Firefox

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

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626
 
 

The feature is called Tab Unloading, and weirdly enough they made it not easy to access despite its usefulness.

You basically have to type about:unloads in the address bar and hit enter. If you then click on "Unload", it will put the least used tabs to sleep. If you keep clicking that button until it's greyed out, you'll have unloaded all your tabs from memory.

This feature is handy if you want to temporarily switch to something that is memory hungry without having to close your 100 tabs.

627
 
 

I have a habit of making windows for different things. For example, let's say I have three windows open. One for school, one for work, and one for leisure.

I want all my work tabs to persist even after closing firefox. Once I close a window, all the links get saved to the bookmark folder. I would then open the folder and start with those tabs open again.

Does anything like this exist?

628
 
 

I am not the author.

https://github.com/galdor/github-license-observer

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/github-license-observer/

This is a cool little addon to help you tell, at a glance, if the repository you're browsing on github has an open source license license.

Especially relevant nowadays given the trend to convert previously OS repos to non-OS licenses as a business model (eg Akka or Terraform.)

629
 
 

I've wanted to install an extension from outside addons.mozilla.org, but Firefox didn't let me do it

So I've did a small research and looks like there are 3 ways to sideload extensions, but all of them suck

  1. Using FF Developer Edition

In the Dev Edition you can set xpinstall.signatures.required to false in about:config, but the problem is that the Dev Edition isn't as stable as standard FF

  1. Temporarily load the extension

In about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox you can temporarily sideload extensions, but they will be removed next time you open FF, which is annoying

  1. Modify FF code

Lastly, I found this script which modifies the FF code, but this can break things so I don't want to use it

I'm really annoyed that Mozilla gets to decide which extensions I can install. So... what's the best way to sideload extensions?

Edit: thanks everyone, I'm now using a FF fork (Librewolf) which lets me sideload extensions after disabling xpinstall.signatures.required

630
 
 

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)

Links:


❓ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


⭐ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


🗣️ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


🔮 Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


💛 Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

631
 
 

EDIT-2: The final solution was to add this to "My Filters":

@@||lemmy.fmhy.net^$3p

Based on Adblock Plus filters explained: Exception rules


EDIT: I went to the logger and found that EasyPrivacy filter list had a specific filter for ||fmhy.net^$3p:


This is the first time I see uBlock Origin blocking images from a random domain and I don't know how to whitelist them without disabling uBlock Origin for the whole site.

Any clues are welcome!
Thanks.

632
 
 

How's it with you guys ?

633
 
 

So the other day I was testing a new browser called waterfox. What stuck me as odd was how a small company seemed to have made Firefox so much more usable everyone. I normally use librewolf for privacy and security reasons but waterfox actually temped me to switch. (I ended up not switching for privacy and security reasons)

After I used waterfox for a bit I started thinking more and more about Mozilla the company. What are they even doing these days? It seems like they have stopped with the innovation. They could of setup a competitor to google with a custom nextcloud but they haven't made any competitive products other than a VPN.

I also saw a Nord VPN commercial and it was full of lies are usual (seriously, malware protection?). However a lot of there arguments could apply to Firefox. Why doesn't Mozilla do any sort of advertising? Admittedly Firefox isn't great in the UI department for the average user so it may be worthless

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636
 
 

I am currently a LibreWolf user, but I am also aware of Arkenfox User.js, which I am led to believe offers similar features.

Which is better?

637
 
 

For a long time I have been looking for an extension where I can "store" or "separate" my open tabs and send them to another place to read them later, and not something like wallabag and not necessarily offline, but simply for example leave saved the url of this post to see it later, without the need for it to be a news.

This is the extension and this is its Github page and its last update was just 3 weeks ago, so far in my opinion it works absolutely perfect.

Now, to tell the truth I can't say if it works because the developer was aware of the mobile users or it's because Mozilla is working on getting more desktop extensions to mobile, but either way, I want to make it clear that it works fine on desktop too.

For those who are interested, here are the steps to add extensions from desktop to mobile, it also works in Firefox Beta.

638
 
 

Could anyone help me. I have a silly problem with wayland, using Firefox (tar.gz or snap are same, tried both, welp ubuntu option only has it, my fedora on Xorg using XFCE). When searching using bing.com, it likes to freeze. I only know from the ram usage, it suddenly surge till the OS can't put any memory or lack of RAM. I never encounter this in WIndows either nightly, beta, stable or on Fedora Xfce Xorg. I only see this problem in wayland.

My Firefox version is 117 on Linux both wayland or xorg and 119 for windows 10

I put the profiller on the link, I hope someone can point me, why this happen, and how to can overcome it. Thanks!

*probably if any Firefox dev, welcome. Thank you

ping @yoasif@fedia.io @yoasif@mastodon.social

639
 
 

It started earlier today, I was watching TV and looked up the cast of an episode of solar opposites on IMDB and promptly closed it. Now randomly throughout the day today that tab going to that episodes cast on IMDB opens. Anything on google pointed to malware but I am not convinced its not a weird bug. Anyone else have this happen? i am going to try to clear history and see if that helps or if it opens a blank tab.

640
 
 

I cancelled my subscription since I received a notification that my browser is not supported. Perhaps I should have mentioned my issues with DRM as well, but this may have gone too far. One message is clear, too many messages are noise.

641
 
 

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/7474838

Via @nick@hkc.social:

Big update to Firefox (117) dropped if using a screen reader. YouTube video lists, and videos themselves, now scroll much better than before.

642
643
 
 

Recently switched computers and realized that Google maps is running really slow now. Severe stuttering, longer loading times, etc. The site works normally on chromium based browsers (tested edge, chrome, Vivaldi). Anything I can do?

Old PC had Radeon graphics and new has Intel integrated and Nvidia, if that's relevant.

644
 
 

I've just switched from Brave to Firefox on Android and so far liking it. There's one issue though. I use Bitwarden for my credentials & SwiftKey as keyboard. When I go to a website that asks for credentials, the Bitwarden button shows up above my keyboard to unlock my vault, as expected. I click it, unlock with fingerprint, and select the credentials. So far it's as expected and the same as Brave. However, when I select a credential, it goes back to Firefox, but then refreshes the page; so the credentials are gone. Luckily the credentials then show up above my keyboard as I've unlocked the vault, but after some time of inactivity I have to unlock again and the problem reoccurs.

Any idea how to resolve this?

/edit: looks like a long outstanding bug in Firefox, see here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1807364

645
 
 

I swear I saw something like this here on Lemmy but I can't find it.

I know android manages the RAM very differently than any desktop OS as it frees up RAM in order to have it available for other processes being third party or core ones.

I remember I saw something that you could fiddle with within the Firefox config page.

Or is it not possible on Android?

I'm using Firefox Nightly, because I think it is the only version that has a working pull to refresh.

646
 
 

I'm dying to find a way to stop Firefox on android from creating new tabs every time I use it. Why does it create a new tab when I open the app? Why won't the tabs ever go away even though I set it to delete them every day? Why is 'every day' the lowest setting to remove them automatically and not when I close the app?

I'm not seeing anything in the settings. I hate having extra tabs open. They're completely useless to me. Does anyone have suggestions?

Thanks.

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649
 
 

I found three, Betterfox, arkenfox, & Narsil.

I been using Betterfox for the last week. I been liking it because Betterfox doesn't break sites. Back in the day, I tried arkenfox. But it break some sites I go to. Narsil is a fork of arkenfox.

650
 
 

I’m wonder if its possible to change or refresh tab favicons and only favicons (without refreshing whole tabs). I looked through some pages on MDN and about WebExtensions but I haven’t found any search bars. I’ve also done Google searches specifically for that with no luck.

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