Firefox

Crossposted from a community manager's post: https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1hwd6u7/join_mozilla_to_test_the_new_firefox_address_bar/

Hi r/firefox 👋,

The address bar is one of the most prominent areas in any browser, and Firefox is no exception. Understanding its importance, the Firefox team has been working on a set of complementary features designed to improve discoverability and security of the Firefox address bar.

With this set of features landing in Firefox Beta 135, we need your expertise to help us test these enhancements by participating in this campaign, which will be live on January 9th! 

The top 5 contributors will each receive a $50 voucher to shop at Mozilla’s swag stores as a thank-you for your efforts. 

Have any questions about this campaign? Join us on Matrix or comment down below!

From page 54 of https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/b200-mozilla-foundation-form-990-public-disclosure-ty23.pdf

From https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1hokr0c/mozilla_chair_pay_vs_firefox_market_share_2023/m4aca4j/:

Total 2022 pay: $6,903,089
Total 2023 pay: $6,260,072 - a $643,017 decrease
Base chair pay: $600,000
2023 chair bonuses and other incentives: $5,622,600

Sources:

• 2023 finances (direct PDF link)
• Previous finances
• Browser market share

For comparison, here are other executive salaries ($0 bonuses for each)

Executive name	Title	Total Pay (2023)
MARK SURMAN	PRESIDENT & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR	715,143
J. BOB ALOTTA	SVP, GLOBAL PROGRAMS	508,138
ANGELA PLOHMAN	COO, SECRETARY & TREASURER	452,234
ASHLEY BOYD	SVP, GLOBAL ADVOCACY	427,701
ZHILUN PANG	DIRECTOR OF FINANCE	273,069
DAVID WALKER	SENIOR COUNSEL	268,565
LAINIE DECOURSY	DIRECTOR, ORG EFFECTIVENESS	267,028
JUAN BARANI	SENIOR DIRECTOR, GIFT PLANNING	262,879
STEPHANIE WRIGHT	SR PROGRAM MANAGER, MOZFEST	236,785

Solution: I just needed to disable Firefox Color in about:addons.

I set a theme with Firefox Color, I tried changing the theme in settings to light or dark but neither work. I'm wondering if there are other ways to do so in Firefox that I could try. I'm on zen browser which is why it may not have worked.

Solved: It turns out I needed to add https:// to the redirect URL. I now edited the redirect to be this:

{
    "createdBy": "Redirector v3.5.3",
    "createdAt": "2024-12-25T00:25:04.487Z",
    "redirects": [
        {
            "description": "sh.reddit.com submission page",
            "exampleUrl": "https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/submit?selftext=true",
            "exampleResult": "https://sh.reddit.com/r/firefox/submit?selftext=true",
            "error": null,
            "includePattern": "https://.*?reddit.com/((r|u|user)/.*?/submit.*)",
            "excludePattern": "",
            "patternDesc": "",
            "redirectUrl": "https://sh.reddit.com/$1",
            "patternType": "R",
            "processMatches": "noProcessing",
            "disabled": false,
            "grouped": false,
            "appliesTo": [
                "main_frame"
            ]
        }, 
    ]
}

Using the Redirector addon, I wrote a redirect from a Reddit submit page to the new new Reddit submit page but it doesn't work when I go to https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/ and click "submit text", it just takes me to https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/submit?selftext=true despite the link working in the example box.

Reproduction: Install the addon, save the following as a json file, click on addon icons and select "edit redirects", then click import to select the json file.

{
"createdBy": "Redirector v3.5.3",
"createdAt": "2024-12-22T15:43:42.356Z",
"redirects": [
{
"description": "sh.reddit.com submission page",
"exampleUrl": "https://old.reddit.com/r/tds_roblox/submit",
"exampleResult": "sh.reddit.com/r/tds_roblox/submit",
"error": null,
"includePattern": "[a-z]+?:\\/\\/.+?reddit.com\\/((r|u|user)\\/.+?\\/submit.*?$)",
"excludePattern": "",
"patternDesc": "",
"redirectUrl": "sh.reddit.com/$1",
"patternType": "R",
"processMatches": "noProcessing",
"disabled": false,
"grouped": false,
"appliesTo": [
"main_frame"
]
},
{
"description": "Old Reddit",
"exampleUrl": "https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit",
"exampleResult": "https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit",
"error": null,
"includePattern": "[a-z]+?:\\/\\/.*?\\.reddit\\.com\\/(((r|u|user)\\/.*)|$)",
"excludePattern": "[a-z]+?:\\/\\/.+?reddit.com\\/((r|u|user)\\/.+?\\/submit.*?$)",
"patternDesc": "",
"redirectUrl": "https://old.reddit.com/$1",
"patternType": "R",
"processMatches": "noProcessing",
"disabled": false,
"grouped": false,
"appliesTo": [
"main_frame"
]
}
]
}

Illustration of overlapping browser windows with Ecosia's logo, a tree graphic, Firefox's logo, and the text "Together for a better web," alongside a search bar with a green cursor.

Your tech choices matter more than ever. That’s why at Mozilla, we believe in empowering users to make informed decisions that align with their values. In that spirit, we’re excited to announce our partnership with Ecosia, a search engine that prioritizes sustainability, and social impact.

Did you know you could choose the search engine of your choice right from your Firefox URL bar? Whether you prioritize privacy, climate protection, or simply want a search experience tailored to your preferences, we’ve got you covered.

Ecosia goes beyond data protection by addressing environmental concerns. Every search made through the search engine contributes to tree-planting projects worldwide, helping to combat deforestation and regenerate the planet. Ecosia planted over 215 million trees, across the planet biodiversity hotspots, making a tangible difference in the fight against climate change. Just like Mozilla, they are committed to creating a better internet, and world, for everyone.

Together, Mozilla, Firefox and Ecosia are contributing to a web that is more open and inclusive, but above all — one where you can make an informed choice about what tech you use and why. Your tech choices make a difference.

As Firefox and Mozilla continue to champion user empowerment and innovation, we invite you to join us in shaping a web that makes the world better. Together, let’s make a positive impact — one search at a time.

I don't want text to be unloaded from pages because then I can't see all the results on the CTRL F box. This happens on Discourse forums and New New Reddit (its too bad they removed the 2018 redesign).

https://windowsreport.com/mozilla-firefox-removes-do-not-track-feature-support-heres-what-it-means-for-your-privacy/

Right now is the best period of time yet for Firefox-based browser, especially when most alternative browsers are Chrome-based.

While there are a bunch of forks like Librewolf and Palemoon, they provide features mainly for power users like hardened privacy and tweaked user-prefs. A year ago the only fork I knew of, based on recent stable versions of Firefox and added productivity features on top was Floorp. I was very surprised at the hype and sudden popularity of Zen Browser in the past few months and have been curious why it grew so much faster than Floorp which has been around for much longer, look at the Github star graph: https://star-history.com/#zen-browser/desktop&Date. Zen Browser currently has 19.3K stars while Floorp has 6.1K.

Reasons I can think of are the following: heavy promotion of the browser by the devs and community on places like Reddit along with emphasizing its 'zen' philosophy, really fast development (it now has way more features than Floorp), and the Zen mods store, where you can install CSS mods.

What are your thoughts and reasons for Zen Browser becoming so popular so fast? (while its not mainstream, it did grow fast in among Firefox and power users)

A Mozilla employee recently released a Firefox addon to change the user agent to Chrome on sites the user enables it on.

• https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-mask/
• https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1eic7bj/chroe_mask_makes_firefox_wear_a_mask_to_look_like/

I'm actually pissed. I and many other users on the forum got an email from Chris Hayes on this:

Hello,

This is a friendly email to make you aware that your personal email address is currently visible to the whole internet via Mozilla's Discourse forum. It will show up in Google Search results. The affected email is the one that this email was sent to.

Many users may not be aware that their email address is publicly visible and Mozilla has not done anything about it in the 4 years it has been known, so I've taken this into my own hands to inform you.

What can you do?

You can update your profile name to be something else (actually, profile name is completely optional, so you can leave it blank if you want).

Steps to update profile name:

1. If you search for "Mozilla Discourse forum" it should be one of the first results.
2. Login. (Top-right)
3. Click on your profile picture at the top right.
4. Then, click on your username, at the top of the dropdown menu.
5. Click on the "Preferences" button.
6. Change the "Name" field, and click "Save Changes".

How did this happen?

There's a misconfiguration with Mozilla's Discourse forum that when you sign up with your Firefox account, it will by default use your personal email address as your profile's public name.

This is not a new issue, and has been known since 2020. The Mozilla Discourse forum is not actively maintained by Mozilla, so this has yet to be fixed.

You are one of 4,630 other users impacted by this privacy issue. It impacts 19% of all forum users, and 28% of new users.

More information:

There's a Discourse discussion about this problem here: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/email-is-displayed-by-default-for-the-new-account/92266

If you have connections to Mozilla, please help escalate this issue to the right people. This is a serious and long-standing privacy issue at an organization that should value "Privacy by default".

Sincerely,@chrisA fellow Mozillian

I am not Mozilla: This is not an official Mozilla email, I do not represent or work for Mozilla. This is an email from a fellow community member spreading awareness of this unaddressed privacy issue.

I should not be a few keystrokes away from accidentally deleting all of today's entries with no confirmation if I'm sure, and no way to recover them, even if I close the browser in the same second. I don't even know which ones I hit.

For instance, I watch a video on Shout Factory and then pause, close the tab and when I go back to the link it goes back to where I left off.

How in web-extenion to detect whether a website supports dark mode and whether it is in dark mode?

Including not only does it automatically switch to dark mode (with color-scheme)), but also is it in dark mode by default, without using color-scheme, without having a light mode?

I want to expand (Firelux type) with such an automatic, effective detector.

I thought that maybe someone had made an effort to detect dark backgrounds, but also light subtitles, detecting everything possible...

Then it occurred to me that there should be a database of sites that have a dark mode and a way to bypass it...
But I'm doing it myself in Firelux, clicking laboriously.

How in web-extenion to detect whether a website supports dark mode and whether it is in dark mode?

Including not only does it automatically switch to dark mode (with color-scheme)), but also is it in dark mode by default, without using color-scheme, without having a light mode?

I want to expand (Firelux type) with such an automatic, effective detector.

I thought that maybe someone had made an effort to detect dark backgrounds, but also light subtitles, detecting everything possible...

Then it occurred to me that there should be a database of sites that have a dark mode and a way to bypass it...
But I'm doing it myself in Firelux, clicking laboriously.

#firefox #webextensions #css #javascript

The only addons I've been finding are ones that block based on specific urls, domains, or a few glob patterns. I want to specify any regex.

What are the pros and cons of using Android Firefox vs F-Droid Fennec on a Kindle Fire 7? Thx!

#firefox

Version 122.0, first offered to Release channel users on January 23, 2024

New

Firefox now displays images and descriptions for search suggestions when provided by the search engine.

The translations feature received an improvement in the quality of translated webpages. The results should be much more stable. This fixes issues where the content of a page could disappear when translated, or interactive widgets could break.

Firefox now supports creating and using passkeys stored in the iCloud Keychain on macOS.

MDN Web Docs article suggestions from Firefox Suggest will be available in the address bar for users searching for web development-related information.

The line breaking rules of Web content now match the Unicode Standard. This improves Web Browser compatibility for line breaking. An additional improvement for East Asian and South East Asian end users, Firefox now supports proper language-aware word selection when double-clicking on text for languages including Chinese, Japanese, Burmese, Lao, Khmer, and Thai.

Firefox now ships with a new .deb package for Linux users on Ubuntu, Debian, and Linux Mint.

Fixed

Various security fixes.

Enterprise

You can find information about policy updates and enterprise specific bug fixes in the Firefox for Enterprise 122 Release Notes.

Developer

Developer Information

Fixing keyboard navigation in Inspector Rules view. Starting with Firefox 122, when editing a selector, a property name, or a property value in the Inspector, the Enter key will no longer move the focus to the next input but will validate what was entered and focus the matching element (#1861674). You can still use Ctrl + Enter (Cmd + Enter on macOS) or Tab to validate and move the focus to the next input.

Web Platform

Enabled the offset-position property which is useful for most of the offset-path values. Added support for ray(), basic-shape, coord-box to the offset-path CSS property. Added support for rect() and xywh() basic shapes on clip-path and offset-path CSS properties.

Firefox now supports animating the SVG viewBox attribute using SMIL by animations.
by animations are animations that are relative to the original value. Other attributes such as lengths and angles already support by, but a viewBox consists of four separate values.

The LargestContentfulPaint API has been added, this provides timing information about the largest image or text paint before users interact with a web page.

hr in select is now supported, allowing websites to easily use separators inside a select element.

The showPicker method is now supported on <select> elements, this can be used to trigger the drop-down behavior via JavaScript.

The fallback URL parser for unknown schemes was changed to DefaultURI, this improves specification adherence and web compatibility.

Enabled the ArrayBuffer.prototype.transfer proposal methods, which enables transferring ownership of ArrayBuffer data.

Added support for the Screen Wake Lock API.

Firefox now recognizes the “webauthn” autocomplete token and will suggest passkeys in form autofill dialogs.

Scripts can now store cacheAPI data in Private Browsing mode. Previously, user experience for someone browsing in private browsing mode could be significantly different than in regular mode. With these changes, websites can store cacheAPI data in Private Mode moving towards a uniform experience in regular vs Private Browsing mode.

To further protect user privacy, Firefox now taints filters that use currentColor as an input. Since color can be set by the :visited pseudo selector, it potentially contains privacy-sensitive information and therefore these primitives must be marked as tainted. This means that if you use such a filter, you won’t be able to read the filter output from canvas.

Uneven Level Protection Forward Error Correction (ULPFEC) will now be on by default in Firefox. This provides another tool for WebRTC services to utilize, improving video quality for users with spotty internet connections.

Unresolved

Some machines with older AMD CPUs may see image thumbnails incorrectly rendered as all black in file dialogs. If this is the case, updating the graphics driver should address this issue.

Community Contributions

With the release of Firefox 122, we are pleased to welcome the developers who contributed their first code change to Firefox in this release, 10 of whom were brand new volunteers! Please join us in thanking each of these diligent and enthusiastic individuals, and take a look at their contributions:

• AAR.dev: 1862505, 1865895
• Akylzhan: 1862508
• cmj.grubb: 1862504
• jameshendry05: 1682239, 1739307, 1866273, 1866776
• Jiangjin Wang: 1865969
• matthewnewall: 1862511
• Meera Murthy: 1869033
• peterodejobi9: 1837072
• realstealthninja: 1862506
• Vsevolod Buzinov: 1865494, 1869853

If you don't know about smart keywords, basically you can set phrases as shortcuts for specific bookmarks. I want a folder with all of my keywords synced, and that folder only. On each profile or account I have have whatever other folders and the placement of the folder with the keywords doesn't matter as long as they have the same name.