Why you SHOULD be using Firefox

Associate
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I rolled back to an older version a while ago as i had an issue with the latest Radeon one on my rx580. Can't remember the issue, so fix one thing, break another :p That's normally what i do with the GPU drivers. Looks like the latest one is from August now, so i'll give that a go and reenable hardware acceleration after.
 
Man of Honour
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Not quite sure what is going on but after updating to latest version my muscle memory key combinations which load a page from the URL drop down aren't always working - it seems to go to the correct one as I start typing but then at a certain point a key input is generating a different list and so the last key input goes to a different link to what I'm intending. I'm guessing it is reordering by some different rule set such as pushing suggestions or something :( but I'm going through the motions too fast to see what it is.

I've got all the search suggestions stuff, etc. turned off.
 
Soldato
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V94 out that finally includes fission aka site isolation.

New

  • With 94, you’ll find a selection of six fun seasonal Colorways (available for a limited time only). Now you can find a color to suit (or lift) your every mood. Fun fact: Did you know we have more daily users with color themes than dark or Alpenglow on Beta? With Firefox 89, 32% of users clicked through to customize their color theme. And that was just on the first day! We decided to introduce these new Colorways to give our users more to love.
  • Firefox macOS now uses Apple's low power mode for fullscreen video on YouTube and Twitch. This meaningfully extends battery life in long viewing sessions. Now your kids can find out what the fox says on a loop without you ever missing a beat…
  • With this release, power users can use about:unloads to release system resources by manually unloading tabs without closing them.
  • On Windows, there will now be fewer interruptions because Firefox won’t prompt you for updates. Instead, a background agent will download and install updates even if Firefox is closed.
  • To better protect all Firefox users against side-channel attacks such as Spectre, we’ve introduced Site Isolation. We’ve got your back...errr...side!
  • We’re rolling out the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension with Mozilla VPN integration. This lets you use a different server location for each container.
  • Firefox no longer warns you by default when you exit the browser or close a window using a menu, button, or three-key command. This should cut back on unwelcome notifications which is always nice--however, if you prefer a bit of notice, you’ll still have full control over the quit/close modal behavior. All warnings can be managed within Firefox Settings. No worries! (More details)
  • And now, Firefox supports the new Snap Layouts menus when running on Windows 11.
Fixed

  • We’ve reduced the overhead of using performance.mark() and performance.measure() APIs with a large set of performance entries.
  • Plus, we’ve modified paint suppression during load to greatly improve warmload performance in Site Isolation mode.
  • You’ll also notice a small reduction in Javascript memory usage. With this release, you’ll notice faster Javascript property enumeration as well.
  • We’ve also implemented better scheduling of garbage collection which has improved some pageload benchmarks.
  • This release also sees reduced CPU usage during socket polling for HTTPS connections.
  • Additionally, you’ll notice faster storage initialization.
  • We’ve also improved cold startup by reducing main thread I/O.
  • Plus, closing devtools now reclaims more memory than ever before.
  • And we’ve improved pageload (especially with Site Isolation mode) by setting a higher priority for loading and displaying images.
  • Various security fixes
Enterprise

  • Enterprise users now have more control over Firefox deployments with the availability of our MSIX package on Windows platforms.
You’ll also notice various bug fixes and new policies have been implemented in this latest version of Firefox. See more details in the Firefox for Enterprise 94 Release Notes.

Developer

Developer Information

Community Contributions

With the release of Firefox 94, we would like to thank all the developers who contributed their first code change to Firefox in this release, 5 of whom were brand new volunteers! Please join us in thanking each of these diligent and enthusiastic individuals, and take a look at their contributions:

  • bvandersloot: Bug 1671182 - Remove "cache" feature from Clear-Site-Data
  • colin.cazabet: Bug 1619312 - Highlighting all occurrences of a selected token, Bug 1654257- Images with incorrect mime-type won't appear when Network is filtered with "Images"
  • Ben: Bug 1656651 - Improve the management and reporting of the pausing of RSS feeds.
  • Hanna Jones: Bug 1723989 - Printing modal animation is displayed even when the show animation is switched off on Windows
  • Noah Pesta: Bug 1699593 - Remove default icon styles from info-pages.css .title class
  • Shaoting Huang: Bug 1712370 - Rename --panel-banner-item-warning-icon-bgcolor variable
 
Soldato
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V94 out that finally includes fission aka site isolation.

  • With 94, you’ll find a selection of six fun seasonal Colorways (available for a limited time only). Now you can find a color to suit (or lift) your every mood. Fun fact: Did you know we have more daily users with color themes than dark or Alpenglow on Beta? With Firefox 89, 32% of users clicked through to customize their color theme. And that was just on the first day! We decided to introduce these new Colorways to give our users more to love.
yep good use of resources right there, it's not like firefox doesn't have themes or anything....

  • Firefox macOS now uses Apple's low power mode for fullscreen video on YouTube and Twitch. This meaningfully extends battery life in long viewing sessions. Now your kids can find out what the fox says on a loop without you ever missing a beat…
does windows have something similar?
[*]On Windows, there will now be fewer interruptions because Firefox won’t prompt you for updates. Instead, a background agent will download and install updates even if Firefox is closed.
oh joy more junk running in the background I don't want... not to mention backdoor tracking of my usage etc. Not to mention I might not want to upgrade straight away...

[*]Firefox no longer warns you by default when you exit the browser or close a window using a menu, button, or three-key command. This should cut back on unwelcome notifications which is always nice--however, if you prefer a bit of notice, you’ll still have full control over the quit/close modal behavior. All warnings can be managed within Firefox Settings. No worries! (More details)
will be checking settings as soon as it's loaded, I find the lack of warning stupid and have always disabled it due to the fact I had the damn browser closing wen I didn't want it to.

Oh some settings for a change...Enable "Confirm before closing multiple tabs" in settings to re-enable this.
 
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Man of Honour
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oh joy more junk running in the background I don't want... not to mention backdoor tracking of my usage etc. Not to mention I might not want to upgrade straight away...

Hopefully that is optional or FF is going straight in the bin.

EDIT: Looks like it is optional - good - at least they aren't as ******* stupid as Microsoft.

On some systems and/or for some users it is a good option to have but on my main desktops absolutely not.
 
Soldato
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Since I updated W11 yesteday (KB5007262), Firefox has been a bit of a trashfire - takes an ages to load pretty much every website.

EDIT: Appears that Bitdefender was causing some issues. Have reverted to Windows Defender and all is well. Will reinstall in a few weeks maybe.

EDIT2: Or DNS over HTTPS settings and Cloudfare as DNS.
 
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Soldato
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21,778
Has google search now started using a more resource intensive animated rendering technique ?
made a search (just the word cricket) and was presented with usual search reults overlayed on a canvas with animated fireworks, after which an icon remained WTF

now searching in reddit for a ublocko filter

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mrk

mrk

Man of Honour
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Nope, the fireworks etc happens from time to time when an event is going on or some other thing and you get it on search results etc. Resource intensive? If you are browsing on a potato sure, on anything remotely modern? Certainly not!

2R9Y8vn.jpg

No fireworks on the search I did just now though.
 
Soldato
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No fireworks on the search I did just now though.

as I subsequently discovered google call them easter eggs ...
but - I just don't want this frippery with my searches - eg I've used ublockO to - block the autocompletion on google searches, which are usually wrong,
nobbling some of the large advertising images that frequently populate results too.

.. not sure that google don't de-prioritize results for mechanism to defeat them
 
Caporegime
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45,167
You can disable/remove new features but the way they are enabled by default on new builds does tend to be annoying and put some people off - they'd be better off having a button that highlighted after new builds which either launched a wizard or a quick menu or both where you could see highlights of new features and decide if you wanted them.
I remember when they removed the loading bar thing on the bottom of the screen and you had to use a mod to add it back on....

firefox is one of those "we think it should be like this, so that's how it is."

it's like what microsoft did with skype.... they tried to make it like tiktok generation friendly or something and everyone just hated it but microsoft know best....

Alienate your userbase to try and capture a share of someone elses.

then wonder why people stop using your product.

what was the old saying? "different strokes for different folks" ?
not one size fits all


still using firefox here though but only because I'm resistant to change, I do have Edge set up with my passwords etc but for some reason keep opening firefox
 
Soldato
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just swapped back to Firefox, i really liked Brave no issues their but wanted to try somthing different, so tried vivaldi omg the odd user experience bugs there... Great features terrible support.
found a bug in 5 minutes reported it with 100% reproduicblity To be told its not a bug because somone else could not reproduce it.

Deleted Vivaldi,

thing i miss from Chrome varients is Grouping tabs WITHOUT an extension
 

V F

V F

Soldato
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just swapped back to Firefox, i really liked Brave no issues their but wanted to try somthing different, so tried vivaldi omg the odd user experience bugs there... Great features terrible support.
found a bug in 5 minutes reported it with 100% reproduicblity To be told its not a bug because somone else could not reproduce it.

Deleted Vivaldi,

thing i miss from Chrome varients is Grouping tabs WITHOUT an extension

This is the thing I despise a lot about software developers. Always have because a bug they claim that's not reproducible takes a lot of time and effort to rectify the code. Therefor usually blame something else. Or sometimes having to learn a new piece of code or ways to do it but always fall back to blaming something.
 
Soldato
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This is the thing I despise a lot about software developers. Always have because a bug they claim that's not reproducible takes a lot of time and effort to rectify the code. Therefor usually blame something else. Or sometimes having to learn a new piece of code or ways to do it but always fall back to blaming something.

As a developer,certfied software tester & Linux/Windows proffesional. i think a lot of it comes back to Average users causing issues.

  • Now days anyone can file a bug
  • Developer asks for more info/ cannot reproduce
  • Average joe cannot/will not give more info
  • Developer gets annoyed
  • Doesnt want to try anymore
  • Repeat on next user
In this instance https://imgur.com/X197S8A on portrait mode the close dialog cannot be clicked so End task via Task manager is required...
could they could not do it Then they said works for me.
 

V F

V F

Soldato
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Bug testing is fun when they want to work with you to resolve it. I remember helping a company with a bug that was rare and only to a specific amount of users that it took 2 months to resolve it with a lot of testing back and forth. Razer was another that was forthcoming with bug hunting to get it resolved after a month of diagnosis.

Others I found, not so helpful or communication stopped with them.
 
Soldato
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Bug testing is fun when they want to work with you to resolve it. I remember helping a company with a bug that was rare and only to a specific amount of users that it took 2 months to resolve it with a lot of testing back and forth. Razer was another that was forthcoming with bug hunting to get it resolved after a month of diagnosis.

Others I found, not so helpful or communication stopped with them.
indeed i found a very Bad bug on coral betting website, Where i found a memory leak

Load up a bingo room - 500MB
switch beingo room - 700MB
reeat setup 2 every 30 seconds (didnt have to be sped up the experience)
After 3 minutes i got to 12.5GB in Chrome,Firefox & back then Edge, tested it on Linux/Windows & Mac

wrote down steps, Took a video of the entire process with Task manager open
Wrote to support They fobbed me off created an automated email raising the bug for 2 weeks nothing
So i found the CEO of Coral group holding & emailed him

2 days later support contacted me 3 weeks of going back and forward they could not reproduce the bug.
Then i found it could be a secruity issue
Gave them 60 days to comply & fix said issue no response.
said going to send the report to media, instant reply & they Found the issue...

not checked in a while but believe still their..
 
Soldato
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Firefox 95.0, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes (mozilla.org)

95.0
Firefox Release


December 7, 2021

Version 95.0, first offered to Release channel users on December 7, 2021

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New
  • RLBox — a new technology that hardens Firefox against potential security vulnerabilities in third-party libraries — is now enabled on all platforms.
  • Good news! You can now download Firefox from the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 and Windows 11 platforms.
  • We’ve reduced CPU usage on macOS in Firefox and WindowServer during event processing.
  • We’ve also reduced the power usage of software decoded video on macOS, especially in fullscreen. This includes streaming sites such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
  • You can now move the Picture-in-Picture toggle button to the opposite side of the video. Simply look for the new context menu option Move Picture-in-Picture Toggle to Left (Right) Side.
  • To better protect Firefox users against side-channel attacks such as Spectre, Site Isolation is now enabled for all Firefox 95 users.
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Fixed
  • After starting Firefox, users of the JAWS screen reader and ZoomText magnifier will no longer need to switch applications in order to access Firefox.
  • You’ll find the state of controls using the ARIA switch role is now correctly reported by Mac OS VoiceOver.
  • You’ll see a faster content process startup on macOS.
  • We’ve also made memory allocator improvements.
  • And we’ve improved page load performance by speculatively compiling JavaScript ahead of time.
  • Various security fixes
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Changed
  • We’ve added a User Agent override for Slack.com, which allows Firefox users to use more Call features and have access to Huddles.
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Enterprise
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Developer
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unresolved
  • On macOS command-clicking links in Gmail still does not open a new tab. Workaround: you can click links in Gmail without pressing command, which will still open a new tab.
 
Caporegime
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wow firefox sucks to bad I wanted to view an images size...... you can't just right click anymore you have to install an addon ....

who makes these stupid decisions slap them silly please.......
 
Soldato
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Soldato
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just swapped back to Firefox, i really liked Brave no issues their but wanted to try somthing different, so tried vivaldi omg the odd user experience bugs there... Great features terrible support.
found a bug in 5 minutes reported it with 100% reproduicblity To be told its not a bug because somone else could not reproduce it.

Deleted Vivaldi,

thing i miss from Chrome varients is Grouping tabs WITHOUT an extension

Yep their bug report system is controversial.

Normal bug reporting systems give access to the bug tracking to the reporter, and you get to see developer responses.

It looks like with vivaldi instead its akin to a support ticket, basically it has to be triaged by a team of testers, who may well not be running with the same spec, same tabs, same websites etc. and if they cannot reproduce it is rejected. I have seen one example of where a tester using a mac closed a report that was created on a windows machine. Also I have been told if you do get a response, it will be from a tester acting as a middle man not a developer.

There is a thread discussing this on their forums, but its unlikely to be changed as the founder of vivaldi apparently wants the bug reports to work this way.

However though in terms of UI Vivaldi are the clear leader., they are the only one's that respect we dont all use touch screens so padding around icons, tabs etc. is minimal, and most of the UI is customisable. On the flip side the browser is definitely feature bloated and they keep releasing more and more features dragging the performance down. All the other chromium forks are too scared to move away from chrome UI design, Edge did add side tabs, but the padding Microsoft added reminds me of Windows 11, they have some kind of obsession with making all their software touch screen friendly.

Firefox is a mixed bag on the UI, there is limited customisation, you can fiddle with CSS to improve things, but the developers are seemingly eager to go with padding as well, they tried to remove their compact theme on the toolbar, but due to mass rejection from the user base they backed down however threw a strop stating it will be a unsupported option hidden by default.

Firefox is also still slow in my experience, even with not many tabs and a clean profile. However I am still moving some of my browsing back to it, as I think the chrome situation is getting out of hand and Firefox is the only real competitor, they need a bigger userbase to gain influence.
 
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