
Firefox 77 - jiehong
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/77.0/releasenotes/
======
Wowfunhappy
And now my address bar expands on click, because browser.urlbar.update1 was
removed from about:config. I knew this day was coming, but I'm still not happy
it's here.

The movement is distracting, and the alignment of the bar's expanded state is
terrible. There's a reason most graphic design follows a grid system.

We need a way to turn this off. I realize the old about:config flag was tied
to a legacy code pathway, but now Mozilla should implement a new flag. I don't
think that's an unreasonable ask.

~~~
tgv
It's really obtrusive. It takes up too much space, perhaps only by 2 pixels on
each side or so, but it's too much, the contrast is too large, the outline is
too heavy, and the a m o u n t o f w h i t e s p a c e is plain annoying.

Why do they persist in these ugly design shenanigans?

~~~
DangerousPie
I suspect a lot of this is about making it easier to use with touch input.
Which doesn't mean I like it, but I can understand why they're doing it.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
How does this benefit touch input? It expands _after_ clicking—the tap target
hasn't changed.

~~~
DangerousPie
I was mostly thinking about the amount of whitespace between list items. Makes
it easier to hit the right one.

------
pcx
Everyone not happy with pocket recommendations, what is the alternate source
of revenue? Not enough will pay for the product. On the other hand Mozilla has
to compete with Apple, Google & Microsoft, all of whom are fighting hard for
the Web.

Mozilla is doing good overall. They are doing some fundamental work to get
back the technical edge, still trying to keep the future of the platform open
with WebAssembly and their products have become much more reliable now. We
have to cut them some slack.

~~~
bzb3
They could use the donations to improve Firefox, to pay the salaries of the
engineers, instead of all the political nonsense they do with the foundation.
Yes, your donations go towards that.

And they could cut the salaries of management instead of giving themselves
raises.

Instead we got ads in the home page.

~~~
pcx
1\. They are doing it with substantially less budget than their competitors.

2\. Developers shouldn't have to build software for the greater good by
sacrificing their livelihood.

3\. I am pretty sure many people building all this amazing tech can definitely
get paid better in other places

4\. These days when someone like Facebook fails to be bold, I would prefer to
support someone like Mozilla who walks the talk.

~~~
bzb3
I don't think you get what I said. I said: if they stopped throwing money down
the drain with the politised foundation and the executives stopped raising
their salaries they wouldn't have to run ads and maybe they could even pay
their engineers more money.

~~~
woodruffw
Can you elaborate on the ways in which you feel the Mozilla Foundation is
politicized? Their advocacy page[1] feels incredibly vanilla: it emphasizes
private communication, online safety, and collaboration with generally well-
regarded groups like the EFF.

[1]:
[https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/advocacy/](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/advocacy/)

------
have_faith
> ...some of the best stories on the web, will appear on the Firefox new
> tab...

Why is FireFox trying to get into article recommendations? I can only assume
it allows some method of monetisation once users get used to it being there.
Feels a bit off.

~~~
jakemal
It looks like they are already monetizing it. A few of the articles have a
"Sponsored by X" below them. I don't _love_ that, but at least they set it up
in a way where they aren't collecting data on users to show them. They have to
pay the bills somehow.

~~~
okasaki
The $500M per year they get from Google isn't enough to pay the bills?

~~~
heffer
Having other sources of revenue outside of a benefactor whose interesting in
you relies on having a relevance in the browser market with them also actively
engaged in implicitly or explicitly undermining that with a product of their
own doesn't seem like too bad of an idea.

~~~
okasaki
How does this relate to the original claim I was responding to which was "they
have to pay their bills somehow"?

------
kleiba
The biggest item on my wish-list is still a user-option to restore the
previous (sensible) click behavior for the address bar: one click places the
cursor, double click selects (all, but if I need to triple click for that it
would be fine, too).

Sadly, this wish will probably not come true any time soon... or ever.

~~~
Normille
CMD+L [I'm on a mac, adapt as appropriate for your particular platform] places
the cursor in the address bar and selects all the text.

Then, if needs be, hit left arrow to move cursor to start of URL and deselect
text. Hit right arrow to move to end of URL and deselect text.

Seems to be a standard keyboard shortcut across browsers. Works for me in
Firefox, Yandex and Opera.

~~~
roryokane
The action that the recent change to Firefox made harder is not any the
actions you just described how to do, but placing the cursor at a point
_within_ the URL. The recent change made it require a click to select the
whole URL, a pause, and another click to place the cursor, instead of just a
place to place the cursor.

I used to place the cursor inside the URL a lot and was disappointed when that
action got slower. I was all set to give an example of why it’s bad, but right
now, I’m actually having trouble thinking of such an example. I used to place
the cursor inside a URL and then hit Shift-Command-Right to select the text
after that, but I’ve just realized that clicking inside the URL and then
dragging the mouse down is even faster. And I used to place the cursor near a
section of the URL and use the keyboard to select and delete it, but double-
clicking and dragging seems to take a similar amount of time in the examples I
can think of.

Hmm… okay, I’ve thought of a good use-case for placing the cursor inside the
URL: adding a subdomain. If I’m developing
[http://example.com/foo](http://example.com/foo) and want to go to the staging
server [http://staging.example.com/foo](http://staging.example.com/foo), I
used to be able to click before “example” and type “staging.”. Now that
requires two clicks and a pause, and the selection shortcuts above don’t help.

------
CaioAlonso
I would financially support a fork of Firefox with all the garbage removed.
The home page bullshit, Pocket, all the automatic requests made without user
action, and more that I probably don't know of.

~~~
gonational
+100

I will pay $100 annually, but I would need assurances that the telemetry is
also 100% removed (no calls home, WHATSOEVER).

------
nicoburns
> Source map support also got a lot more reliable and will just work for a lot
> more cases

This is good news if it's true. Source map support seems pretty patchy across
both Chrome and Firefox. I've had the work reliably at times in the past. But
something always seems to shift which breaks them again, and I've never been
able to work out what it is.

~~~
XaspR8d
Yeah and debugging it usually requires me to examine my least favorite and
most fragile parts of my build tools.

I think my employer's gulp config has had source maps broken for 2 years now,
but I'm probably the only person who would do anything about it...

------
RandomBacon
People keep recommending Brave, but I keep countering with Firefox. It's
getting a lot harder to convince people when Firefox is doubling-down on BS
like the expanding address bar, integrating articles/ads, telemetry, etc.

When I see Brave recommendations, they're primarily because of it's built-in
ad-blocking. People value sanity. Don't introduce more visual distractions
(essentially what the average person gets from an ad; they see it as a visual
thing, they don't comprehend tracking and resource management like we do).
Make Firefox clean, make it so that it can be easily recommended. When Chrome
came out, people were excited because it was simple and sleek. It's okay to
learn from competitors, don't let hubris be the downfall!

~~~
sfink
I think a lot of people agree. And a lot of other people are pissed off about
Firefox following Chrome's lead in stripping everything down visually.

There's a solution, though -- as it happens, I happen to have the best opinion
on this. Like, always the best. So really the Firefox designers should just
ask me. I would think they would appreciate being able to confidently say that
they're always doing the right thing?

~~~
reitanqild
You made me chuckle :-)

I have the same superskill.

We could make a consulting agency and people would pay us good money to know
exactly how stuff should be done.

------
theandrewbailey
Firefox 77 includes AV1 image format[0] support! You'll need to set
image.avif.enabled = true in about:config.

[0]
[https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-avif/](https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-avif/)

~~~
nothis
Haven't been following this, is there any major site where this makes an
impact? Youtube?

~~~
theandrewbailey
I doubt that any big site would be affected, since Firefox is the first
browser shipping any form of AVIF support, even though most browsers already
have AV1.

------
at_a_remove
I hope that about:performance has not been nerfed still further. Currently I
have an issue wherein _some_ tab, unknown to me, begins using one or more
cores at full speed. About:performance allows me only to search by the eco-
friendly "energy" usage bit, which somehow does not reveal which tab is doing
it. I kill off the most active tabs according to that stat, nothing happens.

And so I have had to default back to killing off a process and guessing which
tab has crashed.

------
blakesterz
"Pocket recommendations, featuring some of the best stories on the web, will
appear on the Firefox new tab for our users in the UK."

I really hate to admit how often those darn Pocket recommendations get me! I
don't know how they choose what shows up on my tab, but more often than not,
there's at least one thing in there I end up reading.

~~~
appleiigs
I was curious about that too. I wasn't sure if it was targeted ads or a news
aggregator. I think it's more of a news aggregator.

From the Firefox New Tab FAQ
([https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-
reco...](https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-
recommendations-faq))

> Are these stories personalized to me? For the most part, no. Most
> recommendations on your new tab come from a general list of the best of
> stories on the web.

> Pocket occasionally partners with select publishers and brands to deliver
> high-quality sponsored stories to our users. These stories will always be
> clearly marked

> Pocket’s 30+ million global users help guide our curation by pointing us to
> thought-provoking essays, hidden gems, and fascinating deep-dives from
> across the web. Editors at Pocket then sift through the most-recommended and
> most-read stories and handpick the best to share with the wider Pocket and
> Firefox communities

~~~
NullPrefix
>Are these stories personalized to me? For the most part, no.

If they wouldn't be personalized, the answer would be no, instead of "for the
most part, no". Lawyer speak.

~~~
ivanfon
The bottom of the page says it was updated today, now it says this:

> Are these stories personalized to me?

> For the most part, no. Most recommendations on your new tab come from a
> general list of the best of stories on the web. But Pocket is actively
> exploring ways to deliver personalized recommendations in a way that
> vigorously protects users’ privacy. Importantly, neither Mozilla nor Pocket
> ever receives a copy of your browser history. When personalization does
> occur, recommendations rely on a process of story sorting and filtering that
> happens locally in your personal copy of Firefox.

------
0x006A
Why remove config options and force some UI that clearly people are not happy
with? I can not type in a url without showing the most visited sites? At least
let me press ctrl-l or click in the url bar and start typing before showing me
helpful information, trying to enter a new URL, I really do not want to see
the most common sites again and again and again and again!

Is Firefox trying to kill the long tail of the internet and get everyone to
just visit the top 5 sites?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
"Why remove [the] config [option]" is easily answered in this case. When
Mozilla changed the address bar, they also rewrote a lot of overall address
bar code, and the old about:config flag activated the old code pathway—it
wasn't just a simple design tweak. You don't want to have all that old code
sticking around in Firefox.

What we need is a new flag that changes the design specifically.

------
vmateixeira
So... what kind of nonsense do I need to disable in about:config this time?

~~~
msl
Oh, don't worry: more options have been removed again: setting
browser.urlbar.update1 = false no longer gives you back the old, unintrusive
urlbar behavior. Mozilla UX people have once again shown that they know best
and you won't need to worry about getting a bad user experience just because
you mistakenly thought you liked it.

Edit: Changed 'disabled' to 'removed' in the first sentence, as it's probably
clearer.

~~~
BitwiseFool
I've been googling for the last 20 minutes trying to figure out how to re-
disable this. Ugh, I can't stand it.

~~~
huhtenberg
While you can't disable it, but you can still restyle it.

[https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-
fir...](https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-firefox-
address-bar/)

------
siscia
How better is the webrender?

Should people get excited about it?

------
caution
[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/06/new-in-
firefox-77-devtool-...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/06/new-in-
firefox-77-devtool-improvements-and-web-platform-updates/)

------
Normille
@Mozilla:

Wake me up when you bring back text-reflow. It's only been 9 years...

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710298](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710298)

------
huhtenberg
This Pocket thing just won't die, would it?

~~~
uallo
Why would it? A lot of people like and actively use it. If you don't like the
integration with Home, you can disable it.

------
accountinhn
Part I never get is how and when did we got into the mindset of, open source
means free and the backlash Mozilla receives for trying to monetize their
product. Either I'm reading too much in-between the lines or I'm missing
something.

------
AtticHacker
Whenever I looked at pocket recommendations, I would either get: 1\. political
content; which is something I barely read. And a lot of the content doesn't
even align with me (But again, I don't read a lot of political articles) 2\.
US Sports; I'm european!

I'd try to mark everything as "Not interested", but that never really changed
anything in the end. I do use Pocket, but mostly as a bookmarking tool. And
all the topics that I bookmark are either tech, or self help / phychology
related. I never get anything that matches these topics in my recommendations.
Not really looking forward to seeing them on my new tab. But I assume you can
switch it off.

~~~
Tagbert
Yes, you can turn it off. I keep it on on my home machine as I frequently come
across interesting articles. (I’ve never seen any sports articles)

------
coronadisaster
"We’re still preparing the notes for this release, and will post them here
when they are ready. Please check back later."

~~~
Tomte
"I really want to be the first one to post this, even if nothing has been
released, yet".

Happens all the time on HN, and our defense is a little link above.

~~~
jiehong
I got the update on Archlinux, as it's released, but I was surprised to find
an empty release note…

~~~
coronadisaster
why didn't you post the arch package link then?

------
throwaway_pdp09
To all who aren't happy with the way FX is going, may I suggest palemoon. I've
been using it a long while and it's just straighforwardly good.
[http://www.palemoon.org/](http://www.palemoon.org/)

Perhaps the easiest way of letting Mozilla know how you feel is by helping
them lose market share to another.

PM is a good browser. Not affiliated, it just works for me.

~~~
smnthermes
Good suggestion. People shouldn't believe the FUD spread by Firefox fanboys:

1\.
[http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml](http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml)

2\.
[https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22270](https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22270)

3\.
[https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22399](https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22399)

4\.
[https://old.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/evywwj/how_secure...](https://old.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/evywwj/how_secure_is_pm_really/ffzc5iw/)

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
Interesting. I didn't know this. BTW I wonder where the assorted silent
downvotes are coming from - just from my suggesting an alternative browser and
your posting useful info.

------
PHGamer
did they fix the issue with websockets over a forward proxy?

------
user48372
I’m sick of Firefox megabar. I’ve downgraded Firefox to the 76.0.1 already.
It’s time to switch to another browser. Can you suggest any good ones? Or
there is only one choice left?

------
MikusR
For me his release broke uBlock Origin (Dashboard shows only menu without
options and doesn't block anything), Twitter doesn't load, Reddit doesn't load

~~~
MikusR
More reports:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/gv765v/firefox_770...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/gv765v/firefox_770_see_all_new_features_updates_and_fixes/fsnxmr1/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Enhancement/comments/gv9uwt/firefox...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Enhancement/comments/gv9uwt/firefox_770_update_appears_to_have_removed_many/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/gvc7zd/none_of_my_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/gvc7zd/none_of_my_extensions_work_now_with_firefox_77/)

------
sunseb
No Firefox, no! Please don't embed distraction directly into the browser
(pocket recommendations)! I don't want to hear about Coronavirus or ongoing
politics bullshit whenever I open a tab! I just want to ignore this noise.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Just turn off pocket in about:config.

~~~
CaioAlonso
Why do I have to opt-out of this? This should be opt-in.

