Firefox 57 Quantum Released

[engine]

Mozilla has released Firefox Quantum, which is Firefox 57.

Claimed to be much faster than previous iterations, Mozilla says it's twice as fast. Time will tell, but so far it's looking good. Some people commented on the beta [webmasterworld.com] last month.

The first thing you’ll notice is the speed. Go on, open some tabs and have some fun. The second thing you’ll notice is the new User Interface (UI). We call this initiative Photon, and its goal is to modernize and unify anything that we call Firefox while taking advantage of the speedy new engine. You guessed it: the Photon UI itself is incredibly fast and smooth. Firefox 57 Quantum Released [blog.mozilla.org]

[tangor]

Only if the user had installed any extensions. :)

[Ebuzz]

Been a long time user, but FF57 is awful. Looks horrible and so many extensions no longer work. And you guys say it is even more intrusive now.

Firefox used to be the "Geek Browser" but now it is showing its true corporate colors to the max. Anyone asking how to roll back on those Firefox affiliated forums is met with either silence, or someone attempting to persuade them to stay with the update. Even their own Help Pages offer no help.

In a more worse case scenario, the user is banned. True story.

All this for what? A little more speed?

Come to your own conclusions....

[phranque]

Anyone asking how to roll back on those Firefox affiliated forums is met with either silence, or someone attempting to persuade them to stay with the update. Even their own Help Pages offer no help.

you should revert to Firefox ESR (52) so you get security updates:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/ [mozilla.org]

[blend27]

CTRL+SHIFT+M was a responsive design mode before, I used it a lot.

Looks like Things changed for the worst, at least for me. I could no longer paste users window size into the box to see what it looks like, that was there before.

Also, if the tab/page is left in responsive mode for a while, selecting a different resolution re-requests a new copy of the page from the server for some reason. While making adjustments to the generated HTML/CSS(F12) it trashes changes made. That is a uuuge PITA.

[tangor]

FF57 made me look. Loss of NoScript made me look harder. Might have to say thanks to moz for breaking the legacy add-ins as uMatrix is a hoot! (Takes out things NoScript ignored).

FF57 is faster than 56 and earlier, but blazing fast when you kill all the other stuff coming over the pipes!

Rolled back to 56 (I keep the installs I download) and did a few tests between the two.

If I can just kill that pesky data send to moz for that stupid "newtab" stuff I never asked for in the first place I just might keep 57. That data collection stuff just irritates me!

[Shaddows]

Gah, I hate the input type="date" picker. HATE IT.

NoScript is back now.

[blend27]

-- NoScript is back now. --

Now hit F12 and see now much you have to scroll down to the code you wrote. NoScript/FF57 seem to generate a bloat of I'd love me Old noScript, but call me slow.

The learning curve for an average user will be much longer clicking "Options >AddOns>Disable".

I am not sure if FF57 makes it harder for Developer or he just jumped the step(or 2) with the release. It was not complicated this before...

Including "Media" checkbox that rolls together with Script ckeckbox as a rule is not in my favor at this point. It disables loading default product image in JQuery slide menu on my e-com site - perhaps I should rewrite the code.

[blend27]

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[iamlost]

@tangor: open about:config and scroll down to browser.newtabpage and you'll find a long list to toggle off or change to [] aka blank string. It does result in a nice clean blank new tab :) and fewer 'feature' data connections.

[mcneely]

meh ... Firefox starts up faster than it did before -- and the first few sites/tabs load pretty fast too -- then it seems to bog down. I used Firefox up until about the end of last year when I loaded Vivaldi -- The new Firefox updated on the Windows side first and about a week later it came through the update on Linux.

I've never been real big on all of the gizmos and gadgets that these browsers seem to think we need -- It's as if they've arrived at peak-browser so now they're loading these things up with just about everything else to try to stay relevant --
I run Linux Mint (Cinnamon) 18.2 as my primary and have been for quite a while now, and the Vivaldi browser is still the best fit for me. It loads out and runs much faster than Firefox - It stays consistent with the work load and doesn't bog down - at least for me

The new Firefox runs about the same on both Windows and Linux -- I hate to admit it, but I'm kind of thinking about Firefox in much the same way as I started to think about Internet Explorer back in the day.

[dstiles]

I'd already begun trialling Pale Moon in linux (Manjaro) before v57 was issued. It retains (at the moment) "legacy" plugins such as NoScript and Tab Mix Plus. Think I'll add in a few more and drop Firefox. Shame, I've been using it since forever!

[smallcompany]

Well, after using it for some time now, I found some websites not working correctly in this version of Firefox. For example, I log into one of the affiliate networks, and one of the tabs is not working. I go to use Flagallery in WP, and upload images part is not working. I came across various problems in the same fashion where content simply seems to be blocked in some ways - therefore I cannot do the work. For this purpose, I have to go either to Chrome or Safari.

[tangor]

FF57 is default flash disabled. I have found a rather large number of destination borked for that reason. It might take time for the web to catch up to the new flash shun (which needs be done!).

New Tab undercontrol now (thanks!)
NoScript was not (originally) usable for High Contrast (visually impaired users) but has changed. But does not work the same way as before.
uMatrix covers the missing in NoScript.
Ad Block+ has changed their methods (but you can change the options back to the more strict if you like)

It is faster.

What HAS changed for the better is resources in use, CPU utilization (running eight cores so it makes a difference) and a smoother GPU interaction.

Sadly, integration of more krap and removal of some customization features is a PITA. And all the calling home/data mining which ALL browsers are doing these days.

Unless I missed it (and I don't think I have) there is no longer an option to disable JS from the options menu. It can be done, of course, just I find it interesting the Disable JS check box has disappeared.

Most folks have no concerns in that regard, but JS bothers me as it is CLIENT SIDE (my computer) and I steadfastly decide what I run on my machine. It is my hardware, after all.

</rant>

[smallcompany]

For my part above, I rushed as it turned to be the add-on that comes with the download software (FDM). Something about old one that was auto disabled by FF 57, then new one installed over. Once I removed it and put it back, the sites in questions started working properly.
But it's amazing how many pages were affected by this. I hope my experience can at least help some that may have issues. Use FF in safe mode if having trouble, and figure if something else is causing it. Inventing hot water, lol.

[IanCP]

I don't care about "fast" so much - I don't measure page load times in nano-seconds. Just so long as I don't see...

"Firefox is not responding"