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    Posted on 18-12-13, 00:23
    Dinosaur

    Post: #79 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 4 days
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    (AKA "the thread where tomman complains about web browsers being garbage")

    In today's episode of Mozilla's Neverending Quest For Irrelevance: Mozilla Corporation reinvents Clippy while causing paranoid nerds to get their panties in a bunch:

    https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/12/11/latest-firefox-release-available-today/
    https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/11/1756217/new-firefox-suggests-ways-to-get-more-out-of-the-web

    Basically, the next Firefox update will "check" how you use your browser, and try to suggest useful addons that would be a good match for your usage patterns. Also, for whatever reason the feature is only available for users in the United States of America, despite claims that no personal information is sent out to Mozilla, and that everything happens clientside:
    Contextual Feature Recommender (CFR)

    Aimed at people who are looking to get more out of their online experience or ways to level up. CFR is a system that proactively recommends Firefox features and add-ons based on how you use the web. For example, if you open multiple tabs and repeatedly use these tabs, we may offer a feature called “Pinned Tabs” and explain how it works. Firefox curates the suggested features and notifies you. With today’s release, we will start to rollout with three recommended extensions which include: Facebook Container, Enhancer for YouTube and To Google Translate. This feature is available for US users in regular browsing mode only. They will not appear in Private Browsing mode. Also, Mozilla does NOT receive a copy of your browser history. The entire process happens locally in your copy of Firefox.


    ... how about going back to making a program that only renders web pages without getting in your way, eh Mozilla? Nah, only dinosaurs would want such an outrageous thing!

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 18-12-13, 08:30
    Custom title here

    Post: #123 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 6 days
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    Posted by tomman

    Basically, the next Firefox update will "check" how you use your browser, and try to suggest useful addons that would be a good match for your usage patterns.

    Does it suggest addons to disable the helper?


    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 18-12-13, 17:05
    Banned
    Post: #13 of 28
    Since: 12-10-18

    Last post: 1171 days
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    Yet again Firefox pandering to Chrome! Dumb down everything! :DDD
    Posted on 18-12-13, 18:40
    Dinosaur

    Post: #81 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 4 days
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    Posted by jjndig
    Yet again Firefox pandering to Chrome! Dumb down everything! :DDD

    No, this is even worse. This time, Mozilla is on a suckyness tier of its own.

    Dude, if I ever wanted ideas about addons for enhancing my web browsing experience, I would talk to other humans using ordinary communication channels (message boards, instant messaging, or even face to face). LIKE AN ANIMAL.

    Today, when the Chrome team is out of bad ideas, they look for inspiration in Mozilla. We've come full circle, the ouroboros of obnoxious UX design is here, and we call it "the Internet".

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 18-12-13, 19:03
    Dick Duck

    Post: #108 of 598
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 86 days
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    Almost makes you want to make your own browser. That doesn't support blackjack.

    Just a simple thing with a nicely functional UI that's either easy to modify as you like or so simple as to not need much, and basic CSS/JS support. Not even enough to run GMail or Youtube -- most people'd use their phone for that anyway. Like animals.

    When you don't give a shit about stuff like flexbox, writing a layout engine from scratch seems almost within reach.
    Posted on 18-12-14, 01:15

    Post: #11 of 49
    Since: 10-29-18

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    Posted by Kawa
    When you don't give a shit about stuff like flexbox, writing a layout engine from scratch seems almost within reach.


    Keep in mind IE didn't even support full CSS 2.1 until IE8, and that was in an era when Firefox had its largest market share and Chrome was in its infancy.
    Posted on 18-12-14, 06:25
    Custom title here

    Post: #126 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Posted by Kawa
    Almost makes you want to make your own browser. That doesn't support blackjack.

    What about hookers?

    Man, if only someone would turn up a reasonably functional rendering engine, then make it freely available and with a nice, stable, well-documented API... but they'd probably either have the project taken over by fascists or have it forked by major corporations who never ever give back. Either way, the new powers would break all the APIs every other week and run around deleting useful features and implementing their own brand of insanity. Open-source at its finest.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 18-12-14, 07:23 (revision 1)
    Full mod

    Post: #64 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

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    There's a bunch of "reasonably functional" GUI based rendering engines, like Dillo and NetSurf, freely available. They have not been taken over by fascists, nor been forked by major corporations. They just fell way, way behind on the compatibility treadmill, so they work nicely with 80% of the websites on the Internet but fail horribly on the 5% of websites people care most about.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 18-12-14, 09:28
    Custom title here

    Post: #128 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Posted by Screwtape
    There's a bunch of "reasonably functional" GUI based rendering engines, like Dillo and NetSurf, freely available. They have not been taken over by fascists, nor been forked by major corporations. They just fell way, way behind on the compatibility treadmill, so they work nicely with 80% of the websites on the Internet but fail horribly on the 5% of websites people care most about.
    I've never had good luck with Dillo, honestly. I'd love to see it get a major bump.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 18-12-18, 09:22
    Full mod

    Post: #67 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Today I came across a tweet from Chris Peterson, "technical program manager" at Mozilla:
    YouTube page load is 5x slower in Firefox and Edge than in Chrome because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome. You can restore YouTube's faster pre-Polymer design with this Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-classic/

    I'm not normally a fan of this kind of "cling to the past" addon, but I installed it to try it out, and wow, YouTube really does load noticably faster.

    I had a look at the extension's github repo, and so far as I can tell, it works by setting a "opt out of redesign" cookie in each request to YouTube, so it won't work forever, but it's also unlikely to break things or hurt your privacy.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 18-12-18, 11:29
    Custom title here

    Post: #134 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

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    I just searched Shadow DOM, and I find it amusing that Youtube is using an API that Chrome is supposed to remove in April.


    Personally, I hate the modern web browser attitude that old features should be removed so we can break old websites all the time, but... seems I can't win that fight.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 18-12-18, 12:05 (revision 1)

    Post: #21 of 100
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Shadow DOM Version 0 was never supposed to land in browsers except behind super ultra experimental settings, it working in Chrome by default was a serious mistake and Youtube of all things using it is doubly/triply a mistake.
    Posted on 18-12-18, 12:06 (revision 1)
    Custom title here

    Post: #135 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Chrome: a collection of serious mistakes.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 18-12-18, 12:49 (revision 5)
    Post: #52 of 426
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Posted by Screwtape
    Today I came across a tweet from Chris Peterson, "technical program manager" at Mozilla:
    YouTube page load is 5x slower in Firefox and Edge than in Chrome because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome. You can restore YouTube's faster pre-Polymer design with this Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-classic/

    I'm not normally a fan of this kind of "cling to the past" addon, but I installed it to try it out, and wow, YouTube really does load noticably faster.

    I had a look at the extension's github repo, and so far as I can tell, it works by setting a "opt out of redesign" cookie in each request to YouTube, so it won't work forever, but it's also unlikely to break things or hurt your privacy.
    Yeah you could tweak some cookies to work around the issue but it'd undo it self after a while... cool to see an add-on automate the process. A shame you can't have the new Youtube & the performance but ah well, at least there's a good dark theme for the old Youtube design (note how the description for it now has steps to manually do what the add-on you mentioned does).

    Edit: Also the old website design is compatible with more of the Enhancer for Youtube add-on's features.

    AMD Ryzen 3700X | MSI Gamer Geforce 1070Ti 8GB | 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM | ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard | Windows 10 x64
    Posted on 18-12-18, 15:46
    Post: #2 of 21
    Since: 11-08-18

    Last post: 1016 days
    Last view: 1016 days
    Isn't this stuff pretty easy to turn off in the source code?

    I'm really surprised no one maintains a "Firefox minus Suggestions, Pocket, etc" branch. I imagine maintenance could be mostly automated.

    My current solution is a custom cfg file I can easily throw onto any new machine.
    Posted on 18-12-18, 15:48
    Dinosaur

    Post: #84 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 4 days
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    Do people still watch videos on a web browser instead of in a media player, like God intended!?

    I could care less about YouTube hipster redesigns, as I don't even watch videos these days. But as long as things like youtube-dl work, I consider myself well served.

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 18-12-18, 16:56
    Ambidextrous Sprite

    Post: #111 of 598
    Since: 10-29-18

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    I do love me some youtube-dl...
    Posted on 18-12-23, 14:43
    Dinosaur

    Post: #98 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 4 days
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    In the meanwhile, some news from the Planet Seamonkey:

    https://blog.seamonkey-project.org/2018/12/19/updating-everyone/

    Basically: yes, they're still alive, progress has been difficult to say the least (thanks Mozilla), and the future is grim due to the official death of XUL. A ESR60-based release is simply not happening anytime soon (that would be 2.57, which is pretty much unusable at this stage). The only safe bet right now would be switching to the last XUL-based FF base (FF56/SM2.53), for which there are rather stable unofficial builds available that you can help testing right now (unfortunately I can't use them because 1- there are no langpacks available -I refuse to use a browser not on my language-, and 2- the Linux builds are not suitable for my particular setups due to glibc/stdcxx versions too new for some of my Debian boxes, and no 32-bit binaries available).

    Anyway, I won't even consider a Quantum-based Seamonkey - I prefer to see the project die for good rather than committing such an act of treason (not to mention that they simply don't have the manpower to try to undo the deliberate wrecking ball acts of Mozilla on the Gecko codebase). I guess SM2.49 is my new FF28 at this stage, so I'll be there for a long while...

    Too bad that a cooperation with Pale Moon seems to be unlikely to happen like, ever, for oh so many reasons :/

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 18-12-27, 03:39
    Post: #2 of 5
    Since: 12-26-18

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    Posted by wareya
    Shadow DOM Version 0 was never supposed to land in browsers except behind super ultra experimental settings, it working in Chrome by default was a serious mistake and Youtube of all things using it is doubly/triply a mistake.

    reminds me of that thing I read about Microsoft Office, how it crushed competition by using undocumented Windows APIs that were faster than the 'official', documented way, so their product would be faster than any competitor could be.

    might not be the same intent here, but it reminds me of that regardless.


    also re: making your own browser

    the sheer amount of time and effort it would take to implement most of HTML5, let alone keep up with the forced march of progress for the sake of progress, restricts that market to actors who can muster a large workforce. such actors are companies and have incentive to be rentable. so basically, the current web is within the death grip of capitalism.

    I have this idea for an alternate web instead, where we'd keep things simple instead of having everything be a behemoth. small but functional subset of HTML5 and JS. just enough that you can do things without feeling overly prehistorical and without turning into a Hipsterscript shitfest. and, of course, making your own browser would be attainable if you can codez0rz.

    blarg.
    Posted on 18-12-27, 04:05
    Post: #63 of 426
    Since: 10-30-18

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    https://xkcd.com/927/

    AMD Ryzen 3700X | MSI Gamer Geforce 1070Ti 8GB | 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM | ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard | Windows 10 x64
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      Main » Discussion » Mozilla, *sigh*
      This does not actually go there and I regret nothing.