox menu item. Someone who thinks THEIR solution to a problem they've never come across is so much better.

                    The JS toggle in settings is global. If you have multiple tabs open, it gets turned off for ALL tabs, not just the malicious page.

                    Do'h. I know that. So what? Once you get rid of the malicious page that you can't get away from while js is active, TURN JAVASCRIPT BACK ON. It really is that simple. Three simple steps: 1. Turn js off. 2. Escape the malicious page. 3. T

                    • OK; I said I wouldn't respond again, but I can see that you're definitely reading more into a number of my statements than I was putting there... especially the bit about the banking -- I was implying that intelligent people (including you) wouldn't be doing that in the first place, so this isn't really an issue for you, and the checkbox method would work. Someone admitting you have a point usually isn't calling into question your intelligence.

                      And your conclusions as to the points I was making are way off.

      • You forgot "WE would rather have that toggle than install NoScript".

        THE ENTIRE POINT of Firefox was that if you wanted a feature, you could just add it on.

        Now let's move all the extra features into add-ons so that the default browser is a browser only, and I'll be happy. Oh, that and make the relationship between "Add-ons" and "extensions" more obvious. After all -- you have to go to the Add-ons menu to adjust your extensions -- but you can only "get add-ons" and not extensions, because....

        (and I'm sure i

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Actually there is security deterioration. The support of http/2 means that now web servers will be able to push unwanted objects to your browser. I'm not sure whether NoScript and AdBlock Plus will still work properly or not.

      Whoever "pushed" that feature into the http/2 standard is a world class idiot at best.

      • by zidium ( 2550286 )

        So we can bring back PointCast?! Man, I used that service ALL THE TIME in the mid-to-late 1990s!!! I actually still miss it.

  • Dang. I use this a lot.

    Crap. Crapity crapity crapity crap.

  • by davidshewitt ( 1552163 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @12:09AM (#49124883)
    I updated Firefox on my windows machine and the Windows firewall dialog popped up and asked me to allow Firefox. I declined it. but WTF?! Why would a browser need to open up ports? This seems like quite a security risk. Anyone else seen this?
    • WebRTC or Firefox Hello [mozilla.org], perhaps?

      • Nope. Bug 1054959 [mozilla.org]: it's searching your network for Roku or Chromecast devices so you can fling videos and tabs to them.

        • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

          Why would this require opening a port? I skimmed through the bug and didn't even find a mention of opening ports. Is this part of the discovery protocol for Roku or Chromecast?

          • Yeah, it looks like the protocol involves sending a UDP packet to 239.255.255.250 port 1900, and waiting for any devices to send a packet back. The return packets will come from the devices' unicast address rather than the discovery multicast address, so you can't rely on normal state tracking to let the return packets in automatically.

            The bugs are a bit convoluted, because there's a lot of them and this code originally landed for Mobile before being ported to desktop. There's Bug 1090535 [mozilla.org]... the actual disc

  • Less of the trivial nonsense. What we all want to know is how round the tabs are.

  • And leaving the new features to the extension-writers? Isn't that what this was supposed to be, back in the days of Phoenix?

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