Surf the web from your parked Renault: Vivaldi comes to OpenR Browser-maker Vivaldi has added Renault to the list of users for the Android Automotive OS version of its eponymous web renderer. Vivaldi Click to enlarge The company had already brought the Chromium-based browser to Polestar 2 electric vehicles at the end of 2021, so its arrival in another Android Automotive OS car was not …
Sadly, it seems that Renault have replaced the 12-inch infotainment screen mentioned in the article, with a 9-inch version on all UK spec trim levels.
They've also removed the "smart" digital rear view mirror that is absolutely essential, given the ultra-widescreen proportions of the rear glass.
TL;DR - Will not be buying one.
I agree with your comments about the reliability on electrical devices aboard French cars, but I totally disagree with your comment about French beers. You should open your mind and try some who are really outstanding (see https://www.worldbeerawards.com/winner-beer/beer/2021/worlds-best-pale-beer-33480-world-beer-awards-2021 or https://www.worldbeerawards.com/winner-beer/beer/2021/worlds-best-flavoured-spirit-33502-world-beer-awards-2021)
For non-European readers:
There is a north-south beer-wine divide going all through Europe. Localities below that frontier make wine, localities above make beer, and since they both have been doing it for centuries (if not millennia), they've usually gotten quite good at it.
Not just a North/South divide, but also East/West.
A French peasant can stamp on some grapes in an old bucket and make a world class wine, while a few km to the East, the Germans with all their money and technology make wine that tastes like gasoline.
Recently I had a bit of a discussion with Firefox devs about issues that I was having in Firefox.. namely the amount of patch nagging, forced restarts after patches had been applied in the background (couldn't even open a new tab without being forced to restart Firefox - this was happening every few days and I was tearing my hair out at the end) and the removal of the option in the menus, to turn off automatic patching. This was the last in a number of issues which broke the camels back.
I mean, I was getting up in the morning, sitting down at my workstation and wanting to see what had happened in the world overnight, only to be forced to do yet another firefox restart (and I have a fair few tabs open) ... and that was before I'd had my first cup of tea, which is probably me at my worst mood! :-)
Their attitude was that Firefox must be patched, that normal users are not to be trusted with a menu option and that in order to achieve turning off automatic patching, you had to make a profile file somewhere. Even then, it failed to turn off the nagging and I went to Vivaldi and after a bit of a learning curve am finding it pretty much the same in terms of user experience, except that there's no nagging now. (obviously I had to do the usual stuff like limit the cache size, turn on the window border, etc.)
I personally believe that Firefox's devs taking the attitude that they alone know what's best for the users is going to be an increasing barrier going forward. Which is a bit of a shame IMHO. Vivaldi and others are likely to keep winning results like this.
Does this not work?
about:preferences
General -> Firefox Updates
Click "Check for updates but let you choose to install them"
Checking my recent update history for Firefox it looks like patches are released once every couple of weeks on average. Hardly an onerous task and pretty much par for the course with any browser that takes security seriously.
No, it doesn't work, unfortunately. Part of the problem was that I was researching on the internet and none of it was working, which was why I logged a bug report in the first place. Firefox devs said they deliberately made it very hard for people to turn off updates automatically. (this is in Linux) ... and it did get a bit more complicated than this, because for Mint updates are supposed to come with the package manager and Firefox devs said that Mint devs should have put the file in as part of the Mint build... but it was all actually outside the point that Firefox devs were making decisions on behalf of the users and that they were right to have that attitude.
There is an argument that they've got a point, and that's fair enough. It's their show and their hard work. So I stopped using it.
I'm pretty sure that if it was only every two weeks, I'd not have noticed so much.
Probably, but then in my case it can take about a week and a half to get around to updating (typically because I have a lot of tabs open, and "update" doesn't automatically imply "important security fix", so I wait for a convenient time).
This means that - not infrequently - just after I do the latest update, another one then appears only a day or so later, prompting the inevitable "What!? Already? I only just ... "
Unfortunately, there are two update streams. One via package manager and Firefox has its own update stream. So even when I do an apt-get, (which is cron'd overnight) Firefox then does its own thing anyway and even when I managed to turn off the firefox update engine, I couldn't turn off the nag engine that would nag me every few hours, it seemed like.
Just for the record, this is part of what they had to say about my request to have an update disable option in the settings menu...
"I'm afraid that we've already considered this and made the decision that this option does not belong on the Firefox Settings page. It's simply too dangerous. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people regularly run untrusted and/or malicious code and expect their browser to allow that code to execute, but also to protect them from it. Doing this absolutely requires having updates installed regularly. Putting the setting in a place that requires some technical knowledge to set it helps limit its use to people that understand the importance of updating regularly."
...and...
"Our goal was not to make it unable to be done, but to make it a little harder than just clicking a button in preferences. We had too many people that clicked the button without understanding what it was and just never got updates. You certainly can turn off updates, you just have to put more effort into it."
Yes... let's read that again... "We had too many people that clicked the button without understanding what it was and just never got updates."
If you want to look up the whole conversation, it's bug 1756397
"I personally believe that Firefox's devs taking the attitude"
I've just noticed (earlier today when I wanted to scan a form for a stool sample) that the new browser versions of Firefox for Android have completely broken its interaction with my printer.
The printer is a bog standard HP inkjet. When you connect to it using a desktop browser, it has an option to WebScan, which is quite useful.
On a phone, neither Chrome nor the stock browser work in any way, but Firefox when in desktop mode is able to fool the printer into doing it.
Firefox 60 on my old phone: select options, scan, long press image, save, job done.
Firefox 90-something on my new phone: select options, scan, looking press image, save, bloody browser tries to fetch what it already has, which the printer no longer has, it all fails.
Also noticed that Firefox is no longer capable of basic stuff like printing, preferring to kick it over to some sort of printer helper utility rather than doing it itself. Which means any options you've set on Firefox (like desktop mode) will be lost as the printer helper is probably just going to throw the URL at WebViewer and try to print whatever that returns.
Oh, and, what is it now, eighteen plugins? Twenty?
What the hell are the Firefox devs thinking?
Oh, and I've also just noticed that Google has recently pulled a rather nasty ploy.
When you have Chrome on your phone, it seems to be hardwired into your Google account. That is to say the phone's Google identity (for Docs, the app store, etc) is now not only available to Chrome but is your identity within Google search within the browser. And there's no obvious way that I've found of logging search out, other than completely signing the entire phone out.
For a company that blathers endlessly about people's so-called security, to have the browser always connected with the account and no way to not do this is quite horrific (and insidious).
Firefox 68 for mobile was the cutoff I think. Newer ones won't (can't) access files on the phone. Some of this is down to Google, who appear to have banned browsers from accessing local files (the "Files and Media" permission is media-only and can't be changed.) I don't know if Mozilla could work round that if they wanted to.
I had a bunch of (linked) html files saved onto my sd card as reference documents. None of the modern (Android 12-era) browsers can open them.
Same here, and it's really annoying, because I have a heap of those, mostly tables (I now will need to turn into PDFs - until they remove PDF handling).
Android is trying very hard to remove usability or at least annoy users.
Other example, I have a cheap tablet I only use when traveling (nothing important on it), so only 1-2 times a year. Last time I booted it, Play Store had removed all my carefully curated app permissions, because "I hadn't used those apps for a long time". Well duh, I haven't used the whole tablet in a long time, genius! Why don't you uninstall yourself too, overbearing PoS?
> devs taking the attitude that they alone know what's best for the users
That's unfortunately a very common disease. We can all quote dozens of companies doing this, having lost all connection to what made their initial success and having yielded control to cut-rate "visionaries" and hapless marketing drones.
To be honest, we all tend to think we know better than the idiots out there, it's only human, but intelligent people are able to look beyond their egos and put things in perspective.
Firefox devs clearly don't, they know they know better. And besides they don't have to sell anything, if you don't like what they do you can use Chrome...
(Very pissed) Firefox user since the very beginning.
Personally I don't get this mega touchscreen functionality in cars (blaming Musk) - CarPlay and the Android Version I get - for Telephony/Messaging/Music, Podcasts, Sat Nav etc. on a reasonable size screen - 7/8" or so? Each driver brings their own $$$ mobile gadget with their stuff - so why duplicate the whole thing in the car? And then replace all the nice tactile switches with the touchscreen as well?
Yes, I am old (ish).
Fortunately our 67 plate Outlander PHEV is similar - though the dock is a tray under the armrest where there's also a couple of USB outlets. But about the right balance between a useful touchscreen - does some of the car setup/diagnostics and the radio + car play. Heating is still real switches, volume on steering wheel.
Also has some unnecessary voice controls - guess useful if you are still on a bluetooth phone, but does also let you talk to Siri.
> I don't get this mega touchscreen functionality in cars
Because it's not you who buys a car, it's your kids (or spouse), you just pay for it. So it has to look good for them, ie. look as much as possible like a comfy entertainment room, for them.
Driving and the driver are secondary, just utilities, like the windshield wipers. Who buys a car because of its windshield wipers?
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