Firefox 92 To Try Again With AVIF Image Support By Default

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Firefox 92 To Try Again With AVIF Image Support By Default

Mozilla is trying once again to enable AVIF image decoding support by default within the Firefox web browser. AVIF is the promising image file format based on using AV1 in the HEIF file format...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-92-AVIF-Trying-Again

[andyprough]

Since last year Google Chrome has fully supported AVIF images

That's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Firefox is a web browser. Chrome is a keylogger and ad-slinger, and a nation state surveillance tool. Totally different goals and purposes for those two projects.

[lamka02sk]

That's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Firefox is a web browser. Chrome is a keylogger and ad-slinger, and a nation state surveillance tool. Totally different goals and purposes for those two projects.

While I agree, it is not only that, it is also the incompetence of some Mozilla employees. They should be making the browser, not trying to solve and finance political shit.

[Turbine]

That's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Firefox is a web browser. Chrome is a keylogger and ad-slinger, and a nation state surveillance tool. Totally different goals and purposes for those two projects.

Do you have any evidence or are these baseless claims?

[M@GOid]

That's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Firefox is a web browser. Chrome is a keylogger and ad-slinger, and a nation state surveillance tool. Totally different goals and purposes for those two projects.

No offense intended, but that is a lame excuse. Mozilla have its fair share of bloat included, valuable functionality removed, and contrary to what its fans say, they do collect info about you too, with most of it enable by default at install, just like Chrome. And they do offer services that need a good eye on the fine print too.

And while Mozilla like to pretend they are the saviors of the Internet privacy, their board of directors are letting developers go while they maintain their salaries fat and good. All of this disguised as a "foundation".

[kpedersen]

They should be making the browser, not trying to solve and finance political shit.

I disagree. They should absolutely waste their time with politics. Because every time they do touch the browser's code, they make it a little worse each time.

Chrome and Firefox are such scum. It is embarrassing that the industry don't have better and yet spend all their time using web browsers.

[andyprough]

Do you have any evidence or are these baseless claims?

Search for the 2020 Trinity College research "Web Browser Privacy: What Do Browsers Say When They Phone Home?" by Douglas J. Leith. On DuckDuckGo, it will be the 4th search result - a pdf copy of the study.

The study has many examples of behavior by Chrome that most would consider keylogging. For example, the default autocomplete search behavior sends almost every letter to google as it is typed, and the browser is individually tracked, even across browser restarts. In some other cases, Google tracks users across browser re-installs.

Chrome sends text to www.google.com as it is typed. A request is sent for almost every letter typed, resulting in a total of 19 requests. Each request header includes a psi value which changes across fresh installs but remains constant across browser restarts i.e. it seems to act as a persistent identifier for each browser instance, allowing requests to be tied together.

(pg. 13)

Regarding nation-state surveillance, these programs and their use of Google data is well documented in Edward Snowden's revelations and others since then. Historical data points include the PRISM program and MUSCULAR, and other NSA programs to grab billions of personal records through their backdoors into google and other services. I don't think we know what the current NSA backdoor programs into Google are called. You can probably imagine what the Chinese government is probably doing with whatever access they have to this data.

[birdie]

As far as I understand Google is keen to push WEBP 2 instead of AVIF while VVC in HEIC is a much better option.

[Imroy]

I'm waiting for JPEG XL myself.

[arun54321]

Jpeg xl is much better than avif. They should enable it on release builds.