Firefox 44 Deletes Fine-Grained Cookie Management (mozilla.org) 471
ewhac writes: Among its other desirable features, Firefox included a feature allowing very fine-grained cookie management. When enabled, every time a Web site asked to set a cookie, Firefox would raise a dialog containing information about the cookie requested, which you could then approve or deny. An "exception" list also allowed you to mark selected domains as "Always allow" or "Always deny", so that the dialog would not appear for frequently-visited sites. It was an excellent way to maintain close, custom control over which sites could set cookies, and which specific cookies they could set. It also helped easily identify poorly-coded sites that unnecessarily requested cookies for every single asset, or which would hit the browser with a "cookie storm" — hundreds of concurrent cookie requests.
Mozilla quietly deleted this feature from Firefox 44, with no functional equivalent put in its place. Further, users who had enabled the "Ask before accept" feature have had that preference silently changed to, "Accept normally." The proffered excuse for the removal was that the feature was unmaintained, and that its users were, "probably crashing multiple times a day as a result" (although no evidence was presented to support this assertion). Mozilla's apparent position is that users wishing fine-grained cookie control should be using a third-party add-on instead, and that an "Ask before accept" option was, "not really nice to use on today's Web."
Mozilla quietly deleted this feature from Firefox 44, with no functional equivalent put in its place. Further, users who had enabled the "Ask before accept" feature have had that preference silently changed to, "Accept normally." The proffered excuse for the removal was that the feature was unmaintained, and that its users were, "probably crashing multiple times a day as a result" (although no evidence was presented to support this assertion). Mozilla's apparent position is that users wishing fine-grained cookie control should be using a third-party add-on instead, and that an "Ask before accept" option was, "not really nice to use on today's Web."
Deny ALL Cookies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Deny ALL Cookies (Score:5, Insightful)
Says the guy logged in to Slashdot.
Re:Deny ALL Cookies (Score:4, Insightful)
Session variables. If people would use those and not just cookies. It'd be better.
And how exactly do you think session variables work? How do you link a browser to the session? Cookies!!!
Yes, I know you can put a god damn session id in the URL query string, but that's annoying, unreliable, and insecure. IF someone navigates your website for a bit, puts some stuff in the shopping cart, then just goes back to your homepage by stripping everything but the domain name off the URL...TADA!!! You've lost their session!!! Or if they jump to a different part of your website via a bookmark from a previous session...TADA!!!! You've lost their session. Or if they copy their URL and pass it to someone else/post it on a forum...TADA!!!! Someone else is now using their session (yes, you can "solve" that issue by linking the session by a secondary authentication variable like IP, but then you run the risk of having your website broken for anyone that moves between IP addresses).
In short, I've never seen a good, clean, reliable way to link a user to a session that doesn't involve cookies. If you've got the magic solution to that, please...I'm all ears.
Now if you mean websites should only use session cookies instead of persistent cookies, and the "deny all cookies" option only denied persistent cookies (does it do that already? I have no idea), then yes...that is a workable solution for most cases. Off the top of my head, I think the only thing you lose there is the ability to persist your login between browser sessions. But then again, if someone doesn't mind session cookie but dislikes persistent cookies, they could already set their browser to clear all cookies on exit or use a private browsing mode, and then all current websites would work perfectly fine.
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It will be like experiencing 1997's web all over again!
Except our blink tags will now be CSS3 enabled.
LOL even Brendan Eich is using Chromium for Brave! (Score:2, Insightful)
Everything we need to know about the sorry state of Firefox is shown by the new Brave web browser [slashdot.org] that Brendan Eich [wikipedia.org] is creating.
Look at what Brave's FAQ page says: [brave.com]
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This post would have been a lot more believable if it had actually come from an Anonymous Coward.
Re: Deny ALL Cookies (Score:5, Insightful)
And I don't want to hear you whine when people stop visiting your site because of your fucking annoying popups.
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It's not legally required that the popup is actually a popup though, is it? Numerous sites I've visited have had some form of a popup, but many also just have the notification as part of the normal flow of content in the page. There's usually an option to hide or close it for future views, but it's unobtrusive as part of the design.
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We don't want your fsck'ing "Welcome" popups. Just write a normal website that stays out of my face and gives me the static content I am looking for, thanks.
Re:Deny ALL Cookies (Score:5, Informative)
Friendly suggestion: Switch to uBlock Origin. Much faster engine than adblock. Per-element blocking is also built-in and just a context menu away. As an extra bonus it's not sponsored by the very businesses we are trying to block.
No options for you (Score:5, Funny)
Bloat vs extensions (Score:2)
What is the better option?
Re:No options for you (Score:5, Insightful)
No, its the "FUCK YOU! we know how to use our browser better than you" philosophy.
The gun is pointing at the foot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The gun is pointing at the foot (Score:5, Interesting)
It all makes a lot more sense if you consider that almost all of Mozilla's income comes from Google and Yahoo.
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Yeah, but looks like they missed and blasted themselves in the balls.
Re:The gun is pointing at the foot (Score:5, Funny)
They seem to be really trying to shoot themselves in the foot lately.
No worries, the feet will be removed in v45.0
You will still have plugins for right foot, left foot, and foot extensions, someone just need to write them. And sign them for every new version.
In 46.0, the rendering engine will be removed, but no worries, you can use a plugin.
in 47.0, the plugin loader will be removed, but no worries, you can load an extension for loading plugins.
Or reducing bloat... (Score:2)
They are easier to maintain, and can be developed independently of FF... Faster iterations, and release of features to end-users, etc..
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Re:The gun is pointing at the foot (Score:5, Informative)
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universally hated Australis
If by "universally" you mean "by a tiny minority of perpetually unsatisfied users on Slashdot".
Re:The gun is pointing at the foot (Score:5, Informative)
Browser market share stats prove you are totally wrong.
In August 2013 Firefox held over 16% of the browser market [archive.org].
Australis was included in Firefox 29, which was released on April 29, 2014.
By August 2014 Firefox only held about 11% of the browser market [archive.org].
By August 2015 Firefox was down to about 8% of the browser market [archive.org].
As of January 2016 Firefox is down to around 7% of the browser market [caniuse.com].
Australis has helped drive away over half of Firefox's users.
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When Australis was forced into FF, my relatives whose machines I have maintained all called me that their internet was broken. People could not access or use the bookmarks anymore. While waiting for my help, half of them were already googled for "how to fix internet" and installed Chrome..
Firefox just does not get it that each time they prevent existing users from using the browser, they will lose some part of customer base. Not a single user will install FF just because some some feature was removed from i
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You must've missed the part where the most popular extension in the entire Mozilla "store" was the one that undoes the Australis interface around when it came out.
So sure, "a tiny minority."
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Also try old school SeaMonkey [seamonkey-project.org] that is a suite like old Netscape and Mozilla.
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When I eyeball the January 2016 browser market share stats [caniuse.com], it looks like Firefox is now at or just under 7% of the browser market. That's across all versions on all platforms!
IE 11 alone has almost as many users as Firefox does in total. The same goes for iOS Safari 9.2. Hell, even Opera Mini almost has more users than Firefox does! Desktop Chrome 47 has over 3 times as many users as Firefox does in total. Chrome for Android 47 has 2.5 times as many users.
These numbers should be scaring the living shit out of Mozilla. They should be in a constant state of panic right now. Firefox is getting decimated.
Maybe Mozilla doesn't realize it, but Firefox is the only product they have left that has any sort of a user base. Seamonkey, Thunderbird and Persona have been left to flounder. Firefox OS was a massive disaster, maybe even worse than GNOME 3 was. Rust and Servo are dead end projects. Bugzilla is a relic.
Why the fuck will anyone, especially the big players in the game, give a damn about what Mozilla thinks or wants? Mozilla already has so little influence. Soon enough Firefox will have so few users that nobody will give a fuck about it or its users, which in turn means that Mozilla will lose whatever small amount of influence it does have left.
It's fucking insane how Mozilla isn't reacting to this. It's fucking insane! It's like they're nearing the edge of a cliff, but they're running faster and faster!
I don't want Mozilla as an organization to vanish. They play such an important role in keeping the web free and open. Yet they also seem to be so intent on destroying themselves! Please, Mozilla, wake up! Please, Mozilla! PLEASE! Stop ruining Firefox! Stop making yourself irrelevant! Please, Mozilla! Please stop it!
I currently only use Firefox for a couple of specialty plugins, or extensions, and I use an outdated version at work as that's required by IT. Otherwise I use Chrome. That said I agree with you, I don't want them to die. I don't want a Webkit monoculture with a sprinkle of IE. It's bad enough that we already lost Opera. More players and more options is good for the user!
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hat's across all versions on all platforms!
Which is the only way to get the number that low. Mobile users tend not to change browsers. Most have few, if any, any options. Including mobile is deceptive.
Re: The gun is pointing at the foot (Score:2, Informative)
I use this feature and have for ages. I deny every site by default. If I notice something I want doesn't work I switch it to allow for session. If it's a site I want to stay logged into I will switch to allow. It has never crashed on me. FF doesn't actually crash more than a few times per year on me at all.
Re:The gun is pointing at the foot (Score:5, Interesting)
And all 12 people that used the feature will be missed.
When your market share has shrunk to little more than the people who only continue to use your product because it has features that differentiate it from the alternatives, removing those very features is a damned stupid move.
I'm just waiting for them to finish the work currently underway to dump XUL and the current addon API, utterly destroying the current addon ecosystem and fully alienating all remaining users. That will be final stroke in Firefox's Chromification, and its death.
Re:The gun is pointing at the foot (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm overwhelmingly a user of Palemoon rather than Firefox. I am extremely satisfied with Palemoon, particularly given the stewardship Mozilla has provided of late.
I hate what Firefox has become. At this point, It's a marketing company with a technology product, not a technology company. I don't like third party applications being inflicted on me. I don't like the state of flux in the UI that has existed since Firefox 26, the change or removal of features I've been using for years. I don't like arbitrary, zero-notice changes to features I'm using. These are all bad things.
But I'm going to stick with a Mozilla-derived browser for as long as humanly possible because all the alternatives seem worse. I like leaving tabs open. Browsers that use One Process-per-tab will annihilate my available RAM. Chrome (-ium), Opera and Safari all lack privacy and security-related addons that I won't surf without. Edge, with no addon support at all and forthcoming "We're gonna try to use Chrome's!", is a complete non-starter. I need Java in a browser for IT operations tasks. Anecdotally, I see as many issues with fake/bad addons in Chrome's Extensions as I did with BHOs in IE6's heyday.
Chrome has gone from the simple, lightweight option to a bloated mess that duplicates a lot of OS functions. I don't even want to load on a low-spec machines any more. I know it's the web's new favorite, but I'd rather take the ham-fisted marketing driven Mozilla mismanagement any day than live in an ecosystem where Noscript and RequestPolicy aren't really available.
There's an add-on for that.. (Score:5, Informative)
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Most of the cookie add-ons used FF's built-in functionality; they just made it easier to interact with...
I'm a little pissed off at this.
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Yeah, not sure what the fuss is. I have 'delete cookies when I close firefox' as default action, then I can allow sites to specifically keep their cookies.
This has been a standard feature of firefox for quite a while now and despite my other misgivings about their browser (the main of which being that all the features they have removed and said 'third party addons will replace this', have indeed been replaced and the browser runs like crap with the amount of them I now need to use) it still functions better
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Close firefox? Only when the system crashes or I have to reboot for some reason. Too damn many windows I have to restore.
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There is an option to "reopen last session" on start. You get all your tabs back :)
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Yes, and that's a lifesaver, but many of them need to be logged into again, and then it flashes up bazillions of windows for a while while recreating them and it's generally a nuisance.
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Indeed, whitelist to allow persistant cookies for the sites you need to or use something like KeePass to auto log them back in.
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There's a bunch of things firefox has included in the core browser that probably should be replaced with an addon. There have been many examples of this already. What they are missing here is a prompt on upgrade if their change in behaviour applies to you so you aren't surprised by it.
Most users don't read the release notes, or follow some obscure blog where this change may have been discussed.
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Good luck with that, ABP and noscript have my back for those kinds of shenanigans.
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Please identify WHICH add-on.
Re:There's an add-on for that.. (Score:5, Informative)
Please identify WHICH add-on.
'selectivecookiedelete' v4.1.1 [mozilla.org]
Just checked it, it's still doing it's job, keeping the whitelisted cookies, deleting everything else.
Re:There's an add-on for that.. (Score:5, Informative)
I use Self-Destructing Cookies [mozilla.org], which accepts cookies long enough to make a session work and then deletes them automatically when you close the related tab. There's a whitelist feature.
Of course as per usual with a Firefox update, I now have no clue whether or not that extension will continue working, or whether I need to tweak some arcane setting to keep it working, or whether said arcane setting has been removed from the browser entirely... So I'll just stick with my current version for awhile. Other people can be the guinea pigs and I'll look for their reports. The trouble with that approach is that with each release, there are fewer other users out there. Mozilla seems determined to run Firefox into the ground and it's just a sad thing to watch.
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I use that one too. Works well, and still seems to work. Before that, I used FF's built in mechanism, and I think it's an utter disgrace that they removed it without offering an alternative. I still trust Mozilla a bit better than Google, but at this rate, FF runs the risk of being abandoned by its last users.
Perhaps that's what they want anyway.
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Yeah Mozilla probably is making the right decision here.
The feature *would* have been irritating as hell to use, and removing it to streamline the code and letting those users who wanted that sort of cookie control use an extension is the *right* move.
The 3rd party example you gave would actually be a functionally better solution for most people to use then what Mozilla had built-in. (What addon is it by the way that you use?)
The only real criticism i really have of Mozilla on this issue was the lack of cle
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Add-on good, default preference bad (Score:2)
I fully agree that functionality that can be provided by add-ons need not be provided by the core program. In fact, this level of extensibility is a great selling point for Firefox.
The problem is what to do with those who set the preference in the past and have yet to install an add-on. I think it would have been better to take the "paranoid" default (deny all), making sure they have at least as much security as they had before. I find it hard to believe that there are many users who were regularly appro
NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THE SAME!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I "shouted". Obviously to OP has no clue.
Denying the creation of a cookie in the first place has nothing to do with deleting them when Firefox is closed (whoever closes ALL of their FF windows anyway?).
I hope Pale Moon keeps the feature, but, IMO, FF44 is now nearly useless.
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Right, Firefox have been simplifying options that break web sites for years. If you want to mess with your browsing experience in a way that might break how websites work, install an addon.
There's no point having what amounts to a "Make all websites work" checkbox.
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it only breaks web sites that I want to break.
If a site only works if I drop my pants and bend over then I want to know that before my pants are around my ankles.
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Re: There's an add-on for that.. (Score:2)
Proud to have self-destructing cookies installed (Score:5, Informative)
I leave a site, its cookies explode.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
^^^ This
Self-Destructing Cookies [mozilla.org] was a genuine break-through in cookie privacy.
I wish the idea would be extended to other tracker-enabling downloads like fonts and HTML5 web storage. [w3schools.com]
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For web fonts and similar 3rd party assets you want Smart Referer [mozilla.org]. Unless the primary website's address or id is encoded in the URL, this stops such tracking.
Yahoo? (Score:2)
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"p***d? Pissed? If you're thinking it you might as well say it.
Mozilla can't keep a secret... (Score:2)
Was Yahoo p***d off about people who don't allow some cookies to be set?
That's a serious accusation, did you even care to read the bug before writing that?
FYI, while the deal isn't public, it was rather clear that it was contingent on Yahoo reinventing their search engine as they did.
So you can be confident that it's more likely Mozilla that pressures Yahoo than the other way around.
Besides the bugs, mailing lists, wiki, regular monday meetings, irc channels, etherpads, source code, review notes, commit comments, is all open.
I work at Mozilla there is very little private
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Add-ons? (Score:2)
...users wishing fine-grained cookie control should be using a third-party add-on instead...
That's a laugh. What third-party add-ons are going to remain after another year or so of breaking them with nearly every damned release?
Mozilla seem absolutely determined to jump the shark.
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after another year or so of breaking them with nearly every damned release?
You guys just can't be satisfied. "This or that feature should be a plugin!" Mozilla removes features and suggests they are better handled by plugins "No! Not that feature!"
Their plugins sometimes break between releases because of the way plugins are structured, so they announce that they're replacing their plugin architecture with something guaranteed to have a more stable API. "No! You're destroying everything! NoScript will never work again!" "We're working with NoScript to ensure it continues to func
Re:Add-ons? (Score:4, Interesting)
You are mostly right. Although it is unclear how many other extensions won't be adaptable to the new model. They are working with NoScript because NoScript is the 3rd most popular add-on for firefox. But what about those odd-ball add-ons that only have a couple of hundred users?
Meanwhile one thing that is legitimately and inarguably stupid is this add-on signing requirement they keep pushing back every couple of releases. They want to force you to submit your add-on source code to them for signing. At first they were doing automated code inspection and rejected add-ons that didn't pass, even for stylistic reasons. It took a couple of months of bitching before they finally backed off that level of scrutiny, doh!
But it is still a problem for people who have internally developed extensions - forcing them to choose between running an unsupported version of firefox or exposing their source code to mozilla who can not guarantee that it won't be pilfered away via corporate espionage.
All they need to do to fix it is make mozilla check for a list of exceptions to the signature requirements in an admin-only writable location (like /usr/lib/mozilla/ on linux or an admin-only part of the registry on windows). The code to do that is already 99% written because they already pull config data out of those locations, just need to verify it is admin-only writable.
But they keep resisting the obvious, instead insisting that anyone who wants to run an unsigned add-on must run a completely separate installation of firefox and thus forgo all the security benefits of getting auto-updates straight from them. The end result is much reduced security for those people - no crypto signatures for any add-ons and they must do manual compiles each time there is a new firefox release - and really, only the most hard-core of users is ever going to do that in a timely fashion. Just because you have an odd-ball add-on doesn't mean you are that hard-core.
I'm not that hard-core, but I still run the defunct "redirect cleaner" because none of the replacement add-ons quite match the original's functionality in corner cases. If I had enough time to compile every new release of firefox, I would have enough time to fix one of the replacement redirect-cleaner extensions to handle the corner-cases too.
Re: (Score:2)
But it is still a problem for people who have internally developed extensions
They have release channels that don't require the signed code.
In my opinion, their default model is correct for the general masses.
They DO HAVE a release channel suitable for advanced users who require internally developed unsigned stuff. One is not forced to stay on an old version.
But letting you simply turn off the signing as an option in the main release channel would be pointless, because then any malware would simply *do that* as its first action.
Having the version that doesn't require signed extension
Re:Add-ons? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure we can be satisfied. All they have to do is give control to the user instead of making inane changes because they know better for us.
If no one was maintaining this feature, the proper thing to do would be disable on new installs, check settings on upgrades, and put a job posting out for someone to volunteer to maintain it. While they are at it, notify the users of the problem and stop pretending their shit don't stink.
In fewer words, show the users some respect.
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It is hard to believe a company when they have worked hard to destroy their credibility with their own user base. For example: claiming to support privacy, while removing features that can improve privacy.
Also, Slashdot users are not a singular entity. Different people have different opinions. It is quite probable that those opinions will contradict each other.
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You guys just can't be satisfied. "This or that feature should be a plugin!" Mozilla removes features and suggests they are better handled by plugins "No! Not that feature!"
There's a huge gap between "You can have the car painted any color you want as long as it's black" and "We've stripped it down to the chassis, pick the parts that are right for you". I always thought extensions were going to cover niche functionality and act as a test bed so you could slowly pull in core shortcomings into the main browser at a leisurely and well structured pace because there's an overhead to extensions when you have many installed and your browser runs like shit because of some bad plug-ins
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I'm confused (Score:2)
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That's a great approach, in a perfect make-believe world where add-ons are all reliably maintained. In the real world, if you have 10 essential features split up as 10 different add-ons maintained by 10 different people/organizations, you have 10x the chance of one of them breaking in a future update. Being a feature of the core program entails more reliable maintenance. Of course even that can fail sometimes, as in the case of this article where they were unable to find anyone to maintain the feature... bu
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If you want bookmark management, use an add on..
Simple bookmark management should be built in. But perhaps even that should be an add on, just one that is installed & enabled by default.
Because Reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
Moreover, the allegation that enabling the feature destabilized the browser is pharmaceutically pure bullshit. I've been using the feature since its inception, and have Firefox windows open and running for days at a time without ill effect.
Contrariwise, I just went to check my cookie store, and found a bunch of new, unapproved, unwelcome, provably unnecessary cookies have appeared in just the week since I moved from v43 to v44. Deleting them after the fact is not a solution. Once set, tracking can take place immediately. The damage has already been done.
The proffered reasons for the change are easily shown to be false, so I do not hold out any hope that Mozilla management will have a change of heart on this matter and reinstate the long-standing feature.
Would anyone care to recommend a cookie management add-on?
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Same here. I've been using this in Firefox FOREVER. Turning that feature on and installing AdBlock are the first two things I do on a new Firefox install. I have Firefox running for days or weeks without issue (Only issue is when having too many Javascript-heavy tabs open and the whole process bloats up to over 1GB then starts chugging).
Crashing multiple times per day my ass! The only crashes related to this is when some site I've never been to before bombards me with so many cookie requests that the popups
Re:Because Reasons (Score:4, Informative)
> Would anyone care to recommend a cookie management add-on?
Self-Destructing Cookies [mozilla.org]
Cookies are automatically deleted when you navigate away from the web page that placed them. You can designate some to persist, although it isn't the most convenient UI.
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Does this extension work if you open in a new window, rather than in a new tab? It only claims to work with tabs.
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While I like the idea of its behavioral detection of tracking cookies, and its stats panel is informative, my ultimate problem is that it allows the cookies to be set in the first place. 99.9% of the cookies shoved at my browser are entirely, provably unnecessary -- the page displays the same regardless. As such, my philosophy is that they should never be accepted in the first place, even temporarily.
The cookie requ
By converting Firefox to Chrome .... (Score:2)
they lose their identity and userbase. It's strange how they fail to understand that.
The Australis UI was the first step. Now this. Soon, a looming XUL deprecation which is an even worse idea -- I wonder what's the point of using Firefox will be then.
In short we had a fantastic web browser, now we have a Chrome wanna-be. Soon, we'll have a Chrome copy with Gecko underneath, but who on earth cares what rendering engine they are running?
apropos (Score:2)
Mozilla's apparent position is that users wishing fine-grained cookie control should be using a third-party add-on instead, and that an "Ask before accept" option was, "not really nice to use on today's Web."
The same could be said for Firefox 44, really.
Fuck Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)
I built a new Windows image for our workstation PXE deployments, this time without Firefox.
If you're going to be just another trash browser you're no longer getting installed on the systems I'm responsible for.
In true Mozilla fashion, the discussion on the bug tracker has been censored, so people can't even effectively complain about it.
Re:Fuck Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)
And in true Mozilla fashion, my post to the mailing list, where Mozilla told people to discuss the issue, was rejected by the moderator:
To: firefox-dev@mozilla.org
Subject: Cookies in Firefox 44
The recent change to how cookies were handled in Firefox 44 should be reverted.
Stifling discussion on the bug tracker is also bad form.
Your request to the firefox-dev mailing list
Posting of your message titled "Cookies in Firefox 44"
has been rejected by the list moderator. The moderator gave the
following reason for rejecting your request:
"Bugzilla is for tracking technical work, it's not a debate forum.
Firefox-dev is the proper place to discuss such things, but as your
message isn't adding substantive to the discussion I'm rejecting it."
Any questions or comments should be directed to the list administrator
at:
firefox-dev-owner@mozilla.org
Bye, Mozilla.
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What will you use then, Google Spyware that lacks key privacy-related extensions?
Re:Fuck Mozilla (Score:4, Informative)
Currently I'm evaluating PaleMoon.
WaterFox? (Score:2)
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WaterFox doesn't make changes aside from being a 64-bit build, as far as I know. It's basically a 64-bit build using the Intel C compiler with the optimizations flag turned up to 11.
It will eventually get this "update".
I'm currently evaluating http://www.palemoon.org/ [palemoon.org] as my personal Firefox replacement. The workstations I'm responsible for will get Chrome by default, and not Firefox. (Along with IE/Edge/Safari.)
I'm 100% done with Mozilla, and I expect the organization to go under by the end of 2018.
Cookie storms (Score:4, Interesting)
I fucking hate sites that cause cookie storms.
I got hit by one today, at Chandra Observatory, of all places.
Set your cookies to request always and prepare for > 30 of them: http://chandra.si.edu/photo/20... [si.edu]
However, it doesn't seem like this solution of Mozilla's is a great one if one were to take the new default into consideration.
But it's why I'm still on v39.0 - can't keep up to all the changes
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A mere thirty? Lucky you. That's easily manageable; just lean on the ESC key for a few seconds. I've visited sites that tried assaulting me with nearly a thousand for a single page.
All the tracking for nothing? (Score:2)
Firefox records and submits telemetry, by default, without gaining consent. If you're going to abuse your user, why can't the user at least benefit? They have telemetry, so they at least know which users have this feature enabled ("I use this feature"). If their telemetry is thorough, they know which users enabled it, then disabled it and left it off ("I tried this feature. I then stopped using it"). Now you know how popular it is, rather than just using a supposition as one of your major reasons [mozilla.org], you have
I still run Opera 12 (Score:2)
It's cookie option is to delete any new cookies received when shutting down.
That's it, I'm done (Score:2)
This is where I get off the bus. I've used Firefox for years, Netscape before that - gladly so. But the Firefox people have gone from great developers making a useful product, to pretty good but a little squirrelly, to UX weenies and marketing assholes, to evil sellouts actively trying to screw me over. Fuck 'em.
On a completely unrelated note, if you use Linux, chattr +i is your friend. Works on directories as well as files too. Just sayin'.
After all these years, I guess that is it then. (Score:2)
I have been using Firefox since the early days. Sure there were some releases with problems but 44 for me is the worst ever in my opinion. I have completely wiped it from APPDATA and Programs, reinstalled, yet frequent crashes. Crashes immediately if loading from the taskbar in Windows 7. If I use any plugins like Ad Block Plus or Noscript I get high CPU utilization and it sucks up allot of memory. Occasionally it just disappears in the middle of doing something.
Now with the cookie thing which I use freq
Mmmmm, fine-grained cookies... (Score:2)
I hope we still have the option for chunky chocolate chips!
Can still delete cookies individually (Score:3)
This report is about removing optional user control over which cookies get created. Firefox 44 still allows users to delete individual cookies. Open up Preferences, go to the Privacy tab, click on "remove individual cookies" (a hyperlink) and you will see a list of all your cookies [cluemail.com], grouped by domain name. Click on the ">" before a domain name to see the cookies for that domain. Select and delete as desired.
Personally, I prefer to use NoScript but allow websites to create cookies. That way I can whitelist domains in NoScript until a website works, without having to worry about which cookies to allow. Once I've finished with a website, I can always delete all the relevant cookies until next visit. This works well for me; YMMV.
ABORT on goddammed ESC key (Score:5, Interesting)
Some where back in the dim recent past, Firefox's ESCape key no longer meant abort everything and return control completely to the user. No matter if the base html is incomplete, no matter if some goofy-gumdrop JSON cloud-abortion is in progress, or a 302 redirect is in progress. No matter if you'll have to settle for a blank page because CSS cannot decide what color the text will be. Just ABORT. Now the ESC key means hardly anything.
Now in the face of incomplete loads, packet loss, severely delayed DNS lookups, javascript tumors that are busy metastasizing to grow the page from seeds using repeated lookups to unresponsive and overworked database servers --- all of this results in pages that won't stop loading, tabs that will not close immediately, or even pages with visible readable content that will not respond to scrolling requests or link clicks... until... exactly what I never found out.
The purported reason was to save the poor deep data content providers from aborted transactions caused by unwashed masses hitting reload and ESC. I say, if they're overloaded or vulnerable in any way to aborts or identical re-submits they are vulnerable to script kiddies too and someone has not done their job properly or provisioned their servers adequately. I never considered the ability to abort a web load as anything but an intrinsic RIGHT --- until it was taken away. It was,like, what are they thinking?
I've had to force-close Firefox to regain control. And no we're not talking about Flash or embed delays either, I run NoScript. This is Firefox's native process refusing to abort everything under all conditions.
If content providers bite into some apple of complexity (for example) embedding advertising and load sharing schemes that do little tricks (such as) using gobblegook DNS names with low or zero TTL, they deserve to be sandbagged for their effort by the masses until they re-think their decision and (god forbid) roll back in the general direction of 'static' content.
Unfortunately this is something a third-party addon cannot really fix. If ever I was temped to fork a whole project and create a new subculture to fix one aggravating feature=bug this is it.
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Perhaps by the time their servo rewrite is finished, the firefox name will be so unpopular that their best choice would be to release it under a different name.
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Perhaps by the time their servo rewrite is finished, the firefox name will be so unpopular that their best choice would be to release it under a different name.
I'm thinking something like "Chrome"?
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How about "Silver Plastic" ?
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How about Mozilla Bono?
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Brave is an advertising platform first and foremost.
Brave replaces ads the page / 3rd parties deliver with ads Brave delivers, while promising that the ads Brave delivers are safer and less invasive, as well as better targeted.
However good it may be as a browser it's a non-starter for me. It's core purpose is to put its own ads in front of my eyeballs.
A truly honest browser would refuse to load ANY content from a separate domain by default. That means going to butt.com will not allow you to load up an emb