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Firefox continues cracking down on tracking with cache partitioning:
Firefox version 85 will be released in January 2021, and one of its features is increased user privacy via improvements in client-side storage (cache) partitioning. This has been widely and incorrectly reported elsewhere as network partitioning, likely due to confusion around the privacy.partition.network_state flag in Firefox, which allows advanced users to enable or disable cache partitioning as desired.
What is cache partitioning—and why might I want it?
In a nutshell, cache partitioning is the process of keeping separate cache pools for separate websites, based on the site requesting the resources loaded, rather than simply on the site providing the resources.
[...] For a more detailed discussion of client-side storage partitioning, see the W3C Privacy Community Group's work item on the topic, at https://github.com/privacycg/storage-partitioning.
What's the downside to cache partitioning?
There are some Web resources which are legitimately used near-universally across thousands or millions of sites—for example, embedded fonts being delivered from fonts.google.com. With a globally scoped cache, site1.com might embed a copy of the Roboto font from fonts.google.com, and when site2.com through site999.com embed the same font, it can be delivered from the browser cache.
Although this will be the broadest userdata cache partitioning scheme in production once launched, Mozilla is playing catch-up in deploying one at all. Apple began partitioning Safari's browser cache in 2013 and has continued to partition it further since, and Google partitioned Chrome's HTTP cache beginning with Chrome 86, released in early October.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:42PM (7 children)
Probably some complaints about blue hair? Shitty design and UI changes? As many problems as Mozilla has they are pretty much the only browser creator that cares at all about the users.
I'm happy to see this, hope it gets ported into Palemoon and other browser projects.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fakefuck39 on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:34PM (6 children)
how about none of those things. how about the fact that the flag mentioned here is not even accessible on mobile firefox, because they removed about:config completely. how about full screen videos playing zoomed in horizontally instead of fit to screen if you have your address bar on the traditional top instead of the bottom, changing your phone orientation to locked horizontal even if you have auto-rotate disabled, and the flag to change that behavior which they clearly released without even bothering to test, being behind a no longer available flag? how about having to use nightly builds that crash to access about:config? how about mozilla becoming a completely useless piece of crap.
but let's bitch about the desktop version. vertical tabs? cool, but you can't turn off horizontal ones anymore, so it's both or just horizontal.
firefox is a joke. chrome is worse. edge might be worse, but I'll never bother to try it. waterfox and pale moon? maybe, I keep trying both about once a year and something or another doesn't work, so I give up.
how about not bitching about firefox, but bitching that we had 3 browsers, and now browser wars have become the potus election - choose between your flavor of shit.
given that, I was able to get rid of horizontal tabs and reclaim the screen space on desktop ff. posted the css to do that too. of course, that's not important information for the retards who run this site to share.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:30PM (3 children)
Clone Firefox or Chrome and start your own?
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by fakefuck39 on Thursday December 24 2020, @02:38AM (2 children)
and this, in summary, is why there's no linux on the desktop, no gimp on the desktop, no libre office on the desktop. well, there are all of those things on mine.
hey, offtopic, I'm really not happy with the beef we got stateside. the grassfed beef that's actually cheaper around the world is ok, but it's considered a premium and is ridiculously expensive. out cornfed blow-up cows with huge clumps of fat are disgusting. should I start a cow farm and grow my own cheaper grassfed beef, while I'm writing my own browser just so I can view a webpage?
some of us have lives loser, and things like a browser are a tool we use to live our lives. to you, a tool, the tool itself is the extent of your life. sucks to be you and be living your life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @12:05PM (1 child)
The problem is that we depend on a browser to live our lives. The network is bigger than HTTP.
If you're using a large trout to hammer a nail, that might be a tool, but it's a pretty shitty tool.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Friday December 25 2020, @01:46AM
me: all 3 browsers have become shitty
some idiot: well write your own browser then
me: yeah, let me write a browser so i can open a webpage - i have a life and the browser is just a tool
you: i didn't take my pills, i don't even know what reply button i hit on what conversation. here are some random thoughts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2020, @09:25AM (1 child)
I gave up on mobile FF, it's a joke. If you're desperate for a proper tool for browsing on your phone like I was, try Kiwi browser. Chromium fork, not open source, can run any extension, configurable, gets the job done.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:07AM
It's open source now, but I downloaded the source, tried for hours to compile it, and gave up. I downloaded the binary too, put on ublock origin, and the extension had to be restarted literally every 10min because it would go to sleep. If that's fixed now, that's the only extension I use on mobile and will give it a try again. Thanks for the tip.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:03PM (1 child)
No pre-loading in the background, none of that. Can you still configure that with Firefox?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @08:57PM
At least the original about:config to:
chrome://global/content/config.xhtml
Add it to your bookmark bar.
If you type on about:config in new FF it's a shitty new redesign, so stick with the old as per above.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:07PM (4 children)
"legitimate" -- I suppose technically it could be considered legitimate but legit is not the same as necessary. How much damage has resulted from trying to make graphic designers happy?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:25PM (1 child)
I can see two sides to this equation. I agree and pretty much hate all of this unnecessary "stuff" in websites.
I remember way back when little image / icons were being used as link buttons, instead of simple text hyperlinks. I thought that was really stupid. I might not hate it as much if they were predefined and part of a browser installation, but even then they're totally unnecessary.
I don't mean to sound cynical, but I think (too) much of website "stuff" is driven by a desire, almost need, to put these things on the resume.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @08:08PM
"I have 25 yeras exp in xyz"
"have you done ABC in the last 6 months for 18 hours a day"
"no I have been working on this and that transfers very nicely"
"GTFO"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @10:00PM (1 child)
The problem isn't graphic designers, per se, but the fact that no graphic designer nor the web development agencies that tend to employ them can make a living by walking into a sales conversation with the message "Acme Inc, your website is clear, easy to use, and has great functionality for your customers and users. Your SEO is absolutely right on too in our testing. We should change as little as possible going forward."
Like, sure, we could just settle on having a few great serif, san-serif, and script-style fonts that everybody uses and browsers handle with minimal fuss, but why do that when we can sell you the use of some newfangled font nobody has ever heard of?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @04:31PM
Web development agencies are the least of your problems. The real problem is a customer himself who saw that cool stuff over the Internet and that surely must be on their site. Nobody cares if it's necessary, it's SHINY therefore REQUIRED. Image sliders? Yes. Random popup forms? Sure. Controls customized by the great Cthulhu? Oh yeah, baby. Have you heard of this infinite scrolling thing? That'd be so neat to have. Social logins to fill 2 form fields? Be right there! Mobile is cool, right? Therefore we design everything around it (no, that doesn't mean lightweight sites, sorry), desktop be damned. It's a never stopping train of idiocy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @08:43PM (7 children)
If anything, wouldn't this be worse for privacy? Now every time you visit a site that uses something on fonts.google.com, fonts.google.com will receive at least one request with the site as a referrer. Prior to partitioning, they might only get one request with one referrer site while other sites would load from cache. So with a partitioned cache, your Googles and Akamais and Cloudflares will have a more complete picture of where requests are coming from.
Now, partitioned cookies, that should be standard; one site shouldn't be able to see cookies set as part of requesting things as part of another site. Of course I don't see partitioned cookies in the list of things partitioned off in TFA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @08:49PM
the browser should just make it where a domain can only see the cookie for said domain. i mean, wtf?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:34PM (4 children)
https://collinmbarrett.com/block-web-fonts/ [collinmbarrett.com]
Article is four years old, and relies on uBlock Origin
Or, in about:config find or create the boolean gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled and set it to false
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shortscreen on Thursday December 24 2020, @12:04AM (3 children)
I'm happy with not loading them from goog. Not loading them from anywhere is tempting, but some extra evil sites use undefined code points that only exist in their stupid custom font. Since they aren't valid unicode they show as gibberish otherwise.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 24 2020, @12:48AM (1 child)
This may surprise you:
I've blocked all web fonts in my browsers. At the same time, my preferred fonts throughout the system are Google's NOTO fonts. I've installed all of them. When I see gibberish, it's because I can't read the language, and/or the alphabet is meaningless to me, like Cyrillic.
NOTO fonts are good, they cover all the languages and alphabets in the world. Download once, install, and you've got it all. No tracking site can track you based on the fonts you use.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Thursday December 24 2020, @01:14PM
That would surprise me, because when I looked into it previously the characters in question wouldn't render at all even with a debugging font [github.com] installed. But I'll check it out, thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @04:39PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @10:19PM
no, the browser should have site blacklisting by default with fonts.google.com at the top of the list.
Seriously, if those were ubiq then load them into the browser itself.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by iamjacksusername on Wednesday December 23 2020, @08:50PM (2 children)
It seems turning off the advertising spigot of cash and the collapsing user base has motivated Mozilla to get back to serving it users.
In the past year:
* A native MSI installer (this original bug was opened in 2004 with the platform listed as Windows 2000). The bug comments are hilarious in the sense you get to watch 15 years of Mozilla basically doing everything in their power to not implement an MSI; every year, the reason why they cannot do it changes. But, they definitely had money to burn making Firefox OS... It is almost like someone at the top kept quashing the bug so Chrome we not have any competition in the enterprise space as the default non-IE browser. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=231062 [mozilla.org]
* Native Group Policy support without add-ons
So maybe we are starting to see FireFox get back to its roots of protecting user privacy and the browsing experience. When the pop-up blocker was introduced, it fundamentally changed every other browser. My personal wishlist is to see native implementations for 'content managers'
* uBlock and similiar for content control
* Similar functions to NoScript for JS control
Then, you would be able to subscribe to whitelists and blacklists that manage that for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:35PM
In the latest version I have on mobile it blocks extension installs from the site and says to install only from their site.. from the subsite of addons in the 'mobile' section.
On the same phone I have Icefox which can and will load and extension from the firefox site or from xpi.
Go figure. They are being complete asshats to users.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2020, @09:35AM
Ublock Origin now does basically everything that NoScript/ uMatrix does. Try switching it to 'advanced mode' in the options.