Mozilla Firefox 37.0.1 Final

[WelshBloke]

I need that full page auto translation thing that Chrome has going on. The only versions of that that I've found on FF are really lacking.

Liking FF on mobile just for the easy ad blocking (full page ads need to DIAF).

 

[TheGardener]

In the new Firefox,they removed everything that was good about the old Firefox.
Forced updating..no thank you!
crappy security, too.

I have Firefox set to never automatically update. Setting is available under Options/Advanced/Update.

I cannot comment on your security concerns, except that I notice that other browsers seem to have reported security issues as well. Certainly if you are satisfied with security of another browser, that is reason enough not to use Firefox.

Lastly I am not clear on what was removed from the "old" Firefox that you miss. Can you elaborate?

 

[TheGardener]

Seems to be a day of coincidences. From my bookmarks I clicked on the following link for Tech News in Asia, which I discovered on Anandtech. I've visited the site before, but this time I noticed a green icon with a plus mark in my Firefox Search window. Clicking on the Search icon, I saw two new search engines associated with this site, but I could not see my default and optional search engines, except by clicking a link. The change was not permanent. When I used my back button, my default and optional search engines returned.

http://techcrunch.com/asia/


So my questions are... can I prevent this or worse changes using embedded Firefox features? Is there an add-on that can effectively do the job?

 

[ninaholic37]

but I could not see my default and optional search engines, except by clicking a link.

I can't see the default search engine either now by default. Weird. It looks like the US version switched back to Google in FF36 and is trying to hide it (unless it's just my machine?). Seems like Google Search is desperate to get back onto Firefox

http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/...switch-their-default-search-engine-to-google/
http://searchengineland.com/google-...-to-switch-their-default-search-engine-216770

 

[Puffnstuff]

I'm becoming more aggravated with it by the day. It locks up while I'm typing, browsing and stutters when loading a page and my system isn't slow. I started using ie 11 again because of it.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Have you tried to create a new user login on your computer and see if it still does the same? It could be just your profile making it slow for some reason.

I'm becoming more aggravated with it by the day. It locks up while I'm typing, browsing and stutters when loading a page and my system isn't slow. I started using ie 11 again because of it.

 

[lxskllr]

Seems to be a day of coincidences. From my bookmarks I clicked on the following link for Tech News in Asia, which I discovered on Anandtech. I've visited the site before, but this time I noticed a green icon with a plus mark in my Firefox Search window. Clicking on the Search icon, I saw two new search engines associated with this site, but I could not see my default and optional search engines, except by clicking a link. The change was not permanent. When I used my back button, my default and optional search engines returned.

http://techcrunch.com/asia/


So my questions are... can I prevent this or worse changes using embedded Firefox features? Is there an add-on that can effectively do the job?

This is what mine looks like...

To get the same behavior, in about:config set browser.search.showOneOffButtons to false

 

[Ketchup]

Still happy with FF. Just did a test (haven't done with in about a year) with about 30 tabs open. Chrome used about 50% more memory for the exact same pages, and that was without the ad-ons that I have running on FF. Memory in and of itself isn't a problem on this machine, except that it seems like nothing more than wasted space.

 

[ninaholic37]

I just started playing around with Tahrpup 6.0 CE (Linux distro) today. It comes with Pale Moon v24.7.1 which has DuckDuckGo as the default search engine, which is pretty nice... ignoring the Yahoo vs. Google wars completely. :thumbsup:

 

[Socio]

I just started playing around with Tahrpup 6.0 CE (Linux distro) today. It comes with Pale Moon v24.7.1 which has DuckDuckGo as the default search engine, which is pretty nice... ignoring the Yahoo vs. Google wars completely. :thumbsup:

I have been using the Pale Moon 64bit 25.30 its blazing fast, no crashes like IE 11 in 64bit mode either. I would never use Chrome as I just don't trust google.

 

[Mem]

It is so slow and there is a 1 to 2 second lag when you access any webpage. Mozillai s focusing on adding more bloat to the browser rather than improving its performance

You guys must be using a different version to me then,my FF 36.0.4 is blazing fast,personally think it could be another issue like AV you use or extensions.

FYI I use Bitdefender free with five FF extensions.

Happy FF user here,but I miss my old Opera browser,the new Opera is not the same since they went over to Chromium based.

 

[sweenish]

FF and Chrome have been neck and neck in performance for a good while now.

Perceived or real difference are likely due to things like bloated profiles in one browser or the other, a bad extension in one or the other, etc.

 

[nemesismk2]

FF and Chrome have been neck and neck in performance for a good while now.

Perceived or real difference are likely due to things like bloated profiles in one browser or the other, a bad extension in one or the other, etc.

I agree that most sites do display as fast with firefox as chrome. sites and benchmarks made by google as expected will be faster with chrome. i think google maps and street view is faster with google chrome as expected. i can't see any difference with firefox and chrome with anandtech for example.

 

[TheGardener]

To get the same behavior, in about:config set browser.search.showOneOffButtons to false

Thanks for the suggestion on about:config. I tried it, but got different results. The search window was locked and I couldn't access the link which listed my default and alternative search engines. All I saw was the plus mark to add the website. So I reset this line to true and it returned to the status that I reported above.

 

[Socio]

In the new Firefox,they removed everything that was good about the old Firefox.
Forced updating..no thank you!
crappy security, too.

You can try Ice Dragon it is supposed to be a more secure version of Firefox:

https://www.comodo.com/home/browsers-toolbars/icedragon-browser.php

 

[TheRyuu]

You can try Ice Dragon it is supposed to be a more secure version of Firefox:

https://www.comodo.com/home/browsers-toolbars/icedragon-browser.php

I doubt that changes the inherent weakness due to the lack of good (any?) sandboxing.

Mozilla has never been one to care about security though (on Windows or Linux), well perhaps that's a slightly unfair statement. However, they just never seem to care about being proactive about it at the very least.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I find that I'm using ie 11 for everything except school and it's so much more responsive when doing everything. For instance, right now I'm typing like normal and ff would stutter forcing me to wait for it to catch up. IE 11 stays with me allowing me to type at my normal speed. It's just the little quirks about it that made me stop using it like I did before.

 

[Socio]

I doubt that changes the inherent weakness due to the lack of good (any?) sandboxing.

Mozilla has never been one to care about security though (on Windows or Linux), well perhaps that's a slightly unfair statement. However, they just never seem to care about being proactive about it at the very least.

I remember reading Firefox does and found the link about it;

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/01/24/mozilla-adds-npapi-plug-in-sandbox-to-firefox/

Sandboxing finally comes to the Firefox web browser. After enabling a (currently) non-restrictive content sandbox in Firefox Nightly last month, the organization enabled the upcoming NPAPI plug-in sandbox in Aurora and Nightly versions of the browser as well.

 

[TheRyuu]

I remember reading Firefox does and found the link about it;

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/01/24/mozilla-adds-npapi-plug-in-sandbox-to-firefox/

Well I wouldn't call it good yet but at least they're moving in the right direction. Currently it seems the best you can get is a guarantee that it won't load as an administrator, not any type of restriction on access to anything (i.e still running at the medium integrity level), I guess that would be the next step so it'll be interesting to watch. I do hope they do it properly without having to compromise for certain compatibility. They have a history of screwing up security related stuff so I'm still a little worried without knowing too much about it.

I just think it took way to long to get to this point though. Chrome is adding lowbox(?) (AppContainer) support for Chrome (currently active in the dev branch if you're on Windows 8) along with placing restrictions on the system calls a renderer process can make (reduces the kernel attack surface by 80%) which should also now be on by default on beta/dev branches.

 

[Spacehead]

I can't see the default search engine either now by default. Weird. It looks like the US version switched back to Google in FF36 and is trying to hide it (unless it's just my machine?). Seems like Google Search is desperate to get back onto Firefox

A few versions ago my default search was reset to Yahoo(i think) with the new update but i reset it to DuckDuckGo & with every update since my search list always stay the same.
I know other people have said their default search changes with each FF update but i'm not seeing that happen for some reason.

Thanks for the suggestion on about:config. I tried it, but got different results. The search window was locked and I couldn't access the link which listed my default and alternative search engines. All I saw was the plus mark to add the website. So I reset this line to true and it returned to the status that I reported above.

For me, with "browser.search.showOneOffButtons" set to false i see the same thing as lxskllr pic. I set it to true & i lose the dropdown list of search engines but there is a tab added in "Options" for search where you can set your default search.
I set "browser.search.showOneOffButtons" back to false.

I went to that site you linked to - http://techcrunch.com/asia/
Nothing overtook my search list but i could add "TechCrunch" & "WordPress.com" from the dropdown menu.

 

[mikeymikec]

Still happy with FF. Just did a test (haven't done with in about a year) with about 30 tabs open. Chrome used about 50% more memory for the exact same pages, and that was without the ad-ons that I have running on FF. Memory in and of itself isn't a problem on this machine, except that it seems like nothing more than wasted space.

Ditto. I haven't noticed any improvement or deterioration in performance in FF for as long as I can remember, it loads pages perfectly quickly for me. The only delay that slightly irks me is the 2 second delay when starting the Firefox process while (IIRC) ABP kicks in.

It would interest me if someone can provide a page that loads obviously quicker in Chrome than in FF, and for me to be able to reproduce the performance difference here (even if it is relatively speaking).

Having said that, I've seen it before on some customers' computers that one browser outperforms another unexpectedly (like say IE11 outpacing Google Chrome for Google Maps), so I think there's a lot of unexpected benefits of running certain browsers on certain platforms.

The only other difference that I've noted before (but not tested to a great enough degree to be certain), is that FF doesn't always middle-button-scroll as smoothly as Chrome, but then the issue is intermittent in FF with my trackball (no trackball drivers installed).

 

[ninaholic37]

The only other difference that I've noted before (but not tested to a great enough degree to be certain), is that FF doesn't always middle-button-scroll as smoothly as Chrome, but then the issue is intermittent in FF with my trackball (no trackball drivers installed).

I think Chrome removed smooth scrolling, or never really had it except for once in a "beta/testing" menu? In Firefox I can get similar quickness on a slow machine by disabling Smooth Scrolling with Alt (Menu) -> Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced.

 

[mikeymikec]

I think Chrome removed smooth scrolling, or never really had it except for once in a "beta/testing" menu? In Firefox I can get similar quickness on a slow machine by disabling Smooth Scrolling with Alt (Menu) -> Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced.

Smoothness of scrolling when using the middle button isn't the same thing as the 'smooth scrolling' setting in FF, which I have disabled. A lot of the time middle button scrolling is pretty smooth in FF (ie. when holding down the button and having the pointer below where I started holding the button down, and watching the scroll movement until I let go of the button), but for the same pages at other times it becomes juddery or the text gets vertically momentarily warped by a few pixels for whatever's at the top of the viewable part of the page.

 

[ninaholic37]

(ie. when holding down the button and having the pointer below where I started holding the button down, and watching the scroll movement until I let go of the button)

Ahh, I always wondered what the point was of being able to "click" the middle button on a mouse was when it comes to browsers. Sounds interesting. Maybe I'll try this sometime. Usually I just use PgUp/PgDown or click on the scrollbar at the right and move up my pointer but sometimes I use two-finger trackpad scrolling.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I did something yesterday that changed the way that ff feels and now it seems normal. I discovered that the real source of my troubles was the router firmware I was using so I rolled it back to the previous version. Now ff feels fine and everything is running normally with it so I just wanted to clarify that. It was my router that was causing the perceived issues not the browser so I wanted to correct myself.