[HN Gopher] Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade
___________________________________________________________________
Firefox Private Browsing mode upgrade
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 187 points
Date : 2022-10-18 13:12 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.mozilla.org)
| chobytes wrote:
| At this point I feel like using a stripped down fork of firefox
| is basically a requirement. There's nothing left of the Mozilla
| that cared it seems.
| WallyFunk wrote:
| https://librewolf.net/
| zamubafoo wrote:
| To give some perspective, Microsoft is doing better with VS Code
| than Mozilla is doing with Firefox.
|
| * There are no sponsored ads every time I use common
| functionality (like opening a new tab)
|
| * At least VS Code has a easily available settings page to turn
| off telemetry
|
| To do something half way similar, Firefox requires you to venture
| into `about:config` where you get a "Here be dragons" message to
| scare users away from touching settings. Not only that, none of
| the settings are documented anywhere.
|
| Do I trust either of them? No, but at least Microsoft doesn't
| market "privacy".
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > At least VS Code has a easily available settings page to turn
| off telemetry
|
| You sure about that? They look pretty similar to me.
| - https://www.roboleary.net/tools/2022/04/20/vscode-
| telemetry.html - "It looks like you cannot shut
| telemetry off 100%. These settings will opt you of
| most data sharing scenarios; but not all data sharing
| scenarios." - Apparently even VSCodium can't kill it
| all - https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/ma
| ster/DOCS.md#disable-telemetry
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I am extremely surprised by all the negative Firefox sentiment
| here. I switched from Chrome as soon as manifest v3 was announced
| and I have been almost completely happy with it. In all the ways
| I'm unhappy with it, chrome is even worse.
| anbotero wrote:
| I literally just switched back to a Chromium-based browser
| because Google Meet background features are not supported on
| Mozilla Firefox. Everything else, I like or I'm quite content
| with on Firefox. I so just want to have Google Meet with
| background blur on Firefox, it's the only thing I need to fully
| switch back.
| ericpauley wrote:
| Whenever all the negative comments come up I mostly just assume
| there is a silent majority that continues to be happy with
| Firefox and doesn't say anything. I've been using it for years
| with basically 0 issues.
|
| And I'm not using it to "stick it to Google" either. Containers
| and tree-style tabs are a huge productivity win.
| asdff wrote:
| I love treestyle tabs and being able to autohide it until I
| mouse over, but I can't get containers to ever work as
| expected. I would expect when I click a link to e.g. ebay it
| would open in my ebay container in a new tab, and when I
| google something it puts me in a google container, and when I
| click a reddit link it puts me into the reddit container.
| Instead I am often still in the ebay container. Temporary
| containers are even worse with this, I would think opening up
| a new link to a different domain would put me into a new
| temporary container, but I am still in tmp7 or whatever the
| numbers have marched up to. I have regressed to just facebook
| container because its simpler to deal with just one container
| and associated issues.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| The "Containerise" extension is sadly practically required
| to ged containers working as you'd expect.
| asdff wrote:
| Thanks for this, I had been trying every setting there
| was in the standard container extensions to no avail. Too
| bad that the way containers fundamentally works hijacks
| your back button, this was another annoyance I was
| remembering.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I honestly don't know which side the silent
| majority/plurality is on. What makes you think they're on
| FF's side? Probably vis-a-vis Chrome that's true, but there
| are several other up-and-coming browsers out there.
|
| Also, TST isn't a FF-only feature now (Brave has started the
| rollout, Orion has a great implementation, and Edge has it
| also).
|
| My personal path was decades with FF and its predecessors,
| then Brave because it was much, much faster. Now I'm debating
| between Orion (which might win on performance/battery, due to
| being webkit), Brave (which is fast, and is evolving its TST
| capability), and Firefox (which works fine, but IME is a bit
| slower).
| asdff wrote:
| I don't know how anyone browses the modern web without ublock
| origin. I don't even go on websites on my iphone anymore
| because they are unusable with the banner ads, the footer ads,
| the autoplay videos, and trying to gleam information from 1
| inch worth of text on my phone. I blow through my datacap in no
| time. Like why did we make these phone screens so big, just to
| fit more ads?
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| For anyone else being annoyed that private windows now switch
| their chrome into dark mode by default, completely rendering
| black favicons (or the toggle icon of the TreeStyleTabs
| extension) invisible: You can set browser.theme.dark-private-
| windows to false.
|
| I don't want dark mode, period. Who decided that privacy must
| equal to dark mode, and that there is no easy switch in settings
| to turn it off?
| WallyFunk wrote:
| > Who decided that privacy must equal to dark mode
|
| It's a visual cue to remember what context you are in. I always
| done that anyway. I have a Pink theme when surfing NSFW sites
| :)
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Does the clue have to cover the entire browser chrome,
| though? Maybe the previous indicator was too small, but
| messing with font contrast of all UI elements? It seems too
| much to me.
| oortcloud42 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how did you configure it?
| WallyFunk wrote:
| I have a dedicated Firefox profile for NSFW stuff. You can
| add a Pink theme for that profile only. Here's one I use:
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/pink/?utm_sou...
|
| You can configure themes here:
|
| about:addons
| morsch wrote:
| The titular upgrade to private browsing is that you can now
| launch the application directly in that mode and private browsing
| mode is displayed in dark theme by default. Oh and private
| browsing mode has a new logo. Exciting stuff.
| LaleoDJ wrote:
| marcodiego wrote:
| I have to repost it aagain: Firefox: the last remaining mostly
| independent, maintained and reasonably popular browser.
|
| Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd
| still use it for the above mentioned reasons.
| firefoxkekw wrote:
| You are literally helping the "big corpo" doing that.
|
| Firefox was mostly funded by Alphabet/Google to avoid antitrust
| lawsuits/promote their search engine, one of the best scenarios
| for the "big corpo" is a product (firefox) that doesn't have
| many users and cater to the most anti-corpo users (users that
| wouldn't like to use "big corpo" products anyway). At this
| point mozilla is just a bussiness expense for the big corpo,
| the cost of doing bussiness.
|
| "Big corpo" can argue, "look we are even funding the
| competence", the competence need to be small but relevant
| enough, so while you are thinking that you are fighting the
| "big corpo" the reality is that you are just helping to keep
| firefox relevant enough that the "big corpo" can't be sued.
| monlockandkey wrote:
| I have said this before, but I will repeat again:
|
| The entire internet discourse is filled with "Chrome evil, use
| Firefox". Go to any browser discussion on the internet and 99%
| of the thread is "just use Firefox or Firefox is the best". You
| would think that everyone uses Firefox. The internet is a
| bubble. Reality is Firefox usage is pathetic. 32 MILLION people
| have _STOPPED_ using Firefox in the past 4 years. The browser
| only has a 3.16% market share.
|
| https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
|
| Chrome is a good browser. Can be considered objectively better
| than Firefox given its superior performance, equivalent if not
| slightly better resource usage, web compatibility and
| integration with the Google ecosystem (which the vast majority
| of internet population use (excluding niche tech circles)).
|
| I have no vendetta against Firefox. At the end of the day, it
| is just a browser and that is a personal preference. But people
| act like it is some sort of saviour that will bring them to the
| light. There is such an aggressive tribal mentality with
| browsers. It makes no sense as all browsers look the same, feel
| the same and have the same functionality. Just a matter of
| preference given your needs, and for 70% of the population,
| Chromium delivers.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| The truth is, people using Firefox just to 'stick it to the big
| bad corpo' is getting us nowhere. Firefox is losing not because
| of Chrome but because of its own incompetence or inability to
| keep the users happy.
|
| Firefox is losing userbase a lot faster than some other
| browsers are gaining it, is that Firefox users' fault or
| Firefox's?
|
| I use Firefox because I think the sync service it provides is
| great and that some of the customization is unmatched, not
| because I think I'm some soldier fighting the Chromium
| monopoly.
| marcodiego wrote:
| > people using Firefox just to 'stick it to the big bad
| corpo' is getting us nowhere.
|
| Don't underestimate the power of small contributions. You
| could say the same about people using konqueror 20 years ago,
| it brought KHTML which brought us webkit. You could say the
| same about people using firefox at the same time. You could
| say the same about people using linux in middle 90's, the
| same about GCC... I could go on showing more examples.
|
| Simply using a software is a form of contribution: at the
| least it improves statistics. People making small
| contributions are important; small donations to wikipedia,
| bug reports, translations, fixing a small bug, improving a
| feature you need, talking with devs to guarantee a device
| works... I personally made many of these small contributions
| and although most of them didn't ended up on the "market
| leader project", it certainly made them good enough for
| people to keep using them and to encourage other people to
| contribute too.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Sure but we're acting as if a few people sticking to
| Firefox for the sake of it is going to save it, it's not.
| Not unless Mozilla fixes its underlying problems like the
| management and development roadmaps.
|
| The fact that Firefox got backdrop-blur support in mid 2022
| speaks volumes about Firefox's priorities.
|
| I get the point you're trying to make, I use FOSS because I
| believe more people should be using it and if I don't, who
| would? But that doesn't work when it comes to Firefox.
| There are a lot of good free and open source browsers right
| now, no matter what engine they use.
|
| If a chromium based FOSS browser gets popular enough, there
| are better chances of it surviving and breaking away from
| Google's monopoly at the same time. It does not matter what
| Google does with Chrome, as long as independent forks are
| able to exist within that same space and can get just as
| big.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > The fact that Firefox got backdrop-blur support in mid
| 2022 speaks volumes about Firefox's priorities.
|
| Perhaps it speaks more to your priorities? I can't see
| anyone outside of a web developer who needed that feature
| 1 time or even caring that backdrop-blur wasn't
| implemented.
|
| The fact that you're salty about a specific CSS property
| and that it's reason enough to boycott a browser speaks
| volumes.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > Perhaps it speaks more to your priorities? I can't see
| anyone outside of a web developer who needed that feature
| 1 time or even caring that backdrop-blur wasn't
| implemented.
|
| The point is, if Firefox can't even make basic web
| features like blur work on the browser (that are
| available on even no name mobile browsers) I can't expect
| Firefox to ever surpass Chrome or other competitors and
| it's evident.
|
| > The fact that you're salty about a specific CSS
| property and that it's reason enough to boycott a browser
| speaks volumes.
|
| As a web developer, I 100% stopped development on Firefox
| because it doesn't support even the most basic features
| all other browsers have. Like it or not, it's an inferior
| product because of the missing web APIs.
|
| You know what's better than fighting monopoly with an
| ideology? Fighting monopoly with an even better product
| that supports the ideology. Firefox is sadly not that.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > Firefox can't even make basic web features like blur
| work on the browser
|
| I wouldn't call backdrop-blur trivial or a basic feature.
| It's non-trivial to implement and used very little. Why
| should it be a priority?
|
| > (that are available on even no name mobile browsers)
|
| What no-name mobile browser that isn't based on an engine
| like Chromium has implemented more "basic" features than
| Firefox? The fact of the matter is that large
| corporations like Microsoft have given up trying to
| implement their own custom browser engine and pivoted to
| using Chromium.
|
| > it doesn't support even the most basic features all
| other browsers have.
|
| Like backdrop-blur?
|
| > Fighting monopoly with an even better product that
| supports the ideology.
|
| You're trivializing browser development as if you could
| build a better browser in a weekend.
|
| Of the 4 major browsers developers only one isn't a
| billion/trillion dollar corporation; one uses it's
| monopoly in search to bankroll and push it's browser, one
| uses their monopoly position in smartphones to force
| their browser on users and restricts the feature set of
| it's browser so as not to detract from custom App
| development, one threw in the towel and just rebranded
| Chromium, and the last is a non-profit that's financially
| dependent on the other three for handouts.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > I wouldn't call backdrop-blur trivial or a basic
| feature. It's non-trivial to implement and used very
| little. Why should it be a priority?
|
| Why shouldn't it be? If Firefox can't lead in web
| development, how do you even expect it to keep up with
| times?
|
| I'm not sure why someone would defend Firefox's
| incompetency. I see things as they are and I make
| decisions based on that.
|
| Even if I see things as they could be, I'd rather not bet
| my money on Firefox.
| andy81 wrote:
| Firefox wasting time on re-implementing every pointless
| Chrome feature is half the reason we're in this space to
| begin with.
|
| A browser doesn't need to be an operating system.
| EbNar wrote:
| aliqot wrote:
| Qutebrowser is best, I pay for it voluntarily though it's free.
|
| But Firefox is mostly independent eh? Did they stop taking
| google money yet?
| anycans wrote:
| Qutebrowser isnt independent if you care that google money is
| involved, it uses blink.
|
| Firefox is the only even vaguely independent browser engine
| that keeps up at all with google.
| insanitybit wrote:
| > Qutebrowser isnt independent if you care that google
| money is involved, it uses blink.
|
| Did something change? Last I checked almost all funding for
| Firefox was from Google.
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| That was my impression too, signing a 3 year deal in 2020
| for ~$400 to $450 million/year.
|
| > More than 90 per cent of Mozilla's funding comes from
| web search providers that pay for the right to be the
| default search engine in Firefox in their regions.
| According to the organization's latest financial figures
| [PDF], $430m of its 2018 total revenue of $451m came from
| those internet giants - primarily Google, we understand.
| These deals were due to be renewed or renegotiated by
| November this year.
|
| [1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google
| _search...
|
| I believe it's listed under royalties and also
| receivables in the annual report, though that does not
| specify Google specifically, but you can look at the
| numbers and figure they are a large portion if the news
| was accurate.
|
| [2] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-
| fdn-202...
| reitanqild wrote:
| Librewolf is a running fork of the newest Firefox with some
| small improvements. Unlike other forks it always has latest
| security updates.
|
| I use it these days and I am considering to start chipping
| in too (I am at my limits currently so I will have to stop
| something else though).
|
| But I really really want something like my old Firefox
| back...!
| Arnavion wrote:
| >Unlike other forks it always has latest security
| updates.
|
| Well yeah, that's how all the forks are when they start
| out. It's less than a year old (started in Nov 2021) so
| I'd be worried if it _didn 't_ keep up with upstream
| security patches.
| aliqot wrote:
| I also chip in :) Librewolf eally saved my bacon on this
| old laptop I keep flogging into the future.
| [deleted]
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I love you Firefox, I tolerate you Mozilla. But I'm not sure a
| private browsing button, and fall colors really show your
| commitment to "cyber security month".
| jrootabega wrote:
| Yeah. There's nothing of substance here. All it is is a
| shortcut for private mode and a default to dark theme when
| you're in private mode. Not really noteworthy. It's a user-
| hostile update, even. Dark theme by default when private? I'll
| control my own themes, thanks. If people are unsure whether
| they're in private mode, put a permanent private mode indicator
| in the UI. And what about people who will now confuse dark
| theme with private mode? Their privacy story just got worse!
| groovybits wrote:
| > put a permanent private mode indicator in the UI.
|
| There is. The purple and white mask icon in the upper-right
| window corner, and in each private tab.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Then the dark theme default was not necessary. And I'll
| note that it's a private mode indicator on NEW private tabs
| only.
| throwoutway wrote:
| The corp speak at Mozilla is getting even weirder. It sounds
| like something my HR VP would say:
|
| > new desktop feature that allowed our users to express their
| most authentic selves and bring joy while browsing the web.
|
| No, it's just another color theme setting.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Marketing prose is to be expected, but this is just too
| much. I suspect there aren't enough people at Mozilla with
| the courage to tell the marketing/brand management folks to
| tone it down. I don't necessarily blame them, though. It
| isn't easy to give criticism to creative folks with a great
| deal of enthusiasm.
| yewenjie wrote:
| > Last year we launched Firefox Colorways, a new desktop feature
| that allowed our users to express their most authentic selves and
| bring joy while browsing the web.
|
| I wonder whether people who write this kind of press-releases
| even use Firefox as their primary browser. If you care so much
| about actually letting users customizing the look and feel of
| Firefox please just support userstyles as a first-class feature.
| Spivak wrote:
| Everyone in this thread complaining about colorways has got to be
| a meta-commentary on bikeshedding. This feature isn't for you.
|
| But anyway, I'm sad that HTTPS default and isolated cookies are
| turned on only for Private Browsing (sorry, "Guest Session" from
| that other silly HN thread, "private" apparently implies you have
| a rank in the military while using) when both these features
| aren't super disruptive for general browsing.
| jrootabega wrote:
| But Mozilla deceived us by indicating they had privacy
| improvements for us! This particular incident is a minor
| annoyance, but it's an indicator of how those in charge view
| those of us who care about actual privacy and functionality.
| Spivak wrote:
| Mozilla really can't win on HN, a feature that basically only
| exists to save one click (efficiency!) for the kind of people
| who consume PB regularly is very power user and aligns with
| their brand as being privacy focused when private mode is the
| thing that is always visible in the bar.
|
| Nobody on HN seems to know at all how to market tech to a
| general audience and play the game of "staying relevant" so
| they always have something to post to social/newswires.
| jrootabega wrote:
| I, and probably many others, feel that the quality of this
| as an HN submission is related, but not synonymous with,
| the quality of it as a Mozilla communication. But it was
| submitted to HN, and so it will be judged as an HN
| submission.
|
| But many of us also believe that, though it's POSSIBLE
| Mozilla is acting how you describe ("We are committed to
| privacy at our core but we have to publish this kind of
| press release to survive!"), they are actually corrupt at
| their core to the point where they only see privacy-
| conscious users as customercattle to be milked.
|
| I believe we critics have good enough intuition to see this
| kind of behavior from Mozilla as a canary indicating their
| true nature. This is kind of an aftershock of the Mr. Robot
| incident. I think it's unlikely that that kind of bad
| judgment was not chronic and systemic.
| soundnote wrote:
| Brave and Vivaldi manage to focus on privacy and not
| write sickening marketing copy. It's a Mozilla problem.
| Karunamon wrote:
| How much do you want to bet the "general audience" does not
| care one bit about this and will not meaningfully move the
| (declining) DAU numbers?
|
| Mozilla's problems are in its fundamentals, not its
| marketing.
| Spivak wrote:
| Mozilla's problem is they have been grasping for an
| answer to "why should you use Firefox over Chrome?" that
| actually resonates with people for over a decade. The
| product is fine, Firefox is a perfectly capable browser.
| Convincing people to use it is a soft-skills problem
| because the only reason to use Firefox is because you
| like Mozilla more than you like Google which is entirely
| driven by Mozilla having good-feels activism mindshare
| and getting in being in the news cycle.
| Karunamon wrote:
| ...Made less and less capable over time. Firefox today is
| objectively less useful than Firefox many years ago.
|
| The continuing decline in user numbers would tell anyone
| in leadership that is actually paying attention that this
| approach is not working. And the idea that the answer to
| attracting normal people is renaming and pushing themes
| is, to put it mildly, brain-damaged. It is like nobody at
| that company has ever actually met a computer user
| before.
| soundnote wrote:
| Their marketing copy is actively repellent to me at
| least, and judging by friends and comments in this
| thread, I'm not alone.
| sfink wrote:
| > I'm sad that HTTPS default and isolated cookies are turned on
| only for Private Browsing
|
| You might want HTTPS-only mode (bottom section of
| about:preferences#privacy ). I kind of thought isolated cookies
| were already the default, as per
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-rolls-o...
| but maybe I'm missing a nuance?
| xg15 wrote:
| I think what annoys me is that Mozilla (like many other
| companies) has co-opted the "social movement/political
| activist" aesthetic without actually engaging in any activism.
|
| Private browsing mode is a prime example of that. The current
| improvement is absolutely miniscule for the amount of bravado
| they perform around it - but even if you accept it's useful for
| some, you could ask why private browsing mode exist at all? If
| that mode had superior privacy protections, why not add those
| to the normal browsing mode?
|
| I think by making tracking the default and having a special
| mode for when you _really_ need privacy, they are sort of doing
| the opposite: Normalising that privacy is an exception.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > If that mode had superior privacy protections, why not add
| those to the normal browsing mode?
|
| That would make their master mad. Everything that makes them
| mad gets taken away.
| Spivak wrote:
| > The current improvement is absolutely miniscule for the
| amount of bravado they perform around it.
|
| Welcome to marketing. This icon is a more visible change than
| 1000 closed PRs in the browser internals. It's Twitter
| fodder, and to get tech journalists to talk about Firefox.
| none_to_remain wrote:
| The main feature I expect from private browsing is that the
| browser history will not be saved, but in normal browsing I
| do want it saved
| sfink wrote:
| > not add those to the normal browsing mode?
|
| Because it breaks a lot of web sites, and removes
| functionality that most people want for most of their usage?
|
| I _want_ my browser remembering where I 've been so it can
| suggest it to me when I want to get back to it. I especially
| prefer my browser remembering it rather than some server
| knowing it, or having to re-do searches which is less
| convenient and means I'm telling the search server what I'm
| up to.
| stoplying1 wrote:
| I think you should re-read the complaints with slightly more
| empathy for both sides. I love my purple Firefox (apparently
| via Colorways). Meanwhile, the "Colorways" feature UX and
| messaging is stupid and _confusing_. I 'm not exaggerating, me
| and others are quite confused about what it is/isn't and if
| it's going away. All for freaking what?
|
| My mom sees that shit? She's gonna go "uh I don't know what
| Colorways is, why's it gonna go away, I'll just stick with Edge
| where it showed me 12 colored icons under the Theme heading and
| I just clicked one." Because that's _exactly_ what I did until
| the slight annoyed-curiosity-purple-enthusiast got the better
| of me.
|
| I feel like the scene in Zoolander when the character is
| befuddled and exasperatedly asks "am I taking crazy pills".
| Spivak wrote:
| > All for freaking what?
|
| Because they wanted something to talk about social media that
| was fun and limited time. They were following the Nike
| playbook with shoe drops including the terminology. Look at
| the screenshot in the blog post about colorways the art is
| even a shoe with a basketball.
|
| They were trying _something new_. Limited time cosmetic drops
| for browsers that get people hyped in every other context. It
| confused white people because of how they executed it. Live
| and learn I guess -\\_(tsu)_ /-.
|
| Every non-chrome browser has to answer the question "why use
| me instead of Chrome" and for Firefox it's the activism. you
| might not like that but it's what Mozilla's got. At least
| it's not some crypto nonsense.
| stoplying1 wrote:
| So Mozilla is chasing Nike shoe trends to advocate for
| their browser via colorschemes. I'm not even saying you're
| wrong, and I guess I'm not even sure that's an absolutely
| bad idea but Christ if that's "our" play for the future of
| browsers and privacy, I need to start building that shed
| ASAP!
| Spivak wrote:
| I get you dude, Firefox got popular because IE stagnated
| and Mozilla capitalized on it, Chrome ate the world
| because Google made a significant technical improvement
| at just the right time neither of which can be replicated
| again so long as Google keeps up their frankly ridiculous
| development pace. Safari only lives because a popular
| platform requires it.
|
| Mozilla angling for a cultural victory in the browser war
| is weird but it's the only thing they and every other
| alternative browser has. I actually thought the colorway
| thing was fun when it popped up, browser did actually
| look fresh and new but yeah probably not gonna move the
| needle.
| acheron wrote:
| Chrome only "ate the world" because Google leveraged its
| monopoly in another area to push it. We used to think
| that was a bad thing.
| soundnote wrote:
| > Mozilla angling for a cultural victory in the browser
| war is weird but it's the only thing they and every other
| alternative browser has.
|
| Or, you know. Do what Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera etc.
| all do. Features. It works.
| soundnote wrote:
| I'm fairly sure the play for browser privacy looks like a
| lion.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| > Every non-chrome browser has to answer the question "why
| use me instead of Chrome" and for Firefox it's the
| activism. you might not like that but it's what Mozilla's
| got.
|
| The problem is that Mozilla's raison d'etre used to be
| about technical merit and user agency, including privacy
| and customization features. Chrome doesn't set a
| particularly high bar here, so Firefox _could_ still be
| about this (and in fact Firefox is still the better choice
| despite themselves), but over the last few years they 've
| gone in exactly the wrong direction.
|
| Browsers were themeable 20 years ago. _Everything_ used to
| be themeable. Things like CSS show these roots in their
| design, but Mozilla thinks that user stylesheets are a
| "legacyUserProfileCustomizations" instead of a fundamental
| design feature now.
|
| The whole idea of limited time marketing is to create
| anxiety and FOMO. It's completely anti-ethical to user-
| focused design.
| llimos wrote:
| > "private" apparently implies you have a rank in the military
|
| Are you thinking of the "Private Browsing reporting for duty"
| clip?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5VEftRH12Y&t=42
| butz wrote:
| They don't have enough resources (developers) to implement
| "adding websites to desktop and running them in separate windows,
| as applications" support, yet they are wasting time to re-add
| "limited edition" themes. Not to mention video conferencing
| support still lagging behind, although that's not so important
| anymore, as it was during lockdown.
|
| And still, I'll keep on using Firefox, as other browsers are even
| in a worse state.
| traveler01 wrote:
| I want to like and use Firefox. Seriously, I really do. But when
| will they fix the performance of the browser?
|
| They're spending devs time on useless crap instead of being
| improving the engine, which clearly needs improvements. For
| example, I wanted to send some thousands of pictures to Proton
| Drive (doesn't have a sync App yet) and tried doing it in
| Firefox. It literally started to take all the computer RAM (my
| computer has 32 GB) while with Brave it uploaded the entire thing
| without me even noticing in the computer performance.
| Ayesh wrote:
| I don't know the technical details behind this, but Firefox
| always felt slower in file upload front. It was very late to
| the directory upload feature that Chrome had (in mostly non-
| standard ways I don't doubt).
|
| It doesn't bother me to a point that I can't use Firefox, but
| for those who regularly upload files, I can totally see Firefox
| being a subpar experience.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I've noticed something similar with download speed; I
| accidentally discovered a while back that using wget to
| download the same file would run far faster than firefox.
| WallyFunk wrote:
| > It literally started to take all the computer RAM
|
| That's probably not Firefox, but the way Proton encrypts data
| client-side. The browser has to do a lot of heavy crypto
| operations. At least that's the case with Filen.io[0]. I was
| told by support to have a beefy machine since the desktop web
| app encrypts data on-the-fly before uploading to their servers.
|
| [0] https://filen.io/
| grangerg wrote:
| I used to wonder the same about Chrome. Try using a Chromebook
| with less than 4GiB RAM. You can handle 2 simultaneous
| tabs/apps---if you choose them well. It's due to this behavior
| alone that I never consider Chromebooks; by the time you find
| one with enough RAM to handle Chrome, you're in the price range
| of a "real" laptop.
| eis wrote:
| Shouldn't a post about a new release mention the version number?
| (It's 106)
|
| I really like Firefox from a usability and features point of
| view. Multi-account containers are fantastic! I want it to
| succeed. But a private browsing shortcut and colors don't excite
| me. I'd love to see improvements in speed and efficiency because
| FF is still behind the others for me. FF is also the only browser
| that frequently crashes. Submitted about a dozen stacktraces
| already so hopefully they'll figure it out one day.
| xg15 wrote:
| Nah. After all, we're in the world of evergreen software now,
| so there are no release numbers, only happy little surprises
| when some new feature suddenly pops up on your screen...
|
| /s
| chrisjc wrote:
| Better color/theme support would interest me if it extended to
| containers. I've searched but I never found a theme switcher
| that worked with containers. It would be nice to have a little
| more control over customizing the colors/themes based on the
| container you're current open on.
| ddplusdsr wrote:
| You can right-click -> remove the Firefox View icon, and the new
| private browsing branding can be styled with: #private-browsing-
| indicator-with-label
|
| Leaving you pretty much in the same spot than version 105 (with a
| new icon if you are on MacOS)
| bhhaskin wrote:
| Mozilla & Firefox stop trying to be a god-damned social movement.
| Just be a fucking browser.
| Fervicus wrote:
| Everything is a social movement these days. TV Shows, movies,
| games, apps, social media, news, ads. Can't even get a cup of
| coffee without getting some social uplifting messaging shoved
| down my throat.
| authpor wrote:
| but that was the plan... part of the great shift from freedom
| in software, to open source code.
|
| "is mozilla about open software? or was it about that old RMS
| (yuck) what was it? looked like a joke... gnu is not gnu?? wut"
|
| /angry-snark
|
| just trying to vent some frustration...
|
| edit: I actually believe that software should guarantee
| freedom, but I've understood that gnu's play failed, copyright
| is not the side of freedom of individuals, but on the side of
| freedom for corporations-as-individuals. my own ignorant
| opinion (because I'm just guessing) is taboo
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33248402
| nnopepe wrote:
| pls watch the minority empowering mozilla irl podcast
|
| firefox funding will decrease until viewership improves
| cptskippy wrote:
| Why do people get so worked up about messaging that isn't
| targeted at them? Mozilla is trying to gain broad appeal beyond
| mom's basement. There's a certain group of people that this
| message resonates with.
| jacooper wrote:
| And its failing at both.
| soundnote wrote:
| That group of people isn't terribly large. It's mostly
| terminally online wokelets, who are loud, but not a terribly
| large population.
| viridian wrote:
| Clearly not, based on browser trends over time. The real
| problem is that they aren't even able to keep the low hanging
| fruit (i.e. "Mom's basement" dwellers), let alone whoever
| this other audience is.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Why don't you give power users at the very least in about:config
| an option to disable ALL phoning home by Firefox upon launch and
| exit. As it stands even with all telemetry off Firefox is
| extremely chatty and I've had Mozilla developers tell me they
| have no intention to fix this.
|
| You can profile this yourself on macOS with Charles Proxy (GUI)
| or mitmproxy (CLI).
|
| Until this is fixed all I can do is roll my eyes when I see the
| incessant privacy marketing from Mozilla.
| mdaniel wrote:
| I realized while reading your comment they actually do have the
| _perfect_ button for "I wish to disable browser telemetry":
| the DNT checkbox
|
| Its whole premise is "I, as a user of this browser, do not want
| to participate in tracking activities." I don't see why mozilla
| should be exempt from that intention. I'd be some top shelf
| :chefs_kiss: if mozilla.org honored the DNT but the browser
| itself didn't
| altairprime wrote:
| The T in DNT stands for Do Not Track, not Do Not Telemetry.
|
| Telemetry and Tracking are not mutually exclusive; both _can_
| be implemented by software developers.
|
| Telemetry is unidentified software usage statistics from a
| random IP address somewhere on the Internet, generally
| without caring about _whose_ telemetry it is.
|
| Tracking is an attempt to identify _who_ is operating the
| software, in order to associate that software 's activity
| with specific human beings in a database.
|
| DNT is Do Not Track, which means "do not attempt to identify
| me" -- but I assume that Firefox telemetry typically isn't
| attempting to identify you in the first place, so making a
| statement about tracking with the DNT checkbox would not
| affect telemetry decisions.
| elashri wrote:
| While it is not a simple change, you can always modify things
| in about:config to turn off all (probably) telemetry on
| Firefox. The annoying thing is that you should keep updating
| the strings that is changing with updates (when they add or
| remove strings).
|
| Also you can keep an eye to updated to arkenfox user.js because
| while using it by default probably will break many websites but
| they keep track of privacy updates of Firefox.
| user3939382 wrote:
| That's the problem, even with every possible option disabled
| there is currently no way, even through about:config, to keep
| Firefox from phoning home at these points in its execution
| lifecycle.
|
| The telemetry settings they provided basically amount to,
| we'll phone home to Mozilla either more or less, depending on
| your settings.
| s_ting765 wrote:
| > Why don't you give power users at the very least in
| about:config an option to disable ALL phoning home by Firefox
| upon launch and exit.
|
| Biggest reason I refuse to use Firefox no matter how bad
| Chromium is. I sometimes use Firefox Focus for doing searches
| on my phone and the thing is always pinging mozilla services.
| Some of them location related. No way to turn any of these off
| on what is supposed to be an incognito browser.
| dont__panic wrote:
| You feel like Firefox doesn't respect your privacy, so you
| use Google's phone-home software instead? Sounds kinda like
| "Biggest reason I refuse to use weed no matter how bad
| methamphetamine is" to me. Unless you're using UnGoogled
| Chromium and blocking requests by IP or something.
| s_ting765 wrote:
| Mozilla's Firefox is the 'Google' of the FOSS world. Too
| big, too data (telemetry) hungry. They have even
| experimented with doing ads. I could go on and on.
|
| You cannot be preaching about privacy and refuse to provide
| a simple toggle to opt-out of all telemetry in your
| software.
|
| FYI I do use ungoogled chromium as my main browser.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| I find it hard to believe Chromium pings any less than
| Firefox. Would love to get more info on this.
| s_ting765 wrote:
| Believe it. Firefox is kind of unbeaten in this regard.
|
| There was a study carried out on what kinds of data leaks
| on browsers during launch [0] but Chromium specifically
| wasn't measured. I can only infer Safe browsing to be a
| leak point available on Chromium since it is shipped by
| default but I have it turned off (never needed it anyway)
| so I have not observed any pings related to it personally.
|
| [0]
| https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf
| insanitybit wrote:
| SafeBrowsing V2 only sends a partial hash to Google, only
| sending the full hash if the partial has a match. You can
| just read Chromium's whitepaper on their various features
| if you want to understand the privacy implications.
| vntok wrote:
| Here you go: https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/116
| 58588961766604...
|
| > What I found were dozens of requests, which loaded nearly
| 16 MB in data. Lets break down what I saw.
|
| > I also reviewed Google Chrome, for those interested: When
| I launched Google Chrome for the first time (and let it sit
| for a minute), 32 requests were made, and 7.26 MB of data
| downloaded.
|
| Presumably Chromium would ping even less than Google
| Chrome.
| insanitybit wrote:
| Raw numbers mean nothing. Lots of these requests are
| totally benign.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Is it possible to get a list of addresses and add them to a
| block list, in PiHole for example?
| cptskippy wrote:
| Yes, it's already in one of the Steven Black or Peter Lowe
| lists:
|
| incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org
| coldpie wrote:
| > As it stands even with all telemetry off Firefox is extremely
| chatty and I've had Mozilla developers tell me they have no
| intention to fix this.
|
| What data is being communicated? What about that data is
| harmful to you? (Genuinely asking for more information, not
| trying to convince you you're wrong.)
| freediver wrote:
| All telemetry at the very least transfers your IP address
| which is legally considered personal information. A browser
| can not therefore be considered privacy-respecting if it has
| telemetry turned on by default.
|
| Respecting users' privacy at a fundamental level is important
| for a tool that is our most intimate window to the web (a web
| browser) even if you personally have 'nothing to hide'.
| coldpie wrote:
| Can you please describe a theoretical attack on your
| privacy by Mozilla learning that your IP address launched a
| Firefox instance?
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| It's not Mozilla that learns about your IP address, it's
| all the hops between you and Mozilla. An encrypted HTTP
| request typially contains the following info:
|
| - source IP:port
|
| - source OS (through TCP fingerprints)
|
| - destination IP:port
|
| - destination hostname
|
| Now you have to consider where your packets may be
| diverted and who might want to do what with them.
| coldpie wrote:
| Okay. Can you please describe a theoretical attack?
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| 1. X sniffs my connection. 2. X learns my address uses
| Firefox on Linux. 3. X sells the data to Y, whom I never
| visit. 4. Y correlates the IP with Z's subscriber data,
| and adds Linux to my shadow profile.
|
| As the sibling said, the burden of proof is on them. They
| are the ones who push that on users when there's no
| technical need.
| coldpie wrote:
| Surely that same information is made available by
| visiting any website, no?
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Yes, except the attacker gets it without visiting the
| attacker's web site.
| coldpie wrote:
| You lost me. Why can an attacker do this to Firefox's
| telemetry, but not when I visit https://google.com/?
| zamubafoo wrote:
| It's sufficient to identify you since there is still all
| other tracking data any browser supplies as part of the
| HTTPs connection handshake [1].
|
| It's also not necessary to have Mozilla be the bad actor.
| Anyone who has access to the information in the future is
| a possible bad actor as they might be able to cross-
| reference the allegedly "innocuous" information with some
| future, more-pervasive data.
|
| ---
|
| [1] - https://github.com/salesforce/ja3
| freediver wrote:
| Burden of proof is not on the user. Burden is on Mozilla
| (and any browser vendor with telemetry ON by default) to
| prove that:
|
| 1) They are not misusing collected information in any way
|
| 2) They need it so badly that telemetry is ON by default,
| without the explicit consent of the user
|
| Both of these are simply addressed by having no telemetry
| by default and all browser telemetry being completely
| opt-in.
|
| Given that IP address is legally considered private
| information and Mozilla claims that Firefox is privacy
| respecting, becoming a zero-telemetry browser by default
| should be a no-brainer move to substantiate that claim,
| othwerise it is just empty words that further detoriate
| the trust in Mozilla.
|
| It should also be noted that every browser with telemetry
| ON by default (which is almost every mainstream browser)
| is also directly or indirectly monetized by ad-tech,
| which does not help their case at all.
| sfink wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to your point of view, but I disagree.
|
| Telemetry is a bit like DRM. Firefox strenuously avoided
| DRM for a long time, losing a lot of market share in the
| process, until it became clear that it could not stay
| relevant without being able to display DRM video. The
| pragmatic decision was either to (1) stay pure, forbid
| DRM, and disappear; or (2) give in and support DRM,
| accept that the battle was lost, and continue to survive
| in order to influence the battles that had not yet been
| lost.
|
| The same could be said for telemetry, though it has less
| impact in either direction (it causes less harm, and not
| having it is less of an existential threat). And we (I
| work for Mozilla) _did_ resist it for a long time, longer
| than was probably healthy for the market share, and
| eventually gave in. At least with telemetry it could be a
| somewhat principled capitulation--we are much more
| careful about avoiding tying together different measures
| that could be correlated to identify users, and we have a
| strict approval process when adding new telemetry (I 've
| gone through it several times).
|
| Telemetry is sadly necessary to stay competitive in
| today's landscape. For example, speed is the #1 reason
| that people report for switching browsers. Relying on
| either benchmarks or user reports for performance tuning
| simply isn't good enough. The signal is slow and
| massively lossy. We need to know what our actual users
| are experiencing, and whether a change had a positive
| impact on real-world usage or not. It's easy to come up
| with a change that improves benchmarks, at least a
| little. It's much harder to move the needle on what our
| users are experiencing. Without telemetry, we would make
| lots of changes that would overfit for benchmark
| behavior, adding complexity and producing very little
| benefit.
|
| The other important piece: opt-in telemetry isn't
| telemetry. The sampling bias results in _massive_
| distortion. Being able to say "this change improves
| performance *for users who have opted in to telemetry*"
| is mostly useless. Users who opt in are going to have
| wildly different hardware, on average.
|
| Opt out is much less problematic, even though it also
| introduces sampling bias, because in practice not that
| many people bother to opt out. It's definitely reasonable
| to argue that the opt out mechanisms should be simpler
| and more clear.
|
| Though at the end of the day, it's much more important
| that we collect telemetry in a way that does not
| compromise the privacy of people who don't opt out, and
| (imho) we're doing pretty well there.
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ gives a
| decent high-level overview.
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Data_Collection gives more of
| the nitty gritty detail than you'd probably want.
| freediver wrote:
| I appreciate your pesonal perspective as an employee of
| the company I used to admire a lot. It looks like we
| disagree on the fundamental premise
|
| To me, the golden age of tracking is over and the privacy
| of the user is the new gold standard. It doesn't matter
| that Firefox needs telemetry to survive (and the
| empirical evidence of Firefox still losing users left and
| right does not help that case), if it is going to violate
| someone's privacy over it.
|
| It also does not matter what its privacy policy is (and
| they can change), the moment Firefox transferred user's
| personal information, which is the IP address, without
| their consent, it took away something private from them,
| that can potentially be used in the future against them.
|
| Here is an analogy. Would you accept telemetry in your
| apartment or a house, that is built-in and enabled by
| default, without your consent? Would you freak out that
| it exists once you find out?
|
| The builder will then try to explain they use it only to
| improve homes they make, for example to understand what
| rooms you use and how, and that without it, they would
| not survive on the market because their main competitors
| are using it too. Would you care about that or you would
| seek to find an apartment elsewhere?
|
| The browser is no different. It is the most intimate tool
| we use in our daily lives. People are fed of our data
| being used without our consent.
|
| A privacy respecting browser simply can not allow itself
| to have telemetry by default. Meaning Firefox simply can
| not call itself privacy respecting if it is transferring
| user's private information without their consent, by
| default - no matter what the economic or business
| justification are. If a browser is choosing to have
| telemetry for economic interest, it loses the privilege
| to call itself privacy-respecting or 'a force for the
| privacy on the web'. Respecting privacy is digital, it is
| either 0 or 1, you can't be 0.7 privacy-respecting.
|
| Finally, I don't buy the argument that telemetry is
| helping FIrefox at all. All that telemetry for the last
| 10 years or so and Firefox is down to less than 5% market
| share. It lost 50 million users in the last two years
| alone.
|
| Perhaps Mozilla should consider becoming more user-
| centric instead and start listening to the users, instead
| of using telemetry. Go back to its roots of innovation
| and experiments, to the golden age of Firefox between
| 2005-2010 when we got Firebug, Ubiquity, Panorama and go
| back to product annoncements that excite user about the
| browser.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| The last half of your comment describes such a scenario.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Assuming they tag the browser install, that information
| could be used to track your location history. e.g. if you
| move from your home network to a store wifi.
| sfink wrote:
| From what I understand, Firefox _does_ tag the initial
| browser install in order to track the marketing channel
| the install came from, but after the first run it stops
| sending it. So no, it cannot be correlated with location
| history. (And if you grab Firefox from
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ it won't have
| the token.)
|
| You'll have to rely on your phone's OS stalk you by
| location. ;-)
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > What about that data is harmful to you?
|
| Arguments like these always reminds me of the story where
| some town had a population register that included religion,
| and then the Nazis invaded.
|
| You don't know how or when the collected data will be
| misused, whether by the original owner, a malicious third-
| party breaching their systems, or the government (and even
| somewhat-stable governments can quickly turn sour, see Russia
| or the US's recent issues on abortion for an example).
|
| Furthermore, at least in Europe, the GDPR mandates that all
| non-essential data collection must be strictly opt-in, so
| regardless of opinions, it's a law with which you have to
| technically comply (even though lacklustre enforcement allows
| offenders to get away), but doubly so if your entire selling
| pitch is based on privacy.
| godelski wrote:
| > Arguments like these always reminds me of the story where
| some town had a population register that included religion,
| and then the Nazis invaded.
|
| I agree that these questions often are asked by those being
| deceitful, but the reason that works is because it is a dog
| whistle. Something that hides in normal speech. But we
| can't presume that someone asking a question like this is
| in fact dog whistling. If we do, we only enable to
| whistlers because honest askers will be put off by
| pretentious and arrogant responses. It is better to answer
| in good faith until they show their true colors. Even if it
| is a dog whistle, others will read this public forum and go
| "why are they attacking someone who is just asking a
| question?" That gives them power. So let's be honest here.
| coldpie wrote:
| I agree, which is why I asked what data is being collected.
| If it's like, "a user launched Firefox version 105.0.1 and
| has Pocket disabled," I've got a tough time caring.
| Telemetry is genuinely useful information. But if it's
| like, "a user with IP 123.45 opened MyFavoriteReligion.com
| and spent 20 minutes at that domain" then it's bad news.
| So, I'd like to know what's actually being transmitted.
| sfink wrote:
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ answers
| that question, though admittedly it's not a quick answer
| that can be easily summarized. It's basically "a user at
| IP x.y.z.w launched Firefox version 105.0.1 and has
| Pocket disabled" where the IP is not collected other than
| in the server logs: "When Firefox sends data to us, your
| IP address is temporarily collected as part of our server
| logs."
|
| Actual URLs are treated _very_ carefully. The only ways I
| know that they could be leaked: (1) there is limited
| exposure via the SafeBrowsing stuff, and (2) if you crash
| then URLs could be swept up in the crash report and
| visible to privileged people at Mozilla. Or if you
| manually submit a profile and don 't anonymize it
| (there's a checkbox to submit URLs that is checked by
| default), but you have to go out of your way to do that.
| There very well could be other ways, but browsing history
| is treated as very sensitive data for both legal and
| moral reasons.
|
| Personally, I would not trust Mozilla to be unable to
| answer the question "has this IP address ever used
| Firefox?", especially if under subpoena. The IP is
| temporarily in the server logs, it's used for coarse
| location information, etc. I doubt anyone is all that
| interested in asking that question, though.
| EE84M3i wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow your example, because any telemetry
| event will always include the IP as it's required to
| establish a connection.
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| Do you have any source for that story? I also heard of it
| but don't know if it's made up or not and couldn't find a
| source
| jjulius wrote:
| I was as curious as you, and found this:
|
| >While the fact that the census 1939 inquired Jewish
| ancestry is a well known fact in historiography its
| significance for the identification of individual Jews in
| the context of the Shoah has been disputed. The thesis
| argues that a population register introduced in 1939 -
| the People's Card Index (Volkskartei) - was essential in
| the identification of German Jews. Consulting new sources
| it shows that the collation of the census data on
| ancestry with the Volkskartei was ordered in March 1941
| to facilitate the identification and localisation of
| German Jews in the context of the deportations.
|
| https://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/95623/
| bbarnett wrote:
| My understanding, is it wasn't a census, but just info at
| local town halls.
|
| The purpose was only so you could be buried where you
| wanted, in a preferred cemetery, Catholics in a Catholic
| cemetery for example, people wanted, and cared about
| that, back then.
|
| But if you died without relatives... the town had to
| know.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| So, the information that killed people was actually one
| that people overlook even in hindsight?
|
| That puts the comments around here saying "what use can
| they make of X and Y?" on a new light.
| WallyFunk wrote:
| If you don't want to configure stuff, LibreWolf[0] has all the
| phoning home / telemetry stuff blocked out of the box.
|
| [0] https://librewolf.net/
| dont__panic wrote:
| Even better, you can manage LibreWolf updates via homebrew on
| Mac, and it doesn't harass you about new versions. If you
| browse HN routinely, you end up seeing the Firefox updates
| anyway, which is a good reminder to update LibreWolf. I've
| been really annoyed recently by software that doesn't respect
| my decision to update on my own schedule, or software that
| doesn't even let me make that decision at all in the
| settings. LibreWolf is a real diamond in the rough of web
| browsers these days.
| nervuri wrote:
| You can disable all phoning home. Have a look at
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making...
|
| Having a single setting that does all of this would indeed be
| nice.
| leeoniya wrote:
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js
|
| https://gist.github.com/ryandaniels/33e443bb401dde665fce15dd.
| ..
|
| but yes, a single setting is necessary if you want to also
| opt out of any _future_ telemetry settings without always
| having to update your prefs.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| They just revert prefs don't they, add buttons back to your
| toolbars, etc.
|
| Or have they reformed?
| kotlin2 wrote:
| One privacy feature I'd really like is kind of like HTTPS
| everywhere, except it's TLS 1.3 w/ SNI encryption everywhere.
| mehlmao wrote:
| Firefox does offer an HTTPS only-mode, which tries to upgrade
| HTTP to HTTPS and warns you before connecting if it's not
| enabled.
|
| Settings > Privacy & Security > HTTPS-Only Mode
|
| As far as I know, there are still no practical attacks against
| TLS 1.2.
| kotlin2 wrote:
| The issue I'd like to solve is that, even with TLS, you still
| leak the SNI as part of the handshake. So your ISP can tell
| you're connecting to google.com even if you're using HTTPS.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Wouldn't the ISP still know that you're connecting to
| Google, however?
| kotlin2 wrote:
| Your ISP would know the IP address, but not specifically
| that you were connecting to google.com.
| grangerg wrote:
| Even without rDNS, they're almost certain to know of at
| least one DNS name that goes with the IP address you're
| connecting to. Even if not, they can
| label/categorize/group it by ISP and/or approximate
| location.
| eli wrote:
| What would happen when you click a link to a site that doesn't
| support that?
| kotlin2 wrote:
| You'd get a warning and be asked to proceed. Similar to how
| https everywhere works.
| btdmaster wrote:
| Does anything support Encrypted Client Hello given its draft
| status?
|
| I got it back as unsupported when testing (yes, I would prefer
| to test on something other than Cloudflare but I couldn't find
| any): https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/encrypted-sni/
| kotlin2 wrote:
| I guess ESNI was deprecated and removed from Firefox in favor
| of ECH (just found that out now). CloudFlare supports ESNI,
| but not ECH. So that feels like a step backwards.
| bobmaxup wrote:
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/https-only-prefs/
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1101896
| dekatron wrote:
| Is a desktop shortcut and dark theme really an "upgrade" to
| private browsing?
| mawise wrote:
| I saw the screenshot for Firefox View and at first I thought they
| were bringing back RSS! How slick would it be for Firefox View
| not to just show you the list of recent sites you've visited, but
| give you a preview of the _current content_ on those sites using
| RSS!
| perlgeek wrote:
| I've long wondered why there wasn't a command-line option to open
| an URL in a new, private window. Hope this comes with this new
| desktop button.
| coldpie wrote:
| The following worked for me on macOS. Found it at
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/CommandLineOptions
| firefox -private-window https://google.com/
| bhearsum2 wrote:
| This should work, and has been there a very long time!
| perlgeek wrote:
| You are right, it does. Somehow I tested it some years ago
| and for some reason it didn't work back then, or I was stupid
| in the past. Thanks!
| drooopy wrote:
| In case anyone's interested in removing View:
|
| about:config
|
| and then search for
|
| browser.tabs.firefox-view
|
| and set to false.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| What I want to know is have Firefox fixed the show-stopper bug
| with their implementation of Private Windows yet ?
|
| In Firefox, if I login to something in one Private Window, and
| open a second Private Window, my session is maintained (e.g.
| login to Protonmail on one, I open a second private window and
| I'm already logged in). So I assume Firefox is sharing cookies
| and whatnot between Private Windows.
|
| Brave doesn't do this. If I login in one Private Window in Brave,
| the new Private Window presents me (correctly) with the login
| screen.
|
| I've been through my Firefox settings with a fine-tooth comb and
| cannot identify anything that might be causing this. Hence I
| assume it is a bug.
|
| (And yes, I mean new _window_ , not a new tab)
| hn92726819 wrote:
| I think it's pretty clearly not a bug. Chrome behaves the same
| way. Private session is cleared when all windows are closed.
|
| I am curious though. What happens if you drag a private tab
| into its own window? Is state shared with the original private
| window? How is this communicated to the user? And what if I
| drag a different private window tab into the new private
| window? Does each tab retain it's original window?
|
| Edit: you might be interested in the Firefox add-on Temporary
| Containers. You can open a new tab in its own container that
| isn't shared with anything else
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Edit: you might be interested in the Firefox add-on
| Temporary Containers. You can open a new tab in its own
| container that isn't shared with anything else
|
| Thank you for the suggestion but....
|
| "Containers are disabled .... when Never Remember History is
| selected in your privacy settings."
|
| Which is a bit of a shit limitation. ;-(
| Ayesh wrote:
| If it's isolation you are really after, you can just use built-
| in Containers feature. It isolates session/cookie data, and
| there are extensions that you create temporary containers for
| highly configurable boundaries.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I don't know the answer to your question but the work-around I
| found was to use an add-on [1]
|
| [1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-
| con...
| jrootabega wrote:
| It's a miscommunication/misalignment of expectations. Private
| windows have privacy (more than non-private windows, at least),
| but they do not have privacy or isolation from each other.
| Unless you use add-ons, the isolation boundary is the profile.
| You need multiple profiles to keep them from sharing with each
| other.
|
| The main problem then, IMO, is that it is not well-supported
| for a user to use template profiles or automation to manage or
| create multiple profiles with common settings. Copying profile
| directories to a separate user account (on platforms that allow
| that kind of thing) is the closest strong approach I can think
| of.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > It's a miscommunication/misalignment of expectations.
| Private windows have privacy (more than non-private windows,
| at least), but they do not have privacy or isolation from
| each other
|
| Ok fine, but why can't it be a checkbox option in preferences
| ?
|
| Why can't I tick a box that says "isolate private windows" ?
| jrootabega wrote:
| I would like that option as well. The closest Mozilla will
| officially let you get is multi-account containers.
|
| But it's just not a bug, and I think it should be clear
| that it will never be a feature.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| Chrome and Edge behave the same way as Firefox.
|
| You should think of it as a _private session_ , not a _private
| window_.
|
| I doubt Firefox would want to change from the behaviour shared
| by other browsers.
| fotta wrote:
| I came here looking to see if this was fixed too. This isn't
| really a "bug" per se as the text on the Private Window says it
| does this. But I agree with you it's the biggest issue with
| Private Windows. I always check if I have one open now if I
| want to use one and have started using Safari Private Windows
| more now because each one is isolated.
| soundnote wrote:
| Just tested in Brave, and it behaves as you say Firefox
| behaves. One Proton login shared between two private windows.
| ris58h wrote:
| > Hence I assume it is a bug.
|
| You probably should report it to Mozilla
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > You probably should report it to Mozilla
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
|
| Probably. But I've never had much luck getting any traction
| on previous reports even when I've made sure to produce great
| supporting detail to enable reproduction.
|
| I suspect you need to know the right people to get traction
| on Mozilla bugs. Everyone else just seems to get lost in the
| swamp.
| jabiko wrote:
| Isn't this normal? I just tested it in Chrome appears like
| sessions are across private windows there as well.
|
| So I guess its just an extra feature of Brave.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| God this marketing is exactly why I still use Chromium. Not only
| is it faster but it is just as secure and private as Firefox
| without all the BS and cult.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'd love to be able to use Chromium/Chrome/anything Blink-based
| but the lack of Tree Style Tab makes it unbearable every time I
| try it.
|
| This one extension is the only reason I'm still using
| Firefox... And the profiler sometimes works better than
| Chromium's as well, but seldom I use it.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Vivaldi does have something approaching tree style tabs:
| https://vivaldi.com/features/tab-management/
| capableweb wrote:
| Seems to not be tabs in the style of a tree, which is
| exactly what I'm using _Tree Style Tab_ for ;) Vivaldi just
| does grouping which is not enough for me. Also should be on
| the side rather than keeping the tabs below /above the
| content.
|
| See the following image for an example of a tree of tabs:
| https://imgur.com/a/fEWp9h0
| soundnote wrote:
| Vivaldi does have vertical tabs. Not a tree, though.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Got the upgrade a few days ago. I am loving it.
|
| I reside 12 hours a day within the private window itself and the
| ui looks quite nice now. The purple and all. Keep it up
| mdaniel wrote:
| Have you seen the browsing containers^1, including the self-
| destructing ones? I'm 100% not trying to lobby you out of
| private browsing, just wondering if you were using the mode
| that best fit your needs
|
| Also, be aware that _(unless something has radically changed)_
| all private windows share state with one another, which to the
| very best of my knowledge isn 't true for the browser
| containers
|
| 1: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-
| conta... and https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-
| containers#readme
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| yes. i use that too.
|
| here is a stupid habit i formed years ago.
|
| when i start my machine, the first firefox window i open is
| the normal window + containers for email and some other
| website.
|
| i open private browsing window.
|
| then i go about with my day. any website i have to sign in,
| like hn, the passwords are saved in firefox so it is just a 2
| step process usually. sometimes some website asks for an otp,
| email or mobile which is a pain but fine.
|
| i can access youtube or whatever, amazon or something else
| and once a window has too many open tabs, i create a new
| window and pick up the work from there.
|
| i like how i can close the private windows and everything
| gets logged out automatically. No stored prefs, no history,
| no records on my machine, no recomendations say on youtube
| based on my previous search history or browsing history. Same
| for amazon. I can search for any darn thing all day and i
| don't sign in unless i have to actually order something and
| if i do, i sign in, order and sign out.
|
| This has served me well since 2010 at least and firefox with
| ABP+noscript at first but then ublock origin....
|
| i am not really concerned about "isp tracking" or google
| analytics, i have a pihole installed which takes care of most
| of the things.
|
| >all private windows share state with one another yes. my
| understanding is that is a feature because as i said, i can
| open youtube and continue the thread if i open too many tabs
| (unless i want to close all of them) . the upside of this is,
| unless one window is open "ctrl+shift+t" works on firefox but
| not on chromium based browsers and private window. that is a
| 100% useful feature because i do not rely on browser history
| for my surfing so if i make a mistake, ctrl+shift+t and i am
| back.
|
| edit: i log in to HN 3-4 times a day because of this.
| sometimes once, sometimes 4 times, depending. that is not a
| bother
| margarina72 wrote:
| ff: hey, we got themes!
|
| me: `guiset gui none`
| yewenjie wrote:
| hello fellow Tridactyl user
| reidrac wrote:
| When I read this in the what's new page:
|
| > Also, private windows have been redesigned to increase the
| feeling of privacy.
|
| What does it mean? It doesn't make me feel very confident that
| Mozilla know what are they doing any more.
| aasasd wrote:
| My small wish is that FF on Android supports an intent that opens
| a URL in a new private tab. That way I'd be able to selectively
| open pages from HN, Reddit or other apps in private tabs--by the
| way of Tasker or Automate.
|
| I looked a bit through FF code, and there's an intent to open an
| empty private tab, but not an address. Alas, with my lack of
| knowledge about data flow in an Android app, I'm not of much help
| so far.
| mdaniel wrote:
| I'm _super cognizant_ of the /dev/null that is bugzilla, but
| have you opened an issue about that? My stance is that I don't
| have influence over whether they ignore me, but I have more
| righteous indignation if I did, in fact, open a ticket and then
| they ignored me
| aasasd wrote:
| The Android Firefox, formerly known as Fenix, has a separate
| tracker on Github. However I wouldn't say that it's radically
| divergent in habits--more of a different take on the same
| problem that Mozilla has very limited resources and its own
| vision, whereas the hordes of users have thousands of their
| own wishes. E.g. the Fenix' tracker finally clears out stale
| bugs, at least occasionally, instead of letting them ferment
| for many years.
|
| Anyway, personally I came to terms with the fact that open-
| source devs aren't my bitches, and just accept with gratitude
| what they offer to the world, while abstaining from polluting
| the trackers even further. However, I'm not above a hopeful
| whisper into the noosphere.
| sfink wrote:
| You could also try https://connect.mozilla.org which is the
| official location for ideas like this (and it sounds like a
| great idea to me!) There's definitely no guarantee that it
| won't still be ignored, but at least there's a mechanism
| for popular ideas to get some attention.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| There are things about Firefox that need attention; more UI bling
| isn't one of them.
|
| Also, the Private Browsing upgrade appears to be just a theme
| change and a button. Most of the article is nothing to do with
| Private Browsing, so the title of the post is incorrect.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Whoever edited the title of the HN submission somehow made it
| even more misleading than Mozilla did. The original HN title
| was the same as the Mozilla article: "Privacy online just got
| easier with today's Firefox release"
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221018134430/https://news.ycom...
| Ptchd wrote:
| standup wrote:
| The "privacy" provided by so-called private browsing mode is just
| a smokescreen considering how much device fingerprinting is going
| on. And widespread surveillance of the Internet backbone not just
| by intelligence agencies but now private organisations like Team
| Cymru.
|
| It would be better if we spent the resources on a next generation
| anonymity network to replace Tor, or some kind of alternative
| data transport like radio or satellite, which can still be used
| by small niche communities of free speech activists, for
| example... A one way data broadcasting system, sending compressed
| text only, provides near complete anonymity for those receiving
| it. However as it necessitates buying receiver hardware, it
| doesn't get very much traction.
| WallyFunk wrote:
| > The "privacy" provided by so-called private browsing mode is
| just a smokescreen
|
| And to add insult to injury, browsing artifacts are sometimes
| remembered in Windows' pagefile and other parts of the OS. Even
| on Linux, if your distro cares to add stuff to swap, it will
| dump browsing sessions in plaintext to your hard-drive,
| incognito/private mode or not. This is why people need to use
| TailsOS[0] if they're really concerned about not leaving any
| traces.
|
| [0] https://tails.net/
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That's not really on the application, though; "the OS can
| write your RAM to disk" is outside of Firefox's control.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Actually I have to add caveats to that. It looks like you
| _could_ tell the OS not to swap your RAM using mlock
| /mlockall, but with significant caveats around overcommit
| that are a little over my head but which I suspect would be
| painful for a modern web browser to try and operate with.
| kotlin2 wrote:
| Firefox at least tries to restrict fingerprinting. For
| instance, you can force websites to require permissions to
| access canvas data.
| hn92726819 wrote:
| I haven't used chrome in years..does chrome really not allow
| limiting canvas data?
| andrepd wrote:
| Firefox includes anti-fingerprint measures, and uBlock origin +
| advanced mode + all scripts blocked by default helps a lot.
| Also first-party isolation.
| EbNar wrote:
| hbn wrote:
| > Last year we launched Firefox Colorways, a new desktop feature
| that allowed our users to express their most authentic selves and
| bring joy while browsing the web
|
| > "'Independent Voices' are the voices of the past and present
| that create a better future," said Keely Alexis. "I chose this
| [analogy] as my inspiration for the collaboration because it
| feels authentic to me but it also aligns with Firefox and the
| vision that we can make the world better, on the internet and
| beyond."
|
| Jesus, can you just say "we've got themes?" No one is going to
| remember Firefox as the next MLK Jr because they let you turn the
| window chrome orange.
| uni_rule wrote:
| God what a non-issue.
| [deleted]
| soundnote wrote:
| I spontaneously developed cancer and projectile vomited in an
| impressive arc on reading their marketing copy for this stuff.
| Easy theming is nice, but holy fuck. Talk about saccharine.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I remember being able to add a background to Firefox' UI a
| decade ago. Maybe they've removed it and are now celebrating it
| as a new feature despite it actually being a casualty of the
| browser's never-ending devolution.
| Macha wrote:
| They actually still support legacy themes, persona themes and
| colorways themes last I checked, so three generations of
| themes. I'm surprised with how much they like to deprecate
| stuff
| [deleted]
| smesla wrote:
| > bring joy while browsing the web
|
| Why am I seeing people using the word "joy" everywhere lately?
| And why is theming a web browser bringing it to anyone?
| chowells wrote:
| Blame Marie Kondo. It's just modern self-help vocabulary.
| stoplying1 wrote:
| Does it still have the cursed text with it that says "going
| away in (some month soon)".
|
| It's so stupid and confusing and baffling that I want to rage
| quit Firefox with this as the absolute last straw. Like wtf,
| you're gonna take back my color in a few months? Just pull the
| upsell for it? Why the hell am I having to wonder about any of
| this? Why on God's green earth was this done instead of
| spending any effort getting a SINGLE bit of unity among the
| Bookmarks, Downloads and Add-ons panels, all of which should
| behave at least rougly similarly. (Because, to be clear, I had
| a Firefox theme that was imperceptibly similar to this months
| ago before this Colorways upsell)
|
| I don't get it. I do not do not do not get it. And now they're
| screwing around with another extensions menu that takes space
| on the toolbar but doesn't de-dupe with the extension buttons
| themselves (I actually can see where this Might be going, but
| again, zero clear comms about it).
|
| I'm the poster boy for an annoying Firefox advocate and I'm
| increasingly looking at selling my laptop to build a
| woodworking shed because it all feels hopeless.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Why on God's green earth was this done instead of
|
| You are not alone. I'm starting to think something is wrong
| with me because I don't give an iota of a damn about any of
| this. I have watched people just get sucked into the rabbit
| hole of browsing for themes for the their browser while
| accomplishing exactly nothing after being overwhelmed and
| paralyzed by the choices. (Kinda like trying to find
| something to watch on streaming platforms)
|
| Me, I have the default desktops from the OS, mobile OS, etc.
| I have too many windows covering my desktop to even care what
| it looks like. Yes, that's me, and I'm not even close to
| being everyone else. If this is the thing that convinces
| people to stop using Chrome, then fine. Spend time making the
| UI customizable to the point it looks like a MySpace
| background because that's what 99.9999% of people not me
| want. I'll do me, you do you.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| > I have watched people just get sucked into the rabbit
| hole of browsing for themes for the their browser while
| accomplishing exactly nothing after being overwhelmed and
| paralyzed by the choices
|
| When done in the physical world this is called decorating,
| I guess theming is just a digital version of hanging a
| print from Ikea on the wall. When I do this sort of thing,
| I usually do accomplish something, because I like looking
| at pretty things, doing so makes me happier, making my
| things prettier helps me feel a bit happier when I look at
| them. Whether that has value depends on perspective, though
| I feel if it doesn't then that perspective is a pretty
| dismal one. It's also a way to make an abstract and alien
| thing feel a bit more familiar and "one's own", and
| computers are plenty alien and intimidating for a lot of
| people.
| soundnote wrote:
| The moronic thing about these new "colorways" is that the
| company still refuses the sane default: Mostly grayish or
| very, very lightly tinted UI with a decently dark,
| contrasting tab bar. All these new themes have a lot of
| color outside the tab bar, but credit to Mozilla that the
| "soft" ones still manage more experienced contrast than
| their white-on-white abomination of a light theme.
| forsythe_ wrote:
| I think the entire point is that Mozilla has depended on
| people "like you" to stay relevant for years and knows
| that's not a great long-term growth strategy compared to
| appealing to the general populace who cares about things
| like customizable themes.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet
| because of its identity politics. It's actually
| addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common
| computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but
| w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of
| societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy
| works.
|
| Given that a huge number of Chrome users probably come
| from societies that actively despise this kind of stuff,
| it might actually backfire.
|
| Lucky for them I guess most people outside of HN probably
| never even read that marketing material, so I think it's
| more of a circle jerk for the marketing dpt.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet
| because of its identity politics. It's actually
| addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common
| computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but
| w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of
| societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy
| works.
|
| I'm pretty sure Chrome is the most common browser on the
| planet because Google abused its market position in
| search and mobile (Android) to shove it down people's
| throats, helped along by bundling it with other
| installers. Everything else was secondary.
| insanitybit wrote:
| Mozilla could have gone to OEMs like Dell and said "We'll
| pay you to pre-install Firefox" but they didn't, Google
| did. I wonder if that would have cost more or less than
| the yearly bonuses the CEO takes?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Has any non-ad driven piece of software ever used this
| inorganic growth hack? Admittedly, it has been a long
| long time since I've suffered using an OS burdened with
| this kind of malady, but it was definitely where I
| learned about how apps are not as "free" as one might be
| led to believe. It was these types of apps and the damn
| browser toolbar installs that were dark-UI/hidden
| installed when installing a completely different app.
| insanitybit wrote:
| I don't know who has or has not used that approach, but
| if you're going to say "Chrome is popular because it did
| these things" I'm going to wonder why Mozilla didn't do
| those things. I remember the first time I downloaded
| Chrome was because I got some item in Runescape for doing
| that. Why didn't Mozilla do that?
|
| Mozilla has hundreds of millions of dollars _at minimum_
| , very likely billions. It's absurd that they're failing
| so miserably, and it's obscene that their CEO has taken
| increasingly large 8 figure bonuses while the company has
| floundered under her leadership.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >I'm going to wonder why Mozilla didn't do those things.
|
| Self respect?
| insanitybit wrote:
| Is that Mozilla's mission? Self respect? I thought it was
| a more open web.
| andrepd wrote:
| > instead of spending any effort getting a SINGLE bit of
| unity among the Bookmarks, Downloads and Add-ons panels
|
| One thing I'd actually like is a reasonably powerful history
| browser/manager. I want to look for websites I visited in a
| custom time period, how many times I visited a website last
| month, or in January, or whatever.
|
| It's all very poor as it stands: a very simple interface with
| no power-features whatsover, a fixed set of time periods to
| view (today, yesterday, last month), and a simple total visit
| count and timestamp of most recent visit.
| forsythe_ wrote:
| Counter argument: is it actually worth getting this upset
| over themes?
|
| Yes, the marketing behind it is stupid because it attempts to
| correlate some deeper symbolic meaning to the act of choosing
| colors for your web browser. But as a fellow Firefox
| advocate, I would rather Mozilla plays around with these sort
| of corny marketing concepts as a way of gaining market share
| rather than rely on Google's patronage ad-infinitum.
| stoplying1 wrote:
| I don't care about marketing. I care about being fucking
| confused what it means that a colorized theme of Firefox is
| "going away". I'm still confused and everyone seems to just
| dance around it. Wtaf!?
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I used to use a colorway I liked. But every new Firefox
| installation I added to my Sync profile would erase the
| color scheme, and once Firefox removed their "limited-time
| colorway" I couldn't even install or sync the same theme to
| my newly setup computers. So I gave up on installing
| colorways on _any_ of my computers.
| bityard wrote:
| I would rather Mozilla put their time and money into
| actually improving on the things they _used to_ to better
| than Chrome and IE, like building a vibrant and diverse
| community, listening to their users, focusing on giving the
| user control over their own browsing experience, and being
| first to market with privacy features.
|
| It feels to me like they just ran out of either the will or
| the engineers to do the hard innovative stuff and are just
| trying to turn Firefox into their own UX art project at
| this point.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| > ... listening to their users, focusing on giving the
| user control over their own browsing experience ...
|
| To play devil's advocate, that may well be exactly what
| they're doing. I've always used Firefox, but I'm aware
| that I'm not a typical user andmy interests likely don't
| align with mass adaoption.
|
| I've said it before when Firefox has released new
| features that the HN crowd aren't interested in - there's
| not enough of you (us) for your opinions on [ themes ] to
| matter. And if this is a quicker way to grow adoption
| then it's a good thing in the long term.
|
| I don't have access to statistics to qualify whether or
| not this is the case and contribute to making it harder
| to evaluate by turning off telemetry and never using
| Google ads, so I can't exactly complain.
| throwaway82390 wrote:
| New colorway themes are a limited time offer because that
| will create seasonal excitement and users will be more likely
| to customize their Firefox theme if they know the other
| options will be taken away from them in a few months. Or at
| least that's product management's hypothesis for increasing
| user engagement.
| Macha wrote:
| So we're going to use FOMO to increase the interaction rate
| of a feature. I'm sure that looks great on the PM's
| quarterly review when they can point out how many users
| used the feature, but is it actually better for the users
| who were uninterested in the feature?
| [deleted]
| Ptchd wrote:
| saint-loup wrote:
| I observed the change in tone in Mozilla blog posts, from
| experts talking about their craft to marketspeak.
|
| Even posts I should be professionally partial to, like those
| about UI design, rub me of the wrong way. It's often full of
| "creating delightful experiences" and "streamlining a seamless
| flow".
| authpor wrote:
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Former Mozilla engineer here.
|
| > I observed the change in tone in Mozilla blog posts, from
| experts talking about their craft to marketspeak.
|
| I think I can explain what you're seeing here. The original
| blog.mozilla.org was run very much like the old "MSDN blogs"
| from Microsoft (think Raymond Chen's The Old New Thing.)
|
| When I started at Mozilla a decade ago, my manager told me to
| file a request for my own space on blogs.mozilla.org -- which
| was denied. I was told that this was because blog.mozilla.org
| was being refocused as the "official" Mozilla blog.
|
| People who already had accounts on there were grandfathered
| in, which is why some people (Nick Nethercote's blog come to
| mind) still had blogs on there. Obviously as those developers
| moved on, those employee blogs have gradually died off.
|
| These days, if you want technical content, you'll need to
| look at hacks.mozilla.org for "officially sanctioned" pieces,
| or look at the blogs that publish to planet.mozilla.org for
| developer blogs (though much like blogging in general, there
| is much less traffic on there compared to a decade ago).
|
| TL;DR: The focus of blog.mozilla.org is primarily corporate
| and marketing at this point.
| reitanqild wrote:
| Firefox used to be so extensible that what is developer tools
| in every browser today started in Firefox as an extension,
| Firebug (yes, I am aware it is slightly more nuanced, but it is
| close enough for this argument.)
|
| Also for a long while one of my preferred FTP programs was just
| a Firefox extension.
|
| Yes, I think Google must be punished harsher for Chrome than
| Microsoft was for IE, but Mozilla couldn't have done much more
| to eradicate their market share without losing plausible
| deniability ;-)
| dylan604 wrote:
| capableweb wrote:
| As long as it's FTPS and it works for the intents and
| purposes you use it for, what's wrong with using it?
| dylan604 wrote:
| FTPS !== FTP which is what the comment I replied to
| stated.
|
| If we just get to make up stuff, then what a fun day this
| will be
| 0x457 wrote:
| You sure that you're not confusing SFTP and FTPS? FTPS is
| absolutely FTP.
|
| Also, FTP is still used a lot, unfortunately.
| dylan604 wrote:
| So you're telling me that if I enter ftp://blah to
| something expecting a secured connection that it'll work
| just fine no problems? Then I have to ask what the point
| of the 'S' really is.
|
| >Also, FTP is still used a lot, unfortunately.
|
| Um, like, yup. Please see my original comment on my
| feeling on this.
| 0x457 wrote:
| No, what I'm saying FTPS is just plain FTP over TLS
| connection, there is nothing special about it. When you
| talk to a web server, do you refer to the piece of
| software that does communication for you "http client" or
| "https client" or "http and or https <version> client"?
|
| What I'm saying: You're being needlessly pedantic. When
| people say FTP, they might mean SFTP, it might talk about
| FTPS or plain FTP. If I read original comment correctly,
| it is about FireFTP, it talks all 3 commonly used flavors
| of FTP. Notice how it's called FireFTP and not
| FireSFTP/FTP/FTPS...
|
| Me, personally, always specifically clarify that I'm
| talking about plain-text FTP when I talk about plain-text
| FTP because of how bonkers it is.
| reitanqild wrote:
| Haven't used it for years (5 years since last I can
| remember and that was close to a one off).
|
| I used it only as an example.
|
| Oh, and BTW I always tried to use SCP or SFTP where
| possible the last few years.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| How else would you deploy your k8s cluster?
| Sebb767 wrote:
| TFTP over X.25, obviously.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Does anyone remembers when Firefox was called Phoenix and it
| was born as the lightweight alternative to Mozilla and it was
| already highly configurable theme wise on basically calculators
| for today's standards?
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/community/files/2013/05/2002_phoeni...
| causi wrote:
| _Jesus, can you just say "we've got themes?" No one is going to
| remember Firefox as the next MLK Jr because they let you turn
| the window chrome orange._
|
| Meanwhile Firefox Android is still a slow, unstable garbage
| pile. How many years now since Mozilla began developing
| exclusively for headline writers instead of their users?
| sabellito wrote:
| I use FF Android every day, including watching videos, and
| haven't noticed the "unstable garbage pile". Are you being
| hyperbolic?
| [deleted]
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| On Firefox Nightly, I randomly get tabs that break and show
| an interactive version of the _previously_ switched-to tab
| until you restart the browser, dragging a text handle to
| the left of a Hacker News comment crashes the entire
| browser, etc.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Breaking news, unstable version is unstable.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| Then stop using nightly.....
| GordonS wrote:
| Nightly is the only build where you can use extensions,
| which IMO is _the_ reason to use FF on mobile :(
| mFixman wrote:
| I'm using extensions on regular Firefox 106 for Android.
| cute_boi wrote:
| If I am correct we can only choose few extensions
| including ublock in ff(except nightly?
| sfink wrote:
| Sounds like you're having problems with WebRender? Maybe
| it's unhappy with your graphics card or something.
| Definitely worth filing a bug and attaching your
| about:support.
|
| I used to have much more minor issues that are somewhat
| similar to what you describe, but they've been fixed for
| the last year or so. (I run Nightly all the time, on
| Linux, and generally have remarkably few issues with it.)
| _wolfie_ wrote:
| Well it's useable, I use it as well, but definitely worse
| then before this "new" version. And I want the extension
| support back.
| godshatter wrote:
| Install Fennec using F-Droid, it's firefox with more
| extensions than what firefox for android allows. Are they
| ever going to re-enable other extensions on firefox
| android? Firefox used to be synonymous with "awesome list
| of helpful extensions".
| Georgelemental wrote:
| I've had the opposite experience, switched to Firefox on
| Android after the new update because of the better
| performance and UI. Limited extension support is
| annoying, but if you get it from F-Droid or use the
| nightly version, you can enable a hidden setting that
| lets you install any extension you like.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Have you compared it to mobile chrome? Chrome feels so much
| faster.
| zeppelin101 wrote:
| Me too. It's my main browser on Android for years now and
| it works great.
| causi wrote:
| Have you actually tried a different one lately? I tried
| Vivaldi and was astonished at how much snappier it is. No
| more weird crashes on launch. No more Desktop Mode button
| that breaks if you hit the Back button. No more failed
| attempts to dismiss a tab because using your phone in
| landscape mode made it adjust the swipe length to six
| damn inches long.
| zeppelin101 wrote:
| I haven't tried other browsers lately. I agree that FF is
| less snappy compared to Chrome, for example, but I have a
| fast phone. I haven't experienced those issues you talk
| about - maybe it's just my luck! I particularly like the
| ad-blocking abilities of FF.
| causi wrote:
| I still use Firefox for high-risk browsing like porn or
| piracy, but for regular browsing the adblocking built
| into Vivaldi or Brave works just fine.
| zeppelin101 wrote:
| Interesting that you'd bring up Vivaldi. I think I tried
| it on my phone a few years back and it worked OK. But on
| a PC or Mac, it's the most bloated and slow piece of
| software I've seen. Which is a damn shame, because it has
| a lot of unique features.
| causi wrote:
| I agree fully. It's quite nice on mobile, though. I
| especially like being able to automatically hide the
| status bar while in landscape mode to maximize vertical
| space. There's also the advantage that, as a Chromium-
| based browser, the Assistant command "read aloud" works.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| > "'Independent Voices' are the voices of the past and present
| that create a better future," said Keely Alexis. "I chose this
| [analogy] as my inspiration for the collaboration because it
| feels authentic to me but it also aligns with Firefox and the
| vision that we can make the world better, on the internet and
| beyond."
|
| Hooli is about people. Hooli is about innovative technology
| that makes a difference, transforming the world as we know it.
| Making the world a better place, through minimal message
| oriented transport layers.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Sounds like Zombo.com
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| For those out of the loop:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZmpYxbBDQw
| odiroot wrote:
| There's a great Polish saying for this occasion: a fish rots
| from the head down.
| echelon wrote:
| There's truth in Mike Judge's caricature. It's because you
| don't get paid as much to say "we've got themes".
|
| Classic example (pdf warning) :
|
| https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-
| arnell...
|
| That PDF cost Pepsi millions of dollars.
| b3nji wrote:
| Gavin always said it best.
| pluc wrote:
| I love Firefox but the hubris is takes to think a few themes
| for your app is a betterment for the world is hard to fathom
| rasz wrote:
| Not hard at all when you look at salaries and allocation of
| funds.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| the entire colorways branding reminds me so much of that
| Silicon Valley scene it's hilarious. That said the themes are
| pretty good though, in particular the matte versions.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GtF_zpJc_w
| Aardwolf wrote:
| In Windows 3.11 you could choose all the colors you wanted for
| every part of the window rendering (and it wasn't called
| "limited edition" or whatever there either, and naming it
| limited edition in FF as in the image caption in the article
| doesn't inspire confidence to rely on this feature long term).
|
| Nothing recent comes close to that, even Linux desktops make it
| hard to choose colors or how visible your scrollbars are if you
| prefer to actually see and use scrollbars (sometimes you can
| edit CSS files that get overwritten again each time you update
| your system).
| dkdmso wrote:
| KDE definitely still lets you theme like crazy, I believe
| including the scroll bar settings
|
| The CSS comment sounds like Gnome. I used Gnome for fifteen
| years and got tired of what you're complaining about and
| switched to KDE eight or nine months ago and haven't looked
| back
| [deleted]
| bertman wrote:
| >[...]Firefox Colorways, a new desktop feature that allowed our
| users to express their most authentic selves[...]
|
| I'd like to express myself and say that I just want a secure and
| privacy-respecting browser that gets its priorities straight.
| jacooper wrote:
| That is honestly brave.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| Priorities like mentioning PDF editing before sickly
| doublespeak about...theming.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Do people think it's one person implementing Theming, PDF
| editing, and Privacy Mode protects; and that he just needs to
| re-prioritize his backlog?
|
| Why can't developer of difference capabilities contribute in
| different ways? I'm a competent developer but I will never be
| kernel module, crypto, or netcode competent; does that mean I
| should just forgo contributing to anything?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| If it's implemented by volunteers then yeah let them work
| on whatever they want. If it's implemented by paid
| employees at Mozilla then it's up to them what devs they're
| hiring, and if they spend their finite budget on devs
| reimplementing theming then that's totally on them.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| I think that someone wrote the entire spiel about the life-
| changing aspects of changing some colours of a program
| without realising how plastic it sounds, when they could
| have written it to be read by real people, and have a grasp
| of perspective. Visuals and aesthetics do play an important
| role but people want their software to do its job: be a
| useful tool.
| Y-bar wrote:
| I kind of like the colourways, but the way they present it is
| quite a bit over the top. Just call it themes and be done with
| it.
| elementalest wrote:
| From Mozilla's point of view its probably that people might
| get confused between the old and new themes and wonder why
| all the highly customisable themes we use to have no longer
| work. So we have to have a new the colourways name so Mozilla
| can market the 'new' feature and sidestep the problem.
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