Will Firefox changes win back users and developers?

Will Firefox changes win back users and developers?

Firefox has gone through a rough time over the last couple of years, with increased competition from Chrome and other browsers. Now the browser’s developers are planning big changes to Firefox. Will these changes win back users and developers who have abandoned Firefox?

Sebastian Anthony reports for Ars Technica:

Firefox is about to undergo some dramatic changes, according to Mozilla. In an e-mail to the firefox-dev mailing list, Dave Camp, Firefox’s director of engineering, has outlined what he calls the Three Pillars of the new Firefox: Uncompromised Quality, Best Of The Web, and Uniquely Firefox. Let’s take them in order.

Uncompromised Quality will aim to strip out Firefox’s half-baked ideas, or to carry them through to completion so that they’re “polished, functional, and a joy to use.” This program is internally dubbed “Great or Dead”—as in, if the Firefox devs can’t make a feature great, it should be killed off. Camp says in the email that Electrolysis (e10s)—Firefox’s massively overdue implementation of per-tab processes—is one of the first features that needs to be focused on, “to get the kind of snappy experience we need to make Firefox feel great.”

Best Of The Web is a slightly more nebulous pillar that will concern itself with the add-ons community, and partnerships with third parties like Telefonica. “We intend to spend some significant effort making addons even more awesome by improving security and performance for users and a building a better API that increases x-platform compatibility for addon authors and partners,” Camp says in the email.

Uniquely Firefox is all about actually attracting new users to Firefox, by “focus[ing] on the reasons users choose us in the first place.” The only specific example given is an improved Private Browsing mode, which Camp says will “land shortly.”

More at Ars Technica

Linux redditors reacted to the news with some skepticism:

Altiris28048: “I’m completely lost with what they are trying to do, lots of buzz and marketing words (I hate that…, if you don’t have exact information yet don’t send out a damn message). Why are trying to do things like integrate Pocket, some Web chat thing, etc.

I’ve been waiting probably a year to be able to play 1080p and 60fps videos on Firefox with HTML5. Can I do this already or its not implemented for some reason (is it drm related)?”

Steamruler: “What’s the purpose of splitting the browser into multiple processes now again? Is there any significant advantage over running each tab as a thread instead? If anything, the presence of a process per tab just makes killing and identifying tasks harder.”

D5Njv: “I can’t count the number of times when I see firefox mysteriously pegging my CPU at 100% and having to guess which tab is responsible. By isolating each tab in its own process, it would be trivial to find the offending tab using top or one’s favorite task manager.”

Lions: “Maybe it’s time to admit that users don’t care about dogmatic adherence to free software. Go out and get Netflix working. Find a way to make sure Hulu doesn’t tear so badly. Same with YouTube. I don’t care if everything else works far better, those three things count for the majority of my web usage, if they don’t work I’m sticking with chrome.”

Formegadrivers: “This worries me. A lot, given existing precedents[1] . “Unpolished”, according to who? “Not very useful”, according to who? Many useful extensions will die in the process, I’m sure. Oh, great. Just what we wanted. More “partnerships” :/ …repelling us old users, which have been with Firefox since it was called Phoenix, it seems. The reasons I chose Phoenix back then… I can’t see them in the current Firefox anymore 🙁 How about complex extensions like Vimperator[2] and Pentadactyl[3] , alternative browsers like Conkeror[4] and Seamonkey[5] , or Mozilla’s own Thunderbird[6] ? What will happen to them?”

Pogey: “…if they just don’t have the manpower to do all of these things, it’s better that something goes- even if it was something that I liked. I bet tab groups will be one thing to go and I’ll miss it.”

Kumpel: “I certainly hope they keep userstyles for the UI because that’s pretty much the only reason I’d chose Firefox over chrome right now; the customizability. But chrome removed it because it “unfinished” and not user-friendly (IIRC). If Mozilla thinks the same, I don’t see where this feature of “help[ing] them shape and control that personal experience” for users is if they can only color things like in chrome.”

36878: “What I don’t understand is why browsers use so much memory these days? Is it possible to forget about closed tabs after say the last 6-7 that were closed? (Ie. just store the last 6-7 closed tabs).”

Wooly: “Really hoping that splitting processes means splitting them in a way that doesn’t significantly raise/alter Firefox’s total memory usage. Currently using Firefox on my c720 (only 2gb) because the memory usage is about half of what I get with same tabs open in Chrome.”

Adamnew: “My understanding of the idea is that, should one of your tabs run amok (either because a plugin died, or you hit a browser bug), the others (and the browser UI) aren’t torn down with it. I think you’re also supposed to see less UI lag, since a page using bad Javascript doesn’t block the browser’s UI.”

More at Reddit

Android malware increases significantly

Android has long had problems with malware, and a new report indicates that the problem has increased significantly for Google’s mobile platform.

Jack Germain reports for LinuxInsider:

Information stored on an Android smartphone or tablet is vulnerable to almost 4,900 new malware files each day, according to a report G Data SecurityLabs released Wednesday. Cybercriminals’ interest in the Android operating system has grown, the firm’s Q1 2015 Mobile Malware Report revealed. “The report suggests that Android devices are becoming a bigger target for the bad guys and more profitable than in previous years,” said Andy Hayter, security evangelist for G Data.

The number of new malware samples in the first quarter increased 6.4 percent (440,267) from the fourth quarter of last year (413,871). The number of malware strains rose by 21 percent compared with the first quarter of 2014 (316,153). More than 2 million new Android malware strains are likely to surface this year, G Data security predicted.

The new malware files have a financial foundation, according to the G Data report. At least half of all Android malware now in circulation includes banking Trojans, SMS Trojans and similar malware components.

Perhaps the one most effective strategy to minimize the risk of Android malware infection is to avoid discount app stores. “Do not download apps from unknown app stores, except if you really trust the specific vendor,” said Andy Hayter, security evangelist for G Data. Also, install a malware scanner, and check the permissions thoroughly before installing any app.

More at LinuxInsider

One million new lines of code added to Linux kernel in 4.2 rc1

Linus has been busy on the latest update to the Linux kernel, and 4.2 rc1 might be the biggest update to Linux ever.

Simon Sharwood reports for The Register:

Linus Torvalds has loosed Linux 4.2-rc1 upon a waiting world, and rates it the biggest release candidate ever in terms of the volume of new code it contains.

The Linux Lord writes that “if you count the size in pure number of lines changed, this really seems to be the biggest rc we’ve ever had, with over a million lines added (and about a quarter million removed).”

Most of those new lines of code come from “the new amd gpu register description header”, code that Torvalds says comprises “41 per cent of the entire patch” and has created a “… somewhat odd situation where a single driver is about half of the whole rc1 in number of lines.”

Torvalds says 4.2rc1 knocks off the previous “champion”, 3.11rc1, which grew because it added the Lustre filesystem.

More at The Register

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