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posted by
CoolHand
on Saturday August 22 2015, @05:47AM
from the who-is-this-company-named-mozilla dept.
from the who-is-this-company-named-mozilla dept.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody who's been paying attention the past few years, Mozilla has announced that it will be deprecating all current extensions and have all future extensions be compatible with Chrome and Opera via the new WebExtensions API.
- We are implementing a new extension API, called WebExtensions—largely compatible with the model used by Chrome and Opera—to make it easier to develop extensions across multiple browsers.
- A safer, faster, multi-process version of Firefox is coming soon with Electrolysis; we need developers to ensure their Firefox add-ons will be compatible with it.
- To ensure third-party extensions provide customization without sacrificing security, performance or exposing users to malware, we will require all extensions to be validated and signed by Mozilla starting in Firefox 41, which will be released on September 22nd 2015.
- We have decided on an approximate timeline for the deprecation of XPCOM- and XUL-based add-ons.
Maybe now we can get a sustainable fork going?
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday August 22 2015, @07:02AM
It meana that a browser like Firefox (and Seamonkey, Palemoon) will look up the address of a linked web page when you hover your mouse over the link. not when you actually click on the link.
Say you were reading an article on the Internet and in the comments there was a link that another poster said supported their statement/position/view.
The link in the test reads something like "www.cnn.com/breakingnews/article/catchytitle".
You, not being an idiot, or having seen goatse at least once, hover your mouse over the link to see what shows up in the status bar at the bottom of your browser window.
When you see that the status bar says the link actually points to "someserver.info/subdirname/kiddieporn" you wisely do not click on the link.
With Firefox, Seamonkey and Palemoon (?) the browser will make a DNS query to get the IP address of the server the link is pointing at when you just hover your mouse pointer over the link. Not when you click on it. This is in case you actually click on the link the browser will be able to get the linked page faster. Yea for efficiency!
Where this could be a problem for some is even if you are just moving your mouse to the other side of the page and your mouse passes over the link, the browser will do the look up. If anyone were to look trawl the traffic logs of your ISP there would be an entry of a DNS lookup requests coming from your home/cellphone/laptop showing that you looked up the address of a server that has kiddieporn on it.
That could get you into some hot water.
Even if you didn't click on the link the record would be there. And as they say "anything you say can and WILL be used against you in a court of law"
If you follow the instructions you can find on the web and change the value on the "about:config" page (sorry I don't have a link to the instructions handy) you can disable the "predictive lookups"
If you don't care you can do nothing, and hope that the old passage "give me six lines written by an honest man, and therin I will find cause to hang them" is false
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 5, Informative) by sudo rm -rf on Saturday August 22 2015, @07:26AM
Thanks for the explanation, the Firefox (40) setting is called 'network.dns.disablePrefetch'
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Controlling_DNS_prefetching [mozilla.org]
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Saturday August 22 2015, @07:51AM
I'm glad it can be disabled, but they've removed the ability to change settings before. Also, nothing should EVER be only accessible through something like about:config. Regular users will never decipher that, or know the option even exists unless told by someone. All browser options should be in the UI with full descriptions so that any human can easily find the preferences/options menu and navigate through all possibilities.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @11:05AM
Make sure that flipping that actually disables it. Some of those booleans don't actually do anything because the code ignores their value.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @08:52AM
I'm sorry but you are completely off-base.
DNS Pre-fetching does not happen when you hover over a link, it happens when the page is loaded [blogspot.com] - by default firefox (and palemoon) do DNS prefetching on ALL href anchors in the document.
You've confused speculative connections (see the subject line of this thread) with DNS pre-fetching. Speculative connections are where the browser sets up the TCP connection (but does not do any HTTP protocol transactions) when it thinks you might be about to make a HTTP connection. There was some bad reporting last week that suggested firefox does speculative connections every time you hover over a link. That turned out to be false. [soylentnews.org] It only happens in very narrow circumstances.
(Score: 1) by number11 on Saturday August 22 2015, @04:35PM
Palemoon will not to do that unless you change the default setting in about:config (default setting is network.dns.disablePrefetch = True)