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Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: Apr 19th, '18, 23:38
by wilcal
I don't have all the facts on this so please contribute if you have something. There appears to be quite an amount of stress over our present Firefox 52.x ESR. The are upcoming releases of Firefox both the regular editon and the ESR due soon. Part of the problem here involves an increasing number of website operators who either probibit or strongly insist that you be using the latest version of Firefox.

Example:

I am a long time customer of BankofAmerica.com. And for the last year or so every time I go to review my accounts there is a banner across the top of the page warning me that I am not using a certified Browser. This is the case for 52.x.x ESR. I have downloaded, and have transitioned to FF 59.x, the warning is not there.

If you review:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar

you'll notice that we are just a few weeks away from the release of FF 60 and ESR 52.8; 60.0.

I spent last week at the National Association of Broadcasters Show here in Las Vegas where I visited the Adobe booth and asked a technical person about the status of Flash. His answer was they offer a free "kit" and instructions on how to transition away from Flash to HTML5. He all but said they don't support Flash anymore. Officially Adobe has indicated they will support Flash through the Fall of 2020. I didn't get that feeling from this tech person.

There is at least one report that FF 60.0b13 crashes if Flash 29.0.0.140 is installed. This may be a one off incident, it may really be intentional on Mozillas part.

The Mageia team will continue to test and work to bring you the best version of FF we can. But, IMO, over the next weeks or so that may be a bit of a bumpy road.

Re: Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: Apr 20th, '18, 08:46
by jiml8
Some months ago I posted that I would be happy if Mageia held off on the update to firefox until the plugin situation worked itself out. At the time I was running the latest FF in a Mint virtual machine, and it was practically unusable.

Since then, the situation has changed dramatically, and the FF 59.01 that I have running in Mint is stable and all the plugins I need (all for security and privacy) work fine. Flash (29.0r0) also runs, for those sites that need it.

So it appears to me that the situation with FF has matured to the point that moving to release 59 or 60 should be fine.

I will note that my OpenSUSE Leap 42.3 VM is still on FF 52 ESR, so Mageia is certainly not alone in not having made the move yet.

Re: Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: Apr 20th, '18, 14:26
by wilcal
Thanks for the update jim

Re: Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: Apr 20th, '18, 14:59
by doktor5000
Well, usually for ESR release changes, there's a phase of more then a month as we're usually waiting for at least the next ESR .1 minor version.
So I'd say we won't see the next ESR version pushed to users boxes before july, and I don't see anything bumpy there ...

Re: Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: Apr 21st, '18, 10:59
by morgano
The bump is that a few sites demand FF<=52, and a few other sites demand FF>52
So it seem some users need FF52 and also 59 or 60 installed at the same time (or other browser)

Re: Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: Apr 21st, '18, 14:04
by wilcal
morgano wrote:The bump is that a few sites demand FF<=52, and a few other sites demand FF>52
So it seem some users need FF52 and also 59 or 60 installed at the same time (or other browser)


And that's what I'm doing here. Presently I'm using FF 59.0.2 and it works just fine on Mageia 6.0
Flash version 28.0.0, but every time the browser needs it it asks. It's not automatic like it had been.

Re: Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: Apr 21st, '18, 15:17
by doktor5000
morgano wrote:The bump is that a few sites demand FF<=52, and a few other sites demand FF>52
So it seem some users need FF52 and also 59 or 60 installed at the same time (or other browser)

Or simply use a different user agent, no need to use a different browser for that.

Re: Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: May 13th, '18, 23:28
by Gelsenbury
Firefox 59.0.1, downloaded directly from Mozilla, works just fine here under Mageia 6 and the current Plasma desktop. I'm very happy with this release, actually. But, of course, I don't visit all the sites that would need testing before you can be confident in including it in Mageia.

Re: Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: May 13th, '18, 23:43
by wilcal
Gelsenbury wrote:Firefox 59.0.1, downloaded directly from Mozilla, works just fine here under Mageia 6 and the current Plasma desktop. I'm very happy with this release, actually. But, of course, I don't visit all the sites that would need testing before you can be confident in including it in Mageia.

Note that shortly after your get Firefox going it should automatically update to Ver 60.0. That's what I have here.

Re: Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: Sep 15th, '18, 23:45
by zeebra
doktor5000 wrote:
morgano wrote:The bump is that a few sites demand FF<=52, and a few other sites demand FF>52
So it seem some users need FF52 and also 59 or 60 installed at the same time (or other browser)

Or simply use a different user agent, no need to use a different browser for that.


Enlighten me please. How do you change the user agent in Firefox? I have tried to find out for awhile.

Could you give me some advise on that?

Re: Firefox is in Transition

PostPosted: Sep 16th, '18, 04:14
by doktor5000
zeebra wrote:Enlighten me please. How do you change the user agent in Firefox? I have tried to find out for awhile.

Check e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... -switcher/