Firefox 130 lands with a yawn, but 131 beta teases a long-awaited feature Firefox 130 is landing on users' machines, while version 131 enters beta — with a feature we've all been waiting for. The latest version of Firefox is here, less than a month after its predecessor – which was chiefly notable because it got not one but two bug-fix releases. (And yes, we do know that Firefox 128 is already up to …
Firefox on desktop has two zoom modes: (1) a simple zooming into the page (achieved by the pinching motion on the touchpad if you're on a laptop), which will lead to horizontal scrollbars and is comparable to zooming in a picture, and (2) increasing the size of all elements and reflowing the content to still fit without needing to scroll horizontally (achieved by Ctrl + Mousewheel or Ctrl + "+/-").
On mobile, the only browser who actually reflows the text when you zoom in is Opera for Android. And it's a feature you dearly miss once you experience it. If you need to zoom with any other browser, including Firefox for Android, the text will be wider than the screen.
As the most viable alternative to the Chrom* hegemony, I'm most certainly sticking with Firefox. I've never noticed the memory-usage or performance issues that are the most frequently-levelled criticisms; I've been using FF since its inception and I twitch when forced to use just about anything else.
The one annoyance that riles me - irrationally, I know - is that on Linux, if FF is updated in the background by the package manager, the running instance of FF then refuses to load new tabs and demands to be closed and restarted.
Yes, I know there are perfectly sound and logical technical reasons for that behaviour. And I can't think of a better alternative given the way the OS and the package manager work.
But I can still bitch and complain, right?
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The one annoyance that riles me - irrationally, I know - is that on Linux, if FF is updated in the background by the package manager, the running instance of FF then refuses to load new tabs and demands to be closed and restarted.
Nothing irrational about that annoyance. That's why I dropped Firefox. It's not only that it won't load new tabs; it won't let you interact with existing ones, and so any work you are doing is lost. It's a cretinously stupid decision by the Firefox developers made even worse by the Xubuntu (in my case) developers who decided that there should be no way of declining or postponing upgrades, so that at irregular intervals you lose anything you're doing.
Chrome handles upgrades much, much more sensibly.
So websites were legally required to start showing cookie banners because people complained about cookies automatically happening, but browsers will now automatically block the banners, so how does that affect the rights of the user and the site when it comes to cookies? (I know there are add-ons that will do it already but people have to go out of their way to get those.) Are you considered to have accepted them if you block the banner and continue to use the site? Does blocking it mean the cookies are enabled because the code that lets you disagree didn't run? Not all sites even have options in the banners like "limit cookies to those necessary" or "I don't accept cookies" and if you don't click a specific link in the banner to go to a cookie selection page, closing the banner or just leaving it open means you accepted the cookies.
I don't see what's so hard to understand about it.
If you don't accept the cookies, you don't accept the cookies, in other words, you do not give permissions for cookies to be placed, you reject them.
Believe it or not, but oddly enough "not accepting" does not mean "accepting". Thus, as long as you do not give consent to being tracked like cattle, which is what those banner are asking you to consent to, then those who track you like cattle are violating you and your rights. Easy-peazy!(*)
Now whether those on the other side of the line (server-side) will respect that, that's a different matter. I am reminded of "Do Not Track" for instance as well. But that doesn't change the fact that they are violating your rights when they choose to go against your expressed wishes (and not expressing a wish to be tracked/cookie'd is an expressed wish to not be tracked/cookie'd). Withholding consent means, put simply, that you do not want the other party to execute their actions upon you.
And that's what this means for the rights of the user: they need express, informed consent, you not giving it means they do not have your express, informed consent, your rights are retained. The fact that you have chosen a tool which automatically does this withholding of consent for you, is immaterial because that's a tool you choose to use; by using this (type of) tool you express an intent to not want to give this consent. And if you really, really want to be tracked and milked like cattle, there's always Chrome or Edge for you.
(*) I'd love to see someone make an actual, coherent (!) argument for "but everyone wants to be tracked like cattle, and therefore it should be the default!"
"but everyone wants to be tracked like cattle, and therefore it should be the default!"
Well, given that recently far too many sites seem to think that privacy is something people should pay for, I can't help but feel that your rights and wishes don't count. Especially given that a place that is slimy enough to completely ignore the option of "advertising without the tracking" is going to track you regardless of whether or not you pay...
...the modern web is shit and we're all clickbait cattle.
I'd love to have an auto-accept (not auto-reject) cookie banners function for private / incognito tabs.
Some sites won't work at all unless you accept (which is illegal but it happens). I'm not worried because I use private / incognito: all cleared at end of session. But then I get the banners Every Single Time (I can't even search Google without dismissing a stupid cookie pop-up), and in Firefox this happens per tab. I don't need banners guys: I know how to clear my own cookies! Can't I surf the web in Expert Mode or something? :)
Didn't downvote, but the bastards will track you anyway.
Try looking at how many cookies get set whilst their cookie pop-up is visible and telling you "We care about your privacy", oh bollocks, if anybody cared they would note the DNT header and not ask because I've already said no. If they cared the "Reject everything" option would be as simple as the "Accept everything" option. And on some sites, they ignore the "functional cookies" exception so they ask you on Every Single Fucking Page because they want to harass you into just saying sod it and accepting the cookies. And none of this is even counting the new business model of "pay for your supposed privacy".
A plague on all their houses.
And this is why having a tool that dismisses those nuisances for you is a good thing...
In my entire life, I've only ever encountered a single (1) human that told me "I want to be tracked, I get valuable services because of it"... but that particular individual is also as dumb as rocks (apologies to rocks and rock-alikes).
You're describing how it ought to work from a consumer's assumption, but not about how it works from a legal perspective which is very often very different and full of legal jargon that makes it unintelligible to anyone but a lawyer. Does the law state that not clicking Accept automatically means Don't Accept? How does that work with banners that don't even have Accept and Reject buttons, where the very fact that they have informed you of the cookies and you continue to use the site means you've accepted them, unless you click a link in the banner to go to a page to change your preferences?
As long as i have not expressively given my consent they can state continuing to use their site means whatever they come up with but it won't allow them to claim informed consent as a legal basis in GDPR. Even the best lawyer will struggle to make not clicking something into informed consent.
I am unsure if i should believe you really think the situation is as complicated as you claim it to be or if you're just spreading FUD.
Curve25519 is for encryption what Ed25519 is for digital signatures, and Ed25519 is definitely my favourite signature algorithm, which surprises me because I didn’t think I had one: short keys, very fast, predictable cipher text length, very strong, and resistant to (last time I looked) all current approaches used in channel attacks. </geek>
Security updates are good to have, but the constant "must prove I'm working hard" style moving stuff around is tedious. I remember the times when new versions were only released when new features were added! Incredible, isn't it?
Why don't they just jump directly to version #831 and take a break till they get some ideas about some really useful stuff? Instead of piling busywork releases just to keep with the artificially breathless release rhythm of Chrome?
Wow. Vertical tabs. Much yay.
Seriously, I suspect this is more of an issue for Firefox users, given that Firefox's tab bar and header are 1½× the size of Chromium's (for no good reason).
Now if they can just make it run faster, and make it live up to the whole privacy thing...
It'll never happen, but I'd much rather they added Group Policy integration so I could offer a viable alternative to versions of Chromium when doing enterprise deployments. Firefox unfortunately is becoming quite niche and devs are coding more and more just for Chromium based browsers, TVline for example is now almost unusable on Firefox because large chunks of their website get marked as ads and so get blocked by uBlock/Adblock etc, but only on Firefox.
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