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Mozilla Details How Old Plugins Will Be Blocked In Firefox 17 152

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, Mozilla announced it will prompt Firefox users on Windows with old versions of Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight to update their plugins, but refused to detail how the system will work. Now, the organization has unveiled 'click-to-play plugin blocks,' which will be on by default in Firefox 17, starting with the three aforementioned plugins. (Expect more to be added eventually.) Furthermore, you can try out the feature for yourself now in Firefox 17 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux." Also coming in Firefox 17 is support for Mozilla's "Social API." The announcement describes it thus: "Much like the OpenSearch standard, the Social API enables developers to integrate social services into the browser in a way that is meaningful and helpful to users. As services integrate with Firefox via the Social API sidebar, it will be easy for you to keep up with friends and family anywhere you go on the Web without having to open a new Web page or switch between tabs. You can stay connected to your favorite social network even while you are surfing the Web, watching a video or playing a game."
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Mozilla Details How Old Plugins Will Be Blocked In Firefox 17

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    This afternoon I updated to Firefox 18.

  • by fluffy99 ( 870997 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @02:44PM (#41634109)

    Mozilla has lost it's focus and instead of making a good, fast, secure browser they are trying to turn it into a social API with every gee-whiz-bang feature most users don't want or need.

    • by hardie ( 716254 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @02:46PM (#41634129)

      Don't those folks have anything better to do?

      • Don't those folks have anything better to do?

        Yea, like maybe coming up with a Linux version that at least sucks balls a little less...

    • by Anonymous Coward

      It hasn't been good, fast, or secure in years. The last good thing Firefox did was inspire a collection of captioned images of red foxes. Before that, the last good thing it did was show that an open source browser could be a match for IE6 and adhere to the HTML standards better.

      The big reason that Firefox managed to hold on for so long was the ad blocker plugin.

      • The big reason that Firefox managed to hold on for so long was the ad blocker plugin.

        and noScript

        • by Threni ( 635302 )

          Chrome still doesn't have that. And it doesn't have a working mouse gestures add on, either. The half-decent one was pulled because it was sending all your visited pages back to its server, and the currents ones aren't very configurable and you either have the context menu pop up when you right click, or you have to double right click on links to open them. What a piece of crap. I don't care how fast it is - it's not as safe or as comfortable an experience as FF. Oh, and i'm not sure if you've checked

          • I only started using firefox when I could add adblock, noscript, flashblock and mouse gestures, but it's still my secondary browser.

    • by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @02:51PM (#41634159)

      Mozilla has lost it's focus and instead of making a good, fast, secure browser they are trying to turn it into a social API with every gee-whiz-bang feature most users don't want or need.

      And yet, FF 16 is noticeably snappier for me than 15 was. Glad they got 16.0.1 out quickly. The developer tool updates in the last few versions are very welcome, as well, and certainly the reduced memory use is very nice.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12, 2012 @03:06PM (#41634307)

      Actually this is a good thing. The new api that the plugins use do not break during each release.

      I just started warming up to Firefox recently. After I submitted the story last spring of FF using the least amount of memory I gave it another whirl. It is much faster, it no longer nags you, flash is now sandboxed, and it gets faster during each release.

      With 5.0 I agree. I actually went back to IE 9 which was a decent browser back in 2011 believe it or not contrary to popular belief on slashdot. I found Chrome too lacking with features and minimalistic.

      But FF is much improved and they already patched the 16 bug. 16.01 is out starting last last night.

    • Yeah shame on them for turning around and fixing a security issue in days and enabling an update method that ensures everyone will have the fix.

      If you can't notice that Firefox is faster too then you're blind.
      • That's what point releases are for. Also, I bet you that if you installed an old copy of FF2 on your modern machine, you may change your mind.
    • How is this not making the browser more secure? Firefox is already pretty damn fast. Last 3-4 releases have consistently reduced browser and extension memory usage as well (it was never a concern for me personally, all systems I use have over 10 GB of RAM anyway). And this change only mitigates the third party risk in a least intrusive way possible. I say go Mozilla. Firefox is still very competitive and in my opinion the best browser out there. This is why I still use it. In fact I can't imagine using any
    • by Synerg1y ( 2169962 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @03:33PM (#41634549)

      Am I the only one who thinks that we need LESS social networking as opposed to oh say, actually meeting and talking to people in person?

      • by EMR ( 13768 )

        One of my friend (real ones) likes to call anyone she 'meets' online through social networking as 'imaginary friends' And me personally I RARELY every use facebook. I log in maybe once every few months to clean out crap that collects and move on.. And the only time I use twitter is to promote the next Humble Bundle that unleashed new linux and mac ports in.

      • by Laxori666 ( 748529 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @03:48PM (#41634697) Homepage

        You mean, meeting in meat space? Heaven forbid. These mortal coils of ours are getting more and more outdated. It requires such effort to synchronize two intellects to meet at a certain point and time, and then to move two 200lb bodies from wherever they happen to be to that point in time and place in space.

        The inconvenience of course is in experiencing any sort of fleshy exertion as well as having to deal with the vicissitudes of the physical world. Going up a flight of stairs, getting delayed in traffic, etc. All serve to frustrate the would-be mortal coil transcender.

        It will help when we have cybernetic implants such that we can control our environment more readily with our thoughts. I'm thinking bionic arms and legs, and perhaps jetpacks, which are mentally-commanded, much like our regular arms and legs are, except they won't tire or feel pain.

        However, that's still not ideal as the machinery can break and still has to deal with physical forces. That'll just be a temporary stopgap until we can integrate everything meaningful into a consensual hallucination existing only on the computers of the world. Plug in, upload your consciousness, and then move about in and interact with a world entirely of your own making. No more need to move heavy bodies in the physical world, thus all of those muscles required for motion can atrophy, reducing the required caloric intake. The body becomes a more capable yet more powerful machine thanks to the mental interface into cyberspace.

        This won't be ideal at first until all the kinks are worked out. You're not gonna want a server outage to fry the brains of everyone currently uploaded to that server. It's that blasted physical world, again. But eventually the electronics will get smaller, we'll need less and less of our bodies, and we'll have a brilliantly glorious future consisting of billions of disembodied human brains side-by-side in gigantic clusters all uploaded to the most powerful networked computer program ever made, dependent upon almost-invisible/ethereal hardware. Boring from the outside, but inside, we won't have to eat, drink or sleep to survive. Just one long massive near-eternal dream whose inhabitants can do what they want, when they want: mass orgies, gigantic visceral FPSs, mini-golf simulations, RPGs, petting kitties, you name it.

        What a glorious future awaits this human race. Until then, I will continue living in this painful physical world... my first action will be to finish consuming this bag of fried pork skins.

        • I really wish I had mod points right now. I havent laughed this hard in ages.

        • Your post immediately made me think of Ghost in the Shell lol, been a while since I watched that.

        • Of course, dealing with all the difficulties of moving 200lb bodies to where they physically meet has a significant advantage: If you meet in meatspace, you have a very slight chance of getting laid.

          • Bah! An evolutionary left-over. A pitiful remnant which only goes to show the limitations of blind nature. I'll take my genetically-enhanced pleasure receptors massively stimulated by the electrodes plugged into my brain-in-a-vat set in tandem with the visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations of dozens of impossibly (and I mean physically impossibly) attractive females, each specifically designed by the PleasureSystem to cater to my specific tastes thanks to it having completely emulated my brain neuron

      • by r1348 ( 2567295 )

        Not the only one, but definitely a minority.

        Also, remember that personal meeting greatly restricts your range of contacts. I would hate to ditch my foreign friends because "Facebook sux".

      • by Threni ( 635302 )

        > Am I the only one who thinks that we need LESS social networking as opposed to oh say, actually meeting
        > and talking to people in person?

        No, because it would be expensive, environmentally damaging and logisitically impossible to perform all the conversations I have with friends, family and colleagues around the world in person rather than from my phone on the bus to work, train home from work or during adverts on tv shows.

        I mean, I could talk to people online less, so that my real-life meetings try

    • Mozilla has lost it's focus and instead of making a good, fast, secure browser they are trying to turn it into a social API with every gee-whiz-bang feature most users don't want or need.

      While I would agree with you ... Facebook has a billion (active?) users. While not a majority, maybe a significant minority of users of Firefox can benefit from this feature.

      Besides, the only time Firefox seems to slow down on me is when Flash is doing something crazy. And I can't really blame Firefox completely for that.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Thank you for cherrypicking what you don't like and using it to pretend that Mozilla isn't making their browser faster, leaner, and more secure with every release. And for saying what you did as though they're the only browser vendor that's adding extraneous "stuff" to their browser.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Anonymous Coward

        People don't listen to you because YOU'RE off the rails. You seem to be pretending that Firefox is so bloated, ill-equipped, and under-performant that people should just ditch it. And then you tell them to choose a browser that you prefer, like some insane marketing droid for Chromium, which isn't a rationally better choice in any general way.

        You can pretend that your favorite features are the most important, but they aren't. Chromium has its own security problems, performance bottlenecks, and basic compati

      • Do they make a 64-bit version of CDragon?
  • by jerquiaga ( 859470 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @03:01PM (#41634239)

    Hopefully there is something built in separating that social API sidebar from what you are actually browsing. Facebook/Google/Apple/Skeezy Advertisers wouldn't need tracking cookies to know exactly where you surfed.

  • by alef.01 ( 616834 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @03:02PM (#41634243) Homepage
    Will Mozilla provide isolation for its social apps from the rest of the tabs, when requested by the user; i.e providing cintrols on what browsing data, session, cookies and history the social API will be able to access, or will this make it more difficult for users to wall social apps than it is to do so with web-based social apps using plug-ins as many now do?
  • Because Facebook and Google Pluse aren't invasive enough on your browser already???
  • I'd like to see some more progress in MIdori. It's already pretty functional (in Linux), though it has a bug or two and could use a few extra features. I switch back and forth from Midori and FF for now, at least until FF gets too weird, which seems inevitable.

    WTF can't there be an all-around good browser that doesn't turn to crap?
  • by Anonymous Coward

    (warning: hearsay to follow since I'm not a Mac User)

    If I recall, Safari does something similar; if it detects an older version of Flash it disables the plug-in and throws up a warning message prompting the user to update.

    Or at least, that's what my mother told me happened. At which point she switched to Firefox and used that instead.

    Mind you, it was an ancient version of FF I had installed for her two years ago; God knows how old the Flash plug-in was.

    These "warning" notifications - even if they also disab

  • by JDG1980 ( 2438906 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @03:57PM (#41634781)

    Also coming in Firefox 17 is support for Mozilla's "Social API." The announcement describes it thus: "Much like the OpenSearch standard, the Social API enables developers to integrate social services into the browser in a way that is meaningful and helpful to users. As services integrate with Firefox via the Social API sidebar, it will be easy for you to keep up with friends and family anywhere you go on the Web without having to open a new Web page or switch between tabs. You can stay connected to your favorite social network even while you are surfing the Web, watching a video or playing a game."

    Can someone explain to me why crap like this is being incorporated into Firefox as a core feature, but if we want a traditional status bar or address bar, that has to be a plugin?

  • Just to be clear, is this API for plugins only or can any JavaScript on the web run it?

  • of course one could just hit ninite.com for an autoinstaller and not have to worry about outdated versions.

    i have a few different versions downloaded one that has all the "stuff" i like to install when i do a computer setup.

  • by Cid Highwind ( 9258 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @04:20PM (#41635035) Homepage

    You can stay connected to your favorite social network even while you are surfing the Web, watching a video or playing a game.

    Yeah, it's called tabbed browsing. Been in Firefox since version 2.0...

  • by NinjaTekNeeks ( 817385 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @04:31PM (#41635183)
    First you install Firefox...
    Then Flashblock....
    Then Adblock Plus
    Then Noscript
    Then Fasterfox...
    Then....

    Make a browser that has the ability to turn off crap like ads, flash, easily white or black list javascript enabled sites (google, gmail, etc.) and reduce bloat (170mb of ram just to browse slashdot in firefox?!?!?!) and I'll be happy. Social Media integration? wow, who gives a flying firefox.....
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @04:56PM (#41635655)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @05:13PM (#41635929) Homepage

    Release after release, Mozilla has taunted us with the ability to remove unwanted plugins, but that promise has never been realized. Why?
    For Firefox to be secure, it should never allow a plug to be added and activated without the users's permission.

    Please fix this!!!!

  • What about Chromium? Its Chrome without the Google stuff to extract data to track people for showing ads. http://www.chromium.org/Home [chromium.org] I really liked Firefox and recommended to everyone, but with this loss of focus in an attempt to reprove its relevance with it so called "rapid release", its having the reverse effect and may give MS a new opportunity to push its semi-w3c complaint browser. Apple Safari may be a good alternative for MS windows clients but I haven't looked into whether it collects data. I n
  • by NoMaster ( 142776 ) on Friday October 12, 2012 @06:47PM (#41637269) Homepage Journal

    How about they jam their "social API" up their arse, and use the now-free developer time to maintain feature users want [google.com]?

    Or, at the very least, those developers could be retrained and fruitfully employed. Testing cluebats on the Mozilla community co-ordinators & technical evangelists - who would rather gaslight people with different opinions than listen to them - might occupy a few...

  • I've stuck with V3.6.x. I don't like the UI of the 4.x and newer versions and I don't like the route mozilla is going. If there was another browser that supported all the developer plugins FF has I would be dumping FF. Time to get the source for FF3.6 and modify it to tell sites it's the newer version even if it isn't. Mozilla's "rapid" outdating is just a little much. Newer isn't always better.... I don't want to go back to IE!

    • Amen. Wishing I had mod points.

    • good luck with that. The internet becomes jscript heavier with each passing day and performance of ff3.6 is abysmal. What about evolving standards like slowly finalized CSS3, SVG and what not? Your idea is yet another IE6 story, the bane of webdevs, which is ironic, considering you've mentioned dev plugins.

  • Firefox needs to get their act together regarding updates, they are driving people away.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Funny how you idiots complain about firefox updating so much but probably use chrome, which updates way more, pfft.

  • by petsounds ( 593538 ) on Saturday October 13, 2012 @02:18AM (#41639655)

    The Firefox team is off the rails. In fact, the whole Mozilla Foundation has lost its way. First they basically abandon Thunderbird for no reason, and now they're bolting on entire social media interfaces. Commercial, closed-source ones at that. All because their egos make them want to stay with the big boys, instead of innovating, instead of just trying to be the best browser.

    If there was a fast, secure, standards-compliant browser that was compatible with the Firefox plugin architecture, I'd jump in a second.

    • Watch it, Protoplasm is probably patented by those big corps that have strangled FF into a media sack. LOL Not funny is that FF/MF is cowtowing to the big corps so that we loose control of our web experience. I prefer not to use the recent flash and pdf reader because of all the strings attached and adds popping up in the middle of videos or the services running constantly contacting home base to report in (acrobat). I'm not against ads but the media they use is distracting past annoying, many are stupid li
  • Ever since they sent their update change to force FF to go to the plugin site to update to plugins I can't use,
    FF hangs at 100% cpu usage on exit... I have to use Process Hacker to kill it...

    What a piece of Excrement.

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