Mozilla’s plans for Firefox: More partnerships, better add-ons, and faster updates

[Chiefcrowe]

http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/06/m...rships-better-add-ons-faster-updates-and-more

 

[dkozloski]

http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/06/m...rships-better-add-ons-faster-updates-and-more

Maybe they ought to concentrate on getting the bugs out of what they already have. Adding more features and services will only add more bugs. They can start with compatibility issues with Norton Toolbar.

 

[sweenish]

Or you could stop using Norton Toolbar.

If I had choose between whether it's the browser or Norton Toolbar not playing well, I'd pick the toolbar every time.

Doesn't even have to be Norton's, but since you brought it up, it's especially Norton's fault and not Mozilla's.

Are we back in the 90's?

 

[sbpromania]

Maybe they ought to concentrate on getting the bugs out of what they already have. Adding more features and services will only add more bugs. They can start with compatibility issues with Norton Toolbar.

I totally agree, the guys from Mozilla are still adding stuff to Firefox, but I hardly use any of them.

Give us a lightweight browser, without memory hogs and with decent features, and it's enough!

 

[Mushkins]

Faster updates? I'm already being nagged to update firefox twice a week. It seems like every time I sit down at my desk there's a new version!

What they need to do is streamline *security* updates on a separate path than feature updates. Install the security stuff automatically with a pending app restart, make it totally seamless for the end user. Leave the feature updates as optional stuff outside of major version revisions.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I agree, they should fix what they have already, but they seem to be removing some stuff according to this quote:
"Firefox will be going through some pruning: “Every feature in the browser should be polished, functional, and a joy to use. Where we can’t get it to that state, we shouldn’t do it at all.”

We'll see, but I hope it improves a lot in the next year.

 

[nemesismk2]

this all doesn't sound so good for firefox if you ask me. i just wish they would release a solid version of firefox just with security updates.

 

[sweenish]

You guys realize that what you're talking about has existed since 2012?

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/

I mean, seriously?

 

[lxskllr]

"Firefox will be going through some pruning: “Every feature in the browser should be polished, functional, and a joy to use. Where we can’t get it to that state, we shouldn’t do it at all.”

If our dumbest user can't use it, we're removing it

Which quote do you think will be more accurate?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah they need to actually SLOW DOWN updates. Have security updates come in regularly, but stop making a whole new version every couple weeks. Also fix all the memleak and choppiness issues, each release makes it worse. I finally gave up and switched to Chromium because it was getting unusable. I've always been a loyal Firefox user but it just got to the point where I could not stand it anymore. Go to close a tab, nothing happens, then 5 new tabs open, then 10, etc. Just so slow and choppy, especially opening/closing tabs. But even scrolling in sites like Facebook would get pretty bad. In Chrome it's much smoother.

They need to sit down, and completely revamp the code and clean stuff up.

Also bring back the classic interface in Windows. This shit is ugly as hell:



The menu is not suppose to go in the title bar, and the title bar is not suppose to be that thick. The whole design is terrible.

Thankfully they did not do that in Linux though, so I would have kept using it if it was not for the choppiness in the UI. yeah you can install theme restorer but should not have to do that if they made it look half decent from the get go.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

"If our dumbest user can't use it, we're removing it" Perhaps this one. All I know is that they will have to do a lot of work to even try to win back some of the people who abandoned FF in the past few years.

Which quote do you think will be more accurate?

 

[nemesismk2]

You guys realize that what you're talking about has existed since 2012?

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/

I mean, seriously?

i am going to try out the Firefox Extended Support which comes with firefox 31 and everything is working great so far.

 

[TheGardener]

Sorry if this is taking things off-topic, but what does the Nortons toolbar do? I disabled it because I didn't want to lose more space on my 14 in screen. If I remember correctly, it allowed me to see if a website was considered to be safe before clicking on it. But maybe I adjusted one of the setting to lose that function.

 

[Spacehead]

You guys realize that what you're talking about has existed since 2012?

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/

I mean, seriously?

So the ESR doesn't include things like 'Pocket' & 'Hello'?

 

[ninaholic37]

I keep editing this post for no reason

 

[postmortemIA]

read like this: more partnership - we'll bloat your web browser even more, because deal with Yahoo! is not as good as we had it with Google

 

[cubby1223]

I, for one, am getting tired of half-featured plugins. Like, Adobe Reader, for example. Both Chrome & Firefox have their own custom built-in software, and 99% of the time it's okay. But if you are that 1% who needs the extra functionality Adobe's own plugin provided, or have a compatibility issue with your printer (more common than you'd think), you're largely sol with these new browsers.

 

[mikeymikec]

Where is this 'dumbing down' quote coming from exactly? I don't see it in the OP article.

If it is a real quote, it would scare me somewhat; a good portion of my customers don't know and don't care what a browser tab is. Customisation of cookie management would disappear entirely, no add-ons support, bookmarks would probably disappear completely, etc.

 

[nemesismk2]

everything is still working well with Firefox Extended Support which comes with firefox 31. all i wanted was security updates with firefox.

 

[lxskllr]

Where is this 'dumbing down' quote coming from exactly? I don't see it in the OP article.

If it is a real quote, it would scare me somewhat; a good portion of my customers don't know and don't care what a browser tab is. Customisation of cookie management would disappear entirely, no add-ons support, bookmarks would probably disappear completely, etc.

I made it up. Sort of... That was the philosophy behind removing features during the last purge. They were more diplomatic about word choice, but what they really meant was "Some of our users are idiots, and we need to make the browser for them."

 

[ringtail]

Sorry if this is taking things off-topic, but what does the Nortons toolbar do? I disabled it because I didn't want to lose more space on my 14 in screen. If I remember correctly, it allowed me to see if a website was considered to be safe before clicking on it. But maybe I adjusted one of the setting to lose that function.

And the answer is....that's all about living years in the past, back when you
a) bought a license to some brand of AV software,
then

b) downloaded updates (say maybe every 15 minutes) to its STATIC database of virus/worm/trojan/rootkit signatures

c) then you ran scans of your hard drive against those static signatures.

All that's old hat....ancient history, pretty much useless, INEFFECTIVE, waste of time & money since AT LEAST 5 years or longer now.

Malware has become ADAPTIVE.

It changes it's shape every time it runs (inserts new lines of dead code into itself to conceal its signature, and/or calls the creation of new code not visible in the malware until the instant it runs, so that static signature filters can NOT detect it, etc. Many tricks....malware-2015 does all sorts of gymnastics to evade detection based on static signatures and also heuristics analysis. All that old Norton/ Nod32/ AVG/ Avast/ Clam/ Panda /Symantec stuff is NOT REALLY WORTH ANYTHING anymore, except it IS still useful to defend against the hoardes of little Jr HS kiddie coders who thing it's cool to launch malware.

REAL bad guys like in US Gov't can surreptitiously flash your bios and plant malware there...you'll never see it, you'll never know it happened by relying on an AV software scan, you'll never remove it by reformatting your HDD because it's in your BIOS not your HDD.

The Chinese got ALL the "protected," firewalled, "secure" data...the much more expensive and sophisticated echelons of all the AV stuff like Norton/Nod32/Symantec Endpoint "defense" and "detection" utterly and totally FAILED to deny your SSN, DOB, Driver's LIcense number, medical records, etc. to the Chinese...they got it ALL, not to mention 100% of the design info on F-35.

Some very astute analysts are guessing the Chinese will quietly hold all their info about YOU for many years until the flap dies away, then maybe 20 years in future start harvesting YOU...you cash cow!
Link

Personally, I like Firefox way better than Chrome. Chrome helps concentrate MORE power into Google...not a healthy thing.

 

[lxskllr]

Personally, I like Firefox way better than Chrome. Chrome helps concentrate MORE power into Google...not a healthy thing.

Yup. Google is about increasing the use of Google. Everything they make is a cattle chute directing the user to more Google. No thanks...

 

[mikeymikec]

Sorry if this is taking things off-topic, but what does the Nortons toolbar do?

It's a gateway to Norton Safe Search, its official function is to provide a "safe" list of search results, but in reality it's even flakier than anti-virus normally is; it works on a blacklist of "known dodgy" (e.g. supplying malware) sites (so a "dodgy" site needs to be visited and reported as dodgy) which is great in supplying the impression of security (a nice big green tick next to a search result, must be safe, right?). However, many high-profile websites in the past have rented out advertising space to people who supplied adverts that exploit software flaws. A blacklist doesn't work very well against such a scenario whereby hundreds of thousands of users may be infected during say an eight hour window, then the offending ad is removed.

However, what a "safe search" system is best at achieving is to gather marketing data
on what users are searching for (or some sort of profitable deal between Symantec and Ask).

What makes Norton Safe Search truly worthy of ridicule though is their use of the Ask Search engine. For example, I just searched for "Microsoft Security Essentials" on Norton Search and out of the top four results on the page, I'd say at least two of those are scams, and the other two don't take you to the official site or download page for MSE:

http://nortonsafe.search.ask.com/web?q=microsoft%20security%20essentials&o=APN10504&geo=en_GB&prt=&ctype=&ver=&chn=&tpr=121

While Symantec would argue that only the links with their official seal of approval have been tested, the dodgy ones are the top search results on the page, and there's a reason why ads tend to come before the rest of the results. Google have cleaned up their act considerably in the last several months so that dodgy results don't appear above the official results.

Using it to search for "Adobe Flash Player" is even worse:
http://nortonsafe.search.ask.com/we...10504&ctype=&chn=&ver=&tpr=2&ts=1436618577698

The official download link is the EIGHTH link down, and I wouldn't click on the fourth link down (labelled "abode flash player" [sic]) if you paid me!
My $0.02

 

[postmortemIA]

everything is still working well with Firefox Extended Support which comes with firefox 31. all i wanted was security updates with firefox.

Enjoy it while you can.

 

[nemesismk2]

instead of using the Firefox Extended Support version i have now just installed firefox 39 in stead. just read that Mozilla deactivates Flash and it by default in Firefox. Flash should always be disabled.