
Firefox 26 is released - lambda_cube
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/26.0/releasenotes/
======
riquito
> Improved page load times due to no longer decoding images that aren't
> visible (847223) (
> [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=847223](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=847223)
> )

This is pretty cool

~~~
verytrivial
And it was even cooler when Opera did it several years ago.

~~~
nhebb
If you were to construct a graph of all the features implemented by one
browser and then copied by the others, after a while it would look like a
chain link fence.

~~~
dubcanada
As correct as you are you'd be surprised how many features we use where
implemented in Opera first. Surprisingly large amount, which they then threw
away...

~~~
eli
I give the Opera guys a lot of credit (I met a few engineers years ago at a
conference and they seem like awesome dudes too), but one can hardly blame
them for "throwing it away."

------
prteja11
Love this - All Java plug-ins are defaulted to 'click to play'

I tried convincing my coworkers to disable java and failed (we are not
developers).

~~~
a1a
I do not think this is a good solution. This is once again just smashing
another security trade-off in the face of the end-user. Once the user is
responsible they can be blamed and the browser is considered secure with
stupid users.

If the developers at mozilla can't verify the security of the applet, how on
earth would my grandmother be able to?

Note: This is not an attack against mozilla in particular, almost all vendors
does this (e.g. "antivirus: wanna allow suspicious file?" or "browser: invalid
certificate". These questions are asked as if everyone is a computer
scientist. We developers need to start formulating these questions so they can
be answered by a normal person.

Note 2: I guess it's better than doing nothing at all, since it might stop
some drive-by attacks.

~~~
revasm
The main security benefit of click-to-play plugin schemes is not to question
the user about the security of an object, which is unknown in most cases
anyway, but to prevent accidental drive-by loading and other annoying (and
risky) usage. Clicking an overlay to run a plugin should be as natural as
clicking on a video to begin playback.

~~~
pwnna
Yes. Drive-by is big deal imo.

------
kibwen
According to the #ux channel on irc.mozilla.org, Australis will be relegated
to Nightly builds (Firefox 29) for a while yet, and might be as late as
Firefox 30 depending on the speed at which bugfixes roll in. Sorry, Aurora
users. :(

~~~
JohnTHaller
That still means it would only be about 5 months.

~~~
yeukhon
Yeah. to clarify for people who are not clear, see this
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar](https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar)

~~~
systems
will the linux version still show the window frame on top of the tabs?

Update: seems so [http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/blog-
images/australis-...](http://people.mozilla.org/~shorlander/blog-
images/australis-landing-on-nightly/intro-image-large.jpg)

why didnt they take this chance to fix this, chromium does it>

~~~
quaint-
Chromium does it, to a pretty useless extent. With so many window managers,
it's pretty hard to draw correct window borders on every machine, and Chromium
doesn't even try: with Ubuntu, for example, it draws the titlebar buttons in
the "wrong" corner.

Let's face it, the Linux version will only show the window frame if you choose
to draw it: not all do (with tiling wm's it's pretty rare, even). Firefox is
easy to customize, which allows every distribution to match it looks to
whatever theme they use. Linux doesn't have the DE like OSX and Windows do.

------
pwnna
> Support for H.264 on Linux if the appropriate gstreamer plug-ins are
> installed

\o/

~~~
lawl
I don't think that's a good thing for the open web.

:'(

Then again I do like that I can watch more YouTube Videos in a reasonable
resolution now. Most webm transcodes are just available in low quality.

~~~
spindritf
I just download youtube videos[1]. It has many advantages over youtube.com.
Hardware acceleration is one but also no stalling when skipping ahead, no
disappearing videos that you planned to watch later, no need to sign in.

Actually, youtube as a repository of material for download works much better
than youtube as a streaming site.

[1] [http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)

~~~
x0054
On OSX I highly recommend YouView[1]. It streams H.264, and CPU usage during
playback is 1/3 of what the browser player uses. I guess it really
inconsequential unless you are on a laptop. On a laptop it's a difference in
1-1.5 hours of battery life.

[1]
[https://mrgeckosmedia.com/applications/info/YouView](https://mrgeckosmedia.com/applications/info/YouView)

~~~
rcthompson
I used YouView for a while, but I switched to Mactubes because YouView doesn't
have Retina support. But I much prefer YouView's interface, and I would switch
back in a moment if they released a Retina-enabled version.

~~~
x0054
I have a rMBP as well. You can use a little program called Retinizer[1] to
convert YouView to retina compatible app. Retinizer works on almost any cocoa
app, I have tried it on a bunch. All it does is set a flag in the info.plist
file that tells OSX that the app is HiDPI compatible, the OS does the rest.
You should also get Maximizer[2] to add full screen app option for it.

[1] [http://retinizer.mikelpr.com/](http://retinizer.mikelpr.com/) [2]
[http://chpwn.com/apps/maximizer.html](http://chpwn.com/apps/maximizer.html)

~~~
rcthompson
Retinizer is nice, but it only "retinizes" the UI controls in YouView, not the
actual video view, which is the part that matters.

~~~
x0054
Ha! You are right. I usually watch videos in 720p, because my connection isn't
all that great to YouTube servers, so I never noticed. Just tried it with a
1080p clip, and sure enough, the content isn't running in retina resolution. I
guess if I haven't noticed after this long, I am not switching, but good
catch.

------
jevinskie
EXIF rotation was long overdue but I'm happy it finally landed!

------
caissy
> There is no longer a prompt when websites use appcache.

Quite happy with this one. I had to develop an offline web-based application a
few weeks ago and it really bugged me that I had to allow the application to
use the offline cache.

~~~
super_mario
I'd like to know if some web developer has decided to use 5 GB of offline
storage for their app.

~~~
untog
IIRC most (all?) browsers prompt you when usage goes above a certain limit
(5MB, I think). Firefox was the only one that asked you before the site saved
a single byte.

------
Ygg2
I have a silly request, can timings on Network tab be displayed on mouse
hover? I hate having to click to measure which part took much time? This is
@Mozilla Web inspector

~~~
phaer
I think bugzilla, mailinglists and irc channels might be better places to
request a feature request than a comment on hacker news.

~~~
Ygg2
I got no clue how to get to Bugzilla. I made other bug request, but I have no
idea where those went (It was one of those Feedback sites for Mozilla with I
have an idea, etc.)

~~~
DEinspanjer
If you made the suggestion through a feedback mechanism, it goes into a big
database along with the millions of other feedback entries. The support team
at Mozilla is responsible for combing through that database looking for common
themes and especially for trending issues.

I'd guess your request probably isn't very common, so you probably wouldn't
get the same potential attention that you would get if you were to go to
bugzilla.mozilla.org and file a bug there.

------
shmerl
Is there any way to update Firefox on Linux without resorting to ugly methods
like running it as root and using update UI, or downloading the mar file
manually and running the updater CLI tool with that file (as sudo / root)?

The issue is that I use stock Mozilla build (I prefer it to Iceweasel on
Debian), so I just placed it in /opt, but I don't want to give write
permissions to the firefox directory to my primary user (it's kind of bad
security wise). Because of no write permissions, updating UI can't update the
browser naturally, unless I run it as root. And manual mar + updater method
isn't nice either.

Potentially there can be some better ways for updating:

1\. Firefox can work with policykit and request authorization for updating (if
user has it - it can ask for password). That's much better than running as
root.

2\. updater CLI tool can detect all the settings, channels sources and etc.
from Firefox local DBs, and instead of forcing the user to manually grab some
mar file, it can go and perform all that automatically. updater can be run
with sudo still, but avoid all the manual steps.

Both these methods would be much neater than what I usually do now.

~~~
thristian
Honestly, when I've used official Firefox builds, I've just downloaded the
tarball and extracted it to my home directory. Any malicious code that could
corrupt your Firefox install can trash your entire home directory anyway, so
there's not much gained by making it non-writable.

Also, running a browser (or anything as complex as a GUI app, but especially
anything as wildly complex as a browser) as root is probably a bad idea
security-wise anyway.

~~~
shmerl
_> Also, running a browser (or anything as complex as a GUI app, but
especially anything as wildly complex as a browser) as root is probably a bad
idea security-wise anyway._

Yes, that's why using mar + updater is probably the only "right" option, but
it's way too manual. I even thought about writing some script which would
extract http sources for mar file based on the current update channel but
didn't figure out yet where it's configured.

------
super_mario
These frequent updates are going to kill Firefox and it's partially Google's
fault. Basically, Google has managed somehow to coax Firefox developers to
rapid release cycle with frequent Chrome updates. But this goes against
Firefox users.

Why do people use Firefox? Most users claim extensions. What breaks
extensions? Frequent updates. Effectively annulling the most compelling reason
to use Firefox.

This is certainly my experience. Pentadactyl, the most compelling reason for
me personally to keep using Firefox is more broken than not. Every single
update in the last year has broken it and sometimes in non-trivial ways, and
stretching my patience to the limit. If I have to abandon Pentadactyl, I
really don't have a reason to use Firefox anymore.

UI changes proposed in Australis are not something to look forward to either
esp. if you like hiding Firefox UI elements and basically just keeping
undecorated minimal window with Pentadactyl.

~~~
zobzu
Is that a troll attempt? Not sure.

Haven't had any of my 15 extensions break in 20 releases. I don't expect any
breakage any time.

The reason for rapid release is that they need to get new features out to load
stuff properly like google docs, yes.

The main reason to use firefox IMO is that its as fast or faster than others
(and has all the features of course) AND has this: [http://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/about/manifesto/](http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/) to tip
things on it's favors.

Also, I'm using Australis and its just fine. I switch back to release
sometimes and I don't really notice the difference anymore. I do prefer the
australis tabs contrast.

~~~
stewbrew
They are changing the js API all the time. E.g. in ff26 they disabled the old
download manager and replaced it with a new module that's available only since
ff26. When the extensions you use didn't break, it's because the developers
are busy updating them.

------
erichurkman
See also the Firefox 26 for Developers: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Releases/26](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Releases/26)

And Site Compatibility for Firefox 26, [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Releases/26/Site...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Releases/26/Site_Compatibility)

Of note, images with EXIF rotation data are now rotated correctly! And you can
inspect :before and :after elements in the built-in inspector finally.

------
notjustanymike
As a developer, it would just peachy if they'd start supporting HTML5 input
elements.

~~~
acdha
Firefox has support for a bunch of them and that's been steadily improving –
i.e. the input type=range landed in (IIRC) FF 23.

You can see the current status for just about everything here:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344614](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344614)
As you can see from reading some of the linked tickets not all of the
remaining work is trivial – there are questions about the spec, compatibility
with webkit, etc:

type=color:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=547004](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=547004)
type=number:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344616](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344616)
type=date:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446510](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446510)

------
anymane
I am curious about this change in the changelog. "Password manager now
supports script-generated password fields" I couldn't easily find any details
about. Would someone be kind enough to elaborate on what it does and where it
is useful?

~~~
_doug_
see
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=355063](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=355063)

~~~
snogglethorpe
Wow, that bug is over seven years old!

It's oddly gratifying to see bugs that old getting fixed...

------
mar1
I'm using Archlinux and I have the H.264 GStreamer plugin installed (as well
as base+bad+good+ugly codecs), but with Firefox 26 I still can't play a lot of
YouTube videos when Flash is disabled, for example when I try to play Gangnam
Style it tells me "The Adobe Flash Player is required for video playback".

Is that related to advertisements? Would it be possible to develop a plugin or
a GreaseMonkey script that would allow to play every YouTube video in HTML5
with Firefox? If yes, does it exist?

~~~
drill_sarge
[https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/87011](https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/87011)

No need for Flash anymore, works on every video

------
benjamincburns
Maybe I'm biased, but jor1k is my FF benchmark of choice these days. Sadly I'm
not seeing any major performance increase over FF 25 (posting this from jor1k
via links [1]).

1: [http://s-macke.github.io/jor1k](http://s-macke.github.io/jor1k) (had to
edit in the link as the ':' and '-' keys don't appear to be working)

~~~
dijit
hm, that's simple 'does this use case run 1 thing particularly well.'

EXIF rotation and ability to use gstreamer for video are massive feature
improvements that may result in slower page generation, but the returns are
far more significant.

not everything has to be 'better, faster, smaller' making things generally
better with _no_ regressions is difficult enough.

~~~
benjamincburns
Yeah, I phrased that poorly (was fighting with links and not thinking about my
words too carefully). I didn't mean to knock the release by any means. I was
only making the observation that there didn't appear to be much in the way of
asm.js performance improvement this time around.

And you're absolutely right; the fact that there are additional
features/improvements and I get to keep the same (awesome) performance from FF
25 is very impressive and laudable. I can enumerate several FOSS projects for
which this sort of thing is an issue.

------
shmerl
About gstreamer video playback: I didn't find a way to prioritize formats.
Let's say some video is available in VPx (WebM) and H.264 (mp4). Firefox will
pick first whatever is listed first on the page. So for me it always picks
H.264 on Youtube. I prefer to use open codecs though when there is a choice,
but there is no apparent way to set the priority.

~~~
russellsprouts
I think the browser is supposed to load them by the order listed in the HTML.

    
    
        <video>
          <source src="foo.mp4">
          <source src="foo.webm">
        </video>
    

Unfortunately, I think there were bugs in older browsers, so they broke if mp4
was not listed first. So most websites list mp4 first.

~~~
shmerl
May be an add-on can allow overriding the priority. I'll take a look if it's
possible.

------
raverbashing
Just clicked on "About Firefox", the upgrade was downloaded and installed.

And a smaller download than downloading the new version.

------
drill_sarge
If you are on beta channel and the integrated updater is too slow for you, you
can grab 27b1 here:
[https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/27....](https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/27.0b1/)

------
dear
Anyone with memory problem with Firefox? My FF is currently using 2G memory
while I only have 13 tabs opened and most of them are just plain simple pages.
I am sure it will keep sucking up memory until I do restart. This problem is
not new. Is there a memory leak problem with FF?

~~~
bad_user
First of all, it's hard to tell how much memory a process uses. If you're on
Linux or on OS X and you're using "top", there's difficulty in interpreting
the results.

For example right now my Firefox 26 with about 20 tabs is being reported by
"top" as using 2190MB VIRT and ~1030MB RES. VIRT reports the total amount of
memory allocated, including memory that's shared between processes, including
memory-mapped files, including virtual memory, including the loaded shared
libraries, or anything that takes up address space, but address space is not
real, the measure is next to useless. RES is the relevant measure, which in my
case reports about 1 GB, however that's a little misleading too because it
also counts memory that's shared between processes, although in my case I
think 1 GB is an accurate measure. And if you're using some kind of GUI that
doesn't specify exactly how it calculates memory consumption, then you can't
trust what it says.

Second, free memory is unused memory. Browsers are caching stuff for example.
Unused caches in memory-strained systems end up being flushed to disk. The
kernel is quite efficient in flushing memory pages on disk and reloading them
later when needed. That's why it's very hard to tell how much memory a process
needs to be usable.

If you want to claim that some application leaks memory, then you need to look
at _growth_. And if you want to claim that it's a memory hog, then you need to
take a look at how it behaves on top of memory constrained systems.

In my experience, Firefox is very memory efficient, which is why I'm using it
and not Chrome. And I'm on the beta channel now, so I've been on Firefox 26
since a week ago and it's OK.

~~~
dear
In my case, everytime I open a new tab, the mem usage goes up. But when I
close a tab, it does not necessarily go down, or just goes down a little. So
the overall trend is it goes up, until it can no longer function (freezed up
on my old 4G computer). Then I have to kill and restart it.

I use OSX's Activity Monitor to see the mem usage.

~~~
mikeratcliffe
Can you try running in Firefox's safe mode and let us know if you have the
same issue... sound to me like one of your extensions is leaking.

------
dijit
>Support for H.264 on Linux if the appropriate gstreamer plug-ins are
installed

I was trying to do this for ages using plug-ins, nothing works- was told to
run nightly- but I need this browser.

can't wait until it makes it's way into repo's :D

------
footpath
The Android version has received a facelift as well, and it looks nice.
However, I suppose there still isn't a way to manually pin sites to the
about:home page if they do not show up there already?

~~~
padenot
This is possible in Nightly, so it's likely to be live in release in a couple
months or so.

------
crb002
Lol. I like the unresolved finger given to Flash.

~~~
scrabble
I encounter this issue frequently, so I'd prefer if it was resolved.

------
known
Great Browser. Thank you Mozilla.

------
xfalcox
Can we see the gzipped size side by side with real size on network panel?

------
achairapart
Firefox 25 hanged most of the time, it seems was because of Firebug. I
disabled Firebug.

Firefox 26 hangs at start up. CPU stuck at 100%. Almost 1 GB of ram used with
1 tab open (I can't even open a new one).

What happened, Mozilla?

I'm giving up with this browser.

~~~
saidajigumi
Anecdata: I use FF<current> heavily on a daily basis and haven't seen any of
these problems. Issues of this magnitude are "set the internet on fire"
problems. If a few web searches don't turn up _tons_ of other users having
these problems then it's best to assume there are local issues that need
troubleshooting. Some suggestions on that:

1\. Have you tried troubleshooting Firefox via Safe Mode?
[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-
is...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-
safe-mode)

2\. If troubleshooting via #1 doesn't help, consider using the Profile
Manager[1] to create a new, blank profile and see if your problems reproduce
there.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Profile_Manager](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Profile_Manager)

~~~
achairapart
I didn't want to be so negative but I'm actually frustrated with this.
Because:

1\. I used to be in love with Firefox. So much.

2\. A few web searches turn up tons of _other_ problems [1], maybe mine also.
Maybe not.

3\. At this point, this is not just a one shot problem to sort out. This is
something mining my daily productivity.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/?q=firefox+hangs&safe=off](https://www.google.com/?q=firefox+hangs&safe=off)

------
3rd3
I wished they would improve the PDF viewer.

~~~
RussianCow
How would you like it improved? I rather like it as it is--I've completely
stopped using Adobe Reader, in fact--but I'm curious to know what you think is
missing.

~~~
omaranto
Speed mainly: it's unbearable on my machines. But maybe I'm a niche market:
cheapskates with 5 year old laptops.

~~~
com2kid
I have a brand new beefy machine with lots of cores a big GPU and plenty of
RAM, it is also dog slow on PDF documents of any appreciable length.

Then again I tend to load multi-hundred page PDFs.

------
nodata
"has been released" or "is out".

~~~
JangoSteve
Technically speaking, "released" can also be a state, so "is released" (as in
"is in the released state") works too.

~~~
nodata
Technically maybe, but when has a native speaker ever written that?

~~~
eCa
I would guess that most of the 12,000,000+ hits [0] on G has been written by
natives.

[0]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22is+released%22](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22is+released%22)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Or even better, on Google Ngram viewer:

[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=is+released%2C...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=is+released%2Chas+been+released&year_start=1800&year_end=2013&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cis%20released%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chas%20been%20released%3B%2Cc0)

Hey, "is released" is more common than "has been released"!

------
_sabe_
How can this tiny minor changes be worthy of a whole version number? Firefox
is the software equivalent of the Zimbabwe dollar.

~~~
bryanlarsen
A lot of software is developed via some sort of agile software process these
days. This means a new version of the software quite regularly, released on a
time basis rather than a feature basis. This is what made version numbers
meaningless. There are three common solutions:

time based: Ubuntu 12.04

increment the major number: Chrome 31

increment the minor number, never or rarely changing the major numbers: Linux
2.6.39

None of these solutions work well.

~~~
winslow
What is your solution then if these don't work well?

~~~
caipre
I'd suggest Semantic Versioning[1]: <major>.<minor>.<patch>

[1]: [http://semver.org/](http://semver.org/)

Major releases break the API, so programs that depend upon them may not work.
Minor releases add or improve features while preserving existing
functionality. Patches fix bugs.

This is exactly why having version numbers is important. Even if the number
becomes arbitrary, it's existence is necessary to build dependency trees.

Aside: I'm not certain, but it seem as though Firefox does have a major.minor
version scheme: my user-agent reads "Mozilla/5.0 ... Firefox/25.0"; Firefox
5.25 is probably the most correct.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Most, if not all releases of Firefox have minor API changes. Sometimes it's
visible via HTML, sometimes they are only visible to plugins. By semantic
versioning, 25.0 is the correct version.

------
lucb1e
Firefox 3: Yay!

Firefox 3.6: Let's see what's new!

Firefox 4: oooh pretty UI (at least that's what most thought)

Firefox 26: _sigh_ another one?

I think only every 10 versions should be news. Since they moved to this
useless release cycle (basically replacing bugfix releases with major
releases), we should shift our news upvoting from major releases to major-
major releases (i.e. treat the decimal sign as if it were 2.6x instead of
26.x).

~~~
nine_k
For me personally FF 26 adds a major feature, specifically h.264 video
playback in Linux. Finally I'll stop needing Flash to view videos on Vimeo
(and a few other sites).

~~~
shmerl
It actually was already available in 25, it was just off by default.

