Is Firefox going into a tailspin?

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Just got this note from @jnperlm While this was covered back in June: Mozilla execs clash over whether Firefox has a future, I think you might want to
[See the full post at: Is Firefox going into a tailspin?]

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SueW, Elly, HiFlyer

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Woody

If Firefox is going into a “tailspin” and Google Chrome spies on us to much which Browser would you recommend  we use as our go to browser? I normally use Firefox and use Google Chrome only when the mood strikes me.

Sam

 

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At this point I’m fishing for an answer to that very question!

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Steve, HiFlyer

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Sam and Woody,

This just in: Firefox WebExtensions may be used to identify you on the Internet .

My strategy is set: I am staying with ESR as long as I can and then assess the FF alternatives, PaleMoon, Waterfox and there seem to be additional FF branches in the works.

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SueW, Elly, HiFlyer, MrBrian

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From the comments in that article, purportedly issue https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1372288 pertains to this issue.

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I’ve already moved back to Waterfox.  I used it some time ago, before Mozilla finally got around to delivering a 64-bit Windows edition, but when the 64-bit edition finally came, I went back to that.

Now, with Firefox set to cut off their defining feature in their never-ending goal of becoming Chrome, I’ve revisted both WF and Pale Moon.  Both are good; PM has come a long way too, but WF supports e10s, while PM doesn’t, so for now I am using WF.

WF will continue to support XUL extensions, NPAPI plugins, and have all telemetry removed into the future, among some other things.  The dev has posted about needing to find a repository for the formerly Firefox plugins , so he’s aware of the need.  If he’s not going to be able to keep doing this on his own, this would be the most logical project to become truly a community effort to replace what Mozilla takes away.  I know the kind of thing this will require is done all the time by Linux Distros, where they maintain older branches of various projects and backport applicable security and stability bugfixes as they are released.

Pale Moon is another possibility, and while I would have no problem at all moving to that if the other choice was the neutered Firefox, the lack of multiprocess support (e10s) means the jankiness (as Mozilla calls it) that has typified FF and its derivatives for years will always be there.  It’s tolerable if it is the only way to retain my addons, but with WF, it looks like it will be possible to eat our cake and have it too, though it makes addons like Classic Theme Restorter that much more important.

Whether addon devs will continue to support their addons for WF remains to be seen.  Those that can be ported to WebExtensions should continue to work in WF, but I don’t think they will in PM, which I believe will only support the old-style addons.

It seems that in time, every software project decides to go off on some bizarre tangent and essentially kill off the project as far as longtime users are concerned.  Windows is doing the same thing, of course, as we speak.

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grayslady, HiFlyer

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It’s been a while since I looked into this, but IIRC the reason I went with Pale Moon over Waterfox way back when is that WF is a 64-bit browser and 32-bit extensions wouldn’t work on it. Is that true, or not really?

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JNP wrote:

This just in: Firefox WebExtensions may be used to identify you on the Internet .

Posted yesterday on Code Red – security advisories:
Chromium/Firefox-based Browser Extn Leaks Rely on Scripts

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A couple of alternatives to Chrome and Firefox – Chromium (open source Chrome), Vivaldi (based on Chrome), and Brave. Brave is, I believe, written in Rust and has its own engine. Ad blocking and other privacy features are enable by default. I have been recently using it and it seems rather stable and well behaved.

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The easy answer is to use the open source Chromium if you want Chrome without the data collection.

Or, if you prefer Firefox, and are concerned with Mozilla’s current direction, choose a Firefox fork!

I really don’t see any cause for alarm with Firefox at the moment, and plan to use Firefox for the foreseeable future as my daily driver.  I have a few choice extensions and security products installed that should prevent any personally identifiable info from being leaked.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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One browser I’ve tried that I really liked was a Firefox fork known as Waterfox, which is a 64-bit fork of the original built for better privacy and speed. I primarily use Chrome as it’s fast, secure, updates itself and best of all still supports extensions. I know it has a lot of data collection, but that’s the trade off.

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@anon 131243
Do you not worry about the insecure/unsigned add-ons/extensions policy of Waterfox, which could present a security risk?

* Allow running of unsigned extensions

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Tailspin perhaps but, I will not be moving to a ‘blink’ rendering browser, for sure (Opera, Chromium or Chrome the data slurper).

There are few forks from firefox available, one which I will need to revisit soon, ‘palemoon’ which, has a good following and has been/ is deviating from the move that mozilla is taking with regards to extensions, the only thing that worries me about this move is; whether the developers will continue to update ‘legacy’ extensions or completely move with Mozilla to the new extension API?

I did notice the telemetry settings within about:config have increased over the last few releases which can be newtered/ disabled which, do come back on point release updates (repeat tweaking) Nevertheless, Mozilla Firefox has served us well since the ‘Phoenix’ days and will continue to do so for a while yet.

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Oh yea, it definitely has a future. It only has to do a few things that we’ve seen throughout the years during the browser wars:

1. Get faster/more fluid

2. Add features that people want (current item is integrated ad-blocker – everyone is adding it)

3. Cut down on RAM consumption

If they manage to do 2 of those 3, it has a future regardless of this extension nonsense. If it does all 3, we may see a resurgence of Firefox > Chrome that we haven’t seen in many years.

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glnz, HiFlyer, EstherD

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Firefox lost me as a user several years ago to Pale Moon. After the whole Eich thing, I left. I don’t care about Social Issues, I don’t care about who does what outside of work, I care about a good browser, not an ideology. Mozilla was so obsessed with it at the time, I felt like they were basically trying to sell me it as a Religion. No thanks, I just want a working browser which not only does Pale Moon provide, they do it without shoving their beliefs down my throat.

I disagree with the person who said that ” it has a future regardless of this extension nonsense”. One of the selling points of Firefox is the vast extension library it has, but thanks to their terrible management, and ignoring Firefox for years to promote social issues—because you know, that’s more important that making an application—they have upset many extension developers who have washed their hands of it, and angered users who switched to something that wasn’t trying to force an ideology down their throats.

Firefox will never be greater than Chrome, and that’s saying something since Chrome is a terrible browser. Firefox forks are the future of the browser wars.

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Cybertooth, Ascaris, Elly, HiFlyer

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I’ve also been using Palemoon since 2014. It was faster than FF so I turned to that for daily use.  I use FF ESR as my backup browser but I see the way FF ESR is going and after June 2018, I suspect I won’t be using that any more.

I have no wish to install Chrome on any Windows computer. Even though it is on my android devices, I install another browser.

I’ve been testing Vivaldi. It uses the chrome store for extensions. It is slower than Palemoon but I do want something as a backup. I like the fact that when I open a new tab, I can see tiles for “speed dial” – similar to bookmarks, I guess. I also can choose history at the top and erase everything. I don’t like a browser to keep history. Not that I go to any questionable sites, I just prefer NOT to be tracked.

I’ll keep watching this thread to see any suggestions for browsers to try.

Got coffee?

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Elly

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Ever since Mozilla tried to “clone” Google Chrome with the Australis/Chrome theme in 2013, Firefox’s world market share has dropped from 19% in 2013 to 12% in 2017.
https://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/18/firefoxs-australis-theme-may-have-disastrous-consquences-for-users-who-customize-the-browser/
Hence, the popular Classic Theme Restorer add-on for Firefox.

Another reason for the drop was Mozilla’s slowness in adopting DRM/EME technology, eg for streaming Netflix’s DRM-protected videos.
.
Again, Mozilla is now trying to “clone” Google Chome’s walled-garden Web Extensions system for Firefox 57 in November 2017 and doing away with their popular, open and very-customizable Add-ons system. This move by Mozilla is supposedly to help developers make one common not-very-customizable Web Extension for the main browsers, ie Chrome, Firefox and Edge/IE.
How dumb is that.?, ie kow-towing to Chrome.

Seems, Mozilla Firefox is seeking common ground with Google Chrome in its race to the bottom, instead of distinguishing itself from Chrome and the other browsers.
So, it will be no surprise if Firefox’s market share drops below 10% in 2018.

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grayslady, Elly

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Mozilla execs clash…

I always wonder… How does free, open source software that doesn’t spy have “execs”? Are those unpaid positions?

If I start FireFox using my own web site as the home page (www.prodigitalsoftware.com, which doesn’t link to any other sites), this is the list of servers contacted:

For what it’s worth…

Internet Explorer (reconfigured for security and privacy) is still my browser of choice. ipconfig /flushdns and start it on my web site as the home page, only my page is contacted (note the times and that the log covers DNS resolution for multiple systems)…

As far as FireFox derivatives go, I don’t see Pale Moon contacting any extra sites when I start it either…

-Noel

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JohnW, samak, HiFlyer, Cybertooth, ryegrass, MrJimPhelps, satrow, Elly, johnf, Microfix

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Interesting indeed Noel, I’m just now using/ testing Palemoon and was quite surprised at the default speed compared to FF. I’ve just tweaked a few things in Palemoon and found that it has vastly improved since my last encounter a couple of years back.
Checked on Panopticlick  for browser security to find that palemoon’s charactaristics has 1 in 23196.88 value

‘Within our dataset of several hundred thousand visitors, only one in 86159.86 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.
Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 16.39 bits of identifying information.’

tests still ongoing..

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Kirsty, johnf, HiFlyer, Elly

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Compared to FF v55.02:

Within our dataset of several hundred thousand visitors, only one in 4678.53 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 12.19 bits of identifying information.

And fingerprint is protected whereas in Palemoon, I have found none of the palemoon extensions that provide fingerprint protection.

Most of the mozilla extensions do not work with palemoon

hmm..

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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HiFlyer

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Microfix wrote:

Most of the mozilla extensions do not work with palemoon

A lot of them don’t install directly with PM, but if you install them with the PM testing addon, called Moon Tester Tool, they work just fine.  I have all of my functionality with PM that I do with FF/WF; while some addons (Classic Theme Restorer, for example) are not usually needed with PM, others are to bring back features added to FF since PM forked (like the speaker icon on the tab for any tab making sound; I find that useful.  PM has an addon to put it back; FF of course doesn’t need one.)

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Noel Carboni, Microfix

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I’m not sure why people need extensions, but to each his own. I really don’t use any. They’re not necessary for browsing in general.

And this fingerprint stuff doesn’t mean as much if you just block all the tracking sites that seek to figure out what page you’re on at the moment. Yes, it’s still possible the site server maintainers are gathering the info separately as part of the plain old visit stats. Through that logging of course they also know your IP address.

Before we go too far down the path of “blend in with the crowd” thinking, I’m quite sure I DON’T want MY browser set up the way the majority of the people browsing the web have theirs, though… Not surprisingly, that eff.org site reports my “fingerprint” is unique to all their visitors. The important thing is that I’M not getting infections nor allowing ads or tracking via all the add-on sites at all.

-Noel

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JohnW, HiFlyer, Elly

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Compared to FF ESR v52.3.0

Within our dataset of several hundred thousand visitors, only one in 100685.0 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 16.62 bits of identifying information.

Same set-up as FF v 55.0.2 using exactly the same settings and extensions (noscript/ HTTPS Everywhere and Disconnect). Some of the tweaks were not applicable to FF ESR due to being an older version. For me FF ESR is a keeper until March 2018 as per the ESR Lifecycle

If anyone would wish to check their chosen browser SSL/TLS Capabilities see SSLLabs

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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SueW

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If the eff.org site reports:

Microfix wrote:

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 16.62 bits of identifying information.

What does that really mean?

16.62 bits is a mighty precise number for a fairly arbitrary concept… 2 raised to the 16.62 power is around 100,000. Can we presume they are saying your signature is found in 1 of every 100,000 people browsing the web?

Do we know how many people are out there browsing the web? If you’re 1 in 100,000 and there are a billion folks browsing, does that mean the folks who seek to track you as an individual wouldn’t be able to differentiate you from 10,000 other folks online? Is there particular merit to being 1 in 10,000 vs. 1 in 1,000? 1 in 100? The extreme is being unique. What’s the downside of that, practically speaking, considering you might change browsers now and again, or get a new version of an OS, or…?

They claim to have measured about 600,000 browsers. Is a 6 in 600,000 samples measurement up to being taken to out to 4 digits? Or is it more a matter of “you’re not quite unique”?

I’m not being critical of the measurements; in fact I find them interesting. I’m just not sure what to do with them in a practical sense.

-Noel

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Elly

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Regarding the ESR life-cycle, according to Aris, who developed the great successors to the Noia theme, like ClassicThemeRestorer, you can extend FF ESR into June 2018 (https://github.com/Aris-t2/ClassicThemeRestorer/issues/299), as follows:

Note: If you are on Firefox ESR 52.6, you should get an offer to upgrade to Firefox ESR 59.0 on 2018-03-06. If you decline that offer, Firefox will just update to Firefox ESR 52.7.  This will be repeated for one more cycle (Firefox ESR 52.8/59.1). From 2018-06-26 on Firefox ESR 59.2 will be the only up-to-date and “secure” ESR version of Firefox and ESR 52.x will be deprecated.

For this reason, it is Aris’s recommendation to stick with ESR.

For those who are migrating over to Waterfox now, you should know that some extensions will still fall by the wayside as Waterfox goes through new versions, and which ones you won’t really know until Waterfox upgrades (some have been lost already).

My personal sense is that, assuming Mozilla doesn’t wise-up and keep a secure extension friendly ESR around after June 2018, Waterfox will likely be the place to end-up if you desire to retain the most FF exension.  But, until that date, if your goal is to retain your existing extensions and have a security updated FF, then FF ESR is the prudent choice.  Also, by June there will be a better idea of how successful the developer of Waterfox has been in stockpiling extensions, etc.

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Elly, SueW, HiFlyer

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I forgot to sign in, the above anonymous was written by JNP.

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Hmm, that’s some nice example of being in paradoxical state by asking help against web tracking by linking to the big three tracking services. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Noel Carboni

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https://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/18/a-comprehensive-list-of-firefox-privacy-and-security-settings

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Microfix, HiFlyer, SueW

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Also courtesy of @microfix:
AKB 3000003: Firefox – additional security, telemetry and privacy tweaks

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HiFlyer, Elly, Microfix

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Another vote for Pale Moon. I stopped using it on Windows in April, because I stopped using the Win 7 machine online, as an extreme version of Group W :). I was able to replicate my profile (passwords, bookmarks and preferences to the Linux version, though I’ve found a few snags; mostly settings that keep me from downloading .pdf files on certain pages. Using a clean version (no extensions, default profile) usually lets me work around this, and I have FF as a backup.

PM on Linux isn’t quite so automagic as on Windows, but it’s good enough. OTOH, I keep it simple; Adblock Latitude, NoScript (undated when I think about it), and that’s it. I seldom use video due to my metered satellite connection, so your mileage will vary.

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This comment from rtc (who can’t post at the moment):

The Firefox no-more-addons thing came up on The Register:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/14/firefox_57_to_disable_all_extensions/

See the user comments,very informative.

I have the last good FF (54.01) and addons archived from Filehippo and will run that.

Palemoon is long since installed on all machines.

It appears that the Mozilla crowd can’t keep their politics (snowflakes?)

out of their doings…fine…FF will drop even more,maybe disappear when they mega slurp data.

Not all FF addons work in Palemoon but they have some of their own,it’s quite doable

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SueW, HiFlyer, Ascaris, Elly, EstherD, Microfix

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Ironically, Waterfox 55 (based on Firefox of the same version) is by far the best Waterfox I have used to date.  It’s considerably more responsive than 54, very stable, and works with all my addons.  It’s outstanding.

FF 55 annoys people because it takes the liberty of modifying their user profiles in such a way on first run that going backwards is impossible.  That doesn’t affect Waterfox, as 55 is the first version of WF to use its own Waterfox profile directories rather than operating from the Mozilla ones.  It will automatically migrate the user’s Firefox folder to the new Waterfox folder when it is run the first time (though you may just want to copy it over; Waterfox’s migration didn’t migrate everything).

What that means for the user is that the Firefox profiles are left unscathed when you run Waterfox 55, so if you want to go back or concurrently use a lower version of FF, there’s nothing stopping you.

 

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HiFlyer, Elly, EstherD

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Thanks, this is good information. Will definitely consider this.

Q: I got latest Firefox last week, most addons are now legacy, if I go ESR route, should I download it, my profile will work (go across from Firefox), and then uninstall regular Firefox, or won’t it work now, not backwards compatible?

Also, not being nasty, but won’t developers simply stop updating legacy extensions sooner rather than later, so if you are using Waterfox, won’t that apply?

Thanks for your informative post.

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IMHO Mozilla lost sight of what made Firefox popular to begin with, which was customization and open-ness. Once the Australis GUI was force-fed on everyone not running ESR, they lost the war to Chrome for good. Why anyone in their right minds would spend nearly two decades claiming to be the browser of choice, the browser for everyone else who wanted control and customization…. only to shun all of that and turn Firefox into Chrome-lite – is beyond me. I’ve tried going back to Firefox for nostalgia’s sake, and it’s just a bloated mess now, which is a complete 180 from where it used to be.

As others have said, if you need an alternative to fill your Firefox needs, use Pale Moon.

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ryegrass, Karlston, HiFlyer, Elly, Cybertooth

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Re:131261 “…it’s just a bloated mess now…”
Amen!

 

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Add me to the growing list of Firefox users who got tired of the nonsense and have switched to Pale Moon.

FF undevelopers have been busy removing every aspect of the browser that makes it worthwhile: removing settings from the user interface (burying them in about:config when not eliminating them altogether); shoving an ugly UI down users’ throats; disabling useful and perfectly functional add-ons and demanding that developers dance to their WebExtensions tune.

Huh, sounds a bit like Microsoft with Windows 8/10.

 

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ryegrass, Karlston, HiFlyer, Ascaris, Elly

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I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said this and no one seems to listen.

If it isn’t broke, don’t “fix” it!

Also:  When you’ve got a good product that sells and pleases everyone – leave it alone!

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Noel Carboni, Cybertooth

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I, too, will be one of those FF users migrating to Palemoon. I will keep FF 55 as a backup browser, just as I still have Opera 12.16 as a backup browser. I don’t game, I don’t shop much online, and I don’t have any resource-hungry programs on my computers, so issues of security or RAM aren’t nearly so important to me in my browser selection as they might be for others. (Thanks to vastly improved firewalls and anti-malware programs, I haven’t seen a virus on my computer since the early days of XP.) What I care about is sensible set-up and presentation that allows me flexibility to easily access information on the computer. The older Opera was immediately intuitive, while, at the same time, offering clearly useful settings. Changes to YouTube and other media-intensive sites meant needing to have an Opera alternative. FF has always had excellent codecs, so when I learned about Classic Theme Restorer, All-in-One Sidepanel, uBlock Origin, and some other tweaks, FF became almost as user-friendly as Opera had been. I love being able to have an extension that easily allows me to turn off Java Script pop-ups and videos, and I simply won’t go back to an internet experience in which I have no input in how material is presented to me.

That being said, I see two issues influencing not just browser selection, but operating systems, search engines, and many other aspects of internet computing. Specifically:

1. The internet experience has become fractured by those using desktop/laptop computers and those using “smartphones” for their computing. Just as a copper land line provides superior communication to wireless, the desktop provides superior visibility, privacy, and program space to a wireless computer phone. It is also a lot less expensive to operate an ethernet than a wireless network. The two platforms require totally different approaches by developers, and, sadly, since wireless is much more profitable to telcos and the Silicon Valley tech set, applications for desktop users are not keeping pace with mobile development. If PC manufacturers were to partner with the software community, not only would they see improved sales, but we, the end-users, would see better products. I won’t hold my breath.
2. Computing, like so many other products and services, has been cra*ified by replacing the goal of customer satisfaction with the object of simply forcing users to accept the unpalatable in order for the suppliers to make more money. A commenter on a Palemoon forum put it rather succinctly: “Call us romantic, but some of us long for the continuation of the Personal Computer, in the spirit of the visions of Vannevar Bush, Doug Englebart, the Xerox PARC team, Steve Wozniak, Richard Sapper, and user-first design methodology as exemplified by the Windows 95 User Interface Design team. This is as opposed to the user-ignorant or even user-hostile software and hardware so common today.”

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Steve, Elly, Noel Carboni, wdburt1, flackcatcher, HiFlyer, SueW, Cybertooth

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uBlock Origin has become legacy too. Today I’ve started noticing YouTube’s ads are back, and uBlock Origin does not have the control panel button anymore, so I cannot update it’s blocking lists.

Sigh…

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There’s a discussion on that topic here (with the usual good information our contributors provide!):
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/u-block-on-firefox-55/

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grayslady

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Adblocker Ultimate  had the legacy  notation but now the legacy notation is gone.  This blocker still works fine.

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Noel Carboni wrote:

I always wonder… How does free, open source software that doesn’t spy have “execs”? Are those unpaid positions?

There is a Mozilla Corporation.  It’s nonprofit, but it doesn’t mean that no one gets paid.  It’s not a bad thing in and of itself; it’s good to have people whose job it is to work on open-source projects, rather than just having it all done by hobbyists (who can’t be told to go work on something less fun like debugging).  Any project administered by humans, unfortunately, can be taken off in a bizarre direction that alienates the users, regardless of for-profit or non-profit status.

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Noel Carboni

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The question would be where and how they make the money to pay themselves.

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I’ll rarely post a c|net article link but this does contain some factual information. A portion of search engine advertisement revenue.

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Does anybody here remember the feeling of piqued interest when seeing dozens of new browsers pop-up on freeware sites many years ago, only to be left disappointed & queasy when finding out many were just user interfaces glued onto Microsoft Internet Explorer?

My opinion is that by deeming Firefox and other browsers commodities the execs in charge have not any pride in the creation of something different. With the continuing integration of Google Chrome technology, the Firefox ESR we can use now does stand a chance of becoming little more than a skin for Google Chrome or some other set of rendering libraries.

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I’ve been using Firefox (FF) as my primary browser as long as I can remember. FF has been partially and gradually breaking down for me, in terms of a few buttons on a few webpages and other basic functionality that always worked before now not working correctly, over the past month or so. Disabling and removing add-ons is not solving my issues.

I’m very concerned about significant add-on functionality being removed from FF later this year. I’m not a beta-testing guy, but yesterday I installed Firefox Nightly which does give a much better sense of what extensions are now available and already work with the planned browser. For me the two must-haves are ad blocking and LastPass (password manager). FN is faster, like Chrome. The upcoming FF has a good ad blocker extension already but is not compatible as yet with LastPass. I would drop FF over that alone if not fixed by LastPass.

I’ve never liked the aggressive data monitoring of Chrome (which does support LastPass and ad blocking), but if FF is going to collect data as well, there’s no reason to stay with FF over Chrome, especially if add-on functionality is better with Chrome. I suspect FF would suffer a fatal tailspin in terms of a good chunk of remaining users bailing if Mozilla does increase data collection and does banish a bunch of add-ons with no replacements. Seems this would play right into Google’s hands.

I will try PaleMoon. LastPass says they are “compatible with but do not support” PaleMoon. We’ll see.

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HiFlyer

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Thanks to this topic I just switched to waterfox after over a decade of using firefox. The transition was seemless, it’s first-start profile-transfer copied over every single thing from firefox, from add-ons, to bookmarks, to saved passwords, to even my profile-sync. I’m even still logged in to the sites I was logged into a moment ago in firefox. It’s literally firefox the way I want it to be (ie not run by bell-ends). I only needed to put the settings the way I wanted them to be, open the tabs I had active in firefox, and now need to re-whitelist the sites I want in Noscript when I visit them, and I’m up and running again.

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teuhasn, HiFlyer, SueW

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I tried Pale Moon and Opera. BTW I didn’t like the User Agreement for PaleMoon. I’ve seen them described as privacy-friendly, but I didn’t see that reflected in their UA.

Then per your suggestion, I tried Waterfox. That was the clear winner for me. I agree–seamless transition for FF users. FF add-ons work well in Waterfox. About a minute-and-a-half of changing a few settings, and for me, Waterfox was a perfect match to FF a few months ago. Waterfox is faster than Firefox right now, and the few things that were not working in FF work well again in WF.

Apparently Waterfox will continue working along with its current add-ons after FF goes to version 57 this fall and cuts off its old add-ons. The question that does remain, though, is whether older Firefox add-ons will be maintained by developers after that point. I would guess not since they will no longer work in FF. You’d still be able to use them in WF, but you wouldn’t be able to update them. Of course some of the more popular ones in FF will be updated to a new version of extension that works with FF 57+, and those would work in WF as well, as I understand it.

 

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SueW

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I’m curious as to why so few people seem to like Opera. I don’t know that much about it’s add ons or other internal workings, but I’ve found it to be pretty fast and user friendly, and it even has a VPN. Towards the end of days for my old Vista machine it was the only browser I found that would run without problems, suggesting that it was relatively streamlined and not a total resource hog.

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@DrBonzo ,

Opera is owned by a China-company. Some computer users are very wary of some things from China.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/18/opera-browser-sold-to-a-chinese-consortium-for-600-million/

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HiFlyer

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Thanks for the info. I was unaware of that.

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https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/chinese-company-installed-secret-backdoor-on-hundreds-of-thousands-of-phones/

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HiFlyer

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The only way I can unsubscribe to this thread is by adding another post. If there is another way, please tell me so I don’t have to post something useless to unsubscribe.

Got coffee?

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Up at the top of the topic, on the first gray line, there is a “subscribe/Unsubscribe” link. If you are subscribed it says “unsubscribe.”

Also see https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/how-to-subscribe-and-unsubscribe-to-a-topic/

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I suggest you check out the Tips for using the Lounge forum, incl. Woody’s:
How to subscribe and unsubscribe to a Topic

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Firefox is definitely getting an ugly stick makeover, with a ‘new’ look more similar to Microsoft’s Edge they have removed the curvy tabs from the user interface! Clean, Modern, Sterile and devoid of any personality, all with claims that it was backed with user input.

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I can’t shake my Firefox addiction because of the way it handles tabs.

I have a set of pinned tabs that I want to load right on startup (gmail, FB, etc.) and a pile of tabs I want on standby, so they load when I click on the tab (and unlike a bookmark, the tab will open to the last location on the site I had open). I haven’t yet found another browser that does this. (Yes, I do realise I shouldn’t have ~100 tabs on standby, but it’s faster to find a site by tab icon than to dig through a huge bookmark list.)

No matter where you go, there you are.

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I am at a crossroads for a browser these days. Not paranoid but Chrome doesn’t do it for me these days. Really have not been able to stick with Firefox either, too much stuff going on with it. Some of it might eventually be good. But right now is just like using a beta release. I’m trying Edge right now to see if it can win me over, so far not so much. Most probably stick with Chrome because its design is minimalist that it has become the browser of choice. I actually like Chromium because it gives me what Chrome does, without all that Google baggage.  I have yet to decide how I feel about Firefox collecting more data, this just sounds like a company trying to sneak in a way to eventually make revenue.

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With all this talk about a bunch of alternative browsers, I’m curious what folks do about online banking and other financial stuff.

It seems that a lot of financial institutions only support Internet Explorer, Edge, Firefox, and Chrome, at least for Windows. For that matter it seems that Linux is hardly ever supported.

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glnz

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If the financial institution is not too dumb with IT (unfortunately this is not as obvious as you would think for some but then it should give you a clue about how maybe they won’t understand security either, so it is like a nice free warning sign to put your money somewhere else), they should be compatible with any browser that supports standards, because their web site won’t have been programmed using proprietary technologies without an insight about the future.

I even seen institutions deploy ´new’ web sites using ActiveX when the mobile revolution was well under way. In fact, someone thought it would be smart to save money buy buying an old system from another american institution and pay consultants to rebrand it and adjust it a bit. Guess what, it wasn’t even compatible with IE 11 and needed luck and tricks to make it work on IE 10. Not the brightest move and it probably costed them a lot in customer support when they realized Windows 8.1 wouldn’t run any IE below 11 and it didn’t seem easy to fix for them.

I had to switch away from credit card processing company because of the same idiocy. I ended up using a company that would just work using a standard web site. Imagine you go to nfl.com or whitehouse.gov and they tell you you need Chrome or Edge only. This is like travelling in time when web sites were grey background with rainbow colors and comic sans all over the place. Lucky for us, the world is wising up on this as the diversity of devices increase, Steve Jobs killed flash, Java is dead in the browser, IE is doomed with its ActiveX, people generally know better and try to follow open standards.

To me, there is no reason a bank should not follow standards to provide services to individuals. Sometimes, tricks still seems to be required when forms need to be printed but maybe it isn’t really required. Anyway, I don’t think you should loose sleep over it. A browser that is not compatible enough won’t survive long and a lot of them are built on common components shared eith the major browsers.

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Elly, SueW, Noel Carboni, DrBonzo

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@DrBonzo
It is not very computer-wise to do online banking, eg your online bank account being hacked, it’s funds stolen and the bank refusing to refund your loss.
https://www.scmagazine.com/brazilian-bank-hacked-loses-control-of-its-online-presense/article/648773/
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/08/tesco-bank-cyber-thieves-25m

Online shopping with credit cards is still viable because it is guaranteed that the banks will refund any loss from hacked or fraudulent online transactions, which are presently just at less than 1% of all online shopping transactions.
In comparison, most online shopping with debit cards are non-refundable if fraudulent or have been hacked.

So, the question of which browser to use for online financial transactions does not affect some users who do use do not use online banking and shopping, like myself.

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You should also run checks on the server security on those banking/financial sites: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html and complain directly to them if anything looks risky.

I use Pale Moon, even if I could connect to those sites I’d need to lower the browser’s security levels for many of them as they use outdated non-standards that are vulnerable.

Chrome/FF/IE(/probably Edge) will accept connections even with bad/vulnerable protocols.

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Elly

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When Firefox is deceased, how will Watefox fork?

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Reply:
“Mozilla Firefox (or simply Firefox) is a free and open-source[18] web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation.”(Wikipedia)

So, if Mozilla dies, any group of tech-geeks can take-over Firefox and develop and/or maintain it further according to their own vision(eg retain the Add-ons system of pre-Firefox 57), including the developers of Waterfox, Cyberfox and Palemoon.

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Not techy enough to understand all comments here, but I am dumbfounded Mozilla does not focus on and promote privacy and better usability.  Why focus on anything else?

My FF on all my machines (XP, 7 32, 7 64 and 10 64) is getting slower and slower and harder to use.  I love the add-ons NoScript, Better Privacy, AdBlock Plus, Cookie Monster, HTTPS Everywhere and Disconnect Me.  Why is Mozilla not consciously supporting their direction?

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Elly, AlexEiffel

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Maybe because one of its key creator had to leave the company after a scandal? I am not saying he shouldn’t have left, but a change in this position certainly can have an impact on the direction and priorities of the organization. I think he went to create the Brave browser.

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Elly

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Numerous times, I’ve upgraded Firefox to the new version (I have it set to manual), only to find that some other minor feature I liked had been removed.  I do a quick search, and invariably end up at the Mozilla page where the issue is being discussed.  It quickly becomes clear what happened– they changed it to be like Chrome does it, time and time again.  When the users object, the Mozillians come up with an argument that amounts to, “Why should be do it differently than Chrome?”  The inverse argument, “Why should we worry about the way Chrome does anything?” never seems to be asked.  The assumption is always that Chrome defines the standard, not ever that going their own way is a valid goal.

Try to argue it further with them and it just becomes circular, with them again explaining that Chrome did it that way and that means it’s how users expect it to be.  Do they?  Do users really expect Firefox to be exactly like Chrome?  Are they not able to understand that different browsers are different?

Mozilla seems to have gotten into a habit of thinking that Chrome’s market share indicates that Chrome is what people want in a browser; therefore, whatever that is represents the “correct” way of doing things.  Rather than concentrate on the users that remain with Firefox, they’re forsaking all of us in favor of the ones who have long since moved on to Chrome.  Rather than trying to lure back the Chrome users who still have things about Chrome they do not like, things that Firefox could potentially do better, they’re trying to lure away the ones that are completely pleased with Chrome in every way– the ones that Mozilla has the very least chance of luring away from Chrome.

What sense does it make to go after the users that are the most pleased with their existing product, and in doing so, go head to head against the Google juggernaut?  Can you imagine what would have become of Mozilla if they’d tried that during the browser wars?  They’d have been obsessed with stripping the unique features of Firefox out of it so that it would be more like IE6, which had around 95% of the market at one point.  Why would anyone migrate just to get something that is just as bad (if they think it is, in fact, bad– those that don’t are not likely to migrate) as what they are already using?

If you try to argue any of this now with the Mozillians, they would probably tell us that this has been in the works for years, and the time to oppose it has passed.  Well, we have been opposing it since then, but they simply don’t care.  Google doesn’t listen to what users want… it gives them what it thinks they need and tells them to shut up about it if they don’t like it (one example is that people have been asking for an encrypted password store like Firefox has, which Google has told them will not happen, so stop asking for it).

So, naturally, Mozilla copied that bad attitude too.  Google is big; they can be arrogant and ignore their users and still succeed.  Mozilla is a bit player at this point; they ought not be trying to copy policies that require a level of strongarming they can never match

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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flackcatcher, Noel Carboni, grayslady, samak, HiFlyer, Elly, EstherD, Cybertooth

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I don’t have strong feelings about browsers, so long as they are not overtly intrusive.  The whole subject seems a bit overrated, measured in speed and memory usage, when these are seldom an issue now.  Intrusiveness is different.  I won’t go with Google for that reason.  If Firefox had emphasized privacy, or at least the capability to easily customize for privacy (and not have it undermined by other stuff going on), I would have become a Firefox loyalist.  This thread is a signal to start looking around.

And as Noel implied above, I don’t understand how any free browser developer makes money, unless it’s to shove ads in your face (the part you see) and/or sell data (the part you don’t).  So assurances of privacy need to be pretty strong.

 

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Noel Carboni, HiFlyer, Elly

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