From Amber Neeley at AppleInsider.
Yes yes yes! We need to save Firefox which I still find the best and most customizeable browser. And Apple, Google and Microsoft all push their in house browsers over it, which has decimated it’s market share.
From Jeff Johnson of Underpass App Company, this works in safari in iOS and Mac.
This app stops Javascript from running on pages, and I use it to block sites that make you turn off content blockers before you can view the site.
I know sites need revenue, but random ads only annoy me, and some of that is that I edit commercials, so I know the tricks and they just annoy me! So i block them and making me turn off my content blockers annoys me even more!
This takes a little effort and a little work, but it does what it says (and some pages break when you stop the scripts), and I love it.
From Arin Waichulis at 9to5 Mac, this is worth a read.
I had never heard of StopTheMadness, which is not cheap (as you have to buy Mac and Mobile versions at $7.99 each) and the Mac version also works on Firefox and Chrome as well. It overrides websites attempts to lock out browser features, which is something I have been thinking about for a long time. It can also remove tracking tags, and URL shorteners.
And it is on by default, though you can return to the new method if you want to (but why would you). She is also reporting that the tab bar will make a return on iPad OS 15 in a future beta.
I had posted about this and was using it in Safari Technology Preview in Big Sur. A new version hasn’t been released, but I will take a look at it once it comes out, to see if it is improved. Now if only Apple would add the option of tree style tabs, ha one can only dream.
Now I am running the new Safari within Big Sur in the Safari Technology Preview, and I am on an iMac Pro with a second 27″ monitor, so 2 27″ monitors running at 2560×1440. To me the new safari is only trying to save space, but doing it at the cost of usability.
The tabs in Monterey become illegible and hard to find too quickly and all so the tab bar can take up less space. All well and good for a small screened laptops users, but useless for large displays! And even more useless for power users who have lots of plug ins which also take up space!
And you can’t even activate the old functionality in Safari, only the new tabs are available.
And this is Firefox with Tree Style tabs. They are always legible and you can have so many of them. Once again, maybe not so good for a small laptop, but for a big monitor it is essential. If only firefox would have a true dark mode and allow me to get rid of the light title bar at the top, but at least it means you can read the web site title. Still I wish I could turn the top tabs off and just have tree style tabs.
Of course there is also Vivaldi, which has tree style tabs built in. It is a gorgeous and fast browser, built on chrome, while I would prefer Firefox for it being a different engine and the most customizable browser.
And that isn’t even the worst of it. If you have Safari at default settings, when you switch tabs you get the tabs changing color based on the web site. For some web sites, it isn’t so bad, but for others…
Luckily you can turn this off in advanced tabs.
Just make sure to check Never Use Background Color in Toolbar.
Now I use Firefox as my primary browser, and I have for years. I have enough if my life in google because I use a gmail account, and google search is too much of my life so I don’t want to use Chrome, even if it is marginally faster. And Safari I don’t really use on my mac, because I use Firefox, but I have to use it on my iPad and my iPhone.
So after giving up on LastPass because it is not e10 multiprocessor compatible, I have been trying to sync my bookmarks using Firefox Sync, Chrome Sync and iCloud Bookmark Sync for windows. Unfortunately iCloud bookmarks is garbage, because it has no simple way to either clear bookmarks, or force a sync from a single source, and unfortunately it often gets completely corrupted! To clear it you have to disable sync everywhere except your mac, and let it sit, then clear your bookmarks and either import or create a new clean set. Unforunately this process is very unstable. It requires much switching off sync and waiting, and hoping.
Keep your fingers crossed, as I am.
So I was let know that LastPass version 4 does in fact work with e10 multiprocessing in Firefox. The normal update does not work, so you need to install LastPass 4.0 from the web site.
There is no word on Xmarks though.
So I am now running the iCloud Bookmarks Plug In on my Surface Pro 4 to sync between Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. And using Firefox bookmark Sync to sync from my mac to my Surface Pro.
So it looks like neither Xmarks or Lastpass will ever support e10 Multiprocessing in Mozilla Firefox. For years Mozilla Firefox has been my browser of choice because of all of it’s extensions. There was a short period where I used Chrome, but it is not as customizable. Firefox though is changing and is becoming multiprocessor, and that requires re-writing plugins to work with e10, or they won’t work. Right no Firefox will still work without e-10, by keeping Firefox in the old mode without mulit-processor support.
I contacted Xmarks/Lastpass support to see about their e-10 support, and I got this response.
Hello,
Thanks for reaching out to Xmarks Support.
Through testing that we were unable to install Xmarks in Electrolysis e10. At this time, we have no plans to launch Xmarks compatibility with e10. I will submit a formal feature request ticket advocating your desire if you’d like.
Thanks,
Jeremy
So basically a paid service will never update their software and will very shortly lose all support for Firefox my favorite browser! Time to kill my accounts for xmarks and lastpass!
Of course now the question is how to replace these essential programs. I am going to try out Firefox Browser sync, and iCloud sync. Unfortunately iCloud Browser sync only runs on windows, but I have my Surface Pro 4 running Windows 10, so I can try Safari Browser sync to sync between Chrome, Firefox and Safari on Mac. And it is e10 supported, so that might work. I will keep my backup in Firefox on my mac so I can keep replacing my good backups.
AppleInsider has this article on what is going on. It seems that for all videos uploaded as of December 6, 2016 Adobe has moved from the paid to license H265 Codec to the free VP9 codec, and Safari does not support VP9. Previously the 4K videos had been encoded in H264, but both H265 and VP9 require much more power to playback and it will drain battery life, and use some serious processing power.
Obviously using a free encoder vs a paid license will help the bottom line for Google, as will videos that take up half the hard drive space, but users take a hit because people who don’t have the latest Machines will take a hit and be unable to playback 4K because it is so processor intensive. Seems a little soon, but Google has already made the switch.
If you want to encode VP9, Fnord has a free plug in for Adobe Premier Pro and Media Encoder.