
Firefox 65.0 released - theodorejb
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/65.0/releasenotes/
======
lugg
Recently switched from chromium to Firefox. Very pleased with its performance.

Android Firefox demolishes chrome too but probably just because I no longer
need to download and render all the ads (thanks ublock.)

While I was at it I also took the chance to migrate passwords out of Google
land into Bitwarden.

Session restore is amazing, my .cache is tmpfs but it still manages to
instantly recover all my tabs on reboot. Tabs are addictive in FF and don't
have the same usage constraints like in chrome.

The container system for managing different developer/test/personal profiles
is a dream. No longer have to worry about Slack links opening in whatever
random chrome instance had focus last. (Back up your user data, sync on these
container settings doesn't work - yet)

Also enjoying different proxy profiles per Firefox profile as well.

Yes,

Work profile + work containers + works SSH tunnel proxy.

Personal profile + personal containers + NordVPN.

Passwords managed by bitwarden and any required crossover is shared via a
private organisation. This gives me minimal work access on my phone, and
minimal private passwords on my work profile.(GitHub/stack overflow)

It's kind of complicated but it's such a quality of life change coming from 20
odd chrome profiles and the nasty sync issues that ensues. Most people can
probably get by with a single profile. I just have multiple systems and need
to keep work stuff separate but end up using work laptop as a daily driver
most of the time.

~~~
Tepix
I hadn't heard about Bitwarden. Looks like it requires 2-4GB of RAM and a x86
CPU to run your own server due to relying on MS SQL server. Bummer!

~~~
jamie_ca
There's an unofficial rust implementation[0] that runs in a docker image and
uses sqlite for persistence. I don't know what the details are for storing
data at-rest in the sqlite db, but it's supposed to be much better on system
resources.

0: [https://github.com/dani-garcia/bitwarden_rs](https://github.com/dani-
garcia/bitwarden_rs)

~~~
Tepix
Thanks!

------
newscracker
I’m a diehard Firefox user and supporter, but with every release there are
still things I wait on the WebExtensions support to improve:

1\. There’s still no full featured Tab Mix Plus possible with the current
APIs. That’s been a big bummer for some years now.

2\. The most downloaded session management extension now is still not as rich
and good as the old XUL extension Session Manager (from mozdev).

3\. I probably have to search again for a WebExtension equivalent for this
one. Lazarus was a nice form saving extension in the past. Not sure if
something similar exists or is even possible.

~~~
markn951
Best not hold your breath. You are an old-school power user and 99.9% of users
no longer know or care about any of the functionality you're talking about.

I don't have any specific retorts to your points other than pointing you to
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/textarea-
cach...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/textarea-cache/) for a
Lazarus replacement (although I thought Firefox does this by default, and I
don't understand why you need an extension at all).

~~~
newscracker
Thanks for the pointer to this extension. I'll check it out. One of the things
Lazarus provided (at the cost of adding some effort in maintaining privacy)
was to save the history of form fields across sites and across restarts. In my
knowledge, Firefox allows saving text fields, but not text areas. Periodic
saving and history were quite helpful especially when writing longer walls of
text like on HN comments or posts on other platforms.

------
gardaani
FF65 also supports WebP images and animations. Here's few test images:
[https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/gallery1](https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/gallery1)

~~~
arifmeticus
I wish they implemented the feature sooner. AVIF, an image format based on the
new AV1 video codec with even better compression is already on the horizon.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
Yes. As much as I was hoping they'd implement it back then, I kind of wish
that they _didn 't_ implement it now. If they couldn't do it years ago, might
as well wait for AVIF instead of letting webp proliferate.

------
lol768
I was intrigued by this statement:

> A better video streaming experience for Windows users: Firefox now supports
> the next-generation, royalty-free video compression technology called AV1

Since I don't care about Windows, I was curious as to whether this had already
shipped for other platforms or not. At least using Firefox Developer Edition
v66, it works fine behind the media.av1.enabled flag on Linux.

\----

Also seems that [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/known-
vulnerabilities...](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/known-
vulnerabilities/firefox/#firefox65) has yet to be updated.

~~~
gourlaysama
> I was curious as to whether this had already shipped for other platforms or
> not.

AV1 support is available on all platforms behing the flag; this release just
enables it by default on Windows [1].

[1]:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1452146](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1452146)

~~~
TD-Linux
AV1 also uses the brand new media codec sandboxing feature (RDD process). It
has platform specific code, hence why only Windows was ready by 65 (but Mac +
Linux should be available soon).

------
yuchi
> Support for Handoff on macOS: Continue browsing across devices. Pick up
> where you left off with iOS (via Firefox or Safari) on Firefox on Mac.

OH YES! Finally!

~~~
Shivetya
I tried both Safari and Chrome of macOS but went back to Firefox for one
simple reason. When watching streaming content if the browser was not in the
foreground it would reduce the quality of the streamed content which could
take almost ten seconds to revert back when focus was given.

Firefox doesn't seem to know/care if its not top window

~~~
zapzupnz
Safari user, always play videos in a background window, never seen this. I
suspect it’s not the browser’s video playback but perhaps more to do with how
it handles spikes and drops in connection quality?

------
andy_ppp
I have turned on Webrender in FF66a (nightly) and it’s fantastic; it sped up a
site I quickly threw together for a friend no end [1] and almost everything
with lots of graphical painting is buttery smooth.

Even though they are only starting in nightly to make it the default on Nvidia
hardware it seems to work without incident so far on this 2016 AMD Radeon’d
MacBook Pro.

[1] [https://uparchitects.co.uk/](https://uparchitects.co.uk/)

[2] [https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/have-you-tested-
webrender/16...](https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/have-you-tested-
webrender/16137)

~~~
dan-robertson
Well the limit in nightly to nvidia on windows is less about saying “we think
WebRender only works/is stable on nvidia on windows” than it is about saying
“we want more people to try it and possibly send big reports but we don’t want
to risk breaking the entire nightly population or have them all sending in big
reports, so we will start with a small subpopulation where we think bugs will
be due to WebRender rather than graphics drivers”

~~~
andy_ppp
Ah fantastic, definitely good to stagger the releases. I do understand the
driver/stability situation being much more fragmented on Windows, just nice to
be able to confirm how big the improvements are to Firefox that are still to
come; the fastest browser by a long way IMO!

------
vishnu_ks
I don't understand why Firefox doesn't include an option to download the .deb
package instead of tar file for Ubuntu and Debian during release
announcements. The market share is already shrinking and why make it harder
for people to install or upgrade Firefox? Chrome does it. Why can't Firefox do
that as well?

~~~
brobdingnagians
This brings up an interesting point about releasing software in general. If
you spend huge amounts of time programming cool things and tuning every last
knob, but then it is difficult for your average user to find out how to
install and start to see all the cool things you've produced, when it would
take far less time to just make an easy installer than it took you to make all
the cool things, then there needs to be some balance in usability. The
pipeline to getting the software in front of someone is sometimes more
important than adding new cool features. A basic thing that is easy to use
will get more adoption than a mind-blowingly awesome thing that only sys-
admins can figure out how to use.

~~~
daleharvey
"Ubuntu and Debian" "average user"

I dont disagree with your point, not sure it is relevant however.

~~~
DCKing
The pretense that all Linux users should be (or already are) technically
capable is really harmful to the ecosystem. No, you should not expect Ubuntu
or Debian users to figure out on their own (1) why the tar.gz file they
download doesn't do anything meaningful and (2) how they will get this version
of Firefox instead without any further instructions.

Running Firefox from a tarball is a very specific use case for a small subset
of highly technical users. Even if you figure out how to do it, the lack of
system integration gives a very poor impression of the way things work on
Linux. Even the vast majority of technical users don't want to run Firefox
this way. Yet that's still what the website offers you.

We should be able to recommend _at the very least_ Ubuntu to average users.
And people do that, sometimes quite successfully. But with the attitude that
all Linux users can save themselves - "we don't need to think about the UX" \-
we can't really keep doing that.

~~~
detaro
Wouldn't the average Ubuntu user be best off by getting it through the Ubuntu
package repo once it's updated there? Or doesn't Ubuntu have a channel that
would provide that soon by default?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, yes and no. I'm precluded from installing new Firefox via apt-get
because my Ubuntu version fell off active support. Running a dist-upgrade is
risky, and I don't feel like doing it until I know I have a spare free day to
fix everything in case of a problem. A Firefox PPA would be a nice thing to
use instead, for now.

~~~
dTal
Average user: "Pee pee what now?"

If Firefox offered a .deb for $OS on their homepage, and Grandma attempts to
install it while running $OTHEROS, then likely she will either 1) fail or 2)
break her system. That's a worse user experience than a .tar.gz.

Asking Firefox to maintain packages for every outdated Debian-based distro is
unreasonable. Nice to have, yes, but unreasonable to ask.

------
jedberg
I recently made the transition back to Firefox too, like a lot of other folks
in here it seems. Containers makes working with all my AWS much easier, and
the containers isolating Facebook are great.

One problem though, that I can't solve, is that every once in a while I _want_
to log in with Facebook, like for AirBnB. But I can't, because the cookie only
lives in the Facebook container, but I can't add AirBnB as a hostname to the
Facebook container.

Has anyone solved this?

Edit: I just solved this. You have to disable the built in Facebook Container
extension and then it works as expected.

~~~
wiktental
Would you happen to know how safe and separate the containers are?

Like, if I had a specific container used for Banking sites, would it be
relatively safe from other containers?

Currently, I use Firefox for casual browsing and Chrome for email and
financial related sites. But it would be nice to just use Firefox for both.
I'm just worried it would be less safe.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
Is there a way to configure Firefox so that a single-use container gets
created when certain sites get visited, and discarded when they're closed?

I don't want to delete cookies by default (since I don't like to lose my
shopping cart due to accidentally closing a tab in a shop I haven't used
before), but I certainly would like to be able to ban sites that use cookies
in a user-hostile manner from storing cookies permanently.

It would be even better if Mozilla used the voluntary telemetry + manual user
feedback to decide which sites benefit from cookies (e.g. web shops), and
applied this to everything else (e.g. news sites).

~~~
ssvss
> I don't want to delete cookies by default

IIUC you want a container to be isolated to a single website, you have to
create a container for that website, open the site in that container, and then
click the multi-account container tab in the toolbar, and select to option to
open this website in that container by default. From then on whenever you open
the website, it gets opened in that container by default.

------
abryzak
I just updated and immediately noticed two things that bothered me:

1\. It added a new search engine (amazon.com.au) to my list that I'd culled
down to just DuckDuckGo

2\. It started recommending extensions for websites I visited

Maybe I'm overreacting a bit but why does it feel like every time I update
anything recently I then have to spend 5 minutes going through the preferences
to make sure it hasn't changed anything. It makes me hesitant to update any
app when I feel like the developers are working against my interests.

~~~
richjdsmith
I was annoyed about the recommending plugins thing as well. It's quick to turn
off if that's any help.

------
Flimm
No one mentioned WebP support yet! This is great news, Firefox will now feel
faster on all the sites that use WebP. Safari is the last major browser to
hold out.

~~~
lucb1e
What's so great about webp? I haven't heard about it. Is it one of those jpeg
competitors? Because I did see a blog post recently that said none of the the
things people are coming up with are more than marginally better despite
jpeg's age.

~~~
vanderZwan
I suspect those blog posts focused on photos.

However, WebP works well for a much larger range of image types[0]. It has
lossless options with better compression than PNG (because PNG is _incredibly_
simple compared to more recent image formats, in my opinion in a kind of
beautiful way). And when compressing graphically simple illustrations with
lossy settings, it can get much better results than JPG, both compression and
quality wise.

Having said that, I still hope FLIF (or some descendant of it) will get some
traction eventually[1].

[0] [https://www.andrewmunsell.com/blog/png-vs-
webp/](https://www.andrewmunsell.com/blog/png-vs-webp/)

[1] [http://flif.info/](http://flif.info/)

------
olavgg
I love Firefox and use it all the time, but for the last few years one of my
biggest pains is the OSX performance on my Macbook Pro. Is this close to be
resolved soon?

~~~
acdha
Are you using a non-native display resolution? That seems to be the common
factor for people who have significant problems.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042)

~~~
amimetic
A scaled resolution is now default on most MacBooks. I haven't noticed battery
problems but certainly seen RAM usage at least double that of Chrome and
considerably above Safari.

~~~
jacurtis
If you are worried about battery performance, I can personally attest that
Firefox is better than chrome in terms of battery performance.

Still Safari is the best in terms of battery endurance (its a VERY SIGNIFICANT
difference). But then again its Safari, so you have to decide whether you want
a capable browser (FF/Chrome) or a battery efficient one.

~~~
untog
IMO Safari is a very capable browser. I switched to it long ago and found I
didn't miss anything from Chrome. Experimenting with Firefox now because I
love the containers feature, I hope we'll see it in Safari some day.

------
sambe
I feel like I've been waiting a long time for autoplay blocking - does this
keep being pushed back or have I missed a feature cancellation/config
setting/extension announcement?

~~~
NamTaf
I was hoping to see this pushed out by default because I agree that it's the
best 'new' feature I've found in the browser in some time. You can change it
in about:config, searching for 'media.autoplay'. I've changed the following:

1) Set 'ask permission' to true

2) Set 'block webaudio' to true

3) Set default to 2, which is 'ask per domain'. As I understand, the default
of 0 is 'autoplay', 1 is 'block' and 2 is 'ask' but your favourite search
engine of choice can provide clarification on this and the other settings. 2
will cause a pop-up beside the URL bar, like with password save popups,
letting you accept or block and with a checkbox to set it permanent.

~~~
vezycash
Why don't they write it as Block, Ask, Allow? Much easier this way.

~~~
NamTaf
Apparently, setting both “ask-permission” and “enabled.user-gestures-needed”
to true then enables a setting in the privacy area of settings to have a
dropdown box with these options. I’m guessing it maps to the 0/1/2 setting I
mentioned earlier

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/questions/1238033](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1238033)

~~~
joveian
Thanks! I also found this page with a bit more info on the settings:

[https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/FirefoxMediaAut...](https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/FirefoxMediaAutoplaySettingsII?showcomments)

I changed all the media.autoplay settings from the default except block-
event.enabled, with default set to 1. With that it seems to do what I want.
I'm not sure if the strange media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground behavior
described in the comment is still happening but I set that to false also.

------
agurk
Is there any news on Wayland support? I had read here previously that Firefox
65 was when support was going to be available by default[0] but there are no
references in the release notes.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18657960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18657960)

~~~
glandium
It's opt-in at runtime.
[https://glandium.org/blog/?p=3899](https://glandium.org/blog/?p=3899)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18465506](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18465506)

And because that can cause problems when spawning third party applications
from Firefox, there's another environment variable to opt-in in last nightly:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1522780](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1522780)

------
TheAceOfHearts
They finally implemented globalThis [0]! It's not a huge or complex feature,
but it's been something I've been wanting for a long time. Now there's a
portable way to access the global object. I would've preferred `global`, but
that broke web compatibility which made it a non-starter.

I just checked and was a bit sad to find that the latest version of node still
doesn't support it. This is a bit surprising as globalThis is already
supported in Chrome.

[0] [https://github.com/tc39/proposal-
global](https://github.com/tc39/proposal-global)

------
satysin
I would love to switch to Firefox but it still lacks -

* Per-site JavaScript controls (which Chrome has)

* Pinch to zoom (on macOS)

* Customisable keyboard shortcuts for Add-ons (which Chrome has)

* No elastic scroll (bounce effect) (which Chrome has)

I stick with Chrome as it works how I want it to although I find myself using
Safari now and then but Safari's extensions are pretty crap in comparison to
Chromes.

~~~
asadotzler
Customizable keyboard shortcuts for extensions just landed in nightly last
week. Expect it soon.

~~~
satysin
Well god damn! I had no idea. Thank you for replying :)

------
numbsafari
I wish Mozilla started to compete with Google on ChromeOS. Just make it the
browser and leverage containers to keep things locked down. There’s a total
business here and Mozilla could make it happen, without the entanglements of
the ads business. Real missed opportunity to help promote open standards at
the services level as well.

~~~
vezycash
They had FirefoxOS remember? Doubt think they'll want to do it again soon.

~~~
tombert
I think the intended market for FirefoxOS was pretty different than ChromeOS.
Wasn't FirefoxOS for low-powered phones? ChromeOS is designed around a
"streamlined" laptop system.

~~~
Zhyl
Yeah, FFOS essentially had the SteamOS problem - targeting a market that
didn't have any 'wedge' users in their existing demographics. For Firefox OS
and Steam OS to take off you needed to buy new hardware and the people most on
board with this already had hardware and didn't have a use case for buying
more (low end phone for Firefox, PC-as-a-console for SteamOS). In either case
there was a small pool of first movers and then almost no early adopters. This
was pretty stark in the steam case as Linux usage, sales and games rose
considerably but hardware sales were pretty thin.

~~~
numbsafari
Schools. Schools would be pretty motivated to drop Google because Google is an
ads company.

Schools love chrome books and gsuite, but struggle with trusting an add
company.

~~~
Zhyl
If they refactored Firefox OS to be a ChromeBook competitor, sure. They
heavily marketed their phones to the developing world markets.

I may be wrong, but I have a suspicion that Chromebooks only got a foot in the
door in the education sector because they had such a large marketing machine
behind it. I wouldn't mind betting money that Firefox wouldn't be able to get
an equivalent foothold (even comparable to their browser market share right
now with like-for-like hardware and form factors) just because their exposure
for any given initiative is a fraction of what Google can summon.

------
imagetic
Huge props to the Mozilla crew. Firefox has been an awesome browser and I'm
thankful for their product.

My only major gripe is video sort of sucks in it, especially when I'm on my
laptop.

I'm glad we're starting to see AV1 rolling out in places. Full support can't
come soon enough. Last year at NAB everyone was saying it's about 2 years out
from solid support. 2020 should be a good year. AV1 looks pretty promising.

------
jniedrauer
I'm _very_ happy with the wayland performance in this release. XWayland looks
really bad with sway on a HiDPI display, and previous to this release, firefox
wayland was too slow to be usable.

That's no longer true. I'm giddy with how clear everything looks and how fast
it is. This is a huge deal for me.

------
wslh
At the risk of a downvote storm, a few months ago I tried to switch from
Chrome to Firefox until I had a call of two hours via Google Hangouts and
Firefox started to degrade the voice until a point of no return. I don't know
if this is common in very demanding "web apps".

~~~
mtgx
Blame Google, not Mozilla. They're doing it on purpose and it's the main
reason why more people should make the switch _now_ before it's too late and
nothing else works with Google's stuff but Chrome:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824)

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/the-web-now-
belongs-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/the-web-now-belongs-to-
google-and-that-should-worry-us-all/)

Google intends to kill Hangouts by the end of the year anyway:

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/22/18193303/google-
hangouts-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/22/18193303/google-hangouts-end-
transition-october-gsuite-chat-meet)

I don't have any proof for this, but I think everything I've seen about
Google's Invoice was also meant to kill the open email standards by convincing
everyone that the proprietary "AI-enhanced" features of Invoice were worth it
over interoperability with other email providers.

Thank goodness that app failed. They're still trying to do it through Gmail
now, but it's going to be a much slower process and hopefully people will have
enough time to catch on to them before it's too late.

Google is becoming a monopoly in the classical "evil company" sense - a
monopoly that's no different than any other monopoly in the past, and that
will try to exploit the users and kill competition in the same way others have
done it before. More people should start to seriously consider this before
going more "all-in" with Google than they already have.

~~~
soohyung
> I don't have any proof for this

That sums it up nicely.

------
shmerl
Is there any progress with GPU accelerated video decoding / encoding in the
Linux version? Now that WebRender is in place it should be possible?

Without it, any WebRTC video conferencing applications are very CPU heavy,
which cripples them on laptops especially.

~~~
jhasse
I don't think WebRender has anything to do with accelerated video decoding.

Here's the bug btw:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1210727](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1210727)

~~~
shmerl
WebRender seems to be a prerequisite for it:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=563206](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=563206)

 _> The GPU->GPU copy is only usable if you also have hardware accelerated
composition._

I thought WebRender is implementing such compositor.

~~~
jhasse
It is, but there was also another one in Firefox (you could enable it on Linux
by setting layers.acceleration.force-enabled to true).

~~~
shmerl
I suppose they didn't want to actively work on such features for something
that's going to be deprecated. Since WebRender is their way forward, they can
as well implement video acceleration together with it.

------
darkpuma
>Firefox will now warn you when closing a window (regardless of whether you
have automatic session restore enabled for restart).

To whoever is responsible for pushing this change through: _Thank you._

~~~
pdpi
Chrome's "hold cmd-Q to quit" popup is just about perfect in that regard.

~~~
davrosthedalek
I hate that thing! Is there a way to switch it off? (I get it, it can be
useful. It's my personal preference, and showing it is a sane default. Less
intrusive than a (modal) pop-up for sure. But I like software which I can set
up to my liking.)

~~~
erichurkman
It's in the 'Chrome' menu. 'Warn before quitting'.

~~~
davrosthedalek
Ah, thanks. I use firefox as my daily driver, but go to chrome for some web
pages anyway.

------
ComodoHacker
Fantastic product, excellent release.

Just a little complain if website team reads this. Being on main landing
page[0] there is no way to find out which version of Firefox is currently the
latest.

0\. [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/)

------
pyr0hu
Is it just me, or the font used by FF is changed on OSX? It's a bit crispier
and it's not antialiased

~~~
kemenaran
Are you on macOS Mojave?

If yes, it could be because Firefox started honoring the system font settings
of Mojave [1].

Enabling font smoothing in System Preferences now results in slighlty bolder
fonts, and grayscale font smoothing. Firefox and Chrome needed some time to
adjust to these settings, but now have the same rendering than the rest of the
system.

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1495282](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1495282)

~~~
pyr0hu
Yes, on latest Mojave. Thanks for the heads up, did not know that FF just
started supporting the Mac settings

------
bjoli
Does anyone know what the decoding performance of AV1 is these days? I'd love
to play with it, but back when I last tried my oldish laptop did NOT like
decoding it.

~~~
gardaani
I have tried AV1 video on Chrome and it seems to be using the same amount of
CPU as VP9 on my computer.

I can't test Firefox support for AV1 on my Mac, because it seems to work only
on Windows.

~~~
ignaloidas
It's only on windows by default, but you can enable it using about:config flag
media.av1.enabled

------
fxfan
Still waiting for vimperator so I can use browser like I used to use only 2
years back.

Tridactyl is good but no :map, no :js and alphabets instead of numbers for
links.

~~~
bovine3dom
When did you last look at Tridactyl?

\- :js is there

\- You can have numbers with :set hintstyle numeric

\- You can have Vimperator style link filtering with :set hintfiltermode
vimperator

\- There's no map (and probably never will be), but you can bind sequences of
keys to "ex-commands", which is probably 99% of what you want, e.g, :bind
<C-b>t open google what time is it

The main problem I have with Tridactyl is that it's pretty janky at the
moment.

~~~
fxfan
You're godsent- `:js` is there now and it works!

I tried `:set hintstyle numeric` and the command was accepted but it didn't
work. Same for `hintfiltermode`. But that they exist means I it's probably me
doing something wrong.

I couldn't get bind to work the way I wanted- I typed `:` followed by `bind w
:tabnext<CR>` but that didn't work.

Also, C-i for opening vim on textareas and C-c for cancelling a page load
don't work either.

I'm beginning to think though that "all" stuff already there, it just works
differently (JS wasn't there when I tried a few months back) so I just need to
re-read the documentation and not expect everything to work "exactly" like
vimperator.

Thank you so much! You've changed my life (partially :))

~~~
bovine3dom
We don't have much validation on `set` - people can use it to make their own
settings if they want - so just because it was accepted doesn't mean that it
worked in the way you thought it would...

In this case it's because I misremembered the setting. You want `:set
hintnames numeric` instead : )

Regarding bind: as I said, it maps sequences of keys to an ex-command. Your
attempt is a sequence of keys to a sequence of keys. The correct invocation is
`bind w tabnext`.

We left ctrl-c unbound so it could be used for copy, not least because I know
it would annoy the hell out of me. You can rebind it with `bind <C-c> stop`,
but because we only have access to pages after they've loaded a bit, it might
not quite work as often as you'd like.

Ctrl-I will only work if you have `:native` installed, and, if you're on OSX,
an editor I thought to add, which I think might just be MacVim. I'd hope it
would give you errors if any of the above was untrue...

We definitely aren't at feature parity with Vimperator. Some stuff Mozilla
just won't let us do (e.g, emenu), other stuff we can do but haven't got
around to it yet (accepting keyboard input on privileged pages - we have
preliminary approval for extending WebExtensions).

I'm glad I could help. There's `:tutor` which is fairly short and probably the
most user-friendly way of digesting general information, and there's `:help`
if you fancy a very dry novella; there's also somewhat hidden help pages for
settings and commands for use in insert/ex mode, the latter of which I can't
remember how to access. I think there's a link hidden on the main help page.

~~~
fxfan
Thank you. Your using `we` made me go to github contributors and sure enough
you were one of the top guys :)

I guess with the right `hintnames` and `:bind w tabnext` working I am 95% of
the way already.

Couple of things if I don't come across as ungrateul-- :nativeinstall didn't
work for me, so I manually did the (seemingly risky) step. :native now shows
0.1.10 installed but C-i doesn't yet work. I'll look around and post back. I
am on Linux.

I tried binding C-c but it doesn't seem to work as you guessed. Also- how
about using C-z for stop once you have imap and nmap working? Because you're
right C-c could get annoying but `stop` is an oft-used feature too.

About feature parity- vimperator also gave you `readline` style C-a, C-e C-w
in text-fields.

I'm going to read the hell out of the tutor and help as soon as I get some
time. Vimperator (now Tridactyl!) means a lot to me since it makes me much
more productive.

~~~
bovine3dom
What do you mean by the manual step for nativeinstall? It is risky if you
don't trust us, which is why Mozilla won't let us do it automatically, so it
has to be manual.

What do you mean by imap and nmap? We already have separate binds for normal
and insert mode (which is why you can type into text boxes ;) ). I think
Ctrl-Z was bound to ignore mode in Pentadactyl. Now I think about it, I don't
know why it isn't bound to ignore mode; I should probably do that. Anyway,
`stop` is just fundamentally broken at the moment because we can't access the
page until it loads a bit. It is bound to `x` by default.

We actually have most of the readline binds. They're hidden away on the help
page - if you look at the third paragraph "text areas that can be found here"
\- but we left them unbound by default because I don't use them and we can't
rebind ctrl-w. I don't want to train people that we have readline binds and
make them close tabs that they're editing text in :)

As for your editor - I don't know why it isn't working without more
information. Feel free to file an issue on GitHub. (For the avoidance of doubt
- you need to have a text box focused to use it - I know it sounds silly but
it has come up before).

You don't sound ungrateful - Tridactyl is complicated, has weird defaults, and
is badly documented.

~~~
fxfan
Sorry i immediately set editorcmd but the edit was for some reason posted as a
sibling comment that I then deleted.(I couldn't reply immediately afterwards
because this website didn't have a reply button for your comment then)

Maybe ZZ could be stop then?

~~~
bovine3dom
ZZ closes all your tabs and windows. `viewconfig nmaps` will show you all the
normal mode binds, if you're curious.

I'm reasonably happy with "x" for stop.

------
unsignedint
Chrome has a very annoying (and somewhat severe) Japanese input issue on Linux
and pretty much forced me to use Firefox.[0] But I do like Firefox from
feature perspectives, too.

[0]:
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=681389](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=681389)

------
vezycash
Once read that Firefox is working on a Chrome-like language translation
feature. Anyone know when it'll be done?

------
smileypete
The other day I found out that live bookmarks can still be made to work in
Firefox 64, in a way:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/advckx/live_boomar...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/advckx/live_boomarks_still_kind_of_works_in_firefox_64/)

Not sure if the same applies to 65, but it might help someone...

------
mark_l_watson
I really like Firefox containers. Having different containers for each of
Google, Google G Suite, Hacker News, Twitter, and Reddit lets me have one
browser open and keep cookies separate.

I started using Firefox again when I got a new Linux laptop last December
(from Sytem76 - love it). After getting used to having containers, then I
started also using Firefox again on my MacBook.

------
mmwelt
The energy usage in the task manager doesn't seem to be very accurate.

I tested by opening a new window with a cpu-intensive webpage
([http://www.digitalattackmap.com](http://www.digitalattackmap.com)). Real CPU
usage jumps all the way up, but energy usage in the task manager is still
showing low. Why?

------
ncmncm
I'm hoping it will be less crashy than the last three or four releases. But
they don't say so in the announcement...

Does anybody know whether we get to blame Servo for the crashiness? Rust code
is supposed to be "safe", but that never really pans out in industrial use;
maturity is a better predictor of stability.

------
letsgetsilly
I'd love to switch over to Firefox, but I'm used to Chrome's developer
toolkit. I understand it thoroughly and can use it proficiently.

Any insight as to the comparison between the state of FF's developer tools and
Chrome's would be appreciated. I'd love to be convinced to switch.

~~~
333c
I don't use Chrome or its developer tools, but I do use Firefox's. They work
well for my needs, because I can inspect network requests, including editing
and re-sending them, and I can debug JS.

~~~
cimmanom
Wait, how do you edit/resend a network request?

~~~
333c
Using the network inspector, there's a button when you click on a specific
request to edit and resend it.

Here's a SO answer:
[https://stackoverflow.com/a/28775346](https://stackoverflow.com/a/28775346)

~~~
cimmanom
Thank you! This is my new killer feature!

------
skykooler
> Firefox will now warn you when closing a window (regardless of whether you
> have automatic session restore enabled for restart).

Excellent! The number of times I've accidentally hit ctrl+q instead of ctrl+w
and then had to relaunch firefox and restore my session - this will be a
welcome relief.

~~~
jeena
This stopped happening to me once I moved to Dvorak.

------
edoloughlin
Anyone else had a problem with AMP on Android with Firefox set as the default
browser? Tapping on AMP search results from a Google search resulted in a
blank page and a never-ending progress bar.

Installing the "Redirect AMP to HTML" plugin sort of solves the issues but
adds a delay.

------
shaklee3
I remember about a year or two ago, there was a lot of press on HN about a new
Firefox engine that made it extremely fast. Ever since then, I've only seen
negative comments about Firefox. Did that just not pan out as much as people
had expected?

~~~
kerng
Firefox is fantastic! But I have noticed a similar trend with Firefox getting
negative comments.

One particular reason might be that HN has a lot of current and former Google
employees on it, and they are pretty vocal and actively defend Google and
downvote everything else - I have experienced this multiple times when
bringing up anything negative about Chrome - which is really not that great of
a browser. Especially the security (look at past number of patches) and memory
usage is bad. I'm not sure why the community here speaks so highly about it.

~~~
techntoke
I personally find the opposite, where it is usually Mozilla fans bashing
Chrome. Mozilla doesn't have any better record when it comes to security. I
still have access to all my favorite privacy extensions within Chromium. I
also find the performance on Linux (Arch with VAAPI) for Chromium to be much
better than Firefox.

------
vardump
Downloaded Firefox 65 (Windows) and quickly loaded a web page... and still no
pinch zoom. :-(

I hope macOS & Windows Firefox will get pinch zoom soon, so that I can finally
switch from Chrome.

Firefox seems to have good performance and user-centric features &
functionality.

~~~
lucasverra
there is a capable extension for that [https://github.com/haxiomic/firefox-
multi-touch-zoom](https://github.com/haxiomic/firefox-multi-touch-zoom)

------
asdashjdjhb
Could any seniors give more information on what do they mean by this firefox
update: A better video streaming experience for Windows users: Firefox now
supports the next-generation, royalty-free video compression technology called
AV1?

~~~
M2Ys4U
AV1 is a new video codec, produced by the Alliance for Open Media.

AOM is a consortium of browser vendors, content producers, streaming
platforms, teleconference providers, hardware companies, and others to produce
a state of the art, efficient codec that's also free of the outright extortion
that comes with patents on codecs from MPEG (like H.264 and H.265).

------
ddtaylor
I hope someday we'll see Duck Duck Go partner with Firefox as the default
engine.

~~~
24gttghh
This is the case on Linux Mint. I can't even set Google as a search provider
if I wanted to! Too bad Duck Duck Go is simply re-branded Bing results, and
they kinda suck.

~~~
ddtaylor
> Too bad Duck Duck Go is simply re-branded Bing results

Do you have any source for this claim?

~~~
24gttghh
[https://duck.co/help/results/sources](https://duck.co/help/results/sources)

"In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These
include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers,
DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in
our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the
search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including
Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing."

------
copperx
Tangential, but has anyone here figured out how to get menu copy and paste
working in Firefox on webapps such as Google Docs?

I've tried suggestions such as changing the dom.clipboard settings in
about:config, but that doesn't help.

------
andrepd
How do the new privacy blocker settings interfere or conflict with uBlock?

~~~
asadotzler
You mean the enhanced tracking protection? There's no interference or conflict
with uBlock.

~~~
joveian
It can at least be confusing and there might be conflicts. I'd recommend
turning off the built in tracking protection if using other tracking.

They might have fixed the particular issue, but at one point I had stupidly
enabled "strict" tracking protection and used that with uMatrix and found that
it broke something major (I forget what, maybe reCaptcha) even when the
internal tracking was disabled on a per-site basis. Very confusing and
unnecessary to have the internal tracking protection if you already use a
blocker.

------
TylerH
Happy with a lot of stuff 65 introduced (this is a nice trend in a lot of
recent Firefox releases)

One thing I'm _not_ happy about; opted-in recommendations for addons when you
browse websites.

------
kemenaran
Handoff on macOS, finally! \o/

Just tested opening Firefox on iOS, and the "Open page in Firefox" pops up in
the Dock of my Mac. Neat.

(It is advertised as also working with Mobile Safari.)

~~~
kbd
Does any of this work with Firefox on Windows/Linux? It would be nice to have
this kind of syncing across all platforms.

------
Friedduck
Committed FF user after finding you can stop auto playing HTML5 videos without
the need for an extension.

Plus: Google’s auto-login debacle which precipitated the move.

------
eikenberry
Any big reasons to up date to this over the ESR release (60)? So far it seems
like mostly minor updates since then or did I miss something?

------
zelos
Anybody else seeing blurry text for the bookmark toolbar and background tab
titles? macOS 10.14 on an external monitor.

~~~
zelos
Hmm, looks like it only happens with dark theme enabled, it looks ok in light
mode.

------
smilbandit
Darn was hoping for default urls for containers. so when you open a container
the tab will open a specific url also.

------
leandot
Finally it seems the performance issues on macbook pro with retina display
have been solved, at least for me!

------
zwayhowder
The hard-coded alt+# for switching to numbered tabs is a deal breaker for me.
I wish it wasn't but I have ingrained ctrl+# for switching and alt+# is used
for my window manager. I accept I'm in a minority, but it seems like a strange
design decision for an open browser.

------
curt15
What would it take for firefox to support Gmail's offline mode?

------
shostack
Is there any decent mouse gesture solution yet?

------
chengiz
Is per site autoplay control still not available?

------
howard941
I wish I could revert. 65 regressed and the tabs are back above the address
bar.

~~~
theandrewbailey
Firefox has placed tabs above the address bar by default for almost 10 years.
Addresses are specific to (inside of/"below") tabs, so the default interface
makes better sense.

------
oosjc9a5
A question regarding the advertisements they show on the home page:
[https://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-640-is-now-showing-a-
boo...](https://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-640-is-now-showing-a-bookingcom-
ad-in-the-new-tab-page/)

Are these ads introduced with these updates, or does Firefox include a
backdoor so the Mozilla Corporation can show whatever they want on your home
page?

~~~
ekianjo
Firefox as an organization does not get branding at all. They claim to be the
champions on privacy and user freedom yet they keep breaking that image over
and over again with unwanted ads, telemetry, and services you can't disable. I
still use Firefox as my main browser, but I can't fathom how they come up with
such poor decisions every single time.

~~~
ForHackernews
Maybe if users were willing to pay for a browser, they wouldn't be so
desperately scrambling around for non-Google revenue sources.

They could try to offer some kind of "pay us to forgo marketing partnerships"
deal, but I somehow doubt even most of the well-paid privacy advocates on HN
would sign up.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> They could try to offer some kind of "pay us to forgo marketing
> partnerships" deal, but I somehow doubt even most of the well-paid privacy
> advocates on HN would sign up.

I would pay for this, provided it was a one time payment! (I feel I need to
add that caveat nowadays, since subscriptions are all the rage.)

~~~
tivert
> I would pay for this, provided it was a one time payment!

The problem is that web browsers require some of the most intensive software
maintenance of any software, ever. They're one of the most exposed attack
surfaces to external security threats; and piles of new features are
unfortunately getting continuously added to web standards, which need to be
supported for compatibility reasons.

I think a one time tip-jar payment makes sense for a lot of software, but not
for web browsers. I think a subscription-type contribution makes the most
sense for them.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Put the money into a trust fund? I suppose I could do that on my end, but
that's a little extreme from an effort point of view.

Subscriptions are just difficult to manage, I can't deal with individual
recurring costs for so many pieces of software.

------
pointillistic
No changes to the interface again! Will not go back to FF till they take
graphic design seriously.

~~~
meesterdude
curious, what changes do you want to see?

~~~
pointillistic
Here are my comments. There is too much color in the tab and bookmarks bars.
It should fade with focus on the content. The icons are too contrasting, the
outlive around the folders is too harsh. I don't think they changed the icons
design in 10 years or more. I find his lack of aesthetic attention jarring.
Same goes for navigation and settings interface.

