
Firefox 64 Released - feross
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/12/firefox-64-released/
======
kevincrane
> We’re excited to introduce multiple tab selection, which makes it easier to
> manage windows with many open tabs. Simply hold Control (Windows, Linux) or
> Command (macOS) and click on tabs to select them. Once selected, click and
> drag to move the tabs as a group — either within a given window, or out into
> a new window.

Yessss. It doesn't happen often, but the times when I open up 6-10 tabs for
research but then decide they deserve their own window so I can focus on them
(and subsequently drag them out one by one) is still a lot.

~~~
sorenjan
I use Panorama View, it's a clone of the old tab groups functionality.
Multiple windows is hard to save as a session.

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

~~~
mr_woozy
I endlessly miss tab grouping

~~~
Ayesh
Simple Tab Groups add-on (with latest updates) works wonders and I'd even say
better than old Tab Groups.

------
moosingin3space
Kind of a niche thing to comment on, but this release lands a commit I made
that enables XDG desktop portals support in Firefox. If you're on KDE Plasma,
you can run Firefox with the environment variable `GTK_USE_PORTAL=1` set and
it will use KDE file selection dialogs.

~~~
nanna
Would someone mind explaining how to set this for a user (ahem, myself),
who've not set environment variables in firefox? A Kubuntu user.

~~~
tlamponi
The environment variable here does not refers to a Firefox variable but rather
to the OS environment.

To test it once you could execute:

GTK_USE_PORTAL=1 firefox

If you want a more persistent solution you could add

export GTK_USE_PORTAL=1

to your .profile or /etc/profile (if you want it for all system users)

------
jt2190
Some things I've been looking forward to:

> Easier performance management: The new Task Manager page found at
> about:performance lets you see how much energy each open tab consumes and
> provides access to close tabs to conserve power

> Improved performance for Mac and Linux users, by enabling link time
> optimization (Clang LTO). (Clang LTO was enabled for Windows users in
> Firefox 63.)

Release Notes: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/64.0/releasenotes/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/64.0/releasenotes/)

~~~
whalesalad
> Improved performance for Mac and Linux users, by enabling link time
> optimization (Clang LTO).

Does this mean I need to build it myself or is the binary gonna ship this way?

~~~
arnvidr
I'm sure those who build it themselves could have enabled this in earlier
versions already, and I assume this means the pre-built binaries now enable
this.

------
Doctor_Fegg
> The CSS Scrollbars Level 1 spec standardizes features for setting scrollbar
> width and color

I would like these features to be standardised to hands-off-my-fricking-
scrollbars.

I’m fed up with impossible-to-grab 1px-wide scrollbars because “everyone has
trackpads”. No, they don’t.

~~~
chrisseaton
> because “everyone has trackpads”. No, they don’t.

Don't most mice have scrolling as well? It's not about trackpads.

~~~
bm98
Most _new_ mice, yes. I use an original Logitech MouseMan 3-button mouse with
no scroll-wheel. I realize I'm an outlier, but no mouse has ever come close in
terms of comfort for me - so I continue to use it, and life has been just fine
until the advent of the Overlay Scroll Bar.

I realize the benefits of the Overlay Scroll Bar to the majority of users who
have scroll-wheels. But it sure would be nice if there was an easy way to
revert back to the Normal Scroll Bar ("Classic" scroll bar?). You know, the
wide bar that scrolls down exactly one page-length if you click outside of the
bar? I've spent plenty of time Googling and in "about:config" and exporting
environment variables like GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0 to no avail.

~~~
danillonunes
Maybe with that change you can have it now by using a userscript that override
scroll bar CSS for every site.

------
jjordan
Is this the version that kills Live Bookmarks? Some of us FF old-timers are
hopelessly reliant on these things, and it's, as far as I have found, the
fastest way to quickly scan lists of headlines from all your favorite sites at
once. Seriously, one click and you can quickly mouse over the sites on your
bookmarks toolbar to consume hundreds of headlines.

I really, REALLY hate that they're killing this feature, but this addon
promises to restore it: [https://www.ghacks.net/2018/07/30/livemarks-restores-
live-bo...](https://www.ghacks.net/2018/07/30/livemarks-restores-live-
bookmarks-support-in-firefox/)

Edit: here's the official GitHub:
[https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks/](https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks/)

~~~
fao_
> but this addon promises to restore it

Mozilla did the same with tab groups, then the addon was abandoned. The
replacement that is compatible with the new form of extension isn't able to
unload the tabs, just hide them, which undoes most of the performance
benefits.

[abraham simpson voice] It'll happen to _you_ too! [/abraham simpson voice]
/jk

~~~
untog
> Mozilla did the same with tab groups, then the addon was abandoned.

Wouldn't that indicate that the extension was not that widely used, and as
such Mozilla were correct in removing it from the central codebase?

~~~
usrusr
“Not that widely used" is an incredibly elastic term. When you axe twenty "5%
features" your worst case is offending 100% of your users.

~~~
kiriakasis
Which can be worth it depending on what you trade it for. I really liked the
tab group feature but the new extension API is vastly more secure and can
(probably) be extended to allow for most addons.

At Mozzila they need to prioritize many different things and I can understand
how a constant push to make the browser leaner is foundamental. (especially in
cases like RSS feeds)

------
iod
Soon Wayland support is coming in Firefox 65 (works in beta/nightly already¹)!
But have to wait until next month² for that.

¹
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635134](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635134)

²
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar)

~~~
jniedrauer
You have no idea how excited I am for this. I use sway as my daily driver
since it supports HiDPI so much better than i3, but the one caveat to that has
been firefox and xwayland. Once this ships, sway will have nearly flawless
HiDPI support.

~~~
pmoriarty
I'm not. Wayland lacks a lot compared to X.[1]

From the linked-to-post, it lacks:

* Programmatic output configuration (xrandr, arandr, etc.)

* CLI clipboard access (xsel, xclip)

* Third party app launcher/window switcher (rofi, dmenu, albert, docky).

* Clipboard managers (parcellite, klipper, Gpaste, clipman, etc.)

* Third party screen shot/capture/share (shutter, OBS, ffmpeg, import, peek, scrot, VNC, etc.)

* Color picker (gpick, gcolor3, kcolorchooser)

* xdotool

Lack of Wayland versions of these apps is a deal breakers for me, and I'm
going to avoid Wayland until it gets them.

[1] -
[https://old.reddit.com/r/wayland/comments/85q78y/why_im_not_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/wayland/comments/85q78y/why_im_not_going_to_switch_to_wayland_yet/)

~~~
iod
Those things are mostly compositor specific and not specifically a Wayland
issue. For example with Sway:

​

* Programmatic output configuration

swaymsg -t get_outputs # get displays

swaymsg output DP-1 pos 0 0 res 1920x1080 # set displays

​

* CLI clipboard access

swaymsg -t get_clipboard

​

* Third party app launcher/window switcher

I use gnome-panel with Xwayland, but better than nothing

​

* Third party screen shot/capture/share

[https://github.com/foss-project/green-recorder](https://github.com/foss-
project/green-recorder)

​

* Color picker (gpick, gcolor3, kcolorchooser)

Sorry, no options here yet, but it can be done

​

* xdotool

swaymsg [title="Top Panel"] floating enable, resize set width 2560 px height
32 px, move position 0 -38

~~~
gpm
No, it's fundamentally a wayland issue.

Window managers can implement their own extra protocols of course, but instead
of X11 where everything was standardized and window managers didn't even have
to think about it, there is no standard and window managers have to rewrite
all the code for it themselves.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> No, it's fundamentally a wayland issue.

It's not an "issue". It's a design decision.

As another example, Linux doesn't have just one desktop environment, like
Windows or MacOS, would you say that's an "issue", even if it's a deliberate
decision?

------
kentosi
Good work guys.

For those using Firefox, I have one question. Is there any way to replicate
Chrome's tab-to-search feature? It's literally the __ONLY __reason I 'm still
on Chrome.

Let me explain by showing how I would search for "apples" in youtube across
both browsers.

Firefox:

1 - Ctrl+L (go to location bar) 2 - Type "you", press "down" to select youtube
from history. 3 - Wait for site to load...... 4 - Click on search box 5 - Type
in "apples" 6 - Press enter

Chrome:

1 - Ctrl+L (go to location bar) 2 - Type "you", and if youtube is first item
in history, 3 - Press "tab" 4 - Type in "apples" 5 - Press enter.

Youtube opens up _with_ my searched item. Nice and easy with far fewer key
presses no waiting nor mouse clicking.

Works for youtube, hacker news, wiktionary, google images, and a heap of other
sites I use daily.

~~~
BoumTAC
Yes but it isn't as good as google.

Go to youtube.

Right click on the youtube search bar.

add a keyword for this search.

choose your keyword (ex: yt)

now you can type in the omnibar "yt my search" and it will do directly the
search. It's not as good as chrome solution but it's the only thing for now.

~~~
ziftface
Wow I actually like this better. Didn't know about these features in either
browser though.

~~~
JensRex
I remember first using this feature in IE6 back when that browser was new, and
I've used it since then. I have "i" for IMDb search, "w" for WikiPedia. "g"
goes to DuckDuckGo now after Google became malicious and evil, because of
years of muscle memory.

------
nn3
Curious about the "energy impact" metric. It seems to be just runtime. Fairly
lame, had expected some kind of real energy model. This will be quite
misleading in many cases, e.g. GPU usage or heavy floating point.

    
    
        // 'Dispatches' doesn't make sense to users, and it's difficult to present
        // two numbers in a meaningful way, so we need to somehow aggregate the
        // dispatches and duration values we have.
        // The current formula to aggregate the numbers assumes that the cost of
        // a dispatch is equivalent to 1ms of CPU time.
        // Dividing the result by the sampling interval and by 10 gives a number that
        // looks like a familiar percentage to users, as fullying using one core will
        // result in a number close to 100.
        let energyImpact =
          Math.max(duration || 0, dispatches * 1000) / UPDATE_INTERVAL_MS / 10;
        // Keep only 2 digits after the decimal point.

return Math.ceil(energyImpact * 100) / 100;

------
bane
There's always been a look & feel problem for me with Firefox...something that
seemed to be solved right out of the box with Chrome. I've not been able to
put my finger on it, but I think this kind of small user-convenience stuff is
part of it. It's not "features" per se, but more the _feel_ of how the
application works.

It reminds me of old platform video games before Super Mario Bros. (and for a
while after) Superficially, they looked and played kind of the same, but there
were a thousand little tweaks in how Mario handled that made it feel right.

I'm definitely going to give Firefox a spin and see how it handles these days.

~~~
nnain
Same here. I gave Firefox a fresh chance at v57 (Quantam), but I'm back to
Chrome. It was fine honestly, no problems with performance or with what I
could do. But Right after install, I spent several minutes in just fixing some
very basic UI irritations. It had some extra-spacing on sides of the address
bar, a 'heavy' looking menu bar, etc. (most users don't want to do that, and
rightly so).

I don't mind the different styled settings or menu items at all. The balance
(or lack thereof) between font-sizes/font-weights, line weights, the darker
gray lines etc. is what perturbs me. Maybe they should look at making the UI
look a little 'lighter', like Safari and Chrome.

~~~
Ayesh
Firefox is my main browser and I love it, but I totally see what you mean.
Chrome looks just right out of the box, but even a small line in Firefox UI
makes it irritating.

I have several userChrome CSS changes to make it look exactly as I want. All
these taming took me some time, but it's totally worth it because this is a
software you spend a few hours every day on.

------
O1111OOO
RSS is dead...

I have a local html page devoted to news. An entry for a specific site will
see at least two urls: The main site's URL and a link to it's RSS feed.

Linking to the feed directly was a great way to bypass all the modern garbage
on the home page to see a simple list of articles (not unlike HN's home page).
It's borked now...

None of my RSS links render. Chromium was very bad at this but at least it
rendered a few (a couple of examples below), FF64 doesn't render any (in any
form):

[http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index](http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index)

[https://feeds.feedburner.com/ItsFoss](https://feeds.feedburner.com/ItsFoss)

A huge part of my ability to enjoy the web has just been destroyed.:( I'll
have to test this on other browsers...

edit (update): both sample links above are working now (odd). Most others with
XML, RSS, Atom extensions do not render (FF offers to open in external app or
save).

~~~
acdha
Why not use a feed reader which is designed and optimized for that task? I
like Newsblur.com (aka
[https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur](https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur))
but there are tons of great desktop apps which do a much better job than
Firefox ever did.

~~~
keybits
Completely agree - use a feed reader. I was a Newsblur subscriber and have
great respect for the product and Samuel.

Recently switched to Miniflux: [https://miniflux.app](https://miniflux.app)
which is much better for my needs. Small efficient Go app that works great
with a PWA on mobile.

------
amarsahinovic
I really wish they would implement tab stacking, that is the feature that I
really miss from the old Opera, here is a video of how it looks in case you
don't know:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWpJvg8icmM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWpJvg8icmM)

I've tried to find an extension for FF that does this, but so far I was unable
to find one.

~~~
lucideer
The big issue here is that Chrome's extension API (which Firefox adopted)
doesn't allow this directly, so any extensions trying this need to:

1\. rebuild the UI from scratch

2\. rebuild basic tab handling behaviour from scratch

3\. build tab stacking on top of that

4\. (ideally) hide Firefox's existing tab bar

And there's two issues with the above steps:

(a) 4 hasn't been possible with the new extensions API sofar (it was in
progress last I checked, maybe it's possible now)

(b) the dev effort required is big, so results have not been very polished
sofar

they're getting there though

On the other hand, if you want to try something resembling that as-yet-
unsurpassed 2010 UI today, Vivaldi is working on replicating it natively.

I'm never keen to recommend Vivaldi because it's (a) closed source, which is
why we don't have Opera anymore and (b) it's Blink, and we need diversity
there. But it's a very good browser otherwise.

~~~
derefr
I'm not clear on why you would want TST as an extension rather than built into
the browser chrome. It'd be like wanting the tab bar, or the address bar, to
be an extension. Those things _belong_ in the browser chrome; they're what the
browser chrome "layer" is _for_. Just dig into the Firefox code and add TST to
the browser itself. (It wouldn't be all that much work; it'd just be 1. adding
"parent" and "children" properties to tab model-objects; and 2. adding a TST
sidebar view-controller, fed from the same data-binding that backs the regular
tab bar.)

~~~
michaelmrose
It's pretty clear that people desire it as an extension because a good and
functional extension exists whereas first party support in a browser does not.
There are certainly good arguments for it being easier for it to be built in
vs as an extension if you were building from scratch right this moment but
such an argument misses multiple points.

An extension exists NOW that people enjoy using. Building THIS into firefox
isn't a replacement for a robust extension interface unless you suppose that
first party developers can think or implement all the good ideas that will
ever come about.

People in truth give zero damns if its easier to implement or more elegantly
done any more than they care if their tv is beautifully engineered because
their priorities aren't yours. They care about functionality. Right now
firefox seems to be lighter and even post quantum have better extensions.
Throwing either of those out will cause it to cede more marketshare to chrome.

~~~
derefr
> unless you suppose that first party developers can think or implement all
> the good ideas that will ever come about.

Er, no. What I think is that _becoming_ a "first-party developer"—when you
already know as much about the internals of Firefox as is required to maintain
an extension such as TST—isn't that hard. Firefox is a FOSS project, with
internals that are well-maintained and well-documented, and the UI layer is
abstracted out to make working with it easier for frontend engineers (which is
why, unlike any other browser, you constantly see versions of Firefox with new
"experimental UIs.")

> There are certainly good arguments for it being easier for it to be built in
> vs as an extension if you were building from scratch right this moment but
> such an argument misses multiple points.

I mean, that _was_ my argument, yes. And I don't see how it misses the point,
because I'm not coming at this from the perspective of a Firefox user, nor am
I coming at this from the perspective of one of the existing TST maintainers.
I have no dog in the fight of Firefox's extension system, because—at the
earliest point I'd even _start using_ Firefox—it'd already be a “fact of life”
that it only has WebExtensions. I'd just have to _take it as a given_ that you
can't do what TST does (did) as an extension, and ask the question afresh: how
do you implement something like TST?

And the answer is: natively, in the browser chrome, and thankfully so, because
that's what TST _should_ have done in the first place and it'll make many
parts of the implementation a _lot_ easier. (See my sibling reply.)

Though, also, never mind Firefox. I'm also coming at this from the perspective
of a developer who would want to implement TST-like functionality for _any_
FOSS browser. For example, TST-like functionality for Chromium.

The fact that TST already exists for "old Firefox" doesn't really matter.
That's a different web-browser than the one we've got now, and no current
browser lets you do what TST did at the extension level. I don't care about
ideological arguments about whether they _should_ let you; I care about the
practical facts of how to go about _having TST functionality_ in the
present/future of the browser landscape.

------
mancerayder
What's the status of the cat and mouse game being played with autoplay video
being forced on and new options needing to be hunted down?

First Chrome forced it on, because EvilCorp's business model is around a
forced-open-eyelid philosophy of advertising revenue from unstoppable
impressions.

Next I moved to Firefox, which in an update a few months ago changed the
autoplay option to be on, removed the config attribute and made it a new one,
which has as options 0, 1 and 2. Turned out autoplay default should be 1.

I'm not about to wait to find out what's around the corner. I started using
Vivaldi this weekend in hopes someone actually made a browser for those who
don't care about some company's ad revenue.

I don't know why Firefox would do that, and introduce Pocket as well. Is
copying Google that sexy a thing?

~~~
daleharvey
I introduced the change to 0,1,2. Not sure what happened when we first
introduced autoplay but the change to 0,1,2 was so we could let users switch
between enabled, disabled and ask the user.

Original plan was to ask the user by default. We did some user testing with
this change and it looks like we will be changing it to block by default based
on feedback

Not sure what this has to do with any companies ad revenue, or pocket

~~~
drbawb
Block by default, and not ask by default? That seems unfortunate to me, and
will definitely break one of my services for Firefox users. I have a site
which coordinates watching videos amongst a party of people. To the browser
heuristics it looks like "autoplay" (the host starts the video manually, and
some scripting on the page kicks it off for everyone else and works w/ the
backend to maintain something resembling stream sync.) This is a consensual
thing, you click the host's invite only link, you're taken to a landing page
that tells you who made the link and briefly describes the service. Presumably
you would not have clicked through all that if you didn't want to watch a
video w/ the host.

I already had to deal w/ increased complaints from users due to scripts no
longer being able to start the video in Chrome when the user hasn't interacted
with the DOM yet. The only warning was an error in the development console.
Users would get incredibly confused because they'd join the room and "lurk",
i.e not interact w/ chat or the site, and then they'd be left wondering why
everyone is commenting on the video when their's hasn't started playing.

I realize autoplay gets a lot of flak due to large corporations using it to
further their aggressive marketing campaigns, but there are legitimate use
cases out there which you will be breaking w/ a block-by-default policy. I'd
urge you to reconsider ask-by-default, or at least allow scripts to have some
sort of API whereby they can ask the user for permission ahead of time.

This just really sucks, because it's hard to communicate these sorts of things
to my userbase which has wildly varying degrees of technical competency. It's
also unfortunate to, essentially, need relay the message "some organizations
(ab|mis)used this useragent functionality, so now nobody gets to use it."

~~~
daleharvey
It sucks when you want to use feature that arent available however users
wishes always trump site authors, we tested ask by default and it turned out
more users wanted them blocked

"Click here to play video" is also clear and easy to understand, not sure why
you would think your users could not handle that.

In future [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Permissions...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Permissions_API) may help

~~~
drbawb
>We tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked.

I was one of those users, as I have Nightly installed. I hope you don't
seriously think me clicking "no" on the majority of those popups in any way
equates to me saying "videos should never autoplay." \-- Hell I used my own
service and approved one of those dialogs for it.

You should be careful how you read into statistics: there is a _huge_
difference between "90+% of users said no to the autoplay prompt" and "90+% of
users think autoplay should be off by default."

>Not sure why you would think your users could not handle that.

I don't _think_ , I _know_ , because I've fielded the numerous reports from
users who thought my service was broken when Google[1] decided their "media
engagement index" was too low and the videos weren't starting automatically
for them.

It is objectively a bad experience for my users if they all have to manually
click play and their streams are randomly offset from the host and they see
people "spoiling" things in chat. The reality is that many of my users would
sit on the page, looking at a play button (that wasn't there before),
wondering why people are already talking about the video in chat. "Has it
started yet?" "When does it start?" "I think I'm buffering", etc.

[1]:
[https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-
policy-changes)

~~~
mancerayder
You're a benevolent site amidst a maelstrom of websites who eagerly want users
to hear and see things that they didn't expect. And very large publishers are
perhaps the most guilty. News websites, Facebook ads, and typical websites
with some announcer voice yapping away with music in the back, trying to get
your attention to Buy something.

So why stop at a pop-up for AutoPlay video?

 _" The website has requested permission to have autoplay video. Grant (Y/N)"_

but also

 _" " " " .. requested permission to display notifications.."_

Why stop there?

 _" .. requested permission to autoplay media with sound .."_

and why not

 _" .. requested permission to set/store cookies "_

Finally, after a drum roll:

 _" Sign up to this mailing list!"_ \- unblockable JavaScript popup when
you're a third down the article.

How many bloody popups would satisfy every single website publisher? Turn all
the damn things off, let the designers figure out if they want to point a big
giant arrow GIF to where the "Click Here" button to play the video is.

~~~
mancerayder
_If this is about giving the user 's more control over what they see: then the
setting should not be hidden in about:config, full stop. I know this may be
lost on the HN crowd, but doing that relegates the functionality to a small
fraction of power-users._

You know what, I think we agree! That's two votes for "move some stuff out of
top-secret about:config and into Settings where the mortals can actually use
it, it's useful for them."

~~~
daleharvey
Its in about:preferences (at least it will be when fully released)

------
madmax108
Every new release of Firefox makes the experience better and better. I'm glad
Mozilla has started focusing on the browser again, not just as an "open
alternative to chrome" but as the "best possible browser", which I truly
believe Firefox today is :)

Every new release reminds me of this comic:
[http://www.stickycomics.com/computer-
update/](http://www.stickycomics.com/computer-update/)

As a tweet I read today[1] :

"Mozilla seems to be under the assumption that there are people out there who
don't want them to win.

EVERYONE WANTS MOZILLA TO WIN!

Half the developers on the Chrome team want Mozilla to win.

We're all sort of terrified that Mozilla isn't going to win"

I'm glad there are more people embracing this attitude within Mozilla and the
developer community.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/mikeal/status/1071134519976022017](https://twitter.com/mikeal/status/1071134519976022017)

~~~
WilliamEdward
I want to believe firefox is the best but Chrome's user interface is simply
too smooth and clean and firefox has not been able to match that.

There are some details that you will only notice if you have used FF and
chrome in equal amounts for a long time, such as being able to easily merge
two windows in Chrome (in one click vs two), or clumsy bookmarks and search
history settings in FF, etc.

Also there's a significantly slower drop-down url menu in firefox?? How does
no one notice this? I click on a result and a list of other results take its
place and send me to the wrong page, before the change even appears in the url
box.

There will be people who ask me to elaborate on my points here, but I'm so
tired of doing that for Firefox supporters and curious chrome users. If you
want to feel why Chrome is simply better, just use it and compare it to
Firefox.

As long as both browsers are able to do everything, a good UI is the only
deciding factor for me. So many people in this thread are echoing what I've
said.

~~~
bad_user
Firefox has tags for bookmarks, whereas Chrome doesn't. This can help in
refining your searches.

Firefox's Awesome Bar (location bar) is superior to Chrome's Omnibar. And this
matters too when it comes to bookmarks, which are automatically searched. But
when typing in your location bar, you can also limit the searches just to your
bookmarks by starting the search with a "*" char. You can also use "^" to
limit your searches just to your history.

You don't usually need such refinement, the Awesome Bar simply does a good job
by default, but given that it searches in multiple places, sometimes precision
helps. See here for this trick: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-
bar-search-fire...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-
firefox-bookmarks-history-tabs#w_changing-results-on-the-fly_2)

Speaking of bookmark management, Firefox also has this neat feature: "Bookmark
All Tabs". You specify a folder and it saves all of your opened tabs.

Overall I feel that Firefox has the upperhand on bookmark management. Not sure
why you feel it is clumsy.

\---

I've used Chrome for two years and still use it from time to time, for testing
purposes and because I want to see how it evolves.

That said, as a Firefox supporter, I think Firefox is superior for my usage
patterns. And about its UI, believe it or not, but it was its UI that made me
stick with Firefox. And I'm a Mac OS and an iOS user.

~~~
aepiepaey
In addition to the bookmarks and history searched, "%" searches open tabs.

Also, note that you need a space after the character (so "% search query", not
"%search query").

------
Perceptes
I'm afraid I'm a bit of a one-issue voter when it comes to web browser, and
the reason that I haven't switched to Firefox from Chrome (even though
ideologically I want to) is this workflow that I use for clicking links in
other apps. I open an incognito/private browser window in the foreground, then
click the link in the other application. In Chrome, this opens the link in the
incognito window. In Firefox, this opens the link in a normal browser window.
In order to open the link in a private browser window, I have to manually copy
paste the link between applications into the private window. I follow this
workflow when the link is some site that I don't generally visit, or don't
recognize, and hence don't want to access any cookies associated with my
regular browser window, and importantly, also don't want to show up in my
browsing history.

I recall there being an issue on Mozilla's bug tracker where someone brought
this up and it was closed as a wontfix. Unless there is something about
Firefox's container system that obviates my workflow, I'm still reluctantly
sticking with Chrome.

~~~
verall
Depending on the apps you're clicking links on you might be able to drag the
link onto the incognito window. Still more annoying that it default opening
incognito but nicer than copy/pasta.

------
idoubtit
The new API browser.menus.overrideContext is announced with documentation
links pointing to blogs, including a personal blog page with unrelated
Japanese texts and anime pictures. The official documentation (MDN) has no
reference to the new features. Even the API features from FF63 (august 2018)
are only have a draft of documentation (e.g. Menus.getTargetElement).
Documentation is important, even more for an API. I think this pattern is
worrying.

~~~
sinistersnare
Yeah, the feature is not introduced that well. It is mostly a good feature for
the extension that they are talking about, TreeStyleTab[1], which explains the
feature. Piro's blogpost is actually awesome. It describes the history of the
feature, and how it is used today in his extension.

However, they could stand do the documentation themselves, or at least setting
up the context of the blog-post a little more.

I am not worried by the reference to the post, Piro may not have the most
pretty site, but his writeups are great!

[1]:
[https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab](https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab)

~~~
idoubtit
In this case, I don't care much if the blog is pretty or not and who wrote it,
even if Tree Style Tabs is my main reason for using Firefox. The problem is
that Firefox is relying on an external source as the main explanation of their
new API. Will the URL still be right in a few months? They have no control
over it.

MDN is one of the best achievements of Mozilla, so I worry when I see it is
not updated with their own technologies.

~~~
ghostly_s
As mentioned above, piro_or is the developer of the popular extension this
feature was tailor-made for. I imagine it is well-documented on their site
because they were closely involved in the development. I see no reason not to
presume the documentation hasn't been added to the wiki yet simply because the
devs were working down to the wire to get it included in this release as many
users have been clamoring for it. In fact, there is a fairly detailed blog
post on Mozilla's site that suggests this is the case.[1] All the worst-case
assumptions about Mozilla on this site are getting tiresome.

1\. [https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/11/08/extensions-in-
fir...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/11/08/extensions-in-
firefox-64/#cm)

------
TekMol
Does it support hardware accelerated video playback on Linux now?

I have been waiting for this feature for I don't know how many years.

Every Firefox release, I am reminded of this xkcd comic:

[https://xkcd.com/619/](https://xkcd.com/619/)

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
To be fair, that particular comic is slightly funny because we have now
outlived Flash video.

~~~
TekMol
Yet the problem persists.

------
xvilka
Is there any tracking progress, what parts of Firefox are now rewritten in
Rust and what will be next?

~~~
l1ambda
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation#Rust_Components](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation#Rust_Components)

------
whalesalad
Anecdotally the scrolling performance feels better on my 2018 Macbook Pro.
I've been doing heavy work all morning (lots of scrolling around) and after
updating, something feels better. Can't really prove any of this
scientifically but good to percieve performance improvements.

I also have a brutally long Trello card that used to choke up Firefox (not as
bad on Chrome). Happy to say that is no longer happening either.

Unfortunately Gmail still looks to have optimization that only work in Chrome.
For whatever reason the time from first load to seeing the compose window
after clicking "compose" is brutally slow in FFX, but not in Chrome.

------
pseudoanonymity
> Symantec CA Distrust: Due to a history of malpractice, Firefox 64 will not
> trust TLS certificates issued by Symantec (including under their GeoTrust,
> RapidSSL, and Thawte brands). Microsoft, Google, and Apple are implementing
> similar measures for their respective browsers.

> Multiple tab selection: We’re excited to introduce multiple tab selection,
> which makes it easier to manage windows with many open tabs. Simply hold
> Control (Windows, Linux) or Command (macOS) and click on tabs to select
> them. Once selected, click and drag to move the tabs as a group — either
> within a given window, or out into a new window.

------
nameless912
For some reason I read this as "Starfox 64 Released". I was confused and
happy. Now I'm a little less of both.

------
foldr
I wish they'd finally fix pinch-to-zoom on OS X. This is the main thing that
keeps me using Chrome.

~~~
satysin
Same for me. And two finger scrolling. Just _feels_ wrong in Firefox on macOS.

~~~
saagarjha
It's much less smooth than Safari is, at least. Interestingly, both Chrome and
Firefox seem pretty similar to me.

------
jimnotgym
Anecdotally I keep finding myself stuck in Captcha loops of Firefox and the
same sites work fine on Chrome?

Anyone else finding this?

~~~
robin_reala
Yep. One ungracious explanation could be that Google is penalising Firefox
users, but a more likely reason is that Firefox successfully blocks some of
the information leakage from the browser that Google uses to decide whether a
browser user is a bot or a human. I’ve no doubt that Chrome is very secure,
but I do doubt that Google does much to stop it sending data back to Google
controlled domains.

~~~
JohnFen
"I’ve no doubt that Chrome is very secure, but I do doubt that Google does
much to stop it sending data back to Google controlled domains."

Either Chrome is sending data home, or it is "very secure". It can't be both.

~~~
robin_reala
Well, Chrome comes from Google, so if you don’t trust Google to store your
data I’d recommend not using the browser at all. I certainly don’t (apart from
for unlogged-in development testing), but if you do then there shouldn’t be a
problem.

~~~
JohnFen
I certainly don't trust Google, and I don't use any Google products. But
that's a bit beside the point.

What I was trying to get at is that if data is being sent from a product to
the manufacturer without your knowledge and consent, then that is a data
breach no matter how trustworthy the collector of the data is. Such products
cannot reasonably be called "very secure" in a blanket way.

Saying something like "very secure against outside attackers" would be more
correct as, to use the Chrome example, Google is an inside attacker.

------
marklang
How does it compare to Mario 64 though? Not buying a game for an older gen
console in this day and age. Madness.

~~~
munk-a
I'm more curious if they added a Sierra compatible Perfect Dark theme.

------
onewhonknocks
'reload all tabs' is missing from the right click menu on tabs now. Has this
been removed, or just moved? I used that feature a lot every day.

~~~
dorgo
I think the new workflow is: "select all tabs" and then "reload tabs"

~~~
onewhonknocks
But...but...that's an extra step!

------
kev6168
What happened between Firefox 61 and Firefox 63 ? 61 (and the versions before
that) occasionally freeze or crashed on my old laptop (win7, 32bit), but just
yesterday I installed 63, it runs very fast, feels very stable, has had no
problem at all so far.

Just want to say thank you to the developers of Firefox. Thank you for all the
hard work to continue to improve a great product.

------
rerx
Does it come with Mac performance improvements?

~~~
sioux77
If this release makes it actually usable on MacOS I would be so happy.
Everyone says to use FireFox here, but they don't realize that it runs
horribly on machines that a lot of people use to develop on.

Reading the release notes:

    
    
      Improved performance for Mac and Linux users, by enabling link time optimization (Clang LTO). (Clang LTO was enabled for Windows users in Firefox 63.)
    

Doesn't seem like this fixes the high CPU issue on MacOS.

Maybe in another few dozen releases they'll fix it. Doesn't Mozilla realize
how many people develop on MacOS? Everyone I know develops on a Mac.

~~~
nindalf
To be clear, this doesn't affect _all_ macOS users. My battery reliably lasts
a whole day with Firefox running throughout. That said, the subset of users
who are affected, like you, suffer a lot - low prevalence, high impact.

~~~
jasin
In my case, CPU usage goes to the roof if I use a scaled resolution instead of
the default one. If that is the case with all macOS users with non-default
resolution, I wouldn't call it low prevalence.

~~~
jillesvangurp
Not an issue for me. I have a imac 5K and a retina mac book pro. Both with
image scaling on by default. I think most recent macs have retina now.

I use Firefox exclusively and have done so for the last 2 years or so. This
sounds like it could be a driver issue for specific macs. Both my macs have
AMD Radeon chipsets & quad core i7s.

Anyway, I'm sure this issue is real. Bugzilla ticket numbers probably exist
for it and might be more helpful than vague complaints about things being
slow.

Of course some web sites are a bit unreasonably javascript heavy these days.
The downside of a large screen is that pushing a lot of pixels around is not
free. Usually closing any offending tabs immediately restores any cpu usage I
see. I'd suggest using the new task manager thingy (page menu->more->task
manager)

~~~
cpmsmith
Anecdotal, but I've found it happens when image scaling by a factor other than
2. Affects my setup of a 4K display at 2650x1440 effective resolution, or 1.5x
scaling.

~~~
rosser
Exactly this. I run at 1920x1080 effective resolution on my 15" rMBP, and
1680x945 on my 13". I see the issue on both.

When I switch to the "default" scaling (1440x900 and 1280x800, respectively),
it stops. Only the 15" has a discrete GPU, eliminating that as potentially
causal.

The "problem" scaling is 1.5x. The default is 2x.

------
zanny
Personally am looking forward to 65 when we get webp support everywhere but
from Apple.

Its all politics, but once 80% of browsers support it, the pressure will be on
Apple to finally let us use an image format from this century.

~~~
kccqzy
Apple is standing behind HEIF, so quite unlikely.

------
blitmap
I wrote a comment about this a couple days ago on another thread:

I wish we had a simple UI we could bring up to expose cookies to other tabs
(arbitrarily). I just want a list of cookies with rows marked in green if
they're being sent with requests, red rows for cookies that would normally be
sent for the same [sub]domain but are currently not, and then gray cookies
that are established from completely unrelated domains. To me this would be
better than maintaining tab profiles/containers that are for
business/personal/etc. This would be like a one-off UI before you determine if
you want to establish a container profile.

Also I want them to take tree tabs seriously. There is a plugin for this, but
it doesn't look like a tree at all.. I am grateful for the plugin, I just wish
it were a UI effort focused on. I cannot maintain more than 40 tabs open and
easily browse through them. I'm tired of the response being "well don't".

------
tapoxi
Does WebRender ship enabled in this release?

~~~
kibwen
AFAIK it's enabled by default in Nightly for some desktop Windows users.
There's an about:config pref that others can use to enable it. Follow the
WebRender blog for more information:
[https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/](https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/)

------
polskibus
I hope one day DevTools get their own "Quantum" Milestone and rust rewrite!

~~~
moosingin3space
DevTools UI is actually currently being re-written with React, so it can be
more easily hacked on and benefit from all the performance work Quantum
brings. Check out [https://github.com/devtools-
html](https://github.com/devtools-html) to see the progress of this work.

------
Siecje
I wish you could resize the columns in the Network tab of the Dev tools.

~~~
cpeterso
Yeah. That is annoying. Here is the bug about making the columns resizable:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1463423](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1463423)

------
joemi
Serious question: Is this a special 64-bit edition, or is it just version
number 64?

I wondered this yesterday because suffixing with "64" is a common way to
denote such a thing. I looked into it and as far as I could tell, no, it's
just version 64 of Firefox, so I mentioned that in an attempting-to-be-helpful
comment here, but it got downvoted. So now I'm wondering if my research was
wrong. Can anyone clarify, please? I'm really confused about this now.

~~~
ImaCake
It's a coincidence that the version number is the same as the 64-bit naming
convention.

------
tempestn
One frustration I have is that Firefox Mobile doesn't yet support Android Oreo
autofill, which means it doesn't work with any of the major password managers.
If you use FF Desktop it's convenient to use it on mobile as well given that
history and such can be easily synced, but having to go back to copying and
pasting passwords manually is quite a pain. Would love to see that implemented
soon.

------
4p3
Nobody wants to comment on the Contextual Feature Recommender(CFR)?

about:preferences -> browsing -> uncheck "Recommend extensions as you browse"

------
kbenson
I really want bookmarks with a specified container. I have a dedicated
container for each of multiple Google apps/G Suite accounts I have and my
personal Google account. It would be great to be able to specify what account
to use along with the bookmark when saving a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet
instead of manually opening the correct container first.

------
digitalzombie
I've been through netscape, prodigy, aol, and IE5. Mozilla really made the web
better during those days as IE5 dominance really stagnant the web scene at the
same the current web dev pace seems crazy. I'm glad for innovation and for
mozilla. Will always be a fan and will be using this over chrome any day. I
trust Mozilla more than Google.

------
agumonkey
multiple tab selection ... this has metabolic impact on my brain right now

------
mrwww
Chrome pushing the auto-login made me switch and I haven't looked back since,
Firefox has really come a long way.

------
shmerl
I've just updated to new beta (Firefox 65.0b3) with WebRender enabled and it
started showing such error in about:support:

    
    
        [GFX1-]: shader-cache: Shader disk cache is not supported
    

I'm using AMD GPU and as far as I know, Mesa supports shader cache for
radeonsi and radv.

Does anyone know why that error is showing up?

~~~
bholley
See
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1511726](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1511726)

Assuming you're on non-Windows, the message is expected and not indicative of
a problem. I've pushed a patch to disable it going forward. Sorry for the
noise.

~~~
shmerl
Thanks for the pointer. May be still display something but like "shader cache
is not used" so it will be clear that the feature isn't utilized yet.

------
stockkid
I like the multiple tab selection feature. Kudos for Mozilla for their
continued hard work on Firefox.

------
fovc
Just upgraded and noticed the syntax highlighting and paren matching in the
console. Thank you!!

------
perfect_vacuum
When it comes to tab magic, you might check Side View extension as well:
[https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/side-
view/](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/side-view/)

------
ataylor32
I've been looking forward to this release for the any-hover support:

[https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/media-hover-
pointer/](https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/media-hover-pointer/)

------
tnr23
Damn, since the update the browser SSH is not working anymore in the Google
Cloud console with Firefox 64. Had to install Google Chrome to make it work...
Let's see where this overcomplicating of the web by Google leads to ;-)

------
daveheq
Ctrl+Tab doesn't work on Mac like other more popular or well-known browsers on
any OS... Having a basic often-used feature go against the grain is a
disconcerting choice that has caused me to switch back to Brave and Chrome.

~~~
mythmon_
What do you mean by this? If you mean ctrl-tab switching to tabs in most
recent used order, there is an option for that now. It's actually on by
default in new profiles in Firefox. The previous behavior (in order switching)
was left for existing profiles, to avoid disruption.

------
vmarsy
Really cool to have text contrast ratios available in Dev tools!

I hope multi-accounts containers will land soon on Android. The phone is where
I feel the least in control of what's happening on the browser.

------
johnklos
It'd be nice if one of these days Firefox were made portable again. Right now
it really isn't an option, either to built or run, on anything without a
shitton of memory.

------
JamesAdir
I've switched to Firefox since the account login integration in Chrome. I now
they've reverted this decision, but I'm much happier with Firefox since then.

------
damck
Are there a command pop up with tab search and mouse gestures built in yet?
These as well as multitab selection kinda won me over to Vivaldi a year and
bit back

------
arprocter
'Reload All Tabs' is gone - looks like you have to do a 'Select All Tabs' and
then reload

Progress?

Edit: if you don't unselect and close a tab you lose all your pins...

------
LordJZ
This broke the sidebar splitter hide CSS:

``` #sidebar-splitter { display: none } ```

To fix add this: ``` vbox#sidebar-box.chromeclass-extrachrome[src] { border-
right: none !important } ```

------
excalibur
Wonder if they fixed the certificate deployment admx functionality that was
introduced in Firefox 60 and never worked properly.

------
cjpb
Can I inspect websocket frames yet?

------
dsego
Does the search bar still resize the viewport, making some pages like youtube
reflow?

------
Svoka
Still no Touch Bar support :(

------
skykooler
Woo CSS scrollbars finally!

~~~
JohnFen
I don't think that's a good thing. I don't want web designers to be able to
alter the look of the browser itself.

~~~
PavlovsCat
The same person who managed to make the text and background color not clash
will also be able handle two scrollbar colors responsibly. Take e.g. a
textarea that gains focus and has the both scrollbar and border change color,
what's so terrible about that?

~~~
bzbarsky
> The same person who managed to make the text and background color not clash

Just to check, is that sarcasm? Because having those end up the same for users
who use non-default colors is a _very_ common webdev mistake...

~~~
PavlovsCat
No sarcasm, and that question wasn't rhetorical either: How is a scrollbar
that different from other input elements within webpages that can already be
styled?

And what do you mean by using non-default colors? User stylesheets would also
include scrollbar colors anyway; do you mean just setting a background but no
text color (assuming a default of black, which might not be black for the
user)? Don't see how this could apply to this CSS property, since it takes two
colors, you either set both or none.

It seems logical to me that _if_ you can read the text on the web page, that
is, if the web dev hasn't made the common mistake that renders the text
unreadable, they will set the scrollbar colors to something of similar
"quality". If you _can 't_ read the text because they use CSS badly, then the
scrollbar color is the least of your worries. QED?

Generally speaking, there are a lot of "common webdev mistakes", like using
the giant images and scaling them down, having text and background color very
close together... but we don't take that away just because some abuse it, so
resisting more flexibility on those grounds doesn't strike me as so "obvious"
as people seem to agree it is. If you can allow websites to hide the mouse
cursor, I don't think the web will break because of this CSS property. If you
don't want to see it on any page, override it in your user stylesheet, done.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Scrollbars aren't within webpages, they're browser chrome. Why not just let
the webdev alter that too.

~~~
Nadya
Aren't _commonly_ within webpages. But they can be. They just often aren't
because it is a confusing UX (because they almost never are.)

Example from Codepen: [https://vgy.me/IBmcUz.png](https://vgy.me/IBmcUz.png)

------
ace_33
For a moment I thought this had something to do with Star Fox 64

------
skinnyasianboi
I appreciate that they added permanent close buttons to tabs.

------
modzu
gave firefox a try but what is up with the bookmarks? 4 clicks to get to them
and the UI looks like something out of the 90s? am i missing something
obvious?

------
Muuuchem
Damn I was hoping for 64 bit video games on firefox!

------
bobblywobbles
Was expecting a reference to the Nintendo 64...

~~~
arielweisberg
Yeah I had the exact same response.

------
mindcrime
Did they fix the horrendously ugly tab-bar yet?

~~~
mindcrime
Answering my own question... it is, indeed, markedly better than the last new
release I tried. It was really janky looking for a while. It still doesn't
look as clean as Chrome's tab bar, but it's reasonable now. So props to the
Mozilla team on that.

~~~
Jaruzel
I actually prefer the old 'triangle' Chrome tab bar.... the new curvy Chrome
one is horrible.

~~~
mindcrime
I think I liked the more triangle shaped tabs as well, but w/r/t Firefox,
there was a recent release (couple of months ago?) where the tab-bar was all
kinds of jacked up. Maybe it was just a short-lived bug or something... what
it was, it looks a lot better now.

~~~
Jaruzel
In Chrome you can revert the tabs back to the triangle shape via Chrome flags:

chrome://flags/#top-chrome-md

I've got mine set to 'Normal'.

------
Endy
In other news: The march toward Firefox becoming another Chrome knockoff
continues unabated.

~~~
baroffoos
What do you mean by that. Seems like a bit of a troll comment. They both have
totally different codebases so the only real thing thats the same is they are
both browsers and they both support the same web standard. Would you like them
to fork html/css/js and make everything incompatible?

------
lonk
Firefox is in a major version number race status with minor fixes.

~~~
51lver
It's all been downhill since 3.x... If they could put the current engine
behind the 3.x series interface, I'd be one happy camper.

I mean, other than the fact all "modern" websites suck now too.

~~~
nindalf
Yep, things were better in the good old days.

------
pkamb
It's about time you showed up, Fox.

------
mito88
64 bit?

~~~
moosingin3space
In case this is serious, 64-bit builds of Firefox have been produced
officially for a while.

------
srott
Congratulations, nice round version number!

------
lostgame
...but does it run GoldenEye?

------
tekno45
I saw this and got excited about a new star fox game.

------
givinguflac
For a brief moment I had an excited nostalgic feeling, thinking there was a
new Starfox 64 mod released. Still good news though.

------
burtonator
.. now based on Chromium... what!@!!

just joking! :-P

------
ErikAugust
I could not help reading this as Starfox 64 Released.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox_64](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox_64)

------
psteinweber
Always the same ritual:

\- Read about new firefox version

\- "I should give it a try again"

\- Update and start new firefox

\- Open spiegel.de and youtube.com (note: with pi-hole active!)

\- Fans of RMBP go crazy, scrolling a news article lags like it's 1999

\- "Well, let's hope for a better/usable performance with the next update. I'd
love to use it after all..."

:(

~~~
bobthedino
I've found the "h264ify" extension to be helpful with YouTube:
[https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify-
firefox](https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify-firefox)

------
joemi
In case anyone else is confused as I was, the "64" in "Firefox 64" appears to
be the version number and not referring to a 64-bit edition or something other
special edition.

------
dilap
Still no bounce scroll on mac makes this dead in the water for me.

Folks, the UI look and feel stuff really matters. You can't treat a platform
like a second-class citizen and hope to gain widespread adoption.

~~~
omnimus
Interesting. I am ux designer and i never thought people care about this or
even realize there is difference. I mean actually quite opposite lot of people
i know were confused from the movements first time this feature landed in
safari.

Anyway surely this is not a showstopper. I mean it is not functional in any
way.

~~~
dilap
Scrollbars that auto-hide and bounce scrolling are standard behavior for any
macOS application.

Apps that don't do this both look and feel weird.

Maybe not a showstopper if Firefox were offering unavailable-anywhere-else
behavior, but it's completely natural and predicable that users will migrate
to one of the other two major browsers that care enough to make themselves fit
in w/ the system they are running on.

~~~
omnimus
Well Firefox is actually offering "unavailable-anywhere-else behavior" \- it's
free software that does not require you to log in and send private browsing
data to google. This is the case for anyone having google account - which is
almost everyone.

~~~
dilap
"Hey, we respect privacy better, no need to make the UX top-notch!"

^^^ This attitude sucks!

UX is everything if you want your software to be used by the masses.

~~~
omnimus
Omg i just now realized you are just trolling me. Nice one.

~~~
dilap
not trolling! 100% sincere. would love to see firefox once again care about
ux, and reverse its downward trend in popularity.

