Has Firefox been sabotaged?

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aspi-rant
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25 Oct 2012, 8:39 am

Oodain wrote:

MyFutureSelfnMe wrote:

smudge wrote:

Paracosm wrote:

Hey,

I used to love Firefox. For so long it was easily the best browser and I loved how robust it used to be.

The last few builds have been awful though, especially the latest - in the sense that it keeps freezing, has significant issues with Flash and Java, among other deal-breaking issues. It's not just me either, it's happening across the board and I just feel gutted for Firefox. I've recently decided to migrate to Chrome myself even though I said I wouldn't as I find it too bare bones (And I am literally lost with the menu buttons at the top of the screen) - but it's become unusable for me.

What happened? Did the regular devs walk away from the project or something or has it been somehow subverted?

I completely agree. I've had trouble with Flash and Java too, and freezing...and all these bloody updates!! ! It never used to be this way.

What website uses Java!??

there are some embedded chat clients and security features that use java,

as well as some conceptual sites but those are of less importance

in denmark the government, banks etc al use it, due to NemID… based on java.

no "secure" site can do without it...

they only recommend/support firefox on linux.

they only support Mozilla Thunderbird 14 for secure email on mac and linux.

they are complete ignorant... :roll:

https://www.nemid.nu

MyFutureSelfnMe
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25 Oct 2012, 4:47 pm

Yeah NemID sounds stupid. If I ran a bank in Denmark I would not use it.

I haven't seen a Java chat client in years. I don't have Java installed at all and it hasn't caused me any issues in years.

TallyMan
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25 Oct 2012, 5:09 pm

MyFutureSelfnMe wrote:

I don't have Java installed at all and it hasn't caused me any issues in years.

I deinstalled java several years ago and only hit one (government) website in all that time that required it to run. From what I've read java is so full of unpatched security holes it is an open door begging for malware to be installed on your computer.

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MyFutureSelfnMe
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25 Oct 2012, 7:20 pm

TallyMan wrote:

MyFutureSelfnMe wrote:

I don't have Java installed at all and it hasn't caused me any issues in years.

I'm not surprised, but that's probably largely a function of people not using it anyway. It should just be called deprecated so that can be the end of it.

My only real beef with it going all the way back to the 90s is that the VM takes too long to start up. With JS you get instant responsiveness. Well, that and I don't think it's connected to the DOM, and the GUI toolkit included looks fresh out of the 80s.

I did develop a WebGL app with a software renderer (in JS) for IE9/ipad/android support. I've been considering porting to Java and using GL to support IE8 and earlier. But that is 8% market share so probably not.

LookTwice
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25 Oct 2012, 9:11 pm

MyFutureSelfnMe wrote:

I'm not surprised, but that's probably largely a function of people not using it anyway. It should just be called deprecated so that can be the end of it.

Java may be effectively dead for standard desktop applications (even though lots of consumers still use it in form of Android apps) but you can't simply deprecate something that is used so heavily in the business world.

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MyFutureSelfnMe
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25 Oct 2012, 10:09 pm

LookTwice wrote:

MyFutureSelfnMe wrote:

I'm not surprised, but that's probably largely a function of people not using it anyway. It should just be called deprecated so that can be the end of it.

I take it you mean corporate Intranet apps. Yes, you can. If they choose to take that route, which I believe is completely ridiculous, they can accomplish it by installing some sort of browser plugin as part of their standard image. I don't believe it should be a standard part of any browser installation.

My experience using corporate intranet apps written in Java (via IE) has been that they don't work anyway. At all. Ever. I could never even get them to start up. The solution at my company was to dictate that no version of IE higher than 6 be supported (this was only 2 years ago).

The reason Java is used in Android is that it was perceived by the original developers as being a portability solution. I don't believe it's really needed for that function these days and the garbage collected nature of the language creates "embarassing pauses" that I personally don't believe are acceptable on a modern mobile device. Worse, hacking around the "embarassing pause" creates horrible code maintenance issues. We are scoping out an Android port of an app we have, and I plan to write the majority of it in C++.

Last edited by MyFutureSelfnMe on 25 Oct 2012, 10:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

blackelk
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25 Oct 2012, 10:11 pm

I never thought I would abandon Firefox but they let themselves go. Chrome is better in almost every way.

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MyFutureSelfnMe
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25 Oct 2012, 10:15 pm

blackelk wrote:

I never thought I would abandon Firefox but they let themselves go. Chrome is better in almost every way.

They let themselves go? I understand there are issues in 16, but I haven't had them myself. My experience with 15 was that it wasn't terribly different from Chrome (the JS engine is a little slower) and it was eons beyond Firefox 3-4, which I refused to use because those versions genuinely were slow and bloated. My understanding is that Firefox let themselves go sometime around 6-8 years ago.

LookTwice
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26 Oct 2012, 2:34 pm

MyFutureSelfnMe wrote:

I wasn't really talking about applets or things that run with Java web start.
A large part of corporate IT infrastructure is Java based (it's been the go-to language for line of business applications, web services etc. for more than a decade, after all).

C++ for Android may make sense if you value performance more than productivity, but I doubt the average developer will move away from Java.

MyFutureSelfnMe
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26 Oct 2012, 3:41 pm

Ok my point was about browsers and Java.

IMO there is room for a new language, somewhere between C++ and Java, non garbage collected. I guess D is sort of like this.

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27 Oct 2012, 11:27 pm

Thatmew wrote:

Chrome has Adblock Plus. It works just fine for me.

I've been trying Chrome's the last couple of days; it works for images well enough, but for flash animations it doesn't. It also doesn't have the "show blockable elements" one *sigh*

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Oodain
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28 Oct 2012, 2:56 am

MyFutureSelfnMe wrote:

Yeah NemID sounds stupid. If I ran a bank in Denmark I would not use it.

I haven't seen a Java chat client in years. I don't have Java installed at all and it hasn't caused me any issues in years.

as far as encryption goes it is as secure as it gets,

it uses one time code books.

when talking about their software and implementation the story is something quite different alltogether, slow, sloppy and with a huge price tag.

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MyFutureSelfnMe
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28 Oct 2012, 3:53 am

Right and if I were a browser developer, I would not hesitate to remove Java support, regardless of NemID. People can complain to the developers of NemID.

Edit: I'm sure they already do, every day. The <applet> tag is deprecated and <object> requires plugin installation. I guess browsers already no longer have built-in knowledge of Java.

Thatmew
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28 Oct 2012, 4:08 am

Shatbat wrote:

Thatmew wrote:

Chrome has Adblock Plus. It works just fine for me.

I've been trying Chrome's the last couple of days; it works for images well enough, but for flash animations it doesn't. It also doesn't have the "show blockable elements" one *sigh*

It recently got updated. Are you sure you're using enough subscriptions? I'm using Fanboy's and Easylist in the new 1.3, and I've never seen a single youtube ad on my computers.

If you actually want to block flashes directly, you may want to look into something more.

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Shatbat
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28 Oct 2012, 7:35 am

Thatmew wrote:

Yes, I like being in control of what I'm blocking and what I'm not, ads can be occassionally useful, and I just don't like the idea of letting an automated process do the blocking for me. I wonder why Chrome's AdblockPlus doesn't have the same functionalities, but that means I'll havew to stick with Firefox for the time being.

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