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Mozilla to replace add-ons with Chrome compatible extensions

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40hz:
So have you found a good alternative browser yet ;)
-ewemoa (August 23, 2015, 08:36 AM)
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No...although (against my better judgement and personal philosophy) I find myself using Chrome (and Chrome derivatives) more and more as FF seems to want to freeze or get hung up more often than I'm willing to put up with. The only browser I get more annoyed with is Safari - which seems to have problems with everything lately. But since it's an Apple product, that's no surprise to me.

I'm kinda glad I don't spend one fiftieth as much time online as I used to. If I were as heavy a user as I was formerly was, I'd be beside myself. The twenty minutes or so I'm online most days (these days) makes this web nonsense marginally easier to put up with.

FWIW, if MSoft ever gets their act together with Win10 (which they will...eventually) their newest browser looks to be moving into position to be the most promising of the lot. But only time will tell.

P.S. If you know of a better browser, or one you're currently having luck with that also runs under NIX - please let me know! :Thmbsup:

Innuendo:
I don't know if I detect a hint of Firefox wanting to be bought out by Google, but I do detect one of them becoming what the original developers of Firefox were fighting against.

I'm currently using Pale Moon. It's not perfect, but it has x86 & x64 versions available for Windows & it looks like they have a version for Linux as well. It's a Firefox fork that has ripped out all the silliness that Mozilla has implemented lately (user-tracking telemetry, Australis, social media features, etc.) all the while being able to use most Firefox extensions (and not requiring they be signed).

Pale Moon is currently trying to distance themselves even farther from Firefox by coming up with their own web engine to replace Gecko. It's still early days on that so it remains to be seen how fruitful that endeavor will be.

If you like what Firefox used to stand for without the detour into Crazy Town that the Mozilla devs have been on lately, you may want to give PM a go.

Curt:
FF seems to want to freeze or get hung up more often than I'm willing to put up with. -40hz (August 23, 2015, 12:42 PM)
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Could "Encrypted Media Extensions" (EME) be the problem? Like some of the other latest Firefox browsers, version 40.0.2 also comes in a "EME-free" version: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/40.0.2/win32-EME-free/ I am running this version and it is faster than the normal 40.0.2 --Curt (August 23, 2015, 02:12 AM)
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I have no idea why "Encrypted Media Extensions" should make a difference, but on my PC it did. Not much, but some.

TaoPhoenix:
...
Requiring an extension be certified before it will work (in the name of "better security" for end-users) just the old walled garden argument once again. I'm pretty disgusted to hear Mozilla saying it. But Mozilla is like so many other "open" projects that woke up one day and realized they were (theoretically) giving away a few million and not seeing much in return money-wise. Do I detect a hint that they're having some hopes Google will buy them out eventually?

Time was when the open project crowd had more faith in their users - as well as considerably more respect. The philosophy used to be: "We can only advise. You're free to do whatever you want - including completely borking your system if you choose not to listen to our advice. It's your system and your decision - not ours."

((Tao Comment - though also they used to try really hard to make levels of fixes if you did indeed torch your system - not quite as ruthless as the original statement made it sound.))

Now it seems that Mozilla (having previously decided - after much faux hand-wringing - to cave in and embed DRM support in FF) has now determined that their users also need a nanny.

My but how times have changed!

(It's enough to make me sick.) >:(

-40hz (August 23, 2015, 08:07 AM)
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But yeah, Mozilla and FF used to be the vanguard of moving away from Microsoft's old domination. It was the first (and fairly easy) experience of deciding what Choice meant.

And the Add-ons are STILL why I use FF clones today - no other browser has the spread of them. So if they're "doing things" to all that, I'm nervous ...

... "giving away millions" ... that was the point, right? So that we could work on "level three" problems or whatever (made up terminology on the spur for this post), so we didn't have to keep re-inventing level-1 solutions. That's what crushed a lot of great potential B+ grade scientists in the past - they kept having to start from nothing so often the B+ types gave up and faded away.

But I'm trying not to see this as a 15 year Long Con - I do truly think the philosophy was once there, but people with money and long memories maneuvered us out of it.

 >:(

Attronarch:
Saddening.

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