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posted by martyb on Friday September 22 2017, @06:59PM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @08:10PM (19 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @08:10PM (#571780)

    My 'solution' to the Moz corp problem so far is stay on the working ESR release while evaluating a migration strategy.

    It sounds to me like you're a Linux user. That means that Safari and Edge aren't really options for you. If Firefox is out of the question, then you're left with a Chromium-derived browser like Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi or Brave. If you want to use a fully open source browser, that eliminates some of those options. So you're probably left with using Chromium. So I ask, what's there to evaluate? Why not move to Chromium right away?

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Troll=1, Interesting=2, Underrated=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @08:29PM (12 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @08:29PM (#571790)

    The parent comment shouldn't be modded -1, Troll. It's a legitimate question.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @08:55PM (11 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @08:55PM (#571807)

      Seriously, I think some users are abusing the mod system for kicks.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:06PM (10 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:06PM (#571818)

        Every account gets mod points. Out of the hundreds of active users, a handful abusing it is not special.

        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:11PM (9 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:11PM (#571823)

          That's why there should be a zero tolerance policy toward mod abuse here.

          If somebody mods down a comment to -1, and one or more users subsequently mod it up, whoever modded it down should never moderate here ever again using any account.

          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:18PM (4 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:18PM (#571826)

            That's retarded because modding can never be 100% objective. Take your downmod and quit whining.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:39PM (3 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:39PM (#571836)

              If you want shitty modding then you should drag your sorry ass back to Slashdot.

              This site should aspire to fix the broken moderation system it inherited from Slashdot, and that means ruthlessly stamping out and and all mod abuse.

              Downmods that get overturned are by definition mod abuse, and should be punished severely.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:59PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @09:59PM (#571839)

                By definition? Where is this definition? And have you ever considered that some people can disagree with the majority without having any hostile intentions?

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:13PM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:13PM (#571846)

                > Downmods that get overturned are by definition mod abuse, and should be punished severely.

                Maybe you should visit the Grand Canyon instead of SoylentNews, as what you're looking for is an echo chamber, not a discussion site :/

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:46PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:46PM (#571870)

                  Downmodding can make it harder to view comments here. You have to go out of your way to browse at -1 to see such comments.

                  Downmodding promotes the "echo chamber" effect you speak of by suppressing certain comments. It limits the free expression of ideas.

                  That's why downmodding should be highly discouraged. If you disagree with a comment, you should reply to it instead of downmodding it.

                  Downmodding is toxic to online discussion communities because it's what allows "groupthink"/"echo chambers"/"circle-jerks" to happen.

          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:27PM (3 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:27PM (#571860)

            That's why there should be a zero tolerance policy toward mod abuse here.
            If somebody mods down a comment to -1, and one or more users subsequently mod it up, whoever modded it down should never moderate here ever again using any account.

            Excellent!

            1. post GNAA copy-pasta through Tor/proxy as AC
            2. wait for someone to mod it down
            3. log in to my normal account through no/different proxy, and mod it up
            4. ???
            5. Profit!
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:48PM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:48PM (#571871)

              Yes, of course abuse is possible. But it's better for somebody to never moderate again than it is for even just a single comment to be unjustly downmodded.

              • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @02:12AM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @02:12AM (#571948)

                I"m getting some good snowflake photography over here.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @04:27AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @04:27AM (#571998)

                  Winter has come!

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Friday September 22 2017, @08:56PM (4 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Friday September 22 2017, @08:56PM (#571810)

    Pale Moon and Seamonkey are also available for some distributions, including PCLinuxOS and it is the current candidate to replace CentOS 6. It is a bitch, EVERYTHING is going mad at the same time. Replacing the browser is bad enough, replacing OS and browser is worse. Bad part is the fear that the war is still in the early phases. It really feels like there is a hidden method to this madness, that is a war of some sort, lots of conspiracy theories as to what but nothing that sounds right yet. Fairly safe bet the whole Free Software ecosystem's demise is part of the plan but even that probably isn't the whole story here.

    Chromium is the red headed stepchild of Chrome, Google totally controls the project's direction. May as well use Chrome and avoid the sites that won't work with Chromium.

    Android is going off the rails too, no really good options out there yet for that problem but there probably will be. Still more churn.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @03:41AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @03:41AM (#571987)

      It started with the GNU project's obfuscation efforts in gcc/glibc makign it hard to develop on in order to avoid 'legal loophole' plugins/products based off them, then the FSF pushing for the GPLv3 to work around the sleazy actions of companies, combined with their handling of litigation and licensing for companies in violation of it.

      Apple was the first major defector. They found LLVM from UIUC, pushed a bunch of funding to make it an MIT licensed backend for code generation in OSX, then slowly pushed development of first a gcc frontend, then a bespoke MIT-licensed frontend (clang). Step two was excising libstdc++, which had been a hassle for years as ever new version resulting in subtle ABI breakage on the majority of platforms, especially linux. The next big push was Android. It seems like the opportunity for linux to take over, but instead it has basically turned out to be an unmanageable mess that nobody has spun off projects from (there still isn't a fork of the AOT compiler from 5.x(?) for compiling native java apps for instance.) Then there is systemd. Nothing more really needs to be said about that. It created a huge schism in the community among the pro and anti-systemd crowd, with the majority of commercial companies siding with the systemd regime. Then there was musl. An MIT licensed C library that is far far better than glibc, at least when your software doesn't contain any gnuisms and is actually standards compliant. As it turned out, Microsoft and the GNU Project aren't that different, both resulting in unmaintainable messes if you don't know what the ACTUAL standards compliant functions are and how they are expected to work (vs how they need to be worked around in practice.) And finally there is Microsoft+Ubuntu. The nail in the coffin. The first and second phases of Microsoft's famous 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.' Much like the Borg's victims, the Linux community will be assimilated. And it will be assimilated thanks to traitors like Miguel de Icaza, Mark Shuttleworth, and so many others.)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @02:06PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @02:06PM (#572103)

        The GPL family of licenses are unnecessary because if you support truly free software then you just use the MIT license or the BSD license. If you aren't using one of those licenses, or some other equivalently free license, then you're writing proprietary software. As far as I'm concerned, GPLed software is proprietary, because I can't modify it and redistribute my version without also redistributing the source code.

        • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday September 24 2017, @04:59AM

          by Pino P (4721) on Sunday September 24 2017, @04:59AM (#572246) Journal

          So you can't take software distributed with the express intent to grant freedom to its users without continuing to grant the same freedom to users of your modified version. Could you explain how a reciprocal condition makes software "proprietary"?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @04:49PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @04:49PM (#572366)

          bsd/mit is a whore's license. all you mac using hipster douches just use it so you can whore your asses to corporations that want to leech off of FOSS. all while professing your love for FOSS. You like to use words like "commercial" when you speak of the proprietary software that these leech corps have built with bsd/mit "Free Software". Or your precious proprietary saas apps built on the back of mit/bsd software. You take on the appearance of Free Software like Slack(the saas app not the Gnu/Linux distribution they stole the nickname of), to further obfuscate your leeching. It's disgusting and transparent.

  • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:06AM

    by Pino P (4721) on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:06AM (#572249) Journal

    Why not move to Chromium right away?

    In my tests, Firefox allows more tabs than Chromium before it starts thrashing swap on a laptop that's already maxed out at 2 GB of RAM. This is especially true if the user enables the built-in tracking protection [mozilla.org] for all windows, not just Private Browsing windows.

    (tongue-in-cheek) Or if a laptop's RAM can't be upgraded further, should its owner buy a USB RAM drive on which to store a swap file in order to use Chromium?