I was looking at the releaese notes of v68 and noticed Firefox will have to resort to modify how FF works on specific sites:
Unfortunately, not all webcompat issues are as simple as implementing non-standard APIs from other browsers. Some problems can only be fixed by modifying how Firefox works on a specific site, or even telling Firefox to pretend to be something else in order to evade browser sniffing.
Screenshot of a webpage that blocks Firefox users, but which works perfectly with a webcompat intervention.
We deliver these targeted fixes as part of the webcompat system add-on that’s bundled with Firefox. This makes it easier to update our webcompat interventions as sites change, without needing to bake those fixes directly into Firefox itself. And as of Firefox 68, you can view (and disable) these interventions by visiting about:compat and toggling the relevant switches.
Our first preference is always to help developers ensure their sites work on all modern browsers, but we can only address the problems that we’re aware of. If you run into a web compatibility issue, please report it at webcompat.com.
This is reminiscent of the struggles the standards compliant Opera browser went through in the first decade of the century then with the hegemony and mono-culture caused by Internet Explorer. Opera had to resort to fixing important sites. How the tables turned. Firefox is a standards compliant browser and these days the monoculture of Chromium is making FF look inapt. :-\
!ot! It’s like we’re learning nothing while we like to see our Western society as very advanced. A similar thing is happening with IoT where security is an afterthought and a situation may happen again like with Windows computer in the first half of the previous decade.
No matter how much something is standardised, the most used implementation(s) become the de facto standard. In this case Blink/WebCore (Chromium/Safari).
Firefox is as important today, as it was when Firefox 1.0 was released, fifteen years ago.
Mozilla keeps improving its tracking protection, which debuted with Firefox 35. Firefox 67 added protection against fingerprinting and cryptominers (not really tracking, but part of Enhanced Tracking Protection). Firefox 67.0.1 enabled Enhanced Tracking Protection by default in all (not only private) windows (new installations only).
And now, it seems “social” tracking is the next target. Actually, though, Mozilla has been fighting Facebook specifically for more than a year, with its Facebook Container extension. It was updated to version 2.0 a month ago.
Overall, I am very pleased to see how Firefox has evolved in recent years, from a browser which looked rather obsolete compared to Chrome. Electrolysis has made Firefox more secure, stable, and also faster. WebExtensions has brought a modern architecture for extensions. Quantum has brought speed improvements from the experimental browser engine Servo. And Enhanced Tracking Protection has brought better privacy (and speed). And none of that is done yet. (The Road goes ever on and on…) WebRender (Quantum Render) is the most recent step in the Quantum leap. Fission is a new feature of the sandbox, available in Firefox 69.
The drawing of websites when they are still loading is still slow in Firefox providing sluggish experience despite the performance improvements that were made and noticed and appreciated by yours truly. Opera Classic still beats Firefox handsdown in this respect. Do you know if there are plans on the roadmap to improve this part of Firefox’s page rendering?
Insecure connections have been marked as not secure in Chrome for a year now, and I’m not aware of that having caused any fear amongst users. If anything, it has made users aware that an insecure connection is in fact not secure. It may also have speeded up the pace in which the web becomes encrypted. A secure connection is now the norm, an insecure one is the bad (and increasingly rare) exception.
For those who want more tracking protection than Firefox has to offer, the extension Privacy Badger has recently been updated, and now blocks cookie sharing:
DoH can be enabled in the network settings. With it enabled, one can also enable ESNI (Encrypted Server Name Indication for TLS 1.3) in about:config. Set network.security.esni.enabled to true. Not yet widely used, though.
Waterfox is obsolete. It’s based upon Firefox 56 from September 2017. The work on Waterfox 68 seems to go very slowly. The first alpha release in May, and the second yesterday.
Guess that depends on your meaning of obsolete ? The security updates get applied in a timely fashion. Runs like a shiny new car. Waterfox is what Firefox once was before the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation ruined it. Once again just my opinion.
A two years old browser core is obsolete, no matter how many security patches are thrown at it.
Anyhow, this topic was not meant for discussing and debating Waterfox, or any other Firefox derivatives. And you have already expressed your opinions about the modernisation of Firefox.
A two years old browser core is obsolete ? Until your browser can do something mine can’t then you can save that. Yeah I said it back then and it still holds true. I’m done with it.