> Firefox now verifies and displays Qualified Website Authentication Certificates (QWACs) in accordance with eIDAS regulations.
Interesting that they just buried this in the middle without even a screenshot, considering how hostile Mozilla has been to the proposal in the past[0].
Considering that they previously made quite strong arguments that implementing QWAC would undermine security by completely bypassing the existing CA trust process and violate user's privacy by leaking browsing activity to third parties: what changed?
It does seem to fit into a wider movement, though. Mozilla previously explicitly considered WebUSB, WebHID, and WebMIDI as "harmful" as they lacked an effective mechanism against hostile websites tricking users into permanently compromising their hardware. This switched to "neutral" without addressing the underlying issue, seemingly just to satisfy some users asking for parity with Chrome out of a convenience argument. Same with Firefox happily jumping onto the AI bandwagon, and only backtracking after major public outcry.
Not to be dramatic, but Firefox seems hellbent on rapidly turning into a reimplementation of Chrome, completely ignoring its raison d'être. Will there be any traditional user-serving browsers left a few years from now?
> Will there be any traditional user-serving browsers left a few years from now?
One can hope that by then Ladybird has landed. There was some rumblings about an alpha release come 2027 so "few years" might actually be achievable if the speed remains constant.
PDF got attached to the browser when the browser needed a printing mechanism that worked in JS. PDF.js was the best approach. Creating PDFs is also part of the same approach. And merging PDFs is part of the same approach. PDF is now a first class child of the web.
- extremely stupid question but please entertain me here a bit
- why dont any of the modern browsers open and load pages instantaneously anymore, why does it take seconds?
- is this because of backward compatibility support where you are supporting html, css and JS features all the way back to the 90s
- apart from gecko and v8 why dont we have browser engines?
- are you familiar with anyone building an entire browser engine from scratch? how many WhatWG specifications would they have to support
- with all the GPT hype of late, why havent we seen a single GPT yet capable of building a browser engine from scratch supporting the last 20 years of html, css and js specs?
Yes. Containers will be enabled by default in the regular release without the need to install the extension or flip a preference in about:config.
It's also planned to integrate the ability to assign a website to a specific container. There's no information available on the other extra features from Multi-Account Containers like VPN/Proxy per container for the moment.
> Containers let you keep separate parts of your online life (work, shopping, personal, banking) logged into different accounts in the same browser window, but keep your cookies and ad tracking isolated inside each container.
What's new here? Containers have been an add-on, at least, for a long time? Is it integrated into core Firefox for the first time?
> Quickly pick and copy a color from any page by typing "pick color", "color picker", or "eyedropper" in the address bar and selecting the "Pick a color" quick action.
This seems like add-on or developer tools territory. Maybe that's what quick actions are? Does Firefox really want to add non-essential widgets to maintain, support, and integrate going forward? Maybe this one is necessary for some reason? I have a global color-picker that works in every application; I expect many who need one have the same.
Devtools are built-in on Firefox, and this one is probably useful to more people than want to be looking at the JS console. I can't imagine the maintenance burden is unreasonable, it's just a combination of features that Firefox already has.
14 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 37.0 ms ] threadInteresting that they just buried this in the middle without even a screenshot, considering how hostile Mozilla has been to the proposal in the past[0].
Considering that they previously made quite strong arguments that implementing QWAC would undermine security by completely bypassing the existing CA trust process and violate user's privacy by leaking browsing activity to third parties: what changed?
It does seem to fit into a wider movement, though. Mozilla previously explicitly considered WebUSB, WebHID, and WebMIDI as "harmful" as they lacked an effective mechanism against hostile websites tricking users into permanently compromising their hardware. This switched to "neutral" without addressing the underlying issue, seemingly just to satisfy some users asking for parity with Chrome out of a convenience argument. Same with Firefox happily jumping onto the AI bandwagon, and only backtracking after major public outcry.
Not to be dramatic, but Firefox seems hellbent on rapidly turning into a reimplementation of Chrome, completely ignoring its raison d'être. Will there be any traditional user-serving browsers left a few years from now?
[0]: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21330628/mozilla.pdf
You can rest assured that Mozilla will never copy Chrome's updating the mouse coordinates during dragstart, drag and dragend events.
"the spec doesn't specify what the properties should be set to, just that they should be set and we currently set them to 0."
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=505521
16 years and no sign of a resolution. I look forward to celebrating the day that bug becomes old enough to split a six pack with me.
Edit: It was first filed on July 21, 2009 so it will soon be 17.
One can hope that by then Ladybird has landed. There was some rumblings about an alpha release come 2027 so "few years" might actually be achievable if the speed remains constant.
> It is now possible to add images as new pages within PDFs using the Firefox PDF editor.
I have always found it odd that browsers are also PDF editors increasingly.
- why dont any of the modern browsers open and load pages instantaneously anymore, why does it take seconds?
- is this because of backward compatibility support where you are supporting html, css and JS features all the way back to the 90s
- apart from gecko and v8 why dont we have browser engines?
- are you familiar with anyone building an entire browser engine from scratch? how many WhatWG specifications would they have to support
- with all the GPT hype of late, why havent we seen a single GPT yet capable of building a browser engine from scratch supporting the last 20 years of html, css and js specs?
It's also planned to integrate the ability to assign a website to a specific container. There's no information available on the other extra features from Multi-Account Containers like VPN/Proxy per container for the moment.
You can follow the development on bugzilla https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?component=Container...
What's new here? Containers have been an add-on, at least, for a long time? Is it integrated into core Firefox for the first time?
> Quickly pick and copy a color from any page by typing "pick color", "color picker", or "eyedropper" in the address bar and selecting the "Pick a color" quick action.
This seems like add-on or developer tools territory. Maybe that's what quick actions are? Does Firefox really want to add non-essential widgets to maintain, support, and integrate going forward? Maybe this one is necessary for some reason? I have a global color-picker that works in every application; I expect many who need one have the same.