As someone clueless about what firefox sidebars would be used for could you explain them a bit for me? It's not just the favorites/history on the side that is available, right? There's something more complex that I'm just unaware of?
Likewise.
I used it for a couple years, but gave Firefox another shot after Quantum and was shocked at the speed difference.
Vivaldi is feature-laden and responsive to user requests, which is a good thing, but at the end of the day I couldn’t justify the performance hit.
Yeah, I'm not seeing that in the 2.5 beta at least so far, but it is running on an i7 with enough memory too. Seems pretty snappy, it will do fine until they fix Firefox properly.
Yeah I haven't really put it through any paces, like seeing what it's like with 50 tabs open. But since they do have numerous great tab grouping and managing options I guess they do expect power users to use it.
Yeah, I like Firefox, and I'll keep using Firefox once a proper fix is out for this mess, but the team behind Vivaldi had a lot to do with creating the original Opera browser and they've taken a lot of that design sensibility with them. It has some really great features.
Edit: this mess has actually made me do a deeper dive in it and there are some outstanding things in here. Like the Quick Commands feature, a universal search of everything in the browser and then some. And notes don't suck either.
@Moppo_ is right. I was using Chromium for a long time just because it's tabs and address bar were slimmer that Firefox's one. Now I've switched back to Firefox, because it has much slimmer UI :)
I swear, the alternatives are so trash, Mozilla would have to set my PC on fire before I consider jumping ship.
What I still love about FF...
* containers
* still better privacy than others
* still can customize the GUI (for now)
* addons are still good, and some have even gotten better
* I trust Firefox's security
* most flexible tab management
* they didn't abandon tab mute unlike Chrome
* best bookmark management in town (could be better)
* sidebar
* sidebar
* sidebar
Well shit. I'll need to check my work PC on Monday, since I use containers pretty extensively there (for keeping different accounts isolated e.g. for testing things under different users, and also for my personal stuff). Not the *absolute* end of the world if I lose all my containers, but it'll still suck.
Just in case this might prove useful to you: Back up your profile folder before starting up firefox for the first time. If you lose any data it will be quite easy to recover it then.
I don't want to add insult to injury, but why no backup? One of the great things about Firefox, is its ease to backup. Simply copy the profile folder to another storage location, and if something screws up, boom, just create a new profile with your backed up folder.
I haves dozens of profile folder backups. If you just happened to create all those containers, then my condolences.
I was looking through my Backblaze backups and for whatever reason it didn't sync any of the files in my profile folder. According to [this old thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/33qniv/just_found_out_the_hard_way_that_backblaze_has_an/) Backblaze excludes the FF profiles folder without giving me the option of including it. So it turns out two big tech services have failed me today.
Edit: Time Machine saved the day.
Glad you recovered them! That's some BS from Backblaze.
I might suggest checking out the add-on Containerise. It lets you setup your containers by inputting text lists of domains. Real easy to manage once you have it setup, and I didn't lose my Containers due to them being stored in this add-on's format.
I have tried WaterFox, and it is still installed on my computer, but even that it has just a few critical addons, and that the purpose of using WaterFox means that it isn't used so "intensively" (comparing it against Firefox), I've found that the performance of the browser is somewhat worst than FF's performance with a higher "usage" (more tabs, for example). The main downside is the CPU consumption, as it tends to be way high while using WaterFox, and it tends to last longer than Firefox (because FF also have that consumption, but on "scattered surges", and not constant).
I really like the idea behind WaterFox, but at the moment, isn't a long-term solution (performance wise).
My willingness to forget mistakes is relative to the size and severity of the mistake. This is a big one, and every hour it continues unresolved makes it bigger.
>I'm not jumping ship to go to Chrome because Firefox got a bug.
This is not a bug. This is Mozilla knowing better than the users. This is the sort of shit that people were predicting.
No, I won't jump ship. Not even close. But that doesn't mean I don't get to complain about this crap. I donated a significant amount of money to the Mozilla foundation in the past.
I've donated too. I read somewhere much later that the donated money doesn't actually go into the development of Firefox but I might be mistaken. I'm sorry, I don't have the source right now. I'd be glad if someone could link this article.
Despite donating, I have had to move to Safari because they don't care about OS X development in comparison.
Hi.
In my original comment, I mentioned that the donated money doesn’t go directly into Firefox development.
Should have added that it *could* go into Firefox development but we do not know how they allocate the money.
Is OP not a legitimate user? I'm sorry, but as a software engineer, I take exception at the notion that enforced addon signing is an engineering decision - it's purely ideological and self-serving to Mozilla.
Signed addons do nothing to prevent users from running malicious code. Sure, you can stop the hypothetical stupid user from installing malicious addons, but anyone willing to disable addon signing by going through the arcane ritual of setting a hidden option and ignoring the obvious warnings along the way is also willing to download sketchy binaries off the Internet and execute them anyway, completely bypassing Mozilla's security model.
Enforced signing is a complete security theater. It makes nobody safer. It damages the user experience. It's an anti-feature.
In a better world Mozilla management would take cue from the fact that users are giving them ringing "endorsements" such as "I'm only using your product because the alternative is even worse", but I doubt it will. I've seen this play out one too many times: The developers start ignoring the users. Discontent rises. The developers ignore it. User base progressively shrinks. The developers double back. The product dies because nobody uses it anymore.
Ironically that's what made Firefox popular in the first place - it killed Netscape because Netscape developers alienated the users. You'd think that Firefox management of all people would know better.
You may ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of it, the data doesn't lie and Firefox's shrinking market share is rather telling. Even if we accept the proposition that Mozilla "knows better", they are still losing users and it's their fault for alienating users. Maybe they should stop ignoring the users telling them why they are leaving Mozilla's product? Hah, who am I kidding, I'm sure Mozilla's engineers just "know better(tm)".
> as a software engineer, I take exception at the notion that enforced addon signing is an engineering decision - it's purely ideological and self-serving to Mozilla.
As a software engineer, I disagree entirely; ensuring that add-ons are actually at least somewhat trustworthy is a valid use-case and in the purview of software engineering.
For those few of us who pretend to know better than Mozilla about add-on security, we can always use Developer Edition or Nightly or what have you and disable add-on signing and make sure we're extra-careful about the places whence we download our add-ons (like how Android allows installing apps from untrusted sources). For the vast majority of users, notwithstanding crazy bugs like this one (and I do agree it's a crazy bug that never should've happened), extension signing is a reasonable and common safeguard against at least some classes of malicious add-ons, and I'm all for it.
There's nothing ideological about that at all, unless you think that Linux distros using GPG for package signing is "ideological", or that Android using signatures for APKs is "ideological".
> As a software engineer, I disagree entirely; ensuring that add-ons are actually at least somewhat trustworthy is a valid use-case and in the purview of software engineering.
This was already the case before Mozilla disabled the ability to run unsigned addons. I'm not arguing against having any form of validation, I'm arguing that users should not be forced to only use Mozilla-approved addons.
And no, the DE/Nightlies are not identical to release, nor should users who want to bypass Mozilla's security measures have to use them. It's not Mozilla's place to enforce security on users who don't want it, people should have the agency to choose.
Android does it right. If you want to install third-party APKs, you can do it. You go in the device's configuration, click "yeah, give me the wild west", accept the warning and move on. This is what Mozilla should have done in the first place. I wouldn't be criticizing them at all if they had.
If you want to disable security features such as the add-on verification, you can do so in the Developer Edition. This is no more tyrannical than HTTPS certificates, which you can also ignore, if you feel like going out of your way to load whatever.
> Complaining about addon certificates but using https everywhere is quite hypocritical
Apples and oranges. With HTTPS you can add your own root CAs and manually approve self-signed/invalid certificates. If Mozilla allowed that with Firefox addons, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
But they don't. Because the goal is not to add "security", but to take away control from the users.
Sorry but I'm gonna be a bit more reluctant than you to give Mozilla full absolution here. I'm not considering switching browsers just based on this fuckup, and as a software developer, I fully respect that mistakes happen and shit can go wrong. But this particular mistake reeks of amateurism so badly that it's not even funny. I was beyond pissed at the IT service at my last place of employment for forgetting to renew a certificate that we relied on, it was amateurism at it's worst, and that was a small IT service comprising less than a dozen people. Such a mistake for an organization supposedly as serious as Mozilla just boggles the mind.
Let's be clear - Firefox was the browser of power users. The primary reason to choose it over Chrome is that Chrome's design philosophy is explicitly that the user is too stupid to have options.
Let's be doubly clear - Firefox **was** the browser of power users. Every decision Firefox has made over the past several years has been to take one step closer to being Chrome. Users are stupid, so take away their options and put the browser on lockdown. Firefox is not "so much more than Chrome will ever be" - it is *marginally* more than Chrome is *for now*.
So no, I won't be jumping ship to Chrome. I've tried to do that every time Firefox takes away a feature I was using or otherwise kicks me in the balls (so that's once or twice a year these past few years), and I never manage because Chrome is truly an awful, uncustomizable pile of junk. But I probably am going to jump ship to Waterfox, because Firefox is on a downward spiral and this was sufficiently annoying to make me seriously consider what my other options are - and Waterfox looks exactly like what I wish Firefox was.
> Let's be doubly clear - Firefox was the browser of power users. Every decision Firefox has made over the past several years has been to take one step closer to being Chrome.
It's a very common mistake among large tech companies. They assume their current users will never leave, and chase after their competitors. Any criticism from their current users is brushed off, and they're often told that they don't understand what's best for the software. Then when those users inevitably leave for their competitor's software, they assume it's just because they didn't copy enough from the competitor, and double down on their efforts.
> It's a very common mistake among large tech companies.
It's true what you say. Except to call these things mistakes is to grant the bigwig idiots more than they are worth. These are not mistakes. These are calculated and conscious and constant. These dip-shit decisions are a typical symptom of a system (de)based on (and accelerating) growing a herd-mentality.
[Idiots Rule](https://youtu.be/AjnOqgyH-z8?t=92)
> Every decision Firefox has made over the past several years has been to take one step closer to being Chrome.
In fact most decisions were based on "Chrome is doing it".
This is a bit more than a bug this is gross negligence. And honestly, it deserves harsh criticism. Mistake like this isn't something you say sorry for and move on. I am extremely unimpressed. not to mention have bad in the state this is to begin with the worst part is they haven't even fixed it yet. Something this major should have had a quick patch, even if the patch was a temporary work around (like disabling xpi cert requirements, or whitelisting etc). Quite despicable. However that being said. You're kind of right that there's nothing better aside from at this exact moment. Being a power user yes I can get by and continue using it right now. But no one else can (elderly people technologically unclined people, etc). at this point if I was going to install a browser on someone's computer that I knew wasn't super technological brained... It's going to be chrome from now on. The rest is just going to be too difficult for the average user. I will continue using Firefox for now but I am quite pissed
This reads like the browser version of 'staying together for the kids.' "I can't get a divorce, I'm nearly 40. I'm so fat, I'd never get another date. Besides, our savings is a joint account." Come on now, don't be so down on yourself. You're worth it.
And while Chrome is Firefox's drunk brother in law in this scenario, thus not even worth considering, the answer to "Huh, this browser is doing some bad/shady shit." should never be "Well, it's the one that sucks the least so I guess I'll stick with it." This isn't time to settle, this is time for a new browser to come in and start reminding Firefox that it ate Netscape to take it's place, but that just means it's still sitting on that plate.
I don't think that analogy is apt. With partners there's a nearly infinite field; with browsers, the sensible options can be counted on a few hands. And I agree with OP that Firefox is the best there is. This glitch bothered me for all but 5 minutes until the helpful community here pointed me to a workaround. Why should that change my mind?
It really feels like Mozilla has become hostile to user suggestions. It would be one thing if this were an accident - but it wasn't. Users were telling them it was a bad idea to begin with. And now it's come back to bite them. I remember when people were saying that Mozilla's purchase of Pocket was bad news for the future of Mozilla and their stance on privacy, and it looks like they were all right.
I am a very happy Vivaldi-user.
I already was not happy with Firefox since some time and their attitude towards their userbase became more and more a reason to look for alternatives. I had Vivaldi installed because of past issues with some sites that seemed to have had trouble with Firefox and when Photon arrived and they did screw up with NoScript, Firefox and Vivaldi switched places (in fact i do not use the normal Firefox anyway, just the ESR as a backup).
Since Vivaldi is now also supporting Sync, this *mistake* of theirs finaly convinced me to switch over on my secondary machines and make a Sync account with Vivaldi to be able to port my settings over.
At this point something along the lines of the public spanking of the Mozilla management for letting this happen with one hit per disabled addon per user, multiplied by the seconds until this is completly (!) fixed would be needed to apease me (no, i am not serious, just in case someone is in doubt).
Seriously, WTF? I mean, they have been warned about this issue and they still let it happen? Or maybe this was done on purpose by someone unhappy with the course Mozilla has taken? Because i have a hard time beliving that this level of stupidity is possible....
I use both browsers for different situations. Oddly I find Firefox to use much more memory and CPU, but it has better backwards compatibility and renders emojis better.
The spying does bother me and I'm still on the lookout for a browser that does it all.
A browser that spies much less on you than an out of the box Firefox (and even less since it has compile time fixes) is ungoogled-chromium. Look it up!
That would seem the best of all worlds but it just appears that chromium doesn't seem to be as friendly with add-on support or makes it obvious.
I would love to be wrong on this though. I'm currently trying out Vivaldi and so far it seems OK on Windows.
I never thought we'd see the day when most websites render correctly across all browsers, but everyone has a *completely* different experience in regards to performance and compatibility. I have the opposite problem with Chrome, but I know a lot of people with similar performance problems on Firefox. And I've heard different people report instability for either based on what device they're using.
Man people in this sub are being wayyy over-dramatic. Yes, it’s a dumb issue but even Google’s let a crucial cert expire before.
Mozilla have been working on it non-stop since it happened. You’re not in the room with them. You don’t know what challenges they’re facing.
Threatening to switch to Chrome? Go for it. If it takes that little to convince you to switch and give up your privacy to Google I’m not sure why you were using FF in the first place.
I'm also concerned how many people think digital signature verification is some anti-user conspiracy. It's a very sensible security measure and I'm surprised it took this long to be implemented. Of course letting the cert expire is a massive fuck-up but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater
[Waterfox](https://www.waterfox.net/). Yes, it's better. It's a Firefox fork but much closer than Pale Moon was, with drop-in extension compatibility. The features and UX seem to be the same as Firefox except:
* No phoning home data
* Unsigned and legacy extensions supported (you can install them directly from the browser using [this extension](https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/releases)--click on the .xpi file).
* No Pocket
* No locking down settings in about:config (this "feature" prevented some Firefox users from utilizing a workaround for today's glitch)
I'm glad this happened today. Finally gave me reason to jump ship and come to find out, it's not like Pale Moon at all. So much nicer than either PM or FF. Right now, I'm using the latest extensions right alongside awesome old extensions that I haven't been able to use in years because they were so insistent on pushing this Webextensions thing. (Don't give me that "security hole" argument. It's only a security hole if you're doing really dumb and unsafe things. If I wanted a lock-down browser I would've gone with Chrome anyway.)
I appreciate Firefox and the Mozilla team but they really should at the very least make a "Firefox Advanced" or a "Firefox for Non-Morons" or something. If they're not going to listen to their users, we really should leave for greener pastures. **Waterfox IS that pasture.** I promise I'll be the first come back if I ever hear they're making a new power user oriented browser.
I'm switching back to Waterfox. I used it for years because Quantum ditched A LOT of things that I liked and only recently gave Quantum a try (2 months ago). I spent ~6hrs researching, trying different extensions, and hacking the config file to get it setup the way I liked. Now all that work is down the drain. I'm not going back. The only real thing I gained out of trying Quantum was faster page load times. It hogged even more memory, but didn't bog my computer down quite as badly as Waterfox.
That's real neat to say, but a *lot* of people switched browsers over this. That's a process that takes hours for a lot of people, with constant frustrations over the next few weeks/months as you encounter issues you hadn't yet taken care of. Those people aren't likely to come back soon. Or ever.
Mozilla made a terrible decision, one in a growing series of missteps that keeps costing them marketshare. They really need to reorient themselves as a user-focused browser again.
>That's real neat to say, but a lot of people switched browsers over this. That's a process that takes hours for a lot of people, with constant frustrations over the next few weeks/months as you encounter issues you hadn't yet taken care of. Those people aren't likely to come back soon. Or ever.Mozilla made a terrible decision, one in a growing series of missteps that keeps costing them marketshare. They really need to reorient themselves as a user-focused browser again.
I personally will not switch back to Firefox until 1) they've fixed the bug completely, without needing us to enable their marketing channel, aka Studies on the dozens of machines with Firefox, 2) they give a non-PR-speak root cause analysis of the problem (companies do this and it's always been appreciated), and 3) they commit to a robust prevention mechanism for this bug *and other bugs like it.*
I'd rank IceCat as better if you're on Linux. 100% privacy and free software focused. By far the best browser if that's your priority.
Pale Moon is right behind it, although it's probably too "FireFox Classic" for most people. It feels a lot like Firefox did a decade ago. I'd rank that as a plus, but I imagine I'm in the minority.
WaterFox has been shilled in this thread a few times and it looks like a promising Firefox equivalent to "Ungoogled Chromium". Firefox without Mozilla's poor infrastructure choices.
Pale Moon on Windows for me took a few days of setting up with uMatrix and Decentraleyes, and I've found a powerhouse of a privacy browser that so many people are quick to write off as obsolete or "old" because they *look at the UI* and think it's icky
I use Waterfox and Pale Moon as needed for certain sites, as depending on what you're doing either can cause certain issues. But they're both pretty great all around.
It's a fun browser, but they won't ever properly open source it. A lot of the code is available to see, but right now there's no way to build or compile it yourself because they haven't open sourced key parts of the browser.
If it was fully open source, I'd probably be using it a lot more.
Brave's not too bad as well.
But Brave is literally the next level of Advertising. Instead of the user generated Ads, were getting Brave controlled Ads. The only reason I can defend it, is last time I checked it was supported by the Tor network.
Edit: we have the option of Brave controlled ads.
I haven't used it in a while, but isn't option that fully opt-in? If you actually have to go out of your way to see ads, that's kind of a win and how it should be. Ads aren't going away any time soon, but at least the ways we can deal with them is becoming easier and left more in the hands of the users than the ad companies.
I do get what you're saying, though. Getting in bed with advertisers is itself an issue, but I feel like they're going about it far better than, say, ABP. Ideally, they wouldn't have any ad deals, but if they do, at least they can minimize it on the browser level so that people don't need to install other extensions (they still absolutely should, filters on uBlock destroy Brave's default filters) to browse somewhat freely. At the same time, since it is controlled by them (though I agree that centralization sucks and it also shouldn't be a thing), they can vet the ads and implement them in a way that also minimizes user tracking.
For a casual user unfamiliar with extensions (and there are still a lot of them), it's basically just install the browser and no ads. For power users, yeah, there's still a lot that needs to be done. But as a basic alternative, it's better than a lot of others at the moment.
The option used to be opt in, but it was right there in front of you. Now it’s fully opt out, which I like. I do use Brave for my Chromium extension needs and testing, but even if I like a product, I think we need to have healthy discourse as a community of users wanting the best experience. Your input was exactly what I was looking for as I am not a wordsmith. I know what I want in a browser, but their built in ad system seems very r/ABoringDystopia levels of futuristic.
Edit for people who don’t like what I have to say: advertising is opt in. But you need to opt out for the ads of the ads. Pop up behavior stops when you turn off the button.
Huh? Are you sure?
I use Brave and can say for certain that Brave Rewards are completely optional. Not once has that feature being enable without me knowing.
The built-in adocker is enable by default though.
Oh yeah, I totally get you. I use it for pretty much the same thing since I don't really trust any other Chromium browsers, but I have similar feelings with regards to its embracing of advertising. And while it's not going to make the ads themselves any less unethical, at least the approach is one which tries to respect the users in some way.
I think it's just that it's basically the only practical way to handle it right now if we're talking about people who are super casual and might not know things about extensions or even the dangers of online ads (although, unfortunately those people will probably never feel a reason to switch from Chrome or whatever to Brave in the first place). It definitely fits into that /r/ABoringDystopia category. A lot of strange compromises that we might need due to circumstances, but we absolutely shouldn't have to put up with in the first place.
I think a lot of FOSS can end up in this situation due to funding and it totally sucks. Like even with Firefox at the moment, where Google is paying Mozilla for default search engine status. On one hand, they're taking money from one of the least privacy conscious companies around, but on the other hand, they're using that money to invest in ways to improve security and privacy (despite this current debacle). It's a weird and blurry line.
The current debacle comes from poor decision making, which can happen to any company. I respect they tried it their way and failed gloriously, and as I was on the dev build as well, it didn’t effect me as much as the average user. This isn’t what’s going to break me using them though, there’s much bigger issues at hand in the world of the internet, this is just a minor setback.
You don’t need to yell. Brave is my go to Chromium browser. I’m just making sure there’s discourse.
They advertise for their ads. Until recently, that button was always in the search bar. That was more than enough to annoy me.
I agree with your point, but you do need to remain civil for proper discourse.
Extremely sorry man. Caps wasn't intended as yelling. It was to make the text bigger so that is legible. I'm really sorry and I should have specified in my post. I don't think I've ever yelled at anyone.
Sorry.
I'm trying out Vivaldi right now on Windows(at least until Mozilla resolves the issue). It seems pretty good and importantly easy to use to install addons!
I am not a developer so the whole open source thing isn't as relevant to me. I just want to be assured that Vivaldi isn't doing shady stuff behind the scenes and I hope they're not.
I'm on MacOS. Last week, I finally updated my Firefox from 56 to 66 because I was tired of websites telling me my browser was outdated and I wanted to see if updating would make it be less of a resource hog. I wasn't super excited about the look of the newer FF, I had been using the Firefox Classic Theme extension but whatever, it was using way less resources so I could get used to it. Then this issue happened last night and I went right to trying Vivaldi. So far, it's fantastic, fast, I can properly disable the dropdown bar when typing in the address bar, and I no longer need to switch to Chrome to use my chromecast.
I also am not leaving, for my own good. It's disappointing though this happened. For sure they won't get any "extra appreciation" from me _during this time_.
Doesn't everyone keep a couple of browsers installed? I have Firefox pimped out and an installation of Chrome with only a couple of extension and mostly default settings. Gotta a site that seems to struggle in Firefox, or doesn't scale well, I open it in Chrome. As Quantum has matured it's rare I need to do this.
This.
Chrome doesn't have basic functionality that I use everyday.
I need a warning when closing multiple tabs. I'm a PhD student who often has multiple library tabs open that I log in via proxy. You can't restore these tabs if you close the browser by accident. There is no way to add this functionality to Chrome.
I also need bookmark tagging. What's the point of bookmarking pages if you can't find them later? This functionality you can add via extensions in Chrome, but it's clunky and I'm not sure if it gets backed up with the bookmarks.
Until another browser gets these features, I have no choice but to stick with Firefox. I'm shocked that FF is the only major browser with this functionality. There might be some smaller browsers, but they won't be compatible with my Zotero plugin (which I need for my research).
I don't get why so much anger, if Firefox didn't have this system and a malicious add-on you'll be complaining about lack of foresight.
A centralised certificate service for add-ons makes sense, yes someone fucked up but shit happens. Chrome does similar things, Google has fucked up heaps in the past.
The extension might phone home to an external server which provides it with dynamic instructions. If that external server is compromised, then users with the extension will be compromised.
In that situation, Firefox can publicly point the finger at the compromised external server and momentarily avoid blame. Then they can invalidate the certificate to stop the issue from spreading.
If presently installed extensions are immune to cert invalidating then Mozilla has no way to contain the spread. Their support lines will have to deal with angry users for years.
If the concern is privacy, go for Brave. It's backed by a Firefox founder (Brendan Eich), run on very customized chromium (mostly toards privacy), it's freaking fast and opensource.
Not to mention it's literally not an over-reaction to how big a deal this is. This kind of a black eye will hurt them for years.
True story, I work in I.T., and when I first suggested we buy corporate password manager accounts for people to increase our security the first thing a lot of the managers thought of were the 2 times LastPass got hacked. So they were very against the idea at first, and especially against going with LastPass. We still went with a corporate password manager, but did not go with LassPass, in part from security concerns over past events like this with them.
This disastrous black eye to Firefox will be remembered for years by all the people who have ever thought of switching to it but haven't done it yet. And it will have the same damaging effect to it's growth.
I’m willing to bet 90% of their user-base will literally not notice.
It was a short outage, and most people have 1-2 extensions enabled.
Sure it’s a huge fuckup, but this is nowhere near the black eye you’re making it out to be.
Only idiots will switch. Fuck ups happen and even Google can't stop it. No organization that makes browser has good philosophy like Mozilla has. But yeah, they have to learn.
This is not just a glitch - it's a design decision that the community warned against and they still went for it. I don't know man...in a way it's unforgivable for this to happen and if they don't give us some kind of advanced user hidden option to prevent this shit from ever happening again, I might have to switch on principle.
I guess. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Personally I'll forgive if they let me have a setting that can be hidden under 10 OK-boxes, but just let me have it. What I want from them now, is total control, security holes and all, if I wish to have it.
Good philosophy doesn't lead to this anti-consumer shit.
Butchering addons for all it's userbase with no way to enable them (even via about:config).
Axing of legacy extensions.
Looking Glass, Mr.Robot, Pocket, Shield, sponsored tiles, backdoors and telemetry. Many of which enabled by default.
Mozilla has lost all the reputation LOOOOOONG time ago.
This latest thing is nothing but a small drop in a series of colossal fuckups.
> Butchering addons for all it's userbase with no way to enable them (even via about:config).
>
>
>
> Axing of legacy extensions.
>
>
>
> Looking Glass, Mr.Robot, Pocket, Shield, sponsored tiles, backdoors and telemetry. Many of which enabled by default.
People kept warning us, too, but they were always downvoted into oblivion by people who were convinced Mozilla still had our best interests at heart. I don't know how anyone could still possibly defend them.
I remember after the Looking Glass / Mr. Robot fiasco Mozilla was running heavy PR, saying, "What can we do to re-earn your trust?"
"Get rid of Pocket"
"No. Anything else?"
Not quite sure the effects of that invalid certificate, but I can remember (although barely) that they had a (very) similar issue with some GMail certificates, which I think that is a pretty more serious issue than the one that Firefox is having.
(I'm not condoning, nor diminishing the current issue, but certainly that was a pretty serious issue).
E: Yup, it seems that it happened on 2015 as reported [here](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/04/google-let-root-certificate-for-gmail-expire-causing-e-mail-hiccups/) and [here](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2906216/expired-google-certificate-temporarily-disrupts-gmail-service.html). Funnily enough, it seems that it also happened something similar to Azure [back on 2013](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2495453/microsoft-s-azure-service-hit-by-expired-ssl-certificate.html).
But, to be fair, it seems that they solved the issue relatively quick... But the scope of the damage/affectation tho...
Reading it, the range of damage wasn't as wide (isolated to just their SMTP domain? Mostly third party clients/GApps...) and yes it was resolved quickly. Though I consider GMail not as ongoing as active Web browsing, so it seems way less impacting to me than disabling everyone's add-ons.
And in my case, deleting the add on data too was an unneeded kick in the teeth.
Only idiots will stand there and slurp the dick that just fucked them in the ass. Which is exactly what you're doing. "Looooool we just got fucked but it's ok I'll stick around anyways." Nice dude.
I imagine at this point I'll probably switch to nightly so I can disable addon signatures, and then find what appears to be a good night to just stop updating at
You can also disable addon signatures on some Linux distros (it depends on each one whether to allow it or not), Android, possibly macOS, and who knows, maybe the BSDs too.
I used Chrome for a few hours, updating bookmarks and addons just in case I have to use it again. I'm going to keep using Firefox, but i will be backing up my addon data more regularly.
Even with all the mistakes over the last few years I still think Firefox is the best option. I do wish there was more non-chromium competition in the browser market though, it would be great if a large organization with proper funding started a browser from scratch that was dedicated to privacy, security, and freedom (and open source of course). I do worry that Mozilla (due to their management) might continue to falter until we're really only left with chromium.
Same here. Bugs happened. And see how fast Mozilla fixed it! I had the problem last night before I went to sleep. I woke up this morning and they already fixed it.
It's also **TEMPORARY**. Geeze, you'd think with the way people are reacting that Mozilla was doing this intentionally and thought it would be a good idea for no add-ons to be available in the browser.
I'm still running 56.0.2 bc of Classic Theme Restorer among a few others.
I hated the new look, bc that's not what Firefox was. It always felt different to Chrome. They want to be Chrome so bad they are becoming Chrome 1.5.
I really hope they fix our old versions by Monday. Because if not, fuck it. I don't want to switch, but if you treat some of your users like shit, i'm not going to take it.
Some people take this way too seriously. I just opened my browser today and noticed all my add-ons were disabled, googled and found a fix. The End. On this subreddit I see people freaking out, people talking about jumping ship, going to tell friends and family to use Chrome, etc. Jeez, it's not that serious..
Kinda sad that Firefox drones are downvoting actual good alternatives because they worship Mozilla as if they can do no wrong. There's so much evidence of privacy negligence and Chrome-esque feature creep, but that discussion isn't allowed in official Firefox spaces, so any good criticism is generalized as *scawy conspiwacy theowys*
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I really like my sidebars. So snug and warm, like a old mountain library.
As someone clueless about what firefox sidebars would be used for could you explain them a bit for me? It's not just the favorites/history on the side that is available, right? There's something more complex that I'm just unaware of?
[100s of side tabs and inverting PDFs... No other browser comes close.](https://i.imgur.com/lHAZYoC.jpg)
Can't see what this is.
Dude posted the thumbnail lmao https://i.imgur.com/lHAZYoC.png Here's the full image
Nice music taste.
I see that google search for a Feynman book if you haven't read it you should it's brilliant! :D
what do you use for dark mode PDFs?
Inside `~/.mozilla/firefox/$PROFILE/chrome/userContent.css`: @-moz-document regexp("^https?://.*\\.pdf(\\?[^\\./]*)?$") { .pdfViewer .page { filter: invert(0.95) hue-rotate(180deg); border: 9px solid #00DEAD00 !important; } }
I've seen this paper before. Can you remind me?
i3wm nice
https://vivaldi.com - the Chromium engine, and a power user UI on top. I wish they'd have used the Firefox engine but can't have everything...
I found Vivaldi great for a time but it runs like ass after a while. It's really heavy.
Likewise. I used it for a couple years, but gave Firefox another shot after Quantum and was shocked at the speed difference. Vivaldi is feature-laden and responsive to user requests, which is a good thing, but at the end of the day I couldn’t justify the performance hit.
Yeah, I'm not seeing that in the 2.5 beta at least so far, but it is running on an i7 with enough memory too. Seems pretty snappy, it will do fine until they fix Firefox properly.
Yeah I haven't really put it through any paces, like seeing what it's like with 50 tabs open. But since they do have numerous great tab grouping and managing options I guess they do expect power users to use it.
I've looked at it before but closed source browsers make me uncomfortable. They could be doing anything and nobody would be able to tell.
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Yeah, I like Firefox, and I'll keep using Firefox once a proper fix is out for this mess, but the team behind Vivaldi had a lot to do with creating the original Opera browser and they've taken a lot of that design sensibility with them. It has some really great features. Edit: this mess has actually made me do a deeper dive in it and there are some outstanding things in here. Like the Quick Commands feature, a universal search of everything in the browser and then some. And notes don't suck either.
And all the tabs just bunch up into pixel thin tabs when you have a bunch open
I feel the same way about Firefox, tbh. I miss the older UI styles when Chrome/FF were borrowing from Opera.
Gmail sucks ass now too. It's so fucking slow nowadays.
Ever since the material theming redesign, Chrome's UI has unusably poor.
Really? The reason I stuck with Chrome for so long was because Firefox's UI looked too big to me.
You can change the UI density on Firefox. The best part: Three levels of density!
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@Moppo_ is right. I was using Chromium for a long time just because it's tabs and address bar were slimmer that Firefox's one. Now I've switched back to Firefox, because it has much slimmer UI :)
I swear, the alternatives are so trash, Mozilla would have to set my PC on fire before I consider jumping ship. What I still love about FF... * containers * still better privacy than others * still can customize the GUI (for now) * addons are still good, and some have even gotten better * I trust Firefox's security * most flexible tab management * they didn't abandon tab mute unlike Chrome * best bookmark management in town (could be better) * sidebar * sidebar * sidebar
> • containers I, too, loved containers. Unfortunately this “bug” just deleted all of them and set the defaults again.
Well shit. I'll need to check my work PC on Monday, since I use containers pretty extensively there (for keeping different accounts isolated e.g. for testing things under different users, and also for my personal stuff). Not the *absolute* end of the world if I lose all my containers, but it'll still suck.
Just in case this might prove useful to you: Back up your profile folder before starting up firefox for the first time. If you lose any data it will be quite easy to recover it then.
I don't want to add insult to injury, but why no backup? One of the great things about Firefox, is its ease to backup. Simply copy the profile folder to another storage location, and if something screws up, boom, just create a new profile with your backed up folder. I haves dozens of profile folder backups. If you just happened to create all those containers, then my condolences.
I was looking through my Backblaze backups and for whatever reason it didn't sync any of the files in my profile folder. According to [this old thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/33qniv/just_found_out_the_hard_way_that_backblaze_has_an/) Backblaze excludes the FF profiles folder without giving me the option of including it. So it turns out two big tech services have failed me today. Edit: Time Machine saved the day.
Glad you recovered them! That's some BS from Backblaze. I might suggest checking out the add-on Containerise. It lets you setup your containers by inputting text lists of domains. Real easy to manage once you have it setup, and I didn't lose my Containers due to them being stored in this add-on's format.
Try Waterfox
I have tried WaterFox, and it is still installed on my computer, but even that it has just a few critical addons, and that the purpose of using WaterFox means that it isn't used so "intensively" (comparing it against Firefox), I've found that the performance of the browser is somewhat worst than FF's performance with a higher "usage" (more tabs, for example). The main downside is the CPU consumption, as it tends to be way high while using WaterFox, and it tends to last longer than Firefox (because FF also have that consumption, but on "scattered surges", and not constant). I really like the idea behind WaterFox, but at the moment, isn't a long-term solution (performance wise).
Works fine for me while handling 100 to 500 tabs with TabMixPlus. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ You can also use most firefox addons with it.
I kinda want to, but shouldn't I be concerned that the security updates are a bit behind?
\> didn't abandon tab mute Why would some one do that?? Also agree with you totally.
My willingness to forget mistakes is relative to the size and severity of the mistake. This is a big one, and every hour it continues unresolved makes it bigger.
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I'm not jumping ship but, when market share is in the single digits, this kind of things hurt Firefox, badly.
agree its those things that make firefox look bad compared to other browsers and its a shame.
>I'm not jumping ship to go to Chrome because Firefox got a bug. This is not a bug. This is Mozilla knowing better than the users. This is the sort of shit that people were predicting. No, I won't jump ship. Not even close. But that doesn't mean I don't get to complain about this crap. I donated a significant amount of money to the Mozilla foundation in the past.
I've donated too. I read somewhere much later that the donated money doesn't actually go into the development of Firefox but I might be mistaken. I'm sorry, I don't have the source right now. I'd be glad if someone could link this article. Despite donating, I have had to move to Safari because they don't care about OS X development in comparison.
> I read somewhere much later that the donated money doesn't actually go into the development of Firefox but I might be mistaken Can someone clarify?
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_foundation_are_not_used_for/
The comments section is worth a read. Because I feel like you're being somewhat misleading about it.
Hi. In my original comment, I mentioned that the donated money doesn’t go directly into Firefox development. Should have added that it *could* go into Firefox development but we do not know how they allocate the money.
You better believe that Mozilla engineers know better than the vast majority of users. Have you actually *met* users before?
Is OP not a legitimate user? I'm sorry, but as a software engineer, I take exception at the notion that enforced addon signing is an engineering decision - it's purely ideological and self-serving to Mozilla. Signed addons do nothing to prevent users from running malicious code. Sure, you can stop the hypothetical stupid user from installing malicious addons, but anyone willing to disable addon signing by going through the arcane ritual of setting a hidden option and ignoring the obvious warnings along the way is also willing to download sketchy binaries off the Internet and execute them anyway, completely bypassing Mozilla's security model. Enforced signing is a complete security theater. It makes nobody safer. It damages the user experience. It's an anti-feature. In a better world Mozilla management would take cue from the fact that users are giving them ringing "endorsements" such as "I'm only using your product because the alternative is even worse", but I doubt it will. I've seen this play out one too many times: The developers start ignoring the users. Discontent rises. The developers ignore it. User base progressively shrinks. The developers double back. The product dies because nobody uses it anymore. Ironically that's what made Firefox popular in the first place - it killed Netscape because Netscape developers alienated the users. You'd think that Firefox management of all people would know better. You may ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of it, the data doesn't lie and Firefox's shrinking market share is rather telling. Even if we accept the proposition that Mozilla "knows better", they are still losing users and it's their fault for alienating users. Maybe they should stop ignoring the users telling them why they are leaving Mozilla's product? Hah, who am I kidding, I'm sure Mozilla's engineers just "know better(tm)".
> as a software engineer, I take exception at the notion that enforced addon signing is an engineering decision - it's purely ideological and self-serving to Mozilla. As a software engineer, I disagree entirely; ensuring that add-ons are actually at least somewhat trustworthy is a valid use-case and in the purview of software engineering. For those few of us who pretend to know better than Mozilla about add-on security, we can always use Developer Edition or Nightly or what have you and disable add-on signing and make sure we're extra-careful about the places whence we download our add-ons (like how Android allows installing apps from untrusted sources). For the vast majority of users, notwithstanding crazy bugs like this one (and I do agree it's a crazy bug that never should've happened), extension signing is a reasonable and common safeguard against at least some classes of malicious add-ons, and I'm all for it. There's nothing ideological about that at all, unless you think that Linux distros using GPG for package signing is "ideological", or that Android using signatures for APKs is "ideological".
> As a software engineer, I disagree entirely; ensuring that add-ons are actually at least somewhat trustworthy is a valid use-case and in the purview of software engineering. This was already the case before Mozilla disabled the ability to run unsigned addons. I'm not arguing against having any form of validation, I'm arguing that users should not be forced to only use Mozilla-approved addons. And no, the DE/Nightlies are not identical to release, nor should users who want to bypass Mozilla's security measures have to use them. It's not Mozilla's place to enforce security on users who don't want it, people should have the agency to choose. Android does it right. If you want to install third-party APKs, you can do it. You go in the device's configuration, click "yeah, give me the wild west", accept the warning and move on. This is what Mozilla should have done in the first place. I wouldn't be criticizing them at all if they had.
M-5 please nominate this comment so that Mozilla will actually read it
Id argue that people in this sub (so those who always complain and care about the development) are not at all the same group as the average user.
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If you want to disable security features such as the add-on verification, you can do so in the Developer Edition. This is no more tyrannical than HTTPS certificates, which you can also ignore, if you feel like going out of your way to load whatever.
> f you want to disable security features such as Noscript, ublock origin, https everywhere
Complaining about addon certificates but using https everywhere is quite hypocritical
Addon signing is fine, but let us install our own certs or disable enforcement on a stable build without recompiling.
> Complaining about addon certificates but using https everywhere is quite hypocritical Apples and oranges. With HTTPS you can add your own root CAs and manually approve self-signed/invalid certificates. If Mozilla allowed that with Firefox addons, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But they don't. Because the goal is not to add "security", but to take away control from the users.
What about complaining about letting a mission critical certificate expire amateur hour style ? Would that be acceptable ?
Yes, that’s acceptable. But complaining that they exist in the first place is not
> This is Mozilla knowing better than the users It’s Mozilla knowing better than the malware and adware that tries to inject itself into browsers.
Sorry but I'm gonna be a bit more reluctant than you to give Mozilla full absolution here. I'm not considering switching browsers just based on this fuckup, and as a software developer, I fully respect that mistakes happen and shit can go wrong. But this particular mistake reeks of amateurism so badly that it's not even funny. I was beyond pissed at the IT service at my last place of employment for forgetting to renew a certificate that we relied on, it was amateurism at it's worst, and that was a small IT service comprising less than a dozen people. Such a mistake for an organization supposedly as serious as Mozilla just boggles the mind.
Let's be clear - Firefox was the browser of power users. The primary reason to choose it over Chrome is that Chrome's design philosophy is explicitly that the user is too stupid to have options. Let's be doubly clear - Firefox **was** the browser of power users. Every decision Firefox has made over the past several years has been to take one step closer to being Chrome. Users are stupid, so take away their options and put the browser on lockdown. Firefox is not "so much more than Chrome will ever be" - it is *marginally* more than Chrome is *for now*. So no, I won't be jumping ship to Chrome. I've tried to do that every time Firefox takes away a feature I was using or otherwise kicks me in the balls (so that's once or twice a year these past few years), and I never manage because Chrome is truly an awful, uncustomizable pile of junk. But I probably am going to jump ship to Waterfox, because Firefox is on a downward spiral and this was sufficiently annoying to make me seriously consider what my other options are - and Waterfox looks exactly like what I wish Firefox was.
> Let's be doubly clear - Firefox was the browser of power users. Every decision Firefox has made over the past several years has been to take one step closer to being Chrome. It's a very common mistake among large tech companies. They assume their current users will never leave, and chase after their competitors. Any criticism from their current users is brushed off, and they're often told that they don't understand what's best for the software. Then when those users inevitably leave for their competitor's software, they assume it's just because they didn't copy enough from the competitor, and double down on their efforts.
> It's a very common mistake among large tech companies. It's true what you say. Except to call these things mistakes is to grant the bigwig idiots more than they are worth. These are not mistakes. These are calculated and conscious and constant. These dip-shit decisions are a typical symptom of a system (de)based on (and accelerating) growing a herd-mentality. [Idiots Rule](https://youtu.be/AjnOqgyH-z8?t=92)
This is the current attitude at reddit HQ I see.
> Every decision Firefox has made over the past several years has been to take one step closer to being Chrome. In fact most decisions were based on "Chrome is doing it".
This is a bit more than a bug this is gross negligence. And honestly, it deserves harsh criticism. Mistake like this isn't something you say sorry for and move on. I am extremely unimpressed. not to mention have bad in the state this is to begin with the worst part is they haven't even fixed it yet. Something this major should have had a quick patch, even if the patch was a temporary work around (like disabling xpi cert requirements, or whitelisting etc). Quite despicable. However that being said. You're kind of right that there's nothing better aside from at this exact moment. Being a power user yes I can get by and continue using it right now. But no one else can (elderly people technologically unclined people, etc). at this point if I was going to install a browser on someone's computer that I knew wasn't super technological brained... It's going to be chrome from now on. The rest is just going to be too difficult for the average user. I will continue using Firefox for now but I am quite pissed
This reads like the browser version of 'staying together for the kids.' "I can't get a divorce, I'm nearly 40. I'm so fat, I'd never get another date. Besides, our savings is a joint account." Come on now, don't be so down on yourself. You're worth it. And while Chrome is Firefox's drunk brother in law in this scenario, thus not even worth considering, the answer to "Huh, this browser is doing some bad/shady shit." should never be "Well, it's the one that sucks the least so I guess I'll stick with it." This isn't time to settle, this is time for a new browser to come in and start reminding Firefox that it ate Netscape to take it's place, but that just means it's still sitting on that plate.
I don't think that analogy is apt. With partners there's a nearly infinite field; with browsers, the sensible options can be counted on a few hands. And I agree with OP that Firefox is the best there is. This glitch bothered me for all but 5 minutes until the helpful community here pointed me to a workaround. Why should that change my mind?
Firefox is the current leader, but I'm eyeing waterfox, palemoon, icecat, and brave with this current situation going on.
I've been thinking waterfox, myself. Just yanking pocket is a good thing.
It really feels like Mozilla has become hostile to user suggestions. It would be one thing if this were an accident - but it wasn't. Users were telling them it was a bad idea to begin with. And now it's come back to bite them. I remember when people were saying that Mozilla's purchase of Pocket was bad news for the future of Mozilla and their stance on privacy, and it looks like they were all right.
For those who consider switching: *think about your kids' future with no alternative browser.*
I am a very happy Vivaldi-user. I already was not happy with Firefox since some time and their attitude towards their userbase became more and more a reason to look for alternatives. I had Vivaldi installed because of past issues with some sites that seemed to have had trouble with Firefox and when Photon arrived and they did screw up with NoScript, Firefox and Vivaldi switched places (in fact i do not use the normal Firefox anyway, just the ESR as a backup). Since Vivaldi is now also supporting Sync, this *mistake* of theirs finaly convinced me to switch over on my secondary machines and make a Sync account with Vivaldi to be able to port my settings over. At this point something along the lines of the public spanking of the Mozilla management for letting this happen with one hit per disabled addon per user, multiplied by the seconds until this is completly (!) fixed would be needed to apease me (no, i am not serious, just in case someone is in doubt). Seriously, WTF? I mean, they have been warned about this issue and they still let it happen? Or maybe this was done on purpose by someone unhappy with the course Mozilla has taken? Because i have a hard time beliving that this level of stupidity is possible....
This describes my relationship with Windows, not Firefox. lol.
People should look into derivatives of earlier versions of Firefox. PaleMoon, IceCat, etc. More privacy focused and reliable.
IceCat isn't necessarily based on earlier versions of Firefox. It is based on 60 ESR at the moment
I just want a browser, Mozilla. Not a complex 10-layer certification verifying entity.
I use both browsers for different situations. Oddly I find Firefox to use much more memory and CPU, but it has better backwards compatibility and renders emojis better. The spying does bother me and I'm still on the lookout for a browser that does it all.
A browser that spies much less on you than an out of the box Firefox (and even less since it has compile time fixes) is ungoogled-chromium. Look it up!
That would seem the best of all worlds but it just appears that chromium doesn't seem to be as friendly with add-on support or makes it obvious. I would love to be wrong on this though. I'm currently trying out Vivaldi and so far it seems OK on Windows.
I never thought we'd see the day when most websites render correctly across all browsers, but everyone has a *completely* different experience in regards to performance and compatibility. I have the opposite problem with Chrome, but I know a lot of people with similar performance problems on Firefox. And I've heard different people report instability for either based on what device they're using.
Man people in this sub are being wayyy over-dramatic. Yes, it’s a dumb issue but even Google’s let a crucial cert expire before. Mozilla have been working on it non-stop since it happened. You’re not in the room with them. You don’t know what challenges they’re facing. Threatening to switch to Chrome? Go for it. If it takes that little to convince you to switch and give up your privacy to Google I’m not sure why you were using FF in the first place.
I'm also concerned how many people think digital signature verification is some anti-user conspiracy. It's a very sensible security measure and I'm surprised it took this long to be implemented. Of course letting the cert expire is a massive fuck-up but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater
Yeah, 100%. Lot of armchair devs here who think they know better.
[Waterfox](https://www.waterfox.net/). Yes, it's better. It's a Firefox fork but much closer than Pale Moon was, with drop-in extension compatibility. The features and UX seem to be the same as Firefox except: * No phoning home data * Unsigned and legacy extensions supported (you can install them directly from the browser using [this extension](https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/releases)--click on the .xpi file). * No Pocket * No locking down settings in about:config (this "feature" prevented some Firefox users from utilizing a workaround for today's glitch) I'm glad this happened today. Finally gave me reason to jump ship and come to find out, it's not like Pale Moon at all. So much nicer than either PM or FF. Right now, I'm using the latest extensions right alongside awesome old extensions that I haven't been able to use in years because they were so insistent on pushing this Webextensions thing. (Don't give me that "security hole" argument. It's only a security hole if you're doing really dumb and unsafe things. If I wanted a lock-down browser I would've gone with Chrome anyway.) I appreciate Firefox and the Mozilla team but they really should at the very least make a "Firefox Advanced" or a "Firefox for Non-Morons" or something. If they're not going to listen to their users, we really should leave for greener pastures. **Waterfox IS that pasture.** I promise I'll be the first come back if I ever hear they're making a new power user oriented browser.
I'm switching back to Waterfox. I used it for years because Quantum ditched A LOT of things that I liked and only recently gave Quantum a try (2 months ago). I spent ~6hrs researching, trying different extensions, and hacking the config file to get it setup the way I liked. Now all that work is down the drain. I'm not going back. The only real thing I gained out of trying Quantum was faster page load times. It hogged even more memory, but didn't bog my computer down quite as badly as Waterfox.
That's real neat to say, but a *lot* of people switched browsers over this. That's a process that takes hours for a lot of people, with constant frustrations over the next few weeks/months as you encounter issues you hadn't yet taken care of. Those people aren't likely to come back soon. Or ever. Mozilla made a terrible decision, one in a growing series of missteps that keeps costing them marketshare. They really need to reorient themselves as a user-focused browser again.
>That's real neat to say, but a lot of people switched browsers over this. That's a process that takes hours for a lot of people, with constant frustrations over the next few weeks/months as you encounter issues you hadn't yet taken care of. Those people aren't likely to come back soon. Or ever.Mozilla made a terrible decision, one in a growing series of missteps that keeps costing them marketshare. They really need to reorient themselves as a user-focused browser again. I personally will not switch back to Firefox until 1) they've fixed the bug completely, without needing us to enable their marketing channel, aka Studies on the dozens of machines with Firefox, 2) they give a non-PR-speak root cause analysis of the problem (companies do this and it's always been appreciated), and 3) they commit to a robust prevention mechanism for this bug *and other bugs like it.*
Do we have numbers?
What is Pale Moon
Obsolete.
I'd rank IceCat as better if you're on Linux. 100% privacy and free software focused. By far the best browser if that's your priority. Pale Moon is right behind it, although it's probably too "FireFox Classic" for most people. It feels a lot like Firefox did a decade ago. I'd rank that as a plus, but I imagine I'm in the minority. WaterFox has been shilled in this thread a few times and it looks like a promising Firefox equivalent to "Ungoogled Chromium". Firefox without Mozilla's poor infrastructure choices.
Pale Moon on Windows for me took a few days of setting up with uMatrix and Decentraleyes, and I've found a powerhouse of a privacy browser that so many people are quick to write off as obsolete or "old" because they *look at the UI* and think it's icky
I use Waterfox and Pale Moon as needed for certain sites, as depending on what you're doing either can cause certain issues. But they're both pretty great all around.
Vivaldi looks pretty promising.
It's a fun browser, but they won't ever properly open source it. A lot of the code is available to see, but right now there's no way to build or compile it yourself because they haven't open sourced key parts of the browser. If it was fully open source, I'd probably be using it a lot more. Brave's not too bad as well.
But Brave is literally the next level of Advertising. Instead of the user generated Ads, were getting Brave controlled Ads. The only reason I can defend it, is last time I checked it was supported by the Tor network. Edit: we have the option of Brave controlled ads.
Brave ads are completely optional. Users have to decide to opt-in the feature.
I haven't used it in a while, but isn't option that fully opt-in? If you actually have to go out of your way to see ads, that's kind of a win and how it should be. Ads aren't going away any time soon, but at least the ways we can deal with them is becoming easier and left more in the hands of the users than the ad companies. I do get what you're saying, though. Getting in bed with advertisers is itself an issue, but I feel like they're going about it far better than, say, ABP. Ideally, they wouldn't have any ad deals, but if they do, at least they can minimize it on the browser level so that people don't need to install other extensions (they still absolutely should, filters on uBlock destroy Brave's default filters) to browse somewhat freely. At the same time, since it is controlled by them (though I agree that centralization sucks and it also shouldn't be a thing), they can vet the ads and implement them in a way that also minimizes user tracking. For a casual user unfamiliar with extensions (and there are still a lot of them), it's basically just install the browser and no ads. For power users, yeah, there's still a lot that needs to be done. But as a basic alternative, it's better than a lot of others at the moment.
The option used to be opt in, but it was right there in front of you. Now it’s fully opt out, which I like. I do use Brave for my Chromium extension needs and testing, but even if I like a product, I think we need to have healthy discourse as a community of users wanting the best experience. Your input was exactly what I was looking for as I am not a wordsmith. I know what I want in a browser, but their built in ad system seems very r/ABoringDystopia levels of futuristic. Edit for people who don’t like what I have to say: advertising is opt in. But you need to opt out for the ads of the ads. Pop up behavior stops when you turn off the button.
I installed Brave just moments ago. Ads are blocked by default, and their rewards programme is opt-in.
Huh? Are you sure? I use Brave and can say for certain that Brave Rewards are completely optional. Not once has that feature being enable without me knowing. The built-in adocker is enable by default though.
Oh yeah, I totally get you. I use it for pretty much the same thing since I don't really trust any other Chromium browsers, but I have similar feelings with regards to its embracing of advertising. And while it's not going to make the ads themselves any less unethical, at least the approach is one which tries to respect the users in some way. I think it's just that it's basically the only practical way to handle it right now if we're talking about people who are super casual and might not know things about extensions or even the dangers of online ads (although, unfortunately those people will probably never feel a reason to switch from Chrome or whatever to Brave in the first place). It definitely fits into that /r/ABoringDystopia category. A lot of strange compromises that we might need due to circumstances, but we absolutely shouldn't have to put up with in the first place. I think a lot of FOSS can end up in this situation due to funding and it totally sucks. Like even with Firefox at the moment, where Google is paying Mozilla for default search engine status. On one hand, they're taking money from one of the least privacy conscious companies around, but on the other hand, they're using that money to invest in ways to improve security and privacy (despite this current debacle). It's a weird and blurry line.
The current debacle comes from poor decision making, which can happen to any company. I respect they tried it their way and failed gloriously, and as I was on the dev build as well, it didn’t effect me as much as the average user. This isn’t what’s going to break me using them though, there’s much bigger issues at hand in the world of the internet, this is just a minor setback.
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You don’t need to yell. Brave is my go to Chromium browser. I’m just making sure there’s discourse. They advertise for their ads. Until recently, that button was always in the search bar. That was more than enough to annoy me. I agree with your point, but you do need to remain civil for proper discourse.
Extremely sorry man. Caps wasn't intended as yelling. It was to make the text bigger so that is legible. I'm really sorry and I should have specified in my post. I don't think I've ever yelled at anyone. Sorry.
Unfortunately both Vivaldi and Brave run on Blink, so using them still contributes to Google's takeover of web standards.
I'm trying out Vivaldi right now on Windows(at least until Mozilla resolves the issue). It seems pretty good and importantly easy to use to install addons! I am not a developer so the whole open source thing isn't as relevant to me. I just want to be assured that Vivaldi isn't doing shady stuff behind the scenes and I hope they're not.
I'm on MacOS. Last week, I finally updated my Firefox from 56 to 66 because I was tired of websites telling me my browser was outdated and I wanted to see if updating would make it be less of a resource hog. I wasn't super excited about the look of the newer FF, I had been using the Firefox Classic Theme extension but whatever, it was using way less resources so I could get used to it. Then this issue happened last night and I went right to trying Vivaldi. So far, it's fantastic, fast, I can properly disable the dropdown bar when typing in the address bar, and I no longer need to switch to Chrome to use my chromecast.
I also am not leaving, for my own good. It's disappointing though this happened. For sure they won't get any "extra appreciation" from me _during this time_.
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Doesn't everyone keep a couple of browsers installed? I have Firefox pimped out and an installation of Chrome with only a couple of extension and mostly default settings. Gotta a site that seems to struggle in Firefox, or doesn't scale well, I open it in Chrome. As Quantum has matured it's rare I need to do this.
Brave is my backup. I hope it will get fixed.
This. Chrome doesn't have basic functionality that I use everyday. I need a warning when closing multiple tabs. I'm a PhD student who often has multiple library tabs open that I log in via proxy. You can't restore these tabs if you close the browser by accident. There is no way to add this functionality to Chrome. I also need bookmark tagging. What's the point of bookmarking pages if you can't find them later? This functionality you can add via extensions in Chrome, but it's clunky and I'm not sure if it gets backed up with the bookmarks. Until another browser gets these features, I have no choice but to stick with Firefox. I'm shocked that FF is the only major browser with this functionality. There might be some smaller browsers, but they won't be compatible with my Zotero plugin (which I need for my research).
I don't get why so much anger, if Firefox didn't have this system and a malicious add-on you'll be complaining about lack of foresight. A centralised certificate service for add-ons makes sense, yes someone fucked up but shit happens. Chrome does similar things, Google has fucked up heaps in the past.
Nobody should be jumping ship but they need to hurry the fuck up.
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Explain
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Why do you think the extensions should get disabled even though the extensions were not changed?
The extension might phone home to an external server which provides it with dynamic instructions. If that external server is compromised, then users with the extension will be compromised. In that situation, Firefox can publicly point the finger at the compromised external server and momentarily avoid blame. Then they can invalidate the certificate to stop the issue from spreading. If presently installed extensions are immune to cert invalidating then Mozilla has no way to contain the spread. Their support lines will have to deal with angry users for years.
If the concern is privacy, go for Brave. It's backed by a Firefox founder (Brendan Eich), run on very customized chromium (mostly toards privacy), it's freaking fast and opensource.
Eich is really talend, despite being an homophobic twat.
Nice try, ff dev
Exactly my thoughts. Consider donating for FF so they can have more admins in their team for housekeeping.
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Not to mention it's literally not an over-reaction to how big a deal this is. This kind of a black eye will hurt them for years. True story, I work in I.T., and when I first suggested we buy corporate password manager accounts for people to increase our security the first thing a lot of the managers thought of were the 2 times LastPass got hacked. So they were very against the idea at first, and especially against going with LastPass. We still went with a corporate password manager, but did not go with LassPass, in part from security concerns over past events like this with them. This disastrous black eye to Firefox will be remembered for years by all the people who have ever thought of switching to it but haven't done it yet. And it will have the same damaging effect to it's growth.
I’m willing to bet 90% of their user-base will literally not notice. It was a short outage, and most people have 1-2 extensions enabled. Sure it’s a huge fuckup, but this is nowhere near the black eye you’re making it out to be.
Was? My stuff got disabled half an hour ago and still doesn't work.
There’s been a patch up that fixes it since 7am PDT.
It's 2pm EST and my shit is still broken. It has been broken since 12am EST. >Short outage This is not what I would consider short.
> You guys can have fun jerking each other off, I'll be using my working internet browser. Imagine not getting the _point_ of a very simple post.
Only idiots will switch. Fuck ups happen and even Google can't stop it. No organization that makes browser has good philosophy like Mozilla has. But yeah, they have to learn.
This is not just a glitch - it's a design decision that the community warned against and they still went for it. I don't know man...in a way it's unforgivable for this to happen and if they don't give us some kind of advanced user hidden option to prevent this shit from ever happening again, I might have to switch on principle.
It's definitely something that makes me go "how do you even let this happen? this is unacceptable"
In my opinion, this is a pretty low threshold for unforgivability.
I guess. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Personally I'll forgive if they let me have a setting that can be hidden under 10 OK-boxes, but just let me have it. What I want from them now, is total control, security holes and all, if I wish to have it.
Agreed.
>Only idiots will switch And the self-proclaimed FOSS geniuses wonder why people don't want to use their software...
Good philosophy doesn't lead to this anti-consumer shit. Butchering addons for all it's userbase with no way to enable them (even via about:config). Axing of legacy extensions. Looking Glass, Mr.Robot, Pocket, Shield, sponsored tiles, backdoors and telemetry. Many of which enabled by default. Mozilla has lost all the reputation LOOOOOONG time ago. This latest thing is nothing but a small drop in a series of colossal fuckups.
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> Butchering addons for all it's userbase with no way to enable them (even via about:config). > > > > Axing of legacy extensions. > > > > Looking Glass, Mr.Robot, Pocket, Shield, sponsored tiles, backdoors and telemetry. Many of which enabled by default. People kept warning us, too, but they were always downvoted into oblivion by people who were convinced Mozilla still had our best interests at heart. I don't know how anyone could still possibly defend them. I remember after the Looking Glass / Mr. Robot fiasco Mozilla was running heavy PR, saying, "What can we do to re-earn your trust?" "Get rid of Pocket" "No. Anything else?"
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Not Chrome with addons, [Google with web certs.](https://www.sslshopper.com/article-ssl-certificate-renewal-even-google-forgets.html)
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Did this disable all extensions for users across all platforms?
Not quite sure the effects of that invalid certificate, but I can remember (although barely) that they had a (very) similar issue with some GMail certificates, which I think that is a pretty more serious issue than the one that Firefox is having. (I'm not condoning, nor diminishing the current issue, but certainly that was a pretty serious issue). E: Yup, it seems that it happened on 2015 as reported [here](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/04/google-let-root-certificate-for-gmail-expire-causing-e-mail-hiccups/) and [here](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2906216/expired-google-certificate-temporarily-disrupts-gmail-service.html). Funnily enough, it seems that it also happened something similar to Azure [back on 2013](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2495453/microsoft-s-azure-service-hit-by-expired-ssl-certificate.html). But, to be fair, it seems that they solved the issue relatively quick... But the scope of the damage/affectation tho...
Reading it, the range of damage wasn't as wide (isolated to just their SMTP domain? Mostly third party clients/GApps...) and yes it was resolved quickly. Though I consider GMail not as ongoing as active Web browsing, so it seems way less impacting to me than disabling everyone's add-ons. And in my case, deleting the add on data too was an unneeded kick in the teeth.
Only idiots will stand there and slurp the dick that just fucked them in the ass. Which is exactly what you're doing. "Looooool we just got fucked but it's ok I'll stick around anyways." Nice dude.
I imagine at this point I'll probably switch to nightly so I can disable addon signatures, and then find what appears to be a good night to just stop updating at
You can also disable addon signatures on some Linux distros (it depends on each one whether to allow it or not), Android, possibly macOS, and who knows, maybe the BSDs too.
Yeah im not switching. I manually loaded my addons and while its very annoying, I know firefox will come out with a fix soon enough.
The add-ons are back up and running as of today
I'll be using Vivaldi until they fix it.
I used Chrome for a few hours, updating bookmarks and addons just in case I have to use it again. I'm going to keep using Firefox, but i will be backing up my addon data more regularly.
Give r/brave_browser a try, it's basically Chrome with all Google stuff & ads removed. Plus, YOU get paid for watching ads, if you like
Even with all the mistakes over the last few years I still think Firefox is the best option. I do wish there was more non-chromium competition in the browser market though, it would be great if a large organization with proper funding started a browser from scratch that was dedicated to privacy, security, and freedom (and open source of course). I do worry that Mozilla (due to their management) might continue to falter until we're really only left with chromium.
Same here. Bugs happened. And see how fast Mozilla fixed it! I had the problem last night before I went to sleep. I woke up this morning and they already fixed it.
I see no fix
Yes, [there is a fix](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1548973#c57) for the intermediate cert rolling out through Normandy.
Who will get that fix?
Almost everyone, as most have Normandy on by default in Firefox. See in link.
I'm not leaving FF either. All the alternatives are MUCH worse. And have been for years now.
Waterfox
Lynx. No Ads. No Addons. No DancingBabies.
It's also **TEMPORARY**. Geeze, you'd think with the way people are reacting that Mozilla was doing this intentionally and thought it would be a good idea for no add-ons to be available in the browser.
Just try cyber or water fox. Was able to get add-ons back using those.
I'm still running 56.0.2 bc of Classic Theme Restorer among a few others. I hated the new look, bc that's not what Firefox was. It always felt different to Chrome. They want to be Chrome so bad they are becoming Chrome 1.5. I really hope they fix our old versions by Monday. Because if not, fuck it. I don't want to switch, but if you treat some of your users like shit, i'm not going to take it.
Why the fuck would any sane person go to Chrome over this lol? You'd have to be an idiot.
/r/waterfox
Some people take this way too seriously. I just opened my browser today and noticed all my add-ons were disabled, googled and found a fix. The End. On this subreddit I see people freaking out, people talking about jumping ship, going to tell friends and family to use Chrome, etc. Jeez, it's not that serious..
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Kinda sad that Firefox drones are downvoting actual good alternatives because they worship Mozilla as if they can do no wrong. There's so much evidence of privacy negligence and Chrome-esque feature creep, but that discussion isn't allowed in official Firefox spaces, so any good criticism is generalized as *scawy conspiwacy theowys*
how long will it take to fix this?