FireFox Demise

[StainlessS]

Here just a heads up, FireFox has been real sluggish (and buggy) of late so I tried out Opera (quite some time since I did that).

Opera is like lightning in comparison.
Also, Opera has new free VPN option for Android Opera, and PC version.

Thought some of you might like to know.

https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=iBOdWNzCCMmT8QfB6JSQCQ&gws_rd=ssl#q=opera+vpn

[Midzuki]

Regarding Opera: have its developers finally written & applied a useful GUI upon the Blink layout-engine? Or it's still the same old unimaginative clone of Chrome and Chromium?

As for Firefox:
everybody should have already switched to Pale Moon :sly:

[CruNcher]

Here just a heads up, FireFox has been real sluggish (and buggy) of late so I tried out Opera (quite some time since I did that).

Opera is like lightning in comparison.
Also, Opera has new free VPN option for Android Opera, and PC version.

Thought some of you might like to know.

https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=iBOdWNzCCMmT8QfB6JSQCQ&gws_rd=ssl#q=opera+vpn

Personally i don't like such generalizations mostly they don't hold truth in complex ITC systems at all and are only experienced by a certain hardware and OS group of users.

Especially by a on daily base changing software that tries to deeply integrate into the OS.

Firefox is still not optimal in Multi threading on Windows but overall it's decent even for very heavy tasks.

Though im a different kind of user im using nightlies but testing them like every Software very long in production before changing to the next.
And i'm sure you'll find a lot of Firefox users like me that will be happy with it even knowing it's internal Problems very well.

Firefox most stability problems in my very own long time Personal experience are happening inside of XUL but you have to understand what XUL is and how deeply it still is integrated and also how Powerful it is in the perception of Power Users in changing the whole Experience to their own liking and how it can versatile adapt the whole experience to users behavior.

Firefox Rendering Core (Gecko) is old yes and not as nice as Webkit and also Presto was overall very nice.

If you reference Opera you reference to Webkit and Chromes Multi threaded Rendering Engine Base with a different GUI and a different User Experience these days.

The Real Opera (Presto) isn't existing anymore and it's ideas live partly on in the Vivaldi Browser.



But you are right from a normal user Standpoint in the HTML5 Multi threaded age task stability and Performance is a key important factor and Firefox as it is wont still be percepted well here or on the same level as Chrome in a Multi Core environment.

[StainlessS]

I tried out Pale Moon, seems a fair bit more lively than FireFox (which I have used for many years).
I dont like Chrome at all (although only tried it a dozen or so times), I'm not at all familiar with rendering engines and such,
I am only really bothered about having to not wait up to 10 seconds on start up (firefox of late), and dont like the firefox zombies
that lurk around after supposed closure.
Maybe I try out Vivaldi and see what that is like.

And, I guess that the Opera described VPN is more a proxy than VPN.
(I think is currently limited to 500MB per month, but will soon be free and unlimited).
EDIT: Torrenting is currently a capital offence in Opera VPN with instant expulsion if caught,
but even that looks to be acceptable soon.

EDIT: Free Unlimited VPN, thats gotta be a giant killer (or just the first of many).

[Katie Boundary]

The last good version of Firefox was 39. After that, they started scrapping the whole "let the user be in control of the user experience" philosophy. With v40, they required all addons/plugins to be verified or authorized or something. v43 was the last one that allowed you to require the browser to ask for your permission every time someone wanted to install a cookie.

Does anyone know of a browser that functions like Firefox 39, but without the auto-updating to crappier, crippled versions?

[StainlessS]

You can switch off Auto Update in the settings for FireFox.
There is also an add-on that prevents FireFox from disabling extensions (at your own risk), but I cant for the life of me
remember what it was called (recent system change, lost my add-ons and do not have to xpi file for whatever it was).
Some kind of FF developer plugin.

[Katie Boundary]

You can switch off Auto Update in the settings for FireFox.

Unfortunately, that doesn't always stop it from updating.

[Midzuki]

FWIW: besides Pale Moon, both K-Meleon and Seamonkey use the Gecko layout-engine, and have nothing to do with Firefox's dumbed-down interface. K-Meleon is somewhat "outdated", BUT it should work OK with most sites (specially with the "Firefox compatibility" always turned on). Seamonkey looks and feels like the olde and goode Netscape Communicator :devil: , and this is the reason why I prefer it :cool:

[johnmeyer]

Unfortunately, that doesn't always stop it from updating.In my experience, it does. In fact, I will not use any program or operating system that does not let me defeat auto updating. I cannot begin to estimate how much time this has saved me over the years from not having my computer slow down during updates; by not having updates screw up a perfectly operating computer; and by not having to downgrade after I find that I can't understand how the new version works.

I fix other people's computers and had one older guy call me, in tears, because he got fooled into updating Windows 7 to Windows 10 (Microsoft's well-documented update "trojan"). He couldn't figure out how to do anything.

[hello_hello]

The last good version of Firefox was 39. After that, they started scrapping the whole "let the user be in control of the user experience" philosophy. With v40, they required all addons/plugins to be verified or authorized or something. v43 was the last one that allowed you to require the browser to ask for your permission every time someone wanted to install a cookie.

The last version of Firefox allowing you to use unsigned plugins is version 47. There's an option you can set in about:config and it worked until version 48.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing
If I remember correctly it still works for nightly builds if you're adventurous.

I've no idea about the cookie situation as I can't say I care.

Does anyone fully understand how the Firefox ESR system works?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/
I understand in principle but not how updates work. The current ESR on offer here is still version 38. I don't know why.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/
I managed to find an ESR download for version 45 a while back as it's the last ESR release to support unsigned extensions, so I'm staying there for the moment (45.4 to be precise). I haven't been game to auto-update it as I don't know if that'll take me to a newer 45 release or try to push me onto something else. It says I'm on the ESR channel in Help/About Firefox, but can I safely click the "check for updates" button? I'd hate to update it in a month or so and find I'm unexpectedly running Firefox 52.

Unfortunately PaleMoon dropped XP support recently. Well, it'd been dropped for a long time but they had a version optimised for Atom CPUs that ran fine on XP (regardless of the CPU) but that was dropped recently too. Unless I mage a complete switch to Linux, the old PCs here will run XP till the day they die, even after I build a new one, so XP support is still desired. I'd much prefer the same browser and same extensions on each PC. Anything else gets frustrating. I use my other half's vanilla IE on Win7 now and then and want to punch the monitor after five minutes. That's not an IE hate for once, it'd be the same with any browser "out of the box".

After switching to PaleMoon and going through the initial extension pain there's been some relief from the extension madness,as updates to the browser seem far less likely to break extensions. I have 33 installed in Pale Moon and the same in Firefox, plus a few extras to make Firefox look like Pale Moon (old Firefox) and not a sad Chrome wanna-be.

Isn't Firefox switching to Chrome-type extensions soon, or has that happened already? If it gets to the stage where you can update the browser without panicking over how many extensions it'll break, it might be worth switching back. I think I'll sit on the version of PaleMoon I'm using for a while. I've kept Firefox installed and in a useable state as an alternative in case there's a problem with a web site, but the next browser switch might be Chrome, or SeaMonkey, or whatever looks like it won't keep subjecting me to extension madness. Enough already....

Unfortunately, that doesn't always stop it from updating.

It always has for me.

[Katie Boundary]

FWIW: besides Pale Moon, both K-Meleon and Seamonkey use the Gecko layout-engine, and have nothing to do with Firefox's dumbed-down interface. K-Meleon is somewhat "outdated", BUT it should work OK with most sites (specially with the "Firefox compatibility" always turned on). Seamonkey looks and feels like the olde and goode Netscape Communicator :devil: , and this is the reason why I prefer it :cool:

But which ones let me say "ask my permission every time for every cookie"?

In my experience, it does.

Sometimes, an unrelated program - usually an installer - will open a browser window without permission. When it does, it skips the popup window that asks "do you want to allow this program to make changes to your computer?", and thereby allows Firefox to force the update.

It's not common, but it has happened. I keep installers for Firefox 38.8.0 ESR, 39.0.3, and 43.0.4 on my hard drive just in case. Acquiring them was tricky. Although the Mozilla website no longer has any links to these old files, they DO still exist on the Mozilla servers, so they're still downloadable if you correctly guess their location and filenames.

[Midzuki]

But which ones let me say "ask my permission every time for every cookie"?

Both Seamonkey and K-Meleon can do that.
In Seamonkey, hold "ALT", press "E" twice, and you are in the Preferences applet.
In K-Meleon, just press "F2" to do the same thing.

[CruNcher]

The last good version of Firefox was 39. After that, they started scrapping the whole "let the user be in control of the user experience" philosophy. With v40, they required all addons/plugins to be verified or authorized or something. v43 was the last one that allowed you to require the browser to ask for your permission every time someone wanted to install a cookie.

Does anyone know of a browser that functions like Firefox 39, but without the auto-updating to crappier, crippled versions?

Authorization is partly necessary they are to much bad entities living on this world.
To much scandals happened this openes is sometimes a burden as it opens a design philosophy wide to these entities but complete secrecy is no solution either our society has to change finally fundamentally or it will end in a world i don't want to imagine.

Not everyone will use his knowledge for doing the right thing for all of society if he is pressured by outside circumstances in his life to much blackhats grown up.

The result and consequences of this are frightening as hell in enforcing a trusted environment on everyone :(

But which ones let me say "ask my permission every time for every cookie"?

You are crazy right how much time you want to invest then ;)

I mean do you ever analyzed how nested websites these days are with 3rd party cookies from zillion of companies, you would be spending so much time clicking on no that would be wasted of your task completion time.

if you want that control then whitelist/blacklist are the only efficient way.

[hello_hello]

Sometimes, an unrelated program - usually an installer - will open a browser window without permission. When it does, it skips the popup window that asks "do you want to allow this program to make changes to your computer?", and thereby allows Firefox to force the update.

The Firefox setting under Options/Advanced/Update is bypassed by a third party program launching the browser?
Sounds unlikely to me and you're relying on Windows to determine whether a program can update itself instead of disabling updates in the program. The version of Windows I use (XP) doesn't even have a popup like that, and Firefox has never "forced" an update.

I keep installers for Firefox 38.8.0 ESR, 39.0.3, and 43.0.4 on my hard drive just in case. Acquiring them was tricky. Although the Mozilla website no longer has any links to these old files, they DO still exist on the Mozilla servers, so they're still downloadable if you correctly guess their location and filenames.

Or you can just download them from here.
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/

[hello_hello]

I understand in principle but not how updates work. The current ESR on offer here is still version 38. I don't know why.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/

Anyone know what the deal is with the 32 bit ESR links here?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/
I didn't realise when I posted a link to the page above earlier, the 32 and 64 bit links seem to download different versions.

At the moment the English US 32 bit link shows this location:
https://download-sha1.allizom.org/?product=firefox-45.7.0esr-SSL&os=win&lang=en-US
but the file that it leads to is labelled Firefox Setup 38.5.1esr.exe
I don't know if that means it's the wrong file or it's named incorrectly or there's something else going on.

Fortunately though, Katie Boundary said it'd be tricky to download certain Firefox versions, which assured me I'd find them in about 15 seconds via Google
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/
along with every other version of Firefox since day 1, which in turn solved my earlier problem of not being sure how to safely upgrade 45.4 ESR. I'll try auto-update to see if it just takes me to 45.7 now, which I think it will, but if not I can use the full installer to start again.
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/45.7.0esr/
(the last ESR flavour that'll allow the installing of unsigned extensions)

[Katie Boundary]

Both Seamonkey and K-Meleon can do that.
In Seamonkey, hold "ALT", press "E" twice, and you are in the Preferences applet.
In K-Meleon, just press "F2" to do the same thing.

Sweet http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/DWJohnson/Emoticons/emote-thumbsup3.gif

You are crazy right how much time you want to invest then ;)

I mean do you ever analyzed how nested websites these days are with 3rd party cookies from zillion of companies, you would be spending so much time clicking on no that would be wasted of your task completion time.

I know exactly how many garbage cookies these garbage websites want to put on my computer. That's exactly why I want to block them.

[jmac698]

Just saw today, Firefox is removing the add on system and moving to webextensions which are much more restricted. Say goodbye to XUL.
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/01/25/webextensions-in-firefox-53/

The reason ff may be slow to startup is due to addons you have installed.

[StainlessS]

The reason ff may be slow to startup is due to addons you have installed.

Could well be, I got oodles of extensions :)

[Midzuki]

Just saw today, Firefox is removing the add on system and moving to webextensions which are much more restricted. Say goodbye to XUL.
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/01/25/webextensions-in-firefox-53/

I hope the add-on authors themselves will stop-using-&-recommending Firefox. The madness of the glorified Netscape 6 has gone on long enough.

[CruNcher]

Saying goodbye to XUL was the wrong thing it should have been refactored correctly webextensions are horrific in terms of user control and real realtime capabilities, especially Power Users will run high wire.
<-

Maybe i see it to Dark we'll see how it plays out though i save all my code and extension state now and a copy of Firefox 52, as backup ;)

Im pretty undecided now i could even move to Chrome with it's far more advanced multithreading now that decision to kick XUL was enforced.

And if you think you have time to Firefox 57 that is only partly the truth code is braking already