Mozilla To Remove Hello In Firefox 49 (softpedia.com) 128
Firefox's voice and videoconferencing add-on was described as "the first global communications system built directly into a browser" -- but things change. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: An entry on Mozilla's issue tracker opened on July 17 reveals ongoing efforts from Mozilla engineers to remove the Hello system add-on from default Firefox installations starting with version 49, set for public release on September 13, 2016. Mozilla added Hello to Firefox in version 34, released on December 1, 2014, and from the beginning, it was part of the browser's core code, but was moved in December 2015 into a separate add-on, one that came pre-installed with Firefox, making Hello its first ever system add-on.
Mozilla plans to remove Hello from the codebases of Firefox Beta 49, Firefox Developer Edition 50, and Firefox Nightly 51. Based on the currently available information, the deadline for the Hello code removal operations is for this Monday, August 1, after which the first Firefox builds with no Hello integration will be available for testing, and will ship out in the fall with the stable release.
The article suggests this may have been a space-saving measure, "since Mozilla is focused on rebuilding Firefox's code from scratch to keep up with speedier competitors like Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi."
Mozilla plans to remove Hello from the codebases of Firefox Beta 49, Firefox Developer Edition 50, and Firefox Nightly 51. Based on the currently available information, the deadline for the Hello code removal operations is for this Monday, August 1, after which the first Firefox builds with no Hello integration will be available for testing, and will ship out in the fall with the stable release.
The article suggests this may have been a space-saving measure, "since Mozilla is focused on rebuilding Firefox's code from scratch to keep up with speedier competitors like Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi."
A step back towards sanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Great! Now please remove Pocket and Australis as well, bring tabs back to their ergonomic place not on top, stop hiding "http://" from URLs as if it were a "default" protocol (it's not -- names like ftp.*.debian.org are assumed to be FTP even if they don't support FTP anymore), drop that annoying "reader mode", etc. (Yeah, there are extensions or about:config settings to mask most of those, but most users don't know that.)
On the other hand, instead of copying Chrome, please work on actual security improvements, like DANE (currently marked "WONTFIX").
Re:A step back towards sanity (Score:4, Interesting)
Great! Now please remove Pocket and Australis as well, bring tabs back to their ergonomic place not on top, stop hiding "http://" from URLs as if it were a "default" protocol
How is tabs not being on top somehow ergonomic? The titlebar is a waste of space; I'm glad they got rid of it.
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32 pixel height is a lot, there are a great many with strictly less than 1024 pixels of monitor height. Hundreds of millions people.
And I've not found something better than Mate with bottom panel and top panel.
I have a title bar (with a centered title) which you can pry from my hot sweaty hands. Have disabled the menu bar for once and I'm finding my GUI / OS set up neater than usual. With a single-panel-on-bottom desktop I like to keep the menu bar enabled.
It's pretty bad that there isn't a button on the to
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The title bar is a standard interface element. It must always be present, except when a program is in full screen mode. OBEY THE HIG.
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And without a title bar, a maximised window would have its tool bar or menu at the top screen edge, making it easier to click on.
Infinite vertical targeting, that's why a Mac-style global menu bar is a good thing. Too bad almost no one copied it, and the only example that comes to mind - Ubuntu's Unity - is seriously flawed in many other respects. But anyway, I don't want to sacrifice actual usability for a few vertical pixels. If your screen is so damn low-res that this is an issue, the problem is your hardware. Crap, this wouldn't even be worth debating if it wasn't for the idiotic move from 4:3 to widescreen.
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Too bad almost no one copied it
I'm very pleased that almost nobody copied it. I strongly dislike this aspect of the Mac UI.
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They identify the application, and provide a place to drag the window around. That's real usability. Also, it's a matter of consistency. Every application must OBEY THE HIG.
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HIG = Human Interface Guidelines: guidelines, not laws. They're only there to serve the users, not to rule them and they must be regarded critically since sometimes they aren't in the user's best interest when applied too rigidly.
Let's look at a maximised browser window for example.
- Is there any need to identify the application? No, you already know it's the browser. There could be a need to identify the document, but the tab bar, which now appears where the title bar used to be, and the address bar do jus
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Let's look at a maximised browser window for example.
That's a mistake. Sometimes I need it non-maximized. Then your "ideal" design becomes a hindrance. All for a few pixels, to compensate for your subpar hardware. What we need is, at least, to move away from 16:9 to 16:10 monitors and demand better pixel density. Shit like 1366x768 laptops, that's not even worth taking in account! Also, since consistency is essential to produce user-friendly software, any developer who deviates from the HIG without some damn good reason is not worth his salt.
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What we need is, at least, to move away from 16:9 to 16:10 monitors
Why would 16:10 be enough? I prefer 16:12 (aka 4:3) or better.
For now, I use legacy monitors while their supplies last.
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I said "at least" because it's a compromise: there are not enough people demanding a return to 4:3, but there are still some 16:10 options. (The problem with old monitors is, TN has shit color quality.)
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I agree about monitors often having too high a resolution (for instance, 1920x1080 on 15.6" is terrible)
I disagree about the title bar being that useless, since other ways to get the full title are too cumbersome.
Now, I tried enabling the title bar in Windows 7 : instead of being centered the title is aligned on the left, and I hate the font rendering too. So it sucks ass, but only in that particular window manager / desktop environment.
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There's a huge ass 1:1 monitor : Eizo EV2730Q, with a 1920x1920 resolution.
It costs a ton, but it exists. It's even affordable if you don't need a very powerful computer otherwise.
I wish TV execs had chosen something less wide than 16:9 twenty-something years ago. 5:3 is something I would have compromised on, that is 15:9 or 1.66:1.
16:9 TV and video is even worse than 16:9 computer monitors, since the only way to get rid of them is to destroy the universe and start over.
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- Is there any need to drag the window around? No, because you cannot actually drag a maximised window without restoring it, which can be done using the restore button.
So an extra click for zero benefit? In most WMs, MS Windows included, dragging a maximized window will restore it and start dragging all in one go. You also have the ability to drag it to another monitor, or to drag it to the far left or right to "maximize" it to half the monitor. Sure, most of these can be done with keyboard shortcuts, but so can switching between tabs.
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I'm reading your comment in widescreen right now.
It fits on one line, why would I want to line wrap?
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It fits on one line, why would I want to line wrap?
Because the world is not made of tweets, and when you have a very wide block of text, it gets visually confusing. The rule of thumb is: 60-70 characters per line give the best readability.
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And that should be a function of the operating system, not the web page.
I would expect text to reflow, as it does on Slashdot, to the width of a user's browser. If they wish less horizontal width then they may resize the window according to preference.
Worse, you get horizontal scroll bars when resizing a window thinner than the designer had expected. 'Desktop' websites don't reflow on mobile and involve annoying zooming to read - as an excuse to build a fancy app that no one really needs or wants but all th
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Believe it or not, the title bar displays a title.
I do rely on it to know what a tab's web page is about.
Tabs have titles too, but truncated. For instance a tab is name "Microsof...", fair enough it's about Microsoft something. If I select this tab the title now says Micro... and the page's content would let me know what it's about, except for all the off-topic material. Task bar currently says "Micr...". What does say the title bar? 'Microsoft Brings ChakraCore to Linux and OSX - Slashdot - Mozilla Firefox
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The titlebar is a waste of space; I'm glad they got rid of it.
It's gone only on Windows. Then there's the thrice-damned hamburger menu, that's unremovable without an extension, and clumsily provides 1/10 of functionality for menu bar it purports to replace.
Re: A step back towards sanity (Score:1)
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Not sure what you mean. Bare alt does nothing, alt-letter works with the normal (ie, non-default) menu, doesn't appear to do anything with the hamburger abomination, ... am I missing something?
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The titlebar is a waste of space; I'm glad they got rid of it.
Useless to you, maybe, but I find it useful enough that I use a plugin to put it back.
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It is, in about:config
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How is tabs not being on top somehow ergonomic?
Baby Duck
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For myself I use the tabs most so the best position for them to be is at the bottom, below the bookmarks. When they were put at the top it meant that I had to move the mouse, and my eyes, a lot more to the tab bar. I've used the Classic Theme Restorer to move the tab bar back to the most convenient place for me.
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If we wanted Chrome we would just use Chrome.
Some of their steps have been infuriating, whoever is directing their development should have been removed a long time ago. I'll toss in another obvious misstep, and that was the decision to focus on 32bit instead of 64bit, how they thought that was a good idea is beyond me, luckily public outcry got them to pull their head out of their @ss.
What happens when you make assumptions... (Score:3)
My desktop, laptop, tablet, and server all run Linux, and I was an Android rom developer for several years.
And by the way,
Not every Windows user is an ignorant fool, it's people like you who give Linux a bad rep.
Re: A step back towards sanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, I quite agree. It's not perfect, but it actually makes some otherwise unreadable pages readable.
Granted, this isn't Firefox's reader mode. I haven't used FF in years ever since they fixed whatever was paging out my tabs.
At this point they need to cut down to a fast engine, and then pick something to focus on that Chrome does not do already. That's less a problem of coding and more a problem of vision and direction. FF squandered its lead by bloating right the fuck up. Its hard to understand w
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I did say they needed to pick something to work on after cutting back, and while it could be speed, I did not mean the focus had to be on speed itself. I agree that you can't just be leaner, because that's not enough for a top browser, being the speed demon is a trap because it locks you out of adaptability.
Having said that, there is a niche for fast and lean too, you just need to find the right use cases. That would have to be a decision they would make.
In any event, they need to get back to basics on th
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Its hard to understand why the FF developers don't understand that after all these years. People left IE and old Netscape because FF was faster and saner than the alternative. It was clean. Then they shat it right up and turned it into an overweight has-been. Microsoft can glide on their momentum, but not many other groups can.
That's the thing, lean only goes so far. You can only get so much speed out of a browser, and really a lot of that is better handled by hardware design, and leanness is not exactly a selling feature that you can keep using.
After that, your developers start thinking about what people need, what people really need.
I'm of the opinion that a lot of software could be much faster, if we were willing to code it low level enough, but then that is not justified for a lot of software. As far as leanness not being what is needed, I'm less than sure that is true. Lean= battery life, or in the case of large companies lean=electric bill. I'm somewhat dubious about this rewrite idea though. Perhaps you have to rewrite large blocks, but you try to not be too many months out from something that could, possibly, be released.
Off
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Yes, years the software industry made an economic decision that developer time was more valuable than software efficiency on the hypothesis that increasing hardware power will make up for the decrease in software efficiency. That decision reduced overall software quality quite a lot. It was a terrible decision at the time, and is increasingly terrible as time goes on.
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If you want a Firefox based browser without Australis or the other crap, there's Palemoon. Added bonus: It was forked before the annoying bug that causes proxy pac use to freeze up after a certain number of requests, and that Mozilla apparently don't care about. (My guess is that they'll just drop pac support like they dropped support for half a dozen other useful things)
Palemoon is still bloated, sluggish and eats gobs of memory, and lack many (but not all) of the removed features, but that's true for e
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I created an image to deploy on shared workstations, using Firefox as the browser.
Set history to delete at close, disabled password saving nags, hid useless Pocket and hello icons, disable their wretched PDF viewer, added uBlock, set search to Google, etc. Thought I had everything good to go.
Deploy the image on a new machine a couple months later... "You haven't used Firefox in a while. Would you like to Refresh the settings, losing all the customization you added?"
Why the fuck do they keep coming up with n
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The PDF viewer is great. I use the Chrome port of it instead of the built-in one or some third party plug-in. It's pure Javascript so everything runs in the Browser's deepest sandbox, which is far safer than a binary plug-in. It's better than the standard Chrome one too, especially since you can display the PDF table of contents by default.
What is your preference? I used to use SumatraPDF, but the plug-in was discontinued due to being x86 only and everyone removing NSAPI support.
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^^^ MOD PARENT UP ^^^
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I wonder if it varies per machine, but it *always* copy the protocol for me, be it an X11 mouse copy or a copy/paste. Maybe it works on X11.
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set browser.urlbar.trimURLs=false to unhide the protocol.
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Reader seems like a nice feature, I don't see any reason to remove it.
I don't understand the Australis bitching. Just install Classic Theme Restorer.
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don't feed it broken urls. Stick the ftp:// [ftp] at the front.
Why would anyone want to ever use ftp:// [ftp] for this millenium? If a protocol is default, it should be default for every hostname; I don't expect a small rodent themed page for kids to be accessed with gopher:// [gopher] so neither should ftp.debian.org be accessed using some pointless ancient protocol.
Hashtags like the cool kids: (Score:2)
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#suddenoutbreakofproperspeeling
keep up with speedier competitors (Score:3, Insightful)
like Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi...
and Seamonkey...
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SeaMonkey is faster? It's a suite product based on Mozilla's products. :/
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SeaMonkey is faster? It's a suite product based on Mozilla's products. :/
Yes, though not as much as it used to be. Simple UI, none of this crap like hello, same Gecko and JavaScript engines. Most add-ons work or can be easily converted to work. /. loaded much faster back then (might have been ver 3.5 or 3.6). Might vary on different platforms.
Firefox became more bloated and slower then SeaMonkey around version 3, at least
Worth trying if you don't mind the old fashioned interface and perfect for grandmothers and such who freak out when every version of FF is different.
Only proble
Re: Firefox's real problems going unaddressed (Score:1)
All new source code! As if source code rusted.
Rust... Mozilla... Irony...
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Maybe then there's some truth to Microsoft's claim that Edge consumes less battery.
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hello goodbye (Score:2)
I mean, goodbye hello.
Obligitory theme song (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Saves a step (Score:5, Informative)
Disable Firefox Hello
loop.enabled = false
Disable Pocket
browser.pocket.enabled = false
Disable One-Click Search Bar (no longer working)
browser.search.showOneOffButtons = false
Enable Firefox Tracking Protection
privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true
Disable Tab Animations
browser.tabs.animate = false
Disable Search in Url Bar
browser.urlbar.unifiedcomplete = false
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Disable Full Screen "Warning" Popup
full-screen-api.warning.delay = 0
full-screen-api.warning.timeout = 0
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Classic theme restorer add-on takes care of the one-click search bar
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the old theme is pretty poor useability wise.
That's a pretty individual thing, though. Things that you find hard to use may be things that others find are the easiest. But, what legRoom said -- I use the plugin to restore some of the old things that work better for me, and I keep some of the new things that work better for me.
More (Score:2, Informative)
Bring back the real about:blank (and remove the gears in about:blank).
Remove Pocket
Remove Australis
Remove safe browsing (i.e., calling-home to google for every site you visit). At least it should be opt-in, not opt-out.
Remove Geo tracking completely (geo.enabled=false in about:config.) That should have been opt-in and not opt-out.
Remove anything related to facebook. "social.manifest.facebook" and all the "social.*" settings - WTF do they need to be in my browser?\
Set the default search engine to startpage o
Re: More (Score:2)
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The "average user" ditched FF for Chrome a long time ago.
Never noticed (Score:2)
this, and never wanted to.
These developers don't know what they're doing... (Score:1)
When Firefox Hello was introduced, I found it strange that a video chat program was included with a web browser. I tried out using it, and have used it many times to talk with friends and family. I liked it, because my friends and family who are not computer experts can just immediately use it in their browser without installing an application like Ekiga or Linphone (I refuse to use Skype because it is proprietary).
But what I found extremely annoying, is that in each successive Firefox release, major featur
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Build a "wall" around it / make it closed source!
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> If I were their manager, I would call them into my office, and tell them "You're Fired!"
Developers have the leeway to make decisions (without running everything through managerment & commitee) ?! haha
It's the manager that needs fired
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Unfortunately, all these new features come with websites that insist on them or won't work.
You really want to know problems? Play with ESR. The "long term stable" release. Major features/changes tend to land right after an ESR release.
Staying on ESR means fewer changes, no more nightly surprises, no more constantly changing interface every 6 weeks, etc.
BUT ... since major features come out the next 6 week cycle? Websites wind up using them. Suddenly, the long-term stable system becomes unable to access site