Firefox

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A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox

founded 4 years ago
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Here's the detailed report from Mozilla Research: Over the Edge: How Microsoft’s Design Tactics Compromise Free Browser Choice (PDF, 5MB, 74 pages)

And the announcement post from Mozilla Research referenced in the The Register's article is here:

Over the Edge: The Use of Design Tactics to Undermine Browser Choice

In order to be able to choose their own browser, people must be free to download it, easily set it to default and to continue using it – all without interference from the operating system. Windows users do not currently enjoy this freedom of choice.

To investigate Microsoft’s tactics and the impact on consumers, Mozilla commissioned Harry Brignull and Cennydd Bowles, independent researchers and experts in harmful design. Today, the researchers have published a report detailing how Microsoft prevents effective browser choice on Windows. In the report, they document how Microsoft places its own browser — Edge — at the center of its operating system and weaponizes Windows’ user interface design to undermine people selecting rival browsers.

In some cases, the use of harmful design tactics is contrary to Microsoft’s own design guidelines. In many cases, it can lead to (and exacerbate) consumer harm and undermine competition from rival browsers. This kind of behavior is particularly concerning for an independent browser like Firefox, which is reliant on the operating systems provided by companies who are also rival browser vendors.

Self-preferencing from operating system/browser providers is an area Mozilla has previously highlighted, for example, in the Five Walled Gardens report. Recently, details of many issues Mozilla experiences competing on major operating systems were published on the Platform Tilt dashboard.

Now, with the implementation of the Digital Markets Act in the European Union marking the start of a wave of global competition regulation, we hoped that the barriers to browser competition would be dismantled. However, even where there is movement in the right direction, improvements have been incomplete and are grudgingly offered only in markets where regulators have forced platform owners to make changes to respect browser choice. For example, Apple’s decision to allow alternative browser engines is only effective in the EU.

Similarly, Microsoft recently pledged to stop some of the actions it takes to force Edge on users who have selected other browsers. Unfortunately, these changes only address a small number of the tactics outlined in this report. And, to make matters worse, they will only be deployed to users in the EEA.

Windows users everywhere, especially in the rest of the world, continue to have their choices inhibited, overridden and undermined by Microsoft’s use of harmful design. Regulatory action around the world is needed to restore browser choice and competition across all of the major platforms.

Download the full report (PDF, 5MB, 74 pages)

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I want to disable offline auto-completion for facebook.com, bbc.com and other 'popular' sites on android.

I found the lists of domains were added with this commit https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/commit/65fdbf4696a but I cannot find a suitable about:config option to disable this feature.

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There’s a pixelated drawing board for Lemmy now.

help me create a 64x64 image of firefox logo there.

after signing in with lemmy, u can use this template (just clicking this link will be enough)

u can also use my recommended settings

recommended settings

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/firefox@lemmy.ml
 
 

Vivaldi (and Edge) have this absolutely wonderful capability that allows me to split one tab into two or four at the same time.

At least in my workflow it's quite useful because I usually work with several tabs open and sometimes two related tabs (say, a document I'm reading and a document I'm replying to according to that one), I know that I can perfectly have another Firefox window open next to it and fulfill that function, but I wish I could do it directly from Firefox.

Does anyone know of an add-on that fulfills this purpose? Or maybe a dev who is developing it?

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2615118

As shown below, it appears that all Firefox tabs are just named "Firefox" within the volume mixer. This doesn't exactly make differentiating them very easy. Is it possible to make the volume mixer show the names of the tabs instead? If not, is there any feature in the works for this that anyone may be aware of?

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I don't necessaril need a tab bar - though it'd be nice - but something like Ctrl+W to close a tab or Ctrl+T to open a new one. Normal keyboard shortcuts so I don't have to finger the screen all the time.

Is that possible?

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I find i get logged out of sites a ton on Firefox on iOS after very little time

Is there any setting or something I could do to change this? Or is it just a bug/intentional feature?

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I'm sure that it can be useful for a lot of people but for me magnifier's popup (on android) always getting in a way and makes text selection so much harder.

Is there any way to disable this feature, any entry in about:config for that, I'd like to turn it off browser wise?


Thanks @phorq@lemmy.ml, solution:

  • about:config
  • layout.accessiblecaret.magnifier.enabled
  • false
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This is one of the small UX items that I feel would improve FF on MacOS. The shift when moving the cursor to the menu bar sometimes makes me miss click on a tab.

Example here https://imgur.com/a/9tJBLCc.

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Today I noticed that in the Page Info --> Permissions tab (which you access through padlock --> Connection secure --> More information beside a page's URL) there is an Override keyboard shortcuts permission setting, with default set to "Allow". Interesting, because some sites use shortcuts that I'd rather avoid.

I checked the Settings, but I see no entry to set the default to "Block". Is there some entry in about:config for this?

Cheers!

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Sidebar switcher allows users to access Bookmarks, History and Synced Tabs panels easily, quickly switch between them, move the sidebar to another side of the browser window, or close the sidebar.

It is now possible to copy any file from your operating system and paste it into Firefox.

You asked, and we listened! The volume slider is now available in Picture-in-Picture.

The keyboard shortcut to reopen closed tabs (command + shift + t) now reopens last closed tab or last closed window, in the order items were closed.

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  • go to about:config
  • set javascript.options.wasm to true or false to enable or disable webassembly
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by pglpm@lemmy.ca to c/firefox@lemmy.ml
 
 

In my desktop Firefox I use Cookie Autodelete to keep a whitelist of sites whose cookies won't be deleted. All other cookies are deleted as soon as all tabs for a particular site are closed.

Android's Firefox, from what I gather, only give you two choices: delete all cookies upon quitting (not tab closing), or save them across sessions.

Unfortunately the extension above does not work on Firefox Android, and I haven't found any other alternatives.

Do you know of any alternatives or other solutions, to get a behaviour similar to the desktop one? (And also: how come that extension is not supported on Firefox on Android?)

Cheers!

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Edit: I figured it out. It was caused by the User-Agent Switcher and Manager addon, I use it to switch user agents on one site. I switched it to whitelist mode in the settings and now it works.

Like when I try to log into chat.openai.com, I click the checkbox that I'm human and it just keeps reloading that checkbox without progressing the page. But when I open the tab in a Firefox container (which you can install with the Firefox Multi-Account container addon), it works.

I want it to work without a container open.

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Even after all these years firefox keeps using mozilla hidden directory instead of XDG base directories. For how long will this continue?

Watch https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259356 for updates to this request.

~/.mozilla/firefox/ is a mish-mash of data, config, and cache. It's not simple to unravel that. Beyond that, it would be a breaking change, and that requires more caution.

credit: u/yo_99 on Reddit.

original link: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/vkgk78/why_does_firefox_keeps_using_mozilla_directory/

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Intel 8th gen, 8gb of RAM, windows 11

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Hi all,

I'm trying to make aware people of the recent Google movements to close gate the internet to their services and suggest to folks to move to Firefox.

One of my colleagues encouters this problem though:

and it doesn't happen in Chrome. Any ideas? It seems that it mostly happens when the font used on a page is sans-serif

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2287782

Personally, while I've been using Tab Session Manager for years, I've had lots of issues with it. There have been a few times where all my sessions would be completely wiped after restarting Firefox or having it crash, which is why I have the backup folder setting enabled. Very occasionally within the past few years, but much more often lately, when I'd try to restore sessions, all of which consist of 100s of tabs, I'd find a bunch of tabs missing, being replaced with blank new tab pages. Also note that this has happened across different computers and Firefox installations.

Looking at the changes / commits made to the extension since its last update made last September, the developer has only updated the readme page and a few other non-code related things. there are hundreds of unaddressed issues on the repo.

It seems like I should really move away from it, what are alternative extensions you would recommend?

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The dropdown menu is here: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_select

I’d like to change the CSS of the dropdown elements in a <select> element in dev tools, but I can’t make the dropdown stay open.

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I recently switched to Firefox from chrome but I noticed a bug that when I go full screen on Firefox my dock disappears on my second screen. Is there a fix for that?

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I just made the switch from chrome to firefox but I keep running into this issue. I have 2 monitors and when I go full screen the dock will go to the screen that is now full screen and I can’t work on things on my other monitor without having to minimize the other screen. Is there a solution to this?

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