Firefox 86 Gains Total Cookie Protection and Multiple Picture-in-Picture Views

[Everett96]

Good. Makes me wonder what took so long. This is important.

I know right! I honestly thought this is how cookies worked. I've written some rudimentary cookies but I've only accessed the ones I put there. That seems like a huge issue... if I write a site that can access cookie data written by another site..... So yah for Firefox I guess!

 

[LV426]

You gotta wonder why it didn’t work this was to begin with.

It certainly has me wondering. I haven’t used Firefox, but surely it has always had an option to block third party cookies? That’s really the same thing as saying that each site has its own cookie jar. If the browser is working correctly.

 

[bluecoast]

I love what FF stands for but I wish they’d go further in integrating properly with each OS and use native UI controls.

For example, in dark mode, FF right click menus are still white.

Nitpicking I know, but this is sloppy behaviour that you expect from a windows 10 app and not on the Mac.

 

[femike]

I just tried to log in in my Gmail account from new Firefox and I cannot: do I need to let Google behave as usual ?!
What good alternatives are available to gmail?

I'm on the latest Firefox 86, have and am on Strict tracking protection, and Gmail login works fine. I have Gmail in its own container tab as well.

 

[0924487]

It'd be sweet for MR to do a feature comparing the privacy features of Safari, FF, Brave, Chrome (for example).

You know MR sell ads too?

 

[femike]

I just tried. I logged into Gmail, it auto logged me in YouTube, then I went to Spotify that had log in with Google which auto put in my credentials. So I am not sure what they are talking about here about separating the cookie jars.

Gmail and YouTube logins use the same google account website site to login, as both are Google, so that is why. If you want to separate them, install the Firefox Container add-on (by Mozilla) and have a container for Gmail and another container for YouTube. Then your login in one site won't affect the other.

 

[dwaite]

But it is. This is exactly how cookies were set up from the start.

I can’t put a site online at mysite.com and just rummage around in your cookies when you visit and pull info from when you visited yoursite.com. That’s just how cookies work. It’s the same-origin policy at work.

I’m very confused by this “feature”

If I embed facebook into example.com, the facebook frame can read and set Facebook cookies. But those cookies are unique to when I’m looking at example.com. I navigate to foobar.net and its facebook frame can’t see the cookies it set before on the other site. It only sees the cookies it set while the user has been on foobar.net

basically Every website you are on (listed in the address bar) has a unique sandbox limiting how it sees the rest of the internet

 

[InTeCredo]

My biggest wish is that Firefox would give us the option of clearing caches periodically or manually. I sometimes run low of memory when I have so many tabs open (necessary for my analysis work). I use the memory clean app a lot of time, which is irritating.

 

[biffuz]

Serious question: Who asked for multiple simultaneous PiP videos?

Nice question. Also, what about a disable autoplay that actually works and isn't bypassed by trivial javascript?

 

[apples_arrogance]

I'm hesitant to post, comment count is 69. But anyway, I've been using Firefox for the last couple of macOS releases. There's a fix for it, but doesn't it annoy macOS users here that the "close tab" button is on the right, instead of (like Safari) on the left?

Why would the Safari UI be superior? Can’t recall the last time I used my mouse to close a tab. CMD W is the keyboard shortcut for that.
(Nice uniform you got there)

 

[TarJac333]

Zoom in on MacBH928’s pfp. The inside of the Google Chrome logo states “Evil Inside” in the old school “Intel Inside” style

Damn you have some hawky eyes

 

[himanshumodi]

Firefox starts up so slow for me compared to Chrome or Edge (on a PC).

You just made me think about the most irritating thing I deal with -- Microsoft sites. It's frustrating trying to actually log out of a MS site (O365 Admin Center for instance) and log in with another account because it always seems to remember! Let alone, logging into 3 tabs of M365 under 3 different accounts, which is impossible.

I just tried it with Firefox 86.0 and it works fantastically! Finally, I can log in as who I want at MS sites without having to play games trying to get it to forget the last account I logged in as (or using Incognito windows).

agree. MS is the worst to handle multiple accounts. I have a personal and office azure account and it drives me nuts. Worst is when I am trying to switch accounts, I really have something else going on in my head on what I want to do so I really hate having to think about how to get MS to forget my previous login

 

[Blue Hawk]

I still like Firefox. If they would add Focus into the iOS browser I would even switch. But without it it’s not very useful like Safari with the adblockers.

 

[TheIntruder]

I'm hesitant to post, comment count is 69. But anyway, I've been using Firefox for the last couple of macOS releases. There's a fix for it, but doesn't it annoy macOS users here that the "close tab" button is on the right, instead of (like Safari) on the left?

I would find it more annoying if Fx didn't allow users to customise the browser as much as it does.

The UI is still written in CSS, and can be altered in many ways via the userChrome file, including changing the position of the close tab button.

The ability to tweak apps is rare, and in some ways a necessity, even more so since UI designers have latched onto design trends with poor contrast, excessive white space, and generally dumbed-down interfaces that relish in hiding controls for no good reason.

I'd also welcome a modern-day version of Eudora, a mail client with the same user-friendly customisability.

 

[bobob]

It's amazing they had this technology back in 86, and even more amazing that it's gone unnoticed this long!

 

[Captain Trips]

Time to acuse Mozilla of monopoly for not allowing cross-website tracking

And given that the picture in this article used to convey how the cookie protection works has the Facebook icon on all the arms grabbing your info, I expect Zuckerberg to tell his his staff it is time to "inflict pain on Mozilla."

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Compatibility. Netscape used to be 90% of the web. Then it was split between IE and Netscape and as IE grew it copied Netscape features to be compatible. Everyone else copied them.

If you do cookies some other magical way on your site to support browser X and it doesn't support the other browsers, you need to do it the old way anyway. Which is 2x the work.

Yeah, but new stuff gets added periodically anyways. IE, a proper import and module system. Class syntactic sugar. Various functions for querying for elements. The fetch function. That’s just off the top of my head. It was all added within the last ten years, and plenty of improvements were done before then. There’s periodic new versions of the ECMA standards - that’s what all the browsers try to implement. Why haven’t improvements to cookies ever been part of those new standards? The closest they came was adding local storage, but that doesn’t help with keeping the server and client on the same page.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

It’s a public wiki afaik. In other words, the Mozilla developer network is just an open platform that everyone can contribute to. The docs there are not written by Mozilla engineers afaik.

I know there’s buttons to submit feedback, but I’m pretty sure MDN is maintained by Mozilla’s employees, not the public. And either way, their docs are great while Apple’s and Google’s are basically nonexistent. I have found Microsoft has great documentation for a lot of stuff... but I don’t think they have documentation on how their browser implements ECMA stuff...

 

[Captain Trips]

I just tried to log in in my Gmail account from new Firefox and I cannot: do I need to let Google behave as usual ?!
What good alternatives are available to gmail?

Google support: Good morning, how can I help?
katbel: I am using Mozilla 86 and I can't login to my Gmail account.
Google support: Ah, I see. If you use Chrome, all your problems will be solved. Thank you for calling Google Support, and have a great day!

Mostly joking, but I bet using Chrome would be the response in this scenario.


Seriously though, I hope @katbel (and anyone else suffering the same problem) gets their Gmail login issue resolved.

For what it is worth, I just upgraded Firefox to version 86.0 (64 bit) on my 2014 Intel Mac mini running Big Sur v11.2.1 and I can login to Gmail and it looks like it usually does (Inbox has mail, I see my folders, and the user interface looks the same).

 

[Captain Trips]

I switched to Safari from Firefox about five years ago... but lately I've been going back and forth between the two. One feature I love about Firefox is the ability to set the default for cookies to disappear when the browser closes (you can white-list specific sites). Also, NoScript is very powerful - there's nothing really like it on desktop Safari (on mobile, Purify does a great job in that role).

Unfortunately there are shortcomings with both browsers - so I keep vacillating.

Same here - I use Safari as my primary browser, but the save to PDF functionality in Safari appears to only save the entire page, whereas I typically want to save only part of the page (by highlighting the content block I want to save). Firefox lets me do that, so that is my main use case for using Firefox instead of Safari on my Macs.

I do like Firefox, though, I just happen to like Safari better on my Macs. At work, in my Windows VDI, I use Firefox as my primary browser.

 

[Captain Trips]

Why is FF so much faster on my Mac over Safari which runs slow on Facebook?

That is one of the ways that Facebook is causing pain to Apple.

Just speculation on my part, and probably wrong, but that would be a good way for Facebook to hit back at Apple - make Apple's products perform poorly on their sites.

 

[Captain Trips]

Interesting, I have only 3 trackers. I use Wipr as adblocker, maybe that explains the difference.

View attachment 1734405

That matches my experience - I am using Safari, so I get the tracker blocking, and I use AdGuard for Safari.

 

[apples_arrogance]

I love what FF stands for but I wish they’d go further in integrating properly with each OS and use native UI controls.

For example, in dark mode, FF right click menus are still white.

Nitpicking I know, but this is sloppy behaviour that you expect from a windows 10 app and not on the Mac.

They are working on just that and the changes are due with v89 which will bring the new Proton UI.

 

[IllinoisCorn]

No tap to zoom, no use for me. I can't understand why Firefox can't just implement that feature.

 

[wanha]

In COVID-19 times, you can't have too much hygiene. A separate cookie jar for everyone = hygienic af.

Well done, Mozilla. Apple, take note.