From an actual usage perspective? No, it's BSD licensed and very widely used in tons of projects.
Morally? Depends on how much weight you ascribe to simple association with FB. They make a ton of really useful open source stuff with permissive licensing. As shitty as FB is, that is one thing I do appreciate about them.
While Facebook does a LOT of evil things, they're actually pretty important contributors to open source. Their improvements to BTRFS are pretty substantial, for example.
Think about it this way - they have massive datacenters that they are constantly trying to optimize. That they actually push their changes upstream instead of running BSD and keeping everything in-house is laudable.
*Things you want to be excited about in a web browser:*
Workspace, split views, tab grouping, temporary tab, quick link preview,...
*Things instead that Firefox gives you expecting you to be excited about:*
Aerodynamic tabs, limited-time "Colorway™" color themes, surprise Mr Hacker advert integration, Pocket built-in functionality, firing the Servo team, increasing their CEO's salary...
To add on to the other person's comment, these would be exciting to me:
- native vertical tabs
- easier profile management. No, containers are not the same or an equivalent alternative, I want separate bookmarks and history
- PWA support
- normal grey dark mode color. I hate the purple, it sticks out on every platform, and I currently need to use a custom userChrome.css that breaks fairly often to get rid of all of it
- compact mode officially resupported
* they are working on this
* working on this too
* and this
* what purple are you talking about?
* never happening. It moved to unsupported status a few years back. It still works so why do you need it officially resupported?
Some people don't see it, but the dark mode UI is a shade of purple, which can be confirmed using a color tool.
As for compact mode, I want it resupported because its current unsupported status means it will probably disappear at some point with some future update. The reason they moved it to unsupported status is because it wasn't used by enough people, but that reasoning is annoying because most people didn't know it even existed since it was tucked away in the "Customize Toolbar" page instead of the appearance area of settings or displayed as an option on initial install.
Finally, I am aware they're working on most of these things, but those are the updates that would get me excited.
I honestly can't see it. Do you have a screenshot? Are you using Nightly by chance?
It won't disappear. userChrome got the same treatment before compact mode and its still kicking.
I don't have a screenshot handy since I'm at work, but I only use the regular ole stable version. If you use GNOME (and maybe KDE?), many distros automatically install an extension to either use GTK window decorations and menus, or at least make it look like it does, but if you go to the settings page or the new tab page, that background is the same color used for the rest of the UI on other platforms and it's a shade of purple. The RGB values on my work computer are 28, 27, 34. That higher blue value makes it a shade of purple.
> It won't disappear. userChrome got the same treatment before compact mode and its still kicking
For right now, they're still kicking, but there's a reason they were moved to unsupported, which is that there's no ongoing support and any future update could break or remove them. Like I said, my custom userChrome breaks all the time.
I use GNOME on Arch so they don't add anything extra. The background color on internal pages doesn't look like it has a shade of purple to me and I get the same colors as you rgba(28,27,34,255). You can always change it with userContent.css.
userChrome has always been an unsupported feature. People using this are expected to keep their code updated.
Like I said, some people don't see it, but the purple shade from the increased blue value is very apparent to me and I personally find it annoying because it makes Firefox windows look out of place to me. I'm glad it's not an issue for most people, but I would be particularly happy if they changed it to an actual shade of grey like Chrome, Edge, Safari, etc. and 99% of all other programs that support dark mode where the red, green, and blue values are all the same.
I have a better idea:
- stable and feature-rich API that would allow you make to extensions for each point of your list; also in a way that wouldn't break with the next release
Good to see full HTML 5 compliance. Chromium/Chrome is further ahead on this front.
Also I would be super excited if they got high end audio to pass through the browser on Linux.
E.g. Atmos sound
Even without the highend sound Netflix, Amazon Prime, the audio doesn't stream properly on Linux. For me it drops every once in a while. Its the only reason to date I install Chromium. It doesn't have this issue.
* Bringing back Tab Groups or adding Chrome's tab groups
* A UI to switch your user agent
* Better password manager integration in Android so you can save passwords from applications and get strong password suggestions in-app
>Telemetry was added to create an aggregate count of searches by category to broadly inform search feature development. These categories are based on 20 high-level content types, such as "sports,” "business," and "travel". This data will not be associated with specific users and will be collected using OHTTP to remove IP addresses as potentially identifying metadata. **No profiling will be performed, and no data will be shared with third parties.**
I feel like promises like that mean nothing these days.
Sometimes, but you can't really paint with a broad brush stroke, and Firefox has a 20+ year track record of generally being trustworthy and user-respecting.
In this case, the feature alluded to above appears to be *private-by-design*, If you aren't aware of what OHTTP (Oblivious HTTP) is, it adds a layer of separation and anonymization between you and the remote server. Because you don't connect to any server directly. It goes \[you\] -> \[relay server\] -> \[remote server\]. Where the relay can know what your IP is but is oblivious to what data is being sent, and the remote server receives the data, but has no idea where it came from (it just sees the relay server). And (if I understand correctly) none of the info collected is individualized/personal.
as far as I understand, it just tallies broad categories (such as 2.4 million queries for topic:travel in country:belgium) and can be easily disabled if you aren't comfortable with that.
> Firefox has a 20+ year track record of generally being trustworthy and user-respecting.
Ah yes the good old repeated user interface changes and the buying of pocket or whatever and the stuffing ads into the program is good and user friendly
I don't use Pocket. But my Mom, Dad, and Aunt all do, my mom uses it heavily and enjoys it. Sometimes it feels like people here live in a bubble (we do, I'm no exception) and forget that the way they use the browser and the way most people use the browser are not the same.
The other thing that frustrates me is everyone seems to demand Firefox find alternative sources of revenue to not be so dependent on the search deal. But without fail, *every single time they try to*, users are upset about it. It feels like everyone just wants to have their cake and eat it too. If flipping a setting is too burdensome for you, what realistic funding model do you prefer?
>Ah yes the good old repeated user interface changes
[Would you prefer they didn't?](https://images.betanews.com/screenshots/1032985422-1.png)
also, a lot of features that get removed for not being actively used are because those features will get more and more broken if left in. sure, it sucks that single-site browser mode is gone, but leaving something in a product that is unsupported is arguably worse than not having that feature at all.
It's the browser that installed ad-plugins without telling anybody, freaking people out who thought it was malware (which it was, just not the kind that bricks your system). Idk how they are able to maintain the image of "the only browser that respects you" - no, they don't.
How about [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#Browser_extensions)?
>Mozilla has occasionally installed extensions for users without their permission. This happened in 2017 when an extension designed to promote the show Mr. Robot was silently added in an update to Firefox.
I think you misunderstand how ottp works.
There are many sources to learn about Oblivious HTTP, here is [one](https://blog.cloudflare.com/stronger-than-a-promise-proving-oblivious-http-privacy-properties/):
>OHTTP is a protocol that combines public key encryption with a proxy to separate the contents of an HTTP request (and response) from the sender of an HTTP request. In OHTTP, clients generate encrypted requests and send them to a relay, the relay forwards them to a gateway server, and then finally the gateway decrypts the message to handle the request. The relay only ever sees ciphertext and the client and gateway identities, and the gateway only ever sees the relay identity and plaintext.
The first hop server can see your IP, but can't see any data, the second hop server can decrypt the data, but can't see who you are.
(and a couple Firefox specific links ([one](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/10/testing-privacy-preserving-telemetry-with-prio/), [two](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2019/06/06/next-steps-in-privacy-preserving-telemetry-with-prio/)) as well as the spec itself)
>Data collection should be opt-in in a privacy first browser
IF the telemetry is done in a non-privacy-preserving way. Then I agree.
But in the case of OHTTP it is a protocol that has been designed from the ground up to be privacy-enhancing. It is a proposed standard/protocol that the privacy community is pretty excited and positive about.
>you fundamentally cannot do this with the way the internet works
We agree on this. And I suspect we'd agree that privacy is not (and shouldn't be thought of) in Black and White terms.
Its alll about finding a reasonable compromise between competing priorities. And I think Firefox typically does a pretty good job at finding that balance. Implementing features in a privacy-preserving or privacy-enhancing way, and making it easy for users to disable them if they don't consider them private enough. Firefox offers moderate privacy by default, and exceptional privacy to those who want it. I think that is a reasonable compromise (and better than its competitors)
Lets keep things in context here. Literally every search query you make -- *the actual query,* not the broad vague aggregated stuff Mozilla is limiting the feature to -- are already transmitted to your search engine every time you search for something (regardless of browser, regardless of search engine). It makes no sense to be alarmed by this feature if you are comfortable using a search engine at all (and if you don't use a search engine, the mozilla 'categories' wouldn't impact you).
That quote was from their site.
The end result is that there is now a third party involved and the user connects to that server. This yields data and/or metadata. From a GDPR standpoint, they may get away with this depending on future case-law, but there is nothing that I have seen that would definitively escape turning this into personal data, encrypted payload or not. It is the broadness of "identifiability" that third-party proponents do not seem to understand.
Beyond GDPR, the fundamental problem is that third parties do not prevent data from being combined. It just involves extra steps.
>That quote was from their site.
[It isn't](https://blog.cloudflare.com/stronger-than-a-promise-proving-oblivious-http-privacy-properties/) it is from a blogpost written by one of the [co-authors of the proposed standard](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9458/). But I'm not sure why it would matter if it was considering that the other co-author is from Mozilla.
>and/or metadata
This is shifting the goalposts, in the comment I replied to you explicitly said **data** not metadata.
>It is the broadness of "identifiability" that third-party proponents do not seem to understand.
I'm sympathetic to that point in other contexts, but in this context, I think it is a non-issue, the relay server cannot decrypt the data. This substantially decreases the need to trust any one 3rd party. You do still need to trust that the two parties will not collude. But you've gotta be pretty conspiratorial minded, to think that two separate organizations would collude and risk their reputations, and risk lawsuits, just to get data with the granularity of `Some_IP had 4 queries in the category 'Sports'`
If *encrypted* *data* simply transiting a 3rd party server was a GDPR violation, the entire internet would be a GDPR violation, no data can get from point A (your device) to point B (anything on the open internet) without transiting 3rd party servers.
It was from: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/partnership-ohttp-prio/
>Shifting the goalpost substantially, you explicitly said data not metadata.
Really? Did you think metadata didn't matter or that it wasn't part of the problem? Getting rid of the IP address seems like one of their main goals, which essentially acknowledges that it is a problem.
>the relay server cannot decrypt the data. This substantially decreases the need to trust any one 3rd party.
The technical possibility to combine data held by different entities is all that matters.
>You do still need to trust that the two parties will not collude.
And how exactly will that be ensured once there is a court order imposing the requirement that they do?
>But you've gotta be pretty conspiratorial minded, to think that two separate organizations would collude and risk their reputations, and risk lawsuits, just to get data with the granularity of Some_IP had 4 queries in the category 'Sports'
I think they will be required by law to do just that. The reason is that if something is technically possible, it can be done, and then it will be done. First they make sure the data is available or can be "extracted", then they impose a KYC requirement through some law - not necessarily in that order. The more data collected the more desirable KYC becomes.
>If encrypted data simply transiting a 3rd party server was a GDPR violation, the entire internet would be a GDPR violation, no data can get from point A (your device) to point B (anything on the open internet) without transiting 3rd party servers.
It is the identifiability that matters. Even the ciphertext could legally be viewed as personal data given how broad that definition is.
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/
>'personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
The case-law isn't entirely settled yet, but if anybody assumes that doing some filtering/deleting and thirdparty "magic" is going to fix this, they could easily be wrong.
Has there been any discussion about Firefox using PipeWire natively for audio? Whenever I use Firefox on a system with PipeWire installed I get video stuttering (the stuttering doesn't occur with pure PulseAudio). I realize PipeWire has pipewire-pulse for Firefox to use, but videos play differently depending if I have PipeWire or PulseAudio installed. It could be some PipeWire configuration issue, but the results have been the same across multiple hardware and multiple distros. I haven't seen any issues with videos stuttering on Chromium-based browsers with PipeWire installed, so I'm wondering if they're using PipeWire natively?
I've mentioned this issue quite a few times on reddit over the last couple years, and the vast majority of replies are similar to yours.
Could you check [the following video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkN3PRPh00E) in fullscreen to see if you have any video stuttering? When I hit the mute button on the YouTube page the video is much smoother (even though there's no audio in this particular video), and that's the case for other 60 fps videos as well.
I have a 2k monitor, but I see the stuttering in Firefox at any resolution with 60 fps videos.
Is anyone else’s firefox extremely laggy these days?
I did a fresh install both in my windows desktop and on my macbook pro m3 pro, and it just doesn’t want to cooperate.
It has been good for me for years, but recently videos buffer a lot, YouTube sometimes plays audio with the video paused and sometimes (very rarely) it becomes unresponsive to clicks.
I disabled extensions and created a new profile it still happens.
It could be a YouTube issue, but I’ve been forced to use Arc in the meantime (honestly really loving the Arc’s workflow).
I am trying every firefox update to see if something changes as I want to go back to it, but as it stands today I just cannot use it.
Same issue, especially noticeable with YouTube. I don't see how YouTube would cause this type of unresponsiveness, it feels more like a browser (firefox) issue. But I haven't tried to verify this with another browser.
Since when do you experience that?
Do you have the same problem on YT with another browser?
I use Firefox daily with all update on Ubuntu Linux without any problem
I love Firefox (and have donated just about every year), but I recently switched to Chromium due to "micro-stutters" when two-finger scrolling in Firefox (not sure what else to call it).
I made a switch from a Chromium based browser to Firefox for about a month just recently. My impression, across the board, was that Firefox was slower and buggier at a surprising level. Videos were tremendously slower to load and in general it just wasn't as snappy as Chromium browsers. Also I had browser crashes that I never had with other browsers, it was weird.
I was pretty disappointed, and am surprised Firefox is at such a state. What I find really strange is that I never see anyone talking about this online. Firefox is still lauded as a great browser and as far as I can tell it may be in last place for me. Just clunky and dated.
I recently went to Ungoogled Chromium and aside from the hackiness of the project itself the browser is just incredible.
Edit: It really is amazing to see this get buried. Just try the browsers out and see for yourself. I have no stake in this game, and this is just my opinion.
Google isn't (and can't) make that demand of FF. And they would be stupid to try considering they (Google) are currently on the defensive in a big antitrust/anti-competitive practices lawsuit.
Also there is nothing wrong with supporting MV3 (that is a misunderstanding of the problem), the real issue people are upset about is the *discontinuation of MV2* in Chrome(ium) and *Google's implementation of* MV3, which undermines adblockers.
Mozilla has (1) *not discontinued MV2* (2) *not implemented the problematic aspects* of MV3. That is best of both worlds (since outside of the context of adblocking, MV3 has advantages)
Not gonna happen but keep doomposting
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2024/05/14/manifest-v3-updates/
> The webRequest API is not on a deprecation path in Firefox at this time
> Mozilla has no current plans to deprecate MV2 as mentioned in our previous MV3 update
I have no idea where this claim comes from.
Google Chrome, sure. But Chromium? That depends on the browser. Chromium is just an open-source project, albeit driven by Google, that other browsers like Edge and *even Brave* use.
You can rip Google right out of it if you want: https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium
And all your left with is a nearly pure Chromium. And, as I've said above, it is lightning fast.
>Chromium is just an open-source project, albeit driven by Google, that other browsers like Edge and *even Brave* use.
And Brave has to go out of their way (and incur costs that might at some point become unsustainable) to undo, mitigate, or find workarounds for the anti-features Google introduces into Chromium. Fortunately a lot of the problematic stuff happens downstream in Chrome, but a lot of Google's shitty decisions are done upstream (Chromium) and affect all Chromium derivatives. FLOC, dropping MV2 support (undermining adblocking), and Web Integrity API would be 3 examples of significant anti-features introduced into Chromium.
>You can rip Google right out of it if you want: [https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium](https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium) And all your left with is a nearly pure Chromium
That is a somewhat meaningless distinction though. Ungoogled Chromium just removes a few connections to Google services and servers (in some cases inadvisably--safe browsing for example, which even Brave and Firefox use in a privacy preserving way). Chromium development is controlled by, mostly developed by, and mostly funded by Google. Its a \~40 million line codebase, written and maintained almost completely by Google with some contributions from others. So "pure Chromium" might appeal to you for reasons, but the reasons should not include the idea that it is somehow free from Google's influence or decisions. It doesn't require a Google account or anything, but any derivative browser basing on Chromium, or vanilla Chromium itself, definitely depends on and is affected by Google. Brave's CEO has described the relationship/dependence on Chromium as "not ideal"
edit: and just to be clear, I'm not recommending against Chromium based browsers, I'm just recommending not thinking of 'ungoogled-chromium', vanilla chromium, or chromium derivatives as somehow being free from Google's influence or decisions, since Chromium *is a* Google project,
Chromium is dropping MV2 extensions which are the last bastion of any semblance of 'real' adblocking and privacy extensions. MV3 undermines privacy and adblockers, this is on all chromium based browsers.
Put simply, you're opting in to your privacy being violated at least in some way when you use a chromium browser (and there's nothing you can do to stop it, except switch to firefox).
And honestly, the shit google is doing with slow loading YouTube (and other content) in Firefox is intentional, they want you to switch to chrome due to them intentionally slow loading content in Firefox (you can fix this by changing the user agent in Firefox to show as a chromium based browser, and then everything loads faster).
Honestly, use whatever browser you want, but don't act like Firefox is a lesser browser in any way, it's not. Firefox has capabilities with extensions that chromium is just incapable of going forward.
> Honestly, use whatever browser you want, but don't act like Firefox is a lesser browser in any way, it's not.
I'm not acting like anything. It is slow, even outside of Youtube. It hitches quite regularly (scroll down the desktop Instagram on FF vs Chrome). The fluidity of Chromium, in my opinion, is leaps ahead of Firefox. Objective benchmarks appear to suggest the same thing: https://www.cloudwards.net/fastest-browser/ Firefox is behind, by a huge margin.
As for adblocking I've got a PiHole blocking 60% of my network's DNS lookups, plus I suspect uBlock Lite (which is MV3 compatible) ought to cover the loose ends the PiHole doesn't cover. Not to mention Chromium has been pushing abandoning MV2 since 2018. I'm not holding my breath.
Your example of browser performance on chromium is Instagram? An advertising platform that openly takes your data (a pi hole doesn't do you any good when you willingly hand them your data).
Perhaps there's a reason Firefox does not function as well on a site that actively violates your data privacy. 🤷
Unfortunately Firefox often needs manual tweaking to get hardware video decode working so that might be why video was sluggish. If you want to give that a try check the Arch wiki on Firefox.
I made a switch from Firefox to Chromium based browser for about a month just recently. My impression, across the board, was that Chromium based browser was slower and buggier at a surprising level. Videos were tremendously slower to load and in general it just wasn't as snappy as Firefox. Also I had browser crashes that I never had with other browsers, it was weird.
I was pretty disappointed, and am surprised Chromium based browser is at such a state. What I find really strange is that I never see anyone talking about this online. Chromium based browser is still lauded as a great browser and as far as I can tell it may be in last place for me. Just clunky and dated.
I recently went to Waterfox and aside from the hackiness of the project itself the browser is just incredible.
So, "Copy without Tracking" on right-click menus is improved and more telemetry added so they can see what searches people are doing.
One step forward, twenty steps back, I guess.
If you read a bit about their methods, it doesn’t look very invasive. It seems like they only send over what category (out of twenty) was searched, determined locally (or maybe not, this bit’s unclear). They also send that data over anonymized (OHTTP), meaning they don’t know that you specifically searched for something ‘real estate’ related 20 times this month.
I didn’t read the source code for this, but anyone can and it seems reasonable by my reading of their article about it.
> Anyway I guess this can be disabled.
Only if they expose it in settings or you can find it under whatever obscure name they choose in about:config (which, of course, you can't do on the mobile version anymore).
Mozzila can't see what searches people are doing. Why lie?
> With the latest version of Firefox for U.S. desktop users, we’re introducing a new way to measure search activity broken down into high level categories. This measure is not linked with specific individuals and is further anonymized using a technology called OHTTP to ensure it can’t be connected with user IP addresses.
> Let’s say you’re using Firefox to plan a trip to Spain and search for “Barcelona hotels.” Firefox infers that the search results fall under the category of “travel,” and it increments a counter to calculate the total number of searches happening at the country level.
You believe companies when they tell you "We're tracking what you do, but don't worry, it's all anonymous"?
edit: Especially when they're using it to feed their spam engine ("Firefox Suggest").
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-search-update/ (which is where your quote comes from)
It is weird now to put it there doesthat mean they were tracking till 125 ,i installed ublock and privacy badger installed though better than chrome and for chromium based i have brave fast light, privacy lives upto name like firefox.
I don't see how this is anything but surveillance.
>Oblivious HTTP works by routing encrypted data through an intermediary to conceal its source
So that means the third party gets the data/metadata. It can then be combined to reveal the "user".
>Remember, you can always opt out of sending any technical or usage data to Firefox. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to adjust your settings. We also don’t collect category data when you use Private Browsing mode on Firefox.
Does that apply to the search surveillance?
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zstd. Other than that nothing exciting.
Zstd is great. Fast, streamable and often better than gzip for bigger binary data
Its from Facebook - just asking, is that an issue? https://github.com/facebook/zstd
From an actual usage perspective? No, it's BSD licensed and very widely used in tons of projects. Morally? Depends on how much weight you ascribe to simple association with FB. They make a ton of really useful open source stuff with permissive licensing. As shitty as FB is, that is one thing I do appreciate about them.
It's not actually from facebook. Zstd was pretty mature before facebook hired Yann Collet who created it.
While Facebook does a LOT of evil things, they're actually pretty important contributors to open source. Their improvements to BTRFS are pretty substantial, for example. Think about it this way - they have massive datacenters that they are constantly trying to optimize. That they actually push their changes upstream instead of running BSD and keeping everything in-house is laudable.
No.
If that bothers you then you shouldn't use Linux as well. It has a code from many shady people, including the NSA.
When was the last time a Firefox release was exciting?
it's a browser. What do you would consider exciting?
Workspace, split views, tab grouping, temporary tab, quick link preview,...
*Things you want to be excited about in a web browser:* Workspace, split views, tab grouping, temporary tab, quick link preview,... *Things instead that Firefox gives you expecting you to be excited about:* Aerodynamic tabs, limited-time "Colorway™" color themes, surprise Mr Hacker advert integration, Pocket built-in functionality, firing the Servo team, increasing their CEO's salary...
You're right but lmfao the username
To add on to the other person's comment, these would be exciting to me: - native vertical tabs - easier profile management. No, containers are not the same or an equivalent alternative, I want separate bookmarks and history - PWA support - normal grey dark mode color. I hate the purple, it sticks out on every platform, and I currently need to use a custom userChrome.css that breaks fairly often to get rid of all of it - compact mode officially resupported
* they are working on this * working on this too * and this * what purple are you talking about? * never happening. It moved to unsupported status a few years back. It still works so why do you need it officially resupported?
Some people don't see it, but the dark mode UI is a shade of purple, which can be confirmed using a color tool. As for compact mode, I want it resupported because its current unsupported status means it will probably disappear at some point with some future update. The reason they moved it to unsupported status is because it wasn't used by enough people, but that reasoning is annoying because most people didn't know it even existed since it was tucked away in the "Customize Toolbar" page instead of the appearance area of settings or displayed as an option on initial install. Finally, I am aware they're working on most of these things, but those are the updates that would get me excited.
I honestly can't see it. Do you have a screenshot? Are you using Nightly by chance? It won't disappear. userChrome got the same treatment before compact mode and its still kicking.
I don't have a screenshot handy since I'm at work, but I only use the regular ole stable version. If you use GNOME (and maybe KDE?), many distros automatically install an extension to either use GTK window decorations and menus, or at least make it look like it does, but if you go to the settings page or the new tab page, that background is the same color used for the rest of the UI on other platforms and it's a shade of purple. The RGB values on my work computer are 28, 27, 34. That higher blue value makes it a shade of purple. > It won't disappear. userChrome got the same treatment before compact mode and its still kicking For right now, they're still kicking, but there's a reason they were moved to unsupported, which is that there's no ongoing support and any future update could break or remove them. Like I said, my custom userChrome breaks all the time.
I use GNOME on Arch so they don't add anything extra. The background color on internal pages doesn't look like it has a shade of purple to me and I get the same colors as you rgba(28,27,34,255). You can always change it with userContent.css. userChrome has always been an unsupported feature. People using this are expected to keep their code updated.
Like I said, some people don't see it, but the purple shade from the increased blue value is very apparent to me and I personally find it annoying because it makes Firefox windows look out of place to me. I'm glad it's not an issue for most people, but I would be particularly happy if they changed it to an actual shade of grey like Chrome, Edge, Safari, etc. and 99% of all other programs that support dark mode where the red, green, and blue values are all the same.
I have a better idea: - stable and feature-rich API that would allow you make to extensions for each point of your list; also in a way that wouldn't break with the next release
Good to see full HTML 5 compliance. Chromium/Chrome is further ahead on this front. Also I would be super excited if they got high end audio to pass through the browser on Linux. E.g. Atmos sound Even without the highend sound Netflix, Amazon Prime, the audio doesn't stream properly on Linux. For me it drops every once in a while. Its the only reason to date I install Chromium. It doesn't have this issue.
mkv support
Locking tabs, and mixing private and normal tabs in one window
* Bringing back Tab Groups or adding Chrome's tab groups * A UI to switch your user agent * Better password manager integration in Android so you can save passwords from applications and get strong password suggestions in-app
Maybe some features? And optimizations?
When they made Doge the icon of Nightly
Wakelock API! That will be very useful
>Telemetry was added to create an aggregate count of searches by category to broadly inform search feature development. These categories are based on 20 high-level content types, such as "sports,” "business," and "travel". This data will not be associated with specific users and will be collected using OHTTP to remove IP addresses as potentially identifying metadata. **No profiling will be performed, and no data will be shared with third parties.** I feel like promises like that mean nothing these days.
Sometimes, but you can't really paint with a broad brush stroke, and Firefox has a 20+ year track record of generally being trustworthy and user-respecting. In this case, the feature alluded to above appears to be *private-by-design*, If you aren't aware of what OHTTP (Oblivious HTTP) is, it adds a layer of separation and anonymization between you and the remote server. Because you don't connect to any server directly. It goes \[you\] -> \[relay server\] -> \[remote server\]. Where the relay can know what your IP is but is oblivious to what data is being sent, and the remote server receives the data, but has no idea where it came from (it just sees the relay server). And (if I understand correctly) none of the info collected is individualized/personal. as far as I understand, it just tallies broad categories (such as 2.4 million queries for topic:travel in country:belgium) and can be easily disabled if you aren't comfortable with that.
> Firefox has a 20+ year track record of generally being trustworthy and user-respecting. Ah yes the good old repeated user interface changes and the buying of pocket or whatever and the stuffing ads into the program is good and user friendly
I don't use Pocket. But my Mom, Dad, and Aunt all do, my mom uses it heavily and enjoys it. Sometimes it feels like people here live in a bubble (we do, I'm no exception) and forget that the way they use the browser and the way most people use the browser are not the same. The other thing that frustrates me is everyone seems to demand Firefox find alternative sources of revenue to not be so dependent on the search deal. But without fail, *every single time they try to*, users are upset about it. It feels like everyone just wants to have their cake and eat it too. If flipping a setting is too burdensome for you, what realistic funding model do you prefer? >Ah yes the good old repeated user interface changes [Would you prefer they didn't?](https://images.betanews.com/screenshots/1032985422-1.png)
also, a lot of features that get removed for not being actively used are because those features will get more and more broken if left in. sure, it sucks that single-site browser mode is gone, but leaving something in a product that is unsupported is arguably worse than not having that feature at all.
It's the browser that installed ad-plugins without telling anybody, freaking people out who thought it was malware (which it was, just not the kind that bricks your system). Idk how they are able to maintain the image of "the only browser that respects you" - no, they don't.
Got any source on that?
How about [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#Browser_extensions)? >Mozilla has occasionally installed extensions for users without their permission. This happened in 2017 when an extension designed to promote the show Mr. Robot was silently added in an update to Firefox.
Thanks. Though it doesn't seem to be much of a controversy, although not something that is good at all.
It's unfortunate that as long as they maintain the status of being "not as bad as Chrome", they can get away with it.
"paid for by Chrome" "not as bad as Chrome" "Chrome isn't a monopoly we swear"
OHTTP already shares "data" with third parties as it requires a third party.
I think you misunderstand how ottp works. There are many sources to learn about Oblivious HTTP, here is [one](https://blog.cloudflare.com/stronger-than-a-promise-proving-oblivious-http-privacy-properties/): >OHTTP is a protocol that combines public key encryption with a proxy to separate the contents of an HTTP request (and response) from the sender of an HTTP request. In OHTTP, clients generate encrypted requests and send them to a relay, the relay forwards them to a gateway server, and then finally the gateway decrypts the message to handle the request. The relay only ever sees ciphertext and the client and gateway identities, and the gateway only ever sees the relay identity and plaintext. The first hop server can see your IP, but can't see any data, the second hop server can decrypt the data, but can't see who you are. (and a couple Firefox specific links ([one](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/10/testing-privacy-preserving-telemetry-with-prio/), [two](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2019/06/06/next-steps-in-privacy-preserving-telemetry-with-prio/)) as well as the spec itself)
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>Data collection should be opt-in in a privacy first browser IF the telemetry is done in a non-privacy-preserving way. Then I agree. But in the case of OHTTP it is a protocol that has been designed from the ground up to be privacy-enhancing. It is a proposed standard/protocol that the privacy community is pretty excited and positive about.
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>you fundamentally cannot do this with the way the internet works We agree on this. And I suspect we'd agree that privacy is not (and shouldn't be thought of) in Black and White terms. Its alll about finding a reasonable compromise between competing priorities. And I think Firefox typically does a pretty good job at finding that balance. Implementing features in a privacy-preserving or privacy-enhancing way, and making it easy for users to disable them if they don't consider them private enough. Firefox offers moderate privacy by default, and exceptional privacy to those who want it. I think that is a reasonable compromise (and better than its competitors) Lets keep things in context here. Literally every search query you make -- *the actual query,* not the broad vague aggregated stuff Mozilla is limiting the feature to -- are already transmitted to your search engine every time you search for something (regardless of browser, regardless of search engine). It makes no sense to be alarmed by this feature if you are comfortable using a search engine at all (and if you don't use a search engine, the mozilla 'categories' wouldn't impact you).
That quote was from their site. The end result is that there is now a third party involved and the user connects to that server. This yields data and/or metadata. From a GDPR standpoint, they may get away with this depending on future case-law, but there is nothing that I have seen that would definitively escape turning this into personal data, encrypted payload or not. It is the broadness of "identifiability" that third-party proponents do not seem to understand. Beyond GDPR, the fundamental problem is that third parties do not prevent data from being combined. It just involves extra steps.
>That quote was from their site. [It isn't](https://blog.cloudflare.com/stronger-than-a-promise-proving-oblivious-http-privacy-properties/) it is from a blogpost written by one of the [co-authors of the proposed standard](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9458/). But I'm not sure why it would matter if it was considering that the other co-author is from Mozilla. >and/or metadata This is shifting the goalposts, in the comment I replied to you explicitly said **data** not metadata. >It is the broadness of "identifiability" that third-party proponents do not seem to understand. I'm sympathetic to that point in other contexts, but in this context, I think it is a non-issue, the relay server cannot decrypt the data. This substantially decreases the need to trust any one 3rd party. You do still need to trust that the two parties will not collude. But you've gotta be pretty conspiratorial minded, to think that two separate organizations would collude and risk their reputations, and risk lawsuits, just to get data with the granularity of `Some_IP had 4 queries in the category 'Sports'` If *encrypted* *data* simply transiting a 3rd party server was a GDPR violation, the entire internet would be a GDPR violation, no data can get from point A (your device) to point B (anything on the open internet) without transiting 3rd party servers.
It was from: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/partnership-ohttp-prio/ >Shifting the goalpost substantially, you explicitly said data not metadata. Really? Did you think metadata didn't matter or that it wasn't part of the problem? Getting rid of the IP address seems like one of their main goals, which essentially acknowledges that it is a problem. >the relay server cannot decrypt the data. This substantially decreases the need to trust any one 3rd party. The technical possibility to combine data held by different entities is all that matters. >You do still need to trust that the two parties will not collude. And how exactly will that be ensured once there is a court order imposing the requirement that they do? >But you've gotta be pretty conspiratorial minded, to think that two separate organizations would collude and risk their reputations, and risk lawsuits, just to get data with the granularity of Some_IP had 4 queries in the category 'Sports' I think they will be required by law to do just that. The reason is that if something is technically possible, it can be done, and then it will be done. First they make sure the data is available or can be "extracted", then they impose a KYC requirement through some law - not necessarily in that order. The more data collected the more desirable KYC becomes. >If encrypted data simply transiting a 3rd party server was a GDPR violation, the entire internet would be a GDPR violation, no data can get from point A (your device) to point B (anything on the open internet) without transiting 3rd party servers. It is the identifiability that matters. Even the ciphertext could legally be viewed as personal data given how broad that definition is. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/ >'personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; The case-law isn't entirely settled yet, but if anybody assumes that doing some filtering/deleting and thirdparty "magic" is going to fix this, they could easily be wrong.
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Got the Snap update a little bit ago, so I assume Flatpak would be on its way soon too
Has there been any discussion about Firefox using PipeWire natively for audio? Whenever I use Firefox on a system with PipeWire installed I get video stuttering (the stuttering doesn't occur with pure PulseAudio). I realize PipeWire has pipewire-pulse for Firefox to use, but videos play differently depending if I have PipeWire or PulseAudio installed. It could be some PipeWire configuration issue, but the results have been the same across multiple hardware and multiple distros. I haven't seen any issues with videos stuttering on Chromium-based browsers with PipeWire installed, so I'm wondering if they're using PipeWire natively?
I use PipeWire and have no issue with audio or video on Firefox.
I've mentioned this issue quite a few times on reddit over the last couple years, and the vast majority of replies are similar to yours. Could you check [the following video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkN3PRPh00E) in fullscreen to see if you have any video stuttering? When I hit the mute button on the YouTube page the video is much smoother (even though there's no audio in this particular video), and that's the case for other 60 fps videos as well. I have a 2k monitor, but I see the stuttering in Firefox at any resolution with 60 fps videos.
Perfectly smooth at full screen with 4K at 60fps.
Is anyone else’s firefox extremely laggy these days? I did a fresh install both in my windows desktop and on my macbook pro m3 pro, and it just doesn’t want to cooperate. It has been good for me for years, but recently videos buffer a lot, YouTube sometimes plays audio with the video paused and sometimes (very rarely) it becomes unresponsive to clicks. I disabled extensions and created a new profile it still happens. It could be a YouTube issue, but I’ve been forced to use Arc in the meantime (honestly really loving the Arc’s workflow). I am trying every firefox update to see if something changes as I want to go back to it, but as it stands today I just cannot use it.
Same issue, especially noticeable with YouTube. I don't see how YouTube would cause this type of unresponsiveness, it feels more like a browser (firefox) issue. But I haven't tried to verify this with another browser.
Since when do you experience that? Do you have the same problem on YT with another browser? I use Firefox daily with all update on Ubuntu Linux without any problem
Youtube on other browsers works completely fine
Youtube on other browsers works completely fine
I love Firefox (and have donated just about every year), but I recently switched to Chromium due to "micro-stutters" when two-finger scrolling in Firefox (not sure what else to call it).
I made a switch from a Chromium based browser to Firefox for about a month just recently. My impression, across the board, was that Firefox was slower and buggier at a surprising level. Videos were tremendously slower to load and in general it just wasn't as snappy as Chromium browsers. Also I had browser crashes that I never had with other browsers, it was weird. I was pretty disappointed, and am surprised Firefox is at such a state. What I find really strange is that I never see anyone talking about this online. Firefox is still lauded as a great browser and as far as I can tell it may be in last place for me. Just clunky and dated. I recently went to Ungoogled Chromium and aside from the hackiness of the project itself the browser is just incredible. Edit: It really is amazing to see this get buried. Just try the browsers out and see for yourself. I have no stake in this game, and this is just my opinion.
The most legit reason to use FF is adblocker.
Well, until they cave to Google's demands for Manifest V3, anyways.
Google isn't (and can't) make that demand of FF. And they would be stupid to try considering they (Google) are currently on the defensive in a big antitrust/anti-competitive practices lawsuit. Also there is nothing wrong with supporting MV3 (that is a misunderstanding of the problem), the real issue people are upset about is the *discontinuation of MV2* in Chrome(ium) and *Google's implementation of* MV3, which undermines adblockers. Mozilla has (1) *not discontinued MV2* (2) *not implemented the problematic aspects* of MV3. That is best of both worlds (since outside of the context of adblocking, MV3 has advantages)
Not gonna happen but keep doomposting https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2024/05/14/manifest-v3-updates/ > The webRequest API is not on a deprecation path in Firefox at this time > Mozilla has no current plans to deprecate MV2 as mentioned in our previous MV3 update
Chromium is basically straight up adware and spyware these days. Firefox is the only thing holding the line.
I have no idea where this claim comes from. Google Chrome, sure. But Chromium? That depends on the browser. Chromium is just an open-source project, albeit driven by Google, that other browsers like Edge and *even Brave* use. You can rip Google right out of it if you want: https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium And all your left with is a nearly pure Chromium. And, as I've said above, it is lightning fast.
>Chromium is just an open-source project, albeit driven by Google, that other browsers like Edge and *even Brave* use. And Brave has to go out of their way (and incur costs that might at some point become unsustainable) to undo, mitigate, or find workarounds for the anti-features Google introduces into Chromium. Fortunately a lot of the problematic stuff happens downstream in Chrome, but a lot of Google's shitty decisions are done upstream (Chromium) and affect all Chromium derivatives. FLOC, dropping MV2 support (undermining adblocking), and Web Integrity API would be 3 examples of significant anti-features introduced into Chromium. >You can rip Google right out of it if you want: [https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium](https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium) And all your left with is a nearly pure Chromium That is a somewhat meaningless distinction though. Ungoogled Chromium just removes a few connections to Google services and servers (in some cases inadvisably--safe browsing for example, which even Brave and Firefox use in a privacy preserving way). Chromium development is controlled by, mostly developed by, and mostly funded by Google. Its a \~40 million line codebase, written and maintained almost completely by Google with some contributions from others. So "pure Chromium" might appeal to you for reasons, but the reasons should not include the idea that it is somehow free from Google's influence or decisions. It doesn't require a Google account or anything, but any derivative browser basing on Chromium, or vanilla Chromium itself, definitely depends on and is affected by Google. Brave's CEO has described the relationship/dependence on Chromium as "not ideal" edit: and just to be clear, I'm not recommending against Chromium based browsers, I'm just recommending not thinking of 'ungoogled-chromium', vanilla chromium, or chromium derivatives as somehow being free from Google's influence or decisions, since Chromium *is a* Google project,
Very informative and the type of replies I like to see, thank you!
Chromium is dropping MV2 extensions which are the last bastion of any semblance of 'real' adblocking and privacy extensions. MV3 undermines privacy and adblockers, this is on all chromium based browsers. Put simply, you're opting in to your privacy being violated at least in some way when you use a chromium browser (and there's nothing you can do to stop it, except switch to firefox). And honestly, the shit google is doing with slow loading YouTube (and other content) in Firefox is intentional, they want you to switch to chrome due to them intentionally slow loading content in Firefox (you can fix this by changing the user agent in Firefox to show as a chromium based browser, and then everything loads faster). Honestly, use whatever browser you want, but don't act like Firefox is a lesser browser in any way, it's not. Firefox has capabilities with extensions that chromium is just incapable of going forward.
> Honestly, use whatever browser you want, but don't act like Firefox is a lesser browser in any way, it's not. I'm not acting like anything. It is slow, even outside of Youtube. It hitches quite regularly (scroll down the desktop Instagram on FF vs Chrome). The fluidity of Chromium, in my opinion, is leaps ahead of Firefox. Objective benchmarks appear to suggest the same thing: https://www.cloudwards.net/fastest-browser/ Firefox is behind, by a huge margin. As for adblocking I've got a PiHole blocking 60% of my network's DNS lookups, plus I suspect uBlock Lite (which is MV3 compatible) ought to cover the loose ends the PiHole doesn't cover. Not to mention Chromium has been pushing abandoning MV2 since 2018. I'm not holding my breath.
Your example of browser performance on chromium is Instagram? An advertising platform that openly takes your data (a pi hole doesn't do you any good when you willingly hand them your data). Perhaps there's a reason Firefox does not function as well on a site that actively violates your data privacy. 🤷
Unfortunately Firefox often needs manual tweaking to get hardware video decode working so that might be why video was sluggish. If you want to give that a try check the Arch wiki on Firefox.
I have no such issues with FF, both at work (LTS) and on my personal system.
I made a switch from Firefox to Chromium based browser for about a month just recently. My impression, across the board, was that Chromium based browser was slower and buggier at a surprising level. Videos were tremendously slower to load and in general it just wasn't as snappy as Firefox. Also I had browser crashes that I never had with other browsers, it was weird. I was pretty disappointed, and am surprised Chromium based browser is at such a state. What I find really strange is that I never see anyone talking about this online. Chromium based browser is still lauded as a great browser and as far as I can tell it may be in last place for me. Just clunky and dated. I recently went to Waterfox and aside from the hackiness of the project itself the browser is just incredible.
So, "Copy without Tracking" on right-click menus is improved and more telemetry added so they can see what searches people are doing. One step forward, twenty steps back, I guess.
If you read a bit about their methods, it doesn’t look very invasive. It seems like they only send over what category (out of twenty) was searched, determined locally (or maybe not, this bit’s unclear). They also send that data over anonymized (OHTTP), meaning they don’t know that you specifically searched for something ‘real estate’ related 20 times this month. I didn’t read the source code for this, but anyone can and it seems reasonable by my reading of their article about it.
I understand why telemetry is useful, however I don't understand why Mozilla needs to track search categories. Anyway I guess this can be disabled.
> Anyway I guess this can be disabled. Only if they expose it in settings or you can find it under whatever obscure name they choose in about:config (which, of course, you can't do on the mobile version anymore).
> in about:config (which, of course, you can't do on the mobile version anymore). Wait, what?! Oh no, you're right : (
how do they determine the category though
Is this fair dinkum? Mozilla can see our searches now??
Mozzila can't see what searches people are doing. Why lie? > With the latest version of Firefox for U.S. desktop users, we’re introducing a new way to measure search activity broken down into high level categories. This measure is not linked with specific individuals and is further anonymized using a technology called OHTTP to ensure it can’t be connected with user IP addresses. > Let’s say you’re using Firefox to plan a trip to Spain and search for “Barcelona hotels.” Firefox infers that the search results fall under the category of “travel,” and it increments a counter to calculate the total number of searches happening at the country level.
You believe companies when they tell you "We're tracking what you do, but don't worry, it's all anonymous"? edit: Especially when they're using it to feed their spam engine ("Firefox Suggest"). https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-search-update/ (which is where your quote comes from)
> Mozzila ***says they*** can't see what searches people are doing.
It is weird now to put it there doesthat mean they were tracking till 125 ,i installed ublock and privacy badger installed though better than chrome and for chromium based i have brave fast light, privacy lives upto name like firefox.
I don't see how this is anything but surveillance. >Oblivious HTTP works by routing encrypted data through an intermediary to conceal its source So that means the third party gets the data/metadata. It can then be combined to reveal the "user". >Remember, you can always opt out of sending any technical or usage data to Firefox. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to adjust your settings. We also don’t collect category data when you use Private Browsing mode on Firefox. Does that apply to the search surveillance?
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NSFW tag please?
I did not need to click that.
This is an RES issue, just tested it, disabled RES, everything worked. Enabled again, didn't work.
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doesn't work for me
exactly!
I just downloaded firefox yesterday and uninstalled it immediately. Such a POS, glitchy AF. Chromium is miles ahead.