Firefox 63.0 Available With WebExtensions On Linux Now Run In Their Own Process

[M@GOid]

The previous developer was as strange to you as the next will be.

The problem is that you are given up trusted code from Mozilla to go with a random guy. This is not increasing security. And the more functionality Mozilla removes from the browser, more need to go out and trust your browser with third party add-ons. This is a decrease on security, not increase. And when Mozilla decides they will also remove support for live bookmarks from add-ons, you will kiss goodbye to live feeds on the bookmark bar.

And that is just the beginning of the problems. You have code that used to run inside the browser, now it will be a add-on that will increase the memory consumption and decrease stability, since is not as much tested as it was before.

I already seem where that road goes. Gnome users know very well. Is not a happy place.

[higuita]

They decided to remove the option that allows you to choose that you don't want Firefox to check for updates.

There are many things that firefox (or even all projects) do that i do not agree, but this one i agree!
Browser are complex and a open door to the computer is any security hole is found. We all know that we can not trust users to update their software, most people do not care/understand/know, they will get infected, lose data or sustain crashes and attack other computers. No! the default must be that the system auto-updated to fix any problems found. All major apps do auto-update for some reason!. ALL modern browser that takes security in account do auto-update

Normal users need this default, but people that understand how things work can still choose, just because the option is not there doesn't mean that it does not exist.
The fact that you do not know where it is make me thing that you do not really understand the consequences of not update firefox. I do recommend you to keep updating it or if you really do not want to update, use the ESR version (and keep the update on!), you still get the same browser for many months, but still get security updates.

If you decide that you know it all and that everyone else are stupid (trump, is that you?!), you can use the about:config ->app.update.auto

As for you parents, do what i did, migrate then to linux, fine-tune the permissions, install all the needed software. Done, they can browser the web, manage photos, documents, but fail to install or even get a virus. Distro can do auto-upgrade or even you via remote access. Stop trying to fix windows, switch from it!

[higuita]

Yeah I know, there are a bunch of them. But I would prefer not to use another plugin by another third party on my browser, for security/stability reasons.

I recommend you to go read this about the removal of the live bookmark... i was also a RSS user, but reading the list i do understand why:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-to-remove-support-for-built-in-feed-reader-from-firefox/

Of course i would love that mozilla added a better RSS support to the browser, but after looking to the RSS plugins, i could replace the live bookmarks with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...don/livemarks/ to have the exact old behavior. As long as mozilla adds the possibility for add-ons to replace features less used by "normal" users, i have no major problem with it, if there is demand, sooner or later there is a add-on for it

[dungeon]

Firefox 63.0 is notable for Windows desktop in that there's no more user freedom and the user is now too stupid to take decisions for himself.
They decided to remove the option that allows you to choose that you don't want Firefox to check for updates.
Congratulations to Firefox's developers for making it the Windows 10 of browsers.
Who the fuck cares about what the stupid user wants, right?
Welcome to a plethora of toolbars, popups, notifications reminding you to upgrade to the latest version.
What if the latest version is crap and I don't want it ?
What if Microsoft buys Firefox and I don't want it ?

I wonder how do the stupid developers think about the following use case:
I installed Firefox on both my parents computers...
On each of their computers there is Windows 7 with 2 accounts:
1. Danny (my account) -> Administrator account
2. <Name> (where <Name> is their name) -> standard account
Besides the above configuration, I also installed Deep freeze, which froze the C:/ (system) partition to a point that I chose so it will make it even harder for them to break the OS.

Now, if one of my parents want to install / update a program, they can't because of the standard account limitations.
Let's say that they pass somehow past this step, they still can't install / update a program because of the Deep freeze limitations which will undo every installation changes.

So for what the fuck is good to have all these annoyances to my parents about upgrading Firefox when it's impossible for them to do it ?
This already happened in the past until I learned how to turn it off from the settings page.
Now they got the brilliant idea of removing the option completely.

Helpful guys here... please don't remind me that there are still possible to do this by editing some text files in some location.
I don't have the time to jump through hoops on each Firefox install to make it obey my decisions. I don't have time for this crap.
I will just ditch Firefox from both my computer and my parents computers and I will probably install ungoogled Chromium until something better comes along.

Commercial things are like that, they are designed as stupid enough for what average stupido could handle Well, there are organizations who aim to Fight Stupidization , just search for it

Joke a side, for most people these things goes as if you like it - use it, if you don't, then - don't use it If you have enough freedoms not to use what you don't like - that is not big problem, isn't it

What if the latest version is crap and I don't want it ?

If latest version is crap and you don't want it, then they will accuse you how you are against the progress as they see every shit as progress, just because, well... they are working on it

They will also try to convince you how just because they are working on it and as they have right to work, you shouldn't complain And so on...

Who the fuck cares about what the stupid user wants, right?

Right. On a more advanced levels of right to work, they might mark you even as an terrorist... so take care there

[jacob]

They say Firefox is free software and yet they remove one more freedom
I wonder how many freedoms you need to remove from a software until you can call it not free anymore?
Of course, I Forgot to mention that Firefox for Linux is even worse because it's updated with system updates.
So on Linux Firefox never had this freedom to remove it now.
But of course this is not Firefox fault that the system updates user's programs and you are always forced to use only the latest versions.
So I think that posting here makes people realize that Firefox started sucking on othe OSes too, not only on Linux and that Firefox doesn't give more freedom than Chrome let's say anymore.

Software freedom is a matter of licensing and access to the source code. It doesn't mean that the software must necessarily support a particular option, although I agree that forced updates inherently suck. But at any rate both Firefox and Chromium respect Stallman's Four Freedoms while Chrome doesn't at all.

As far as functionalities go, Firefox has the Containers, which, for me, are THE killer feature that AFAIK no other browser has. On the other hand, in the latest release of Chrome, Google finally dropped all pretence to care about user's privacy and personal preferences. Another issue I see with Chrome is that it's slowly but surely becoming the new IE6, with a growing list of web applications that are designed.to only work in Chrome, and Chrome being designed to keep it that way.

[slalomsk8er]

Firefox 63.0 is notable for Windows desktop in that there's no more user freedom and the user is now too stupid to take decisions for himself.
They decided to remove the option that allows you to choose that you don't want Firefox to check for updates.
Congratulations to Firefox's developers for making it the Windows 10 of browsers.
Who the fuck cares about what the stupid user wants, right?
Welcome to a plethora of toolbars, popups, notifications reminding you to upgrade to the latest version.
What if the latest version is crap and I don't want it ?
What if Microsoft buys Firefox and I don't want it ?

I wonder how do the stupid developers think about the following use case:
I installed Firefox on both my parents computers...
On each of their computers there is Windows 7 with 2 accounts:
1. Danny (my account) -> Administrator account
2. <Name> (where <Name> is their name) -> standard account
Besides the above configuration, I also installed Deep freeze, which froze the C:/ (system) partition to a point that I chose so it will make it even harder for them to break the OS.

Now, if one of my parents want to install / update a program, they can't because of the standard account limitations.
Let's say that they pass somehow past this step, they still can't install / update a program because of the Deep freeze limitations which will undo every installation changes.

So for what the fuck is good to have all these annoyances to my parents about upgrading Firefox when it's impossible for them to do it ?
This already happened in the past until I learned how to turn it off from the settings page.
Now they got the brilliant idea of removing the option completely.

Helpful guys here... please don't remind me that there are still possible to do this by editing some text files in some location.
I don't have the time to jump through hoops on each Firefox install to make it obey my decisions. I don't have time for this crap.
I will just ditch Firefox from both my computer and my parents computers and I will probably install ungoogled Chromium until something better comes along.

My 80+ years old granddad broke a vanilla Windows in under 3 months and after the 5th reset to the backup I had enough.
It was too much work to keep Windows from breaking, this is why I switched him to Ubuntu years ago and never had to fix the installation again.
As a bonus, all this updating business is taken care of by the maintainers of the distribution.
The only downside is that I have to update his GPS on my gaming PC because the map updating tool is Windows only.

[Spazturtle]

All this argument about them removing the option to disable updates and it isn't even true. You can use the following settings to disable updates:

app.update.auto - false
app.update.enabled - false
app.update.silent - false

Although you would have to be an absolute idiot to disable updates and I will laugh at you when the FBI raid your house because your computer was part of a botnet distributing child porn.

[Weasel]

I would strongly advise against that. Pale Moon and ESR both lack a sandbox for content process. Gecko is a very old and crufty code base, with lots of sloppy code written by people who had no business going anywhere near C code running in a browser. There ARE major security vulnerabilities in this code base that are uncorrected. At least with Firefox you get that piece of crap sandboxed and isolated. If you run that Pale Moon basically the browser process is completely unconfined.

Cause it's so hard to confine it yourself.

[slalomsk8er]

All this argument about them removing the option to disable updates and it isn't even true. You can use the following settings to disable updates:

app.update.auto - false
app.update.enabled - false
app.update.silent - false

Although you would have to be an absolute idiot to disable updates and I will laugh at you when the FBI raid your house because your computer was part of a botnet distributing child porn.

Thank you for the flags.
Documentation can be found by a simple search on http://kb.mozillazine.org/App.update.silent

As stated, it makes a lot of sense if the user is not to be bothered with the updates as they are managed for him.
It's commendable if the vendor does it in this time and age but sometimes it needs to be done by the company or family support staff or by the distribution.

[Delgarde]

I want to avoid a situation where you are using 10 plugins, you memory consumption is higher than Chrome, the browser is slower than it used to be, because you are trying to retain resources taken away by people who are into the same strange cult that the Gnome developers frequent...

Problem is, the feature was only being used by something like 0.01% of their users... so keeping it was increasing the memory usage and slowing things down for almost every single one of their users. It's a wonder they didn't drop it years ago...