Firefox 41 Released With Many Small Improvements

[Lltp]

Actually, if you come back a bit, you'll see that this tendency to implement OSs in web browsers is due to two main observations:

1) HTTP/S are trusted and fortunately, these are what the web browser speak;
2) Brainless sysadmins have been blocking everything except these protocols/ports for decades in many places.

As a result, HTTP/S is your default highway to the outside. At first, only browsers could speak HTTP/S so that created a huge momentum in the "web" realm. Today, people that were hired a that time are senior devs and teachers. They keep on squeezing everything they can into web browser...

The problem is now that web browser can do so much (and much much more) that their attack surface became huge, yet they are OSs not designed to be OSs... In that sense, "being a web browser" is not well-defined. Most of the crap (be it with good or bad intentions) comes from "features" that are used today to "browse the web". If JS was less powerful and people kept creating dedicated clients, this would have not been the mess that we have today... But having dedicated clients also require a good package manager which Windows still lacks today... Android does not have this problem, mainly because it's harder to type a url than to clic on an icon.

[smitty3268]

Why does this irrelevant VOIP/AV program have to even be included in the browser in the first place? This pisses me off, it's a web browser, not a fucking computing environment.

Well, the VOIP program comes down to a couple hundred javascript lines, I imagine. I mean, it's practically nothing.

The core of it is the WebRTC spec, which Google and Mozilla are both pushing hard.

Is that the bit you don't like - WebRTC? Or is just the fact that you can see a button?

[horizonbrave]

IIRC, Firefox Hello is so integrated with the browser (instead of being an addon) because in order to get acceptable performance on lower-end PCs and FirefoxOS phones, it has to use some features not available to addons (or at least bypass some of the addon's API calls and such). I would, however, like the option of disabling it like I could any other extension.

and should also "pocket" really be integrated? I mean, it's good concept and service but WHY not to leave it as an extension. I may start to check if Web/Epiphany is good enough for switching over.. by the way I don't mind adblocking

[The Walking Glitch]

Well, the VOIP program comes down to a couple hundred javascript lines, I imagine. I mean, it's practically nothing.

The core of it is the WebRTC spec, which Google and Mozilla are both pushing hard.

Is that the bit you don't like - WebRTC? Or is just the fact that you can see a button?

WebRTC has no business being in a web browser. What's so hard about prompting to open an external program? But this is just one small gripe I have, as Luke_Wolf alluded to.

[The Walking Glitch]

because Mozilla and Google both want to push "cloud computing" basically instead of treating the web browser as well... a web browser.

THIS is the real problem. Cloud computing is a bullshit scam for the majority of us. Only a few people and organizations actually benefit from "cloud computing," in this context.

[The Walking Glitch]

Actually, if you come back a bit, you'll see that this tendency to implement OSs in web browsers is due to two main observations:

1) HTTP/S are trusted and fortunately, these are what the web browser speak;
2) Brainless sysadmins have been blocking everything except these protocols/ports for decades in many places.

As a result, HTTP/S is your default highway to the outside. At first, only browsers could speak HTTP/S so that created a huge momentum in the "web" realm. Today, people that were hired a that time are senior devs and teachers. They keep on squeezing everything they can into web browser...

The problem is now that web browser can do so much (and much much more) that their attack surface became huge, yet they are OSs not designed to be OSs... In that sense, "being a web browser" is not well-defined. Most of the crap (be it with good or bad intentions) comes from "features" that are used today to "browse the web". If JS was less powerful and people kept creating dedicated clients, this would have not been the mess that we have today... But having dedicated clients also require a good package manager which Windows still lacks today... Android does not have this problem, mainly because it's harder to type a url than to clic on an icon.

I pretty much agree. I really hate how shitty webdevs do everything in javashit instead of html&css like they are supposed too, (use the proper tools for the fucking job) but instead I get stuck being forced to use web pages that each consume 500MB of RAM; I'm looking at you youtube+chrom(ium). I've gotten to the point, where if I cannot use your website without JS, and cannot enable you website with 2 domains in NS, I move right on, because your sad excuse for a website is only going to slow down my computer and lock up my web browser.

EDIT: Would be nice if I could quote multiple people in a post...

[bakgwailo]

So just more bloat, and no actual improvements? No fixes for the huge memory leakages, no fixes for their shitty JS engine stalling the whole browser whenever an app opens a connection? Instead profile pictures for a shitty program that has no business being in a FUCKING WEB BROWSER! Firefuck is seriously hosed...

Trolololo, there were huge memory improvements, especially when using adblock plus. Also various developer improvements/etc. FF doesn't seem to leak memory on any of my boxes (excluding pages with flash, of course).

[halo9en]

They should just demote Firefox Hello to a extension so people can uninstall it instead of forcing it upon everyone. And focus on the core functionality.

+1. Or maybe release an alternative, stripped-down version for those of us who want a non-bloated browser (e.g. http://sourceforge.net/projects/lightfirefox/)

[Luke]

Right now, installing a new version of Firefox on my systems requires firing up with Wireshark running and an about:blank homepage, then finding and blocking every last URL it tries to phone home to. Some cannot be blocked in about: config and require blocking in /etc/hosts! I don't use the browser for anything that counts until I get a clean startup with no connections made that I did not initiate.

Debian and other distros really should look at offering browsers based on older LTS releases that get security patches but no new "features" that so many of us want nothing to do with.

I do not know if I will ever be able to install this version. Every last one of my extensions including Canvasblocker has to be ported over first, I won't connect to the Internet without protection against canvas-based tracking. At that point I can back up my .mozilla directory, (packages are always backed up and can be rolled back), install it, pull all the extensions, and if one or more extensions won't install or does not work roll back to Iceweasel 38. Same if it comes up unique in Panopticlick, though I suppose it would be common by that time.

If they are ported over to Chrome but never signed by Mozilla , I suppose I could pull the Firefox source and build it with the signature check, Firefox Hello, Pocket, and the newtab ad "feature" all deleted from the source, and all phone home URLS not only deleted but the code that runs them stripped out too. That's the beauty of open-source. They can have their monetized binary for the appliance masses on Windows 10, I can have my own version with every antifeature all the way removed. Can't be too much harder than hacking and building compiz. First up would be changing the signature check to always return "true," followed by a second build with that code all the way gone, tested with a Chrome extension not signed by Mozilla and the resulting .mozilla directory thrown away just in case. Once that is working I can start killing the rest of the antifeatures one by one. Firefox Hello goes Goodbye, Pocket gets ripped off the back, the new tabs window code goes too. Every phone home URL gets permanently hung up on.

If I could have any browser I wanted it would be an armored version of Rekonq ported to kf5, with all the features of NoScript baked right into its JS control, with the Disconnect block list always on or simply added to /etc/hosts to be 127.0.0.1'd out. Also always-on would be replacing all Canvas images sent back with a bit of garbage from /dev/urandom, and as it is Webkit it could pretend to be older Chrome or Safari-or just always falsely claim to be the default browser on a never-used Windows 10 box.

[log0]

Wow, it seems they've finally fixed the disabling of media autoplay (and it only took them four years...)!