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Firefox Open Source Software

Firefox 26 Arrives With Click-To-Play For Java Plugins 208

Posted by Soulskill from the demotion-of-java-continues dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 26 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions include Click-to-Play turned on by default for all Java plugins, more seamless updates on Windows, and a new Home design for Android. Firefox 26 has been released over on Firefox.com and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. Release notes are here: desktop and mobile."
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Firefox 26 Arrives With Click-To-Play For Java Plugins More

Firefox 26 Arrives With Click-To-Play For Java Plugins

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  • Plug-ins (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fluffy the Destroyer ( 3459643 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @02:42PM (#45653041) Homepage
    The only problem i've seen with Firefox today is the updates are way too fast. The plug-ins and extentions aren't fast enough to follow becomes obsolete and break. It's not all the updates but I've seen some of it not compatible anymore

    • Re:Plug-ins (Score:5, Funny)

      by lennier1 ( 264730 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @02:49PM (#45653115)

      Depends.
      A third-party web application our company uses encountered Javascript problems in Firefox 24. Waiting for five minutes until Firefox 25 showed up fixed the problem again.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Animats ( 122034 )

        A third-party web application our company uses encountered Javascript problems in Firefox 24. Waiting for five minutes until Firefox 25 showed up fixed the problem again.

        That's reality. I had to post this [sitetruth.net] for one of my Firefox add-ons:

        "Due to Firefox Bug 886329, "drop-down list in Jetpack add-on breaks entire UI", the preferences menu in Ad Limiter is not working in Firefox version 23 only. It worked in Firefox 22, and is fixed in Firefox 24, which is now available. We suggest not using Firefox 23."

      • Re: Firefox ESR (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Billly Gates ( 198444 )

        Google it!

        I am at version 17 with the latest security fixes and it will updated to 24 next week:)

        Next version is a year away with continual security. Addon work now and what Mozilla should have done back in 2011

    • I am using nightly many years and never had any problems. there was a problem 3-4 years ago with fast dial, but only because there was a problem into the verification from the mozilla site. the rest of my 25+ plugins work flawlessly and i am in version 29 or 28, which seems more like chrome, and chrome has a bad UI. generally speaking, 20 to 25 does not change a lot of things in the plugin api. The days were 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 were completely different and had many compatibility issues are past.

    • I'd rather see "click-to-pay" the default for javascript.

      It's been many years since I've been annoyed by an irritating java applet, and there a few I find useful.

      But ugh - so much javascript, and so many sites that practically require it.

      • Ya, almost no one has a basic HTML web site anymore, they're all applications now. Turn off javascript and just about everything breaks in some way, with maybe half being unusable or displaying no information at all. No one cares about portability of web sites anymore, their goal is to serve up advertisements and collect user tracking information. And don't be fooled into thinking the people writing these web sites are all experts in creating efficiently coded Javascript applets, most of them are buggy a

  • "Click-to-pay"... (Score:5, Funny)

    by zarthrag ( 650912 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @02:43PM (#45653053)

    ...was the first thing I saw. Talk about a panic attack!

  • great... (Score:5, Informative)

    by lyapunov ( 241045 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @02:46PM (#45653075)

    In the mean time they have made it substantially more difficult to configure the rejection of cookies.

    Jesus... I'm actually thinking IE is better at this point.

    • Re:great... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @03:03PM (#45653219) Homepage Journal

      Are you using CookieMonster? It's much better than any stock cookie controller that I've seen.

      • No. I will check it out. Thanks!

      • Cookie Monster is one of my must have plugins for Firefox. You can easily see at a glance where the cookie usage stands for the site you are on and can then adjust as needed. Using a default of rejecting all can be a bit more work though but isn't so bad once you have white listed your regularly used web sites.

      • CookieMonster is almost perfect, the only thing I miss is retroactively accepting cookies that were marked as session-only by my default policy. I guess this would need to store the original expiration date in the cookie itself, which at that point is overwritten by "till the session ends".

    • Re:great... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by magic maverick ( 2615475 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @03:05PM (#45653247) Homepage Journal

      If you care about cookies, use an addon/extension that gives you a better interface, and finer control, than the built in systems. I use CookieMonster (set to deny all cookies by default), but there are others.

      CookieMonster allows you to set per website permissions, both temporary (until you close the browser, and then permissions revert to deny), per session (deletes every time you close your browser), and ordinary (hangs around until they expire). You can also set third party cookie controls.

      What makes Firefox great is the addon/extension ecosystem. If you're not going to use it, why even use Firefox? (OK, it's less evil.)

    • Re:great... (Score:5, Informative)

      by DMUTPeregrine ( 612791 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @03:06PM (#45653257) Journal
      Try the self-destructing cookies addon.
      When you close a tab, the cookies created by that tab are removed. You can whitelist domains to prevent their cookies from being deleted.
      This way, sites see cookies as being enabled, but can't track you after you close the tab.
      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-cookies/

    • In the mean time they have made it substantially more difficult to configure the rejection of cookies.

      Their intention is to outsource fine-grain cookie control to extensions. I think it is a good idea, but only half-baked. I would like to see them come up with a list of recommended privacy extensions (including cookie handlers), a sort of "Mozilla Recommended" list to make it easier for newbies who care about privacy but don't know enough to necessarily ask the right questions.

    • Re:great... (Score:4, Informative)

      by sqrt(2) ( 786011 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @03:23PM (#45653451) Journal

      Try out Self-destructing Cookies. It allows cookies to be set, but once you close the tab they are deleted, or deleted on a timer, or both. You can whitelist sites with a toolbar button. Then set Firefox to always reject 3rd party cookies and you're safe as far as cookies go.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cffrost ( 885375 )

      In the mean time they have made it substantially more difficult to configure the rejection of cookies.

      Jesus... I'm actually thinking IE is better at this point.

      Pay no attention to Firefox's built-in cookie-handling interface; it's designed for Joe Kegger — not computer nerds and/or privacy control-freaks. Get whatever cookie-handling plugin(s) that'll give you the level of control you need.

      I use CookieSafe v3.0.5*, which I have set to block by default, and then "allow" and "allow for session" sites I want to white-list. Also provided: "allow temporarily" (for current session, then block), which is handy for determining if a site requires cookies to function,

    • The setting they used to have by default was essentially a "break lots of websites" checkbox. People would toggle it, then complain that firefox "didn't work". If you want the control, and you know what you're doing, use one of the extensions.

  • Java should just die (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @03:03PM (#45653221)

    This is 2013 and I'm really tired of having my browser freeze for 2 seconds with a grey box every time a Java app has to load. With the latest JavaScript features there's no reason to be using Java in web pages anymore.

  • My dream browser would:

    - render text
    - render static images
    - block ads

    My dream browser would NOT:

    - play sounds
    - play movies
    - animate anything
    - open up additional windows
    - support java/javascript/whatever code
    - support cookies
    - store any information

    Oh well, I guess it will never happen.

    • Re:my dream browser (Score:5, Interesting)

      by EMG at MU ( 1194965 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @03:10PM (#45653315)

      - support java/javascript/whatever code.

      As someone that runs NoScript, almost all of the websites on the modern Internet just don't work without JavaScript. They aren't even written to fail gracefully if JavaScript support isn't detected.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by freeze128 ( 544774 )
      I can tell from your requirements that you really don't do anything useful with your browser except read news websites.

      The rest of us who use web browsers to watch youtube videos, do any online shopping, or online banking will need something from this century. You can get along just fine with lynx.

      • > I can tell from your requirements that you really don't do anything useful with your browser except read news websites.

        ...and pr0n...

        But seriously, what's wrong with using a browser primarily to read news websites? How many cat videos can you watch anyway?

      • Besides YouTube, is there any ability that javascript and cookies give for your other purposes that SSL and regular plain old HTML doesn't?

        And I gotta say, watching YouTube is a much poorer activity than reading news websites. Sorry, I remember when I was able to download the embedded videos I wanted to watch, and watch it on the player of my choice.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          Besides YouTube, is there any ability that javascript and cookies give for your other purposes that SSL and regular plain old HTML doesn't?

          Cookies lets you stay logged in without having to reenter your name and password on every page and add items to your own shopping cart. JavaScript lets you expand and collapse comment trees without having to reload all the tens or hundreds of kilobytes of comments already on the page.

      • I can tell from your requirements that you really don't do anything useful with your browser except read news websites.

        The rest of us who use web browsers to watch youtube videos, do any online shopping, or online banking will need something from this century.

        So, you don't do anything useful either then?

        For most web-sites, I'm willing to interact with them at a level of Lynx. For some of them I'm willing to grant permissions for some of this stuff (all of the blockers allow site based permissions). For ma

    • Re:my dream browser (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @03:25PM (#45653477)

      My dream browser would:

      - render text

      - render static images

      - block ads

      My dream browser would NOT:

      - play sounds

      - play movies

      - animate anything

      - open up additional windows

      - support java/javascript/whatever code

      - support cookies

      - store any information

      Oh well, I guess it will never happen.

      Oh, I think you really ought to actually configure Firefox this way and try it out.

      Set all plugins to never activate in Tools > Add Ons
      Set "Accept cookies" to never, and clear all offline data under Advanced.
      Go into about:config and turn off audio and video, set cookies to never in preferences
      Install Adblock and Noscript. (You could turn off javascript for reals, but that would prevent Adblock from working. Noscript can do muc the same thing if configured right..)

      Try it. Try to get through one day on the real web with your browser set up this way.

      You'd need a fantasy dream Internet to make your dream browser work.

    • So, basically, what you're looking for is Lynx with images. Interesting idea. I bet it'd render really fast.

      • I actually have Iceweasel and Chromium configured to run that way on an old laptop with 256MB of RAM. It's still slow anyway.

        Links2, by the way, is entirely incapable of rendering modern websites in a readable way.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Monsuco ( 998964 )

        So, basically, what you're looking for is Lynx with images. Interesting idea. I bet it'd render really fast.

        In other words, Dillo [wikipedia.org] combined with using a host file to block ads.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sigma 7 ( 266129 )

      My dream browser would NOT:

      There are early versions of Mosaic if that's what you want.

      The problem with modern browsers isn't because they do all that stuff, but because they do that stuff without you knowing about it or even controlling it. Anything relying on plugins can be set to Click-to-play (or via exception), popups can be blocked through similar tactics, and cookies/local store use can be identified through a simple icon or status bar message.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      My dream browser would:
      - block ads

      Sites that depend on advertisement revenue would block your dream browser. Enjoy your paywall.

      My dream browser would NOT:
      - play sounds

      Starting from the web site of a band, how would you listen to the music that the band is offering to stream to you?

      My dream browser would NOT:
      - play movies

      Starting from the web site of a short film producer, how would you watch the video that the short film producer is offering to stream to you?

      My dream browser would NOT:
      - support java/javascript/whatever code

      If you have a web page with 100 kB of comments, and you click the button below a comment to view replies to that comment, do you really think it's efficient for t

  • TLS 1.1 and 1.2 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @04:00PM (#45653899)

    TLS 1.1 was supposed to be released with this version by it had to backed out because there were some compatibility issues with a small number of sites:

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=733647

    The code is still in there, you just have to enable it manually via about:prefs: security.tls.version.max=2

    TLS 1.2 is also present:

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=861266

    Just set security.tls.version.max=3.

    Not sure if they're shooting for release 27 or 28. By default only TLS 1.0 is negotiated.

  • Download Window Completely Removed? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LeRaldo ( 983244 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @04:25PM (#45654167)
    Starting somewhere around version 21 of Firefox, they turned off the "downloads" window and took the ability to turn it on/off out of the options. In order to turn something on that had been in Firefox since it was called Phoenix, you had to go into about:config and change "browser.download.useToolkitUI" to true. Now for some reason, it appears to me that Firefox v26 has completely removed the download window altogether. I cannot for the life of me get the old downloads window back. Maybe I'm just blind/dumb, but I can't imagine why Mozilla continues to make changes like this.
  • Does it use less than 250 MB of RAM while idling with no windows open, and less than 1 GB of RAM after 30 minutes of browsing? When it does, I'll get excited.

    • Except maybe for Links/Lynx, what browser uses that little amount of memory. Firefox has been doing quite well in the more recent versions, it uses less memory than MSIE and Chrome. (No idea about the others).
      Most sites are simply becoming annoying resource hogs with memory leaking javascript all over the place. Gmail has gone to almost unusable on my netbook within 2 years. Even Eclipse performs better than Gmail.

    • I've been browsing for a few hours, and Xfce Task Manager on the previous version (Firefox 25.0.1) shows a resident set size of 272 MB. My PC has 1 GB of RAM, and I routinely stay out of thrashing swap even with nine Cracked.com tabs open. Part of how I keep Firefox slim is that I use the Flashblock extension, so that sites other than YouTube and Newgrounds and a couple other whitelisted sites aren't allowed to load the Flash Player until I click.

  • All of Firefox's plugins have security problems. Requiring click-to-play only for Java while ignoring all other plugins comes off as biased.

  • A while ago they were blocking Java outright. Click to play is a great compromise: it's much harder for an attacker to get the user to click on something than to simply load something in the background. It's also much easier for users to log into their bank or view scientific illustrations in Java (possibly other things too:).

    Java has been slow at patching bugs, so I understand why they're getting the stick harder than flash. And their installer is insane, you have to install the 32 bit java to make it work

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