
Firefox 50.0 - conductor
https://www.mozilla.org/en%2DUS/firefox/50.0/releasenotes/
======
Aardwolf
"Set a preference to have Ctrl+Tab cycle through tabs in recently used order "

Finally something that is an actually improved UI feature!

Not some "removed status bar and instead hover its info over text you want to
read sometimes" or "moved refresh button to different place than before just
to annoy you" or similar thing :)

~~~
ohstopitu
I have this feature in sublime text & Atom and absolutely hate it.

I feel like ctrl + tab has to move to next tab & ctrl + shift + tab should
move to previous tab (cycle if it reaches the end).

I feel like that's more predictable behaviour.

~~~
bruce_one
It's all personal preference, but since Opera 12 I've been addicted to ctrl-
tab for most recently used switching (Opera 12 had a nice tab switcher that
made the interaction very understandable/manageable), and then alt-tab for
switching in "physical" order. (I run a large number of tabs, and quickly
switching between two (or a small number) that I've used recently seems to be
a common interaction for me - but then being able to look at favicons and
traverse quickly to a closely located tab too (is less crucial, but important
enough that I don't use FF (because I can't remap that alt-tab interaction
simply).)

And I love it :-p It is literally the reason (in combination with "open new
tab next to current") I use the browser I do (Vivaldi; would consider Opera,
but it doesn't/didn't do "open new tab next to current").

To each their own :-)

~~~
ohstopitu
a feature that I've loved about Vivaldi (and vimium on chrome) is the
spotlight like search for tabs. When you run a lot (~30-40) of tabs, that's an
killer feature right away!

~~~
Manishearth
Aside from the fact that the regular URL bar in Firefox does this, Tab Center
([https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter](https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter))
puts tabs on the side with a filter-search at the top.

~~~
nevex
The search and hide/unhide function seemed interesting to me, but in my
opinion the Tree Style Tab add-on is superior. Perhaps that is because
TabCenter is aimed at a less technical audience [1]. Hierarchical tab
structures are more valuable in my opinion, because it implicitly groups
related tabs together. The structure in which tabs are opened reflects my
workflow while opening them and allows me to e.g. close all tabs that were
related to a certain problem. It does however lack a search function and some
sort of versioning, as I find my tab-bar clutter over time. Perhaps a aging
approach could be helpful for me, but I have yet to come across something
better than Tree Style Tab.

[1]
[https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/498#issuecomment...](https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/498#issuecomment-238127406)

~~~
Manishearth
Oh, yeah, I'm not pitching this as an alternative to Tree Style. I like Tree
Style too.

------
vdnkh
Any firefox devs here? You guys broke your own VTT polyfill with this update:
[https://github.com/mozilla/vtt.js/issues/354](https://github.com/mozilla/vtt.js/issues/354)

Only reason I'm mentioning it here is that it looks like the repo is dead.

~~~
bzbarsky
I'm making some inquiries. It looks like the old code just ended up setting
"position" to 0 when an object was assigned, while the new code (correctly per
spec) throws. The real bug is assigning an object to a non-object-valued
property...

~~~
vdnkh
Here it is:
[https://github.com/mozilla/vtt.js/pull/355](https://github.com/mozilla/vtt.js/pull/355)

~~~
bzbarsky
Thank you!

------
doytch
JS source maps support is a big one for devs.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Releases/50#Chan...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Releases/50#Changes_for_Web_developers)

------
silverwind
Also to note: Firefox can now upload directories.

Granted, it's done by mimicking Webkit APIs, but that has the advantage that
existing sites work without changes.

~~~
Manishearth
> Granted, it's done by mimicking Webkit APIs,

That's ... not a bad thing. Chrome creating nonstandard APIs (IIRC this was
for Drive?) on its own is a bad thing. Coming together and speccing
([https://wicg.github.io/directory-
upload/proposal.html](https://wicg.github.io/directory-upload/proposal.html))
the API is a good thing. They seem to have specced more or less what Webkit
had already implemented (plus some promise based stuff), but usually when a
nonstandard API has been out there long enough it's best to build your
standardized version on top of it instead of having two APIs for it. This is a
common practice. This isn't "mimicking".

~~~
kuschku
> They seem to have specced more or less what Webkit had already implemented

The problem is that the WHATWG always just standardizes "whatever Chrome
does".

This leads to the HTML living standard actually being just like Office Open
XML, with one entity controlling all of it.

~~~
Navarr
I would postulate that the cause of this is that, as a provider of services,
Google kind of knows what's difficult to do in a browser and what apis are
needed to make it more native-like.

So it's not a terribly bad thing, unless other people's standards are just
being ignored

~~~
hobarrera
> So it's not a terribly bad thing, unless other people's standards are just
> being ignored.

It's actually an unfair advantage.

"Oh, let's standardize what Chrome already has implemented and Google is
using". This immediately sets Firefox behind the new "standard", and website
that don't work on FF technically "follow current standards".

------
spacehacker
Obligatory "does it break Tree Style Tabs?" comment.

~~~
kylek
You might want to check out Test Pilot and the Tab Center addon :
[https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-
center](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center)

Unfortunately it is very slow compared to Tree Style Tabs if you have a
considerable amount of tabs open (even using extensions like auto-unload, it
is very very slow). Hope it gets fixed because I would _love_ a built-in
vertical tab feature.

~~~
glandium
I have hundreds of tabs open, and use Tab Center, and I haven't experienced it
being slow.

However, past a number of tabs (enough to fill the "tab bar" vertically), it
doesn't show thumbnails, maybe that's the difference?

~~~
tousif1988
I used to have those kinds of hundreds of tabs in multiple windows until I
found Onetab: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/onetab/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/onetab/)

Still using Tree style tabs for their sub tabs feature which helps keeping
things organised for me.

------
bearcobra
If they could just add a decent profile management option, I would switch back
from Chrome. Keeping my work and personal accounts separated is the only thing
keeping me using that battery killer

~~~
asutherland
If you're willing to try Firefox Nightly, check out the containers experiment:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers)

While everything still happens within a single profile, sites in different
containers get different storage (cookies, localStorage, IndexedDB, etc.) and
cannot see each other.

~~~
BorisMelnik
I think this is great, but is there going to be a simple "sign in" feature
similar to Chrome? People just love having their bookmarks / toolbars / etc
follow them wherever they go.

~~~
mbrubeck
You can sign in to a Firefox Account to sync your bookmarks, passwords,
history, etc.:

[https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/accounts/](https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/accounts/)

------
heinrich5991
>Added download protection for a large number of executable file types on
Windows, Mac and Linux

It seems archives (such as .bz2, .gz) are treated as executable files. What is
the reason for that? [https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-
central/file/054d4856cea6/too...](https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-
central/file/054d4856cea6/toolkit/components/downloads/ApplicationReputation.cpp#l424)

~~~
jimminy
My best guess would be that there is still some risk with these archive types
since the browser-client has built in automatic decompression for them.

------
digi_owl
> View a page in Reader Mode by using Ctrl+Alt+R (command+alt+r on Mac)

Took them bloody long enough. Now if only i was not stuck on ESR because
GTK3...

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Now if only i was not stuck on ESR because GTK3...

What's the issue with GTK3?

~~~
dbl9
GTK3 itself has various regressions and is slower than GTK2 despite the
architectural refactoring lending itself to a snappier experience.

[https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=771708](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=771708)

Firefox GTK3 has regressions too, for instance the bookmark manager not
remembering where you were last which works with Firefox ESR (GTK2).

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267863](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267863)

Also GTK3's file dialog is subjectively a huge regression, but others may
prefer it, just like Apple's finder changed over time. I still haven't figured
out how dconf and gconf work with GTK3, not using GNOME3 as a desktop.

There are more issues with GTK3 but these are the most visible for those of us
who don't use GTK3 regularly as part of GNOME3 and have been forced to use it
via Firefox. The way I read the GTK3 bugreport it seems like the devs don't
test GTK3 outside GNOME3 and hence do not consider it a priority. That one dev
has been stressing that a compositor is needed and multiple answers by the
reporter that they're using a compositor seem to be missed during reading on
the other side. It's a weird exchange. I'm with the reporter. If GTK3 is not
supposed to or not tested outside GNOME3, then this should be communicated so
that everyone can make an informed decision to use something else or revive
the Firefox Qt toolkit code.

~~~
jhoechtl
Serious comment:why bother with gtk anyhow and move to Qt?

~~~
dbl9
I love GTK2, but I can do without GTK3, seeing we're at 3.22 and it's still
not as stable or regression free as GTK2.

I'd be the first to build and use a Firefox where the Qt port was updated and
made to work but GTK is the GUI toolkit used by Firefox outside Android, macOS
and Windows. That said, GTK2 was and still is very good at what it does. It
just works but doesn't support Wayland.

I cannot move to Wayland anyway until xterm or rxvt-unicode are ported since
XWayland integration is still imperfect. Like they wrote in the bug report,
while GTK2 doesn't have a Wayland backend, GTK3's backend isn't really
production quality either with dialogs sometimes opting to zoom out rather
than scale out or general stability issues. If you try to start Firefox under
Wayland by telling GDK to use Wayland, it just crashes on startup.

------
aidanhs
"CVE-2016-5292: URL parsing causes crash" made me curious, given the talk I've
heard about rust-url being integrated into Firefox.

For anyone else interested, it appears that the patch is still being reviewed
-
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1151899](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1151899)
(though I don't know if rust-url would have actually prevented the issue).

------
criddell
I wanted to try reader mode, so I went to a random Atlantic article
([https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/better-
of...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/better-off-before-
obamacare/507650/)) and hit ctrl-alt-r. The graph related to the story was
dropped. Would that be a bug, or is that how reader mode is supposed to work?

I don't have the equivalent Evernote plug-in anymore (I'm trying to get away
from Evernote), so I have nothing to compare it to.

~~~
cpeterso
You can report a bug in Firefox Reader Mode here. Identifying the "important"
content on a page is a hard problem. :) FWIW, Safari's Reader Mode doesn't
include the article's graphs or pictures either.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Toolkit&c...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Toolkit&component=Reader%20Mode)

~~~
shostack
I've noticed this behavior with things like Pocket as well.

Is there any evidence you've found of any publishers intentionally trying to
load assets in a way that would break with this because it is stripping some
ad impressions?

~~~
criddell
I don't think so. Medium, for example, loads images on demand. So if you never
scroll down, I don't think it ever renders the bottom of an article. I don't
think it's malicious, just conflicting goals.

------
dbl9
Did something change in font rendering with Freetype on Linux? While 49.0.2
with FreeType 2.7 looked the best (subjectively) I've seen any font rendering
(including Windows 10 and OS X Snow Leopard (been a while)), something off
with 50.0's rendering. I haven't enabled any custom render options, just your
typical archlinux freetype 2.7 desktop. Time to get ESR and compare with that
but would be great to hear back from others with a similar environment.

~~~
foepys
Freetype 2.7 introduced a new rendering engine. I cannot link anything at the
moment but the Arch Forums have pretty detailed help.

~~~
dbl9
I love 2.7's rendering engine and 49.0.2 looked great, but 50.0 looks washed
out. Tried ESR 45.5.0 and it looks great again. I'm confused as to what may
have happened from 49 to 50 that caused this.

~~~
dbl9
Built 50.0 with cairo-gtk2 backend using it right now but something different
with the font rendering in 50.0. For instance there's a weird washed-out
effect of the text in this very same text control I'm writing the comment in
which comes and goes with the amount of text changing/wrapping etc.

~~~
Figs
Can you post a screenshot?

~~~
dbl9
Sorry I can't because it's something that happens and doesn't stay. If you run
Firefox 50 on Arch Linux, you will see what I mean.

~~~
dbl9
I think I figured it out. Somehow Skia was enabled in Firefox and resetting
that seems to have fixed the rendering bug. Given that 51 will turn Skia on by
default I hope this will be fixed before the switch.

------
arkitaip
Not much for users but devs can expect lots of changes
[https://developer.mozilla.org/sv-
SE/Firefox/Releases/50#Chan...](https://developer.mozilla.org/sv-
SE/Firefox/Releases/50#Changes_for_Web_developers)

------
CiPHPerCoder
[https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/security/advisories/mfsa2016-8...](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/security/advisories/mfsa2016-89/)

PSA: Please update immediately. One of these is critical.

------
severine
So can I sync the reading list and use it later offline, both on desktop or
mobile? I've looked for the reading list in about:about but I can't seem to
find it.

------
thewhitetulip
I find that Firefox has a considerable lag on Macbook 2012 compared to Safari.
I wish that would change because I love firefox and don't want to use Safari
but Safari is just nimble

~~~
beedogs
I had to stop using Firefox, because the 64-bit version apparently exists only
to consume _all_ of the memory on my PCs, not just _some_ of it, like the
32-bit builds would.

I'm using Iron Browser now, which has its own issues, but which at least
handles a hefty amount of tabs and some essential extensions without
destroying system performance.

~~~
thewhitetulip
I use firefox on android and sadly, I have to use firefox on desktop too
because of bookmark/history sync, despite the fact that it is slow.

------
hprotagonist
Breaks NoScript on launch day. That was an unpleasant surprise this morning...

~~~
meZee
Any reason you prefer NoScript to uBlock Origin's script blocker? Just
curious...

~~~
a1a
I don't think they are comparable. I run both. NoScript is a security suite –
besides blocking java, webgl, flash, silverlight, javascript, etc – it has
additional defenses against XSS, ABE, clickjacking etc.

uBlock was to my knowledge never developed to securely stop scripts and deter
drive-by attacks etc. It should be used for adblocking, not for security.

------
adolfoabegg
\- Added Guarani (gn) locale :) Thank you

~~~
DonHopkins
Tereiko porãke! Rojhayhû. ;)

------
conductor
Regarding the new Referrer-Policy header introduction, what happens when my
network.http.sendRefererHeader is 0, network.http.sendSecureXSiteReferrer is
false and some website sets a Referrer-Policy: "unsafe-url" header? Which
setting has the priority?

~~~
bzbarsky
The logic is basically like so:

1) Is the site requesting a "no-referrer" policy? Then send no referer.

2) Is network.http.sendRefererHeader set to a value that would prevent sending
of referrer in this situation (e.g. 0 in all situations)? Then send no
referrer.

3) All the other logic (but generally aiming to follow the most restrictive
directive we have).

The "network.http.sendSecureXSiteReferrer" still exists in 50, but is gone in
52; see
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308725](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308725)

~~~
conductor
Thanks for clarifying, that's logical of course (user preferences should have
priority).

------
michalstanko
It's great that Firefox finally has this option and I'm surprised that so many
people dislike it; it's the single most important feature why Opera is my
default browser.

I guess the reason why it's confusing to people is that Firefox (just like
Sublime) doesn't have that little popup displaying a list of tabs while
switching, it would make all the difference in the user experience, and make
things clear.

------
chris_wot
What are people's opinions of it's developer tools features compared to
Chrome? in particular, how does it compare in terms of running a HTTP trace?

------
kardos
The bottom of the page says "Congrats! You’re using the latest version of
Firefox.", but Firefox's About Firefox box says 49.0.2...

~~~
chucksmash
Are you browsing with Firefox for Android? If you click the "Android" tab, it
still links to the 49.0.2 release notes.

~~~
kardos
Ah, they've updated the page, now it's a "Download" button.

------
pmoriarty
I'm in the process of switching to Pale Moon because Firefox is making changes
that will break Pentadactyl.

~~~
Manishearth
Are you sure that this is the case? There's a lot of misinformation out there
about Firefox's extension changes. I don't know about Pentadactyl, but Firefox
should continue to support APIs providing equivalent functionality for most
plugins. They will have to transition, but they won't be irreparably broken.

------
mwexler
Don't see too many programs going to version 50 these days. Kudos to the team
that keeps improving it.

~~~
username223
With an aggressively "encouraged" monthly version treadmill, it's less
impressive than it might look. If Linux used the same type of software force-
feeding, it would be well past version 200 by now.

~~~
TD-Linux
Er... Linux does use a similar time-based release schedule now, and the minor
number has been reset a couple of times to keep it from "getting too high".

------
anonymousab
I was hoping that the new tab spinner problems would be addressed in 50. Oh
well.

------
baby
Still no tabs on the left.

~~~
kibwen
[https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-
center](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center)

~~~
flukus
Thanks. The tab handling is the only reason I still use chrome.

~~~
baby
Chrome has tab on the side now?

~~~
flukus
No, but I like the way it handles tabs much better than firefox and last time
I looked into it, it was pretty cumbersome to customize firefox this way. Plus
it has to be done on every machine.

This extension is even better IMO. And so far I'm enjoying having better tab
handling and a much faster browser.

~~~
baby
I don't understand how can one browse internet with tab not on the side :|

------
acqq
Still relatively slow startup, even on my quite powerful computer (i7, SSD,
8GB RAM, the second start, everything already cached in RAM, no add-ons or
extensions but the defaults, no sessions restored, open to empty tab) I have
at least a whole second during which I don't see that the program is starting.

At least visibly better than the 49.

~~~
TheDong
Firefox's reproducible automated testing begs to differ
[https://arewefastyet.com/](https://arewefastyet.com/)

~~~
bzbarsky
None of the tests there are startup time.

------
rxlim
I started using Mozilla Firefox 1.04 many years ago. Everytime a new update
was released I was so excited to install it, as the browser became better and
better with each update. I remember when Firefox 2.0 was released and I could
not wait for it to be available in the Debian package repository, because it
was such a big improvement.

Now I absolutely HATE when a update is released, because either functionality
is removed, appearance is changed or even more bloat has been added.

Firefox itself has become the problem it tried to solve.

~~~
broodbucket
What in this release would you class as functionality removal, appearance
changes or added bloat?

~~~
rxlim
This is in the the bloat category:

 _Added a built-in Emoji set for operating systems without native Emoji fonts
(Windows 8.0 and lower and Linux)_

~~~
broodbucket
Do you think that's a useless feature though? Seeing squares all over the
internet isn't exactly a good experience, finding the right font sets to fix
your emoji problem can be tricky on Linux too

EDIT: just got the update and it a) fixed some emojis I somehow didn't have,
namely "thinking face", which is of course critically important and b) made
the rest look a lot livelier.

~~~
flukus
I'll take squares over emojis any day.

