

Firefox 29 beta arrives with easy Sync tool.... - kumarrahul
http://www.freshtechapps.com/firefox-29-beta-arrives-with-easy-sync-tool-customization-mode-and-chrome-like-user-interface-australis/
Firefox 29 beta arrives with easy Sync tool, customization mode and Chrome-like user interface Australis
======
spindritf
You can always use Aurora which is Firefox two versions ahead of release. So
you would have had those features about a month ago.

I was for a long time hesitant thinking that it would be unstable, or cause
compatibility issues with my favourite extensions... Nothing like that. At
least in my experience. New sync worked completely flawlessly. I now use it on
both Ubuntu[1] and Android[2] almost exclusively.

On Android it's faster than Chrome beta, perhaps partly due to AdBlock, and it
has a nicer interface, especially closing tabs is much easier. It's not
available from Google Play but it updates itself so you only need to download
the .apk manually once (make sure you do it over ssl).

On desktop some changes brought by Australis are, let's say, not to my taste.
Of course, there's already an addon to fix it[3]. You can keep whatever you
like from the new UI, and revert whatever you don't. For example, I like the
drawer but didn't like the inability to move back and forward buttons to the
right of the url bar. They're back on the right[4]. Same goes for rounded
corners of tabs, or any other control issue.

[1] [https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-
daily/+archive/firefox...](https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-
daily/+archive/firefox-aurora)

[2] [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/aurora/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/mobile/aurora/)

[3] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/)

[4] [http://i.imgur.com/LE8UZHY.png](http://i.imgur.com/LE8UZHY.png)

------
userbinator
_In this new version, Mozilla presents a major user interface overhaul
Australis that makes it easy to customize your browser._

The amount of doublespeak Mozilla has been putting out recently is astounding.
Read the comments here for example (I don't know if they've changed anything
since then, but I doubt it): [https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2013/11/australis-
is-landing-in-...](https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2013/11/australis-is-landing-
in-firefox-nightly/)

All they appear to be doing is chasing Chrome's design decisions.

~~~
rquirk
I worry that desktop Firefox will go the way of the Android version or the
neutered Firefox OS browser, where you cannot install the vital security add-
on NoScript due to the incompatible add-on model that the mobile versions use.
That used to work on Android, but no longer (and it seems the noscript dev is
not a fan of the mobile platform). There are many more add-ons that only work
on the desktop version. They should all be cross-platform and not desktop
specific :(

~~~
lucian1900
The problem is that most existing extensions are based on XUL, which is
terrible and impractical for good mobile UIs.

There is a more abstract addon API (used by restartless addons) and your
favourite ones just need to be updated.

Also, NoScript is not a "vital security add-on".

~~~
userbinator
> Also, NoScript is not a "vital security add-on".

The vast majority of exploits depend on JS being available, since (at the very
least) it'll be used to unobfuscate/execute some attack code. Remember the Tor
browser vulnerability that was exploited? That wouldn't have happened without
JS.

(Coincidentally, I find it amusing that not too long after, that Firefox made
it even harder to disable JS, by _removing the checkbox for global enable
/disable_.)

~~~
lucian1900
That's almost like saying the vast majority of exploits depend on you using a
Turing machine.

Breaking most websites for the sake of slightly reducing the attack surface
doesn't seem worth it.

~~~
userbinator
The definition of "most websites" varies between people; the majority of the
Internet browsing I do (mostly reading content in the form of text or images)
does not require JS. If I come across a site in a search that refuses to show
content without JS (and Google's cache, text-only, doesn't give me what I want
to see either), I'll just move on to the next search result.

It's far better for websites to break, than my machine. The tradeoff will be
different for someone who regularly browses a different demographic of sites.

------
grandpoobah
I've been patiently waiting for Firefox to fix their ugly UI, I look forward
to finally ditching Chrome and returning to a browser made by a company whose
primary concern isn't accumulating data on its users.

~~~
hackinthebochs
FXChrome solved the problem for me (chrome-like theme for firefox, its
perfect). I am glad someone finally told them their last design iteration was
horrendous. Honestly, who makes these decisions over there?

~~~
kevingadd
UX people and graphic designers, based on extensive user testing. Have you run
any user tests lately? ;)

~~~
userbinator
The majority of the users being tested are not power users. In fact the power
users are probably the ones who don't like the idea of their browser phoning
home to report their usage habits, and so disable those sorts of things.

------
SquareWheel
Australis is such an improvement that I'm tempted to come back from Chrome.
Everything feels very fluid and fast. I'd be curious to see the latest
benchmarks on startup time, Javascript performance and such.

~~~
moystard
I don't know how long you have been a Chrome user, but Firefox has felt snappy
and responsive for a few months now. Australis re-design shows that often
speed is more a matter of impression than benchmark results.

~~~
SquareWheel
I switched from Firefox to Chrome the week it came out. So maybe 5 years? I've
kept Firefox installed for testing web development and such though.

You're absolutely right that perception of speed is largely about experience.
The animations are smooth, it doesn't jump around. But I can tell that the
boot times are much faster now as well.

Both teams have done an excellent job. Seeing this release has encouraged me
to finally donate to Mozilla. They do a lot of good for the web.

------
rootuid
"In addition, Firefox Sync is also upgraded so that all current users will
need to create new account"

Seriously, NO! How to alienate your existing customers.

~~~
sp332
I'm not sure that part of the article is correct. I've been using my old sync
account in Nightly builds (now up to version 31) and it's still working fine.

Edit: I just checked with a clean install, and there's a button that says
"Using an older version of sync?" It brings you to this page
[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-to-update-to-the-
ne...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-to-update-to-the-new-firefox-
sync?redirectlocale=en-US&as=u&redirectslug=how-sync-works-old-version-
firefox&utm_source=inproduct) which basically says "unlink all your devices
and re-link them." So I guess adding new devices to your old account doesn't
work.

------
morsch
So now I need to give them my email address plus remember yet another password
for sync? Do not want. I always thought the old model with the sync keys was
pretty sweet. Is the synced data end-to-end encrypted? It better be!

~~~
dingaling
You can run your own Firefox sync server, but it's a pain to implement.

[http://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-
sync.html](http://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync.html)

Once it's up and running, though, it's seamless.

Edit: Hmm. Looks like they're happy to break this:

" Some unknown proportion of the user base uses their own Sync servers ...
[Asa] I don't think we should worry too much about this group. If we can
identify them and message them that'd be sufficient for my concerns."

[https://services.etherpad.mozilla.org/sync-
migration](https://services.etherpad.mozilla.org/sync-migration)

Well, thanks.

Here's a code-dump of the new Firefox Account server. Not sure yet if I can
implement this:

[https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-auth-server](https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-
auth-server)

~~~
reedlaw
That's not a very reassuring attitude. Hopefully the new Firefox Accounts
authentication server will be easy enough to deploy and configure as an
alternative to private Sync servers.

------
dagurp
So.. can I disable australis somehow?

~~~
moystard
Have you at least tried it or are you simply change averse?

I have done the move a few weeks back, and I don't regret my decision. The
toolbar and my add-ons located there still work very well, also the new menu
gives a quick access to useful features.

~~~
shock
I, for one, have tried it and it makes things I do frequently, more difficult:
there's no longer available a bookmark button to open the bookmarks sidebar,
there's no longer a menu item to show all bookmaks, when I bookmark something
I click the bookmarks star twice in order to enter tags but the second click
is only sometimes registered. For me, the previous theme worked much better
than australis. I struggle to see the improvements in australis.

~~~
moystard
Opening the bookmarks toolbar takes indeed two clicks now (but you can use the
keyboard shortcut CMD + B to open it instantly). Regarding your second point,
the double click works great, and the bookmark details overlay appears.

~~~
shock
I'm on Ubuntu, if that makes a difference about the double click on the
bookmark star so perhaps it's a platform issue. But I was referring to the
bookmarks sidebar not toolbar. How do you open the sidebar?

~~~
SquareWheel
On Windows Ctrl+B opens the bookmark sidebar, and ctrl+shift+b opens the
"library" popup with bookmarks selected.

~~~
shock
My point is that there used to be a button that you could place in a toolbar
and clicking the button would open the bookmarks sidebar. That button is now
gone. I'm sure that in time I'll get used to the changes in australis but I
think it would have been better if they would have been introduced gradually.
As it was introduced, lots of things stopped working at once the way I was
used to. For me, this is friction and it's not good.

------
ctb_mg
In the linked markup, the difference between the bookmark star when the page
is bookmarked (vs not bookmarked) is that the star is filled in grey rather
than an outline.

I think this is a subtle design problem that doesn't easily show "bookmarked"
vs "not bookmarked" state. I think users may have come to expect the typical
yellow star when bookmarking a page. Usually if I want to bookmark a page I
glance at the star to see if it's already bookmarked, and the outline vs. grey
states don't make that clear.

------
Spiritus
There's still some stuff before I can consider switching from Chrome, most are
OS X specific-ish:

\- No swipe animation for going back/forward in history.

\- Doesn't have that native feel for "over-scrolling". You know when you try
to scroll beyond the page and see that grey linen stuff.

\- No Keychain integration (yes I know there's an addon, but I would rather
see this integrated).

\- Even though there's been plenty of improvements, the dev tools in Chrome
feels more polished and feature complete.

------
dingdingdang
The real strength of Firefox vs Chrome is in FF's real (as in not
android-"open-source") open source philosophy which makes forked projects like
Palemoon possible (I personally prefer Palemoon at the moment due to more
conservative release cycle and UI plus strong security focus)

~~~
kevingadd
I agree that the freedom to actually maintain viable forks like Palemoon is
excellent.

On the other hand, I wish Palemoon didn't exist: It's a compatibility
nightmare for anyone trying to build HTML5 apps or games using recent APIs.
All his changes tend to cause mysterious memory usage/cpu usage issues or
simply break things, and 'use a different browser' is not a great answer to
have to give a customer.

I don't know how you could consider Palemoon security focused unless everyone
using it is building it from source and they've carefully examined his
changelists. At least with trunk Firefox you know the commits are exhaustively
reviewed and tested (perhaps too exhaustively; some FF contributors find the
extensive review process stifling).

EDIT: Removed complaint about Pale Moon builds not being reproducible; he used
to have a big angry rant about how he wouldn't share his build settings with
anyone, but he's apparently removed it. Nice move!

------
josteink
I've been using it for quite a while (as "Aurora"), and it is quite a
significant improvement over regular stable Firefox builds.

