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from the should-I-stay-or-should-I-go-now? dept.
I knew this day would eventually come. We had been warned that Firefox 57 would force some significant changes on us users, including the removal of support for extensions that did not conform to the WebExtensions model, along with the introduction of the new Photon user interface appearance.
Although I have always only wanted to run the stable releases, long ago I had been forced to run the Developer Edition of Firefox just so I could easily use some extensions I had written on my own. Now Firefox was showing me that an update to Firefox 57.0b1 was available. Should I do it? Should I install this update? I debated with myself for several minutes. But in the end I knew I would have no choice. I would at some point have to update to Firefox 57 if I wanted to keep receiving security fixes and other important updates. So I did it. I upgraded to Firefox Developer Edition 57.0b1.
The update itself was uneventful. It installed as past updates have, and I restarted my browser to start using the new version. The first thing I noticed are the user interface changes. My initial reaction was that I had accidentally started my Vivaldi browser installation instead of my Firefox Developer Edition installation. A quick check of the About dialog did confirm that I was in fact using Firefox, and not Vivaldi.
There's not much to say about the Photon user interface. While Australis-era Firefox looked almost identical to Chrome to me, Photon-era Firefox looks like Vivaldi to me. I couldn't see any improvements, however. The menu shown after clicking the three line toolbar button may have had its appearance changed to be more like a traditional menu, but it is still muddled and much too busy to be useful. I didn't notice any increase in the responsiveness of the user interface. It still feels to me like it's slower than that of Chrome's user interface.
This would be a good time to talk about the overall performance of the browser. I can't perceive any improvement. I don't think it's worse than it was, but I also don't think that it's any better. From what I can see, pages aren't loading any faster. Changing between tabs doesn't feel any faster to me. Scrolling through loaded pages isn't any smoother. Chrome still feels snappier. If there were improvements on the performance front, I'm not seeing them.
Now it's time to talk about extensions. Although I was expecting breakage, it's still a painful feeling to see many of your favorite extensions labeled as "legacy" and no longer working. While a small number of my installed extensions already supported Firefox 57, there were others where I had to visit the developers' websites and download special dev or pre-release versions. In other cases I wasn't so lucky. Sometimes the developers had given up on supporting Firefox 57, and openly acknowledged that they wouldn't be making any further updates to the extensions. I had to find alternatives. Sometimes there were alternatives, but in at least one of the cases the alternative was much less capable than the extension I had been using. I spent well over an hour just trying to get the third-party extensions I use back to a state similar to how they had been when I'd been using Firefox 56.
Then there are my own personal extensions. I had written these over a number of years, and had been using them with Firefox for quite some time. But now they were deemed "legacy" and they no longer could be used now that I was running Firefox 57. I started to read up about what it would take to convert them to be WebExtensions compatible, and I soon learned that it would not be a trivial task. I will need to set aside a sizable chunk of time to get these ported over.
I've been using Firefox for a long time. I've experienced its highs, and I've experienced its many lows. Of these lows, I think that Firefox 57 is perhaps the lowest of them yet. Many of the extensions I have used for years no longer work. I will need to put in much time and effort to convert extensions I had written for my own personal use. I will need to learn to use its new user interface. But worst of all, I do not see any improvements or benefits. I don't think it performs any better now than it did in the past.
I feel particularly sorry for the Firefox users who aren't as technical as I'm lucky to be. They might not fully understand the implications of Firefox 57 when it comes time for them to eventually upgrade. They likely won't be able to deal with the many broken extensions. They too will need to learn a new user interface that doesn't really provide anything in the way of improvement. As bad as I found the experience of upgrading to Firefox 57 to be, I fear that these average users without a technical background will find it even more painful.
I'm now in a bind. I don't want to use one of the pre-57 ESR releases of Firefox, because I'll eventually end up in the same position that I am in today. I will have to rewrite my extensions either now or later. But since doing that will likely make them compatible with Chrome, I must ask myself, is it still worth using Firefox? I ponder: if my extensions will work with both Firefox and Chrome, but I find Chrome to perform much better, why not just use Chrome instead? That may very well be what I do. While some say that Firefox offers more privacy, I am doubtful about this. It has a long and complex privacy policy that talks of sending various data here and there.
I never really seriously considered moving away from Firefox in the past, even as my user experience got worse and worse over time. But I think the time to leave Firefox permanently has finally arrived. Firefox 57 takes away the few remaining advantages that Firefox had for me, namely the ability to run the extensions I had already written for myself.
I think that I should be feeling more sorrow and regret about finally leaving Firefox behind. But I don't feel any of that. In fact, I feel a sense of optimism that I haven't felt in a long time. Chrome, or more likely Chromium, will probably bring me a faster browsing experience than I've become accustomed to while using Firefox. I will have to rework my extensions, but at least they will then work with a better browser platform. They may even work with other browsers like Vivaldi and Brave, as well.
So while Firefox 57 has so far been one of the worst web browser user experiences for me yet, in some ways it may also be the best: it finally gives me a reason to move away from Firefox to an ecosystem that offers me so much more than what Firefox did. It may very well be putting me in a better position than I would have been in had I not tried Firefox 57 and been so disappointed with it.
Should you update to Firefox 57 as soon as it become available to you? If I were you, I would be cautious. While it's important to get the latest fixes to try and achieve a safe browsing experience, please be aware of the potential to break extensions, some of which there may be no equivalent WebExtensions compatible replacements for. Firefox 57 does include changes that could cause you a lot of problems. My advice would be to prepare before the upgrade, and be ready for your browsing experience to suffer. If you do choose to upgrade to Firefox 57, I sincerely hope that your upgrade goes better than mine has gone.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @07:17PM (24 children)
Pale Moon [palemoon.org] polled its users in the recent past and took note of (among other things) the tremendous desire for user customization using add-ons. While PM has had longstanding support for add-ons, even to the point of being drop-in compatible with many Firefox add-ons, development efforts are now more keenly focused on providing support for third-party add-on creators, improving the existing PM add-on site, and ultimately adding support for add-on types that PM couldn't previously support (can't recall offhand which, but may include jetpack and/or webextensions).
If you feel like Firefox development has gone off the rails into la-la-land, give Pale Moon a shot. It feels nice and comfy like the Firefox of long-ago days.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @07:25PM (19 children)
Pale Moon is not an option after the horrid debacle involving the blocking of the AdNauseam extension [palemoon.org]. The way that was handled is, in my opinion, totally inexcusable. It never should have happened in the first place. It should have been rescinded once it was clear that the Pale Moon community did not want it done. And the discussion should never have been stopped like it was.
After that incident, the Pale Moon project lost all credibility with me. I can't bring myself to trust their judgment after what happened.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @07:56PM (9 children)
[not GP here] Fair point, but I think the AdNauseam incident has been blown out of proportion. It's still possible to use that particular extension, unlike what Mozilla is forcing on its userbase with the coming update.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @08:06PM (8 children)
The AdNauseam disaster is about way more than just being able to use one particular extension. It gets to the very core of the Pale Moon project and its philosophy. It shows me that Pale Moon's development team has its priorities all fucked up. The suppression of discussion is extremely worrying. It's indicative of the creeping tyranny that ruined Firefox for so many people. Remember, Firefox's decline started with very small changes like hiding the status bar and menu bar. At the time, shithead defenders of these changes would say things like, "It's not a big deal! Just make these minor config changes!" But all that did was set the stage for much bigger screwjobs, like Australis and now Firefox 57. So when we see the same thing happening with Pale Moon we know what the eventual outcome could very well be. It's better for us to cut our losses now and ditch Pale Moon before what happens to Firefox happens to it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday September 22 2017, @08:43PM (6 children)
I think we shouldn't go to overboard yet. Consider this a strike one and continue watching to see what develops. Everybody has the occasional fuckup.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @08:51PM (1 child)
With such patterns being repeated so many times in the past I think it is fair for people to react strongly. Compromises and equivocations let FF get away with way too much shit. I think there is no greater evidence that a project has been coopted as when tyranny sets in and user's opinions don't matter.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:04PM
Let's take this as an opportunity to remember that this is why free software should use the GPL. This behavior could never be possible with the GPL because the license prohibits restrictions on the user's use of the software. (and once they accept contributed code under the GPL, even the original author becomes bound by the GPL's user-protecting terms).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:02PM (1 child)
Yes, I agree, the original decision was a fuckup. The community made that clear to the Pale Moon developers. That was indeed the first strike. But the Pale Moon developers did have ample opportunities to fix this mistake. The second strike was the developers not immediately reversing the decision and apologizing. The third strike was when the developers closed the forum discussion so quickly. They've had their three strikes, as far as I'm concerned.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:16PM
Have fun with Chrome, then! Maybe it will better respect your rights.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @02:40AM (1 child)
The Firefox folks have spent a year tearing the core out of their browser (Gecko) and replacing it with Chrome's core (Webkit). This is no occasional fuckup, and there probably is no going back for them.
They will consider it a case of users throwing a temper tantrum. They take requests to make Firefox perform better and interpret it as a desire by the users to take the pieces of Firefox out that make Firefox... well, Firefox. As such we have an also-ran Chrome clone where a highly customizable browser used to be. The concept that people want a better Firefox that is still Firefox in more than branding seems to have been missed by the developers (or more likely they stuck their fingers in their ears and screamed "LA LA LA NOT LISTENING LA LA LA."
If they go back it will probably be on the order of a year or two, maybe longer, and they will have to play catch-up since Gecko will have fallen further behind by then. By that point their old users will have abandoned them and will likely not trust anything they put out. A similar response will be found from those few who have built upon this new structure.
I think the best hope of getting Firefox back is for one of the forks to take over Gecko development, but I don't know that that's going to happen since the lot of them seem to be content to disagree with each other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @06:51AM
What are you talking about? FireFox does not have WebKit/Blink code.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:50PM
Ditch Pale Moon in favor of what, though? There's nothing else I'd even want to use. Not Chromium and certainly not anything proprietary. The options at this point are extremely limited.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by http on Friday September 22 2017, @08:17PM (8 children)
From that page you linked:
So sorry that Palemoon deciding to not be 100% dickish about clickish upsets you.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @08:27PM (5 children)
The extension doesn't come with Pale Moon. If you want to use it, you have to install it yourself.
If the Pale Moon developers don't like what it does, then they don't have to install it into their own personal Pale Moon installations, and they don't have to use it. But they should never be exerting control over which extensions Pale Moon's users can or cannot use.
Personally, I would never use this particular extension. I think it's pointless, and instead I block ads completely.
The extension in question is actually irrelevant. What matters is how the Pale Moon developers acted in what I think is an extremely tyrannical manner. That's what I consider to be unacceptable, and that's why I consider their browser to be unacceptable to use.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:18PM (4 children)
Tyrannical.
Tyrannical.
To you, tyranny is adding a terrible extension to an internal list which prevents it from running, and providing an option (now/soon both in about:config AND in the primary UI) to bypass said internal list.
Wow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:41PM (3 children)
"Tyranny" is a very reasonable word to use when somebody with authority, say the lead developer of a web browser, uses this authority to take away freedom, say the freedom to run whatever browser extensions one wants without unnecessary hassle, from other people, especially while ignoring the protests of these people as they object to their freedom being unjustly taken away.
That's the very definition of the word "tyranny".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:59PM (1 child)
No, tyranny is iron-fist rule with disobedience either severely punished or eliminated as an option. Obviously not the case here, even if the situation was not handled to your liking. Perhaps "heavy handed" is the term you were looking for, even if I still think that's hyperbole.
Calling the actions of PM devs in that regard tyranny torpedoes your own cause, making you look foolish to others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @01:56PM
Your definition is that which the tyrant would give. Always moving the goalposts so "tyranny" is just slightly beyond the tyranny you're currently practicing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @11:50PM
Oh boy, it's Dennis again!
"Come see the violence inherent in the system! Did you see him oppressing me? This is what I'm always on about!"
"No one expects the violent imposition, in fact, those that do, um, those that do, cannot install extensions, and, um . . .I'll come in again. "
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday September 25 2017, @05:42PM (1 child)
Even microsoft never prevented users from doing dickish/illegal things with Windows.
(Score: 2) by http on Monday September 25 2017, @11:54PM
Hey, did you know that ping doesn't even let non-root users flood the network? Those bastards at the USAGI project, how dare they. </s>
Having something accessible not by default, but via explicit enabling, is not prevention.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by iWantToKeepAnon on Friday September 22 2017, @09:08PM (3 children)
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:36PM
That is one Firefox development practice they should have left behind when creating their fork!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @03:17AM (1 child)
But nobody wants to touch developing another fork of Firefox.
Many of the complaints center around the horrible morass of C++ libraries and their arbitrary interdependence on other modules.
Personally however, I think what is needed is a fork of 3.6.28 (last old interface), a fork of one of the more recent ESRs, with security patches backported from the latest Mozilla releases where possible, and new patches designed where they are not. Then over time roll features where possible back onto the 3.6 branch, ensuring preferences and about:config options remain for every feature earlier versions of Firefox documented and supported, adding full HTML5 and CSS3 support with changes made where necessary for security. Skip the EME support and include a warning on the homepage splashscreen about why EME is not supported, and do whatever we can to pull addon/extensions developers over to the new fork.
I don't hold out much hope of this working, especially without a soylentnews-level dedicate staff willing to invest the time to get this project rolling and show that support will be available in the long term if the extension developers are willing to come over, but this is the only way to both free us of the disease that is Mozilla's steering committee as well as the diseases that are the W3Cs changes to the web.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:02AM
From what I hear, they're starting to bring components written in Rust into Firefox. So not only is there C++ code to deal with, but also Rust code! And Rust code makes C++ code look pretty.