Firefox 63 Arrives With Enhanced Tracking Protection, Search Shortcuts, and Picture-in-Picture on Android (venturebeat.com) 83
Mozilla today launched Firefox 63 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The release brings Enhanced Tracking Protection, performance improvements on Windows and macOS, search shortcuts, and Picture-In-Picture on Android. From a report: Firefox 63 for the desktop is available for download now on Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. According to Mozilla, Firefox has about 300 million active users. In other words, it's a major platform that web developers must consider. Firefox 63 for desktop brings support for Enhanced Tracking Protection. [...] Firefox 63's Enhanced Tracking Protection blocks cookies and storage access from third-party trackers, which Mozilla says targets the problem of cross-site tracking without breaking sites and impacting revenue streams like the original Tracking Protection. It does this by preventing known trackers from setting third-party cookies -- the primary method of tracking across sites -- but still gives you the option to block all known trackers (under Firefox Options/Preferences).
[...] Search shortcuts essentially pins sites like Google and Amazon on the new tab page. When you click or tap them, you're redirected to Firefox's awesome bar, which automatically fills the corresponding keyword (@google or @amazon in this case) for the search engine. This way, you can type your query, hit enter, and get your search results without having to first load the Google or Amazon homepage. [...] The only major new feature for this Firefox for Android release is a picture-in-picture mode (Android Oreo and up). This means that if you're watching a video in full-screen, when you switch away from Firefox it will move the video into a small floating window, which you can tap to return to the full video player.
[...] Search shortcuts essentially pins sites like Google and Amazon on the new tab page. When you click or tap them, you're redirected to Firefox's awesome bar, which automatically fills the corresponding keyword (@google or @amazon in this case) for the search engine. This way, you can type your query, hit enter, and get your search results without having to first load the Google or Amazon homepage. [...] The only major new feature for this Firefox for Android release is a picture-in-picture mode (Android Oreo and up). This means that if you're watching a video in full-screen, when you switch away from Firefox it will move the video into a small floating window, which you can tap to return to the full video player.
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How does this compare with other browsers?
Normally most webpages just give the browsers so much junk Pictures that are too large which only get scaled down. JavaScript Libraries that are many megs big, and often use only a fraction of the features. Also many pages are just long, just because it isn't in your field of view the data needs to be stored, and with DHTML and JS, it needs to be all the data, including junk that may never be used.
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No it does not "leak like a sieve" (Score:5, Interesting)
This is my number one annoyance with Firefox.
Not currently running linux on a desktop machine but I am running Firefox on both Windows and Mac machines currently and haven't seen a memory leak of any significance in years. There was a time when those were problems but not so much recently. Like all browsers these days it does use a lot of memory but I haven't seen evidence of a memory leak in a long time. Given that you posted anonymously I'm guessing you are just throwing FUD around for fun.
And shutting down Firefox takes a good 10 minutes or so - I click the 'X' on the window and I can see the processes slowly shrink and eventually go away.
Again I call bullshit on this unless you are running a machine with some serious hardware problems. I have never seen any behavior like that on literally hundreds of machines I administer through work running firefox or in my personal use. Firefox does have its flaws but you don't need to make stuff up to point them out.
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I second that
Re: But it still leaks memory like a sieve.. (Score:1)
Curious which OS you are using?
I recently learned on Linux if your shm isn't big enough (mine was defaulted to 128M) that firefox, chrome, and basically any highly multithreaded application will try to compensate by caching things in their own processes, which causes the application to use way more RAM.
I increased my shm to 1GB and immediately noticed a much smoother operation, and much less memory usage by those applications.
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Overcomplicating things (Score:2)
By using the @, many people wil not use it.
This is true. I will be one of them.
I really miss the time where we had a URL and a place for the search engine on all browsers.
I don't. I just type my search into the bar or I go to the website I want to search. Works fine. No idea why people keep trying to over complicate this stuff. Keep it simple. I pretty much never used the search bar when it was there because it didn't solve any problem for me. Maybe it was a hair slower but not enough for me to care.
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To me the advantage of the search bar was clear all the time if I was typing in a search item or a url.
That's just almost never a problem for me. I don't apparently search for things that are easily confused with a URL. The search bar seems to me to be something that should be added in an extension by those who like that workflow.
It was also much easier to see what the search engine was.
I have a default search engine so I know which one it uses and if I need to search a specific engine other than the default I can just navigate to it. I just don't see much advantage in that workflow. You be you of course but I don't see the point.
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You can set up Firefox to have separate URL and search widgets; the config setting isn't even hidden, it's right under Options on the Search panel.
Meanwhile Waterfox 5.2.4 has been released (Score:5, Informative)
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Too bad you're all busy clinging to the past instead of helping to add the APIs you need to Firefox properly. Then more browsers could benefit from your so-called "real" extensions. But I guess you'll just leave the hard work to the people who really care, and then say "finally!" after that, like the entitled brats that you are.
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The problem is WebExtensions APIs doesn't allow you to write "real" extensions, and a lot of what could previously be done is no longer possible. Want to add a status bar? Forget it! Want to fix the search box to restore it to usability? No chance! Want to customise the UI in some other way? Not permitted!
Aside from the limitations on what can be done, many developers do not consider it worth their time to invest in a platform that's being actively sabotaged. This is exactly why we've ended up with s
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Ahhh the good ol' no "real" extension fallacy.
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No: Google Chrome has it "feature" for several weeks now...
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Re: No escape from online video (Score:1)
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auto-playing videos is really annoying (but is not an FF exclusivity...)
This is trivial to fix in about:config, which I assume you know ...
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I would love to see more performance improvements (Score:3)
But there are still some major performance issues, and somehow I get the feeling that the Mozilla developers get a bit carried away with implementing new and exciting stuff instead of making the existing functionality really good.
If you are running Windows you may want to run the following test with hardware performance enabled and disabled, and compare the displayed frame rates.
Performance test: https://codepen.io/anon/pen/wY... [codepen.io]
On my machine hardware acceleration reduces the frame rate at least by a factor 4(!). This is not what I understand by "acceleration". Please, Mozilla devs, this can't be what you had in mind when you introduced hardware acceleration.
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My guess is that his is just hard and difficult work, and in the Mozilla team there are not too many developers who can do this.
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Hm. You must mean five of these [wired.com]?
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I'm not surprised. "Hardware acceleration" consists in sending your data through an abstraction layer and a graphics driver. It worked well with fixed function hardware and direct access or single user operating systems. Meanwhile CPUs got over 100x faster so what they could do in 1990 (draw a letter), they still can do.
My favorite rescue on old PCs with misbehaving or unstable graphics was to switch VLC output to the dumbest method (on linux it's "X11") or to switch the entire PC's graphics to VESA modes.
E
third-party trackers (Score:2)
blocks cookies and storage access from third-party trackers
Seriously, why didn't they do this 20 years ago? Did they really have to wait until their last user has switched?
Firefox Makes Me Sad : ( (Score:2)
Pocket must go!
Adding a single-line URL/Search bar never needed to be added to the codebase.
Firefox is likely collecting data using Topsites.
No would would need a private mode or it's bloat if you weren't collecting data in the first place.
No one likes looking at square corners on tabs.
The API changes so radically and so often and so deeply and abrupt depreciating, that you can just forget about having a good extension base.
Firefox should have suppor
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As a content provider, I already have 1/10th of the useful life of my 1TB Samsung 850 SSD used.
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Pocket must go!
Why, just ignore what you don't need.
Adding a single-line URL/Search bar never needed to be added to the codebase.
Conjecture. I represent one of many users who don't see a need for the two to be separate.
Firefox is likely collecting data using Topsites.
Really? Because I don't have Topsites installed. But why are you even guessing like this? The code base is there for you to see.
No would would need a private mode or it's bloat if you weren't collecting data in the first place.
A comment made by someone who doesn't understand what private mode is or why it exists. Pro-tip: It has nothing to do with Mozilla or anyone else on the internet collecting your data.
No one likes looking at square corners on tabs.
Conjecture. Speaking for all users without the authority to do so.
The API changes so radically and so often and so deeply and abrupt depreciating, that you can just forget about having a good extension base.
The API
What did they take out? (Score:2)
I see what they added (nothing of interest to me), but with each release I'm more concerned about which functionality I use daily that they decided to take out.
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I just installed Firefox on an Amazon Fire Tablet and lo and behold the app has no "Home" button. I looked around on how to show it and apparently you now need an extension. For the Home button. Don't ask me why. I do not know.
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Not this thing. It just opens whatever porn site I was looking at last. Really useful during presentations.