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Mozilla Firefox Software

Firefox 49 Arrives With Improvements (venturebeat.com) 129

Posted by msmash from the browser-delights dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 49 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The new version includes expanded multi-process support, improvements to Reader Mode, and offline page viewing on Android. The built-in voice and video calling feature Firefox Hello, meanwhile, has been removed from the browser. First up, Firefox 49 brings two improvements to Reader Mode. You can now adjust the text (width and line spacing), fonts, and even change the theme from light to dark. There is also a new Narrate option that reads the content of the page aloud. Next is the Mozilla's crusade to enable multi-process support, a feature that has been in development for years as part of the Electrolysis project. With the release of Firefox 48, Mozilla enabled multi-process support for 1 percent of users, slowly ramping up to nearly half of the Firefox Release channel. Initial tests showed a 400 percent improvement in overall responsiveness.Mozilla says at least "half a billion people around the world" use its Firefox browser.
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Firefox 49 Arrives With Improvements More

Firefox 49 Arrives With Improvements

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  • Isn't it supposed to play Netflix too? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is also supposed to be the version you can play Netflix on. If that's true, I will never, ever install Chrome again.
    So long, Google spyware!

    • Re:Isn't it supposed to play Netflix too? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by T.E.D. ( 34228 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @03:39PM (#52926647)

      Good luck with that. Android doesn't let me uninstall it, and Google's search widget uses it and cannot be configured to use another browser.

      Remember when Microsoft got a legal finding of anti-trust violation against them for doing this exact same thing?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Remember when Microsoft got a legal finding of anti-trust violation against them for doing this exact same thing?

        This is all smartphone vendors, Android now ships with a browser you can't remove and private APIs in their closed source Google Play Services. Apple does the same thing shipping a browser you can't uninstall, they actively prevent alternative browsers so you can only skin the engine that is shipped (which is even worse than Microsoft), they even claim you can't remove it because it would break OS functionality (oh where have I heard that before?), they ship with private APIs that only they can use and you

      • half of an anti-trust violation is having a strong enough market position to abuse. Google has fairly strong competition with Firefox on Android. I primarily use FF Android because it's nearly as fast, displays the real page without me having to mess around and does a better job of displaying that real page. Tabs also work a lot better.

        Now with Apple, who won't even let another company make a browser for iOS (any browser on iOS is really just a skin on Safari) and therefore has no competition you might h

        • Google has fairly strong competition with Firefox on Android.

          Say what? Firefox on Android has market share of half a percent [netmarketshare.com]. Shit, desktop Linux had a higher market share than that when Microsoft was prosecuted for monopoly practices. Browsers like Opera Mini have ten times the market share of Firefox on Android. It may as well not exist for all the presence it has.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by T.E.D. ( 34228 )

          Now with Apple, who won't even let another company make a browser for iOS (any browser on iOS is really just a skin on Safari) and therefore has no competition you might have a point. But we don't like to speak ill of Apple around here

          I can't speak for "we", but I didn't mention them because they just aren't that relevant to me. They provide roughly the same product as the Android vendors, but with worse lock-in issues, and for hundreds of dollars more. Last I checked their sales market-share was in the vicinity of 1/5th of the market, and falling. There will probably be a blip up next month due to a new version coming out, but the trend is pretty clear.

          Android as of March had a hair more than 70% of all sales in the market. That's not

    • When I try to view Netflix using FireFox 49 on Linux it asks me to install Silverlight...

  • If only I could test my website on it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    No longer directly supported by Selenium, you are no suppose to use Marionette as the driver. Marionette, however, will be done Real Soon Now.

  • Improvements (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @03:10PM (#52926437) Homepage Journal

    Improvements? They put the UI back to how it was in version 38?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Did they fire Asa Dotzler?

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Gussington ( 4512999 )
      Are you one of those people that wish MS would still stick with the Windows 2000 UI? We all find UI changes jarring, but it really is time to move on...

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by Hognoxious ( 631665 )

        Don't be so fucking retarded.

        XP FTW.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        yes let's move on from something that worked great for 14 years for whatever shiny "modern" design microsoft wants to push into your face that makes a system less accessible for many. and then not have this modern design for another modern design in a required iteration of windows

        no thanks

      • Re:Improvements (Score:4, Insightful)

        by lgw ( 121541 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @05:42PM (#52927487) Journal

        Are you one of those people that wish MS would still stick with the Windows 2000 UI?

        That's pretty much the usable Windows UI. It got a bit better with Win7 in that the taskbar can combine launching programs and switching to them, if you prefer it that way (I do). Other than that, Win7 UI as configured by a geek looks very much like the Win2k UI.

        Almost every UI change in the past 15 years - to bascially any established software product - was wrong-headed, stupid, and abandoned in the next version.

        • Have you used Win2000 lately? I was one of those staunch win2000 UI supporters too. When I got WinXP I used the classic theme because a green start button was just gay. I skipped Vista because of the UI, and Win 7 took me a long time to adjust to, and Win 8 was a shocker (full screen start menu really?).
          I decided with Win10 that I would jump onboard early and just run with it, now I could never go back. For browsers I don't care so much since 99% of what I do is in the window itself. I can understand some
      • It's time to move on if the new UI is better than the old if not we'd be better off with the old one.
        I don't mind minor UI changes like those introduced until Win 7 but explain to me why on a desktop is better a flat UI, no borders on buttons, no shadows, huge UI elements, tons of whitespace. Those things are nice on a touchscreen, on my PC I want a high density UI.
        In Linux at least the UI is decoupled from the base OS and thus you can choose whichever you like the most

        • In Linux at least the UI is decoupled from the base OS and thus you can choose whichever you like the most

          Or rather, choose the UI you hate the least. Linux GUI is an abomination, and don't pretend otherwise. It is the classic example of design by committee.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Improvements? They put the UI back to how it was in version 38?

      Surely you meant version 3.6. Firefox 4.0 is when everything started to go downhill fast.

      Google brought out Firefox developers to start Chrome, they gave Mozilla filthy amounts of money, the developers left or returning started to make Firefox into a dumb Chrome clone badly targeted at novices (shit UI is shit UI for everybody) who are obviously stopping to use Firefox as they upgrade their PC (because their geek friends and family members are not installing it anymore on their PC), and we went from 30% mar

    • They haven't taken away Addons from us - yet. The ironic thing is that half my addons just restore functionality that was previously built-in but was taken away.

  • Does it.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @03:17PM (#52926495) Homepage Journal

    Does it come with a real menu bar with file, edit and other proper menus? Or do I have to play "hunt the secret glyph" to unlock a menu?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 )

      Or, y'know, press Alt...

    • Pressing the ALT key will reveal the menu your are asking about.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Right-click on the chrome anywhere around the address bar, and check Menu Bar. It's everything you ever wanted.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zumbs ( 1241138 )

      Does it come with a real menu bar with file, edit and other proper menus? Or do I have to play "hunt the secret glyph" to unlock a menu?

      Yeah, it does. You can even configure it to always show it. Alt+v opens the view menu. Then select Toolbars (e.g. by pressing t) and select Menu Bar.

    • What do you need a menu for? All functions of a modern app should be managed by making funny faces at the camera to will it into submission.

    • Does it come with a real menu bar with file, edit and other proper menus? Or do I have to play "hunt the secret glyph" to unlock a menu?

      It has never not done that. Just right-click... in the right spot... and select "menu bar" - and there it is again. The right spot may be tough to find though. The plus-sign next to the tabs works, at least.

      I do agree completely that it should never have been hidden to begin with.

    • Yes, it does. You can enable it by right-clicking on the toolbar and ticking the "Menu Bar" option. To make the menu bar a fixture rather than appearing only when you press alt. When the menu bar is enabled in this way you can still toggle its visibility by pressing F10.

      Personally I find the menu bar occupying a whole row on its own to be a waste of space, so I install the Personal Titlebar [mozilla.org] extension, which allows me to use the "Customise" screen to add a page title next to the menu.

      Here's what my browser l [imgur.com]

  • Cool. Now ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @03:22PM (#52926537)

    Anyone have a list of the about:config settings required to disable the new "useful" and/or annoying "features" added and/or changed by this release?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Raenex ( 947668 )

      Just be happy you're still getting those, and 3rd party plugins for the rest of the stuff they fuck up that can't be changed through config. I would have abandoned Firefox a long time ago if it weren't for that.

  • "Exact numbers"? Half a billion users? (Score:3)

    by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @03:38PM (#52926637)

    Mozilla doesnâ(TM)t break out the exact numbers for Firefox, though the company does say âoehalf a billion people around the worldâ use the browser.

    Translation: We're in decline but don't want to confirm that by looking at the actual data. We'll just hand wave that for everyone else.

  • While everyone here is bitching and whining about the lesser of two evils between the changes being done to Chrome and Firefox, as well as debating the stability of both, I'll just continue to sit over here comfortably with Opera for the time being. And if I feel like getting adventurous, there is still Vivaldi too.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Because software from a random Chinese company never hurt anyone.

    • I've gone to Pale Moon, but I have Opera as a backup. I'm not pleased that they've been acquired by a Chinese company, because I have little doubt the only thing standing between me and full-scale surveillance by one of the nastier totalitarian regimes on the planet is their lack of interest.

    • Opera jumped the shark for me :(

      Vivaldi is what I'm browsing from (from the actual makers of Opera, not the Chinese company).

  • There was a built in video chat feature in Firefox! I didn't have to use Skype!? Why is the first I heard of it the day they killed it?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Fruit ( 31966 )
      The core functionality (WebRTC) is still there, they just removed their frontend. You can still use WebRTC in Firefox (or Chromium/Chrome) by visiting https://opentokrtc.com/ [opentokrtc.com]. Chromium may be a better bet if you're behind a crappy firewall, because it supports TCP as well as UDP (Firefox only supports UDP).

  • Isn't this also the version that changes extension APIs so we essentially have to use Chrome extensions now?

  • I often do research for projects and end up with a set of related tabs open all at once. How nice it would be to be able to save those tabs to a file, so I don't have to leave them open in a separate window all the time.

    You know, it's the simple things that really make the difference.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Tried the Session Manager extension?

  • The bar has been set so low by the last few years of Firefox releases that the new version is announced as bringing "Improvements". Yikes. And I write this as a person who uses FF as my main browser.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      With how the people around here view Firefox, they might as well just give up and generically say "improvements", because we'll find reasons to hate everything Mozilla does regardless. Best not waste time, and just give us the floor to hate on everything.

  • I disabled updates because they're going to get rid of addons. If I have to start over trying to get the functionality of noscript, greasemonkey, privacy badger, ublock, adblocks edge, adnauseum, google privacy, status-4-evar.... I might as well submit to google and install chrome.

  • What have they done to the developer tools dark theme? They seem to have changed it to a bright, low-contrast medium-grey-over-pale-blue scheme. I'm all for trying new things, but that's hardly practical.

    • Agreed. The background looks like Atom One Dark. Anyone have a solution to customize the colors? Monokai, Seti, Torte, Jellybeans?

  • I just switched to Chrome at work (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xenobyte ( 446878 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @07:09AM (#52930207)

    Running with the exact same number of tabs (pinned and regular) in two windows and similar extensions I get:

    Startup and tab load:
    Firefox: 72 seconds
    Chrome: 15 seconds

    Launch a new zendesk.com tab from a link in a mail (I do this a lot):
    Firefox: 35 seconds
    Chrome: 1 second

    Memory use:
    Firefox: 1750 MB
    Chrome 114 MB

    Firefox really needs to pick up its game!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by T.E.D. ( 34228 )

      Or perhaps their user-base doesn't really care about startup time and memory use.

      If I just start the browser once when I boot my computer, and then use it for days (or weeks) thereafter, its tough to get really exercised about that whole extra minute I had to wait that once. If I'm primarily using my system for web browsing, and it has 16Gig of memory, do I really need the browser maintenance engineers spending all their available time getting it to take up 0.0007% of my available RAM instead of 0.01% of

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