What’s up with Firefox 90? Should you go back to version 88?

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PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston In rapid succession, the Mozilla Foundation recently released versions 89 and 90 of its Firefox browser. Cries of
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oldfry

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The article mentions switching to Brave. I moved from Brave to Vivaldi because Brave was phoning home for no readily defensible reason. It is still based on the Chromium engine so uses Chrome extensions, but (AFAICT) is even more privacy-aware than Brave.

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Firefox has gotten incredibly slow. With a brand new desktop it takes four second to load my homepage and I can’t even tell how long it takes to load on my spouse’s five year old PC. So I took the moral of the story as it might be a heck of a lot easier to install Brave. And gwmail/gmail takes longer than that.

I just tried loading Brave and it loads my homepage in less than a second. I noticed the mention of Vivaldi above. But I am giving Brave a try since it appears to be at least somewhat better than Firefox. It took about ten minutes to install and set up. Not bad.

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WSdatabaseben

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I have no problems running Firefox 89 on some of my PCs.
I’ll skip Firefox 90 and will beta test version 91 on a test PC

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WSdatabaseben

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Using Firefox ESR doesn’t create anything that exciting!
With every mainstream Firefox version, (excluding point releases) comes more junk to fix, secure and debunk. It’s abit like W10 with feature updates, you get the rough with the smooth for being on the (supposedly stable and secure) leading edge.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created IT- AE

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SilenceIsG0lden, Alex5723

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I second this. Having been burned so many times in the past, I tend to check out the change log before accepting any major update. What I read about 89 led me straight to ESR.

I really like extended release versions, as I no longer feel like spending days or weeks trying to fix what is either wrong or not to my liking on my WORK computer. Same reason why I opted to go to Linux Mint when Windows lost me. I’m still on 19.3 and totally happy with the regular SECURITY-only updates.

New features? Come on, everything has pretty much plateaued, and so much in the hard- and software world is now only driven by profit and built-in obsolescence.

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Microfix, Alex5723, WSdatabaseben

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I agree and always use esr.  But once a year the Firefox version that esr is based on jumps ahead.  That will happen on October 28 this year, when esr will go from Firefox-78-based to Firefox-91-based.  Only 3 months away :(.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar

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Microfix

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That’s the downside to ESR, the jump-ahead! Although there’s nothing stopping anyone from staying on Firefox ESR 78.15 a bit longer until there is a MASSIVE security scaremongering shout from muzilla. (scrutinizing the changelogs helps here) used that method that with ESR 68.12
At least most of the bugs and erroneous content will be fixed when moving to 91.2 or subsequent versions from 78.15, that’s the plan anyway for security only updates. YMMV

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created IT- AE

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rick41

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SilenceIsG0lden wrote:

New features? Come on, everything has pretty much plateaued, and so much in the hard- and software world is now only driven by profit and built-in obsolescence.

From a long-time user since the pheonix/firebird days, why didn’t they just scrutinize the extensions thoroughly and do away with the additional feature junk in the mainstream versions?
ESR is as close as that gets to that minimal ethos and even then, it still carries a weight.
Being able to run a basic secure browser and choose what YOU need was one of mozilla’s biggest strong points years ago with the now redundant plug-ins, sadly now lost in a desparate attempt to be goozilla.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created IT- AE

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rick41

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I agree.   All the browsers seem to have plateau’d and i see no true differences between them, although we are led to believe that privacy protection(s) is what distinguishes the browsers from each other.

But even then, the so called privacy protecting browsers are collecting information about us anyways.

As for me, I have uninstalled v88, 89 and 90.  I had all 3 installed for testing and comparing.   But now use v84, when  I am in the mood.

 

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Immediately downgraded to 88.0.1, disabled updates and never looked back.

Firefox was a success because it charted its own course.  Now it’s simply another wannabe following the crowd and lacking direction.

For the life of me, will never understand the desire to make a UI as unintuitive and unusable as possible, and then arrogantly look down upon anyone who dares to disagree, but such has discourse become in present day America.

And BTW, still using IE11, with custom accelerators, on Windows 7 SP1.

< /rant >

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Charlie, Cybertooth

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“Wannabe”  is interesting description and i dont disagree.

I think it would also be fair to say that all branded browers that are using chrome as the foundation for their browsers all want to be like google.  🙂

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I’ve been running Firefox 90 (Linux) since it first appeared a week or two ago, and there have been no issues. It doesn’t feel slow by any means, and since no Chromium derivative has as yet demonstrated the ability to scroll without stuttering and juddering all over the place with any of my touchpad-equipped laptops, Firefox (or one of its derivatives) remains the most viable choice.  It takes some modification to make it decent, but that’s been the case since Australis landed eight years ago.

Rolling back to a previous version is certainly the user’s prerogative, but it is a temporary fix, as the browser will become more and more insecure as more issues are discovered. If it’s about the bookmarks, just use “Show all bookmarks” under the Bookmarks menu on the menubar (if you don’t use it, you’ll have to find it on your own; I have no idea where it is) and use the built-in backup feature to save them somewhere.

If it’s about the idiotic UI, you can go back to the old one (for now) by setting the prefs that have “proton” in them to false. I wish I could say that if Mozilla knew how much people disliked something (like making this new UI mandatory), they’d reconsider, but Mozilla has been doing the “I can’t hear you, mmm-mm-mmm-mm” things with fingers in the ears for over a decade every time someone objects to one of their many bad ideas. The plan to make the new UI mandatory will, no doubt, proceed as planned, and people can either adapt (by using Aris-T2’s custom CSS modifications) or move on. Even the ESR branch only forestalls the inevitable for a relatively short time.

This is why I have resigned myself to being pushed off of Firefox despite really, really trying to keep fending off Mozilla’s attempts to make their product undesirable. They keep making Firefox worse, I keep undoing their changes so it remains the best browser for me. At some point, they will break it more than I am capable of fixing, or reasonably fixing, and I will have to put up with the stuttering scrolling of Vivaldi. Other than that “standard” Chromium feature, Vivaldi is fantastic.

It’s been clear Mozilla has lost their way for a long time now. Suspending someone for helping people on the Mozilla forum, then citing a fictitious reason for the ban? Not surprising they’d engage in such censorship, given their comments a few months ago when they came out in favor of “deplatforming”. I guess that’s what they mean by being dedicated to “a free and open web.”

As for Mitchell Baker saying that asking her family to live with less than 3 million dollars a year “is too much to ask” when they’re letting people (who actually contribute something meaningful to Firefox) go amid a continuous slide in market share that happened on her watch (as CEO or chairwoman)… yeah, no sale on that one. How much money does she think she deserves for guiding Mozilla through an 85% reduction in Firefox market share since 2008? Her salary since then has quintupled. Another $600k for every 23% reduction in market share!

If you think you can get 80% more somewhere else after that kind of performance, Ms. Mitchell, have at it.

 

 

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AlexEiffel, rc primak, johnf, wavy, Tom-R, WSdatabaseben, Charlie, SilenceIsG0lden, Cybertooth

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I’ll probably regret saying this because of passed experiences, but I’ve got Firefox 90.0.2 installed on Win 7, and 90.0.1 on Linux Mint.  None of the 89 or 90 updates caused any problem for me on either OS (knocking on my wooden desk).

Being 20 something in the 70's was much more fun than being 70 something in the 20's.

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I’d like to also say that the Firefox browser is one that I can, and will, customize to suit my own personal taste.  So far, I haven’t found much that I can’t fix or live with.  But that’s just me.

Being 20 something in the 70's was much more fun than being 70 something in the 20's.

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A lot of the complaints are on Windows. Linux and Firefox are better matched than Windows and Firefox. This has been true for a long, long time.

-- rc primak

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Charlie

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I think this story may be a case of fear mongering by an organization that has placed the Principal’s above the Principle’s

For example, there was a FF user that is fiercely loyal and would not abandon FF because it protected her; in spite that the recent upgrade occurring a few months ago created all kinds of errors and her business operations were in jeopardy.

She 100% refused to utilize a different browser even though the current train wreck was not protecting her anyways?  And she was being providing with a great deal of technical instructions that ultimately proved unhelpful.  Because I felt her pain and suffering i got her back to a functional state with the previous version of FF.

So did i do a favor to her by helping her to continue using a FF browser, regardless of the version?  Was I not helping the Mozilla Org by helping to retain the above FF consumer and many others regardless of the FF browser version?

In any case, like the FF consumers I was assisting, I too felt betrayed as well.

You see, not only was i helping to retain FF consumers for Mozilla but I was also allocating my valuable time as well, and it was at no charge.  So why does Mozilla rely on volunteers to providing consumer assistance at no charge, quality control and quality assurance, when Mozilla should be paying people to do this for them?   Incidentally, I was donating $$ to the Mozilla Foundation as well.

While for me its not about the money but I wont be throwing any more of it away at those that I feel are placing Principals above the Principles.

Perhaps, my payment comes from helping people, like helping the FF consumers.  And my rewards have been personal thank you’s from them.  Sure, some would say that Thank You’s dont pay the light bills.  But they do, albeit indirectly.

For example, there was a FF consumer whereas a recent upgrade was installed without his knowledge and permission and turned into a train wreck that was jeopardizing his company operations. He lost many years of user data stored on the browser.  For me, it seemed like someone was on a sinking ship and his treasure chest was also going down with the ship.  (incidentally, I am a nuclear submarine veteran)

Again, I did fail to see how a business (or any business) could place all of their proverbial eggs into a one basket.  But never the less, the gentleman relied heavily on FF and all the years of his user data in it. He also discovered that he could not rely on the FF people to assist him during this time of crises. He was being sent on wild goose chases with instructions that have been proven “not to work”.   The so-called assistance were nothing more than time consuming, wild goose chases and distractions. When nothing else could be offered, he and his business was essentially abandoned  to the wind?

In any case, after I brought him back up to speed and once again become functional and productive again, he sent me one of the best emails I had ever received. He had Thank God for me having rescued him. (Over the decades I have received many personal thank you’s from very important people, including one from a Rear Admiral during my time in the USN. But the one I recently received cited GOD.)

In any case, the above are just some of my personal experience’s.

Life for me is about the Principle and does not always have to be about Principal.

It’s not always about the 0’s and the 1’s.  It’s also  about what lays in between them.

~dbben

 

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johnf

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He lost many years of user data stored on the browser.

Who as an individual, let alone a business person, stores irreplaceable data in the browser?

Sometimes people get what they deserve.

And this also goes for people who use old, out of support networked hard drives like the Western Digital MyBook Live, years after the Company says they will not fix known security issues, and you can’t turn off the Web-facing components. And they have no backups of their irreplaceable data which they have saved on these devices!

Some people just never learn.

FWIW, you can back up the entire Firefox Profile rather easily.

-- rc primak

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For what it’s worth, I use Firefox almost exclusively for my regular web browsing (along with Adblock Plus and NoScript extensions).  However, I also control when I accept updates to Firefox via this convenient little utility from TrishTech that toggles between enabling or disabling the automatic updates:

• TrishTech.com – Toggle Firefox Update

So I only update Firefox around once a month typically (on my schedule, not Mozilla’s) — and then only after I check to see if other Firefox users have been reporting any problems with the latest update.

With these updates to v89 and v90, I made sure to preemptively export my Firefox bookmarks to a .json file before updating, just in case anything might get deleted.  However, in my case at least, everything updated cleanly; and no bookmarks were lost in the process.  So my exported .json backup file was never needed.

I really do like Firefox the best of all the browsers I’ve tried, even if it’s not necessarily the fastest.  But just like I don’t fully trust Microsoft with updating Windows, I also don’t trust Mozilla with updating Firefox.  So I make sure that I stay in control of the updating process and schedule.  The TrishTech Toggle utility is to Firefox what the WUMgr tool is to Windows.  It lets me decide when and how to update.

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Charlie, Cybertooth

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Bookmarks aren’t the only data which some people have stored in their browsers. Backing up the entire Firefox Profile is a better choice, and it isn’t that difficult.

In Linux, to have both Firefox and Chrome/Chromium backed up, all I need to do is back up my entire User Home Directory, including Hidden Directories and Files.  In Windows it’s a bit more complicated, but definitely not Rocket Science.

-- rc primak

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Cybertooth

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Firefox portable ESR for me. Currently 78.12.0.

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Microfix

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