Firefox 51 Arrives With HTTP Warning, WebGL 2 and FLAC Support (venturebeat.com) 130
Reader Krystalo writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 51 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The new version includes a new warning for websites which collect passwords but don't use HTTPS, WebGL 2 support for better 3D graphics, and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) playback. Mozilla doesn't break out the exact numbers for Firefox, though the company does say "half a billion people around the world" use the browser. In other words, it's a major platform that web developers target -- even in a world increasingly dominated by mobile apps.
Re:Just installed (Score:5, Informative)
Is it really?
One of the recent updates (48/49/50( absolutely KILLED the performance. Particularly annoying is the URL bar. Autocomplete results take longer to populate and my usual pattern of opening tabs was broken. I used to type in a few characters, select the entry, and hit enter. For example: sl, down (or tab), enter, ctrl+t, ca, down (or tab), enter, ctrl+t, etc. would open up slashdot, then a new tab for my calendar, then a new tab for... Ever since the performance tanked, I couldn't do that anymore without deliberately slowing down at each step.
I even tried blowing out all of my old history (years and years of browsing data on one machine). This was particularly annoying as clearing out everything older than 6 months will do so based on the FIRST access date, not the last access date. So clearing out everything older than 6 months blows out slashdot even though I access it daily. I had to go into each subfolder in the history control and sort by last access date, then blow out everything older than a threshold of a few months back. This took almost an hour of constant work because deleting history this way causes FF to update the UI constantly. CPU usage spiked to 100% of a single core while FF deleted an entry, updated the scroll bar, scrolled the list, then deleted the next entry. To prevent FF from locking up completely and crashing I had to work in batches of a few thousand and let it stew for a couple of minutes before hitting the next batch.
And after all that work, with a history file that was in the hundreds of thousands instead of tens of millions, performance was still ass.
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Try with a fresh Fx profile to compare performance to your usual one. Nine times out of ten, I find that it's some obscure setting people flipped in about:config or an addon that's causing their massive performance problems. The rest are generally caused by people using the heaviest web apps out there, and wondering why their browsers aren't running as well as they did years ago before all of these resource-hungry apps.
Re: Just installed (Score:2)
Well I haven't so stick your fanboi bullshit up your arse
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Christ. Heaven forbid someone points out that problems are often solved by troubleshooting, rather than pissing and moaning.
>Why do I have to reset my Firefox profile every couple of months just to get it to kind of work better, while I never have to do that for Chrome?
I don't know. Why do so many other people NOT have to do that, yet you have to? If you don't want to find out, then fuck off with your holier-than-thou attitude about how Firefox sucks because it's just not stroking you off the right way.
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I'd never really thought about this before, but you are completely right - printing in FF is absolutely terrible. The number of times I have printed something at work to read later, and found myself giving up to read it from the screen instead because the print out was unusable.
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Avoiding splitting certain things across pages, such as a line of text or a small table or image, is one major difference between screen and print layout. Print also has stronger preference for black on white because of consumables costs proportional to ink coverage.
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Regarding printing in FF, I must say that under Linux it works great. I often print to PDF from FF.
Ah, and that's the trick with FF, print first to PDF and then print the PDF from a PDF reader. You still get broken printed docs sometimes, but it's not nearly as bad as printing directly to the printer. Just out of interest, what happens if you go straight to printer under Linux?
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The problem is likely the internal sqlite database fragmentation. On Windows you can run tools like "speedyfox" in order to defrag the database.
Bad performance is likely caused by having lots of extensions enabled.
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I only have a few extensions - Adblock Plus or Ublock Origins (some machines have one, some have the other; no machines have both), New Tab Override (just takes me to about:blank instead of about:tab for new tabs), NoScript, and Ghostery (only on some machines).
I figured the database was the issue, which is why I went through blowing out history. I'll try speedyfox and see if it helps. Firefox occasionally tells me "Hey, refresh your shit!" and I'm like "Fuck you! I have it set up to make it usable!".
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Speedyfox is the real deal. Shit's FIXED!
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The problem with the database Firefox uses is it doesn't actually delete entries when you delete them. It just marks them as deleted so apparently database queries still spend time skipping over them. They aren't actually removed until you perform a vacuum operation on the database. As you found out, there are tools like Speedyfox which do that for you.
Firefox has tons of issues. I'm amazed it's gotten as far as it has with so many fundamental design mistakes. But I guess that really just shows you the
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The thing is, SQLite supports vacuuming and 2 different autovacuum modes. At a minimum, I would think Mozilla would set them to vacuum after emptying large amounts of data, or incrementally when idle.
Either way, download the official SQLite CLI client and vacuum the databases yourself and you can see a dramatic difference if it have been awhile since the last time you did.
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So try it, or else we'll perform another comprehensive update on your system. (You thought Firefox was slow NOW??? And we can tell if you do or not.)
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I would, but it does not appear to be supported on any OS that I use.
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way to go Mozilla (Score:1)
Way to go (Score:1)
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I am curious - how is market share being defined?
Number of users; number of installations; number of hits on a collection of websites; survey or market research results?
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Webkit can probably count all the mobile users who use the default browser as part of its user count. Similarly, maybe Firefox is the browser being used on ATM screens on mall info terminals, that would add a lot of 'users' who are actually clueless as to which browser is underlying their UX.
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'Half a billion' refers to their memory usage.
Less than half a GB? That would be great!
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So somehow they're saying that there are 10 billion people in the world?
Yup. And of those 10 billion, at last four billion love, love, love Australis. And another two billion want Pocket integrated into Firefox. The only downside to the Mozilla... sorry, MI//lla://: whatever it's called now good-news tour is that one or possibly two people have complained about problems with memory leaks, but luckily that affects so few people that it's not worth addressing.
Warning for websites collecting passwords? (Score:1, Troll)
Why? Who is Mozilla to assume that every damn website is important enough to require encryption? I mean Slashdot didn't support HTTPS for a good 18 years and we all survived. God forbid the NSA could pose as thegarbz on Slashdot, oh noes!
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Who is Mozilla to assume that every damn website is important enough to require encryption?
They haven't. HTTPS-less are still going to work.
Slashdot didn't support HTTPS for a good 18 years and we all survived.
Yes, having done things one way in the past is an excellent reason for continuing to do them.
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are still going to work.
Still going to work implies that it won't dick the user about for trivial things.
Yes, having done things one way in the past is an excellent reason for continuing to do them.
I noticed you sidestepped the question. The way we do something in the past is an intrinsic defence against change. If you can't come up with a good reason for a change then the way we have done something in the past is in fact an excellent reason not to change something.
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I noticed you sidestepped the question.
The only question you asked was a) rhetorical and b) logically fallacious, so yes, I did "sidestep" it. I don't remember agreeing to be the one to answer it, anyway, so I'm not sure you're getting snippy with me.
If you can't come up with a good reason for a change then the way we have done something in the past is in fact an excellent reason not to change something.
You really can't think of a good reason not to submit passwords in the clear? Or that a warning about same won't help to alert a user that he's on a spoofed page?
Re:Warning for websites collecting passwords? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The security services got to use quantum insert.
GCHQ Created Spoofed LinkedIn and Slashdot Sites To Serve Malware (November 11, 2013)
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
UK spies continue “quantum insert” attack via LinkedIn, Slashdot page (11/11/2013)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
Password re-use (Score:2)
Who is Mozilla to assume that every damn website is important enough to require encryption?
Answer: password re-use.
Yes, that obscure website that you use to get movie reviews and choose which session you're going to watch in which theatre isn't that much important.
Except that most of the dumb users will have used the exact same password in other much more critical places :
- their bank account
- their gmail account, which serves as the e-mail fall back for all the "password lost" on nearly any other website
So by stealing "a" password on some obscure website, an attacker could completely steal the o
Does it have separate processes for each tab? (Score:2, Insightful)
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The Firefox developers have been working on Electrolysis [mozilla.org] for years. I think they started around 2009. It's only very recently that they've started to enable it in the release builds for small numbers of users.
It hasn't been a smooth process. Aside from taking many, many years to get something that kind of works, it has caused problems for a lot of users. There are some extensions that it doesn't work well with. Even if you aren't using any problematic extensions, it has been known to cause problems.
I haven'
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If you're waiting for something comparable to what Chrome has
Dear God, No! Chrome's approach just amplifies their already outrageous resource use.
Why so many slashdotters still think Chrome has some memory/cpu/whatever advantage is beyond me.
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I'm with you. Firefox uses way less resources for my habits.
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The main trouble with chrome's sandbox is that google still sits in it.
Firefox aka "the java applet browser" (Score:5, Insightful)
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I am one of those people who work in IT who have a VM w/FF running for necessary FUCKING JAVA applets. Fuck Java man. But on a related note, I don't use Chrome, but rather a Chromium-derivative (Vivaldi)...same difference really, I suppose.
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Don't blame Java for this. Or at least not entirely. I think it's the application's vendor who should fix this. They should have upgraded their applications to use Java Web Start [java.com] instead of NPAPI-reliant applets. Besides, you can keep the Java plugin disabled and enable it only when you're gona use it, can't you?
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...Besides, you can keep the Java plugin disabled and enable it only when you're gona use it, can't you?
Sure, but that only would only matter if I used FF by default. I simply keep it around almost exclusively for the purpose of the needed Java applets (I do use it in instances in which websites only don't seem to work in Vivaldi AND Chrome -- which incidentally, happened today). I do basically entirely blame the vendor, however, so there's that, heh.
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Proprietary software publishers tend to charge for the upgrade from NPAPI to Java Web Start.
Re: Firefox aka "the java applet browser" (Score:1)
Java Applets work fine outside the browser with Java Web Start. Java Applets inside any browser is a security issue (Spoofing/Phishing)
Yes, even on mobile. (Score:3)
In other words, itâ(TM)s a major platform that web developers target -- even in a world increasingly dominated by mobile apps.
I'm not sure I understand this comment. I use Firefox as my main browser on both of my mobile platforms (phone and tablet). It probably just beats Twitter as my #1 app used on those devices. Why would someone imply they are some incompatible with each other?
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You may be the only person not related to the devs who still runs FF modile.
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I also run Firefox mobile and desktop (FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, Mac, Android). It runs quite well on all of them. Chrome starts just about as quickly as Firefox for me when using about the same number of extensions.
BTW, have you gotten uBlock Origin to work with Chrome mobile yet? ;)
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I use FF on my mobile devices as well.
Then again, I am a FF die hard. The only things Chrome seems to do better than FF is chromecasting and streaming DRM content on Linux.
It seems like Chrome has about as many plugins as FF now, but the Chrome versions of plugins never allow seamless integration with the browser interface. It always seems more cumbersome to use Chrome plugins than the equivalent FF plugins.
Not really sure why people love Chrome so much. I use all the major browsers regularly and I just don
Would you prefer paywalls? (Score:2)
Enjoying your $4 to $10/mo subscription to each site you visit, even momentarily, in an ad-free world?
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Actually, while I use Chromium on the desktop, the Android version of Chrome is garbage (no extensions? WTF!!!).
What do you run on mobile? Firefox is the only thing I've found so far, which is any good.
I do keep Chrome around on my phone, but it's basically just for testing. "Oh right, and here's what our web site looks like, with all the ads."
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I do keep Chrome around on my phone, but it's basically just for testing. "Oh right, and here's what our web site looks like, with all the ads."
If you have a recent version of Android, I don't believe you can get rid of Chrome. Even worse, the Google search Android app uses it, and can't be configured to use anything else. Its like we're at the point in real-life Animal Farm where Google has become Microsoft.
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FF on the mobile as well here.
And no, I'm not related to any of the devs.
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I run FF on Android. It's terrible, but it's better than everything else, thanks to uBlock Origin, and Desktop By Default add-ons.
On desktop, I run Chromium.
If Google would enable extensions on mobile Chrome, I'd drop it in a heartbeat, but they don't.
it's a major platform that web developers target (Score:2)
...it's a major platform that web developers target...
I dunno about that. I am finding more and more websites where Firefox does not render the page properly. I retry Firefox in safe mode, and there still are problems rendering the page. So I switch to (gasp!) IE, and the page renders fine.
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In my experience, it appears that web developers are beginning to abandon Firefox compatibility, probably because of its very low marketshare.
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...Even if Firefox had retained its market share on desktops, they would have had the same problem....
I disagree, but I'm not going to argue the hypothetical.
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Adding a browser vendor prefix is the proper way to add features that are not yet standardized. The fact that they're not removing support for those prefixes is so old websites won't stop working on the newest versions of browsers.
The only thing you can be annoyed about when a browser adds someone else's prefixes to their own, i.e. Firefox should not be adding -webkit prefixes anymore than Apple adding -edge prefixes.
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If a particular browser publisher ought to implement only its own prefixes, then how ought the public to encourage ignorant (I.e. the majority of) web developers to make sites that work in browsers other than -webkit-?
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I personally hope they sorted out that thing where after you switch tabs the browser still thinks you're on the previous tab
Yes, I have experienced this also. Firefox doesn't update the window title when closing a tab and quite a few times when switching tabs. Also, it sometimes doesn't update the address bar. I have many FF windows open and need the window title to be correct in the task bar.
Using phpMyAdmin in FF takes a very long time to show a table structure. Most of the time FF pops up a message that says "This page is slowing FF down".
And right click on a page and select 'View Page Source' and FF yields a window that i
Is there any way to tell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there any way to tell which extensions are blocking multiprocess? My about:support page says multiprocess is disabled because of extensions, but it doesn't say which ones. It seems like they should publish this information, perhaps in a field on AMO [mozilla.org]. A Google only turns up results for developer testing or small lists, it says nothing about a complete list of incompatible extensions.
I don't know if anyone at Mozilla reads Slashdot any longer, but I think this would be a worthwhile documentation project that would help users demand extension authors make their software compatible, thus aiding the roll-out.
Re:Is there any way to tell? (Score:5, Informative)
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I didn't know Add-on Compatibility Reporter existed. Thanks.
It says my 'Avast Online Security' add-on is not compatible. I think I really need this for safety. Does anyone know if there is an update that is compatible>
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How hard is it? (Score:2)
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It's sole purpose is to render web-pages. I don't need another operating system. If I wanted that, I'd install a VM or emacs.
That boat has long since failed and it's not Firefox's fault for sticking in port and pretending the tide isn't going out. Many web pages now have heaps of javascript and are more like programs than pages. They require a VM and an OS to use.
I browse the web in Dillo and Links-2 if I can, firefox with noscript when I cannot and enable scripts when I have to. It's much, much faster and
How hard is it? (Score:2)
- decent memory management (I don't care if I page takes 2ms more to load, especially if the price is to have a browser taking 2gb of RAM and making my system unusable)
- minimalist interface
- fast startup time
- fast page load
Extra points if it also has:
- add-on support
- sound and videos
Cue the marching band and the fireworks (Score:2)
Mozilla today launched Firefox 51 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android
And the on-line world responded with a huge, jaw-cracking yawn.
I switched to PaleMoon a while ago.. and like it (Score:2)
Firefox was just getting too heavy for me. I'm on Linux, (Mint 18 XFCE) and it was taking 30-45 seconds to become responsive after launching. It would just sit there. Even if I launched it from the command line with a url, it refused to do anything for that time period was up. CPU and memory were not taxed or even being used by FF. I have an older processor, but plenty to handle a damn web browser. (Intel Core2 Quad Core, 8GB of RAM) Unless I open a ton of tabs and GIMP, I barely ever get past 4GB us
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The funny thing is that if you'd have just reset your profile in Firefox and settled for the same relatively limited experience Pale Moon offers you, then you would probably have better performance then even Pale Moon offers. Firefox is often only truly slow because of all the customizations and unexpectedly heavy addons people toss at it, and when you switch to another browser you end up losing a lot of those things in the process. It's only later on that you realize that Pale Moon suffers the same problem
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The funny thing is that if you'd have just reset your profile in Firefox and settled for the same relatively limited experience Pale Moon offers you, then you would probably have better performance then even Pale Moon offers. Firefox is often only truly slow because of all the customizations and unexpectedly heavy addons people toss at it, and when you switch to another browser you end up losing a lot of those things in the process. It's only later on that you realize that Pale Moon suffers the same problems, and you're left worried about whether they'll be able to keep it going or whether it will collapse as it cannot adopt the very necessary improvements that Firefox is making right now, because the core of Pale Moon is too obsolete.
I use Adblocker Plus and a Gestures addon. That's it. No customizations. I even tested it out with a new profile, thinking maybe it was my browsing history or something that was causing it. I search my browsing history a lot when trying remember something I had looked at in the past. I have a lot of bookmarks, many of them old and I haven't cleaned them out. But I imported all of those into PaleMoon.
So while I appreciate the idea, that isn't what was slowing down my Firefox. It was just Firefox.
So is it (Score:2)
Even numbered versions or odd numbered versions that are good for FireFox
I know one thing you can count on is that a new version will change the UI just to be annoying
oh, and break all the add-ons
One of these days I 'll switdh to just using SeaMonky
Android? (Score:3)
Did they really roll out Firefox 51 for Android?
F-Droid, Google Play, and their own direct download link [mozilla.org] all seem to still have 50.1.0. Clicking the "check for updates" on the "About Firefox" screen says "no updates available".