Re: [gentoo-user] What do you think about Firefox 57?

[Daniel Campbell]

On 09/07/2017 05:26 AM, Danny YUE wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have been using FoxyProxy in Firefox for a really long time, until
> today I found its new version really sucks.
>
> Then I read the comment from author who declared that the old version
> can *only* be used before (roughly) end of 2017 before Firefox 57 and in
> new version some features must perish.
>
> Afterwards I found that it seems Firefox 57 will use a new ecosystem for
> extensions and be more strict for plugin developers.
>
> So Firefox gurus, what do you think about it?
>
>
> Danny
>
<user-hat>
I switched to Pale Moon a while ago, though I suspect fewer and fewer
mainstream sites will work with it as devs will begin requiring features
enabled in newer Firefox and Chrome (e.g. WebRTC, EME, localStorage,
etc). GitHub has already dropped support for Pale Moon, despite PM
supporting just about everything GitHub makes use of.

Losing XUL may be great from a security standpoint, but the feature-set
is lacking, it negatively impacts performance (no cache sharing,
blockers can't block correctly without a full render prior) and it all
reeks of a code merge. Why else would Mozilla be putting all this work
into looking *and* acting like Chrome? This behavior is that of a
company that is looking to get out of the market. They've already
abandoned their phone OS and their e-mail/calendar client. Firefox is
just the final nail in the coffin. Servo isn't up to snuff yet, and the
power users that gave Firefox its popularity are (like me) disinterested
in what passes for "modern Web". Many websites are flat-out malicious,
and more are insecure in general, largely due to feature creep in the
browser. Without the ability to protect yourself, it becomes a risky
decision to continue browsing a space filled with surveillance and
malware. In short, it's a dumpster fire. Like all grim scenarios,
however, there are sites out there that don't abuse people. But that
number is dwindling every day.

Aside from that, the hard requirement on PulseAudio is another strike
against it, and their culture wrt diversity is off-putting. Mozilla
isn't the Web leader it once was. To its credit, I don't think any
organization is "leading" the Web well. With the W3C approving DRM as a
standard in HTTP, it indicates a corporate acquisition of the standards
body, and it's no longer fit for purpose. We need a browser that is
opinionated and sticks to the standards that make sense, and hands
control of media to other programs. That would severely simplify the
browser, and leverage software that's generally already on a computer.
Web browsers as they are are fine for netbooks, which have little in the
way of system software. But for desktop machines, at least, most things
can be handed to a media player, PDF viewer, etc. The code's already
there: there are handlers for different protocols like irc:, mailto:,
torrent:, etc. Adding handlers via MIME-type would be fine.

As it is, I already don't read much on the Web. The experience has
become crap, even with blocking extensions. More trouble than it's
worth, most of the time. I have better things to do than endlessly tweak
my privacy just so sites don't slurp up all the metadata they can on my
connection. uBO, Privacy Badger, uMatrix, and others are great -- huge
jumps in quality compared to their predecessors -- but the rampant
misuse of the medium leaves me disinterested in the Web.

So few websites these days are designed with graceful degradation in
mind, let alone accessibility. It's all ECMAscript bells and whistles,
web "apps", etc. to the point where you have two systems: your Gentoo
system and your Web browser. I try to reduce complexity where possible,
balanced against safety. That leads me to an upstream who won't screw
with my interface and disrupt the add-on ecosystem because "this is
better for you".

Based on what I've read so far, Moonchild is up front about any
breakage, and warns about unsupported compilers or settings. One of our
regulars (Walter Dnes) helps maintain PM for us, too, so that's even
better. :)

But to be fair, I'll try it out when 57 is released so I have a stronger
opinion. I suspect I will be let down.
</user-hat>
-- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer, Trustee, Treasurer
OpenPGP Key: 0x1EA055D6 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net
fpr: AE03 9064 AE00 053C 270C  1DE4 6F7A 9091 1EA0 55D6