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Firefox The Internet IT Technology

Firefox 68 Arrives With Darker Reader View, Recommended Extensions, and IT Customizations (venturebeat.com) 69

Mozilla today launched Firefox 68 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. Firefox 68 includes a darker reader view, recommended extensions, IT Pro customizations, and more. From a report: As part of this release, Mozilla has curated a list of recommended extensions "that have been thoroughly reviewed for security, usability, and usefulness." You can find the list on the Get Add-ons page in the Firefox Add-ons Manager (about:addons). While Firefox has had dark mode for months, the Reader View's dark contrast only covered the text area. Now, when you change the contrast to dark, all sections of the site (including sidebars and toolbars) will be immersed in dark mode.

With Firefox 60, Mozilla introduced an enterprise version of the browser that employers can customize. This let IT professionals configure Firefox for their organization, either using Group Policy on Windows or a JSON file that works across Windows, Mac, and Linux. With Firefox 68, Mozilla has added more enterprise policies -- to configure or remove the new tab page, turn off search suggestions, and so on.

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Firefox 68 Arrives With Darker Reader View, Recommended Extensions, and IT Customizations

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  • Brave is twice as fast and uses normal text input fields, so copy and paste actually works.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @06:02PM (#58898300)

      Are you living under a rock? https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/06/27/reinventing-firefox-for-android-a-preview/

      I honestly think Slashdotters just ignore everything Mozilla does unless it's something they can bitch about.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I just hat that every time I update Firefox it seems to remove another feature I rely on.
        Last time it was the "search only typed" flag on the URL bar. The morons who removed it didn't think it was useful. Now the URL bar is filled with every link I ever clicked on as I start typing a URL to go to. Sometimes they're as dumb as a bag of hammers.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          I refuse to go above 54.0.1. Absolutely refuse.

          Anything else trashes my extensions, and removes the status bar from the window's bottom.
          I've use the newest version and reverted back -- I had tabs crashing all of the time;
          restore session would randomly work; and the memory footprint would consume all
          available memory (64 gigs of it).

          For my simple browser usage, it bought nothing new to the experience - but things I
          relied upon kept going MIA. I'm tired of reconfiguring _everything_ after an upgrade.

          CAP === '

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Good luck finding anyone who wants to make software for you for free when you ignore everything they do that doesn't send you off the deep end and call them "morons" and "dumb as hammers".

          Literally nobody gives a shit what you think if you just sit around complaining about everything and acting like it's the end of the world when some obscure flag is removed from a product. Next time why don't you try to actually help maintain the flag, or compensate somebody for maintaining it for you?

          I mean, despite your

          • by Anonymous Coward

            If they had solicited an opinion before removing the feature, or for that matter even mentioned they were thinking of removing it I would have offered to fix it. I've been programming professionally for over 30 years, I'm better at it then they are. I also know not to fuck with a feature that's been working as designed for over a decade without talking to the users first.
            When the bug reports for them breaking the feature showed up they immediately dismissed the users as stupid for wanting it.
            They are as d

      • It takes long time to rebuild a broken reputation. We've spent 10 years bitching, and Mozilla has only recently decided to get their shit in order.

        We're still at "wait and see."

    • >"How about fixing mobile firefox? [on Android] Brave is twice as fast and uses normal text input fields, so copy and paste actually works."

      Brave is Chrome/Chomium and probably uses the same or many of the same libraries already in Android, and they are locked in memory, giving it an unfair advantage.

      That said, it does matter what the end results are... but I would gladly deal with a little slower (and I find it is nowhere near as slow as you claim on my Android devices) for the added security, less spyi

      • That said, it does matter what the end results are... but I would gladly deal with a little slower (and I find it is nowhere near as slow as you claim on my Android devices)

        It takes me literally twice as long to load e.g. slashdot pages (any of them, whether it's the front page or not) in firefox as in brave.

        They have also somehow managed to fuck up the UI pretty much completely. Mobile firefox has no option to always request the desktop version. There is no visual indication that I've clicked a link until it starts loading, and it is literally easier to follow links on brave than on firefox. I regularly have to touch a link (again, here on slashdot) like three times to get it

    • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @03:11AM (#58900176) Journal

      Brave is twice as fast and uses normal text input fields, so copy and paste actually works.

      Copy and paste works fine on skeptic android Firefox. It's not like I just retyped that entire line above.

      I can't comment about speed because I've never used brave.

      • "Copy and paste works fine on skeptic android Firefox. It's not like I just retyped that entire line above."

        It does NOT work "fine". It is half-assed. When you long press to paste, it selects all of the text in the field! This is not how the field is supposed to work! Moving the cursor is also broken! The finger slides off the handle and begins either scrolling or selecting text! They are clearly reinventing the text field control and getting it wrong. I have these problems in zero other apps, so it is clea

        • It does NOT work "fine". It is half-assed. When you long press to paste, it selects all of the text in the field!

          Not on mine. On mine it selects a word.

          Actually that long press selecting everything had started to infest other apps like the and client because there's no way one would ever want to copy a bit of a text like a url or code...

          As a happy Firefox user, no I don't consider it to be a rolling clusterfuck. I use the basic Firefox plus a few extensions and I prefer it to other browsers. I'm also not h

          • Actually that long press selecting everything had started to infest other apps like the and client because there's no way one would ever want to copy a bit of a text like a url or code...

            But my finger isn't over any text, so it shouldn't select anything at all, it should just bring up the menu. Reinventing the text input dialog is a waste of time and money.

            • You're not getting the same experience as me. They're is no long press I can do in the box I'm gently typing that selects all the text.

  • Better luck next time. It's been what, a decade since one was introduced in Chrome? I'd switch to FF, but I 100% segregate work and personal stuff. I know FF has profiles, but the usability of switching profiles in it is piss-poor.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Right. No profile switcher.

      Unless you count "--ProfileManager".

      You're welcome.

      • by doom ( 14564 )

        He didn't say there wasn't a profile manager, he said that the "the usability was piss-poor". What he actually meant, I know not, but arguably needing to know about an obscure command-line argument might count as piss-poor.

        Myself I always run like so: /usr/bin/firefox -no-remote --ProfileManager (But I don't actually know if -no-remote is still needed.)

        What I might complain about is the different profiles are very tightly seperated from each other-- which might make sense for privacy in a multi-user en

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        What I really want is the ability to run two completely isolated copies of Firefox. Separate profiles, different colour window icons so I can tell them apart easily, no cross-contamination.

        One for work, one for personal.

    • You do know this can be done, right.

      Firefox ships with a profile manager by default.

      You can run 2 installations of FF at the same time with different profiles.

      so apart from wanting something to bitch about, what else do you need it to do?

      https://support.mozilla.org/en... [mozilla.org]

      But if a full profile is not necessary, they also have "container tabs" that basically segregate cookies between sites. Originally intended to keep general browsing and finance or personal stuff separate, it might suit your needs just as wel

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Yeah, the only flaw, and it is somewhat minor, is that both instances of Firefox look identical on the task bar. There is a hack to get around it:

        https://itstillworks.com/13332... [itstillworks.com]

        That way you can separate the two at a glance, otherwise it's easy to screw up and use the wrong one.

    • I just use multiple copies of the portable edition. e.g. one separate for Facebook Or you could just use different shortcuts and specify different profiles on the command line.
  • Opera. I just re-discovered it (decided to try it again when I heard it includes a free VPN), and was blown away. I'm using it more and more often vs. Chrome. I can predict a time fast approaching, when Opera will become my primary browser. I only wish it could work with Zotero.

  • I vary rarely fiddle with my Add Ons and I don't really like Firefox "recommending" stuff ...

    // Add-On / Theme Page Recommendations
    user_pref("extensions.htmlaboutaddons.discover.enabled", false); // Show on: Add-ons -> Recommendations
    user_pref("extensions.htmlaboutaddons.recommendations.enabled", false); // Show on: Add-ons -> Extensions

    // Activity Stream
    user_pref("browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.asrouter.userprefs.cfr.addons", false); // Recommend extensions inline.
    user_pref("browser.newt

  • Is it still a browser? With all the hamhanded shit thrown into the pot, the incessant need to hide useful features from end users, or remove them outright, the constant push to anticipate what someone might need and no way to stop it "helping" you, one has to wonder if, at this point in time, Firefox is even capable of displaying a web page.

  • ... if only Firefox would stop deleting all my custom settings and reverting its browser to 'factory standard' every time it updates every week.
  • Too bad I figured out how to stop automatic updates and the disappearing add-ons. Damn. Bummer. I'll never get to see the darker what-the-fuck-shit they have now.
  • bug (Score:4, Informative)

    by anonieuweling ( 536832 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @02:12AM (#58900064)
    And FF68 has this webGL bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s... [mozilla.org]
    Just so that you know.
  • I skimmed the headline as "Firefox 68k". I immediately thought it was a version optimized for old Macs and Ataris, and was looking forward to reading a performance review.

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