
Firefox 43 released with 64-bit version for Windows, better Private Browsing - ingve
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/43.0/releasenotes/
======
orf
I really really love Firefox as my personal browser, but I always find myself
using Chrome to develop/debug my applications because it's dev tools
outclasses those in Firefox.

I've tried the dev edition and firebug and neither comes close - the console
is particularly bad. Sometimes expressions randomly don't show the evaluated
results, stack traces don't use codemaps and the whole design makes me think
of the python IDLE debugger. I've also spent ~2 days in total tracking down a
reverse heisenbug, one that only appeared when the dev tools were open.
Maddening.

I eagerly check the release notes each time for some improvements, but I'm
still waiting :(

Edit: To be fair they do seem to add interesting developer features, but on
the day-to-day usability front it's still pretty dire.

~~~
eterm
I have almost the opposite, I use chrome for browsing but find FF's dev tools
a lot more intuitive. Different mindsets I guess, and while I do find that
some FF debugging features are confusing (the difference between the console,
the scratchpad and the GCLI is just an annoying distinction), overall I find
FF has better console highlighting and is easier to browse objects because
it'll expand a logged object to a sidebar on click, but in chrome it stays in
that console.

There is a separate issue where Firefox can have much worse performance when
the developer tools are open. This is something has been slowly being
addressed but I think there's still a lot of work to get it to chrome levels.

~~~
orf
> overall I find FF has better console highlighting and is easier to browse
> objects because it'll expand a logged object to a sidebar on click

I do actually like that feature, but in my experience the console is a lot
less intuitive than the one in Chrome. I've pasted the output from running
"$('a')" on github.com here[1] using both Chrome and Firefox. Firefox gives
you a massive chunk of output that can't be minimized, while Chrome gives you
a condensed output that you can actually navigate through (with pagination).
It's annoying that outputting a large-ish object instantly destroys the log
with way too much output.

Stack traces are another annoyance, in Chrome I get a trace that I can
minimize and maximize, with all the line numbers resolved using sourcemaps and
with hyperlinks to the debugger. My experience with Firefox has been an
unresolved giant minimized stacktrace that is really no fun to look at. The
debugger also often just takes me to my concatenated 100000 line app.js file
rather than using the sourcemaps.

I guess it does come down to different mindsets, I've been playing with
Firebug while writing this and it seems a lot better than I remember. I've
also found this[2] post about them integrating Firebug into FF itself, so good
things are on the horizon :)

1\. [http://paste.pound-
python.org/show/lUuq1bnMzOnSbcl5bhvC/](http://paste.pound-
python.org/show/lUuq1bnMzOnSbcl5bhvC/)

2\. [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-
integrati...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integration/)

~~~
cpeterso
On the github.com home page, $('a') gives me the following in Firefox, with a
nice attribute navigator panel:

Object { length: 33, prevObject: Object, context: HTMLDocument → github.com,
selector: "a", 33 more… }

Chrome just spews a screenful of HTML to the console.

~~~
eterm
Another thing is that Firefox actually has a $ operator built in now, which is
useful when the page does not even load jquery. (Chrome might have that as
well?)

------
gdulli
Has the release happened yet that removed the ability to use unsigned
extensions? I think this version is no longer safe to upgrade to if you want
to keep that ability. As I understand it the behavior can't be disabled with a
setting.

~~~
silverwind
That's coming in 44 in 6 weeks:

> Firefox 44: Release and Beta versions of Firefox will not allow unsigned
> extensions to be installed, with no override.

~~~
vocatus_gate
Sigh.

Why are they doing this? It's condescending and insulting. "No, you're too
stupid to be allowed to install what you want to."

~~~
semi-extrinsic
As others point out, they want to combat malware. But they've botched the
process and particularly the timeframe quite badly; they __should __have
started by

1\. Fixing the extension "code review" process, which is a mess. Make it be
actually automatic 99% of the time and not a big hassle.

2\. Implementing non-mandatory signing a long time ago and let that run for at
least a year before making it mandatory. (The initial announcement that
extension signing was going to happen was Feb 10 2015.)

3\. Waiting for at least half a year after making signing mandatory to start
even announcing "we will change the API and severely break all non-trivial
extensions in the near future".

Right now, I think Firefox has set themselves up to decimate the number of
extensions, by telling extension devs they have a mountain of work ahead of
them for very little benefit. I can't imagine it will do anything but further
reduce the number of users. Not sure what will come off it in the end. As a
pentadactyl addict, I'm worried that I'll be on the next LTS release (without
signing) for years to come. Either that, or we'll see a fork.

~~~
tired_man
I have more faith in the AV package I use than in Mozilla's part-time coders.

The people producing my AV package do just that, 8 hours a day, all year long.
How much time does Mozilla's AV coders have? How much practical experience?

IMHO, Mozilla's FireFox team should concentrate on making the browser work
fast and smooth. Period. FireFox has been slowly deteriorating for years while
they've diddled with cutesy GUI crap.

Too many spoons in the pot.

~~~
wodenokoto
Full time coders

------
viraptor
I checked just now and self-updating from 32bit on Windows does not give you
64bit on a 64bit system. You have to redownload and reinstall manually.

~~~
cpeterso
64-bit Firefox does not support as many NPAPI plugins as 32-bit Firefox and
may have undiscovered compatibility or performance issues with add-ons or web
content. Mozilla won't autoupgrade 32-bit users until some time next year.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Similarly, Internet Explorer has both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version.

------
sawwit
This is my Firefox wish list:

* Make no distinction between tabs and bookmarks, so that I can search for tabs in the bookmark library and easily arrange them and move them to bookmark folders etc.

* Add optional tab auto-suspend for heavy JS web apps so that they don't eat all CPU cycles in the background.

* Please do something about graphics accelerated video playback. My machine runs hot with 460p YouTube videos, even with h264ify (110% CPU FF, and by comparison only 34% VLC!).

* Be more keyboard friendly: Escape to defocus the address and search bars, page up/down in the add-ons list.

~~~
jhasse
I think you can't compare it to VLC, as Firefox also has to do more stuff
while playing videos on YouTube. For a fair comparison you would have to
compare Firefox playing a plain video file (without a website) vs VLC or
YouTube on Chrome vs YouTube on Firefox.

~~~
sawwit
You are right and I gave it a go: I've tested it with a 640x386 H264 movie
clip averaged over the same time span with a blank Firefox profile:

    
    
        VLC: 14.0 %
        Firefox: 27.1 %
    

Edit: Interesting. I tried it with a different video (H264, 720p) and it
turned the results around (33% VLC and 28% Firefox), there was more movement
in this clip, so it turns out to be more complex to measure this.

~~~
jhasse
Now you'll have to take into account, that H.264 is a patented codec. VideoLAN
is based in France [1], but Mozilla is US. Therefore they can't just ship an
implementation.

On Windows Firefox uses the Windows Media Feature Pack to play H.264, and on
Linux a plugin by Cisco.

Considering this, I think 27 % vs 14 % doesn't look too bad :)

[1] [http://www.videolan.org/legal.html](http://www.videolan.org/legal.html)

~~~
cpeterso
btw, Firefox 43+ on Linux uses the system ffmpeg library. Before that it used
GStreamer, which was very crashy and usually just called ffmpeg anyway. :)
Firefox telemetry shows that 97% of Linux users have ffmpeg, but only 70% have
GStreamer. So this change increases H.264 availability, reduces crashing,
while removing code.

The Cisco OpenH264 plugin is currently only used for WebRTC, not MP4 video
playback. OpenH264 only supports H.264 Baseline Profile, but YouTube, for
example, uses the higher-quality H.264 Main Profile. Cisco or Mozilla could
add Main Profile support to OpenH264, but people would still need an AAC
decoder to watch most MP4 videos. ffmpeg solves both codec problems. For the
3% of Linux users (and 2% of Windows users) who don't already have H.264 and
AAC codecs installed, Adobe's CDM (their DRM plugin for HTML5 video) will
eventually allow Firefox to decode H.264 and AAC content that is not DRM'd.
Props to Adobe! :)

------
eridal
yay server-side console logs!!

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Tools/Web_Console/C...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Tools/Web_Console/Console_messages#Server)

------
ptx
"NEW: Users can choose search suggestions from the Awesome Bar."

What does this mean? It sounds like a rephrasing of an antifeature, something
like "NEW: Everything you type in the location field is now immediately sent
to your search provider, just like in Chrome, making the distinction between
the location field and search field pointless."

~~~
Amezarak
> What does this mean? It sounds like a rephrasing of an antifeature,
> something like "NEW: Everything you type in the location field is now
> immediately sent to your search provider, just like in Chrome, making the
> distinction between the location field and search field pointless."

Maybe they changed it from the beta where I used it, but it was awful in a
completely different way. It very highly preferred doing searches or visiting
the top level of a domain to your bookmarks and history.

So, for example, typing "trans" brings up page title "Transmission" at
192.168.1.17, which is a page I visit several times a week, under the old
Firefox. On the new Firefox, it brought up "Search {default search engine} for
Transmission". If I just did "trans", again, instead of preferring
"Transmission", it preferred Google Translate, which I visited once, six
months ago, apparently because the URl begins with "translate.google.com"

As someone who has basically adapted with the AwesomeBar, I was previously
hitting Ctrl + L, typing one or two letters, hitting tab, enter, DONE, and it
worked for any website I visit. With the change it was _always_ at least two
tabs instead of one and sometimes more, or it just straight up required more
typing.

Fortunately it could be turned off in about:config. If someone with the
release version can provide any input on whether it's different than beta,
that'd be nice. It honestly enraged me so much I don't even want to look. I
was the guy that was telling people to move along with the less popular
changes; I guess that was the one that did me in too. Made me think about
downloading the long-term support release.

~~~
olm
>Fortunately it could be turned off in about:config

What is the name of this setting?

~~~
Amezarak
Set browser.urlbar.unifiedcomplete to false.

~~~
olm
Thanks!

------
acallan
Why was 64-bit Firefox for Windows so late to release?

~~~
dhd415
I don't know why the release was so late, but I'd speculate that it took a
while to find enough compelling reasons to go from 32 to 64 bits on Windows.
Having run Waterfox, the third-party 64-bit build for Windows, for some time
along with the 64-bit version of IE, I haven't seen any real difference in
performance relative to the 32-bit versions of those browsers.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Websites like [https://clara.io](https://clara.io) and
[https://www.onshape.com/](https://www.onshape.com/) really appreciate having
a 64 bit browser. Loading a large model on a 32-bit browser often results in
random crashes.

------
Lord_Nightmare
Note this release disables the about:config "showOneOffButtons = false" bypass
for the new-style search bar, so you're stuck with the new bar with the icons
from now on.

~~~
ju-st
Thanks man.. I disabled automatic updates for now

------
shmerl
Still no GTK3 support on Linux in default Mozilla build. And ffmpeg is
disabled as well :( Why so? Especially since gstreamer 1.x isn't enabled
either...

Another annoyance I noticed - old search UI is gone and can't be restored even
with

    
    
        browser.search.showOneOffButtons = false
    

I had to use Classic Theme Restorer to do that (new search UI is very
cluttered and annoying).

~~~
glandium
_Still no GTK3 support on Linux in default Mozilla build_

This will come in 45.

 _And ffmpeg is disabled as well :(_

AFAIK, ffmpeg is _enabled_ in 43.

~~~
shmerl
_> AFAIK, ffmpeg is enabled in 43._

So it should play mp3 and H.264? When I try to play this in stock Mozilla
build (43) it uses Flash (which means it doesn't detect native mp3 support):

[https://danielamosboots.bandcamp.com/track/er-uh-
ummm](https://danielamosboots.bandcamp.com/track/er-uh-ummm)

UPDATE: H.264 / mp4 is working though which is better than 42.

 _> [GTK3] This will come in 45._

Thanks. I guess it's good that it's somewhat delayed - Breeze-gtk can get in
better shape by that time and fix colors integration for KDE Plasma 5.

------
suprgeek
Just updated and hit a stupid bug right away (oldbar plugin is installed on
Mac OSX Yosemite)

Open new tab-> in address bar start typing some previously visited site->list
of suggestions appears-> use down arrow key to highlight first one->HIT Enter

NOTHING Happens. Very interesting that a basic usecase does not work

~~~
reubenmorais
Can you still reproduce that after disabling oldbar?

~~~
suprgeek
No. oldbar integration is the issue, disabling it gives me the ghastly very
large address that do work.

------
andrewvc
I try to switch to FF every 3mo. or so. EVERY TIME I try it gets sluggish if I
have even a modest number of tabs open.

I really like what Mozilla is doing, but why is it that they just can't make a
browser as snappy as Chrome?

~~~
ohthehugemanate
That's gotta be a plugin, mate. I have the reverse problem: Chrome is slow,
but Firefox is snappy. I know in the last few months FF fixed an issue where
css cache was per-tab, which meant plug ins (like adblock plus) which add huge
stylesheets to every tab had a huge memory load.

The only slowness I get with ff is when I have lots of heavy js tabs open for
more than a day. In my case that's gInbox, gcal, ghangouts, trello (with heavy
plugins), Facebook, and then my normal browsing tabs. Even then, I only notice
the slowness when I instantiate a new window.

~~~
sp332
I haven't been rigorous about testing it, but I think Inbox messes with mine
too. Firefox will eat an entire CPU core for multiple seconds every time I
click in any text box, or close a tab, or load a new tab in the background.
It's the main process that uses CPU, not the content process. This is on Win7,
and my only add-ons are uBlock Origin, Ghostery, LastPass, HTTPS Everywhere.

~~~
rmcgu
Try disabling LastPass. I remember having similar problems on OS X when I was
trying to switch from 1Password to LastPass. I didn't look into it any further
and just stuck with 1Password.

~~~
sp332
It didn't seem to help much. Thanks for the tip though.

------
pc2g4d
"Subresource integrity allows developers to make their sites more secure"

Cryptographic verification of scripts and other linked resources is very cool.
Not an official standard, but I'm glad to see this.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It is a W3C Candidate Recommendation:
[http://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/](http://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/)

------
ck2
For the first time in awhile I am stuck on an old version of Firefox 41.0.2

It is the last version with gDocument which was removed in 42+ and breaks
several extensions that have not been updated.

------
aaaaa11
download link?

~~~
heinrich5991
[https://firefox.com/](https://firefox.com/)

~~~
broodbucket
I didn't realised they finally got the guy to sell firefox.com. They had to
use mozilla.org/getfirefox.com for ages.

~~~
GordonS
Don't suppose anyone knows how much they paid for it?

Mozilla is a non-profit, so it might be public information?

------
nacs
"Better Private browsing" that still features the Pocket bundleware and button
in the toolbar that's still not un-installable like other extensions and
requires about:config edits to disable..

~~~
smacktoward
Since it's apparently obligatory that someone gripe about this on every single
thread mentioning Firefox, I will post the obligatory link to the Bugzilla
thread where they are working on breaking Pocket out into an add-on:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215694](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215694)

~~~
tshtf
An add-on with a consumer-unfriendly opt-out mechanism.

~~~
Dylan16807
You have to opt-out of it existing.

But it doesn't _do anything_ unless you opt-in very strongly.

~~~
totony
It's like saying "installing x doesnt do anything until you execute it!" Its
true, but if applied is stupid hard-drive wise.

/flamewar

~~~
Dylan16807
Except when you execute it all it does is sit there asking you to register.

And space-wise we're talking a couple kilobytes.

You can't really have an opt-in without a point at which you ask the user
about the option. The easily-removed button does that, the fact that it's not
truly purged from the browser is a geeky detail that they're working on
fixing.

