Crossposted another Reddit user's post: https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1dso5sz/easy_trick_to_make_firefox_compact_1_in_firefoxs/

Fingerprinting works by collecting bits of information about the browser and device to identify users. Couldn't browsers like Firefox see when a website gets such info with JS and either prevent or ask permission from the user for the website to make HTTP requests to upload such information to the website. Idk if they do something like this already.

https://reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1dofyj1/how_did_mozilla_firefox_go_from_being_the_best/

Post Text

Seriously, every post I read that's upvoted is smack talking Mozilla in every way possible and it just so happens to take place exactly when Google quietly announces Manifest V3. Mozilla is not our enemy, Google is. Don't let all these bot upvoted comments and posts let you forget that. Has Mozilla made some questionable moves lately? Yeah.. the biggest being the purchase of Anonym. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-the-bar-for-privacy-preserving-digital-advertising/

We'll just have to wait and see how that turns out. But I found it amusing when I saw this post and it got so many upvotes immediately after Mozilla announced the purchase. https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1dkujuh/mozilla_anonym_is_a_datahoovering_monster/

Then Mozilla allegedly fired someone because he has cancer. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/mozilla-is-trying-to-push-me-out-because-i-have-cancer-cpo-says-in-bombshell-lawsuit/ar-BB1oOjOZ

Then I was reading Mozilla android browser is suddenly the worst and least secure android browser.

It's never ending.. Honestly I think I am just going to take some time away from Reddit because it's becoming such a corporate shill and bot upvoted cesspool. I'm sure this will get heavily down-voted but I just wanted to give my two cents. Mozilla will always be my preferred choice for privacy and security and unless I see some actual changes within the browsers no one will ever convince me otherwise.

If anyone wants to check, here is a video showing a Firefox dev. console (F12 key) and errors occured on https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=Oslo#map=8/59.973/10.723

I would like to find the causing extension without the need of disabling extensions randomly or by disabling half of extensions, then if issue solved, disable half of that half etc..

Sometimes it helps to hover over the link near the error on dev. console (F12 key), Console tab, to see the moz-extension://somestring and find first characters of the string at page about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox Though this time, it does not show that IMO (per the linked video).

If I should click something particular in a FF dev. console (F12), please guide me. Thank you.

I did the tests on fingerprint.com/demo/ and https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ and they both said I have a unique fingerprint, even when I enabled privacy.resistFingerprinting to True.

This by @firefox

Firefox 3rd Party Installer Campaign

https://community.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/fx-3rd-party-installer/

\#firefox

I read the descriptions for the Dcentraleyes and LocalCDN addons which cache popular JS frameworks and page assets to enhance privacy and speed up pages that use them (since the assets were downloaded beforehand). Does Firefox have any built-in functionality to cache frequently used assets, or are there any addons that do so?

For instance, If I access Reddit.com a lot, I would want all the resources that all those Reddit pages have in common to be cached automatically to make loading pages from the domain faster.

Maybe other people don't get the results I'm seeing, but it makes that page unusable in ff.

Brave has no problem rendering the page, though.

Anyways, since it seems to be a bug in ff, and I've learned that ff doesn't want any feedback from mobile-devices people, the bug report can be here,

or be deleted to not be fixed,

or whatever: I don't care, anymore.

Integrity requires that it be noted, but..

I'm aware there already are modded versions that many use, but it's more obvious than ever that Mozilla is toast.

Let them eat cake, said the Baker.

Distros should be pivoting to LibreWolf, etc. Let Firefox become the next open office.

I almost exclusively use private tabs and had quite a few of them open at any time for things I was working on. But apparently since I’ve last updated the default behavior changed to close private tabs and the option to keep them open was removed.

Digging into it, I’ve found the bug report in the link. The last entry in the bug report is concerning:

> It looks like this was discussed in FXIOS-8672, although I don't have access to that JIRA to take a look at the discussion.

> Of the three PRs that I see that reference FXIOS-8672, one of them mentions:

> > I've intentionally kept this PR as simple as possible so we can release it and then be sure there is no major blow back from users. If we need to roll back it should be very simple in the current state.

> I'm not sure what would count as "major blow back" but there is at least some hope that this functionality can be restored.

> I agree with @garnetred that this behaviour isn't limited to force closing the app.

I switched to Floorp two months ago since it has native vertical tabs (which I greatly prefer over Tree Style Tabs since its a little buggy) and it has been running fine, though earlier this week I got a bug where I set a hotkey and removing it didn't clear it (it still triggered), even after restarts. I tried switching to the tab to the left with CMD OPT Left arrow, and accidentally set a hotkey for toggle the synced tabs sidebar.

I use that hotkey all the time and it basically ruined my workflow, it takes much longer to switch tabs with the mouse. I just found a workaround where I run my Floorp profile in Floorp Daylight (the beta version of Floorp, equivalent to Firefox Beta) remove the hotkey there, then run regular Floorp again.

While I'm happy with Floorp's exclusive featrues, I really wish they were in upstream Firefox because this is a big downside of using a fork, it has its own bugs. And I have to wait for changes from newer Firefox versions to get merged.

From the post:

In 2023, a significant portion of Firefox downloads came from unknown sources. We believe many of them came from 3rd party websites that let you download Firefox. While some websites are okay, others can put you at risk of downloading an old version or a build with the wrong locale, leading to security risks, a bad user experience, or even malicious installations.

Help the Firefox team to uncover this mystery by taking part in the Firefox 3rd-party installer campaign 3!

There will be swag, and you’ll be featured in our blog if you manage to report 10 valid reports. So don’t forget to invite your friends too!

Have any questions about this campaign? Join us on Matrix or watch the recording of our community call with Romain Testard, Principal Product Manager at Mozilla.

Please also help spread the word about this campaign by sharing this on your social media.

Keep on rocking the helpful web,

Kiki & Konstantina

I have two complaints about Firefox Focus on iOS:

First, when typing into the address bar, you must finish and tap “search” or “go” or else all you typed will go away if you switch to another app and back again. Firefox Focus shouldn’t forget what you’re doing unless you hit the garbage can icon or force close the app.

Second, if you’re typing, and you tap anywhere I’ve marked in red in the screenshot, it erases the search/url text you’ve typed, and you have to start over. It didn’t used to do this when Firefox Focus first came out. It would be fine to put a garbage can icon somewhere in that area, but the area now that deletes what you’re typing is bigger than the keyboard, and I’ve mis-tapped there way too many times.

After removing all passwords under three dots/kebab menu in the top corner of the page "about:logins", i wanted to import passwords from a Proton Pass to see how it works. Yet there is no import menu entry. After researching, I have found a solution that I want to share:

go to "about:config" page, and search for "signon.management.page.fileImport.enabled". Set it to true by double clicking on "false". Reload "about:logins" page to see the import menu entry under three dots corner menu.

YouTube has worked fine for me using Firefox with Ublock Origin, with no lag, notifications telling me to turn off ad blocking, or any of the other issues users have reported here.

> > > In alignment with our commitment to an open and accessible internet, Mozilla will reinstate previously restricted listings in Russia. Our initial decision to temporarily restrict these listings was made while we considered the regulatory environment in Russia and the potential risk to our community and staff. > >

To all people using Mull, the privacy hardened variant of Firefox for Android:

Mull 127 is out today!

The F-Droid version is very slow on updates. The cycles are about 1 per month or less.

DivestOS maintains Mull, and they have their own repo (above link).

Add their repo and get Mull from there.

If you already have it installed from F-Droid, you need to reinstall it, as the app comes from different developers so the Keys dont match.

---

If you are on GrapheneOS, Vanadium is the most secure browser and allows very well integrated process isolation.

Brave is similar but less secure, has better privacy features but also a ton of controversial stuff and (at least in the past) a really bad CEO.

Mull is likely most privacy hardened, interoperable with Firefox and has Addon support. But until there are other infos it has to be assumed as less secure.

---

Obtainium users

I use Obtainium.

For practicality I also have F-Droid Basic installed.

Add the repo in F-Droid basic, and search for Mull. If you are on the app page, use the "send" feature.

Your link will contain the exact name of the app.

In Obtainium, enter the URL of the repo at the top, then select "F-Droid 3rd party repo" as type and in "app id" enter the app name.

us.spotco.fennec_dos

According to zombbo, the developer of Censor Tracker: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/censor-tracker/

> I am one of the developers of the Censor Tracker add-on, which is listed on Mozilla’s add-on repository. We recently noticed that our add-on is now unavailable in Russia, despite being developed specifically to circumvent censorship in Russia.

> We have not changed any visibility settings, nor have we received any emails regarding this action.

> Our Russian users now see this message when they visit the page of Censor Tracker:

*That page is not available in your region.

The page you tried to access is not available in your region.

You may be able to find what you’re looking for in one of the available extensions or themes, or by asking for help on our community forums.*

> Can anyone suggest or explain what this is related to? Was there some request from the Russian authorities to make the extension unavailable in Russia or is there some other reason for this decision on Mozilla’s part?

Once my work day is over and my baby is asleep, there’s nothing I love more than settling in with my weighted blanket, grabbing some pillows, and playing video games. I don’t get to play video games as much as I’d like to anymore, so I need every tool at my disposal working for me to make sure I can maximize my time. I reached out to my fellow gamers here at Mozilla, and here’s how we use Firefox to help us game.

Firefox Nightly, a special channel where users can try out the latest features and changes, received a new feature that should make life easier for tab hoarders: tab previews. You can now hover the cursor over a tab and get a thumbnail with what is happening in that tab.

I want to better organize my bookmarks, but I got a lot of them and even if I already tried to be a bit more organized, they look awful to me. I try to organize them by category and by folder, but still I don't want to have 100 folders of 1 bookmark.

Firefox 130 will introduce an experimental new capability to automatically generate alt-text for images using a fully private on-device AI model. The feature will be available as part of Firefox’s built-in PDF editor, and our end goal is to make it available in general browsing for users with screen readers.

Mozilla plans to add artificial intelligence features to its Firefox web browser. At the WSJ’s Future of Everything Festival Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers and Mozilla Foundation president Mark Surman shared their vision for the future of the web with WSJ tech columnist Christopher Mims. Plus, new research questions how much screens before bed actually delay sleep.

Mozilla, maker of the open source Firefox web browser, has launched an investigation to analyze the impact of Telemetry on the browser's performance on Android.

Fixed an issue with reading tagged PDF documents in a screen reader. (Bug 1894849)

Fixed not displaying localized text for non-en-US locales in the Crash Reporter dialog box on macOS. (Bug 1896097)

Fixed issues with drag-and-drop functionality on Linux. (Bug 1897115)

Fixed an issue causing high GPU memory usage on certain versions of AMD cards. (Bug 1897006)

I removed the click bait part of the title.

Piped Video Link

Over the past few months, we’ve been accelerating our ability to execute outstandingly, make faster decisions, and realize our multi-product ambitions. To help facilitate this, I’m excited to announce an organizational change within the product team. This change will enable us to better develop and scale products at different stages of development and maturity.

Today, we have multiple groups across various teams working on new ideas and emerging products: Fakespot, PXI, Mozilla Social, and the Innovation Ecosystems team, plus some newer emerging pods around new product design sprints and ideation. To simplify and accelerate this work, we are consolidating our emerging and seed product portfolios under a single umbrella, led by Adam Fishman, as our SVP of New Products, reporting directly to me.

By setting up Firefox as a standalone product organization, we will also be able to bring more focus to our continual efforts to improve the Firefox experience for everyone who uses it. Firefox is already a leader in foundational qualities like speed and privacy, and now we will be able to faster in developing solutions that bring more useful tools and more joyful experience to our users. Our recent announcement of new Firefox features is just the start, as we close in on Firefox’s 20th birthday in November.

I am really excited about these changes as they help us accelerate our path to a strong, multi-product future as we simultaneously expand on our investment in our flagship core product, Firefox.

Laura Chambers

CEO, Mozilla Corporation

TLDR: I want to easily have a bunch of tabs somehow synchronized on both my desktop and mobile devices and in different groups. Safari and other iOS browsers haven't worked well for me.

This has actually been a hard problem I've been trying to solve for over 2 years now. Despite having used Firefox as my main browser the whole time, I had relied on Safari to sync tabs between my MBP and iOS devices since the UX for opening desktop tabs in the Firefox mobile app is really clunky: you have to do lots of taps and to get a list of tabs and you can only open one at a time, to open just one tab you have to do the whole dance all over again (this was from last time I tried it months ago, is it any different now?).

The problem with Safari is that lose a whole bunch of tabs can suddenly disappear open on all devices, replacing the pages with blank tabs, you can image how pissed off I was at that. I tried a bunch of iOS browsers, but none of them came close to having a UI as good as Safari in my opinion, and honestly iOS Safari feels much nicer than Firefox. Later I found Orion, but if I have many tabs open, the browser lags really hard on my M1 iPad Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, when all of them except for the current tab are unloaded. I don't get why mobile browsers are generally unpolished compared to desktop ones.

I was opposed to read it later apps like Pocket and Omnivore, because I can't open a bunch of pages quickly and switch between them, like I can with browser tabs, but I think I have to suck it up. I could use the Omnivore iOS app and have a tab open on Firefox desktop, to save page and open them in the browser by default, and it has labels which I can filter pages by, since I like to have pages or tabs in groups like Safari Tab groups.

Having long lists of pages wouldn't lag, or suddenly disappear, and I can mark the pages as read when I'm done with them. I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on this or have other ideas that might work better.