Firefox 81 Released With Security Fixes, PDF Viewer Enhancements

[down1]

Yeah the vaapi-on-x11 shipped in FF 80, but with a bug that made it inoperable. Gentoo (and probably some other dists) backported the fix to the FF 80 branch though. Unfortunately the DMA-BUF requirement in Firefox means we won't be using vaapi with nvidia proprietary drivers any time soon. I just wish I didn't use GPGPU for work.

Does 81 fix the VAPPI stuff?

[skeevy420]

First I heard they lost non-"recommended" extension support, thus I delayed the update.
Then I heard they even deleted the tab reorder function, then I will never "update" the Firefox for Android until it is fixed.
I also heard it don't even retain my browsing session/password/tab opened, so I really don't know if I will ever "update" it anyway.

I prefer my desktop and only use my phone when absolutely necessary so I don't have any extensions on my phone and I don't think that I have even used the tab reorder function. I mainly use it because it syncs passwords with my desktop Firefox since I use randomly generated passwords and crap like "af58d29dfh04DkeAEC" is hard to remember. The small handful of sites that I need to use on the go work just fine with vanilla Firefox so I'm happy enough with it.

But I can see how things like that could really piss you off if you rely on Android.

The Android 4 to 4.4 era is when I quit relying on Android for anything more than basic communications and music. I realized that nothing is guaranteed to work after 6 months and that they'll add and remove stuff at a whim which leads to a less-than-stellar experience. Google changes Android 98 API, apps like Firefox update in a manner that pulls years old features from Android 95 and earlier. Google sucking at LTS with anything at all that's public-facing shouldn't be a real shocker to anyone. Their record speaks for itself.

[skeevy420]

They're constantly asking for UI/UX feedback on Twitter and Github.

I'm perfectly happy with it after changing that setting. I'm not one to complain that much when I don't agree with a default settings choice. If I can change the default to something that I like then I'm fine. That's anything, not just Firefox.

[M@GOid]

Does 81 fix the VAPPI stuff?

At last for me it does. Video playback while using the acceleration is very stable. I'm using a AMD card.

[pal666]

pdf support is sore point of firefox. and i don't mean forms, i mean basic rendering is broken. probably all resources are spent on rust rewrites

[ix900]

I don't mind it. However, I did not like the update a couple of weeks ago that put the address bar on the bottom. My first 30 seconds of use was all "WTF happened to muh browser?!?!" and then I opened the settings menu and fixed it.

I changed it to top at first as well but later tried it at the bottom and after getting used to it (which doesn't take long) it seems to be better and don't like it at the top anymore. So maybe you should give it a go instead of being set in your ways.

[GruenSein]

pdf support is sore point of firefox. and i don't mean forms, i mean basic rendering is broken. probably all resources are spent on rust rewrites

Never had a single problem with it. At least for most scientific journal publications, it is working fine for me.

[skeevy420]

I changed it to top at first as well but later tried it at the bottom and after getting used to it (which doesn't take long) it seems to be better and don't like it at the top anymore. So maybe you should give it a go instead of being set in your ways.

I exaggerated the 30 seconds part. I gave it and honest shot, but I found it difficult with it being right next to the auto-correct bar on SwiftKey. Something about all of it all clustered in one place triggers my dyslexia making the URL, predictions, and randoms letters swap with each other, but this is still a 50/50 accessibility and user preference for me. I prefer it at the top because that's also where it is on Windows and Linux. Unity in design across platforms leads to a better user experience.

[pal666]

Never had a single problem with it. At least for most scientific journal publications, it is working fine for me.

i have to switch to chromium on like every second pdf. firefox even helpfully says at the top of the page that it couldn't render it correctly

[M@GOid]

Never had a single problem with it. At least for most scientific journal publications, it is working fine for me.

While I personally also never have a problem with it, keep in mind that (AFAIK) only the basics of PDF were made opensource. The more feature rich stuff is still proprietary and is not uncommon that documents made, for example, in Adobe Acrobat, can have problems on opensource PDF readers.