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Mozilla sets plan to dump Firefox add-ons, move to Chrome-like extensions
- Thread starter Coreda
- Start date
- Status
Elfforkusu
Member
Being multiprocess doesn't help that much for most vulnerabilities.
It's more secure in the crypto sense, but it's a necessary condition more than a sufficient one. None of the browsers are within sniffing distance of being used for serious crypto, including Chrome. That is the end goal, though, which is one of the reasons (the other being performance) that FF is going there.
I think a better way to view it is to ask what advantages Firefox has left over Chrome or Safari if it abandons its addons. All other things being equal, I think a lot of people would prefer to use the same browser on desktop and mobile, and Firefox has very low marketshare on mobile.
MichaelFassbender
Member
I swear, if FTDeepDark doesn't come back, I will drop-kick a puppy.
Coreda
Member
youtube-dl is what I use for almost everything these days. It's simple once set up and configured for most sites including RTMP streams. DownloadHelper is a great addon though, at least the last time I used it.
Personally haven't experienced a Firefox memory leak in years. That said I run with NoScript enabled so everything is a lot leaner.
Pokemaniac
Member
You do realize Edge is just Internet Explorer 12, with all the baggage that entails, right? The only practical difference that I've found (in my admittedly minimal time using the browser) is that the User Agent String has reached new levels of asinine. I mean, look at this thing:
Code:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/42.0.2311.135 Safari/537.36 Edge/12.10136Edge is pretending to be Chrome, which is pretending to be Safari, which is pretending to be Firefox. It's bad enough that all major modern web browsers pretend to be Firefox/Netscape Navigator thanks to decades old bad server code, but this is just getting ridiculous. Opera used to be the lone holdout, but that ended when Opera ceased to be it's own existence. No rational person should be looking at modern browser user agents and thinking "we need to go deeper".
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
I don't want to have to compile an app myself to download videos. And does it work with all websites? And I mean all web sites. (Excluding DRM sites like Netflix and Hulu of course.) See thats what DownloadHelper is good at. I can get video from pretty much any site including most... alternative video sites.
That's another issue altogether, one that Google are working on.
People are going to complain about Firefox becoming more like Chrome but that's necessary. Firefox is old and adding things like per-tab processes and a sandbox are proving really difficult and to my knowledge they still don't have an official 64bit release (only alphas). What was okay 10+ years ago when the only competition was IE is inadequate now. Insisting on using Firefox is a bit like sticking with Windows XP; it's horribly dated.
buttnuggett
Gold Member
In wait and see mode I guess.
Elfforkusu
Member
He's overreacting. Give it time to see how it shakes out.Well... fuck. If I wanted Chrome I would use Chrome, I want my add ons
not psycho
Member
I've never had any problems with Firefox, never ran slow on youtube, never ran slow on giant pages of gifs, can't remember a single crash, but the add-ons are essential.
Time to start looking for an alternative. Besides, if Firefox becomes Chrome, Chrome is probably a better Chrome, so I'd switch to that.
Time to start looking for an alternative. Besides, if Firefox becomes Chrome, Chrome is probably a better Chrome, so I'd switch to that.
Coreda
Member
I just use the Windows binary from the download page and stick it in a path the system can see, along with setting a default download path in a config file. Then it's as simple as pasting in the link I want and it'll grab it. List of supported sites.
Code:
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6VxXGPifbEor
Code:
youtube-dl -f bestvideo+bestaudio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6VxXGPifbEIf I want the best video stream muxed with the best available audio stream.
DownloadHelper is great at simply detecting embedded video on a given page which for most users is perfect. Hopefully it makes the transition.
Pokemaniac
Member
Firefox has been 64-bit on Unix-y systems (meaning Linux and Mac) for a while now. The 64-bit Windows builds have taken significantly longer, though they did just reach Beta. Given that 64-bit support on Windows lagging behind 64-bit support on Unix-y systems is a relatively common pattern that I've seen, I'm hesitant to fully blame Mozilla for it taking so long.
There have been 64bit variants of Windows since Vista (you can argue XP but model was slightly different). It's squarely on Mozilla.
Pokemaniac
Member
I'm not saying that they have no blame in this matter. It's just that, when even Chrome is just starting to offer stable 64-bit Windows builds as of a few weeks ago, there's clearly something up with 64-bit support on Windows. It could very well just be laziness thanks to the robust-ness of SYSWOW64, but I'd have to do actual research to determine that.
Portugeezer
Member
Will gifs still work properly?
Edge is a fork of of the trident engine with all the legacy crap removed. No baggage, less attack surface, that's the whole point. Also I'm not sure where your user agent rant is going, it sucks but whatever, it's not a security thing.
QueenOfThorns
Member
What's the point of using Firefox if it's just like Chrome/Opera/Edge/Safari?
Every browser has become exactly the same and it's really disappointing. I'd rather use an old version forever than watch it slowly turn into a reskinned Chrome like Opera did.
The user agent string isn't really relevant anymore. It's for old content that check it for compatibility reasons.
Anyone doing modern websites correctly will be feature-testing, not checking the browser agent string.
and Edge is a legitimately a new branch of Trident. It's not IE12.
Pokemaniac
Member
Calling Edge a fork of Trident is rather silly, and is more a marketing move to separate the browser from IE. If Microsoft actually intended to release a "true" IE12, then I might be more convinced. As it stands, Edge is just the next natural evolution of Trident. It may be a somewhat bigger upgrade than usual, but Trident desperately needed upgrading. And yet, despite all of the work Microsoft has done on Edge, it still lags pretty for behind most browsers regarding standard support. I suppose my original comments were a bit unfair, since they have actually dropped support for some auxiliary things which really needed to die long ago, but it clearly is still the same core engine.
From the point of view of a web developer, which is how I tend to look at web browsers I don't actively use, the asinine user agent is the biggest thing that really separates Edge from just being IE12.
Why don't you tell that to Google, who won't allow me to upload images to Google Photos from my Wii U unless I use an alternate User Agent String. Or Netflix, who won't let me watch videos on Linux unless I tell them I'm using Windows.
I'd love to live in your fantasy world where User Agent Strings don't matter anymore, but that simply isn't the case. If they truly didn't matter anymore, then Edge's User Agent would look something like this:
Code:
Edge/12.10136 (Windows NT 10.0)Why would a new api for browser add-ons interfere with gifs?
LurkerPrime
Member
Firefox, nooooooooooo!
Your assessment needs more factual grounding. Start here: http://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/...birth-of-microsofts-new-web-rendering-engine/
That's Google doing things incorrectly.
The User Agent String became useless all the way back in the mid 90s. Browser vendors didn't take long to 'cheat' it by putting other browser names in there, and some people still cling onto using it, even though they shouldn't be. Even Opera shipped with a drop down menu to change your user agent, standard.
Nemesis121
Member
Auto updates off, i have it listed as Check for Updates, let me choose to install, just can't surf the web without NoScript, when the new version adds Noscript, i will update to that..
Pokemaniac
Member
Huh, I'm honestly pretty surprised that mshtml.dll doesn't use the same code as Edge. That really doesn't seem like Microsoft's style.
Even though Edge has pretty deep changes, they're not really that much bigger than those in a lot of the previous versions of the browser. IE's releases used to be so infrequent, it was like it was an entirely new browser every time. This isn't the first time Microsoft has made a commitment to building a more modern web browser.
Soodanim
Member
I switched to Chrome a few months ago because Firefox's frame times are awful (need to make use of the 144fps monitor), but I do prefer Firefox to Chrome in general.
For the security risk of staying on an old browser version, would it be viable to run a browser through a sandbox every time? If you changed the shortcut to go through something like Sandboxie, my first guess is that you'd never notice the difference.
For the security risk of staying on an old browser version, would it be viable to run a browser through a sandbox every time? If you changed the shortcut to go through something like Sandboxie, my first guess is that you'd never notice the difference.
secretanchitman
Member
A lot of the extensions I use will probably be dead and they are the only thing holding me back from going to Chrome. Honestly I don't want to use Chrome until I have to, so next year whenever Mozilla switches everything over.
not psycho
Member
Yes, I barely notice I'm using Sandboxie. And it's better than Chrome sandbox (of course you can use both in that case).
Admiral Woofington
Member
Yeah. I'll transfer bookmarks to chrome and switch. We had a good run Firefox.
CadetMahoney
Member
This is why I use an older version of firefox where my add-ons still work and is not a resource hog.
Pokemaniac
Member
That "some people" is way too large to just ignore. Especially when it includes major players like Google (who are really terrible with how much they use user agent sniffing).
Besides, you're talking like there is no merit to User Agent Strings. There are some legitimate use cases for them, and detecting them is sometimes necessary to maintain compatibility with certain browsers (read: IE) thanks to their quirks.
I won't argue that User Agents aren't a ridiculously broken system, because they totally are. However, that is no excuse for Microsoft to try to break it further.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
If it has a list of supported sites, it's not going to work for me. DownloadHelper works on all sites no matter what as long as there's no DRM protection. (Which is rare)
I guess we'll see what happens when this update comes along. I wonder if the DH people put out a statement. Either way, best to wait for the specifics. Thing is if DH works like it does and Firefox decides to take away the ability for tools to access parts they need then there'll be a problem. Maybe Mozilla will compromise and have an option to allow (With warning) add-ons or extensions with the ability to still access that stuff. They'll basically be destroying their legacy by conforming to all the other browsers.
I use Safari for browsing anyway. But Firefox is very convenient for when I want to save a random video from some obscure site once in a while.
Pokemaniac
Member
Do you want viruses? Because that's how you get viruses.
Don't worry they're a computer expert
This is really sad news. Can the backlash do anything? Or is it going to be how on Linux flash doesn't get updated on Firefox because Mozilla didn't adopt some new standard for plugins?
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