[HN Gopher] Firefox 91 introduces enhanced cookie clearing
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Firefox 91 introduces enhanced cookie clearing
        
       Author : arthuredelstein
       Score  : 569 points
       Date   : 2021-08-10 14:06 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.mozilla.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.mozilla.org)
        
       | qwerty456127 wrote:
       | > lets you fully erase your browser history for any website
       | 
       | I just want a button to whitelist a domain and an option to
       | automatically clear 100% of everything outside the whitelisted
       | domains on every restart.
       | 
       | And always clean the cache, perhaps even for whitelisted domains
       | unless the system is on a metered/slow connection.
       | 
       | Also, every website should always be opened in a separate
       | "container" so cross-site tracking won't work.
       | 
       | If Chrome did that today this would trigger a cascade of
       | consequences. If Firefox did that today it would just improve
       | Firefox popularity and cause no problems.
        
       | tofflos wrote:
       | > Now, if you click on Settings > Privacy and Security > Cookies
       | and Site Data > Manage Data, Firefox no longer shows individual
       | domains that store data. Instead, Firefox lists a cookie jar for
       | each website you have visited.
       | 
       | How is data from previous versions of Firefox handled? Will data
       | from ad networks be listed as a "website you have visited", made
       | unavailable for the embedding site's cookie jar, and re-fetched
       | upon the next visit?
        
         | SubiculumCode wrote:
         | This is a good question. Its not an answer, but I think I'll
         | clear everything upon installing this update.
        
       | mousepilot wrote:
       | Firefox 90+ doesn't even run for me. Bog standard ubuntu 20.04.
       | These guys have really lost their mojo. I have to stick with the
       | 7x lts versions.
        
       | devwastaken wrote:
       | The benefit of this also fixes bugs. Weather.com bugged on me
       | because it uses supercookies, it would send me to the wrong link
       | when I clicked in the search bar for my saved location. Had to
       | manually go through and delete all the copies of the same cookies
       | in local storage and other places they put it.
       | 
       | The next step is for Firefox to finally adopt torbrowser, and
       | natively support not allowing fingerprinting by default.
        
       | newscracker wrote:
       | This would be even more better with a "Forget this site" button
       | that could be added to the toolbar (if the user wishes to).
       | Clicking on it would clear everything for the site and close the
       | tab.
       | 
       | The nested menus to access it aren't very convenient.
       | 
       | I do use CookieAutoDelete to handle this for closed tabs.
        
         | potamic wrote:
         | I tried CookieAutoDelete but it seems to be whitelist based
         | only? How do I instead say block only these domains?
        
           | throwaway64643 wrote:
           | No, there are two types of rule in Cookie AutoDelete (CAD)
           | that you have to read through their documentation to
           | understand their function: Greylist and Whitelist. You have
           | assign these domains to Greylist (whose filter setting has to
           | be pre-configured first, namely you decide what to be
           | kept/removed in greylist rule).
           | 
           | I use in combination with Firefox containers feature Enable
           | Automatic Cleaning of CAD, which deletes all cookies (as well
           | domain related contents) except those in whitelist. That has
           | saved me a lot of time in manual greylisting.
        
         | singhkays wrote:
         | I use this extension
         | 
         | - https://github.com/blaise-io/forget-about-this-site
         | 
         | - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/forget-
         | about-...
        
         | srswtf123 wrote:
         | Never heard of Cookie AutoDelete, many thanks from me as well.
         | 
         | What I really want is for all cookies to be deleted when the
         | browser exits, except for the sites assigned to the containers
         | I've created.
         | 
         | I'll have to see if this is possible in Cookie AutoDelete --
         | looks like it might be. Does anyone have any suggestions?
        
           | throwaway64643 wrote:
           | > What I really want is for all cookies to be deleted when
           | the browser exits, except for the sites assigned to the
           | containers I've created.
           | 
           | Then Cookie AutoDelete (CAD) is exact what you'd want.
           | Firefox has a setting option that deletes all cookies except
           | exception after the browser is closed. But in my opinion,
           | that function is too limited. CAD filters domains on
           | container level, while Firefox's doesn't. CAD also offers
           | regex matching for domains, which is really useful. My
           | favorite feature is greylisting everything in Default
           | Firefox's container (using * regex for greylist).
           | 
           | CAD is compatible and best used with Firefox's Multi-Account
           | Container.
           | 
           | It will take a bit to learn how it works though.
        
           | amphitheatre wrote:
           | Containers are such a great concepts that I wish was built
           | upon slightly more in the browser so that we can achieve
           | things like that.
        
           | yason wrote:
           | _What I really want is for all cookies to be deleted when the
           | browser exits, except for the sites assigned to the
           | containers I 've created._
           | 
           | At least Firefox 90.x has a checkbox "Delete cookies and site
           | data when Firefox is closed" in the privacy section, along
           | with a button to "Manage exceptions..."
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | I would much rather this be when tab close rather than
             | browser close.
             | 
             | I rarely close my browser except for updates, or when I'm
             | spe cifcally taking advantage of delete on exit. However,
             | delete on tab close would be dreamy.
             | 
             | I don't really want it to be an extension. I don't like the
             | power given to extensions, so the less I use the better.
             | Sorry decent extension devs, for me the bad guys have
             | tarnished the trust to just not want to use any.
        
           | albanberg wrote:
           | Go into firefox preferences > privacy/security There's a
           | checkbox a bit down the page that says: Delete cookies and
           | site data when Firefox is closed
        
           | bennyp101 wrote:
           | This is what I do, I have it clear cookies every 60 seconds,
           | but it keeps my container cookies. Just set the site to
           | 'always open in ..' the specific container, and all is good.
           | 
           | In settings for CAD, enable container support
           | 
           | https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-
           | AutoDelete/wiki/...
        
         | albanberg wrote:
         | This! I want a button that deletes everything from the current
         | tab. One click, not two clicks and a right click. Also needs a
         | keyboard shortcut.
        
           | C19is20 wrote:
           | Naaah, one big button.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | magicalhippo wrote:
         | I'd like a "remember this site" instead.
        
         | teddyfrozevelt wrote:
         | You can mostly do this through the lock icon with the "Clear
         | cookies and site data" button.
        
           | jaytaylor wrote:
           | Never knew about this functionality, thanks for sharing!
           | 
           | It even appears to exist and work in Chrome.
        
         | sovnade wrote:
         | Ooh I like this idea. Going to look into CookiesAutoDelete.
         | Thank you!
        
       | wackget wrote:
       | How is this any different from disabling third-party cookies and
       | clearing website cookies manually?
        
       | _trampeltier wrote:
       | I wish they would build a desktop version of Firefix Focus
       | (Android). One big big button and everything is throwed away.
        
         | tsjq wrote:
         | Ctrl+Shift+Delete does that ?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | code_duck wrote:
       | It sure takes a lot of work from the rest of the community to
       | reduce google and facebook's ability to keep us under constant
       | surveillance. My personal relationship with facebook feels fully
       | abusive at this point.
        
       | spuz wrote:
       | This version of Firefox is also the first major piece of software
       | to be translated into Scots - a language spoken / understood by
       | 1.3m people in Scotland.
       | 
       | My previous company worked on the translation and they told me
       | they had fun trying to come up with suitable equivalents for
       | technical words such as "minimise" and "maximise".
       | 
       | https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/08/10/firefox-91-intr...
       | 
       | https://www.thenational.scot/news/19494171.major-web-browser...
        
         | dmurray wrote:
         | Scots is a dialect of English. So finding idiomatic Scots
         | expressions for technical terms, instead of importing them
         | verbatim, really is about "having fun" rather than achieving
         | any extra clarity in communication.
        
           | dspillett wrote:
           | _> Scots is a dialect of English._
           | 
           | You are probably thinking of Scottish English or Scots
           | English, which is essentially English of some words and
           | phrases from Scots and a very strong accent.
           | 
           | Scots proper is as much a language of its own as English is.
           | 
           | Scots and what we now think of as English arguably have a
           | similar age and a lot of shared heritage, though obviously
           | given how much separation, invading and other reasons for
           | variation & remixing of languages has gone on over time, it
           | is tricky to tie down completely what came from where when.
        
           | daleharvey wrote:
           | Describing Scots as a dialect of English is really about a
           | political affiliation than any interest in linguistics,
           | Plenty of people regard Scots as a distinct language.
           | 
           | (Scottish Firefox developer)
        
             | tomrod wrote:
             | Neat!
        
             | dmurray wrote:
             | I don't have any affiliation with England, or the US, and
             | would also consider "English is a dialect of Scots". (More
             | than one person in Galicia described the Portuguese
             | language to me in the analogous way...).
             | 
             | Still, I think it's silly to go all kayfabe here and treat
             | the languages as completely distinct. I have similar
             | thoughts on Slovenian and Slovakian and Flemish.
        
               | conradev wrote:
               | I like how Wikipedia put it:
               | 
               | "Where on this continuum English-influenced Scots becomes
               | Scots-influenced English is difficult to determine."
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language#Decline_in_s
               | tat...
        
               | Fomorian wrote:
               | People that have a vested interest in the suppression of
               | the indigenous Goidelic language of Scotland - on both
               | sides of the England-Scotland border - will always insist
               | upon the full-fledged distinctive language status of
               | Scottish English.
        
               | dmurray wrote:
               | On both sides of the Irish Sea, too. Hard-line unionists
               | in the north of Ireland have been pushing "Ulster Scots"
               | in the last ten years or so. Not out of any real cultural
               | association with the language or with Scotland - they
               | overwhelmingly identify as "British" - but as a tool to
               | diminish Irish-language initiatives. Every time there's a
               | measure proposed to support Irish, they can propose an
               | equal amount of funds for Ulster Scots.
               | 
               | It actually helps them to make the language seem as
               | ridiculous as possible, since the real goal isn't to
               | promote their language but to mock another.
        
               | daleharvey wrote:
               | Unless I misunderstood your point, that is a strange take
               | that isn't close to being true. There is a large overlap
               | of Scottish language enthusiasts who are advocates of
               | both Scots as a distinct language and Gaelic, the
               | demographic of the recent surge of popularity of Gaelic
               | on duolingo are clear.
               | 
               | The overlap between political commentators who both
               | insist that Scots is "just a dialect" and that Gaelic is
               | a dying language that we should discourage is also very
               | apparent.
               | 
               | The subtext is pro indy people are generally pro Scots
               | and Gaelic, and unionists are against both of course.
        
               | donbrae wrote:
               | Scottish English != Scots. The former is just English
               | with a Scottish accent; the latter is a closely related
               | (to English) but distinct language with its own
               | vocabulary and grammar, not dissimilar to the
               | relationship between Norwegian and Danish, or Czech and
               | Slovak.
               | 
               | Scots being a language has nothing to do with suppressing
               | Gaelic. Generally people who hate Gaelic hate Scots
               | equally.
        
               | Fomorian wrote:
               | The fact that you and other anglophones call the
               | indigenous Scottish variety of Gaelic simply "Gaelic" is
               | a pretty good example of why I continue to be very, very
               | suspicious of those who insist upon "Scots" being a
               | language fully distinct from English, and not a dialect -
               | and insist upon calling it by that name.
               | 
               | The Irish and Scottish varieties of the Goidelic language
               | family have far less mutual intelligibility than the
               | English and Scottish varieties of English. Scottish
               | English forms a pretty smooth continuum between "English
               | with a Scottish accent", and what you'd call "Scots" or
               | "Lallans".
               | 
               | But Scottish Gaelic is the tongue that gets the downgrade
               | to "Gaelic", despite it being simply called Scottish for
               | the vast majority of Scotland's history. Despite it
               | literally being the reason for the country's name.
               | 
               | Scottish English was literally only called "Scottis"
               | instead of "Inglis" as the Lowlanders gained a greater
               | sense of national identity and distinctiveness from the
               | English further south. At that point, funnily enough, the
               | Goidelic spoken in Scotland ceased to be called
               | "Scottis", and became "Erse" instead.
               | 
               | It is quite impossible to separate this insistence on
               | distinguishing "Scots" from English, from suppressive
               | efforts towards the indigenous Gaelic language of
               | Scotland. You can see the exact same dynamic in Northern
               | Ireland, where unionists play up the supposed variety of
               | "Scots" spoken by the Ulster planters and their
               | descendants as a fully distinctive language equal to
               | Irish, as a means to delegitimize Irish as the primary
               | indigenous language of the land.
               | 
               | I don't say all of this from a place of antipathy towards
               | the speakers of "Scots". One need only read some Burns to
               | see that the variety of English spoken in Scotland
               | diverged heavily from the varieties spoken further south,
               | and that diversity is beautiful. But the label is
               | politically charged, and fundamentally it is a weapon -
               | and always has been - pointed in the direction of Gaelic-
               | speakers.
        
               | cool_dude85 wrote:
               | What language is Slovenian a "dialect of" in your
               | thoughts?
        
               | dmurray wrote:
               | Yugoslavian.
        
           | dfawcus wrote:
           | "Scots is a dialect of English."
           | 
           | Ahh whisht man.
           | 
           | :-)
           | 
           | That said, I find I often have to mentally pronounce the
           | various written forms in order to be able to understand them.
        
           | lvxferre wrote:
           | >Scots is a dialect of English
           | 
           | It's up to the linguistic community to decide that, if their
           | variety should be considered a "dialect" of something else or
           | a "language" on its own. Linguists already gave up that
           | question, it's more useful to talk about varieties anyway.
           | 
           | And it's the same deal with Galician versus Portuguese, with
           | a difference - "Scots is a dialect of English" threatens
           | Scots, but "Portuguese is a dialect of Galician" doesn't
           | threaten Portuguese (it threatens Galician instead).
        
             | gsnedders wrote:
             | Or whether Danish and Norwegian and Swedish are the same
             | language, but different dialects.
             | 
             | Depending on how you define "dialect" or "language", they
             | may or may not be.
             | 
             | To quote the obligatory quip: "A language is a dialect with
             | an army and navy".
        
               | dfawcus wrote:
               | "Or whether Danish and Norwegian and Swedish are the same
               | language, but different dialects."
               | 
               | I recently watched the Swedish production "Blue Eyes"
               | (with English subtitles), and was amused at the amount of
               | speech which struck me as being 'English with an odd
               | regional dialect'. Usually these were simple 'core
               | language' statements and / or imperatives.
               | 
               | I guess that is more the lasting Viking and Dane Law
               | impact upon the English, than English feeding in modern
               | Swedish.
        
               | lvxferre wrote:
               | >I guess that is more the lasting Viking and Dane Law
               | impact upon the English, than English feeding in modern
               | Swedish.
               | 
               | It might be the result of common Germanic grounds, not
               | necessarily lateral influence. I got the same when
               | learning German - sentences like "das Haus ist rot" or
               | "ich trinke Wein" are surprisingly easy to catch up from
               | English. And after some time you start noticing patterns,
               | that help you further.
        
               | WorldMaker wrote:
               | Fun increasingly off topic facts: a lot of those patterns
               | were originally noticed and compiled by the Brothers
               | Grimm (noted assemblers of fairy tales from across
               | Germany) as they got caught up in the pattern of
               | differences between Low German (the language families
               | that include Dutch and Old English) and High German (what
               | today we think of as the German language) as they
               | assembled all the local fairy tales they could find. High
               | German went through a consonant shift [1] that Low German
               | did not. A lot of the pattern you can see when learning
               | German and knowing a lot of older words in English is
               | applying exactly that consonant shift, plus or minus
               | English's own interesting Great Vowel Shift [2] and large
               | influx of latinate words from French and other languages.
               | (The Brothers Grimm even traced some of the shifts as far
               | back as they could to proto-Germanic, making them some of
               | the first explorers of Proto-Indo-European [PIE] sound
               | shifts and Grimm's Law is named after them. [3])
               | 
               | The evolution of languages is fascinating. Circling
               | somewhat back to the topic above: the difference between
               | "dialect" and "language" is a complex subject just as
               | most "speciation" debates in other evolutionary fields
               | have a lot of hidden complexity. "Language" versus
               | "dialect" versus "creole" doesn't have a lot of simple
               | answers though historically that joke that "a language is
               | a dialect with an army" tracks more than it doesn't which
               | is why it is a good joke.
               | 
               | [1]
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_consonant_shift
               | 
               | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
               | 
               | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law
        
           | jwatt wrote:
           | Two of my favorite videos on "Scots":
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH8pxfqgSBQ
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6RGgFoiNEo
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | guerrilla wrote:
           | > Scots is a dialect of English
           | 
           | Beware fighting words
           | 
           | > Modern Scots is a sister language of Modern English, as the
           | two diverged independently from the same source: Early Middle
           | English (1150-1300)
           | 
           | > As there are no universally accepted criteria for
           | distinguishing a language from a dialect, scholars and other
           | interested parties often disagree about the linguistic,
           | historical and social status of Scots, particularly its
           | relationship to English. Although a number of paradigms for
           | distinguishing between languages and dialects exist, they
           | often render contradictory results. Broad Scots is at one end
           | of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with Scottish Standard
           | English at the other. Scots is sometimes regarded as a
           | variety of English, though it has its own distinct dialects;
           | other scholars treat Scots as a distinct Germanic language,
           | in the way that Norwegian is closely linked to but distinct
           | from Danish.
        
         | dkdbejwi383 wrote:
         | So does "enhanced cookie clearing" become "pure biscuit
         | clearin'"?
        
           | ricardo81 wrote:
           | chuck aw them biscuity hings right oot.
        
         | deanclatworthy wrote:
         | I'm English, and lived in England for 23 years. I have never
         | ever heard of Scots before.
        
           | jahnu wrote:
           | That's really a pity. In England there is a terrible lack of
           | knowledge of the other parts of the Union. It's because of
           | decisions like the not quite full on Scots but truly
           | brilliant Limmy's Show only being shown on BBC Scotland.
        
           | lentil wrote:
           | As a Scot, I find that a bit sad. We're really not that far
           | away!
           | 
           | Does that also mean you never learned about Rabbie Burns in
           | school?
        
             | deanclatworthy wrote:
             | I know his name and who he is. I vaguely recall some of his
             | poems being recited at school.
             | 
             | I like to think I'm a man of the world. I watch a lot of
             | Scottish TV (Burnistoun etc.), have done the NC500 and have
             | plenty of Scottish friends. Of course there is dialect
             | there, but I didn't realise this was a "thing".
        
               | macfaran wrote:
               | There's a whole cannon of literature written in it
               | (Dunbar, Ferguson, Ramsay, MacDairmid, Henryson, Kelman,
               | Leonard, Souter etc.) as well as a bit of a discussion
               | whether the literature reflected or embellished Scots
               | (Burns and MacDairmid both made up words for example).
               | When people think of Scots they usually think of the
               | Glaswegian dialect of English you commonly hear on the
               | TV. But there's still a whole set of words in common use
               | today around Scotland. You hear it more in rural areas
               | and less in the central belt.
        
         | isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
         | Hopefully not by the same guy who ran the scots version of
         | wikipedia.
        
         | ladon86 wrote:
         | Don't leave us hanging, what words did they come up with?
        
           | spuz wrote:
           | 'mak muckle' and 'mak tottie'
        
         | dheera wrote:
         | I suppose cookies become biscuits?
        
         | clydethefrog wrote:
         | I hope they had a bit less fun than the American teenager that
         | edited most of the Scottish Wikipedia pages with nonsense
         | Scottish!
         | 
         | https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/scots-wikipedia-languag...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | bennysomething wrote:
         | Lived in Scotland for 20 years, really doubt 1.3m people even
         | know what Scots is let alone speak it.
        
           | spuz wrote:
           | Oops, sorry I meant to double check that and forgot. It's
           | apparently 1.9m people.
        
             | sdflhasjd wrote:
             | To be fair, that number is self-reported and combines
             | "speak, read, write or understand Scots".
             | 
             | I'm not Scottish myself, but even I could claim to
             | _somewhat_ understand Scots. I wouldn 't say so on a
             | census, but I'm sure there are plenty that would.
             | _Especially_ when there 's some national pride at stake.
        
           | lucideer wrote:
           | It's a self-reported stat (census answers), so that many of
           | people at the very least believe they know what Scots is (as
           | they responded that they do speak it).
           | 
           | I did find it striking that the same stat for Gaelic was just
           | over 50k in contrast: while I know the level of Gaelic spoken
           | in Scotland is extremely low, it's at least a better known
           | language internationally than Scots is, so I would've
           | expected it to be the more spoken of the two.
        
           | GordonS wrote:
           | I lot of people speak many Scots words day to day, but won't
           | necessarily consider themselves to "speak Scots", or even
           | realise that the dialect they speak has an official name.
           | 
           | To test this theory, I just asked my mother in law (who is
           | from the central belt) about Scots, and she replied, quite
           | seriously: "Whits that? I dinnae ken whit that is, I spik
           | proper!"
           | 
           | (I'm Scottish, from the North East)
        
           | hhlbf wrote:
           | I assume this is the same as the figures of how many people
           | speak Catalan.
        
             | occamrazor wrote:
             | Not at all Catalan is the first language for a large part
             | of the population. In Scotland, even for most native Scots
             | speakers English is in fact the first language.
        
               | kunagi7 wrote:
               | Well, this example is quite curious. Catalan is
               | understood and used by most of the people who live in
               | Catalan speaking regions, but it isn't the first language
               | of most of the people who live there. Pretty much the 95%
               | are bilingual (Catalan and Spanish). In fact, more people
               | speak Spanish as their mother tongue than Catalan but
               | they switch between them when required.
               | 
               | Maybe the Scots situation is similar, people learn and
               | use both languages and change to the one they feel most
               | comfortable with.
        
               | donbrae wrote:
               | That is simply incorrect. I personally know people whose
               | first language is Scots. It was the first language they
               | learned and they use it every day.
        
           | HPsquared wrote:
           | Most people know a little bit. That's the thing with Scots,
           | it's highly miscible with English so it's hard to tell where
           | one ends and the other begins.
        
             | Fomorian wrote:
             | Because it's basically a dialect OF English.
             | 
             | In fact, literally the only reason it's called "Scots" and
             | not "Inglis", as it originally was, is as the Lowlander
             | Scots gradually developed a sense of national identity
             | separate from the English, they decided that they wanted a
             | national label of their own. But of course, they still
             | didn't want to share a national label or identity with the
             | hated native Celtic-speaking population.
             | 
             | And so "Inglis" became "Scots", while "Scottis" - the
             | native Goidelic language - became "Erse", or Irish.
             | 
             | The whole thing is insidious.
        
               | jrochkind1 wrote:
               | It is not unique to this case that how we divide and
               | understand langauges is tied up with politics of
               | nationalism. Have been since the start of modern
               | nationalism. What we call "Italian" could be called
               | "Florentine", it wasn't spoken in all of "Italy" until it
               | became a political project to make it so...
               | 
               | And...
               | 
               | > Until about 1800, Standard German was almost entirely a
               | written language. People in Northern Germany who spoke
               | mainly Low Saxon languages very different from Standard
               | German then learned it more or less as a foreign
               | language. However, later the Northern pronunciation (of
               | Standard German) was considered standard[4][5] and spread
               | southward; in some regions (such as around Hanover), the
               | local dialect has completely died out with the exception
               | of small communities of Low German speakers.
               | 
               | > It is thus the spread of Standard German as a language
               | taught at school that defines the German Sprachraum,
               | which was thus a political decision rather than a direct
               | consequence of dialect geography. That allowed areas with
               | dialects with very little mutual comprehensibility to
               | participate in the same cultural sphere. Currently, local
               | dialects are used mainly in informal situations or at
               | home and also in dialect literature, but more recently, a
               | resurgence of German dialects has appeared in mass media
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German
        
               | HPsquared wrote:
               | Perhaps this could be resolved in a similar way, by
               | calling the standard language "British".
        
               | jrochkind1 wrote:
               | What is the thing you think needs to be "resolved"? If
               | it's dispute over the names of languages, I'm not sure
               | that was the nature of any dispute in these 19th century
               | examples, or if it did, if it was ever "resolved" by
               | anything except power to impose it.
        
               | donbrae wrote:
               | As a Scots speaker I would object vehemently to my
               | language being classified as a dialect of 'British', or
               | any other language for that matter.
        
               | dfawcus wrote:
               | "Because it's basically a dialect OF English."
               | 
               | I'd suggest not, it is a peer / sibling of Modern
               | English, and descended in parallel. Northumbrian Old
               | English eventually became Scots, due to the 'English of
               | the Lothians' using it (and eventually 'Inglis').
               | 
               | Go read some older Scots from around 1600, you'll
               | probably have a harder time of it than the same age
               | English because they were and are distinct. Modern media,
               | a lack of formalised spelling, and simple economics post
               | union has probably been the major factor in its slow
               | decline towards death.
               | 
               | So Scots (in its various dialects) and
               | Geordie/Mackem/Northumbrian are I'd suggest dialects of
               | the same language, not being English. Speakers code
               | switch between them.
               | 
               | You've also missed out the other language, which was
               | spoken in the 'Old North' and the Kingdom of Strathclyde
               | - i.e. the Brythonic speakers.
        
               | throwaway2048 wrote:
               | Making hard and fast statements about a topic even
               | lifelong experts don't feel comfortable making a
               | conclusion about is unwise.
               | 
               | There is no meaningful line between a language and a
               | dialect, and it mostly comes down to politics.
        
         | howolduis wrote:
         | this version o' firefox is an' a' th' foremaist major piece o'
         | software tae be translated intae scots - a leid spoken /
         | understaun by 1.3m fowk in bonnie scotland.
         | 
         | Mah afore company worked oan th' translation 'n' thay tellt me
         | thay hud fin trying tae come up wi' suitable equivalents fur
         | tekky wurds sic as 'minimise' 'n' 'maximise'.
        
           | walteweiss wrote:
           | Now I want to study this wonderful language! Any books I can
           | (try to) read in Scots? Serious question! :)
        
             | eigart wrote:
             | Not a book, but https://twitter.com/Lenniesaurus?s=20 does
             | a fun "scots word of the day" series!
        
             | yorwba wrote:
             | How about some 19th-century songs?
             | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Scottish_Song
        
             | JohnicBoom wrote:
             | I've heard the Scots version of Harry Potter and the
             | Philosopher's Stone is really well done, and is fun to read
             | even as an American. That said, I have no experience at all
             | with Scots, so my opinion should have very little weight!
        
             | mgkimsal wrote:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qeWbC7XtO0
             | 
             | See how much of that series you can get through. :)
        
             | donbrae wrote:
             | Not a book but I run a blog written in Scots:
             | https://makforrit.scot.
        
         | ricardo81 wrote:
         | As a Southern Scot I'm familiar with muckle, many a mickle
         | makes a muckle.
         | 
         | I believe the CSS equivalent of a pixel in browser rendering
         | here is a "baw hair".
        
         | jefftk wrote:
         | Did you mean to post this on the general Firefox 91 thread?
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28128305
        
           | spuz wrote:
           | I would have if I had seen it!
        
       | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
       | There is a simple way to do cookie clearing outside the browser.
       | Insert the header Clear-Site-Data^1 into the HTTP response via
       | local proxy^2:
       | 
       | 1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
       | US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Cl...
       | 
       | 2. http-response add-header Clear-Site-Data "*"
        
       | BuckRogers wrote:
       | Typing this from Firefox, been typing from Firefox since 2002.
       | Never moved to Chrome. That's probably a small group of people
       | for sure, and I'm actually happy with this update, and the
       | changes Mozilla has been making. I do think, completely against
       | the grain of most Firefox fans, that they should've moved to
       | Chromium ages ago. That would solve the reason people are
       | actually leaving.. issues with Google properties. I have my
       | mother in-law on Edge because there's less issues when she jumps
       | on her karate class using Google Meets. There should be someone
       | out there to battle Blink, I suppose, but without user share at
       | all, how do you hold any weight anyway? It really doesn't make
       | sense, the argument people make.
       | 
       | It's usershare first, then you have weight to put towards web
       | standards. And I'm afraid Mozilla doesn't have the resources and
       | willpower to fight that battle anyway. If I'm calling shots with
       | Firefox I'm moving to Chromium immediately and then focusing on
       | UI and privacy features. It's probably too late to make that
       | change though. I just read Firefox lost 50 million monthly users
       | in the last two years.
       | 
       | It's a little sad, there is room in the market for a 3rd party,
       | power user's browser but it's obvious as can be that whatever
       | browser that will be- it will be on Chromium and it won't be
       | Firefox.
        
       | djhworld wrote:
       | I'm a heavy user of the "firefox containers" feature, where I try
       | to isolate the social media sites to their own containers
       | (twitter, facebook etc) and also one for reddit. I've also got
       | one for google products as well as I try to use DDG most of the
       | time.
       | 
       | Anyway I wish FF had a feature that broke down the cookies PER
       | container, so I could purge any ones that might have snuck in due
       | to a lapse in my judgement, e.g. if I see facebook cookies in my
       | "twitter" container then I'd like to purge them for that
       | particular container only.
       | 
       | FF only allows you to do a global purge.
       | 
       | EDIT: I can see this bug was raised 3 years ago which suggests it
       | _used_ to be a feature that got removed, but sounds like it was
       | never put back in/low priority/WONTFIX.
       | https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1480175
        
       | viktorcode wrote:
       | Is it any different from "manage website data" in Safari? I use
       | it to make sites forget about me.
        
       | oakfr wrote:
       | Nice feature, although I wish firefox could fix the other side of
       | the cookie nightmare: auto-fill the (now humongous) forms we need
       | to fill in for our cookie settings, for _each_ website. I feel
       | like I am applying for a mortgage a few times a day now.
        
         | llimos wrote:
         | I think by law they have to make it as easy to opt out as to
         | opt in. So for almost all the websites I see, clicking 'More
         | options' defaults to everything off. I now do 'More options' >
         | 'Save' on autopilot (and if one or two bad 'uns slip through
         | the net, so be it - life's too short).
        
           | kfoley wrote:
           | The only problem is that there is often an option to allow
           | cookies to "store site preferences" or something along those
           | lines.
           | 
           | My experience is this also includes your cookie preferences
           | which means if you don't enable that single option, you'll
           | have to go through the steps to disable cookies pretty much
           | every time you visit.
        
           | llimos wrote:
           | The real scandal is when 'More options' takes 20 seconds to
           | load - clearly deliberate but with just enough plausible
           | deniability.
        
         | sleavey wrote:
         | I just open the DOM editor and remove the popover if it takes
         | more than a second to find the reject all button.
        
           | aembleton wrote:
           | block it in uBO so you don't have to see it again.
        
         | tsjq wrote:
         | I use the Kill-Sticky bookmarklet for this and all other
         | intrusive stickies, floaties, etc
         | https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
        
       | idoubtit wrote:
       | If you disallow third party cookies, then there is no use for
       | this _per website cookie jar_. I 've browsed the web like this
       | for decades (since Opera 9, IIRC), and I had problems with at
       | most 5 websites. YMMV, of course.
       | 
       | In my opinion, the simplest way to deal with cookies is to
       | disallow third party, and to keep a white list of authorized
       | websites. Cookies outside this white list should be deleted
       | manually or automatically after a few hours. Extensions for this
       | probably exist, but I've had bad experiences with extensions
       | breaking or becoming intrusive, so I made my own where I hard
       | coded the domains that I want to keep.
        
         | lazyweb wrote:
         | I'm using FF almost exactly the same way as you describe, and
         | have found the "Forget Me Not" addon to be great. Not allowing
         | 3rd party cookies at all via browser settings, then the addon
         | deletes all cookies for a specific site after closing the tab.
         | Having a whitelist with 5-6 sites where I keep cookies forever.
        
         | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
         | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...
         | is great
        
       | jansan wrote:
       | Firefox does not start for me anymore. Gives a blank error
       | message and the content area is blank. That's finally it, I
       | guess.
        
       | drdebug wrote:
       | Great, this is really going in the right direction! So far I had
       | been using different firefox startup profiles for different
       | activities to emulate this behaviour (works even for extensions).
        
       | beermonster wrote:
       | Wonder if this means cookie-autodelete[1] is now redundant?
       | 
       | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...
        
         | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
         | No but it may be complement the extension. You may ask the
         | question at https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-
         | AutoDelete/discu...
        
         | jefftk wrote:
         | Cookie AutoDelete deletes cookies when you close the tab,
         | right? That's pretty different from this feature, where cookies
         | are only deleted when you ask the browser to delete them.
        
           | beermonster wrote:
           | When a tab closes, any cookies not being used are
           | automatically deleted. You can whitelist the ones you trust
           | and it has support for Container Tabs.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | nimbius wrote:
       | >cookie handling that lets you fully erase your browser history
       | for any website.
       | 
       | how about allowing me to whitelist and blacklist cookies from a
       | button? why did that feature have to disappear in the first
       | place? instead I now have a menu in about:preferences#privacy
       | that requires a full URL to be entered, added with a button, then
       | confirmed with "save" in what appears to be an effort to get me
       | to just accept cookies.
       | 
       | whats worse is if i switch between allow cookies, and then back
       | to custom, my selection to block all cookies isnt honored at all.
       | instead i get put back into 'block third party cookies.'
       | 
       | finally theres the misery of including blocked sites in the
       | 'preferences' you can delete as part of your browser history,
       | which seems like an effort to further reduce my predictable and
       | consistent ability to block cookies altogether.
        
       | pomian wrote:
       | Great. Finally. I always wondered why some sites reopen on data
       | relevant to a past date, (weather web site for example), even
       | though all history, cookies, site data, etc, has been set to
       | clear upon shut down. Which always makes you wonder what else is
       | stored.
        
       | jefftk wrote:
       | _Total Cookie Protection, built into Firefox, makes sure that
       | facebook.com can't use cookies to track you across websites. It
       | does this by partitioning data storage into one cookie jar per
       | website, rather than using one big jar for all of facebook.com's
       | storage. With Enhanced Cookie Clearing, if you clear site data
       | for comfypants.com, the entire cookie jar is emptied, including
       | any data facebook.com set while embedded in comfypants.com._
       | 
       | This seems exactly right: now that we have partitioned cookies,
       | cookie clearing should clear cookies for the whole partition.
        
         | jrochkind1 wrote:
         | Should also make it easier to defeat some paywalls by clearing
         | cookies just for that site.
        
         | faichai wrote:
         | It's insane that this hasn't been the default all along across
         | all browsers.
         | 
         | Just shows how Google et al, strive to safeguard and profit
         | from the status quo, at the expense of every internet user.
        
           | SilasX wrote:
           | As others noted, I'm not sure there's a profit motive to
           | blame here, but yeah it feels like browsers are constantly
           | playing catch-up, indicated by ever-stronger words for the
           | features, rather than switch to a better-engineered, more
           | robust model -- reminds me of PHP's treadmill of "no-really-
           | totes-secure-this-time-sql-call".
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | It's ridiculous to suggest that this was somehow all
           | nefariously intended by Google et al. How do you then explain
           | that's what _Firefox_ has done all the way up until now?
           | 
           | No -- it's just how cookies were meant to work from the
           | start, the most obvious implementation before the
           | privacy/security/tracking implications got worked out, which
           | has taken many years.
           | 
           | And Google's working to make similar improvements to Chrome:
           | 
           | https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-
           | web-...
           | 
           | So not "insane" at all. To the contrary, it was entirely
           | reasonable at the beginning, and now we see browsers
           | reasonably addressing the problems that have arisen.
        
             | o8r3oFTZPE wrote:
             | People trust Google. There is no reason not to trust this
             | company.
             | 
             | Mozilla gets 90+% of it operating budget via a deal with
             | Google, but Firefox developement is not influenced at all
             | by Chrome. Totally independent.
             | 
             | Big Tech exists for users, not advertisers.
             | 
             | Google will "build a more private web", just for users.
             | Sorry advertisers. :(
        
             | SilasX wrote:
             | Couldn't a smart person have figured out exactly how that
             | cookie model could be abused like, within days of it
             | existing? Was it really something that only got figured out
             | with time?
        
               | ElderKorihor wrote:
               | You have hindsight.
               | 
               | In the early days, the internet was seen as a massively
               | playfield-leveling and decentralizing force ("the net
               | interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"),
               | not a massively centralizing one (Facebook is the world's
               | only newspaper).
               | 
               | In a model where everything is decentralized and leveled
               | , no player is big enough to worry about.
        
               | joe_the_user wrote:
               | Sure, the realization might taken a decade but the change
               | took two decades at least. So it seems a little late.
        
               | tuatoru wrote:
               | A smart person _could_ have figured it out, but it was
               | extremely unlikely.
               | 
               | The economics sub-discipline of economic geography was
               | being developed at about the same time as Eternal
               | September.
               | 
               | The key insight (one of the key insights) from that
               | research is that as the absolute cost of transport goes
               | down, previously insignificant differences in cost become
               | important. This leads to to the development of "hubs" -
               | centralization.
               | 
               | (Here we're talking about information transport, and the
               | cost being time per bit.)
               | 
               | But as you say, at the time the tech world could never
               | have believed that centralization was the default
               | expectation, nor designed things to compensate.
        
             | teawrecks wrote:
             | > How do you then explain that's what Firefox has done all
             | the way up until now?
             | 
             | Google is historically the largest financial contributor to
             | Mozilla (paying for spot as default search engine) and thus
             | has always had leverage on what they do with FF.
             | 
             | There were a few years there where Moz flexed on google by
             | making Yahoo the default, but then switched back to Google
             | last year. My guess is they had to show google they were
             | willing to go elsewhere in order to regain some of their
             | autonomy, which is why it's only in the last couple of
             | years that FF has been willing to add default customer
             | privacy features despite directly hurting FB/Google's
             | ability to track users.
        
             | notinsaneatall wrote:
             | > How do you then explain that's what Firefox has done all
             | the way up until now?
             | 
             | The fact that for a long, long time the vast majority of
             | Firefox's income has come from search engine partnerships,
             | a category google dominates?
             | 
             | Also: Firefox has been rather poor about user privacy.
             | Integrating third party stuff that's difficult to remove,
             | like Pocket, for example.
             | 
             | There was the whole "Looking Glass" debacle where they
             | dropped in a Mr. Robot promotional plugin into Firefox
             | completely silently.
             | 
             | When someone posted in bugzilla about it, the project
             | manager for the plugin made the thread employee-only. It
             | was then changed back to public briefly, before
             | disappearing for good, reportedly being locked so even
             | employees can't see it:
             | 
             | https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1424977#c21
             | 
             | Ask yourself: "why is a bug files about a promotional
             | plugin so secretive that not even employees can view it?"
             | 
             | BTW: Guess where that project manager used to work before
             | she worked at Mozilla? Answer: an online advertising and
             | analytics firm (according to her LinkedIn profile at the
             | time.)
        
           | jimmaswell wrote:
           | The world kept turning all these years before people got
           | unreasonably paranoid about cookies and ad networks. I think
           | it's all pointless theater. I wish Mozilla would focus more
           | on browser customizability and other extension powers like we
           | used to have with XUL and bringing the mobile browser up to
           | speed instead. I couldn't care less about a Facebook tracking
           | cookie.
        
             | amenod wrote:
             | I agree with the mobile browser (the only recent change
             | they made, afaics, was to artificially disable most of the
             | extensions and to make tab switching worse), however it is
             | not just about ad networks that people are paranoid about.
             | Tracking is pervasive and there are many players which know
             | way too much about what users are doing on the net.
             | 
             | I don't even care if they track me - what I care about is
             | that they track mostly everybody. Such power should not be
             | underestimated.
        
               | jimmaswell wrote:
               | Law enforcement is exempt from GDPR and other online
               | privacy acts and we all know how much intelligence
               | agencies know. The people who it matters if they track
               | you are still tracking you. All that changed is it's
               | harder to make money from ads and it's more expensive and
               | dangerous to run your own web service.
        
               | mnot wrote:
               | Not true; a substantial part of the Schrems II decision
               | was about how the GDPR applies not only to law
               | enforcement, but also national security surveillance. See
               | eg 'European Essential Guarantees.'
        
           | sp332 wrote:
           | This is two huge changes away from how every browser
           | historically stored and cleared cookies, including old Opera,
           | IE, Firefox, Safari, everybody.
        
           | jefftk wrote:
           | _> It's insane that this hasn't been the default all along
           | across all browsers_
           | 
           | Historically cookies weren't partitioned by site. So if you
           | went to clear the cookies for https://publisher.example, then
           | the browser wouldn't know whether to also clear cookies for
           | https://other.example.
           | 
           | (Cookies are still not partitioned by default in Firefox; it
           | requires turning on Total Cookie Protection)
        
       | nashashmi wrote:
       | Damn it Firefox. Your cookie protection system is too damn
       | interrupting and does not provide good enough protection.
       | 
       | I don't want a security "profile" because I don't fit in to
       | whatever few boxes you have setup. Or maybe I just don't trust
       | what you do behind that security profile setup.
       | 
       | I want my own granular cookie tracking. Steal it from chrome if
       | you have to. It is the best thing since sliced bread.
       | 
       | I want a list of every cookie I have got. Just like IE used to
       | do. Just chrome does today.
       | 
       | I want to set in the smallest detail which cookies are allowed,
       | which are blocked, and which only last until I close session.
       | 
       | I have umatrix and ublock with only my personal filter list. It
       | is not good enough. I want something much like chrome.
        
         | mikro2nd wrote:
         | "Cookie Autodelete" plugin might be what you want, then. Sadly
         | I don't know what "like chrome" means, so don't know if the
         | plugin's functionality is more-or-less equivalent, since I
         | never use Chrome.
        
         | davzie wrote:
         | Calm down Veruca Salt
        
       | llimos wrote:
       | The site they choose to demo forgetting about is HN?!
        
         | taftster wrote:
         | Yeah, I'm guessing this was a deliberate joke for us here. The
         | author knew this would be closely read and critiqued by the
         | folks here. I'm sure s/he was waiting for exactly your comment
         | on the HN thread.
        
           | SubiculumCode wrote:
           | Most importantly, /. was not included as a visited site.
        
       | pixxel wrote:
       | I'm such a cynical bastard. My mind says, what took so long to
       | tackle cookies, FLoC?
        
         | michaelt wrote:
         | Firefox doesn't have enough market share/power to dictate terms
         | to website owners; if they just disabled third-party cookies,
         | websites that broke would just tell users to switch to Chrome.
         | 
         | Chrome isn't going to tackle tracking/fingerprinting for
         | obvious reasons.
        
       | bennysomething wrote:
       | Can anyone tell me why since past version 68 of Firefox on
       | Android nearly all my add-ons don't work. Is there an alternative
       | for "I don't care about cookies" . Add-ons working on mobile in
       | Firefox was the main reason I'm still a Firefox user. They have
       | pretty much killed that by breaking compatibility.
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | >Can anyone tell me why since past version 68 of Firefox on
         | Android nearly all my add-ons don't work
         | 
         | Because they switched rendering engines or something. Now
         | addons are restricted to a small subset that they've validated.
         | You can use a custom addon collection to install untested
         | addons (see:
         | https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-
         | extensio...) to get around this, but there's no guarantee that
         | the addons will work.
        
           | noisem4ker wrote:
           | I can confirm the add-on I Don't Care About Cookies works
           | just fine if installed that way. It's just inconvenient. I
           | wonder what stops the list of approved add-ons from growing.
        
             | bennysomething wrote:
             | I might try this thanks. Looks really involved though!
        
               | mfo4321 wrote:
               | Hope you didn't upgrade past 90:
               | https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20647
        
         | blibble wrote:
         | you can do it with nightly but it's a pain in the backside
        
         | tomrod wrote:
         | It also broke font sizing/rendering on sites like reddit.
         | 
         | I loved Firefox mobile and this did me dirty. One of the big
         | draws was adblock, and on top of needing text and extensions
         | they changed the UI to be antiproductive.
         | 
         | Their playstore ratings took a massive nose dive after that
         | release. Shame. They are the only real browser competition to
         | Chrome.
        
           | afterburner wrote:
           | Does the font scaler in Firefox help? I actually switched to
           | Firefox mobile several months ago because that finally
           | resolved my issues with browsing i.reddit.com on Firefox.
           | Chrome would just get the font scaling right, Firefox
           | wouldn't before the major engine change.
           | 
           | I am annoyed that Firefox mobile tabs seem to have to refresh
           | every single time I "tab out". I'm stubbornly sticking to it
           | because of addons though (Dark Reader and uBlock).
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | The reason is that Android part of Firefox got a complete
         | rewrite when they switched to the new engine. They switched
         | from a deeply integrated system over to a more separated
         | frontend for GeckoView, a generic Webview component based on
         | Gecko. This change implied a lot of changes, particularly to
         | the UI and framework surrounding the existing addon code.
         | 
         | Secretly, a lot of addons will run just fine. You can install
         | them in the Firefox nightly through the "secret settings"
         | (tapping the Firefox logo in the about screen seven times) by
         | creating an addon collection and stuffing the right ID in your
         | browser.
         | 
         | I can say the new engine is notably faster and the UI is easier
         | to use for basic tasks, but all of the features that made me
         | switch to Firefox on Android in the first place have been
         | removed. Slightly nonstandard features ("being able to use your
         | own CA" or even "being able to ignore TLS warnings") took years
         | to implement, and logging into a website with a client
         | certificate is still not possible.
         | 
         | They even took about:config from us in the stable builds,
         | because they consider their users babies that will change
         | random settings and break something. Firefox has dropped all
         | support for power users and has focused on becoming Chrome 2.0,
         | a goal which I don't think they'll ever be able to accomplish.
         | If you don't follow the standard workflow of the 80% who forget
         | to disable Mozilla's stalking, you're no longer important.
         | 
         | I'm still on Firefox but every day I'm nudged closer to just
         | switching to Bromite instead. The lack of proper addon support
         | was understandable at first, but by now I hoped to have some
         | decent addon support back already. I guess the team working on
         | it must've gotten culled so Mozilla's CEO could afford their
         | pay raise.
        
         | bennysomething wrote:
         | Why the down votes!?
        
         | jccalhoun wrote:
         | I have not tried it but iceraven is a fork of the android
         | version and it tries to allow more addons to be installed
         | https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | svnpenn wrote:
         | Android Firefox has explicitly disabled support for installing
         | custom add-ons [1], while they try to force developers into
         | registering on AMO.
         | 
         | 1. https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20647
        
       | DavideNL wrote:
       | I hate how Safari on iPad does not have proper Cookie handling...
       | The only solution is to permanently use Safari in "private mode",
       | but it has some limitations (you cannot remember your browsing
       | history, and you can't set a default Font size for example.)
       | 
       | Firefox on iOS _can_ do this, but you can't set a Font size at
       | all. So many websites (like Hacker News) are nearly impossible to
       | read on an iPad.
        
         | nagyf wrote:
         | Why does HN have such a bad font size? I always have to set it
         | to 120% otherwise it's so small I can't even read it on my big
         | ultrawide monitor.
         | 
         | This is the only website which I have to scale up on every
         | computer...
        
           | dmos62 wrote:
           | My 1440p monitor works ok with HN's defaults.
        
           | q-rews wrote:
           | Because HN is not "designed" as much as it's just been
           | written by dinosaurs who visit it via Lynx. My browser is
           | currently at 150% and I'm basically a millennial.
           | 
           | The smallest font on this page is 9px, that's just ludicrous.
           | 
           | I mean just open the CSS file and judge for yourself.
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | Do you have eyesight issues and/or a high dpi display? I'm
           | using a ~105 ppi display and it works fine with regular font
           | size.
        
             | jlarocco wrote:
             | I do have a high DPI display, and HN is ridiculously tiny
             | without manually overriding, because it's setting text size
             | in pixels instead of points, for no good reason. It doesn't
             | make any sense. View source shows:                   line-
             | height:12pt; height:10px;
             | 
             | Why use device independent units for line-height, but not
             | the text itself?
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | >setting text size in pixels instead of points
               | 
               | "px" in css doesn't correspond to literal pixels on the
               | display.
               | 
               | >By definition, this is the physical size of a single
               | pixel at a pixel density of 96 DPI, located an arm's
               | length away from the viewer's eyes.
               | 
               | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
               | US/docs/Glossary/CSS_pixel
        
               | jlarocco wrote:
               | Thank you. It seems "px" is really the worst of both
               | worlds, then.
               | 
               | It's not device independent like "pt", it's not what most
               | people expect it to be (one device pixel), and there's
               | subjective "wiggle room" in what it actually means.
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | >It's not device independent like "pt", it's not what
               | most people expect it to be (one device pixel), and
               | there's subjective "wiggle room" in what it actually
               | means.
               | 
               | This seems to also be incorrect. px and pt are both
               | absolute units, and 1.33px == 1pt. If you want relative
               | units you need to use something like em.
               | 
               | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
               | US/docs/Learn/CSS/Building_...
        
               | dmos62 wrote:
               | em and rem are relative to properties on other nodes in
               | the document's CSS hierarchy; they're not relative to
               | some screen-size specific metric.
               | 
               | I've not studied the topic in any depth, but I believe
               | that an adaptive ruleset would just use CSS media queries
               | (use this font size when viewport width is more than
               | something). That is what Bootstrap does. Or, use
               | viewport-relative units like vw, vh, vmin, vmax, but I
               | doubt that would work well.
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | >they're not relative to some screen-size specific
               | metric.
               | 
               | The fundamental problem here is that the browser can only
               | adjust for device pixel density and not other variables
               | that affect visibility (eg. the viewer's visual acuity or
               | the viewing distance). That said, using absolute units is
               | still the best choice for text size, considering the
               | other relative units (eg. relative to viewport size) is
               | worse.
               | 
               | >I've not studied the topic in any depth, but I believe
               | that an adaptive ruleset would just use CSS media queries
               | (use this font size when viewport width is more than
               | something).
               | 
               | HN has this. See the /* mobile device */ section in
               | news.css.
        
               | q-rews wrote:
               | As opposed to using points? That makes no sense. Every
               | single CSS unit just maps to a fixed value in pixels[1],
               | from em to % and cm.
               | 
               | The only reason why they're in pt is that who wrote the
               | stylesheet didn't know any better.
               | 
               | 1: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
               | US/docs/Learn/CSS/Building_...
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | >As opposed to using points? That makes no sense.
               | 
               | Seems like you're replying to the wrong comment. The
               | comment you're replying to is my comment arguing
               | _against_ using  "pixels instead of points".
        
             | adamc wrote:
             | Might be an age issue. When you get older, small font sizes
             | are problematic. It's rude of sites to use them, IMO.
        
               | tomc1985 wrote:
               | Personally I hate large font sizes. What do they think I
               | am, 5?
        
               | q-rews wrote:
               | It depends on how large. 16/18px is a good default for
               | body copy. IFTTT is just taking the piss, I visit it at
               | 70% or less.
        
             | jrochkind1 wrote:
             | My "eyesight issue" is being older than 40 ha! It'll happen
             | to you too youngster!
        
             | OJFord wrote:
             | I have a 123ppi display, normal is _ok_ but I have it
             | zoomed _out_ to 80 or 90%.
             | 
             | People are different, so it's good to have font size and
             | zoom options. Some can go bigger, some can go smaller. I
             | use 80% on a lot of sites, and an extension called 'Zoom
             | Page WE' to remember the settings.
        
           | spideymans wrote:
           | Gosh, I'm happy I'm not the only one. I have 20/20 vision,
           | yet I have to turn up the HN font size on all my devices.
           | It's the only site I've had to do this.
        
           | beltsazar wrote:
           | In addition to zooming in to 110%, I also apply this CSS for
           | increasing the line spacing and decreasing the number of
           | words per line:                   div.comment {
           | line-height: 1.5         }              td {             max-
           | width: 700px;         }
           | 
           | It improves the readability a lot for me.
        
           | input_sh wrote:
           | Just 120? I do 150% each time.
           | 
           | Font size is set to _really_ low (titles on the homepage are
           | 10px, comments are even smaller).
           | 
           | I can read it fine at 100%, it just requires a bit more
           | mental struggle in the age where font sizes are usually in
           | 16/18px range.
        
         | Angostura wrote:
         | What would proper cookie handling look like for you, in this
         | context? What would you like to be able to do?
        
           | DavideNL wrote:
           | I want to
           | 
           | - specify which websites may store cookies/cache. All
           | websites not specified can not store anything (and thus not
           | track me), and all data for these websites is deleted once i
           | close the tab
           | 
           | - i want to remember all my history
           | 
           | I can do this in Firefox on macOS (with some container
           | extensions, can't remember the names now)
        
             | jonnytran wrote:
             | I started using the DuckDuckGo app on iOS to do exactly
             | this. You can choose to "fireproof" any site you're on,
             | adding it to a list of sites that's immune to clearing all
             | data.
             | 
             | I don't think it has a history feature at all though.
        
           | herodotus wrote:
           | Safari used to have a feature where you could delete all
           | cookies except for ones you had explicitly marked to keep.
           | So, for example, I might keep ones like my bank login name
           | and my amazon history, but very easily remove everything
           | else. I used this all the time. Even better would be the
           | option to delete all but selected cookies every time I closed
           | Safari.
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-10 23:00 UTC)