Firefox 47

[Posted June 7, 2016 by ris]

Firefox 47 has been released. This version enables the VP9 video codec for users with fast machines, plays embedded YouTube videos with HTML5 video if Flash is not installed, and more. There is a blog post about these and other improvements. "Now, we are making it even easier to access synced tabs directly in your desktop Firefox browser. If you’re logged into your Firefox Account, you will see all open tabs from your smartphone or other computers within the sidebar. In the sidebar you can also search for specific tabs quickly and easily." See the release notes for more information.

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 7, 2016 16:56 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (9 responses)

Wait, they only *just now* enabled VP9 decoding? And it's behind a Skype-like processor restriction?

I'm not sure why they even bother adding the hurdle, it's nigh impossible to use Firefox on a low-end machine these days anyway.

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 7, 2016 17:02 UTC (Tue) by Jonimus (subscriber, #89694) [Link] (4 responses)

I believe that is only for Mac and Windows. On Linux if your distro ships a GStreamer that supports VP9 its been enabled for a while as it exports any white-listed of the codecs. Also it is behind a processor restriction because almost no systems have hardware acceleration for VP9 and thus on slow systems VP9 will studder and use much more power. For instance my 2009 2.5Ghz C2D Laptop can barely keep up with move VP9 Youtube videos but it has hardware accel for H264 and thus uses almost no CPU to play those. I would much rather use more bandwidth than melt my laptop with VP9 videos if given the choice and I believe they made the right choice in requiring decent processors to enable VP9 as to avoid performance regressions for most users.

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 8, 2016 8:27 UTC (Wed) by liam (guest, #84133) [Link] (3 responses)

Yeah, but they've deprecated gstreamer for ffmpeg because they haven't been able to figure out how gstreamer works.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1207429

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 14, 2016 21:31 UTC (Tue) by cpeterso (guest, #305) [Link] (2 responses)

gstreamer just calls through to ffmpeg, so bypassing gstreamer removes unnecessarily library dependencies and instability. Plus, more Linux users have ffmpeg installed than ffmpeg+gstreamer, so the percentage of Linux Firefox users who can now play H.264 video jumped from about 58% (using gstreamer in Firefox 42) to 88% (using calling ffmpeg directly in Firefox 43). That sounds like a win/win situation to me.

* Firefox 42 telemetry: https://mzl.la/1UbjOzd
* Firefox 43 telemetry: https://mzl.la/1rowJk0

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 15, 2016 2:27 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

> the percentage of Linux Firefox users who can now play H.264 video jumped from about 58% (using gstreamer in Firefox 42) to 88% (using calling ffmpeg directly in Firefox 43)

What is wrong with the OS that basic components like media handling are that poorly standardized that bypassing it resulted in 20% more success across the same user base. The basic functionality that gstreamer provides should be reliably accessible on any system you might conceivably run Firefox on, that it's not is sad.

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 15, 2016 8:12 UTC (Wed) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]

I don't know, it's only as "basic" as the toolkit, which is not standardized either.
Or if you look at it another way, it's very standardized, with 90% of installations having ffmpeg.

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 7, 2016 17:19 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (1 responses)

Not sure what you consider low end. Firefox seems to work fine on a 800 MHz AMD Bobcat processor. It's a E-350 mini-ITX box that I mostly use as a server.

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 7, 2016 19:48 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

Low end would be netbooks; mine has a 32-bit Atom and I use it for browsing daily. It can handle 1280x720 video in a dedicated player, VP9 in Youtube's postage-stamp sized viewer is no problem. It runs Vivaldi.

I know (non-technical) people using PCs of similar vintage. They're not going to buy a new computer if the browser turns evil, they'll just switch to a better browser. That's how I got them to move from IE to Firefox in the first place...

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 7, 2016 20:17 UTC (Tue) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

The main reason is that lots more machines have usable MP4 HW decoders than VP9 decoders, and some sites will prefer VP9 if it's enabled no matter what the video size. So, enabling VP9 everywhere will cause those sites to play 4K videos etc with VP9, potentially causing a noticeable performance regression for those users.

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 8, 2016 19:53 UTC (Wed) by TD-Linux (guest, #92557) [Link]

VP9 always works in <video> tags. This is just a hack for MSE reporting because the MSE API does not provide adequate reporting of playback performance (or it might now, but a certain very popular video site doesn't use it effectively). Ideally VP9 would always be on and websites would step to a lower resolution if the video plays too slowly.

That said, the single benchmark to toggle VP9 is still a pretty terrible solution as it encourages websites using MSE to use H.264 over VP9, as they can't be guaranteed any VP9 stream will play in Firefox (even low resolution ones).

Firefox 48 (Electrolysis / E10S) is the big deal

Posted Jun 7, 2016 19:27 UTC (Tue) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896) [Link] (1 responses)

The *big* deal is what's coming in Firefox 48: Electrolysis (E10S). This will separate the UI from the rest. I expect it'll help security & performance; the problem is that plug-ins have to change to be ready for it.

More info:
https://asadotzler.com/2016/06/06/firefox-48-beta-release...
https://www.arewee10syet.com/

Firefox 48 (Electrolysis / E10S) is the big deal

Posted Jun 7, 2016 19:56 UTC (Tue) by ms-tg (subscriber, #89231) [Link]

Thanks for the links! Very exciting to see that work, and a responsible roll out plan based on measurement at each stage.

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 9, 2016 20:21 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

I was pleased that this Firefox for Android update (unlike the previous one) did not wipe out all my bookmarks and settings.

I was displeased because I had set it, after the previous experience, not to update automatically, but it updated by itself anyway. I imagine the purpose for the checkbox is just to head off requests for it.

Firefox 47

Posted Jun 10, 2016 17:21 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

Just hazarding a guess, but it might be better behaved if installed from F-Droid? I think the Play Store has its own force-update mechanism.