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Firefox Browser 52 Announced With 'Game Changing' Support For Complex Web Apps

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Mozilla has heralded the release of a new version of Firefox that it says enables resource-intensive web content like games, apps, and image-editors to run in a browser window at previously unachievable native speeds.

To accomplish the feat, Firefox 52 supports Web Assembly, a new standard developed by Mozilla, which it calls "a game changer for the web".

Web-Assembly-800x169.jpg

WebAssembly allows complex apps, like games, to run faster than ever before in a web browser. We expect that WebAssembly will enable applications that have historically been too complex to run fast in browsers - like immersive 3D video games, computer-aided design, video and image editing, and scientific visualization. We also expect that developers will use WebAssembly to speed up many existing web apps.
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Mozilla has posted a video, embedded below, that shows the WebAssembly standard and WebGL 2 in action, with the help of a 3D environment demo rendered in real-time using the Unreal 4 Engine.

In addition to Web Assembly, the update adds automatic detection of "captive portals" often used by hotel wifi networks that require the user to log in before they can access the web.

Mozilla has also built contextual alerts into input fields to warn users when they're prompted to enter username and password information on a page that isn't encrypted with HTTPS.

Other additions to this version of Firefox include CSS Grid, a Grid Inspector developer tool, and automatic disabling of plugins that use the Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI) besides Flash.

Firefox 52 is a free download for the Mac.



Article Link: Firefox Browser 52 Announced With 'Game Changing' Support For Complex Web Apps
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/03/08/firefox-web-assembly-complex-web-apps-native-speed/
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puelocesar said:
It seems like Google's nacl all over again. We get excited and them everybody forgets about it months later
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Nope, web assembly is supported by all major companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft.

Also, this is way more foundational than just what you see here, this is gonna be the future for any webapplication, as the core is byte code instead of code that needs to be compiled everytime.

This is gonna be huge!
 
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JosephAW said:
Looks like they finally are removing all plug in support except flash. It's time for flash to go too folks. The last computer I had flash installed on was my PPC G5.
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There are far, far too many organisations still using Flash internally on legacy systems (many for the sorts of things Flash was *actually* developed for -- training courses and the like, rather than just playing videos) for that to happen anytime soon.
 
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T'hain Esh Kelch said:
It's a good thing your personal needs dictate the development of web technologies.
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.....Flash has a new critical vulnerability announced nearly weekly at this point. Web technologies have all leapfrogged past flash in capability, so other than specific in-house websites for enterprise reasons....why the hell does flash still need to be a thing? No modern website is being designed in Flash.
 
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NT1440 said:
.....Flash has a new critical vulnerability announced nearly weekly at this point. Web technologies have all leapfrogged past flash in capability, so other than specific in-house websites for enterprise reasons....why the hell does flash still need to be a thing? No modern website is being designed in Flash.
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Because some websites still rely on it. The world doesn't change the instant a new technology is developed.
 
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T'hain Esh Kelch said:
Because some websites still rely on it. The world doesn't change the instant a new technology is developed.
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"The instant".......are you familiar at all with the history of Flash? :rolleyes:

It's been nearly a decade since the world learned, through many failed attempts, that Flash is simply never going to be an acceptable technology for mobile. Thus, if you are professionally developing a new website in 2017 that is based on Flash (and is NOT an internal company page), you are simply incompetent. It really is that simple.

Note very carefully what I'm saying. I understand a website developed in 2006 and never updated relies on flash.
 
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NT1440 said:
"The instant".......are you familiar at all with the history of Flash? :rolleyes:

It's been nearly a decade since the world learned, through many failed attempts, that Flash is simply never going to be an acceptable technology for mobile. Thus, if you are professionally developing a new website in 2017 that is based on Flash (and is NOT an internal company page), you are simply incompetent. It really is that simple.

Note very carefully what I'm saying. I understand a website developed in 2006 and never updated relies on flash.
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Yup. If you develop a site using Flash, you're doing it wrong.

Of course, developers of all stripes are notorious for being lazy as hell, and loathe learning new skills. Plenty of greybeard Windows devs still behave like they're developing for Windows 98.
 
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lunarworks said:
Yup. If you develop a site using Flash, you're doing it wrong.

Of course, developers of all stripes are notorious for being lazy as hell, and loathe learning new skills. Plenty of greybeard Windows devs still behave like they're developing for Windows 98.
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That's the thing, I understand many internal company sites use flash because it was fast to develop in. But any developer insisting on using flash for a regular (non corporate) new website using flash is just incompetent at this point.
 
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And yet somehow this version of FF manages to be even slower than the previous one on the apps that actually matter. Like google docs. I didn't even think slower was possible.
 
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Since they open source there content, does this mean that other browsers like Safari and Chrome will soon develop this feature as well?
 
T'hain Esh Kelch said:
Because some websites still rely on it. The world doesn't change the instant a new technology is developed.
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Actually the world does change the instant a new technology is developed, it's just that some people are too short sighted to evaluate it properly and keep up with the change. Usually to their detriment (think Kodak).

If you were still delivering goods with a horse and cart 10 years after the motor truck was developed, you were not in business much longer.
 
NT1440 said:
"The instant".......are you familiar at all with the history of Flash? :rolleyes:

It's been nearly a decade since the world learned, through many failed attempts, that Flash is simply never going to be an acceptable technology for mobile. Thus, if you are professionally developing a new website in 2017 that is based on Flash (and is NOT an internal company page), you are simply incompetent. It really is that simple.

Note very carefully what I'm saying. I understand a website developed in 2006 and never updated relies on flash.
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I completely agree with you that no one should be developing new Flash applications...though unfortunately there is still a need for Flash in some circumstances. For example, Flash is still the only solution for desktop web-based applications that need to record audio and need to be cross-platform (Chrome, Opera and Firefox support audio recording, Safari and IE/Edge do not). Granted, it's an edge case, but a very real one that I've had to support as a professional software developer. A decade after HTML5 acolytes proclaimed that open standards would save us all and Flash was pure evil, web APIs are still not supported the same across browsers, and web-based development is still a mess.

There's also the issue of legacy support for the many enterprise and commercial web applications that still rely on Flash or Flex (enterprise Flash) and have yet to be updated to modern standards.
 
fedhat said:
I completely agree with you that no one should be developing new Flash applications...though unfortunately there is still a need for Flash in some circumstances. For example, Flash is still the only solution for desktop web-based applications that need to record audio and need to be cross-platform (Chrome, Opera and Firefox support audio recording, Safari and IE/Edge do not). Granted, it's an edge case, but a very real one that I've had to support as a professional software developer. A decade after HTML5 acolytes proclaimed that open standards would save us all and Flash was pure evil, web APIs are still not supported the same across browsers, and web-based development is still a mess.

There's also the issue of legacy support for the many enterprise and commercial web applications that still rely on Flash or Flex (enterprise Flash) and have yet to be updated to modern standards.
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It's crazy what a mess HTML5 implementation is isn't it?

What you're describing is exactly what I was speaking to. For certain legacy applications supporting Flash makes sense, but to build a new site or application on Flash other than VERY specific use cases is....asinine IMO.
 
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