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Firefox Mozilla IT

Firefox 75 Arrives With Revamped Address Bar; Mozilla To Stick With 2020 Schedule (venturebeat.com) 43

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 75 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Firefox 75 includes a revamped address bar with significant search improvements, a few performance tweaks, and a handful of developer features. You can download Firefox 75 for desktop now from Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. According to Mozilla, Firefox has about 250 million active users, making it a major platform for web developers to consider.

When the coronavirus crisis took hold, millions found themselves spending more time in their browsers as they learn and work from home. But the crisis is also impacting software developers. Google was forced to pause its Chrome releases, which typically arrive every six weeks. Ultimately, Chrome 81 was delayed, Chrome 82 is being skipped altogether, and Chrome 83 has been moved up a few weeks. Microsoft has followed suit with Edge's release schedule, consistent with Google's open source Chromium project, which both Chrome and Edge are based on. Mozilla wants to make clear it is not in the same boat. The company took an indirect jab at Google and Microsoft today, saying: "We've built empathy into our systems for handling difficult or unexpected circumstances. These strengths are what allow us to continue to make progress where some of our competitors have had to slow down or stop work."

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Firefox 75 Arrives With Revamped Address Bar; Mozilla To Stick With 2020 Schedule

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  • I got so sick of the updates I turned it off and now I don't know how to turn it back on again. Oh well.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by aids1 ( 6742818 )
      Don't worry. They will handle that for you.

      Actually, that's a Chrome thing. They literally turn updates back on if you are "behind" a year. This would be called breaking and entering in a sane world.
    • I don't think people remember the 1990's and early 2000's where there were months/years between updates. By the time the upgrade was available your browser was practically not functioning on the modern web and was a big security hole.

      Now I wasn't a fan of the Firefox version number changes a while back. As I do like seeing a major upgrade and minor upgrades. However just going with the sequential upgrades with a new feature every once in a while it doesn't really change that much to bother me, and I am al

      • by Bodie1 ( 1347679 )

        These days a brand new browser (update) is fully functioning on the modern web and, even so, is*still* a big security hole. Just not quite as big as the previous version.

      • I didn't realize Mozilla hired a troll farm to troll Slashdot. Wild.
      • I don't think people remember the 1990's and early 2000's where there were months/years between updates.

        Major releases perhaps, but as I remember you had to run every minor update to keep up and that was about monthly.

      • Correct me if I am wrong, but you can no longer upgrade and keep your bookmarks, history, etc without creating a Firefox account. Which means what.... they get to see all of your bookmarks and history? I am never going to upgrade. I will hack the code myself or probably just go back to Chrome.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I got so sick of the updates I turned it off and now I don't know how to turn it back on again. Oh well.

      I got so sick of my nose itching, I cut off my head.

      Meanwhile, sane people who were fed up with constant updates switched to the ESR version, which just gets regular security fixes and no feature changes.

  • The Firefox link in the blurb leads nowhere: https://news.slashdot.org/en-U... [slashdot.org]

  • Goozilla Chromefox (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @12:32PM (#59917564)
    It's easy to see that Google is actively sabotaging Firefox by making them implement "features" that make Firefox look shit. The same happened to Opera with their Chinese overlords with them forcing Opera to put pop up ads in the system tray. We need a browser revolt. We are fed up of being told to use obscure Firefox forks like Pale Moon and Waterfox when we need to degooglify Firefox from the ground up and make the web usable again.
    • It doesn't help that if you use things like Pale Moon, the recaptcha Google loves so much becomes rigged against you. I once gathered 40 screenshots of recaptchas that anyone would consider objectively correct, and each of them were considered "wrong". Even if you get their shitty captcha correct it can just arbitrarily say "No". If you try their audio captcha it denies you because you're "making too many requests", which is a huge violation of ADA.

  • Ugh... (Score:5, Informative)

    by SDF-7 ( 556604 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @12:43PM (#59917602)

    For now at least about:config --> browser.urlbar.update1 turns that ugly thing back off. From web searching, it looks like it was renamed on the nightlies around version 74, so expect that will probably go away soon and we'll be stuck with it.

    Also: browser.urlbar.trimURLs if you don't care for the hiding of https and www [ghacks.net].

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      That works perfectly. Now how to make it not make a big whitespace crappola and just a dropdown like it used to be?

      What is it with kids these days that they think everything needs to be surrounded by 5 miles of whitespace?

      Can't those stupid fuckers all catch SARS-CoV-2 and die already yet?

    • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      So, I'm going to keep using Waterfox then, with classic theme restorer.

      I have a file menu, a ton of 1-click bookmarks, a status bar, a URL box, a search box AND still more client area than Firefox or Chrome. Minimalism that isn't even minimalist, fail.

    • Oh good. It shows the browsing history every time you click on the URL bar. WHAT THE FUCK Mozilla.

      • click the little cog, check the box marked "show search suggestions ahead of browsing history" and I think you'll be good.

  • by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @01:05PM (#59917700) Journal

    Whenever I hear anyone touting significant improvements to a piece of software, I immediately suspect it means more intrusion by said software which will get even more in the way when I try to accomplish something.

    *checks article*

    Yup, more intrusion and interference. I guess letting the user decide what they want is out of the question at this point.

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @02:18PM (#59918076)
    Put these in your "user.js" file ...

    user_pref("browser.urlbar.update1", false); // Disable new larger box/font user_pref("browser.urlbar.update1.interventions", false); // Disable Firefox "solutions". user_pref("browser.urlbar.update1.searchTips", false); // Disable search tips.

    • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @02:33PM (#59918128)

      Sorry, freaking formatting (sigh) ...

      user_pref("browser.urlbar.update1", false); // Disable new larger box/font.
      user_pref("browser.urlbar.update1.interventions", false); // Disable Firefox "solutions".
      user_pref("browser.urlbar.update1.searchTips", false); // Disable search tips.

      The Firefox solutions thing show up if you type something like "download firefox" in the URL bar.

      • You may also want to add:

        user_pref("browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus", false); // Disable the Top Sites list when you focus the address bar

      • by trawg ( 308495 )

        Great list, thanks!

        user_pref("browser.urlbar.update1", false); // Disable new larger box/font.

        From a quick look this changes the behaviour of the search box to the "old method", but the larger size seems simply due to the fact that the old method only has 8 items in the list, whereas the new one has 10.

        Another poster made the point about this annoying trend to add heaps of whitespace padding to things which makes these kind of UI elements take up way more space than they need to (although then he kind of ruined it by wishing a COVID-19 death upon them).

        I imagine there's a way to

  • Every time an article about a new version of Firefox (or Chrome, etc) comes out. Everyone comes out to say just how terrible it is and change is bad etc. Well Firefox is open source, surely everyone here could make a browser that was the best thing ever, Actually even forking from Firefox isn't good enough, so you should make your own new engine too. So where is the super best browser that everyone would love 100%?
  • "We still don't really care if our updates break your systems. Didn't care before, still don't care now. Deal with it."

    Sadly, this is why some enterprises still standardize on Microsoft browsers, with their predictable release schedules and their backward compatibility modes.

UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn

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