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From Firefox's faster, slicker, slimmer Quantum edition now out
[...] Collectively, the performance work being done to modernize Firefox is called Project Quantum. We took a closer look at Quantum back when Firefox 57 hit the developer channel in September, but the short version is, Mozilla is rebuilding core parts of the browser, such as how it handles CSS stylesheets, how it draws pages on-screen, and how it uses the GPU.
This work is being motivated by a few things. First, the Web has changed since many parts of Firefox were initially designed and developed; pages are more dynamic in structure and applications are richer and more graphically intensive. JavaScript is also more complex and difficult to debug. Second, computers now have many cores and simultaneous threads, giving them much greater scope to work in parallel. And security remains a pressing concern, prompting the use of new techniques to protect against exploitation. Some of the rebuilt portions are even using Mozilla's new Rust programming language, which is designed to offer improved security compared to C++.
Also at: Firefox aims to win back Chrome users with its souped up Quantum browser
The fastest version of Firefox yet is now live
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @02:59AM (4 children)
The good - supposedly snappier, lighter on RAM, modernized.
The bad - add-ons lagging. Not that they had no warning :) ..and the flat design, silly 1980's tab shapes, etc. FF58 might fix these?
From time to time Mozilla (oh sorry, "moz://a") innovate to stay ahead. This is the next step in the legacy since Netscape. Often these things are accompanied by screams - some legit, some less so. When GiMP made it that Save was for the native format and for JPG etc you had to Export, folks fumed, frothed and swore to use something else. In three or four uses the muscle memory was reprogrammed, "big issue" done and dusted. So now with FF57, moz://a have made a bunch of changes. The worthy add-ons will catch up if they are not already updated. You can't stay on FF52 ESR forever as the Net keeps on changing from year to year. Someone tried out FF3 on today's web a while back - that was an interesting read.
Thus - this is my Last Post from FF56. The update is in the queue, wanting to get installed. Should I wear my Get Firefox (v1.0) t-shirt for this occasion?
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday November 17 2017, @03:46AM (2 children)
The Save/Export thing on GIMP lost most of my former students, who switched to easier-to-use alternatives, because the change happened without warning, accompanied by neither instructions on how to navigate the change, nor an explanation of why the program was operating in a manner different to every other program they were using.
On top of the complexity of the software and the unorthodox user interface, this was the figurative straw that broke the camel's back, and they left.
I must admit that, while muscle memory does the trick most of the time, when I get in the zone, I still mix up Save and Export, and, when I do, I curse the GIMP devs, every single time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @09:07PM
I too get regularly bummed by the export/save silliness but let's be quite honest, which software warns you of changes beforehand? None.
And if you really like changelogs, there's always the apt-listchanges package.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @12:19AM
My understanding is that they made to the change to better match photoshop.
But I still don't understand the thinking, "Hey, photoshop uses an awkward and overly complex opening and saving procedure that makes it harder for people to actually use it. But since it's popular, we should try to copy even their bad ideas?". Just don't get it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday November 17 2017, @06:35AM
The problem is that not all plugins can be updated. For example,Zotero is now only available as a standalone application that opens a port to be used by a browser extension that only does a small part of the functionality, exactly because providing the full functionality is no longer possible with the new interface.
Which not only means that you now have to start the standalone application separately, but also I suspect that this opens up a security hole on a multi user system.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.