Firefox Quantum Arrives With Faster Browser Engine, Major Visual Overhaul (venturebeat.com) 323
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 57, branded Firefox Quantum, for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The new version, which Mozilla calls "by far the biggest update since Firefox 1.0 in 2004," brings massive performance improvements and a visual redesign. The Quantum name signals Firefox 57 is a huge release that incorporates the company's next-generation browser engine (Project Quantum). The goal is to make Firefox the fastest and smoothest browser for PCs and mobile devices -- the company has previously promised that users can expect "some big jumps in capability and performance" through the end of the year. Indeed, three of the four past releases (Firefox 53, Firefox 54, and Firefox 55) included Quantum improvements. But those were just the tip of the iceberg. Additionally, Firefox now exclusively supports extensions built using the WebExtension API, and unsupported legacy extensions will no longer work, the company said.
Weird Gaps? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone else seeing large gaps to the left of the address bar and to the right of the search bar?
Also, the new tabs look a lot uglier...
It's quantized so it's not continuous anymore (Score:5, Funny)
The Quantum is the smallest possible increment. Always remember that when someone tells you it's a quantum leap in performance.
Re:It's quantized so it's not continuous anymore (Score:5, Informative)
The Quantum is the smallest possible increment. Always remember that when someone tells you it's a quantum leap in performance.
True and false. The astonishing property of a quantum leap isn't the distance, but that it goes from one state to another without anything in-between.
That's obviously not what happens with Firefox, though. There wasn't a single commit without any betas, even though it feels like it...
Re:It's quantized so it's not continuous anymore (Score:5, Informative)
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The Quantum is the smallest possible increment. Always remember that when someone tells you it's a quantum leap in performance.
However, in leaps, the quantum unit is huge. That why quantum leaps are so large.
Re:It's quantized so it's not continuous anymore (Score:4, Funny)
However, in leaps, the quantum unit is huge. That why quantum leaps are so large.
I thought quantum leaps were when Count Baccula's conscious traveled back in time and takes over someone's body.
Re: It's quantized so it's not continuous anymore (Score:2)
I'm not a physics major, but as I understand it, Planck measurements are the smallest meaningful increment. You can have smaller measurements, but doing so has no possible practical use.
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The Quantum is the smallest possible increment. Always remember that when someone tells you it's a quantum leap in performance.
I'm more afraid this Quantum Leap [wikipedia.org] will consist of reliving the past mistakes and horrors made by other people.
Re:It's quantized so it's not continuous anymore (Score:5, Funny)
The Quantum is the smallest possible increment. Always remember that when someone tells you it's a quantum leap in performance.
I'm more afraid this Quantum Leap [wikipedia.org] will consist of reliving the past mistakes and horrors made by other people.
Mozilla is just trying to set right what once went wrong.. And hoping that their next version, will be the one home.
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Re:Weird Gaps? (Score:5, Informative)
If you right click the gap and click Customize, it seems these gaps are "flexible space" and can be removed.
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Anyone else seeing large gaps to the left of the address bar and to the right of the search bar?
Nope. Chrome is working just fine.
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Good luck if you ever want to download a youtube video using a simple extension.
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The square tabs are far better than Chromes rounded tabs. Originally Firefox had square tabs but they tried to emulate Google Chromes UI. The community was upset by the change and has been asking for square tabs for for sometime. Rounded tabs are not what Firefox originally had so this is just Firefox going back to the original Firefox way. As for the gaps, I can see it makes sense to have the address bar fill in the space rather than to have wasted space.
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I agree wrt gaps. Fortunately you can Right click, Customize, drag gaps away.
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But, on my case the 57 broke the "noscript" plugin and the new "Adblock plus" for Firefox57 is a complete piece of shit, and the very usefull "Classic Theme Restorer" is now broken and the developer can't do nothing about because the new API lost a lot of functionality and it is unlikely that this functionality be recovered some day.
So, back again to version 56, Maybe I will use the version 52 long term.
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Right click on the gap, select 'remove'
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But that doesn't work with 57 does it?
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But that doesn't work with 57 does it?
Just According to Keikaku
(Translator’s note: Keikaku means plan)
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Waterfox is a fork that says it will support legacy apps, but whether it'll get enough support and last I don't know. Pale moon too.
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Yeah this update nuked Classic Theme Restorer for me and there was all kinds of ugliness and "Pocket" buttons, and my new tabs are going to some sort of rich portal instead of about:blank.
Do you know if they have any plans to update that extension? I'm willing to wrangle Firefox into something usable here if the promised performance improvements are actually there.
Re: Weird Gaps? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: Weird Gaps? (Score:5, Informative)
You can also right click on the gap and "remove from toolbar".
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+10 informative! Best comment on the entire thread.
Re: Weird Gaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus, what is wrong with you people? Yes, there are a couple of UI quirks (like the gaps), but this is _the best_ UI that FF has had in *years*. Australis is finally gone, and this default UI is actually sane. Tabs are threaded, something folks around here have been pleading for for _years_. Can't you give a little bit of credit where it's due?
And it is true that this browser is fast. Perceptibly so. For five years, FF has not been able to keep pace with Chrome for those of us who develop on the web. Now, it might actually be a viable workhorse. I haven't looked into the new dev tools in depth, but if they've improved as much as the UI and the speed, then I might finally be able to switch back.
If you are a geek, you should be rooting for Firefox. Without it, the web will be dominated by an advertising agency and a convicted monopolist. Give it the benefit of the doubt and try not to be a total douche.
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That UI is at least equally crap as the Australis, but unlike previously, it can not be fixed anymore. For the last few years the FF installation procedure was completed by getting Ad block and Classic Theme restorer, where former fixed the web and latter fixed the browser. But after this new FF, the browser is terminally unusable.
Re: Weird Gaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee whiz, give us a few days to drive it to comment on performance. Generally restarting a program improves its performance. But the out of box experience (gaps and tabs) was not pleasant. I've fixed the gaps based on brickhouse98's comment (thanks!), but the tab coloring SUCKS.
In 2 hours of usage, it seems much faster than the previous version, even though I had multi-threading enabled in the previous version. I like it a lot, and I agree that for Privacy, having FF around is key for us.
I'm rooting for FF, but I give honest reviews and speak truth. Ignoring problems with your own team is a primary cause of much of the world's trouble, especially in politics. I refuse to play THAT game.
Re: Weird Gaps? (Score:5, Informative)
but the tab coloring SUCKS
You can pick a different theme in the Customize settings. Firefox ships with three themes (Default, Light, and Dark). I use the Light theme.
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I'm totally rooting for FireFox. I just saw the notification, downloaded it, and yes, the gaps were the first thing I noticed.
I did the same thing ... except that it took me a bit to figure out what the fuss with "the gaps" was all about. Personally, I think it looks fine.
Re: Weird Gaps? (Score:4, Insightful)
If pages you develop are slow loading, perhaps you should revisit your design. What exactly are you doing that FF is unable to keep pace with? There is no reason a normal web page should load slowly on any browser, Chrome or FF.
It's designers like you who make pages so full of unnecessary bloat that it's making browsing the web more and more annoying, regardless of browser, while loading 10MB from two dozen different ad servers just to display a few lines of actual content.
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(For now I reverted back to version 56 and I'll stay in it as long as possible)
Re: Weird Gaps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Why? Because FF is the only major browser that respects your freedom and your privacy.
This is the same reason to root for Linux on the Desktop even if it's not as usable as Win10. Because we don't want to use closed source spyware for the rest of our lives.
Re: Weird Gaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except it no longer respects your freedom to customize the UI and it was always a bit bad at respecting your privacy (stun servers, browser fingerprinting).
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Except it no longer respects your freedom to customize the UI
If I had to vote for my freedom to have really high performance and your freedom to customize the UI, you will lose (or likely we'll be 50:50).
It's not like they just removed it for shits and giggles.
Re: Weird Gaps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because FF is the only major browser that respects your freedom and your privacy.
Just like they respected Brendan Eich's?
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Welcome to 2017 FF, too bad it's nearly 2018
Shouldn't Firefox be welcoming other browsers into the world of proper parallel programming instead? That is, once those other browsers catch up with it.
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Who decided to use monochrome icons? Yes, it looks nice to have few colors but IMO it makes harder to tell them apart and an icon should be, more than anything, easy and fast to identify. This is a horrible case of putting form over function
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You can remove Pocket from the address bar. Right click it and select "Remove from Address Bar".
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Are you sure you're updated to the latest version? I just did it and right-clicked on the pocket icon, and the only option on the menu was "Remove from Address Bar". Clicked it and it's gone.
New Default. (Score:4, Interesting)
The beta has felt quite a bit faster than my old default (Opera). With an official release Firefox has regained default status. I've used it since back in the Phoenix days. Then they got stale and Chrome was faster. Then it got stale and Opera was faster.
Hurray for competition.
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Though it seems surreal looking back, I can remember when Internet Explorer 3.0 was actually the best browser around, demonstrably superior to Netscape 3.0 its only real competition! The world, fortunately, does sometimes progress.
Extensions, though :-( (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally tally: about 2/3 of my regularly used extensions don't work with 57 and don't currently seem to have a similar replacement available.
Sadly, a performance boost just isn't work losing that much functionality for me. :-(
Re:Extensions, though :-( (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Extensions, though :-( (Score:5, Interesting)
It disabled NoScript.
NoScript for Firefox 57 will be released today. Don't worry, be happy [youtube.com].
Re:Extensions, though :-( (Score:4, Informative)
If you were using recent version before upgrade, then no.
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The real bear is losing extensions that take out LSOs - aka SuperCookies. The "suggested replacement" for Self-Destructing Cookies doesn't remove LSOs... thus it is not a replacement. The API is there now, but the author hasn't gotten off his ass yet to implement it. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
Also Gestures extensions are worse, though at least somebody's trying. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
Also no more tab groups - aka Panorama - which sucks ass. Not upgrading until I can get that, and wi
Re:Extensions, though :-( (Score:5, Insightful)
And... and... and... WTF WERE THEY THINKING??? Make it so addon authors need to update things and/or re-create is bad enough, but then remove the underlying functionality? That's insane! It shouldn't be LESS CAPABLE.
It's almost as if to address the performance issues that people have been bitching about would require a major architecture change, but no that's not it, they, like any company, specifically asked YOU what would piss you off and did that instead.
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Re:Extensions, though :-( (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully now that the mainline has dropped support for legacy extensions this will motivate a few more devs to update, otherwise they are loosing most of their install base.
Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of the extension developers have instead pulled their extensions entirely, updated the description to say something like "Sorry, doesn't work with 57, thanks for the support until now", or more worryingly updated the description to say something like "Sorry, this can't work with 57 because the WebExtensions infrastructure can't do it".
Of course, that's just my own anecdotal experience. I've talked to plenty of people who seem to have no problem with most or all of the extensions they use, so maybe I've just been (very) unlucky in the particular extensions I have found useful until now.
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12 of my 14 extensions are legacy, no way am I upgrading.
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"Sorry, this can't work with 57 because the WebExtensions infrastructure can't do it".
I really hope that the plugin developers whose extensions are no longer supported make writeups of what they need so the FF team can implement the WebExtensions features that are needed.
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UI (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares about the features? (Score:5, Insightful)
When it loses the whole POINT of the program? The add-ons are what made Firefox worth using as a primary browser. With the switch to the new version, they made all previous plugins incompatible, and most of the add-ons that I'd prefer to use won't be ported over, mostly out of disgust/disinterest by the developers, or simply that the tools are no longer available to accomplish the task anymore.
This is somewhat akin to a new version of Steam coming out, that disables all Steam games until a new version of each game comes out requiring XBox One controller-only controls. They decided keyboard/mouse was potentially insecure. Sure - some users will celebrate this, but it kind of defeats the point of the platform at large. Eventually, it might get good again - but you're throwing away too much now to be worth that.
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The old extension API was horribly insecure, would expose all browser internals. The WebExtensions does improve security since there are better controls, and a user has to approve an extensions access to information. There is no direct access to the filesystem. Policing extensions was a huge problem and you could not trust the stuff that was in the repository because of the old API and its open ended access.
Another reason was major architectural changes to the browser meant the old API was going to break an
Re:Who cares about the features? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who cares about the features? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's kind of funny how often I see people justifying this insanity by talking about how horribly insecure the old API was. Kind of funny because in over a decade I have had exactly zero problems with addons doing nasty things. And I can recall hearing about exactly zero addons doing nasty things.
But we want to kill the old API, so...uh...security!
It reminds me of that time McLaren realised that they could increase the power to weight ratio of their F1 cars by removing that heavy steering wheel.
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When MacOS X came out, it included classic mode [wikipedia.org], which was able to run most OS9 programs. Apple made some basic minimal effort to provide backwards compatibility, despite making huge architectural changes under the hood.
Another key difference between these scenarios is that Mac OS X wasn't crippled in such a way that it was suddenly impossible to do things you could do on OS9. In fact OSX was more capable.
Significant loss of functionality (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've reverted to Firefox 56.0.2. Unless the plug-in situation changes for the better, Firefox 56 will be the end of my use of Firefox.
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...I've reverted to Firefox 56.0.2. Unless the plug-in situation changes for the better, Firefox 56 will be the end of my use of Firefox....
Scratch that. I've reverted to Firefox 52 ESR. That should give me enough time to find a suitable replacement for Firefox.
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Firefox 57 shows a big disadvantage of plug-ins (Score:5, Insightful)
.
The headline for this release should not be that it is two times faster, but that a very significant amount of functionality has been lost.
Re:Firefox 57 shows a big disadvantage of plug-ins (Score:5, Interesting)
the old extensions mechanism was insecure. Extensions could access all of the browser internals, plus the filesystem. No sandboxing, No security, No nothing.
The old extension API was great if security is of no concern for you.
I would never trust any of the extensions of the old API because of this, so removing the old API is not a downside if one is concerned about security.
For people who are concerned about security, removing the old API is a good thing. It will force a refactoring of the extension code into much more secure code and will smoke out a lot of insecure code, and make the extension systems much safer.
The idea of adding additional functionality through extensions was dubious at best via the old API, especially if third parties are adding the features rather than the Firefox developers, especially since it was becoming very hard to security review the extensions that were coming from third parties due to the high numbers.
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Waa waa waa it was insecure, what a bullshit excuse. It worked perfectly fine for me for years (and still does with Pale Moon).
Firefox tracking protection (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't a Firefox 57 feature, but for all FireFox users I recommend Options - Tracking Protection - Change Block List - Disconnect.me strict protection. The strict protection is arguably bettern than an ad blocker, since it leaves unintrusive ads that support a site but blocks the garbage ones. I don't mind if a site is financed with ads, because server time isn't free.
On Slashdot, the ads at the top that tried to stick themselves over the article, that intermittently tried to inject malware and redirect you to other pages, and that showed me whatever I last looked at on Amazon -- those are gone. Instead, I just see the "Slashdot Top Deals" on the right side and bottom. Those aren't so bad, and if they pay the bills then great.
Until I selected this option, I was browsing in private windows 75% of the time. Now I can go back to normal browsing, which is a slight convenience. If enough people do this, maybe the ad companies will start to figure out that injecting malware is less profitable than an unobtrusive ad.
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I don't mind if a site is financed with ads..I was browsing in private windows 75% of the time...If enough people do this, maybe the ad companies will start to figure out that injecting malware is less profitable than an unobtrusive ad.
How are you so passive and naive about advertising? That ship sailed nearly two decades ago. Over the course of 20 years, ads have just gotten worse and more obtrusive. Loud, animated, moving content around, covering it up, opening in windows in front and behind the browser, now pushing malware, some of which is used to show more ads.
Advertising does not get better. It can't, because of its very nature. It can't be a benefit to the end user of a website.
To advertise, one must draw the attention of the viewe
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>"The strict protection is arguably bettern than an ad blocker, since it leaves unintrusive ads that support a site but blocks the garbage ones. I don't mind if a site is financed with ads, because server time isn't free."
If the ad is animated in ANY way, or contains video or audio, or follows me down the page, or blocks out HUGE sections of content, or performs some action when moused-over *IT IS INTRUSIVE*! This is regardless of where it is hosted or redirects. So although I think your posting is in
Pros and Cons (Score:3, Informative)
Pros:
Cons:
It is actually faster (Score:3)
Generally when a browser boasts of speed increases I sort of shrug because it's rarely obvious. Typically I'm more limited by the speed of the connection than by the browser processing speed. However this time it Firefox actually does appear to work notably faster. I'm not particularly impressed or offended by the visual changes but they are fine I guess. But I am actually (pleasantly) surprised to see how much quicker it works. I use Firefox as my primary browser so it's nice to see a change for the better. Hopefully nothing important broke in the process...
Customize shortcuts using an incompatible add-on! (Score:2)
So if you want to customize shortcuts, their own help articles recommend that you use an add-on called 'Menu Wizard'...that isn't compatible with this version of the browser.
Also, it renders the most OBNOXIOUSLY large scroll bars for Tweetdeck, no matter what the text scaling size is. It's just visually offensive, and no other browser seems to do it. Even MS Edge reduces the size of the scrollbars as you modify the scaling, despite it not rendering the correct, rounded scrollbars.
I've also had to restart it
We'll see (Score:2)
I generally keep 20 or so tabs open, and once a week or so everything will grind to a halt. If this update keeps that from happening I'll be happy. I'm a creature of habit, and I keep certain tabs open in FF and others in Chrome, and I don't really want to change. FF hasn't made it easy over the last few years though, I understand why so many people jumped ship.
Still waiting on the Slashdot Browser (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you Mozilla (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you for keeping up, thank you for being non profit and open source and thank you for offering a cross platform alternative independent of advertising companies and OS vendors.
This is important work.
Thank you ðY(TM)ðY.
Re:It's NO GO since noscript is DOA (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Regression. (Score:4, Interesting)
What's wrong with the way bookmarks have worked forever? By far my most used control in every browser I've used since the days of Netscape Navigator has been a bookmark toolbar that is set up like a menu of the sites I actually want to visit.
Maybe I'm weird, but most of the extensions and new controls in modern browsers seem to be useful primarily to turn off other modern developments that I don't want. For me, that last big UI improvements in browsers were introducing tabs and search boxes, and we've had those for so long that the earliest known source code was found in hieroglyphs on a cave wall.
Just give me good bookmarks, tabbed browsing, and a simple address bar and search bar with the basic controls for back/refresh/etc. and I've got a simple, effective browser UI that will do the job nicely, thanks.
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What's wrong with the way bookmarks have worked forever?
Many people appear to prefer to use tabs to provide the functionality that bookmarks were designed for. So we end up with situations like Firefox OOMing on a 32GB workstation, but it appears to be what the users want.
Perhaps if the bookmark toolbar saved a screenshot of each site, and used that both for hover actions and as a preliminary muted background picture while the site loaded, some tab users might discover bookmarks?
Although a cascading menu hierarchy might still put some off as too complex. That
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I've never really got the using-tabs-as-bookmarks thing. To me they've naturally filled different roles for as long as we've had them. But then I've used browsers for as long as there have been browsers, way back when bookmarking was a great innovation and browsers didn't provide tabs yet. If you've only ever used tabbed browsing then I can see why you wouldn't make the same distinction as someone like me.
Interesting analogy with the Start Menu. For me, the biggest UI advance in Windows 7 was the introducti
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I can't imagine doing this. I prefer to have a bookmarks list with date, title, etc columns with being able to sort the bookmarks by selecting the sorting column.
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What's the problem with managing over 1,000 bookmarks with the way they've traditionally worked? I probably have at least that many, and they're neatly organised in folders that I've built up over the years. This has the same downsides as any hierarchical filing system, and possibilities to link bookmarks from multiple places in the tree and to search the whole tree would be welcome enhancements, but the basic functionality works fine as far as it goes.
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What are you talking about? The bootmarks in google chrome are utterly retarded. No adjustable resorting by alphabet or date? You've got to be kidding. I love the Firefox bookmarking system, its far, far better than Chromes nonsense. You can sort the bookmarks any way you need to and at any time.
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it might be the end of Firefox
Unlikely. Just relax [youtube.com]. You'll feel better.
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witnessing 11/14 as the day the web was lost.
Boohoo [youtube.com]. We're doomed! I have only 6,231 add-ons to choose from with more being added every day. How ever will I survive?
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I have only 6,231 add-ons to choose from
I already went through the search page for add-ons. The three I searched for had no functional equivalent. Nothing even close.
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... If your extension can't be converted, it doesn't have the support it truly needs.
And that shows the fundamental flaw in Mozilla pushing functionality off onto the plug-ins while boasting about the functionality supplied by the plug-ins. Mozilla apparently wants to have its cake and eat it too.
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gobs of blank space in the toolbar for no reason
You can use the Customize tool to customize the interface and remove the blank space. Either right-click in the space on the toolbar and select Customize or go via the Hamburger menu -> Customize.
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Still using ESR. Took qupzilla for a test drive for a while because it still had the separate search engine toolbar element and wasn't going to drop ALSA support AFIACT, but it's still just a bit too broken for use on some of the sites I visit.
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The new firefox release moves it further away from Chrome by going back to square tabs and reversing the Australis UI regressions.
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The reason the old extension API had to be broken was to increase security and allow for sandboxing. Sandboxing and multi content processes are the two must haves if you want security. So all of these people who like the old extensions system have been a cause of preventing Firefox was addressing its security problems and sandboxing the content code. The content code is now sandboxed by default on Linux which is highly recommended.