What is happening with Firefox?
 

I'm one of apparently few who refuse continual upgrades, preferring to stay with what works. However, I'm now moving to a new box and have decided to try some later verions of old favourites.

One WAS Firefox. The new one - 61.0.2 - seems to have been crippled so badly that I'm finding it unusable. For example, I'm accustomed to the choice between clicking a link to open a new tab either in the foreground or in the background, but now have no choice: it's always in the background. It seems that it's now Quantum or something. Many of the old addons aren't compatible with it, and the new ones I've tried have severely reduced functionality.

Can anyone update me on what's going on here? Have I jumped in early in a new phase of development, or is this reduction in functionality here to stay?

After using Opera VERY happily for years, I abandoned it a few years ago for similar reasons, and my hopes for Vivaldi were dashed after using it for a week.

I refuse to use Chrome because Google is now evil. Midori - hmm, well. Nowhere much else to go that I know of.

I'd be very happy to get some feedback and general commentary here if anyone's interested.

Well that's one of the problems of refusing continual upgrades: when you finally do upgrade you can be talking quantum leap (no pun intended) rather than gradual changes. Not forgetting all the security upgrades to Firefox that you will also have missed (it's vital to make sure that your browser is up-to-date, security-wise). Although in saying that, Quantum was quite a leap indeed.

Anyway, to take your first example, check Edit->Preferences->Tabs->When you open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately. If you want to have the choice of foreground/background in the context menu, then have a look at the extensions, it is possible that there is one that allows you to do that.

You need to replace the unsupported add-ons with new ones - there are many available. You just have to search about a bit. It will take you a wee while, but once it's done, it's done.

> when you finally do upgrade you can be talking quantum leap

Yep, but I go into training the week before, and stock up on medication.

> If you want to have the choice of foreground/background in the context menu, then have a look at the extensions, it is possible that there is one that allows you to do that.

Don't think so. There WAS a beaut one that did this and a heap more, but when I pulled it up, a red message box said it couldn't be used with Quantum. Same with a couple of others.

So is Quantum a new rendering engine? Evidently the APIs have all changed, hence the big shift in Addons/Extensions whatever. Maybe it'll just take time for the devs to rewrite stuff.

:D

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/en...to-get-faster/

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...gy-modernizing

You're actually lucky - it took some add-ons quite a while to be ported over to the WebExtensions API and it's now much better than it was in the early days. I managed to find updated versions or equivalents for all my add-ons, but it took a little time to find ones with which I was happy.

Thanks for the links. As a former hardware engineer I was struck by the difficulties of parallelism using multiple cores - nowhere near as easy as it sounds. Looks like they've tackled this - "coarse-grained parallelism".

As for security, IMHO much of it is just another Year 2000 scam: keep the punters good and scared and they'll buy anything!

I've now found Pale Moon and Waterfox, both based on Firefox. Under evaluation.

you might want to consider firefox' esr branch.
on debian-based distros the package is named "firefox-esr" i think.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

Hmm, yes, thanks for that. Wasn't aware of it.

In fact, this is what I've now decided for the whole distro. Most apps have reached a level of functionality and maturity that I'm quite happy with. So many of the "latest improvements" I've seen are just eye candy, and often less usable. The latest Gnome interface is a glaring example - awful. I suspect that the script kiddies are being turned loose on the whole shebang just to give the illusion of progress, esp now that M$ has its fist in Debian's back.

The only things that NEED upgrading are the browser and the kernel. Other that the occasional app - in my case some of the music packages - the rest is better as is.

what do you mean "this"?
there's no "ESR distro".
unless you mean debian stable, or ubuntu LTS.
have you now changed distros?

i quite agree about the script kiddies, but "esp now that M$ has its fist in Debian's back" does not make sense.
how exactly does microsoft has its fist in debian's back?
why debian in particular?
debian is not involved in gnome development. canonical however (and hence ubuntu), is.

I've been quite pleased with Pale Moon-28.0.1.
Loved the "old" Opera and every now and then try Vivaldi, but just don't trust it or anything involving google.

> there's no "ESR distro".

https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/st...nnounce-052517

> why debian in particular?

A few months after they took out Ian Murdock:

http://truthvoice.com/2015/12/the-bi...urdocks-death/

... M$ and Debian-based distros started announcing surprizing new developments:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/micros...to-windows-10/

So call me a conspiracy theorist:

https://www.blacklistednews.com/?news_id=6930

> I've been quite pleased with Pale Moon-28.0.1.

Thanks. It looks interesting.

the string "esr" (not case sensitive) was not found int his article.
but nevermind, i'm quite aware that LTS basically means the same as ESR.
i just don't understand the connection to firefox esr.

the string microsoft (case insensitive) was not found in this article.
also, yeah, i definitely trust in a website called "truthvoice".

debian-based != debian

Not quite sure where you're going with this ondoho. We're probably of VERY different philosophical persuasions.

If you've been following the recent international repugnance of the sociopathic activities of Google/Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft etc then you'll understand my drift. If, OTOH, you get your "news" from MainStream Media you won't.

There's a whole alternative discussion here that's WAY off topic. Happy to engage it if you'd like to start another thread.

you started it; i merely replied.
apparently you now do not want to discuss my counter-aruments anymore.
why don't you start a new thread? i'll be happy to engage.

over and out.