
Firefox Now Offers a More Private Browsing Experience - tempestn
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/11/03/firefox-now-offers-a-more-private-browsing-experience/
======
mmastrac
Here's a link to the FAQ with more info: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/kb/tracking-protection-pbm](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-
protection-pbm)

And links to lists of what is blocked:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tracking_protection#Lists](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tracking_protection#Lists)

I'm curious to know what the in-the-wild breakage rate for FF's blocking
feature is. I use Ghostery myself and I find that maybe 1 in 100 are broken. I
feel like that could be 1 in 1000 if blockers implemented a Google Analytics
stub -- by far the most commonly required script for things to work.

~~~
Cogito
I've run into the Google Analytics issue multiple times. It may be just
because usage is so prevalent, so it's more visible, but it's _bad_ when your
website breaks because a third party script doesn't load.

In the situations I've seen, the issue was using GA without first checking it
loaded correctly. Defensively coding third party requests, let alone all
requests, should be second nature.

It raises two questions for me:

1\. Is there some code out there being copied everywhere which assumes GA will
always load?

2\. How do I make sure this is never an issue in my projects?

I don't _think_ (1) is an actual problem, and I don't know of any options for
(2).

Bandwidth throttling doesn't directly help, although it may make it obvious
which third-party scripts block the render of the page (which often seems
related).

Ideally you would have good test coverage on the loaded page, and then
randomly block requests to see what breaks. Mark resources as either hard or
soft dependencies, make sure soft dependencies never break the
page/functionality of the app, and make sure loss of a hard dependency
degrades nicely.

Edit: I should also add, my most memorable run in with this bug was with a
very well known application, and they were very quick to fix it once reported.
I was surprised none of the internal devs had run into the problem, as I
assumed most would run a blocker, but it may have been an early access
release...

~~~
scintill76
As a user, I would tend to agree; but as a developer, thinking about "what if
the browser decides to kill this one script request but run the rest of the
scripts?" is the last thing on my mind. I don't know, maybe I'm a lazy dev[0],
but when you consider it's essentially the browser's selective compliance to
the standards, how far down that rabbit hole do you want to go?

Now, you could argue that requests can legitimately fail at any time, and it's
best to handle it. OK, as a lazy/efficient dev willing to entertain that, I'll
design my page to put up a modal alert saying "There was an error loading this
page. Click OK to refresh." if anything fails to load. Now my error-handling
job is done, but privacy-conscious users will still be mad at me, demanding
that I gracefully degrade for every combination of request-blocking (or in
GP's case, request-tampering!) they can dream up.

Again, I'm sympathetic as a user, and I've even experienced broken pages due
to Ghostery, but as a developer it's hard to blame them.

[0] And AFAIK have no hard dependencies on third-party scripts like GA.

~~~
Cogito
This is why I think the concept of soft and hard dependencies is useful.

As a dev, it's _nice_ that I can track what my users are doing with GA, but I
would rather my users be able to use my application. This is definitely a
'soft' dependency because I do not have a hard requirement to use its
functionality. If a critical piece of my application (a 'hard' dependency)
fails to load then that is a bigger problem.

I don't think we _have_ to degrade gracefully for every possible failure, but
failing to render anything is a really bad failure mode. Your lazy/efficient
dev is actually just providing a good user experience; if something bad has
gone wrong, let the user know so they can refresh etc.

The thing about third-party scripts is that you have no control over them at
all. By their nature, you can't even bundle them (that is a workaround for
some options though)!

If your users are deploying your web-app behind the firewall, and outbound
requests are blocked, if you _don 't_ handle these requests failing then the
entire app becomes unusable regardless of if they use ad blocking or not.

~~~
scintill76
Yeah, I got a little carried away ranting. It's probably reasonable to make
sure your page works if GA doesn't load. There may be other third-party
scripts that the developer views as essential but the user doesn't.

I found this searching for "google analytics stub":
[http://ejohn.org/blog/fixing-google-analytics-for-
ghostery/](http://ejohn.org/blog/fixing-google-analytics-for-ghostery/) .
Supposedly Ghostery was already stubbing it in 2013. They might be missing
some stubs for certain scripts though, because I've had something break 6-8
weeks ago, and it worked when I disabled Ghostery and refreshed.

------
mrmondo
I truly appreciate how much time and effort Mozilla puts into Firefox privacy.
I do wish however that some more effort was spent on stability and
performance. It seems like every day I hear coworkers growling that Firefox
has crashed on them and while I'm sure that plugins are a huge part of this
it's not exactly easy for the end user to pinpoint where the issue is
occurring.

~~~
monochromatic
98% of my crashes are Flash-related.

~~~
janzer
Yep, I finally uninstalled flash a couple of months ago and will open up a
chrome window for the rare website I need that still requires flash.

~~~
jszymborski
Chrome exists on my comp solely for Netflix and Flash.

------
hackuser
I wonder about Mozilla's strategies for two key challenges:

1) The greatest challenge for Tracking Protection seems to me to be not
technical, but strategic: How do you protect users from tracking without
creating a backlash from the tracking industry and their customers (the whole
Internet economy built on tracking) that will make the outcome worse or no
better, and after an expensive battle. As an extreme example, if the next
release of Firefox cut off tracking for all its users then I think there would
be a war, including possibly lawsuits and an arms race between trackers and
tracking protection. The users would be no better off (or worse off) and it
would consume Mozilla's resources.

2) How do they plan to protect the great majority of users who lack the
knowledge and skill to understand tracking protection? Remember that most
users barely know they are being tracked, much less what that means or how
it's done. Many users I deal with don't know the URL field from the search box
on their home page; they don't understand what a web browser, web page, or
remote server are, much less their components, requests, JavaScript, etc. They
lack even the framework to begin understanding tracking. Most other end users
I know would be overwhelmed by the concept and extra hassle to load a page.
Also, how will most users understand why the webpage is malfunctioning, of all
the possible reasons, and what to do about it? Maybe they'll think Firefox is
simply broken. Maybe this is why Tracking Protection is available only in
Private Browsing right now, and hidden behind a small, somewhat obscure icon
(if I understand correctly); maybe that's a way of limiting it to more
technically skilled users. Providing tracking protection to technical users
has been done, via Ghostery, Disconnect, etc. I'd like to see it become
available to everyone else. (That's not a criticism of Mozilla - this is a
great, precedent-setting step forward, establishing that major browser vendors
might block tracking and act in user interests over industry's, and hopefully
creating some competition in that area.)

Maybe the first step is to raise awareness of tracking and the idea that users
benefit from and should have the option for privacy, which can be done by
simply telling users about Tracking Protection when they open Firefox after
the update, whether or not they actually use it.

~~~
joesmo
"How do you protect users from tracking without creating a backlash from the
tracking industry and their customers?"

I don't see this as a concern for Mozilla. Google/Apple/Microsoft and their
respective browsers sure, but the point of Firefox is to provide a browser
whose goals align with the user. The industry's goals here have never aligned
with users and it's about time (many, many years too late) that a major
browser vendor ships this as part of the browser rather than an addon.

~~~
hackuser
I agree about Mozilla's principles, but my point is that if there is a
backlash they will have done something that is good in principle but which
doesn't actually make the situation better for users. They'll end up with just
as much tracking (but using different tech), more broken websites, etc.

------
mesozoic
Do any of the browsers privacy modes make an active attempt to stop
fingerprint based tracking yet?

~~~
jamoes
Not to my knowledge. That's why I use the CanvasBlocker extension [1], which
prevents websites from abusing canvas tags to fingerprint me.

I'd like to see a comprehensive effort to prevent fingerprinting without
having to resort to simply blocking the canvas element altogether.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/canvasblocker...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/canvasblocker/)

~~~
IshKebab
There are many other ways to fingerprint you. Blocking the canvas alone
doesn't really achieve anything.

------
unicornporn
This is the first time I've had to downgrade after upgrading. For avid users
of Tree Style Tab I can report that it is completely unusable in Firefox 42.

~~~
mbudde
A new version (0.15.20150902901) of TreeStyleTabs has been released that works
with Firefox 42, but it will not automatically update so you need to install
it from [1]. See also [2].

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-
ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-
tab/versions/?page=1#version-0.15.20150902901)

[2]
[https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/973](https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/973)

------
oneJob
So if someone starts following me on the street and gets close enough to put
their hand in one of my pockets and just continues on that way every morning I
leave my house, for weeks or longer, I don't say, "Hey stranger, I'd like to
make an argument why you should afford me some privacy tomorrow." I'd likely
say, "Wtf person, you're being the kind of weird that gets the police called
on people. Step back. Or better yet, go away to somewhere that I can't see
you." But hey, this is the Internet, so let's just all stop thinking as though
this all has anything to do with real life.

------
tenfingers
Seems like "Tracking protection" should be the default, not an opt-on. Like
disabling "beacon.enabled" by default, for instance.

If you're using a general purpose blocker (uBlock, uMatrix, PoliceMan,
AdBlock, etc, even NoScript), it makes sense to actually disable the internal
blocker (less hooks/rules to parse), as FF's list is not even remotely
comparable to what you get by subscribing to a couple of community-maintained
ones, plus there's no convenient way to tweak the rules (something that other
addons excel at).

FF internal tracking protection is somewhat nice for the casual user, and it's
going to stir some extra polemics about content blocking (which I consider a
positive thing), but it's nowhere as effective as the others. I fear it's also
going to be circumvented more quickly, promoting more inline JS, supercookies
and fingerprinting techniques.

Overall, it's not something that I would have included in FF from a purely
pragmatical perspective. It's just opening Mozilla to direct liability, while
not providing anything for the privacy conscious person.

~~~
hackuser
> It's just opening Mozilla to direct liability, while not providing anything
> for the privacy conscious person.

I would guess that there are many people who use Private Browsing mode that
don't understand or use security addons. This change may not help many Hacker
News users, almost all of whom do understand and can easily use the addons,
but we are only a tiny fraction of the Internet.

------
Scarbutt
Will this interfere with Privacy Badge and uBlock Origin? Unlike Chrome,
Firefox doesn't have the option to disable addons for private mode.

~~~
pwnna
No. I've been using this under nightly for a bit now and there's no problem
coexisting afaict.

------
devit
Note that you should be using Tor Browser instead unless you specifically want
the 3rd party sites to see your real IP address, or need to use a browser that
is more compatible with standard browsers.

------
mangeletti
Firefox, as of this update, is completely unstable on Mountain Lion. I have
two notebooks running Mountain Lion, and both have the same issues. Opening
new tabs results in this weird bug where the current page is changed to the
about:blank page, sort of, and the new tab doesn't actually appear. I've used
Firefox since 2.1, and this organization is now falling apart, in terms of
producing a functioning product. How is it possible to make a worse browser in
2015 than they made in 2007 or so?

~~~
muizelaar
Can you find a regression window using
[http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/](http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/)?

That will help us figure out what broke and fix it.

------
Steko
I'd be happy if I could shut off the reminder to upgrade Sync that pops up
every day.

------
awqrre
Why is this not available in standard mode (vs private mode)?

------
choffee
Do they have a html5 version of that flash video?

~~~
icebraining
It's a Youtube video, and it loads the HTML5 player for me. Try going to
[https://www.youtube.com/html5](https://www.youtube.com/html5) and see if you
can enable it.

------
nacs
A "more private browsing experience" that still features the Pocket bundleware
and button in the toolbar thats still not un-installable like other extensions
and requires about:config edits to disable..

~~~
skrowl
They have to make money somehow. They're not making it by selling all of your
data (and giving it to the NSA for free) like Microsoft and Google.

How do you suggest they continue to exist, if not partnering with Pocket /
Yahoo / etc?

~~~
muraiki
Mozilla did not receive any monetary compensation for integrating Pocket.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla_is_not_benefiting_from_the_pocket/)

~~~
redml
If true, that makes it even stupider. If they're adding even more unnecessary
bloat to the browser they should at least be compensated for it.

~~~
Karunamon
In fairness, what amounts to a hyperlink is not "bloat". I wish it wasn't
there because it's a thing nobody is ever going to use in the age of Hangouts
and Skype, but it's not like impacts the rest of the browser in any way

~~~
scrollaway
It very, very negatively impacted mozilla's and firefox's PR.

Case in point: This entire thread.

~~~
hackuser
It only takes a tiny number of people to make a lot of noise, but I don't
think it represents public opinion. Consider the Tea Party: Whether you agree
with them or not (please don't answer), based on the noise they generate they
might seem to be a majority, but they are a small and shrinking minority.

~~~
epoch1970
I wouldn't be so sure about that. There may be a relatively small number of
very vocal individuals, but I think their opinions may be much more widely
held that you believe they are. It's no secret that Firefox's share of the
market has been dropping lately. For every individual who speaks out against
the latest set of bad decisions from Mozilla, there are clearly many other
users who share that disappointment, but say nothing, and instead just move
from Firefox to some other browser. It's these silent former users who
contribute to Firefox's decline in market share each month.

------
RexRollman
I haven't been thrilled with Mozilla's direction for a while now. Bloating
Firefox by embedding Pocket and Hello into it, speeding up Firefox's release
frequency just because Chrome does it that way, wasting resources on Firefox-
OS, and firing an employee just for donating to a political cause.

If they are not careful, they are going to run Mozilla into the ground.

~~~
toyg
They didn't "fire" Brendan Eich, they just acknowledged that his personal
values were at odd with Mozilla's mission and overall sentiment across the
organization, basically demoting him from the CEO role. Eich then resigned.

~~~
takeda
Look, I don't agree with him, I also voted against Prop 8, but it still feels
that this was an infraction on his freedom of speech (as Citizens United
ruling said that money = speech :).

It's not as he was CEO of LGBT organization or he was running for a public
office. Mozilla is not a political organization, his opinions in this matter
should make no difference whatsoever.

This move was basically infringing on rights to have his personal beliefs.

How would it looks like if it was the reverse? Someone pro LGBT made a
contribution against prop 8 and then was told 6 years later that his personal
values did not match the company's even though the company has nothing to do
with LGBT and his opinion has no impact.

This move was is simply discrimination. It should matter whether he is
republican or democrat, christian/muslim/atheist or fire worshiper, whether
he's pro guns or against. Mozilla is a technology company, neither of that
should matter in what they do.

As someone who cares about politics, I would be furious if my employer told me
that my personal beliefs are wrong. That infringes on my rights as a citizen
and voter.

~~~
darklajid
I repeatedly fail to understand this 'Freedom of Speech' notion - and
certainly do here. Mozilla is a company. They certainly can pick roles based
on the statements of an individual. If you apply for a job there and can't
stop cursing like a madman, or if you happen to add juicy details about your
personal homophobic beliefs to the interview, you might not get the job. Free
speech? Doesn't matter.

Now, I do admit that I didn't like the whole 'we dug up this stuff in his
past' part of the story. Nor the pitchfork wielding crowds on the net. I,
personally, would've considered him misguided and stuck in the past in this
regard, but I wasn't calling for (or expecting) consequences. Mozilla decided
(or was pressured) to distance itself from the person and his statements. That
might be correct or might be unfair, depending on your stance.

But it's not about free speech.

~~~
takeda
I guess I was not clear, the first amendment is not for individual companies.
If a company tells me that I cannot talk about for internal technology that is
used (NDA) then I better won't because no first amendment will protect me.

What I mean is that by telling me that my vote or contribution toward specific
cause is not aligned with company's goals essentially forces me to vote in a
specific way which _does_ affect my freedom of speech.

If Mozilla would be an LGBT organization and I joined and was told that my
contribution don't agree with company's values. Then I'm totally at fault and
should look for job somewhere else if this matter to me, but company like
Mozilla has no obvious political affiliations and in fact they should not have
any.

~~~
KingMob
Mozilla didn't tell him to do anything. It just responded to what he did.

People have freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences.

~~~
scintill76
> People have freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences.

This definition of a "right" is so loose as to be basically meaningless.
Accordingly, I have the freedom to murder anyone, just not the freedom from
its consequences. People in North Korea are free to speak whatever they want,
but aren't free to remain living if the government doesn't like what they
said.

If you make the other cliched argument that the first amendment only applies
to government suppression of speech, that's true, but the US Constitution
doesn't have a monopoly on what "freedom of expression" means. It's only a
legal lower bound, and in one country.

------
mucker
Switch to Pale Moon.

------
skarap
I love how the page fails to provide _any_ explanation of how it works or what
it does at all. Maybe there is something in the video, but I'm not going to
watch it.

~~~
jhchen
Uh right below the video...

"We first added Private Browsing to Firefox to give you control over your
privacy locally by not saving your browser history and cookies when you close
a private window. However, when you browse the Web, you can unknowingly share
information about yourself with third parties that are separate from the site
you’re actually visiting, even in Private Browsing mode on any browser. Until
today.

Private Browsing with Tracking Protection in Firefox for Windows, Mac, Android
and Linux actively blocks content like ads, analytics trackers and social
share buttons that may record your behavior without your knowledge across
sites."

------
Silhouette
Unfortunately they have also yet again changed things internally that break
plug-ins, apparently including various popular ones used for privacy and
blocking purposes. So in reality, since I don't habitually browse in Private
Browsing mode, the more private browsing I've experienced with the recent
Firefox updates has involved more ads and trackers than I've seen in years,
followed by a lot of frustration searching for replacement extensions that
actually work and then still more frustration configuring things manually that
used to just work a few months ago.

I really wish Mozilla would get back to promoting the add-ons model that once
made Firefox so attractive, and prioritising flexibility and stability
accordingly. Some of the other features they've added directly might be
useful, but the price of the constant change is too high, and in just about
every case I can think of the add-ons community already had good, working
solutions.

~~~
Osmose
Which add-ons are you referring to? AFAIK the big 3 are AdBlock (Plus? There's
so many jeez), uBlock (and Origin), and, in a distant third, Privacy Badger.

~~~
Silhouette
Adblock Edge was discontinued a little while back but had effectively replaced
the not-fully-blocking Adblock Plus of recent months. ABE's UI integration
broke in another recent FF update, but the blocking itself continued to work
usefully until FF42, at which point apparently it ceased doing anything useful
at all.

uBlock Origin is apparently now the blessed alternative and is OK for blocking
most ads, but I immediately found a few potential tracking issues with its
default lists, and its UI is awful.

Ghostery also isn't blocking various trackers effectively now, even though its
UI still claims it has detected and blocked them. I can't 100% guarantee
that's FF42 if Ghostery also updated its lists at almost exactly the same
time, but that's when I saw things like Facebook Connect start hitting FB
servers even though it's supposedly blocked.

This is almost a brand new machine, BTW, which just happened to update FF and
lead to changes in the plug-ins a few days after initial set-up. There's
relatively little chance of odd things going on or historical baggage
distorting these results.

Bottom line: The day I bought the machine and installed FF and my usual set up
add-ons, my browsing experience was fine, and then a few days later FF updated
to 42, and my browsing experience immediately sucked.

~~~
gorhill
> I immediately found a few potential tracking issues with its default lists

I am curious: what are these "few potential tracking issues" _specifically_?

Whatever default lists uBO is using, unlike with ABE (which is essentially ABP
filtering engine), users have the last words in what is blocked:

\- The `important` filter option can be used to override exception filters.[1]

\- Dynamic filtering override all static filters.[2] For example, you do not
need a special filter list to block Facebook everywhere, it's a matter of a
few point-and-click to block it everywhere without any way for any static
filter to counter it.[3]

* * *

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-
syntax#...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-
syntax#network-filters-options)

[2] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Overview-of-
uBlock's-...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Overview-of-
uBlock's-network-filtering-engine)

[3] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-
filtering:-to...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-
filtering:-to-easily-reduce-privacy-exposure)

~~~
Silhouette
Some specific examples I've noticed on the privacy side are pinging a Facebook
server when a page uses Facebook Connect, and allowing the various web font
services.

It's certainly possible to customise uBlock Origin to prevent these things.
However, I couldn't immediately see any of the other suggested lists that
would have blocked some of these potential privacy/tracking issues either,
which suggests that not only do I need to manually block them if I want to
stop the tracking, I also need to manually update those lists.

In contrast, with a couple of fire-and-forget plug-ins I've been installing as
standard for years until recent FF updates broke them, I very rarely had to
customise anything manually. They just worked as standard, and I trusted them
to keep working and never noticed any significant problems, until now.

~~~
gorhill
> I couldn't immediately see any of the other suggested lists

Fanboy's Anti-ThirdpartySocial is right there in the list of lists, under the
Social header.

> In contrast, with a couple of fire-and-forget plug-ins I've been installing
> as standard for years until recent FF updates broke them

Ok, my answer was meant to address your point that uBO was no replacement for
ABE, as you stated "uBlock Origin is apparently now the blessed alternative
[to ABE]".

~~~
Silhouette
_Fanboy 's Anti-ThirdpartySocial is right there in the list of lists, under
the Social header._

And it doesn't block any of the things I mentioned. The domain
connect.facebook.com isn't in there, for example, and I ran into a page
running a script from there within five minutes of switching to the new plug-
ins.

 _Ok, my answer was meant to address your point that uBO was no replacement
for ABE_

Sorry, I'm not sure where I said anything like that. I explicitly noted that
uBO _was_ apparently being promoted as the successor to ABE, as you seem to
have noticed. I just also noted that the plug-ins I've got running now aren't
as good in some respects as the ones that worked just fine for a long time
until recent FF changes.

~~~
brymaster
> The domain connect.facebook.com isn't in there, for example

"Anti-ThirdpartySocial" aka "Anti-Facebook List‎" list
[https://www.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-
antifacebook.txt](https://www.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-antifacebook.txt)

> ||connect.facebook.com^$third-party,domain=~facebook.net|~fb.com

> ||connect.facebook.net^$third-party,domain=~facebook.com|~fb.com

> ||facebook.com/connect/$third-party

Is that not what you are looking for?

~~~
Silhouette
Yes, you're right, apologies to you and to 'gorhill.

I misunderstood before and at the time I read "Fanboy's Anti-ThirdpartySocial"
as "Fanboy’s Social Blocking List" not "Anti-ThirdpartySocial (see warning
inside list)", perhaps because the latter sometimes seems to change its name
to "Anti-Facebook List" for reasons I haven't identified. The former does
block numerous Facebook addresses, just not that one.

I'm not sure any of this really invalidates my original point, though. Two
weeks ago my Firefox had a couple of privacy/blocker extensions installed, and
with no real configuration beyond ticking the "everything" boxes in the
Ghostery wizard, they blocked pretty much everything that bothered me. Today,
with FF42, neither of them works any more.

Apparently the new version involves figuring out which of the almost 50 lists
that are suggested but not active by default in uBlock Origin are needed to
get a reasonable level of blocking. I dare say almost no-one is actually going
to get that right reliably even if they want to. And while I might have
guessed to just activate everything under the social heading to block Facebook
Connect (at least if I'd realised something related to Facebook wasn't already
blocked by default), I have no idea which of those lists to even check to see
if I can disable the various web font resources that involve tracking.

------
crucini
It's a step in the right direction, but I'm afraid we need more than this.

> Since some Web pages may appear broken when elements that track behavior are
> blocked, we’ve made it easy to turn off Tracking Protection in Private
> Browsing for a particular site using the Control Center.

Whitelisting a whole site because it "appears broken" is a pretty weak
approach, and clearly incentivizes "brokenness". I notice the spies (google
etc.) are more intelligent and creative than the defenders of privacy.

We need a browser that can make such sites work - for the user. Without
leaking any cross-site information. This involves rewriting URLs and cookies,
or "mixmastering" identifiers across a cloud of users.

>Today we’re also releasing new visual editing tools in Firefox Developer
Edition including Animation Tools that work the same way animators think.

To me this sounds like fiddling while Rome burns. Typical of their track
record of wasting energy on irrelevant projects instead of making a great
browser.

~~~
c0achmcguirk
> To me this sounds like fiddling while Rome burns. Typical of their track
> record of wasting energy on irrelevant projects instead of making a great
> browser.

I don't think you're being fair. I'm seeing a lot of improvements from
Firefox, outside of their vastly improved developer tools and tracking
prevention.

    
    
      * They've been working on multi-process Firefox, 
        enabled in developer edition [1]
      * They've been beating Chrome's JS Engine in the 
        benchmarks (not to mention IE) [2]
      * They've been implementing more and more of HTML5, about 
        81% of the way there according to [3]
      * Firefox supports more ES6 features than Chrome [4]
    

I guess I'm seeing a lot of good progress coming from the Firefox team.

[1] - [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Fir...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Firefox)

[2] - [http://arewefastyet.com/](http://arewefastyet.com/)

[3] -
[https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html](https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html)

[4] - [https://kangax.github.io/compat-
table/es6/](https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/)

