[HN Gopher] Firefox 88.0
___________________________________________________________________
Firefox 88.0
Author : easton
Score : 279 points
Date : 2021-04-19 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mozilla.org)
| jrnichols wrote:
| Icons on macOS Big Sur are still the old ones. So far, only the
| Mozilla products (firefox/thunderbird) haven't updated macOS
| icons.
|
| not sure why at this point.
| mfollert wrote:
| The native support for macOS overall is terrible. It took them
| 21 years to finally support native context menus:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572
|
| And you still have to manually configure Firefox to use the
| native full-screen-api so you can use the macOS menubar to
| chance your volume. Horrible, just horrible ...
|
| But I'm currently on Firefox Nightly and pretty happy about the
| recent UX/UI changes.
| strifey wrote:
| > Firefox will not prompt for access to your microphone or camera
| if you've already granted access to the same device on the same
| site in the same tab within the past 50 seconds. This new grace
| period reduces the number of times you're prompted to grant
| device access.
|
| This is a super nice little QoL improvement, but I'd love to be
| able to configure this to be even longer (optimally by domain,
| but I'd love a global setting too).
| TheGoddessInari wrote:
| Is there a substantial gap here between this new thing, your
| suggestion, and "remember this choice"? Trying to imagine the
| use case.
| strifey wrote:
| True, there's not a huge difference. I just tend to prefer to
| reaffirm my permissions on occasion than permanently allow
| them. Similar to how I appreciate that most website
| occasionally require you to re-login.
| r930 wrote:
| According to the commit [0], you may be able to configure the
| period using the 'privacy.webrtc.deviceGracePeriodTimeoutMs'
| option in about:config
|
| [0]
| https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/rMOZILLACENTRAL1513...
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Still no fix for the horrible battery use on MacOS?
|
| Every streaming video call I do through Firefox turns my MBP into
| a toaster.
|
| According to Apple's Energy usage tool, Firefox bloats up to 70,
| while Safari is around 4 for the same Zoom call. Oof.
|
| I really want to love Firefox, but it destroys my battery life.
| Faster than 1% per minute while on a streaming video call.
| cletus wrote:
| Still no update on super-high CPU usage of Twitch on Firefox, an
| issue that has been open for at least 4 years [1][2].
|
| I really want to like Firefox and I want there to be viable
| alternatives to Chrome but when playing video back at 360p (not
| joking) grinds my 1.5 year old Macbook Pro to a halt on a popular
| website... I just can't use it.
|
| I don't know if this is a video codec issue, a CSS/JS issue that
| Twitch manages to trigger or what but it's a problem.
|
| [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403823
|
| [2]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/917hyv/twitch_in_f...
| akvadrako wrote:
| Is it multi-user video chat? Firefox can't do this efficiently
| and it's also a problem with other tools like Jitsi.
| cletus wrote:
| Well, that's worse because it's a bigger issue. If you look
| through some of the bugs (there are several) you'll see
| suggestions of turning off chat to mitigate the issue but
| this raises even more questions:
|
| 1. Why don't users have to do that with Chrome?
|
| 2. While it does help, the video-without-chat CPU+GPU usage
| is still higher than Chrome's CPU+GPU usage for video-with-
| chat.
|
| If that also applies to Youtube or other services and has
| been open for 4+ years then... yeah, big problem.
| btdmaster wrote:
| Non-solution, but have you seen
| https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink-twitch-gui? It runs
| natively using streamlink, and streamlink can use e.g. mpv and
| use minimal CPU, instead using hardware acceleration (or not
| run whatever JavaScript Twitch decides to run, at least).
| cpeterso wrote:
| A good way to get traction on a Firefox performance bug is to
| provide a profile. You don't need to install any new software.
| Instructions for recording a Firefox performance profile:
|
| https://profiler.firefox.com/
| m_eiman wrote:
| Isn't this something that Twitch could/should fix?
| eska wrote:
| Workaround, but I use mpv with youtube-dl. Offers rewinding,
| pausing (buffering for minutes), frame-by-frame stepping, slow
| motion.. You can just type `mpv http://twitch.tv/user_name`
| globular-toast wrote:
| I thought FTP support had been removed a long time ago for some
| reason! I have very fond memories of FTP but I guess its time has
| come. I probably haven't used it for 10 years at this point.
| 51Cards wrote:
| I would have been happier if it had just be locked down to
| secure connections only. I have used FTP to quickly share files
| to colleagues at times and this will be broken now. I'm sure I
| was in a very minimal percentage but it was handy to just send
| someone an FTP link. Now if I don't want to have to upload it
| to an external service I will have to share it through my web
| server which brings up all kinds of MIME type issues, etc. I
| know, edge use case.
| cardanome wrote:
| I used it yesterday. I regularly use FTP at work, well
| preferably SFTP but it does happen.
|
| While we have a automatic deployment pipeline for our own
| projects, lots of our customers that host externally still use
| good old FTP.
|
| I don't think FTP is ever going to fully die. It is still a
| typical way to deploy your files when using a shared web
| hosting that does not offer SSH.
| jug wrote:
| We're kind of crazy and use WebDAV. Big upsides besides
| upload support were built in support in Windows Explorer,
| running over a single port / http, and https support.
| lou1306 wrote:
| FTP is still pretty much alive in research as well (well,
| until now). I also used it in the past week. I understand it
| has flaws, but... I don't know, this seems yet another nail
| in the Old Web coffin.
| kbenson wrote:
| "Has flaws" is an understatement. FTP does not play well
| with the current way the web is set up. Any firewalling or
| NAT is a pain unless you have the firewall introspect the
| FTP commands, which is easy for plain FTP because it's
| _plain text and unencrypted_ , but once you start
| encrypting the transport it gets more complex, and you need
| to add support for that in the firewall. There's also often
| two connection channels, one for control and one for data.
|
| Just be aware that any FTP upload capability offered is
| likely a serious pain for the admins on the other side.
| Even if they finally get it configured well enough to
| mostly forget about, they'll have to dive back in every
| time they upgrade any infrastructure along the path to it.
| It's much easier to just pass a TCP port though, which is
| what scp/sftp (the SSH variant, not the misnamed ftp/s
| variants some clients used to advertise as it) is much
| easier, and if you use rsync, includes easy recovery.
| refracture wrote:
| SFTP is not only just preferable but so unrelated to FTP that
| it frustrates me that it's often brought up in the same
| sentence... why did they call it that.. uhg.
| majewsky wrote:
| Well, it _is_ a Secure File Transfer Protocol after all.
| That 's the trouble with descriptive names.
| gspr wrote:
| > I don't think FTP is ever going to fully die. It is still a
| typical way to deploy your files when using a shared web
| hosting that does not offer SSH.
|
| Surely those abominations are almost dead now though, in the
| age of the low-overhead VMs?
| cardanome wrote:
| Some parts of the tech world seem quick to forget that
| smaller (and sometimes bigger) non-tech companies do exist.
| Sometimes non professional people create and deploy
| websites either as hobbyists or simply because there is no
| budget to hire a proper tech guy.
|
| Wordpress is still a huge part of the Web and is running
| fine on shared hosting. And yes it can be an appropriate
| and cost effective choice for smaller sites even in 2021.
|
| Also adding to that, the one time I did migrate a project
| from shared hosting to a dockerized VM solution was when
| the hoster was not supporting the needed PHP version
| anymore. Meaning hopelessly too old to ever update.
| the_jeremy wrote:
| Chrome 76 (July 2019) dropped FTP support.
| drewda wrote:
| > PDF forms now support JavaScript embedded in PDF files. Some
| PDF forms use JavaScript for validation and other interactive
| features.
|
| The amount of complexity that one can put into a PDF is both
| surprising and a tad frightening.
| danudey wrote:
| Back when I started playing D&D again, some friends stumbled
| across a PDF of "MPMB's character sheet" or something.
|
| Basically, it was a PDF full of scripting and options and such,
| that let you:
|
| * Choose which content you wanted to use (i.e. content from
| which sources) * Choose which rules you wanted to use (in case
| you wanted to use optional rules) * Choose your class, race,
| and background, and handle them appropriately * Level up your
| character, prompting you to choose spells, feats, abilities,
| etc. from every option available to you based on your current
| character options * Manage your inventory * Import and export
| your character data * Import and export source data
|
| It was pretty insane. Granted, it was also insanely slow
| (presumably due to limitations of what data you can store in a
| PDF and how), but for a bunch of tech-savvy newbies to 5th
| edition D&D, it was vastly better than the other options and
| helped us discover a lot of character features that we'd missed
| when overwhelmed at first.
|
| I still wish they'd put it into literally anything more
| performant, like an electron app or something. Yes, it was that
| bad.
| jhauris wrote:
| The same capability is on the web at D&D Beyond:
| https://www.dndbeyond.com/
| ansible wrote:
| One thing to be aware of is that just the super-basic stuff
| is included in a free account. For example a 3rd level
| Rogue can choose a specialty subclass, and only Thief is
| available for free, other subclasses like Arcane Trickster
| you have to pay a couple bucks for.
| jfb wrote:
| Or at roll20.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Here goes me opening PDFs in Firefox.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| It's horrible for security but it can be really useful. This
| guy made an entire Dungeons & Dragons character sheet generator
| embedded into a PDF and I probably wouldn't have ever played
| D&D without it: https://www.flapkan.com/
|
| I looked at the source code briefly and it's on the order of
| 10K lines of Javascript.
| pornel wrote:
| Firefox opens PDF via pdf.js. From security perspective it's
| merely yet another bloated web page.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > The amount of complexity that one can put into a PDF is both
| surprising and a tad frightening.
|
| off-topic, but fwiw: the pocorgtfo16.pdf[1] is a polyglot that
| is valid PDF, a ZIP archive, and a Bash script that runs a
| Python webserver which hosts Kaitai Struct's WebIDE which,
| allows you to view the file's own annotated bytes.
|
| [1] https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/pocorgtfo16.pdf
| lmkg wrote:
| Note that this is a new feature for Firefox's PDF reader, but
| not a new feature of PDFs in general.
|
| Adobe had to update reader back in like... 2008?... to prompt
| before loading external resources. Because companies were
| embedding Google Analytics into PDFs.
| bassdropvroom wrote:
| > Because companies were embedding Google Analytics into
| PDFs.
|
| Wow! This is daft. Thank the FLOSS gods for things like Pi-
| Hole because I never realised this. And if I hadn't blocked
| Google Analytics there, this would have been a sad state of
| affairs.
| bassdropvroom wrote:
| > Thank the FLOSS gods for things like Pi-Hole
|
| Can't edit my comment any more, but I realise this is quite
| dismissive of the work the real maintainers have put in. So
| I'll thank them instead!
| tjoff wrote:
| I bet the real reason for that was because it could then
| compete with adobes own analytics built into the reader.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Can't find the video but there was a sec talk where the host
| would demonstrate a few horrendous ones.
| tonyjstark wrote:
| maybe that one?
|
| https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10832-how_to_break_pdfs
| mrvenkman wrote:
| I instantly thought to myself .. "what could possibly go
| wrong?"
| r00fus wrote:
| Is this using the browser's own JS engine? Do things like
| NoScript allow one to turn off PDF JS?
|
| On the flip side, are there any examples of PDF JS being
| actually useful and not a vector for tracking/exploits?
| akvadrako wrote:
| You can't use plugins like NoScript with PDFs on Firefox:
|
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1454760
| kingsloi wrote:
| interesting, could you embed a pdf into a webpage that has
| some JS which triggers automatically? Even if you have
| noscript?
| staticassertion wrote:
| I don't want to say so authoritatively, but I don't
| believe so.
| silon42 wrote:
| This desperately needs an option to disable PDF js.
| mayama wrote:
| I see pdfjs.enableScripting in about:config options. Have
| to check whether that option disables this scripting after
| I get the new version.
| [deleted]
| jmclnx wrote:
| You can create a Policy File on Linux named
| "/etc/firefox/policies/policies.json" to disable pdf
| through out the system, here is a snippet for just pdf:
|
| { "policies": { "PDFjs": { "Enabled": false },
| "DisableBuiltinPDFViewer": true } }
|
| See:
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/managing-policies-
| linux...
| alksjdalkj wrote:
| NY state tax forms have all sorts of verifications and
| automatic calculations that I assume are implemented using
| PDF JS. Previously you had to use Adobe Reader, hopefully
| this means I can use Firefox now.
| est31 wrote:
| > Is this using the browser's own JS engine?
|
| This issue makes it seem that Components.utils.Sandbox is
| used when included in firefox, which would be the browser's
| own JS engine (but confined to a sandbox), and quickjs in
| other settings (say a website).
| https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/issues/12487
|
| But I can't find Components.utils.Sandbox being referenced in
| the code on github. So maybe they decided to use quickjs for
| all use cases? The issue with quickjs is that it's written in
| C which is an unsafe language. wasm has bad binary security
| [0] so exploits are easier to create given some memory safety
| violation. The environment that calls the wasm is extremely
| privileged compared to random websites, so if a wasm exploit
| could convince the environment to do something, it would be
| major trouble.
|
| [0]: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity20/prese
| ntat...
| [deleted]
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It does get used for interactive forms. The native PDF form
| handling is more simplistic.
| [deleted]
| thepangolino wrote:
| I'm still waiting to see a port of Doom in one. PDFs natively
| support 3D models!
| IncRnd wrote:
| https://js-dos.com/DOOM/
|
| Just add a couple of lines of js for DOOM in the browser, now
| in js in a pdf in a browser!
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Disabled by default, right? Why would you open up such a stupid
| security hole?
| coliveira wrote:
| Let me bring some news: all websites already use javascript.
| Loading javascript from PDFs will be just another source of
| javascript vulnerabilities.
| quesera wrote:
| You're both condescending and incorrect. Bad combination!
|
| Zero websites automatically get JavaScript access from me,
| and many other savvy web users.
|
| If PDFs are not subject to these same controls in Firefox,
| then this could be a security and privacy vulnerability.
| coliveira wrote:
| You can just block PDFs. It is easier than blocking js in
| web pages.
| quesera wrote:
| I don't want to block PDFs.
|
| I want to block JS in PDFs, by default, like I do in web
| pages.
|
| I'd also be happy to hear that the JS runtime in PDFs is
| run in a tight document sandbox, operates only on a
| highly constrained DOM-equivalent, and has zero network
| or filesystem access. Seems reasonable.
| bobthebuilders wrote:
| PDF is required for JS to run due to code generation in
| the PDF rendering pipeline facility.
| quesera wrote:
| Right, so the question becomes: "What controls are in
| place?"
|
| Does the JS run in a true sandbox? Inside, outside, or
| beside the usual browser sandbox? Are network requests
| allowed? Filesystem access? Are granular permissions
| required/available?
| DangerousPie wrote:
| True, but I don't see how it would be any worse than running JS
| on any other web page. Assuming it is implemented in a safe
| way, that is.
| em-bee wrote:
| pdf documents are usually not created by web developers but
| by other people and then uploaded to the website. all it
| takes is a way to have someones computer infect a pdf with
| malicious js code, which, (if such an infection is possible)
| is way more likely to slip through than an attacker embedding
| malicious js into the website itself.
| cyberlab wrote:
| > PDF forms now support JavaScript
|
| I thought they always required JS to be enabled. I have JS
| disabled by default in uBlock Origin, and the inbuilt Firefox
| PDF viewer doesn't work unless I whitelist and enable JS
| temporarily for the page. Only then can I read my PDF.
| muddi900 wrote:
| The firefox PDF reader is based on JS.
| helb wrote:
| Mozilla's PDF viewer is written in JS - it's literally called
| PDF.js: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/.
|
| This new feature means you can run JS embedded in PDF... in
| PDF.js.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I have an idea. Why not allow embedding a full browser engine
| inside of a PDF, complete with tabs and extensions? I hate
| having to leave Adobe Acrobat in order to read my Gmail, so I
| think this feature could be really useful. Anyone who builds a
| PDF can include their own custom browser that their users will
| love.
| [deleted]
| IncRnd wrote:
| Just run Emacs :)
| contravariant wrote:
| Well if you can run interactive javascript then you're mostly
| there, PDF is pretty much Turing complete so you can just
| crosscompile a browser into it using javascript to take care
| of the interactive parts, though you might need to rewrite
| the rendering logic.
| IncRnd wrote:
| PDFs are definitely not Turing complete. [0]
|
| [0]
| https://www.cs.odu.edu/~zeil/cs390/latest/Public/turing-
| comp...
| jsight wrote:
| I'm assuming that predates the addition of JavaScript
| support, though.
| contravariant wrote:
| Ah I see I may have been thinking of Postscript.
|
| Though I'm not entirely convinced they haven't
| accidentally added Turing completeness back in at some
| point.
|
| I mean you don't really need all that much to write a
| basic lisp interpreter.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Well, now that you mention it..... It's likely that PDFs
| in Firefox are Turing Complete, since JS is Turing
| Complete.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| JS embedding isn't unique to Firefox. This is Firefox
| catching up with an old feature from Adobe Acrobat. PDFs
| with embedded JS have been Turing complete for years, in
| readers that run the JS. Just like PDFs with embedded
| Flash content.
|
| The PDF layout language isn't Turing complete on its own.
| gwern wrote:
| Depends on your PDF viewer...
| https://github.com/osnr/horrifying-pdf-experiments
| tediousdemise wrote:
| Two age-old attack vectors united in perfect harmony.
|
| Certainly nothing will go wrong here.
| jacobmischka wrote:
| Does anyone know if there is an RSS feed for release notes? I
| couldn't find one, and the usual adding feed.xml to the URL trick
| didn't work in any of the instances I tried.
| dandellion wrote:
| I suspect if they cared about RSS they wouldn't have removed
| support for it from the browser...
| SimeVidas wrote:
| There's a feed for Nightly: https://www.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/nightly/notes/feed/
| newlisper wrote:
| Have they give up on dev tools?
| momothereal wrote:
| Why? There's been small but consistent improvements in each
| release, including this one.
| childintime wrote:
| Disappointed. There is so much low hanging fruit in the GUI
| department:
|
| - have bookmarks/history stay on the page you open it on (and no
| other)
|
| - have bookmarks and history occupy a full page, instead of
| shoveled into a GUI element, dialog style
|
| - option to collapse tabs into a page (tab)
|
| - make the "tabs window" (the downward arrow after +) a tab, so
| the tabs can be sorted, searched in, or copied from, as html, to
| a file (I now get a rather useless list of 100 tabs)
|
| - have navigation to all of these pages, along with recent
| Downloads and options like Help and New Private Tab, right from
| the New Tab page, and leave the hamburger menu for page specific
| actions.
|
| And more. But even without Firefox is a great browser.
| andrepd wrote:
| Yes, I can't believe Firefox is still using a 15 years old
| bookmark/history dialog with atrocious UI. Completely unusable
| for anything but the most superficial inspection of your
| browsing history.
| dandellion wrote:
| They recently removed bookmark descriptions and the
| justification I read was that it was old code and hard to
| maintain, so maybe we're lucky and they'll improve that UI
| next.
| Krasnol wrote:
| > have bookmarks and history occupy a full page, instead of
| shoveled into a GUI element, dialog style
|
| I would hate that very much because I don't see the necessity
| for a whole page.
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| And vertical tabs ... I can't install plugins on my work
| managed machine like Tab Trees or whatever.
|
| They also need some tab grouping thing like Chrome, which
| ironically they pioneered but abandoned.
| ilikepi wrote:
| > - make the "tabs window" (the downward arrow after +) a tab,
| so the tabs can be sorted, searched in, or copied from, as
| html, to a file (I now get a rather useless list of 100 tabs)
|
| If you go to about:performance, you can double-click on a Tab
| entry, and it will jump you to that tab.
| wooptoo wrote:
| > - have bookmarks and history occupy a full page, instead of
| shoveled into a GUI element, dialog style
|
| These are accessible at:
|
| - chrome://browser/content/places/places.xhtml
|
| - chrome://browser/content/places/historySidebar.xhtml
|
| - chrome://browser/content/places/bookmarksSidebar.xhtml
|
| Not sure why they're not shown as tabs by default like the rest
| of Firefox's menus.
| ffpip wrote:
| > have bookmarks and history occupy a full page
|
| Ctrl+Shift+O and Ctrl+Shift+H respectively.
| conradfr wrote:
| I'm not looking forward to Firefox 89 with Proton and its
| redesigned tabs.
|
| edit: I'm surprised people like them:
|
| https://mk0ghacksnety2pjrgh8.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload...
| butz wrote:
| You might be able to revert them using userchrome.css
| (https://www.userchrome.org/megabar-styling-firefox-
| address-b...). And as "megabar" update has shown, this new
| "tab" style will probably be reverted in future redesign.
| johnklos wrote:
| JavaScript in PDF? Have people learned nothing? This is so
| incredibly stupid. They're just looking for bullshit "features"
| to implement.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| I just switched from FF to Brave. Despite the unnecessarily
| built-in adblocking (I prefer blocking on router level + 2nd
| layer via ublock) and the BAT stuff, it is a good browser. It
| feels so fast and snappy. I wished FF was as fast.
|
| Macbook Air M1
| capableweb wrote:
| The best I ever did for performance was switching away from
| macOS. Sure, Safari and Chrome is really fast on Mac
| hardware/macOS, but nothing beats the performance of Firefox on
| Linux.
| Narishma wrote:
| > nothing beats the performance of Firefox on Linux
|
| Firefox on Windows does.
| 1_player wrote:
| Sure, and FF for Linux was always second to FF for Windows,
| where the experience was better than both platforms.
|
| On Linux hardware accel is still iffy, on macOS they
| implemented support for CoreAnimation one or two years ago,
| and still looks out of place with the rest of the OS.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Sure, and FF for Linux was always second to FF for
| Windows, where the experience was better than both
| platforms.
|
| Not for me on desktop with a pretty well specced machine,
| Firefox still runs better on Linux than Windows and I
| constantly boot into the other during one day.
| iorrus wrote:
| Yeah I moved away from FF as well after they got too political,
| very happy with Brave.
| teddyh wrote:
| That sounds like an "out of the frying pan into the fire"
| kind of thing.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Yeah, what on Earth does he even mean by "too political".
| I've never seen Mozilla make "political" statements beyond
| their user privacy rhetoric, which Brave is far more
| aggressive about.
| WA9ACE wrote:
| I'm almost certain they are referring to this blog post
| https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-
| than-d...
| teddyh wrote:
| That blog post can also be interpreted very differently:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26646748#26647158
| [deleted]
| babypuncher wrote:
| Since when has Firefox ever been "political"?
| hulitu wrote:
| > Print updates: Margin units are now localized.
|
| Print in firefox is totally broken. The change to Chromium was
| the last nail in the coffin for printing. The new web does not
| care.
| ravenstine wrote:
| ??? I print through Firefox all the time with no issues. What
| exactly were you experiencing?
| avian wrote:
| I wouldn't say that Firefox specifically is worse at it than
| other browsers though, but I kind of agree with parent
| comment that the "new web" doesn't care about printing.
|
| On more and more pages I encounter issues like the printer
| only printing out the cookie warning window, or just the left
| navigation bar, etc. and none of the actual page content that
| I wanted to print. Or content goes up to the first in-line
| advertisement and then cuts of there with just blank pages
| coming out of the printer after that. Or weird pagination
| issues where there's text on page 1 and text on page 2, but
| there's a bunch of text missing in between that is otherwise
| visible fine on the screen.
|
| I'm talking about web pages that don't specifically have a
| "print" button on them. If it looks like the page is using a
| fancy layout I typically now just do a screenshot and print
| the resulting .png.
| oktoberpaard wrote:
| > The change to Chromium was the last nail in the coffin for
| printing.
|
| I don't think that Firefox uses code from Chromium for
| printing, does it? I believe that the print interface merely
| resembles that of Chromium.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| I can see why they are doing it but I'll really miss FTP support.
| A lot of public data continuous to be distributed through FTPs
| and for a long time Firefox has been the easiest way to browse
| them.
| tristan957 wrote:
| You can use cURL to access FTP sites fyi.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| and you can use chrome to access http sites, perhaps they
| should remove http support.
| 51Cards wrote:
| Agreed, I was on a public FTP site about a month ago browsing
| through old support files. Now I'll have to configure a client
| for it.
|
| Edit: this might be a small opportunity for some of the native
| FTP apps to jump in and handle the links. Click an FTP link in
| the browser and launch my FTP client with the details passed
| through.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Your native file manager probably works fine with FTP.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _PDF forms now support JavaScript embedded in PDF files. Some
| PDF forms use JavaScript for validation and other interactive
| features._
|
| As far as I can tell I still can't play breakout in a PDF in
| Firefox though (and I think that's for the better)
|
| [0] https://rawgit.com/osnr/horrifying-pdf-
| experiments/master/br...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rbJu10Telc
| goda90 wrote:
| Maybe the form is doing a browser check instead of a feature
| check and just needs to be updated?
| Evidlo wrote:
| Does Firefox not import profiles from old versions? I upgraded
| 85->88 and got the message "this installation has a new profile"
| and am missing all my history, bookmarks and addons.
| MrRadar wrote:
| It should import from the previous release, so try reverting to
| 85 and upgrading through the intermediate versions.
| dsego wrote:
| Is this update why I got the 'Refresh or safe mode' dialog? I
| foolishly clicked and now I'm trying to restore stuff from the
| 'Old Firefox data' directory. This was not nice, I started
| thinking I was getting hacked. Esp. when it asked me for the
| master password five times in a row. Man is this browser rough.
| 51Cards wrote:
| >The 'Take a Screenshot' feature was removed from the Page
| Actions menu in the url bar.
|
| Odd, this is the only place I accessed it from. Not a big deal as
| it's still on the context menu and also can be added as a tool
| bar item but I am curious the rationalization behind this change.
| That seemed like a great place to have it to me.
| kkaranth wrote:
| I typically use Ctrl+Shift+S for this
| judge2020 wrote:
| If you use Windows, newer versions (v1809 and newer) have
| win+shift+s as a neat region-select screenshot tool that
| sends the image to your clipboard.
| 51Cards wrote:
| I likely would as well if I remembered it. I have always had
| a problem recalling key combinations across all the
| applications I use which is why I rely on context menus and
| tool bars heavily. I've called out VSCode on this a few times
| as well as it is a memorization fest to work efficiently in
| there without proper toolbars. It's not just this but I have
| memory issues in general which have only gotten worse as I've
| aged. Easy discoverability / access in UI design is a big
| focus for me.
| edoceo wrote:
| when I discover a new key-combo I write it on a postit at
| the bottom of my monitor, lives there for a while until it
| sticks in my brain.
| rzzzt wrote:
| In VSCode, use Ctrl+Shift+P to bring out the command
| palette and type in your wish. The corresponding shortcut
| is also displayed.
| 51Cards wrote:
| Yep, but I find it to be a really poor paradigm for
| efficient work if you don't remember them. Having to
| search the command palette is much slower than being able
| to set up a toolbar of often used functions. Don't get me
| wrong, the command palette is great to have but if you
| can't memorize all those functions then it's a really
| poor replacement.
|
| For efficiency Key combo > toolbar > command palette. I
| just hate to be forced into #3 because #2 doesn't exist.
| (not to mention that the developers make crazy arguments
| in the forums about why they refuse to impliment it...
| but that's all off topic)
| matsemann wrote:
| When I first tried to use it, I knew of the feature but
| couldn't find it. They probably have metrics on it being
| underutilized so they want to bring it forward a bit or so.
|
| But I think the whole "page actions" button is too hidden. I
| think screenshot belongs there, and the issue is that most
| people don't know without being told that "page actions" is
| something that even exists.
|
| It's great btw to take screenshot of loooong web pages
| smoothly.
| dave5104 wrote:
| > the issue is that most people don't know without being told
| that "page actions" is something that even exists.
|
| I'm a daily Firefox user for quite a while now... thanks for
| telling me this exists! Never really looked into what those 3
| dots were.
|
| (That being said, I always right click to trigger the
| screenshot option from the context menu.)
| baq wrote:
| the right click screenshot is one of the most useful
| features i didn't know i need; it's super convenient to not
| have to precisely draw the rectangle to share a meme or
| report a bug.
| tvb12 wrote:
| Choosing to screenshot the entire page seems to be
| cropping off most of the right side on every site I've
| tried so far. Is that a known bug? It would be really
| useful otherwise.
| cpeterso wrote:
| There is still a "Take Screenshot" menu item in the context
| menu when you right-click on a web page.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Unless the context menu is not available, that is.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| When is the context menu not be available? If the website
| is overriding the right click action, keep shift pressed
| while clicking to gain back control.
| walls wrote:
| There are several pages on AWS that do not show it. For
| example, most CloudWatch pages.
|
| I think it has to do with iframes.
| ffpip wrote:
| You can shift+right click if a page (like the ones on
| AWS) block right clicks.
|
| You can shift+right click normally too, even when a page
| doesn't block right click.
| walls wrote:
| It's not about blocking or hijacking right-clicks. The
| menu option simply isn't there when the right-click
| happens in an iframe.
| MikusR wrote:
| Google pays Mozilla to make Firefox worse to use. An bring more
| people to Chrome.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > PDF forms now support JavaScript embedded in PDF files. Some
| PDF forms use JavaScript for validation and other interactive
| features.
|
| That's the first item listed under Features, yet I wouldn't
| classify that as a feature! That's a vulnerability waiting for an
| exploit.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Holy Moly! JavaScript in PDF?!
|
| What were they thinking? It'll just get disabled in a few months
| because it makes for one awesome vector attack.
| StavrosK wrote:
| How so? Will JS in web pages get disabled too?
| Hjfrf wrote:
| Hopefully
| egberts1 wrote:
| sooner than later, desperately.
| keeganjw wrote:
| Side note: I don't know how often this happens but it's kinda
| cool that Firefox went straight from 87.0 to 88.0 without any
| sub-versions. They didn't seem to have any security/bug patches,
| they just got it right on the first try.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I definitely noticed like "huh, it's weird we haven't had a new
| Firefox version to deploy yet this month". I'm used to seeing a
| point release nearly as soon as I deploy the previous Firefox
| version, lol. It isn't the first time, but it's infrequent
| enough to be kinda notable when they go an entire cycle without
| a point release.
| detritus wrote:
| <cranky>Perhaps in the olden days when various releases were
| somewhat fundamental in nature - not sure it's quite so
| impressive when we've had 3 'major' releases this year
| already</cranky>
|
| Not that I much care - FF4Lyfe here!
| judge2020 wrote:
| I'm sure a few of these could have been backported but weren't
| severe enough to warrant an immediate push when 88 was right
| around the corner: https://www.mozilla.org/en-
| US/security/advisories/mfsa2021-1...
|
| And this apparently happens quite a lot [no security patches in
| between versions]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-
| US/security/known-vulnerabilities...
| nonbirithm wrote:
| Somewhat related is how libraries like three.js don't follow
| semver and only use a single incrementing version number.
| Reading the changelogs, it also looks like they never make any
| mistakes. It seems that there has never been a point in
| three.js's history where there's been a critical security flaw
| or bug severe enough to justify incrementing the version number
| solely for a bugfix. I have no idea how they do it.
|
| Personally I would prefer to keep things as simple as possible,
| but unlike the maintainers of those projects, when it comes to
| making releases, I'm not perfect.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Mozilla, can we have bookmarks back for new tabs in Android?
|
| Collections seemingly reinvent the wheel but limit the number of
| bookmarks, and force me to swipe left to view them.
| matsemann wrote:
| Agreed. Let them cover the whole screen instead of 2x4 with
| lots of free space below.
|
| And it would be great if selecting url bar would also allow me
| to choose one of my collections. Now I have to open a new empty
| tab first.
|
| Edit: basically what a sibling comment wrote I see
| morsch wrote:
| Also can you let me go back to the New tab page without opening
| a new tab? You know, the same way every other page works? The
| way it used to work?
| bluenose69 wrote:
| I have this and Safari both open to github.com on my macos box.
| This site has an animation showing recent github activity on a
| globe. It's coded in javascript, AFAIK.
|
| Firefox is using 55% of my CPU, whilst Safari is using 3%.
|
| As someone who used Firefox exclusively back in the day (and
| mozilla before that), I will continue to try tests like this
| every time a new Firefox is released. Maybe, someday, the energy
| contrast will be less dramatically in Safari's favour, and I'll
| switch back to Firefox.
| fzil wrote:
| I did the same test on my M1 Air. Safari is using 40% CPU while
| Firefox is 55%. Not sure why there's such a large difference
| between your results and mine.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Another M1 datapoint,
|
| Chrome: ~20% Safari: ~35% Firefox: ~45%
| zapt02 wrote:
| My guess is that the OP doesn't have hardware acceleration
| for Firefox on his GPU configuration. You probably don't
| either with your numbers. I have about 3-4% CPU usage on
| GitHub.com using Firefox, and my GPU is at about 20% load
| from the 3D being drawn.
| fzil wrote:
| after reading your comment I checked again and realized
| that activity monitor has a column for %GPU as well under
| the CPU tab. So here's the eyeball average after watching
| the GitHub page for about a minute.
|
| Firefox 88 (no extensions, private mode):
|
| CPU% 55 (avg) 61 (peak)
|
| GPU% 65 (avg) 77 (peak)
|
| Safari (no extensions):
|
| CPU% 33 (avg) 40 (peak)
|
| GPU% 33 (avg) 40 (peak) <- same numbers for both CPU and
| GPU in safari.
| ziftface wrote:
| Maybe it's running on a low power core?
| pfranz wrote:
| I remember creating a moderately large spreadsheet in Google
| Docs last year. Safari unloaded the page and forced a refresh
| every time I switched away. Firefox would hang recomputing
| formulas and only Chrome scaled well.
|
| I'm looking to move to Safari by default. I just need to get
| over some UI differences. It drives me nuts that Firefox
| doesn't use the native context menus (I use "Look Up"
| constantly) and Text Shortcuts don't work. There's a bug for
| this filed literally 20 years ago.
|
| Each browser has different trade offs and those may not change
| over time. I'm glad Safari fits your needs.
| nofinator wrote:
| This is a nice simple test.
|
| But note for others: you need to be logged out of GitHub to see
| the animation. Or open GitHub in a private window.
| hu3 wrote:
| Windows 10 here.
|
| Chrome ~2.5% https://streamable.com/flb8rh
|
| Firefox ~3.5% https://streamable.com/dkrp0w
| lights0123 wrote:
| > The 'Take a Screenshot' feature was removed from the Page
| Actions menu in the url bar. To take a screenshot, right-click to
| open the context menu. You can also add a screenshots shortcut
| directly to your toolbar via the Customize menu. Open the Firefox
| menu and select Customize...
|
| ...why. Obviously it's easy to add it to the overflow bar, but it
| was handy having it there. Especially on pages that block right-
| clicking (including for good reasons, like games).
| morsch wrote:
| Here[1]'s the why: _With the removal of the meatball menu in
| the proton work, we 'd like to move the Take a Screenshot
| button to the toolbar to allow users to hide it or put it in
| the overflow menu rather than being visible all the time._
|
| ???
|
| Edit: Also great to see how they brush over existing users who
| have pinned the screenshot action to the toolbar, which is
| something you can do with all page actions (who knew?!).
|
| _We had discussed it before as a possibility, but I just
| confirmed with Romain that it 's out of scope._
|
| _For reference, ~15k users have screenshots pinned to the URL
| bar and engaged with it within a 1 month period._
|
| So apparently 15k people did know and now have to manually fix
| the regression, assuming they know how to do it. I still find
| it creepy that they gather data this specific, and _of course_
| users who disable "telemetry" mean nothing to them, they don't
| exist.
|
| [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1691464
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| > I still find it creepy that they gather data this specific
|
| I'd be super happy if gathering such specific data by any
| application meant to the developers "15k users are using this
| feature, there is no way we can break their workflow" instead
| of "there's only 15k users out of [x], that's just 0.x%, we
| can ignore them".
| lights0123 wrote:
| > I still find it creepy that they gather data this specific
|
| I personally have never cared--there is nothing that can be
| learned about me (aside from being a power user, which I
| don't care about being public knowledge) from technical
| features I use. I absolutely block everything personal using
| uBlock Origin + Privacy Badger + FF's built in stuff, but I
| definitely see the value in tracking feature use.
| jorams wrote:
| > Especially on pages that block right-clicking
|
| Note that, in Firefox, you can always get to the context menu
| using shift-right click.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Thanks! This always bugs me. Maybe not disabling right-click
| has legitimate uses in things like games, but I only ever
| seen to see it used spitefully.
| judge2020 wrote:
| It's more 'override right click' and is useful for eg.
| Google Docs to use application-specific context actions.
| Unfortunately I agree that most sites override it just to
| disable it, though.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > I only ever seen to see it used spitefully.
|
| God I hate it when sites do that. There's a service _that I
| pay for_ which disables right click, spams copyright notice
| modals every single time I try to copy any text and
| replaces the text I copied with useless copyright messages.
| It 's so incredibly obnoxious it makes me want to scrape
| their content off their website out of pure spite.
| [deleted]
| FrontAid wrote:
| Small bullet point, but an important one. This release also
| combats tracking with `window.name`. Discussion here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26863109
| curt15 wrote:
| >Smooth pinch-zooming using a touchpad is now supported on Linux
|
| Glad that they're still looking after Linux users.
| mdoms wrote:
| On the one hand yes that's great. On the other hand it's not an
| exaggeration to say that a decade ago would have been too late
| for this feature.
| ziftface wrote:
| I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it
| was only added to Mac fairly recently too, maybe around a
| year ago. And for a while it was behind an about:config
| setting as well.
| kelnos wrote:
| This doesn't work for me; found something that seems to suggest
| it's gated behind an about:config option and only works on
| Wayland anyway[0]. Oh well.
|
| [0] https://www.linuxadictos.com/en/firefox-88-will-activate-
| the...
| viklove wrote:
| Unfortunately they still don't provide a PPA for their
| developer build, so I have to update it manually which is
| extremely annoying.
|
| edit: I gotta say, why the fuck would someone downvote this
| comment?
| kelnos wrote:
| Manually? I downloaded their .tar.gz, have unpacked it in a
| location my user can write to, and rely on the built-in auto-
| update mechanism. Works fine.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| PPAs are specific to one commercial distribution. Shouldn't
| they offer a flatpak or something similarly cross distro?
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