Firefox 53: Quantum Compositor, Compact Themes, CSS Masks (opens in new tab)

(hacks.mozilla.org)

199 pointsalexandere9y ago101 comments

101 comments

62 comments · 14 top-level

pkrumins9y ago· 10 in thread

And, as always, I just added Firefox 53 to Browserling. You can try this new version at this URL without installing or updating it:

https://www.browserling.com/firefox/53/news.ycombinator.com

I've a bunch of VMs available for free testing. If there are too many people wanting to try it, then you'll have to wait in a queue for a few minutes.

JohnTHaller9y ago

In the same vein, Windows users can grab the portable version of Firefox 53 and use it without needing to install it, without needing admin rights, and without interfering with a different version installed within Windows:

https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

In addition to the stable channel, you can grab beta, dev, nightly, and esr and automatically update them within the PortableApps.com Platform. We also have all old major versions of it available on our SourceForge project. They're all free and fully open source.

symlinkk9y ago

just fyi you can access the filesystem with file:/// URLs, and I was able to run arbitrary programs.

pkrumins9y ago

Yup. That's a feature. Run any app on any platform in your browser. That's where I'm taking Browserling. We've a bunch of users already running all kinds of software in their browsers so rather than restricting VMs, I'm opening them up. These are throw away VMs anyway, once the session is up, VM is gone.

1 more reply

noja9y ago

You can use old unpatched versions of Firefox...

Manishearth9y ago

This site is really cool! I work on browsers and often need to test things in IE (to see how behavior of a web feature differs across browsers) and hate booting up VMs :)

pkrumins9y ago

Thank you!

_red9y ago

Most of the Safari versions are broken because your URL route mechanism is not prepending "http://" to the front of the URL.

pkrumins9y ago

Thanks, I'll fix that.

lol7689y ago

FWIW, just displays a black screen for me in Firefox 4.0a2.

https://lol768.com/i/pP.4G.Rb.t7.US.8b.u8.gI

pkrumins9y ago

I must have broken something. Browserling works in even IE8. I'll fix it so it works in FF 4 again.

nvr2199y ago· 9 in thread

I switched to Chrome in 2016 because I needed to easily switch between multiple profiles. With Firefox I have to launch with a command line switch. :(

milescrabill9y ago

You should check out Container tabs in Firefox: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec.... It's like per-tab profiles, no need for multiple copies of the browser, etc. Totally changed the way I deal with sites I need multiple accounts for (like AWS).

You can use Containers in Nightly or via the Containers Testpilot experiment here: https://testpilot.firefox.com/.

disclaimer: I work for Mozilla

reitanqild9y ago

I love it although now that I have a Mozilla employee here I should mention that:

- it seems to be missing features when running with Tab Tree

- the ux of Mozilla vertical tabs experiment is weird and IMO bad. And I rarely complain about UX. The problem is: the tab bar goes up on the side of the awesomebar and slides it back and forth as the tab panel expands and goes back.

I have reported this but so far nobody seems to care.

Another small thing: I more or less love Firefox in general <3

3 more replies

hansjorg9y ago

Containers are awesome and very easy to use compared to profiles.

I'm guessing that Chrome might not want to make such a powerful pro-privacy feature available to the masses, so this could be a good way for Firefox to distinguish itself.

kuschku9y ago

As you're already here, when can we expect Firefox to...

(a) read QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS to do per-screen dpi scaling on Linux? Currently there's an old-style extension to read this, and scale the browser accordingly, but with WebExtension only, I'd be stuck with a browser that's always the wrong scale.

(b) support hardware video decoding on Linux? Currently I use a plugin to force Firefox to use VLC to handle HTML5 video, wherever possible, so I can get fluent video - with WebExtension, this won't be possible, and CPU-decoding of HTML5 video eats over 5-10% of CPU even on an i7-6700 with a 4K video. On laptops, it's almost unusable.

(c) How long do you expect it to take until we can customize the entire browser chrome with HTML, CSS and JS again? XUL will be gone, but with Browser.html, and competing browsers such as Vivaldi, these things are possible easily. As we're already on that topic...

(d) as you don't seem to be willing to implement Tab Previews in the browser itself, when can we expect a WebExtension API to do so ourselves? In old-style extensions it is possible, but this breaks with WebExtension.

clairity9y ago

i have so been needing this! no more opening new windows, private windows, and new browsers with private windows to test multiple user scenarios. [thumbsup emoji]

Dylan168079y ago

Which means you edit the shortcut once and leave it that way forever. You don't have to use a command line.

hackuser9y ago

Plenty of add-ons seem to do what you want. Here's a few I found with a quick search:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profilist/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-butto...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profileswitch...

nvr2199y ago

Update: I installed profilist and now I learned that I have to reinstall extensions on a per-profile basis. boo hoo :(

evacchi9y ago

You might want to take a look at the profilist extension

TekMol9y ago· 5 in thread

Still no hardware accelerated video for Linux :(

Everytime Firefox releases something I am reminded of this:

https://xkcd.com/619/

hashhar9y ago

You can easily force enable it. But the stability varies wildly with hardware. My iGPU works good, my NVIDIA 920m works good but the old AMD 5750HD causes crashes.

Go to about:config and set: layers.acceleration.force-enabled to true.

BUG REPORT: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594876

kuschku9y ago

Nope, that's hardware accelerated layers and compositing.

Video is always decoded on CPU on Linux. Always. Eating, at 4K, around 5-10% on an i7-6700.

On a smaller laptop, this can eat an entire core, and make the browser close to unusable.

3 more replies

s_kilk9y ago

I wonder if this is why battery and heat are so bad with Firefox on my Ubuntu 16.04 box? I've switched away to chromium because of the sheer difference in battery drain.

(And no, it's not a plugin that's causing the problem)

Jerry29y ago

If you watch a lot of Youtube, force the video to MP4 so your graphics card can decode it in hardware. Youtube defaults to VP9 but gfx cards rarely support that codec.

Google's wasting a lot of battery life by pushing VP9 onto everyone.

2 more replies

zlynx9y ago

Are you letting random advertising Javascript run? I don't. Noscript disables most of that. My experience is that Chrome uses more battery than my Firefox, by a lot. Of course, Chrome is what I use when I just want a site to work, not have to wonder if I turned on enough Javascript.

dstaley9y ago· 5 in thread

Whenever a new Firefox release drops, my favorite thing to do is to see if this (now ten-year-old) bug [0] is finally fixed.

Spoiler: it isn't.

This bug (and many others similar to it) are one of the main reasons I dislike using Firefox. It just feels out of place on macOS. I'm fine with non-native UI elements as long as they're not elements as fundamental as the select dropdown and the right-click menu.

Edit: Turns out this bug has been fixed, but only if you have Electrolysis [1] enabled [2].

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=402625

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis

[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=402625#c32

yborg9y ago

My favorite thing is coming to the HN threads to read the "tried it out to see if <personal hangup re: obscure app feature 6 people use> is fixed (meaning works the way I want it to work) but it's not, therefore the entire project A SHIT" posts.

The fact that this one then acknowledges that the bug is actually fixed if you use the browser in the recommended mode gives it extra points.

dstaley9y ago

Electrolysis isn't enabled by default, so I don't think it qualifies as "the recommended mode".

Furthermore, I never said "the entire project is shit". Firefox is a great piece of software, but I don't use it personally because of the issue I mentioned, among other issues in the same category (like the right-click menu looking different compared to other right-click menus, or not integrating with the macOS spell-check system).

3 more replies

Dylan168079y ago

Your standard of quality is whether a web page looks like it's not a web page?

kuschku9y ago

The standard of quality is if you can build applications that behave as if they were native with a browser.

Considering stuff like Electron and co, that's not an unusual request.

1 more reply

mannigfaltig9y ago

http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/bikeshedding.html

frik9y ago· 4 in thread

As much as I like Firefox. It is now on a cross road.

For debugging development purposes I am keeping a version now for older dev plugins that never got a proper replacement, and aren't compatible with the newer API and newer will be (because the API is so much less powerful, good for noobs / bad for power user).

And I can't wait until Servo gets more stable and feature complete. I am thinking about a Vivaldi browser like HTML5 based UI based on Servo web engine, instead of blink - that would be the ideal next-gen Firefox reboot! (Firefox/Firebird/forgotthename was initially a leaner fork of the "bloated" MozillaSuite, in the meantime Firefox got so much more bloated than the still maintained MozillaSuite (now called SeaMonkey, based on recent gecko engine)).

hackuser9y ago

> I can't wait until Servo gets more stable and feature complete

Parts of Servo are being migrated to Firefox. IIRC, Quantum Compositor, mentioned in the blog post, is one of them - you can start using it today!

http://jensimmons.com/post/jan-4-2017/replacing-jet-engine-w...

mccr89y ago

Quantum Compositor is just a separate process for GPU stuff. It isn't ported from Servo.

2 more replies

interfixus9y ago

My Pale Moon (Linux) clocks in at around 200Mb less than latest Firefox. It's faster, too. And runs the addons I want it to run. Not going back.

hsivonen9y ago

How well is Pale Moon patching disclosed Firefox vulnerabilities?

2 more replies

kyriakos9y ago· 4 in thread

Flow root. How did that take so long to become available?

callahad9y ago

Firefox and Chrome shipped it today: http://caniuse.com/#feat=flow-root

...and now begins the indeterminate wait for Edge and Safari :)

kyriakos9y ago

I expect edge to have it by next iteration not sure about safari.

vetinari9y ago

Looks like Chrome 58 also shipped today.

1 more reply

progx9y ago

Thank god that we get masks on the internet in 2017 and must not wait 10 years more ;)

Many bloated png can now retire.

fiatjaf9y ago· 3 in thread

  The storage.sync API allows add-ons to 
  save user preferences to Firefox Sync, 
  where it can be shared and synchronized 
  between devices.

Now all Chrome Extensions automatically work on Firefox.

erikdesjardins9y ago

Not entirely, there are still some APIs that are unimplemented in Firefox[1].

But yes, adding storage.sync will help a lot.

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Br...

pmezard9y ago

That's fairly nice now Firefox extensions stopped working in Firefox.

rhelmer9y ago

Legacy Firefox extensions still work in this release, it is 57 that will be WebExtension-only.

mrec9y ago· 2 in thread

I'm not at all convinced about making the general user choose between 32- and 64-bit versions at installation, given that even techies disagree on the relative merits [1]. (Sometimes with themselves [2].)

If the system only supports one or the other, the installer should be able to work that out. If it supports both, the installer should at least give some hints as to what the tradeoffs are.

[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2015/12/29/revisiting...

[2] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2016/01/04/64-bit-vis...

callahad9y ago

The bitness choice (and that entire screenshotted dialog) is only present if you select "Advanced Options" in the bottom left of the installer's first screen, it's not something that we force every user through.

mrec9y ago

Ah, OK, that makes more sense. Thanks.

What's the default if you don't select "Advanced Options", btw?

1 more reply

Zekio9y ago· 2 in thread

Best feature for me is the themes from developer edition, so now I can finally stop using the the developer edition just for the themes

xenithorb9y ago

All along there was an extension called "Developer Edition Theme Enabler" that you could have used :)

The_Hoff9y ago

Beat me to it! The light and dark themes are each so clean and minimal

mrspeaker9y ago· 1 in thread

I love the compact themes - it always unreasonably annoyed me how much vertical space the browser chrome "wastes"!

quadrige9y ago

I love it too, excellent feature!

givemefive9y ago· 1 in thread

Cookie containers are a feature that I really like a lot. The problem is the UX for them is terrible. There are no keybinds and they only show up in one place in the interface. I wanted to add keybinds but I found this very difficult.

milescrabill9y ago

Relevant discussion here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1245262 and here: https://github.com/mozilla/testpilot-containers/issues/119.

brymaster9y ago· 1 in thread

  Media playback on new tabs is blocked until the tab is visible

^^ That feature was in the Beta release notes but didn't seem to make it into 53 release...disappointing because it appears to work great in Beta/Developer Edition. Can anyone from Mozilla explain why it was scrapped?

callahad9y ago

The main bug is at https://bugzil.la/1308154. Looks like it's scheduled for Firefox 54 and was accidentally included in the 53 relnotes.

kreetx9y ago· 1 in thread

Ha, what unexpected Rickroll! :D

callahad9y ago

Oh no! That actually should've worked as described (not auto-playing until you switch tabs), but it looks like auto-play suppression is in 54, not 53. Sorry :( https://bugzil.la/1308154

shmerl9y ago

When is it coming to Linux? And is it going to use Vulkan eventually?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

101 comments

62 comments · 14 top-level

pkrumins9y ago· 10 in thread

And, as always, I just added Firefox 53 to Browserling. You can try this new version at this URL without installing or updating it:

https://www.browserling.com/firefox/53/news.ycombinator.com

I've a bunch of VMs available for free testing. If there are too many people wanting to try it, then you'll have to wait in a queue for a few minutes.

JohnTHaller9y ago

https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

symlinkk9y ago

just fyi you can access the filesystem with file:/// URLs, and I was able to run arbitrary programs.

pkrumins9y ago

1 more reply

noja9y ago

You can use old unpatched versions of Firefox...

Manishearth9y ago

This site is really cool! I work on browsers and often need to test things in IE (to see how behavior of a web feature differs across browsers) and hate booting up VMs :)

pkrumins9y ago

Thank you!

_red9y ago

Most of the Safari versions are broken because your URL route mechanism is not prepending "http://" to the front of the URL.

pkrumins9y ago

Thanks, I'll fix that.

lol7689y ago

FWIW, just displays a black screen for me in Firefox 4.0a2.

https://lol768.com/i/pP.4G.Rb.t7.US.8b.u8.gI

pkrumins9y ago

I must have broken something. Browserling works in even IE8. I'll fix it so it works in FF 4 again.

nvr2199y ago· 9 in thread

I switched to Chrome in 2016 because I needed to easily switch between multiple profiles. With Firefox I have to launch with a command line switch. :(

milescrabill9y ago

You can use Containers in Nightly or via the Containers Testpilot experiment here: https://testpilot.firefox.com/.

disclaimer: I work for Mozilla

reitanqild9y ago

I love it although now that I have a Mozilla employee here I should mention that:

- it seems to be missing features when running with Tab Tree

I have reported this but so far nobody seems to care.

Another small thing: I more or less love Firefox in general <3

3 more replies

hansjorg9y ago

Containers are awesome and very easy to use compared to profiles.

I'm guessing that Chrome might not want to make such a powerful pro-privacy feature available to the masses, so this could be a good way for Firefox to distinguish itself.

kuschku9y ago

As you're already here, when can we expect Firefox to...

clairity9y ago

i have so been needing this! no more opening new windows, private windows, and new browsers with private windows to test multiple user scenarios. [thumbsup emoji]

Dylan168079y ago

Which means you edit the shortcut once and leave it that way forever. You don't have to use a command line.

hackuser9y ago

Plenty of add-ons seem to do what you want. Here's a few I found with a quick search:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profilist/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-butto...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profileswitch...

nvr2199y ago

Update: I installed profilist and now I learned that I have to reinstall extensions on a per-profile basis. boo hoo :(

evacchi9y ago

You might want to take a look at the profilist extension

TekMol9y ago· 5 in thread

Still no hardware accelerated video for Linux :(

Everytime Firefox releases something I am reminded of this:

https://xkcd.com/619/

hashhar9y ago

You can easily force enable it. But the stability varies wildly with hardware. My iGPU works good, my NVIDIA 920m works good but the old AMD 5750HD causes crashes.

Go to about:config and set: layers.acceleration.force-enabled to true.

BUG REPORT: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594876

kuschku9y ago

Nope, that's hardware accelerated layers and compositing.

Video is always decoded on CPU on Linux. Always. Eating, at 4K, around 5-10% on an i7-6700.

On a smaller laptop, this can eat an entire core, and make the browser close to unusable.

3 more replies

s_kilk9y ago

I wonder if this is why battery and heat are so bad with Firefox on my Ubuntu 16.04 box? I've switched away to chromium because of the sheer difference in battery drain.

(And no, it's not a plugin that's causing the problem)

Jerry29y ago

If you watch a lot of Youtube, force the video to MP4 so your graphics card can decode it in hardware. Youtube defaults to VP9 but gfx cards rarely support that codec.

Google's wasting a lot of battery life by pushing VP9 onto everyone.

2 more replies

zlynx9y ago

dstaley9y ago· 5 in thread

Whenever a new Firefox release drops, my favorite thing to do is to see if this (now ten-year-old) bug [0] is finally fixed.

Spoiler: it isn't.

Edit: Turns out this bug has been fixed, but only if you have Electrolysis [1] enabled [2].

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=402625

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis

[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=402625#c32

yborg9y ago

The fact that this one then acknowledges that the bug is actually fixed if you use the browser in the recommended mode gives it extra points.

dstaley9y ago

Electrolysis isn't enabled by default, so I don't think it qualifies as "the recommended mode".

3 more replies

Dylan168079y ago

Your standard of quality is whether a web page looks like it's not a web page?

kuschku9y ago

The standard of quality is if you can build applications that behave as if they were native with a browser.

Considering stuff like Electron and co, that's not an unusual request.

1 more reply

mannigfaltig9y ago

http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/bikeshedding.html

frik9y ago· 4 in thread

As much as I like Firefox. It is now on a cross road.

hackuser9y ago

> I can't wait until Servo gets more stable and feature complete

Parts of Servo are being migrated to Firefox. IIRC, Quantum Compositor, mentioned in the blog post, is one of them - you can start using it today!

http://jensimmons.com/post/jan-4-2017/replacing-jet-engine-w...

mccr89y ago

Quantum Compositor is just a separate process for GPU stuff. It isn't ported from Servo.

2 more replies

interfixus9y ago

My Pale Moon (Linux) clocks in at around 200Mb less than latest Firefox. It's faster, too. And runs the addons I want it to run. Not going back.

hsivonen9y ago

How well is Pale Moon patching disclosed Firefox vulnerabilities?

2 more replies

kyriakos9y ago· 4 in thread

Flow root. How did that take so long to become available?

callahad9y ago

Firefox and Chrome shipped it today: http://caniuse.com/#feat=flow-root

...and now begins the indeterminate wait for Edge and Safari :)

kyriakos9y ago

I expect edge to have it by next iteration not sure about safari.

vetinari9y ago

Looks like Chrome 58 also shipped today.

1 more reply

progx9y ago

Thank god that we get masks on the internet in 2017 and must not wait 10 years more ;)

Many bloated png can now retire.

fiatjaf9y ago· 3 in thread

  The storage.sync API allows add-ons to 
  save user preferences to Firefox Sync, 
  where it can be shared and synchronized 
  between devices.

Now all Chrome Extensions automatically work on Firefox.

erikdesjardins9y ago

Not entirely, there are still some APIs that are unimplemented in Firefox[1].

But yes, adding storage.sync will help a lot.

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Br...

pmezard9y ago

That's fairly nice now Firefox extensions stopped working in Firefox.

rhelmer9y ago

Legacy Firefox extensions still work in this release, it is 57 that will be WebExtension-only.

mrec9y ago· 2 in thread

If the system only supports one or the other, the installer should be able to work that out. If it supports both, the installer should at least give some hints as to what the tradeoffs are.

[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2015/12/29/revisiting...

[2] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2016/01/04/64-bit-vis...

callahad9y ago

mrec9y ago

Ah, OK, that makes more sense. Thanks.

What's the default if you don't select "Advanced Options", btw?

1 more reply

Zekio9y ago· 2 in thread

Best feature for me is the themes from developer edition, so now I can finally stop using the the developer edition just for the themes

xenithorb9y ago

All along there was an extension called "Developer Edition Theme Enabler" that you could have used :)

The_Hoff9y ago

Beat me to it! The light and dark themes are each so clean and minimal

mrspeaker9y ago· 1 in thread

I love the compact themes - it always unreasonably annoyed me how much vertical space the browser chrome "wastes"!

quadrige9y ago

I love it too, excellent feature!

givemefive9y ago· 1 in thread

milescrabill9y ago

Relevant discussion here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1245262 and here: https://github.com/mozilla/testpilot-containers/issues/119.

brymaster9y ago· 1 in thread

  Media playback on new tabs is blocked until the tab is visible

callahad9y ago

The main bug is at https://bugzil.la/1308154. Looks like it's scheduled for Firefox 54 and was accidentally included in the 53 relnotes.

kreetx9y ago· 1 in thread

Ha, what unexpected Rickroll! :D

callahad9y ago

Oh no! That actually should've worked as described (not auto-playing until you switch tabs), but it looks like auto-play suppression is in 54, not 53. Sorry :( https://bugzil.la/1308154

shmerl9y ago

When is it coming to Linux? And is it going to use Vulkan eventually?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse