Firefox

I recently switched from a MBP to a Framework 16 as my primary laptop and one thing I immediately noticed was that I was unable to stop kinetic scrolls in Firefox by laying my fingers onto the touchpad. It'd just slide by unimpeded. You could work around this by counter-scrolling a little rather than holding still which is how I've been coping with it but it's suboptimal to say the least.
(As are many things in the Linux touchpad experience. Linux desktop developers really ought to use a macbook for a little to get a sense for how to do this properly.)

This was caused by Firefox' use of GDK3 to implement its windowing and input needs which does not support hold gestures.

GDK4 does support them but, as I understand it, a port of Firefox to GDK4 would be a ton of work and there isn't really much desire for it as GDK4 doesn't offer many real advantages over GDK3 as Firefox doesn't use classical GTK widgets or anything and only really uses it for basic input/output primitives.

A backport to handle hold gestures in GDK3 too was attempted but, in classic GNOME fashion, it was rejected.

The implementation now somehow gets events from the touchpad directly via wayland somehow from what I could gather but if it works, it works.

You can try this out in the latest nightly builds.

Firefox users criticized the permanent 'List All Tabs' button introduced in version 131.0, leading Mozilla to make it removable.

The button, designed to manage hidden tabs and prevent add-ons from hiding them, received backlash for being unnecessary alongside Firefox View.

Mozilla responded with a fix in version 131.0.3, allowing users to remove the button through toolbar customization.

We’ve been anticipating it for years,1 and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the ...

I use Firefox on Android 11 and Windows 11. What's the best way to bypass short links and sites that make us await a certain period of time (say, 10 seconds) before proceeding? Is it Violentmonkey + Bypass all shortlinks (debloated)?

It's no secret that Google has a very large influence. They have influenced web pages into being highly optimized for high search engine rankings, and have pushed AMP: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/googles-amp-canonical-web-and-importance-web-standards-0. However I haven't found any concrete examples of Google pushing web standards that have been adopted and require browser support. I've read comments here and there like this one, that the Shadow DOM was created and pushed by Google, perhaps to make it harder to block ads, but didn't find any sources on that.

MARK SURMAN, PRESIDENT, MOZILLA Keeping the internet, and the content that makes it a vital and vibrant part of our global society, free and accessible has

Vim's modal editing system is very efficient for manipulating text with little keystrokes. Let's say I had a list of URLs like the ones below, representing tabs. I could have the list as a text file, navigate them with arrow keys to move a text cursor, press enter or another key to focus on the tab under the cursor, d to cut a link (like cutting a file in a file explorer, or like how d deletes or cuts text in Vim), and p to put it in another position where the cursor is. I could select multiple lines to do d or p, or press y to yank (copy) them to my clipboard.

startpage.com
reddit.com/r/firefox
lemmy.ml/c/firefox

Oil.nvim seems to be a good point of reference for this. Its a Neovim plugin that acts as a file explorer, where all the files are text listed in a vim buffer, and you can do d y or p. I did a bunch of searches to see if Vimium Tridactyl or Surfing Keys can do this and nothing showed up. If they can, then an explanation would be helpful.

If Google stopped supporting Firefox today, Bing would still pay to be the default engine. If bing does not pay, Yandex would do.

My point here is Firefox still has 2.71% market share, a lot of search engines operators would pay Firefox good money to be their default engine.

The default search revenue stream is guaranteed as long as they have good amount of users.

But they actively choose to ruin it.

Context

Senate Bill (SB) 1047 is legislation proposed by Senator Scott Wiener for regulating AI models that cost over $100 million to train. The bill was designed to hold AI companies accountable for potential damages caused by their models.

It gained widespread support from the population of California and a broad coalition of labor unions, AI safety advocates, Hollywood figures, and current and ex-employees of AI megacorporations.

However, many giant corporations including Google, Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI opposed the bill, asking Gavin Newsom to veto it.

Mozilla's statement

On August 29, Mozilla joined the corporations to endorse a veto, publishing its own statement:

Mozilla is a champion for both openness and trustworthiness in AI, and we are deeply concerned that SB 1047 would imperil both of those objectives. For over 25 years, Mozilla has fought Big Tech to make the Internet better, creating an open source browser that challenged incumbents and raised the bar on privacy, security, and functionality for everyone in line with our manifesto.

Today, we see parallels to the early Internet in the AI ecosystem, which has also become increasingly closed and consolidated in the hands of a few large, tech companies. >We are concerned that SB 1047 would further this trend, harming the open-source community and making AI less safe — not more.

Mozilla has engaged with Senator Wiener's team on the legislation; we appreciate the Senator’s collaboration, along with many of the positive changes made throughout the legislative process. However, we continue to be concerned about key provisions likely to have serious repercussions. For instance, provisions like those that grant the Board of Frontier Models oversight of computing thresholds without statutory requirements for updating thresholds as AI proves safe will likely harm the open-source AI community and the startups, small businesses, researchers, and academic communities that utilize open-source AI.

As the bill heads to the Governor’s desk, we ask that Governor Newsom consider the serious harm this bill may do to the open source ecosystem and pursue alternatives that address concrete AI risks to ensure a better AI future for all.

Source: Mozilla (PDF).

Gavin Newsom vetoed this bill on September 29th.

Mull builds were delayed due to Google removing a necessary component from the NDK in revision 27. But the devs found a way to build the latest version.

Mull is available on the DivestOS f-droid repo

I just got a x86 tablet, and it works great with GNOME(Wayland), having pretty good touch support, except for on Firefox. I can't get multi-touch gestures to work, nor touch scrolling. I've tried environment variables(MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1,MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1), but that didn't change anything. I've also had a look in about:config and couldn't tell what options would change my experience. It should be noted that I have WebGL disabled, but I don't forsee that changing anything. I also see under about:support that the Window Protocol is xwayland, and I'm wondering if that changed anything aswell(the protocol doesn't change even with environment variables).

Does anyone have an idea about what's gone wrong with my browser? Thank you very much!

Mozilla Thunderbird for Android is now available in beta, built upon the K-9 Mail app.

The beta includes core email features like account setup, email organization, and notifications, with feedback encouraged from users.

Thunderbird for Android will remain a separate app from K-9 Mail, requiring users to migrate if they previously used K-9.

#Features

• Thunderbird for Android branding is now available

• Material 3 Navigation drawer

• Updated color scheme

• Allow migrating settings directly from an existing K-9 or Thunderbird for Android install

• Make use of Glean SDK

• Add basic feature setup for funding via Google Play subscriptions (we'll use this for financial contributions)

• Use [...] for outer subject when encrypting the subject

• Remove "Move/copy destination folders" setting

• Remove "Folders to search" setting

• Remove folder push class to simplify folder notifications

So... Yeah. Just that. How can i enable Firefox translation in Android? I'd like to be able to use the offline translation feature.

Thanks!

Mozilla recently removed every version of uBlock Origin Lite from their add-on store except for the oldest version.

Mozilla says a manual review flagged these issues:

Consent, specifically Nonexistent: For add-ons that collect or transmit user data, the user must be informed...

Your add-on contains minified, concatenated or otherwise machine-generated code. You need to provide the original sources...

uBlock Origin's developer gorhill refutes this with linked evidence.

Contrary to what these emails suggest, the source code files highlighted in the email:

• Have nothing to do with data collection, there is no such thing anywhere in uBOL
• There is no minified code in uBOL, and certainly none in the supposed faulty files

Even for people who did not prefer this add-on, the removal could have a chilling effect on uBlock Origin itself.

Incidentally, all the files reported as having issues are exactly the same files being used in uBO for years, and have been used in uBOL as well for over a year with no modification. Given this, it's worrisome what could happen to uBO in the future.

And gorhill notes uBO Lite had a purpose on Firefox, especially on mobile devices:

[T]here were people who preferred the Lite approach of uBOL, which was designed from the ground up to be an efficient suspendable extension, thus a good match for Firefox for Android.

New releases of uBO Lite do not have a Firefox extension; the last version of this coincides with gorhill's message. The Firefox addon page for uBO Lite is also gone.

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/17910251