Firefox 57.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/57.0/releasenotes/ <comment><USER3> I just updated - WOW! What an improvement! Compared startup time and scrolling around some over-monetized sites; Behaves just as well as Chrome. Time for a switch again, I've missed FireFox since I started having Chrome as my default browser back in ~2011

<comment><USER4> If it as just as good as chrome, why should I switch? Especially given how good Chrome Dev tools are.

<comment><USER5> Aside from the privacy / philosophy / openness / counterweight-to- monopolization-of-the-Web angles which Yoric mentioned, you might find we're actually better than Chrome in some areas. Often small things, but I find I prefer the _feel_ of Firefox to Chrome.

\- If you do frontend work, our CSS grid inspector is unparalleled [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspecto...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspector/How_to/Examine_grid_layouts)

\- Firefox has built-in tracking protection ([https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/11/12/firefox-to- offer...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/11/12/firefox-to-offer- tracking-protection-for-all-in-its-next-update/))

\- Powerful add-ons like Tree Style Tab make managing large numbers of tabs much easier ([https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style- tab/](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/))

\- Our WebAssembly performance tends to be better

\- We should have better resource utilization when you have many tabs open

\- You can mute audio on a page clicking the little speaker icon in the tab

If you want to contribute to the DevTools themselves, they're built using standard web technologies: HTML/JS, React/Redux, etc. [https://github.com/devtools-html/](https://github.com/devtools-html/)

<comment><USER6> You've switched to multiple processes model, but you don't have "task manager" as Chrome. Do you plan to implement it in the future?

<comment><USER7> Working on it right now, but no ETA yet.

<comment><USER6> Ok, thanks. I hope you make it even more informative than the Chrome's one :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hopefully most of the missing extensions will be developed sooner rather than later. I have 15 extensions installed, 14 of which are "Legacy".

The most critical one, Tree Style Tabs, has been converted. That was the key blocker that prevented me from seriously using Chrome. But many more remain; Cookie Controller, RefControl, some kind of Classic Theme Restorer equivalent (to get a menu bar back for Bookmarks, at a minimum), etc.

<comment><USER9> Have a look here [0] for legacy extensions replacements.

[0] [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TFcEXMcKrwoIAECIVyBU...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TFcEXMcKrwoIAECIVyBU0GPoSmRqZ7A0VBvqeKYVSww/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER10> There's no replacement for ScrapBook, a plugin where I have a decade of stored annotated documents (no hyperbole, my oldest files date from 2007). Ever since I discovered that FF57 was going to kill ScrapBook I had to disable Firefox updates so I don't lose access to ~6GB of stored data. It's a mix of past, present, and future writing research.

I know I have access to clumsy workarounds such as copying FF56 to a VM with updates disabled, or to have parallel Firefox installs, but Scrapbook is a daily-use tool for me, and clunky workarounds won't last long.

I'm thinking about reverse-engineering the way ScrapBook stores data so I can write my own migration to something else, but...oof.

Anybody have any suggestions for another plugin/product that offers the same features? Or, dare I dream, one that can import everything from ScrapBook? My searches for the latter have come up dry, but perhaps something obscure exists.

<comment><USER11> Scrapbook, that takes me back. Haven't used it in a dog's age. But I would be _enormously_ surprised if it did no longer store saved content under your Firefox profile directory, and back when I used it, it just saved the files there and maybe did some link rewriting. Not really a lot of importing necessary to view the content outside the extension - you'd just need to point a browser at its file:// URL.

Not sure how much that helps in terms of retaining the actual functionality, which unless I'm badly mistaken would only be feasible in the WebExtensions API via the external application messaging interface - and you'd need a separate program that would receive those messages and do the mirroring for you, and maybe expose a local HTTP server or some other such horrible hack to let you fetch the content tree for rendering in the browser as a table of contents/tree of bookmark-style links. But at least you might not have to lose what you've got.

<comment><USER10> Today I spent some time looking at how ScrapBook stores information. It's a bit of a mixed bag, with some plain text files, some XML, some HTML (besides the saved pages themselves). I managed to figure out how it stores folder structure, bookmarks, saved pages, and annotations. Fortunately there's no database, and no encryption, so I can write a tool to extract the information if needed.

The remaining question becomes: how to replace it? What other tool supports all this?:

* Local saving (as opposed to cloud)

* Storing source URL with support for re-fetching

* Bookmarks (for pages that won't save locally in a useful way, such as YouTube)

* "Deep saving," saving the main page AND linked pages, and keeping them bundled together

* Full text search

* Probably other features I do not recall offhand

Even if I can get the data out, it's hard to know where to put it. Most solutions these days are cloud-oriented, which is unappealing to me. I could build my own stand-alone replacement, but what a headache. I could fork ScrapBook and try to make it work with the latest Firefox, but I have no experience in the plugin domain, nor the time to prioritize learning it.

Sorry for the rant, I'm just trying to figure out how to proceed without severe productivity loss.

<comment><USER11> I'd look at the Zotero standalone, but that's just an offhand guess. Other than that, I got nothin' \- except 52 ESR, which is good for security updates until some time next year, and won't get the breaking changes from 57.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just upgraded. It completely changes the chrome of the browser on OSX and it is _absolutely hideous_. There are a lots of unnecessary animations that I find very jarring. I don't know if there's a way to change it back yet.

UPDATE: There is a "Customize Firefox" button which allows modifying the theme, which fixes the colors, but not the shape of the tabs or the animations.

UPDATE: In about:config, you can disable some of the animations with `toolkit.cosmeticAnimations.enabled: false`

UPDATE: You can bring back curved tabs with this: [https://github.com/wilfredwee/photon- australis](https://github.com/wilfredwee/photon-australis)

<comment><USER13> And it's impossible to put the tabs beneath the address bar, or to have actual toolbars.

Decades of UI/UX knowledge, down the drain. Usability is gone.

<comment><USER14> > Decades of UI/UX knowledge, down the drain. Usability is gone.

Exactly the opposite; this is an evolution that has been taking place over the past decade.

Firefox has had tabs-on-top as the default since _Firefox v4.0_ [1]. Chrome has had tabs-on-top for its entire existence (starting in Sept 2008); Opera had them before Chrome.

The merits can be argued either way, but don't act like this is sudden or arbitrary; it's neither.

Consider that maybe--just maybe--the dev teams at Mozilla, Google, et al. have done some usability studies in the past decade that informed these decisions.

I get that you may prefer tabs below the URL bar, but your claims about the greater state of UX are baseless and absurd.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmgtW2Iw- kE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmgtW2Iw-kE) posted June 2010

EDIT: Google made a comic for the release of Chrome 1.0 that includes an explanation of their original rationale for putting tabs on top. [https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_18.html](https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_18.html)

<comment><USER13> _De gustibus non est disputandum_

The idea that someone else can know what another wants better than the other person is absurd. Your arguments might be valid for _defaults_ , but they must be _configurable defaults_ , because taste is subjective, arbitrary, and, despite what some believe, _never in error_.

I know what UX I want better than anyone else. Nobody can gainsay my personal taste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I trashtalked Firefox being slow forever, I just tried it out and I must say it's definitely very fast. Great work to the Firefox team.

<comment><USER16> Blisteringly fast. Great job FF team!

<comment><USER17> And apparently not all of the performance improvements are even integrated into the browser yet!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is so close to great but can a mac snob ask how to get a more consistent UI experience out of firefox? I'm totally happy with how everything behaves inside the web panel but:

      1.  At a minimum I'd be happy with a toolbar icon set that was a little more in step with OS X design (but willing to hear
          if I just have misunderstanding of design :D)
      2.  As a reach, os-native menus or at least more native-style menus for things like the toolbar menu

<comment><USER19> If only they'd put all the effort spent into trying to imitate macOS into actually building an AppKit version... I guess that's never going to happen due to the cross platform nature of Firefox, but it also means (among other reasons) I'll never use it as my primary browser.

<comment><USER20> Firefox uses Cocoa/AppKit extensively. It doesn't "imitiate macOS": it actually uses the system APIs throughout.

The one thing it doesn't do is to use native widgets to render the UI of the browser chrome. Using native widgets for Web content in a cross-platform browser isn't a very attractive proposition, because native widgets either can't be composited at all (Windows, GTK+) or require that you delegate your entire graphics stack to the OS-specific compositor for Web content (macOS). Delegating the entire graphics stack to Core Animation would prevent us from making any improvements to it (for example, WebRender). Given that a lot of browser UI (e.g. preferences) is becoming Web content in both Chrome and Firefox, for consistency's sake it seems better to use the same widgets for chrome and content.

<comment><USER19> I completely understand the reasons, but the result is an application which does not feel and behave like a native macOS application. It is a lot better than all the Electron crap out there for sure, but it's still a major reason why Firefox can't replace Safari for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For those who look for NoScript replacement, uMatrix[0] (from the maker of uBlock Origin) has got you covered (with "A Desperately Needed User's Guide"[1]).

[0][https://addons.mozilla.org/en- GB/firefox/addon/umatrix/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- GB/firefox/addon/umatrix/) [1][http://adamantine.me/index.php/2015/11/18/umatrix- desperatel...](http://adamantine.me/index.php/2015/11/18/umatrix-desperately- needed-guide/)

<comment><USER16> Tried this. It was too complicated and slow enabling every subdomain by hand.

<comment><USER22> It is a little fiddly to set up at first, certainly.

There are a few tools to make it easier though: if you're dealing with a site that uses a lot of semi-random subdomains (like googlevideo or cloudflare), it's possible to just whitelist the whole domain and get all the subdomains automatically (and then block individual subdomains if you want).

It might be defeating the purpose, but you can also change the "scope" of the changes you make by clicking the blue button in the upper left corner of the panel. You can choose the scope from current domain, current subdomain, or global "*". If you select global, you can, for example, unblock the various youtube/googlevideo related embeds/iframes/xhrs there, and then youtube embeds will work on every site.

The one thing I wish the addon would do is sync my black/whitelists through Firefox Sync so I didn't have to either redo everything on a new computer, or go to the trouble of exporting/importing them.

<comment><USER23> > sync my black/whitelists through Firefox Sync

It's technically possible, although UX is terrible. Go to uMatrix settings, make sure to "enable cloud storage" option is set in the "settings" tab, then manually upload and download rules in the "my rules" tab.

No automatic sync (won't be implemented[1]) and, no merges at the moment (button's broken[2]).

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/467](https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/467)

[2] [https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/807](https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/807)

<comment><USER24> > No automatic sync

By design. Losing all rules because of sync snafu out of control of uMatrix is the absolute worst case. Importing/merging manually will prevent such disaster.

<comment><USER23> Well, if it would be incremental (passing changelists of rule additions and deletions rather than state snapshots), then any serious data loss should be very unlikely. And if deletion log records would contain the deleted records and prunned only after a short while, things could be even rolled back.

As I get it, it would require significant changes to the code, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's great that FF is now faster but how's battery life in this new engine? The reason I stuck with safari and only a year ago moved to chrome was that google finally was able to drastically improve battery life on chrome for Mac... where is FF here (their release page doesn't mention "battery" at all), does anyone know?

<comment><USER26> Well, I'm running it on a 7-year-old Mac mini (yeah, no battery, I know, but hold on...), and _idle_ Firefox, without focus, is ticking along at 0.7-1.5% CPU time.

Safari is _zero_. Dead still. I type this and it moves to 0.3%.

No idea what Firefox is doing...

edit: Also, even without focus, Firefox climbs to 8.9% CPU just by hovering my mouse over it. Safari goes to 0.2%.

<comment><USER25> Mmm thanks! And looks like there are a few anecdotal reports and bugs around battery drain [https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7a91ss/battery_lif...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7a91ss/battery_life_on_firefox_quantum/) what a shame if there are issues there - would be a showstopper for my personal usage at least! Hope they haven't overfocused on speed at the cost of worse battery life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I too am sad that despite the awesome speed, I'm forced to stick with v56 out of necessity for my add-ons.

Tab Groups (which was originally a first-class Mozilla feature called Panorama) absolutely changed my browser workflow, and I can't imagine regressing...

The new APIs won't support replacement any time soon, and the dev has already given up, since they'd already had to run a fundraiser once to add Electrolysis support, just to find that their work would be thrown away in the near future _anyways_.

And that's just one example... :(

<comment><USER28> WebExtensions were specifically announced alongside Electrolysis. This is not Mozilla's fault.

<comment><USER29> When WebExtensions was announced, Electrolysis was already on by default in Developer Edition, and Mozilla planned to begin blacklisting incompatible extensions within 3 months.[1] The author of Tab Groups had just finished rewriting his extensions for Electrolysis.[2] He only gave up 18 months later, partly because of how frustrating Mozilla made the process of getting missing functionality added to WebExtensions.

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of- dev...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing- firefox-add-ons/)

[2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20170128013037/http://fasezero.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170128013037/http://fasezero.com/lastnotice.html)

<comment><USER28> Your link 1 is from 2015/08/21\. Electrolysis was rolled out with Firefox 48 on 2016/08/02\. The respective Developer Edition build was released on 2016/04/25.

<comment><USER29> Electrolysis development started in 2009. It was enabled by default in Developer Edition starting with Firefox 42 (2015/08/11) and opt-in before that.

Nobody knew in August 2015 that Mozilla would delay the Electrolysis rollout, allow incompatible extensions would continue working into 2017, pick an arbitrary date to drop XUL extensions instead of tying it to WebExtensions milestones, drop the Add-on SDK at the same time, and not really support gradual porting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone know how the new FireFox compares on battery-life? Safari crushes Chrome on this front currently, but I'm curious how FireFox compares now.

<comment><USER31> None of the Firefox Quantum work has looked at power usage, so don't expect any changes on that front.

<comment><USER32> This is mentioned in the release notes:

"AMD VP9 hardware video decoder support for improved video playback with lower power consumption"

<comment><USER33> How many users have AMD laptops?

<comment><USER34> AMD graphics. And since we were talking about Macs, the answer is "a lot"

<comment><USER35> And what is the intersection of "Macs", "AMD graphics" and "battery powered"?

Pretty sure it is the empty set.

<comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro) Find in Page "AMD"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> At last LastPass has released a new version! (FF Developer Edition has passed beyond the grace period so only allows modern extensions. I've been using Chrome just for lastpass for months!)

<comment><USER37> This is what's holding me back from changing mostly. Honestly, lastpass is great for me but I almost wish built in browser password managers were better. I used to use Google Chrome's password manager but one time I synced with another computer or phone and everything got erased and there was no undoing it. I lost everything. Maybe syncing is better now but after that sync that thought "hey let's make sure everything is like this brand new device" I hesitate.

<comment><USER38> High time that passwords management was integrated into the OS, where it belongs. These days its not just sites, but hundreds of apps too that want your passwords, and browser based extensions can't interface with other apps. On the other hand a standalone password manager has at best a flaky interaction with web pages inside a browser window, and often has to be supported by an in-broswer extension, adding to complexity of code and interaction.

We need the OS to store credentials and expose a well-defined, OS independent API for apps/sites to identify themselves securely and request for the user's authentication. This will go a long way towards mitigating exploits like cross-site scripting attacks, phishing, software keyloggers, clipboard sniffers and so on.

I really find it amazing that this is something none of the major OS creators have tackled in a standarised manner.

<comment><USER39> I really doubt a Microsoft Windows integrated password manager could be conveniently accessed from Android, OSX or Ubuntu.

In fact, I imagine almost every OS vendor would try some form of lock-in.

<comment><USER23> An application can read from one store and send data to another app to persist into another store.

The one issue I see is that to sync properly such app would need a changelist (with the vector clocks and stuff), and the only thing most credential stores provide is the current state and no history track. An app may implement such list to itself, though, outside of the OS credential storage - without actual credentials, just referring to the record IDs so it's not too sensitive.

Another is, such external app would need to repeatedly access the credential store. If there is no API to detect if the store is locked or not, it may either require to keep it unlocked, or spam user with access prompts or something like that.

Oh, and it would be problematic if the store pins records to the applications and doesn't allow e.g. Chrome to access Firefox passwords and vice versa. You'll need highly privileged access (root) or somehow hook another app and inject yourself into its address space (WinHook, Xposed, etc).

But e.g. Windows Vault <-> KDE or Gnome keyring sync is certainly possible. In theory. Don't know if anyone had ever implemented it in practice, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just upgraded. Definitely feels snappier at first glance, what I'm most curious about however is how much the speed deteriorates the longer I use it (if at all). The older version was definitely pretty bad after a couple of days of uptime.

All in all though. Nice job so far. :)

Edit: I do sorta feel like the tabs are now smaller (when there is a lot of tabs open), any way to make them bigger?

<comment><USER41> As far as your edit is concerned, try searching for "browser.tabs.tabMinWidth" in "about:config".

I know it's available in Beta / Nightly, but I don't know if it got backported to Stable nor will it.

<comment><USER40> Nice. This works, thanks! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you'd like to disable pocket, here are instructions:

[https://help.getpocket.com/article/1025-disabling-pocket- in-...](https://help.getpocket.com/article/1025-disabling-pocket-in-firefox)

<comment><USER43> Unfortunately that doesn't disable the "Recommended by Pocket" crap on the New Tab Window. I have Firefox installed on 8 different machines and the option to remove "Recommended by Pocket" in the New Tab Preferences only appears in half of them.

If you're missing the option then you can open about:config and set "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories" to false to get rid of it. I also blew away the "browser.newtabpage.activity- stream.feeds.section.topstories.options" key that contains all of the configuration crap for pocket.

Unfortunately non of this is or the op's settings are synced in your Profile so you have to change it on all of your machines. :(

<comment><USER44> Huh, going through the prefs there it looks like they probably have telemetry going on in the new tab page. Where all your history goes.

I miss the Mozilla that actually acted like they cared about privacy.

<comment><USER45> I'm not sure what you're referring to, can you clarify?

<comment><USER44> Sure; I'm just complaining about the _existence_ of `browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.telemetry`. I'm not comfortable having tracking so near user data.

Now that I'm not on a mobile and can actually look at the code, it looks like it's defined at [1]. I must be reading TelemetryFeed.jsm wrong, though, because that says addSession() holds on to the URL (as .page) and createPing() puts it into the ping...

[1]: [https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla- release/file/FIREFOX...](https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla- release/file/FIREFOX_57_0_RELEASE/browser/extensions/activity- stream/lib/ActivityStream.jsm#l120)

<comment><USER45> Tracing back through the code, this is only triggered with a URL by the RemotePages watcher, which notifies when the URL matches one of a whitelist. The only whitelisted URLs currently are about:home, about:newtab, and about:tabcrashed.

[https://searchfox.org/mozilla- central/source/toolkit/modules...](https://searchfox.org/mozilla- central/source/toolkit/modules/RemotePageManager.jsm#64)

[https://searchfox.org/mozilla- central/search?q=symbol:%23Rem...](https://searchfox.org/mozilla- central/search?q=symbol:%23RemotePages&redirect=false)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Firefox Quantum feels very fast, but addon support is disappointing :(

      + uBlock Origin
      - Self-Destructing Cookies
      - <USER2>
      - Video DownloadHelper
      - Save Session

<comment><USER47> Self-Destructing Cookies isn't supported anymore. I just found that out myself a bit earlier and am giving Cookies AutoDelete a shot.

Edit: Forgot to mention but if you check the add-ons site, you should be able to find an updated extension for Video DownloadHelper.

<comment><USER46> UPDATE: new version of Video DownloadHelper addon for Quantum Firefox was not useful for me: it requires external companion app to write files (which I don't trust and don't want to install). But I found another addon: "Flash and Video Download", which does its job quite well without any assistance from external software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> For those who still need older plugin system, use Firefox ESR for as long as possible or switch now to Pale Moon.

I gave FF57 (Quantum) a try during Beta and it was FAST. I am still using Pale Moon, but installed FF57 to see the improvements, to keep an alternate browser installed and also because Mozilla "Container Tabs" looks very interesting. [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers)

Using Tree Style Tabs and Container Tabs looks to be AWESOME, once they do a little bit more polish to switching between containers.

At the moment, they haven't implemented hiding of the horizontal tabs as Mozilla haven't officially implemented the feature. It is a work in progress though.

See this workaround to remove tabs: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15343940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15343940)

Now that FF57 is out of beta, I'll give it another go.

</comment><comment><USER49> Without Tab Mix Plus Firefox 57 is not an option for me. Does anyone know of an extension that allows multiple tab rows? Tab Trees and like extensions don't cut it. This is the main reason I never switched to Chrome.

It's too bad FF had to abandon it's massive library of legacy extensions for this upgrade. The myriad of extensions is one of FF's main benefits over other browsers. I've happily accepted lower performance in trade for configuration options. I suppose the most popular extensions will eventually be ported.

<comment><USER50> The toolbar API still lacks the required features to allow multirow. According to bugzilla discussions they might add it somewhere in 2018 :( You can also find contradictory statements from different developers like "this should be handled by addons" vs. "addons should manipulate only the web content not the browser itself" etc. It's a mess so maybe if we users push enough they might understand. See [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246706](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246706)

From my point of view they should also provide mouse gestures because the WebExtensions work only after DOM is loaded and not having gestures on internal pages is a huge discomfort and user experience dissonance to put it mildly.

<comment><USER51> > "addons should manipulate only the web content not the browser itself"

WTF? Who in their right mind can think that the only reason people installed add-ons was to manipulate the web content? UI is the main differentiating factor between browsers, FF strength was the ability to customize UI for user liking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'm loving the new FF, my missing feature is being able to open a site as a desktop app. I use chrome to make different icons/windows/apps for gmail, hn, reddit, photos, cloud9, etc. Anyone know if there is a way to have a website shortcut open in its own window and have an icon in the taskbar?

<comment><USER53> Exactly, this is the only reason why I don't use anything other than Chrome. While I really want to switch to FF. Chrome "add to desktop" does make website almost as like a desktop app and without unnecessary tabbar and stuff.

I wish firefox could do that.

That being said, I don't use any native app at all other than a terminal emulator. Just terminal + vscode + chrome.

<comment><USER7> For what it's worth, Firefox used to be able to do this (with a few manipulations). At some point, that feature was killed, because apparently nobody (except me) was using it :/

It's a shame, because I would really like to be able to move my chat clients out of the Firefox UI.

<comment><USER54> I REALLY want an Electron/NWJS build on top of Firefox. I would scrap chrome altogether both for personal use and for building "desktop" apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Asked this a week ago in anticipation for the release but got no response.[1] Whatever happened with Cliqz? Is it still a part of the release?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15643154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15643154)

<comment><USER56> It has never been part of the release - it was part of a test rollout to 1% of _German_ users (not sure if that was of an actual or a beta release).

<comment><USER55> Well for one thing, it was part of an actual release according to Mozilla's own blog post about it.[1] Second, that still doesn't answer my question about what happened with regards to Cliqz. Is it still being considered? What were the results if the test has concluded? Or are they still testing it in 1% of FF57 downloads to German users? Mozilla has been silent with regards to their Cliqz test which is why I'm asking.

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing- cliqz-i...](https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-in- firefox/)

<comment><USER56> Right, hence the ellipsis. So if you're not downloading German Firefox you probably won't have to worry about it.

I don't have an answer to your other question (maybe someone else will), although since that post says they'll keep us posted and I haven't seen anything, and since it hasn't been that long ago, I don't think too much has come of it yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm using it now. It is really snappy!

There are bugs though. I'm using Debian Stretch. Right click menu doesn't work: it appears for a fraction of a second then disappears; so does the top- bar menu of LastPass plugin.

<comment><USER5> Huh, I can't replicate that in Fedora. Are you using a binary downloaded from Mozilla directly, or from one of the various Debian APT repos? Can you email me with more info (my HN username @mozilla.com), especially what desktop environment you're using, X vs Wayland, etc.

<comment><USER57> I downloaded the tarball from Mozilla website. I use i3 with X.

I'm happy to provide more information via email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I wonder when the Android version of Firefox will be updated to 57.

<comment><USER59> Android will get Quantum with 58, in approximately 6 weeks time.

[https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/31/firefox-58-for-android- ena...](https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/31/firefox-58-for-android-enable- quantum-css-engine/)

But even without Quantum Firefox on Android is way faster than Chrome because it supports ad blocking plugins.

<comment><USER60> Yeah, I can't wait for FF58 on Android.

TBH FF on Android has felt a little choppy, even with ublock origin enabled. The Chromium-based Firefox Focus feels faster, but too bad it doesn't support extensions. Hopefully FF58 will be the best of both worlds on Android soon.

<comment><USER59> It feels choppy, so it feels slower, even though it renders pages faster because it's not downloading and rendering ads. A great example of how feel matters.

<comment><USER61> I agree 100%. I ended up disabling my adblocker on twitter.com just because it was causing so much jank while I was scrolling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Nice to see an update, and performance improvements are noticeable.

If you're missing blank tabs like I was, restore blank tabs at Preferences|When Firefox starts, and set Home Page to `about:blank`.

If you prefer new tabs to be blank as well, that's managed via the gear button on the new tab page, and by deselecting checked options.

Themes are set at Tools|Add-ons|Themes. (For example, if you want a lighter- style theme restored.)

I posted more thoughts here:

[https://jaidee.io/articles/on-the-new-firefox](https://jaidee.io/articles/on- the-new-firefox)

</comment><comment><USER63> The one feature I wanted that chrome has isn't there in Gnome: no worthless title bar that shows redundant information. I saw screenshots for Gnome with the title bar missing before Quantum was released, so I had my hopes up.

There is an extension to get rid of it. However, you also have to manually install some other garbage too. They provide a debian package, but I'm not using a debian based OS so it's a pain in the ass. I'll stick with Chromium, thanks.

<comment><USER28> Relevant bug report: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283299](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283299)

Experimental Nightly build with the Client-Side Decorations that you want enabled: [https://github.com/stransky/gecko-dev/tree/titlebar- csd](https://github.com/stransky/gecko-dev/tree/titlebar-csd)

(This link is taken from comment #64 in that bug report.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Judging by the comments, I could be in a minority, but to me this version feels slower.

There is a noticeable lag before first paint of the page. This is specially visible if you have a fast site. I was able to click through links on the site with no lag, now there is a small, but noticeable lag.

Also, where did the "Restore tabs" button go from the homepage?

EDIT: Also, it looks like my fans are running more often, so CPU usage could be higher as well.

<comment><USER65> Do you observe this behavior in a completely new Firefox profile?

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Forgetting about the speed for a moment (which is great), I like the direction they are taking the user interface. Recent versions of FireFox had terribly clunky and frustratingly bizarre UI elements, 57 is a huge improvement.

</comment><comment><USER67> I hope that firefox will continue to protect users privacy as good as possible. I'm thinking of super cookies and the like. Other brother vendors don't seem to be very engaged in this area.

<comment><USER68> With their recent testing of Cliqz integration I doubt they're really committed a lot to protecting users privacy.

HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708)

<comment><USER69> Isn't that turned off when you disable "search suggestions"?

I don't like search suggestions even in Chrome. I find it makes the omnibar less useful.

The omnibar was the game changer for me when Chrome did it. I never have many tabs open as I can recall anything I've visited previously by typing a few words. More often than not what I want is one of the first suggestions.

So to help with this, I turn off search suggestions since they are not relevant to my past browser activity. I also got in the habit of frequently using Private window so that my History has more relevant content. It's great and I'm confident I don't need to bookmark a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> DC-3 Congratulations to the developers on an important release.

</comment><comment><USER70> Just installed it, looks like the update overrode my previously set default of a blank "new tab" page in favour of their overly fancy, ad infested "new tab experience" page. Looks like it's time for another scan of about:config for any other nasties they decided to sneak in there this time.

<comment><USER71> No need to dive into about:config. Just click the gear icon at the top left to disable all stuff.

<comment><USER72> On the other hand, for some reason they've decided to make the tab previews smaller. Now I have a bunch of small thumbnails on a huge page... And now way to increase their size :(

<comment><USER71> Have you tried Ctrl-wheel or Ctrl-+ (plus key)?

<comment><USER72> Huh, it's actually saved, I thought it was a temporary setting. Thanks! :)

Still not perfect, since I'm just zooming in some PNGs. And the new thumbnails are square while most pages that I view are rectangular. But it will do, for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Has anyone had poor performance on mac? I notice that my fans tend to spin up quite frequently with normal browsing. I didn't really have this issue with chrome.

<comment><USER74> A developer answered in another post

> The point of parallelization is to harness the full power of the CPU. If you > don't want that try reducing the content process limit near the bottom of > general options.

[[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum- era-h...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-how- firefox-got-fast-again-and-where-its-going-to-get-faster/)]

<comment><USER75> It's not murdering battery because it's "harnessing the full power of the CPU", it's chomping through almost 1% battery a minute on Mac while doing virtually nothing.

Apparently "vibrance" is one of the culprits and switching to the light or dark themes can help a lot. But yes, it's destroying battery compared to Safari for me. Which is a shame, as it's already my default on Windows.

<comment><USER76> Sounds like you should definitely file a bug.

<comment><USER75> there is one: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042) — it was moved to being tracked for v58.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> w00t! I started using Firefox 1.0 after being a Netscape user back in the day. I love Mozilla and all they stand for and I'm so excited that they are releasing Quantum and kicking ass again.

</comment><comment><USER78> Wow, no one's talking about mobile? Have they fixed the lagginess and inaccurate click detection that routinely crops up on the Android browser?

<comment><USER79> Mobile FF is built on versions far behind the desktop FF. Give it time.

<comment><USER80> It's more complicated than that. Firefox on Android uses much of the core code that desktop does. But sometimes new features do get enabled on Android a little later. One example is Stylo, the new style engine, which isn't enabled on Android yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Feels GREAT! Happy to be using this in addition to Safari. I also added uBlock Origin as an adblocker but would still love if FF eventually included native, declarative content blocking like Safari (probably less likely given how much money they get from Google).

<comment><USER82> I don't want necessarily want an adblocker built into my web browser. It creates too much centralized risk and power for the kinds of shenanigans pulled by ABP or ghostery, and it would hurt adoption of good add-ons like ublock.

What I DO want to see is something like ublock matrix become a standard feature. Matrix is an incredible add-on that has made the web more useable and more debuggable for me. If it was built-in, the defaults would have to be toned-down or turned off, because it breaks too much of the web, but a simple "privacy mode" toggle to step up restrictions would be welcome in a private browsing window.

Call it "War Mode" or "Paranoid Window" when using a private window with maxed out Matrix.

<comment><USER81> It's not an adblocker. It's a "content blocking" engine. Basically, there are two pieces to any blocker: the blacklist, and the actual execution (matching against blacklist rules, and probably executing JS to remove it).

Safari's got a native engine for the execution part. And you pass in the blacklist with declarative rules. It's the best of both worlds in that you get competing blacklists, but the actual engine is even faster than JS. And for security like you said, there aren't any shenanigans since it's literally a JSON blacklist and can't contain code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Is there a pre-57 theme for the UI?

The new one is way too minimalist. It also appears to target people with poor sight all chrome elements suddenly became larger.

EDIT - The upgrade also wiped all GreaseMonkey scripts for some reason. Hmm.

EDIT - Downgraded back to 56. Way too many jarring UI changes as well as the AddOn breakage to justify the new snappiness. Mozilla also appears to have pulled the link to the "old releases" page from their main website, so here it is - [https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases](https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases)

<comment><USER72> You can reconfigure almost everything back...

For the chrome elements size: Menu -> Customize -> Density -> Compact.

<comment><USER83> Yeah, saw that. That's not "Compact" though, that's "Cluttered".

The top part of the browser window is now an utter mess. I can live with the new tab style, but the layout with absolutely no vertical spacing/padding and these new "minimalist" icons is just... ugly, and unnecessary at that. I don't think I'm the only person who cares for how things _look_ in addition to how they _work_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Previous discussion about performance improvements can be found here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15686653](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15686653)

</comment><comment><USER85> Super fast! And I'm so happy that Tree Style Tab is working smoothly.

</comment><comment><USER86> It's nice, I guess. Doesn't feel any faster, but since I tend to load new links in tabs and then visit them after I've never really noticed page load times anyway.

</comment><comment><USER87> It feels a lot snappier, but I definitely am not seeing a memory improvement. `about:memory` shows ~230MB for the top one, but task manager shows me at 1.3GB. I only have 13 tabs open. Yesterday this same tab set was running about the same memory. I know my linux computer at home runs lower memory with more tabs (that one hasn't been updated to 57 yet)

But the browser speed feels A LOT smoother.

Update: In the last hour I'm now reading about 1.8GB at 16 tabs. Still acting really fast though.

</comment><comment><USER88> Anyone else use PocketCasts web player? Chrome is able to play audio at 2.7x speed without distortion while Firefox still has issues.

Is there a location where I can submit a bug report?

<comment><USER5> We track most of our bugs in Bugzilla ([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org)). Once you've created an account, go to File a Bug, Core, and choose "Audio/Video: Playback" as the Component in the form.

(In general, it's fine to chuck bugs into Firefox -> Untriaged and they'll eventually land in the right place.)

If Bugzilla's a bit of a pain, just let me know and I'll happily file it for you.

<comment><USER89> Are Quantum bugs in bugzilla or Github?

<comment><USER7> Bugzilla. There are a few exceptions, but if you misfile a bug to Bugzilla, don't worry, it will be moved to Github during triage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Does anyone know of benchmarks comparing this to the current version of chrome. The Mozilla team only mentions that it's faster than previous versions of Firefox.

<comment><USER91> The benchmark Mozilla highlights for this release (2x faster) is Speedometer 2.0. FF57 is 2x faster than FF52, which came out roughly 7 months ago.

In my own personal testing (you can run on your machine in a couple minutes), FF57 is 10% faster than FF56 on that benchmark, and Chrome 60 is 10% faster than FF57.

[https://mozilla.github.io/arewefastyet- speedometer/2.0/](https://mozilla.github.io/arewefastyet-speedometer/2.0/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> IMO, it sucks now.

I like the awesome new speed even on my old Sandy Bridge, but the death of ANY possibilities to add features to the browser UI is not worth it. Really.

</comment><comment><USER93> I wonder why, with Mozilla's pro-web and pro-user focus... why not DuckDuckGo?

<comment><USER94> They also use Google Analytics for telemetry btw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Is there a good Vimperator replacement for the new webextension addon system?

<comment><USER56> Depends on your needs. If it's mostly the shortcuts, Vimium works pretty well (at least for me). If you want the full-blown UI customisation, then I'm afraid extensions are not allowed that anymore due to the associated security risks.

<comment><USER96> > If you want the full-blown UI customisation, then I'm afraid extensions are > not allowed that anymore due to the associated security risks.

That's total BS. It's _my_ software running on _my_ computer. _I_ get to decide what I consider a security risk, not Mozilla.

<comment><USER97> This "user is an idiot" mentality permeates their development culture. As another example, Mozilla would rather you don't get to access a site _at all_ if it's misconfigured a certain way, rather than putting in any kind of override.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435013](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435013) (Ten years old, fixes proposed, questions unanswered. Note the status.)

If I sound upset, it's because this is personally offensive (not to mention infuriating) to me, and many good-faith questions have gone ignored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> It's fast. Fast!

Thanks!

It seems i also got Ebay as an additional search engine. Oh well.. deleted it. :)

</comment><comment><USER99> Gave it a shot. My complaints on 20m of usage (2015 MBP):

1\. Firefox is sitting at 15-20% of my CPU with 2 tabs open. I've never had the fan come on just from browsing tabs on chrome. I opened gmail while typing this and now I'm at about 50% of my CPU and the fan is blaring. Something seems very wrong.

2\. The import from other browser (assuming say I already had an old version installed and selected "replace" on mac install) option is VERY hidden behind a bunch of menus. It also didn't import any of my cookies to google, HN, or probably most other passwords in the keychain.

3\. Resizing a window feels really sluggish and not snappy, as does tabbing back and forth between tabs. It takes a noticable like 500-800ms to switch to gmail. Most tabs are around 200-400ms. This feels massively slower than chrome thus far

4\. The design when typing in the search bar is pretty jarring, filling up a huge amount with white space.

I'll keep trying but if the CPU doesn't chill out this is basically a non- starter for me.

</comment><comment><USER100> I'm trying it out now. Seems fast and I like the UI. I think there is a feature missing that I require... In chrome I can log into two separate accounts, my work and my personal. They run as practically two separate instances of chrome, so I can log into a separate lastpass account for each. Is this possible with firefox?

<comment><USER101> yeah, there is an extension for it: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/multi-account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/)

<comment><USER102> This is great but unfortunately you can't have separate extensions with it. For example you can't have 2 Lastpass extensions

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> Would love to see an Electron-compatible runtime coming from Firefox (using the new engine), using less memory etc.

Looks like positron used to do this but is now dead :( [https://github.com/mozilla/positron](https://github.com/mozilla/positron)

</comment><comment><USER104> To chime in with some of the others, I decided to try out Firefox again [0] when the FF57 beta/nightly/whatever was first released and am very happy that I did!

Looks like that was ~48 days ago and I think I've opened up Chromium maybe two or three times since then.

(WRT extensions, LastPass was the only thing I "missed" (we have Enterprise for $work) although I normally use the CLI utility instead anyways. They came out with a beta a few weeks ago and it was actually working great until about two days ago when it suddenly broke for me. The other extensions I use -- uBlock Origin, Vimium -- have been working just fine.)

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15344018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15344018)

</comment><comment><USER105> I have to say it's been a while since I have been impressed with a firefox official release, I have been using nightly for a couple of weeks now.

Another thing to note, and maybe most people don't instinctively realize this, but Chrome should get a lot of kudos for bringing both browsers and the web forward in such a short time. Let's not forget - the clusterfuck both Firefox and IE were before chrome came to the scene. A lot of the implements that makes Firefox awesome now came from chrome.

Chrome played just as big of a role as FF did to bring IE out of the gutter.

I haven't used IE (or whatever it's current incarnation is called) for a long time as a daily driver - spend some time about 6 months ago - wasn't impressed, but still better than what it was before.

Thanks, Chrome team.

</comment><comment><USER106> Having Reader View available out of the box is huge for me. This is one of the reasons I prefer Safari when I'm on MacOS. But I use Ubuntu most of the time, so I'm switching back to Firefox as my default browser. So far, it's been great.

</comment><comment><USER107> It's blazing fast.. Hoping to see more successful Rust based applications.

</comment><comment><USER108> It's supposed to be faster, but when I open developer-tools and click on "Inspector", it takes almost 5 seconds to paint.

EDIT: Okay, tested again; it depends heavily on the website you do this on.

<comment><USER109> Less than a second here. Yes, I can see it paint, but it's nowhere near 5 seconds. And I'm on a base model Thinkpad T440, hardly a speed machine these days.

<comment><USER108> Did you wait until the box was fully populated?

<comment><USER109> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> The omnibar is less convenient than Google Chrome: it appears that pressing DELETE does not actually remove a search suggestion from History. Instead it seems to be ranked down. This is not useful, there should be a way to completely remove a suggestion (unless it is currently a bookmark).

In Google Chrome I navigate with the omnibar so much, it was the game changer for me when Chrome was new. The ability to quickly recall any page I visited before. Coupled with the ability to finetune these suggestions by removing unwanted entries.

</comment><comment><USER110> Can one run the new version alongside a previous version?

I need to access occasionally extensions unsupported in the new version: namely Scrapbook and the extension that provides maff file support.

<comment><USER111> The developer of Waterfox has promised to continue supporting "legacy" add- ons, so that's an option you can explore.

<comment><USER28> Mind though, that this effort will almost certainly die off after June 26, 2018. That's the EOL date of Firefox 52 ESR, meaning the actual end of Mozilla supporting legacy extensions.

This sort of cynic statement is based on this legacy extension system having been a major maintenance burden for Mozilla, so now one developer or even a small team trying to take that over, I can hardly imagine to work out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> I'm on windows 7, the new version seems to keep spawning a process which grinds my machine to a halt.

I've had to open task manager twice now to kill it. Only downloaded it 10 minutes ago.

<comment><USER113> Try starting Firefox in safe mode in case that's some broken extension:

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox- is...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using- safe-mode)

<comment><USER112> No extensions installed. Literally just downloaded firefox.

<comment><USER114> Sibling comment recommended opening a bug. I concur: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided#h=b...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided#h=bugForm%7C)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER115> I've been using Firefox nightly after Quantum changes got in and I love it. I use it as my default browser.

Now that the changes are mainstream I'll be switching to version 57.

But I can't stop using Chrome yet. We write a lot of functional tests and Chrome is better at it.

It's got libraries like Puppeteer, good Webdriver support and a headless mode that just works. I can't put my finger on it, but it's difficult to run automated tests with Firefox.

I hope Firefox gets something like Chrome's DevTools protocol.

</comment><comment><USER116> Quick performance comparison, FF 57 with only a single tab (upwork.com) and Chrome latest with 30+ tabs:

Chrome: [https://i.imgur.com/o8f4ZHp.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/o8f4ZHp.gifv) FF 57: [https://i.imgur.com/kaQl5gN.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/kaQl5gN.gifv)

FF 57 is much slower. Maybe a very specific use case but confirms my experience so far that FF is much slower than Chrome on basically everything.

</comment><comment><USER117> It scores 97/100 in ACID3. Not that it matters but stil...

<comment><USER118> Right, because some of the relevant standards got changed slightly in some of the edge cases ACID3 tests (e.g. to deal with shadow DOM), and browsers got updated to follow the standards, but the maintainer of ACID3 doesn't want to change the test. See [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- archive/2017Jul/000...](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- archive/2017Jul/0003.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> Had some lag after install and had to disable smooth scrolling in General Preferences to sort it. Not sure if I was somehow hallucinating but it's smooth now. OSX.

<comment><USER37> Same issue here. Disabling smooth scrolling fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER120> Do you know how many bookmarks it can sync ?

I have 30000+ bookmarks, and I use my bookmark structure all the time on all my devices, that's my workflow to write later content on my websites ( my folders = my categories, sort of) and I don't want to change my workflow.

When I was using FF two years ago, it couldn't sync that many bookmarks, and that's the only reason which was keeping me from using FF (besides speed and memory usage, but that tend to vary).

</comment><comment><USER121> Does anyone know a replacement for Focus Last Selected Tab functionality? Meaning, when closing a tab, it focuses the previously selected tab before that one.

</comment><comment><USER122> For fans of using Firefox without installing it into Windows (or just trying it out temporarily without leaving things behind), the portable version is also available for your cloud folder, portable drive, or local drive: [https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable](https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable)

</comment><comment><USER123> Is there some super-compelling reason why FF doesn't let you inspect websocket frames? I was taking FF for a drive yesterday, based on the earlier thread, and it was nice until I started debugging my web app.

I'm not interested in trusting a third party extension with all my network data either, so the plug-in to do this isn't an option. It's weird, but this really is a blocker for me for general use.

<comment><USER5> Sorry about that inconvenience. The current plan is to revisit WebSocket debugging in Q1 next year, per [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508).

Part of the delay is the complete rewrite that most of the DevTools are undergoing. As we move from legacy, in-house solutions (XUL) to standard web technology (HTML/JS, React/Redux, etc.) as part of the "devtools.html" project: [https://github.com/devtools-html/](https://github.com/devtools- html/)

<comment><USER123> I see the tracking issue has been in bugzilla for years. I get that it is a tricky map from the raw packets to these frames, but relying on a 3rd party extension to the point of deprioritizing work on this is a pretty iffy call - I wasn't excited about trusting an extension at all; that the extension seems to have been broken in 57 entirely (foreseeably too) just feels meh.

I guess I'm part of a minority of people who does a lot of websockets work? Well, that's guaranteed to be true - a random feature deep inside the devtools is probably a deal-breaker for like four people.

<comment><USER5> Very sorry about that. The third party extension _was_ developed by a core DevTools engineer, just not merged upstream. We'll get there. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER124> I've just updated and it seems really nice so far. Best of all, the "Tree Style Tab" extension works again, and it's glorious.

</comment><comment><USER125> * where are my dragons? i mean add-ons

* [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/) leaves original firefox row of tabs opened. so now i have two sets

* ffox currently eats 8-12% of cpu (i.e. almost one whole core) for itself. the consumption does not seem to stop.

</comment><comment><USER126> This post made me switch from Safari to Firefox. (I abandoned Chrome several years ago. Don't like Google's philosophy.) Hadn't really been using FF in ages. It has made tremendous improvements. Super fast startup and navigation.

Also installed a plugin named Vim Vixen. Now I am able to navigate and use the browser almost without touching the mouse.

Thank you Mozilla. Keep up the good work!

<comment><USER126> Firefox 57 + Duckduckgo = Winning team!

</comment></comment><comment> w-m When I'm trying to resize the "Welcome to Firefox" window on a Retina iMac on 10.12.6, the wavy background animation completely freezes. Firefox then takes more than a second to update the window content and restart the animation.

That particular welcome screen seems like a really poor choice to demonstrate the supposedly much-improved rendering engine on my machine.

</comment><comment><USER127> I updated to the beta last night before doing a bit of homework. While working in Google docs, I noticed that if you right click and try to "paste without formatting", you get this popup: [https://cl.ly/3O0n2e3y1p1e](https://cl.ly/3O0n2e3y1p1e)

Has anyone experienced that in a browser other than Firefox?

</comment><comment><USER69> Is it possible in Firefox to remember the "pinned" state of a tab matching a bookmark when it is closed?

It' be awesome if some of my bookmarks always open in a pinned state. Examples: rain.today (white noise). ... But I don't want them to be there everytime I open the browser, hence to remember the pinned preference with bookmarks.

</comment><comment><USER128> Very nice release, congrats! Are there any plans to improve tab search option in AwsomeBar? For example now you have to really precisely type the name of the tab to switch to it. You can add some kind of fuzzy search logic to find the tab on relatively relevant typing. With >10 tabs open that would be really useful.

</comment><comment><USER129> Woah it's super fast.

Anyone knows if the other major browsers are working on a similar approach to increase performance?

</comment><comment><USER130> I would really like a Debian repository like the one used for Chrome, providing working rolling releases.

</comment><comment><USER131> Just updated it on Android... and I wish I hadn't.

The very first thing I was greeted with on the "top sites" page was a bunch of "Recommended by Pocket" links, and no way to disable that.

I can't find anything in about:config to disable this either. How about NO, goddammit?

Shame on you, Mozilla.

<comment><USER132> I also got the firefox for android after seeing the sync feature. However the tabs don't sync by default and I haven't seen any guide on how to use this feature. I'd appreciate any pointer in the right direction.

<comment><USER28> On the desktop (in Firefox 57), you can find your tabs under Library->Synced Tabs.

On the Android version, they appear on the homepage->History->Synced Devices.

Mind that they don't sync immediately. There's an interval for syncing. You can lower this interval in about:config by editing one of services.sync.scheduler.*, also possibly services.sync.syncInterval, but I don't know for sure what each individual one does. Also, you can tell it to do a sync right away, on the desktop version with Alt+t, then s; on the Android version by going into the settings, then tapping on "Firefox Account" at the top and then "Synchronize now".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> One downside is that there isn't a replacement for the tab wheel scroll add- on. Very annoying.

</comment><comment><USER134> Whats the status of u2f in firefox 57? Trying to login to gmail I get "Something went wrong. Remove your Security Key and try again." I enabled 'security.webauth.u2f' and 'security.webauth.webauthn' but that didn't seem to help :(

<comment><USER134> Ah, it works for github.com but not for google. Seems like an issue with the google login page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER135> A question I have- I've been using Firefox Developer Edition and it says "57.0b12 (64-bit)" when I check its version. Is it kept in parity (or slightly ahead) of Firefox? Do I have all of the new features and speed boosts like Quantum?

</comment><comment><USER136> Congrats to the Firefox developers and team in general. I've stuck with Firefox as my primary browser since version 2 or 3, even as it became very frustratingly slow or resource inefficient compared to Chrome. Version 57 is tremendous.

</comment><comment><USER137> I'm still seeing version 56 on Google Play, is Android version 57 not available yet?

</comment><comment><USER138> I write software for the web so speed is secondary. I want to know: Does the inspector have better/more features than Chrome's Inspector? Does it have Redux and React Toolbars that are better than the Chrome ones?

<comment><USER139> I believe the React and Redux toolbars are exactly the same as Chrome's

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> No video download helper. Anyone got a good way of downloading video streams?

<comment><USER140> Have you tried youtube-dl([https://rg3.github.io/youtube- dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/))?

<comment><USER16> Not for a while. I was hoping for a browser addon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> V-2 As one of these people who switched away from Firefox to Chrome a long time ago, I was curious to give it another go now that it's revamped and all. I tend to do it very year or so, but something is always wrong.

Unfortunately, I quickly bumped into one simple deal-breaker (the same that discouraged me from using Opera once, if I recall). Firefox adds a few pixels of useless gap space above the tabs, meaning I always have to move the cursor slightly downwards when changing tabs.

Some googling revealed the bug was actually reported over a year ago: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1302168](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1302168)

As of now, it persists. Back to Chrome - see you again next year : )

<comment><USER38> Not for me. I can slam the cursor to the top edge of the screen and click on a background tab and it comes to focus just fine. This is of course with Firefox maximised. Am on Windows 10 just for info... perhaps the UI is slightly different under your OS...

<comment> V-2 I'm on Windows 10, too, so I assume the UI shouldn't be that far off.

The problem - see the link to Bugzilla I pasted - is supposedly related to the use of multiple displays (which involves different DPI settings). A small thing to be sure, but somewhat annoying, given that switching tabs is a fairly common action when using a web browser.

What's unpleasant is how long it takes to resolve it. From Bugzilla:

> This is a pretty annoying usability regression that will ship in 50. Will we > be able to fix it for 51?

It's version 57 :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER141> It's great, until you go to stream a video. Then the fans kick on, the computer gets too hot to hold... Been this way forever, hope Firefox can address this at some point in a future release.

</comment><comment><USER142> Pretty much all the extensions I need have been converted to WebExtensions at this point. DownTheMAll remains the sole holdout at this point, but I really only use it on one of my workstations.

</comment><comment><USER143> Where do I see the params of post requests in the developer tools? The parameters tab only shows url params. The old behaviour was to show both. Also, rendering a 50k json response is slow.

</comment><comment><USER130> I use a dark theme on my Gnome desktop and in Firefox default form input elements follow the theme settings. The textarea I'm typing in here on HN is barely readable with this colors.

</comment><comment><USER144> Here's hoping Hacker News Enhancement Suite becomes available soon.

[https://github.com/etcet/HNES](https://github.com/etcet/HNES)

<comment><USER11> Take a look at Chrome Store Foxified: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-foxified/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER145> Loading webpages is faster for me, but youtube has a lot of jank and videos freeze every few seconds. Is anyone else experiencing this, and if so, have you been able to fix it?

</comment><comment><USER69> On Windows 10, am I dreaming or the font smoothing looks a tiny bit different (from Google Chrome)?

I kinda like it, small text looks a bit stronger and smoother à-la OS X.

<comment><USER94> Yes, it has always been different to Chrome (better IMHO).

</comment></comment><comment><USER146> Firefox AGAIN became my favorite. Allows me to control my privacy to the level I want. Great improvements. I believe there is more to come. YAY !!

</comment><comment><USER147> I'd feel a little better if the words "secure" or "security" appeared at least once in the marketing material: [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/57.0/whatsnew/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/57.0/whatsnew/), [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/).

<comment><USER148> what concerns do you have regarding firefox's security?

<comment><USER147> It's just that if security is a core priority, you'd expect to see this mentioned at least once. Based on what I read, the core priorities are speed, privacy, and convenience.

Compare this to Chrome, Safari, and Edge (tagline: "A fast and secure browser that's designed for Windows 10"): [https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/features.html](https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/features.html), [https://www.apple.com/safari/](https://www.apple.com/safari/), [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/microsoft- edge](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/microsoft-edge).

Perhaps this is just a marketing or internal communication issue. Did somebody from security engineering have a seat at the table when the Firefox 57 marketing material was discussed?

<comment><USER7> For what it's worth, in most companies, marketing material is typically created by marketing people, with very limited interaction with engineering.

The message for Firefox 57 is performance. This doesn't mean that other stuff wasn't improved (case in point, better sandboxing), just that you can only tell one story at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER149> Anyone know how to disable the new loading animation? I find the "pulse" at the end of the animation very distracting.

<comment><USER28> You can disable "toolkit.cosmeticAnimations.enabled" in about:config.

This affects more than just the pulse, but you'll probably actually be happy about that...

<comment><USER149> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> shady-lady Glad Tree Style Tabs ported over to 57...but kinda annoying I needed to uninstall/re-install add-on to get it working again

</comment><comment><USER150> Will it be possible to get multi-row tabs back?

</comment><comment><USER151> Still can't view websocket messages natively in the browser. The add on that did this don't work in the new version

</comment><comment><USER152> The main thing keeping me tied to Chrome is how it syncs passwords, bookmarks and history. Is Firefox's sync as good?

<comment><USER153> It works for me.

I keep two instances of Firefox (Release and Nighly) on my work computer (Windows 10), Nightly on my phone (Android) and a couple computers at home running Firefox ESR (Debian). No problem whatsoever, even with such an heterogenous setup.

Do you have any particular need that you think steers from the normal and that Chrome does currently serve? Because for my use case, everything works perfectly.

<comment><USER152> Don't have a particular need, I've just never Firefox's sync feature so I don't know how well it performs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER154> Just updated, arch linux, great experience. Really really fast, the new dark theme is great. Thanks to the developers.

</comment><comment><USER69> 1) Is it possible to change the shortcut for Private window to CTRL Shift N somehow like in Chrome? (instead of Ctrl Shift P). (I like that I could use that shortcut with my left hand (albeit with some nice thumb extension action).)

2) Any way to remove the bottom bar icons when the omni bar completion box shows? ... wait... How do I even edit search engines in Firefox? Like say, typing "yt (space) search term" to do a search on YouTube?

<comment><USER114> 2) [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from- address...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar)

<comment><USER69> Yeah this isn't the same at all. For example I don't know how to add a custom search like:

[http://www.stopforumspam.com/ipcheck/%s](http://www.stopforumspam.com/ipcheck/%s)

When I add a search via right clicking the search box on that site it doesn't work.

Plus, the completion UX is great on Chrome, as soon as you press space or tab aftert he keyword it confirms with a special UX "Search Wikipediea" for example. Here, you get no feedback whatsoever... if I type sfs 126.96.36.199 is it going to google that, or is it actually going to search StopForumSpam for the IP ? I have no idea until I press enter. :(

UPDATE

Looks like you have to use "keywords for bookmarks"

[http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches](http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER155> So... is there an official guide for downgrading back to an older version? For those of us who lost functionality?

<comment><USER156> You probably want extended support release, not an old(ish) _unsupported_ version:

[https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/organizations/faq/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/organizations/faq/)

<comment><USER155> It seems that the extended support is only going to last until mid 2018, so that is not what I want either. Wonder how long Waterfox is going to last.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER157> Feedly performs like garbage with the new Firefox. 100% of CPU when clicking on the feed and doesn't go down.

<comment><USER157> Honestly, I'm having all kinds of problems. I've had to force quit a bunch of times. Some sites are 100% fine, but others cause CPU to 100% and doesn't come down. Feedly was the first I noticed, but it happened again on Yahoo Finance when I clicked on a stock quote. It happened when I went to the new tab settings and tried to change those. Some things are just really off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER158> I've since switched to UnGoogled Chromium but might have to give this a shot just get TreeStyle Tabs back.

</comment><comment><USER159> Do anyone have NoScript working in 57r? The latest dev version from noscript.net doesn't want to install.

<comment><USER41> WebExtension version of NoScript is going to be released today: [https://hackademix.net/2017/11/14/double- noscript/](https://hackademix.net/2017/11/14/double-noscript/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER160> Does anyone know how to make the newtab screen dark? All the user styles seem not to work anymore?

</comment><comment><USER161> Did anyone find an easy way to export bookmarks, history etc from chrome to firefox?

<comment><USER5> The instructions at [https://support.mozilla.org/kb/import-bookmarks-data- another...](https://support.mozilla.org/kb/import-bookmarks-data-another- browser) show how to import data from other browsers into Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER162> Ever since version 50.0, Firefox consistently crashes / freezes every time I try to download a file / save-as an image. I've seen this reported by others as well. This makes Firefox very much unusable for me. Perhaps someone here will pay attention to that.

(fixed you try to I try to make it more about me ;)

<comment><USER7> This could be many things, but if it is only when you download/save-as, from the top of my mind, that sounds like an Anti-Virus bug.

Where did you report it?

<comment><USER162> He's another person reporting [0]. It happens even on safe mode, and I'm on Mac OSX without any AV installed. It started happening only a few releases ago, so not sure what has changed in the download manager. If I go back to, say, FF 45, then it's all happy.

[0] [https://superuser.com/questions/982182/firefox-freezes- when-...](https://superuser.com/questions/982182/firefox-freezes-when- downloading-file)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER163> TIL Chrome is the _worst_ browser on my Macbook atm.

Not too long ago it was the best.

</comment><comment><USER164> Still miss a proper / user-friendly profiles management interface :(

</comment><comment><USER165> I'm just glad that uBlock₀ works in Firefox 57.0 for Android.

</comment><comment><USER166> What you think is better, this version or still google chrome?

</comment><comment><USER167> I updated to 57 from 56 and now FireFox won't launch :(.

</comment><comment><USER168> This is exciting! Glad to see Google Chrome has competition.

</comment><comment><USER169> Any recommendations for installing the ESR version on Linux?

</comment><comment><USER170> What Firefox version is Webrender release scheduled for?

</comment><comment><USER171> Is there a way to import bookmarks from Chrome?

</comment><comment><USER172> Scrolling is still laggy and jerky on android.

<comment><USER173> Are you on beta/nightly on Android? I feel it's much better now, but still not as good as Chrome.

The add-on support (uBlock) is absolutely crucial on mobile though so I could never go back to Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER174> Even the scrolling on macOS is more smooth!

</comment><comment><USER175> Congrats Firefox team on this release!

</comment><comment><USER176> Wow, super responsive firefox now :)

</comment><comment><USER177> since 56.0 google maps went black on me and nothing seems to matter. really confused how something so simple just breaks; I am on OS X fwiw.

I end up swapping to safari for some functions and then using firefox for others. throw in 57 changes the look for no reason. I don't need dark tabs as default, updates should not change the user experience without permission

<comment><USER89> You could try switching off WebGL rendering on maps, if that's still an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER178> No more Private Tabs.

</comment><comment><USER179> This is really fast.

</comment><comment><USER180> Thank you Mozilla!

</comment><comment><USER181> vertical tabs?

Seems like vertical-tabs-reloaded no longer works.

</comment><comment><USER182> Currently no NoScript for Firefox 57.

And no gestures if you are on Mac or Linux.

<comment><USER183> But NoScript will be released today:

[https://hackademix.net/2017/11/14/double- noscript/](https://hackademix.net/2017/11/14/double-noscript/)

<comment><USER182> End of the week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER184> The release disabled noscript. Do not update.

</comment><comment><USER101> its so good!

</comment><comment><USER56> From the announcement post [1]:

> As part of our focus on user experience and performance in Firefox Quantum, > Google will also become our new default search provider in the United States > and Canada.

Does that mean the deal with Yahoo! has lapsed? And is there a new deal with Google, or no deal at all? (And what would be the revenue impact of that?)

Edit: Just saw an announcement for this as well [2], with no word about revenue. Guess that means that Yahoo! isn't paying anymore and that it means Google is the more sensible choice when nobody pays - though that's still reading between the lines.

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/introducing- firefox...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/introducing-firefox- quantum/)

[2] [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features- go...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-google-as- default-search-provider-in-the-u-s-canada-hong-kong-and-taiwan/)

<comment><USER185> I'd say that the most sensible choice in the absence of any payment, considering FF sensibility and message, (i.e. according to me) DDG would be the most sensible default. (edit : clarify)

<comment><USER186> When has any proof ever been given that they're any more privacy conscious than any other search engine?

<comment><USER187> They're not an ad agency, which is a good enough answer for me.

<comment><USER186> An ad agency has a big incentive to keep your user data to themselves, as that's their most valuable and competitive resource. Google and Facebook have a _huge_ incentive to not leak information about their users; why would someone pay them if that data was available elsewhere?

DDG has every incentive to sell user data, given that they don't have their own ad network with which to target. How else would they make money off of it?

<comment><USER187> [https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and- affiliates](https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates)

<comment><USER186> My point is that "they're not an ad agency" is not an argument that a company has some incentive to protect user privacy, and "they're an ad agency" is not an argument that a company is incentivized to sell user data.

<comment><USER187> Yeah, okay, DDG _might_ be lying about their privacy promises. They _might_ be tracking us all ways to Sunday the way Google and Facebook do. They _might_ have some seekrit, back-door ad sales department that nobody knows about and somehow they've managed to keep secret. Which, of course, is a great method for making ad sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER188> This will be the first version of Firefox that I won't be using. The final straw with me was the "Studies" integration. I've wanted to stop using Firefox since Pocket and EME was integrated, but I have failed to find anything else that works for me. I can no longer pretend to trust the Mozilla Foundation or the Firefox team, given their track record over the last few years. In our current era, the browser has become a critical piece of software and it is dangerous to trust an organization who wishes to censor [1][2] and track users.

[1] Brendan Eich [https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla- ce...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ceo-brendan- eich-deserve-to-be-removed-from-his-position-due-to-his-support-for- proposition-8/)

[2] Mozilla Information Trust Initiative : [https://archive.fo/jcJWg](https://archive.fo/jcJWg)

<comment><USER189> Could you elaborate on how the second source is about censoring/tracking users?

<comment><USER188> Creating a single entity who gets to control what is true from its point of view?

> Mozilla's Open Innovation team will work with ["like-minded"] technologists > and artists to develop technology that combats misinformation. Mozilla will > partner with global media organizations to do this, and also double down on > our existing product work in the space, like Pocket, Focus, and Coral.

Firefox is the gatekeeper to the web for many and if Mozilla or this initiative is going to inject their bias in the browser, then it means that anyone that Mozilla or the Mozilla Information Trust Initiative disagrees with will get censored or their speech altered. No organization that is run by humans can make the claim that they won't have a bias one way or another. In order to have a free society, we must have the freedom to express any idea (no matter how stupid they might be). People have become too lazy to look at other sources or challenge what they hear. Ideas need to be challenged in the open and be able to hold their own weight. We should not need an organization or a browser making those calls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER190> On first glance, it's got some pretty annoying loading animations for tabs.

<comment><USER191> Yes, even after disabling UI animations, the blue bar above tabs does not go away. Still looking for a way to disable this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER192> Absolutely no difference from chrome w.r.t memory usage.

</comment><comment><USER193> I won't touch it until NoScript is available.

<comment><USER194> +1 m using Chrome + uBO + uMatrix + uBlock Protector while NoScript 10 gets released.

<comment><USER195> Slightly confused here: what's the point of "using Chrome instead" when FF supports all of the addons you're using 'in the mean time' already? Just use FF with those addons until NoScript gets its official release in tandem with the official FF release?

<comment><USER194> Every major FF release always come with major bugs followed by a minor release fixing them a couple of days later, plus it comes with headaches discovering "Whats New" or for me "What should i disable next" or "What feature they delete", usually i tolerated those changes because i had NoScript by my side and now that NoScript disappear the line between Chrome and FF its pretty thin therefore meanwhile everything settle, m using an already tuned Chrome.

tl;dr FF without NoScript is basically Chrome, without NoScript Firefox is meaningless to me, it's the only thing that has kept me on Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER155> So... my Firefox just auto-upgraded to 57

* No multi-row tab bar and no way to get it (from Tab Mix Plus)

* Tabs are ugly square and no way to get them rounded

* Tabs are too small and no way to set minimal tab size

* Tabs are all the same color and no way to get them colored again

* No tab groups, the replacement is containers, but there is no way to move an existing tab into a container and no way to only see tabs for a particular container.

* Tab Session Manager seems to provide named sessions, although I have not tested it properly yet

I wouldn't say that the new FF is completely useless, but it has affected my browsing experience in a strongly negative way. I will give it a few days, but at this point Chrome might provide more features I actually want (never thought I would say that).

Edit: Reading other comments in this thread, I found a link to a set of CSS files that bring rounded tabs back ([https://github.com/wilfredwee/photon- australis](https://github.com/wilfredwee/photon-australis)). Unfortunately it disables color coding container tabs which makes separating containers a pain. Well, guess you cannot have everything.</comment>


Which States Have the Best Startup Environments? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sachinagarwal.com/what-states-have-the-best-startup-environment

<comment><USER2> This is interesting analysis. However I think the most important factors of success of a start-up are 1) what service to provide; 2) team to run the business. Friendly funding environment is a plus, but it is not a sine qua non for a young company.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think anyone disagrees with that.

The point of the analysis is to answer the question "if you're a team that has identified a promising market and looking to build a product, where should you be?"

<comment><USER3> That's a meaningless question because it ignores important factors that often swamp the generic data.

For example, the product and market matters. If you're starting a fossil-fuels related company, you're probably better off in Wyoming than on Sand Hill Road.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suspect a lot of this is due to California's employee-friendly laws that prevent non-compete agreements and prevent "we own every thought you have" intellectual property assignments.

As a libertarian I naturally lean towards freedom of contract, but some things are properly inalienable.

Are these common in other states?

<comment><USER5> Sort-of, although states with similar laws tend to be more ambiguous, which results in messy legal battles where the employees are often outgunned by corporate lawyers. California's is fairly clear and has been tested in court on several occasions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's some data on the best and worst tax climates, by state:

[http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2009/09/2010-state.h...](http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2009/09/2010-state.html)

<comment><USER7> It is interesting to compare the tax climates to the $s of funding. California, Minnesota and Iowa manage to have successful startup per capita despite these harsh laws.

And, Wyoming is dead last in dollars for funding, but second in tax environments. Clearly Wyoming has a sparsely populated state, but per capita was supposed to account for that.

As a native Marylander, I am a bit intrigued by how the recent tax changes targeted at businesses will effect this sort of data. It is already seemingly hurting Maryland in comparison with other states (1 year avg < 3 yrs < 5 yrs), but other factors may come to play.

Perhaps a great indicator is population density, or more specifically educated peoples density.

<comment><USER8> Wyoming has oil, which probably pushes out investment in other industries (why invest in a startup when you can invest in an oil well?). It may have a localized version of the Dutch disease. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know of a state-by-state comparison of the laws and regulations around forming a business in each state (registration fees, etc.)? This seems like it would be a useful metric, if one was choosing to relocate based on business environment.

<comment><USER10> Most funded companies are incorporated in Delaware. Many VCs insist on it. Delaware has positioned itself as "business friendly" with low corporate registration fees and a legal system that favors business interests. YC recommends that all of their founders incorporate in Delware.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've told the story before: when I was a VC, a deal almost fell apart because the California Secretary of State rejected the new articles of incorporation after the funding. They didn't like the voting structure for some bizarre reason.

Incorporate in Delaware - it's the safest, because they 1) give more leeway to management and 2) the Chancery court there has a ton of caselaw so there are very, very few surprises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of comments have pointed out that there are problems with the metric used in the article. Still, the differences aren't measured aren't off by 20 or 30 percent. Some states have 10 times the amount of venture money as others. Clearly there are factors that make some places better (in some absolute sense) than others for doing a startup. I think it would be interesting to see the same data on a city level.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting...

I'm surprised by Massachusetts being even slightly higher than California per capita but possibly has to do with population size I guess.

At any rate, good to know that 'number 2' may not be so far behind 'number 1' as some would have you believe...

Thanks for this great post!

<comment><USER13> Yeah I think that's an artifact of the "per-capita by State" metric being used, which really isn't all that useful. If you were to combine all of New England with New York and then compare, California would come out ahead. (Or just compare Northern CA with MA)

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't forget that this data _excludes_ angels. My feeling is that CA companies tend to get way more seed/startup money from angels than do MA companies, where firms like Flybridge, Atlas, etc. do early stage investing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This isn't useful... The first graph has Iowa above Texas. The founders of the company make a much bigger difference than the state of founding.

<comment><USER5> It's per-capita funding, so why would state size matter? There's actually been considerable startup activity in Des Moines and Iowa City, so I'm not surprised to see Iowa passing Texas on a per-capita basis.

<comment><USER14> The title is "Which States Have the Best Startup Environments." The metrics used in the article are not the best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the 3-Year Average graph, South Dakota is below $0.00, is that possible?</comment>