Microsoft's upcoming release of Windows 11 will make it even harder to switch default browsers and ignores browser defaults in new areas of the operating system. While Microsoft is making many positive changes to the Windows 11 UI, the default apps experience is a step back and browser competitors like Mozilla, Opera, and Vivaldi are concerned. From a report: In Windows 11, Microsoft has changed the way you set default apps. Like Windows 10, there's a prompt that appears when you install a new browser and open a web link for the first time. It's the only opportunity to easily switch browsers, though. Unless you tick "always use this app," the default will never be changed. It's incredibly easy to forget to toggle the "always use this app" option, and simply launch the browser you want from this prompt and never see this default choice again when you click web links.

If you do forget to set your default browser at first launch, the experience for switching defaults is now very confusing compared to Windows 10. Chrome and many other rival browsers will often prompt users to set them as default and will throw Windows users into the default apps part of settings to enable this. Microsoft has changed the way default apps are assigned in Windows 11, which means you now have to set defaults by file or link type instead of a single switch. In the case of Chrome, that means changing the default file type for HTM, HTML, PDF, SHTML, SVG, WEBP, XHT, XHTML, FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS. Firefox's statement: We have been increasingly worried about the trend on Windows. Since Windows 10, users have had to take additional and unnecessary steps to set and retain their default browser settings. These barriers are confusing at best and seem designed to undermine a user's choice for a non-Microsoft browser.

Mozilla has launched an experiment where they change the Firefox browser user agent to a three-digit "Firefox/100.0" version to see if it will break websites. Bleeping Computer reports: A user agent is a string used by a web browser that includes information about the software, including its name, version, and technologies that it uses. When a new version of a browser is released, the developers also increment the version number in the user agent string. When visiting a website, the user agent strings are sent to a website so that the site knows the software capabilities of the visitor. This information allows the website to modify its response to account for different features of browsers.

As Firefox version numbers are currently two digits, Mozilla developers are investigating if anything breaks when they release Firefox Nightly version 100 in March 2022. "We would like to run an experiment to test whether a UA string with a three-digit Firefox version number will break many sites," Mozilla Staff Engineering Program Manager Chris Peterson said in a bug post first spotted by Techdows. "This new temporary general.useragent.experiment.firefoxVersion pref can override the UA string's Firefox version." When conducting the test, an enrolled Firefox user will have their user agent changed to the following string with the hopes that if anything breaks, they will report it to Mozilla: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:100.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/100.0."

WIth the release of Firefox 91 on Tuesday, Mozilla has introduced a bigger hammer for smashing the cookies that websites, advertisers and tracking companies can use to record your online behavior. From a report: The new feature, called enhanced cookie clearing, is designed to block tracking not just from a website, but also from third parties whose code appears on the site. The technology is designed to let you clear cookies for a particular website but also the more aggressive "supercookies" designed to evade lesser privacy protections. The feature is an option if you enable Firefox's strict mode for cookie handling, which partitions website data into separate storage containers. "You can easily recognize and remove all data a website has stored on your computer, without having to worry about leftover data from third parties embedded in that website," Mozilla said in a blog post.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from It's FOSS, written by Ankush Das: Mozilla's Firefox is the only popular alternative to Chromium-based browsers. It has been the default choice for Linux users and privacy-conscious users across every platform. However, even with all benefits as one of the best web browsers around, it is losing its grip for the past few years. I came across a Reddit thread by u/nixcraft, which highlighted more details on the decline in the userbase of Firefox since 2018. And surprisingly, the original source for this information is Firefox's Public Data Report.

As per the official stats, the reported number of active (monthly) users was about 244 million at the end of 2018. And, it seems to have declined to 198 million at the end of Q2 2021. So, that makes it a whopping ~46 million decline in the userbase. Considering 2021 is the year when privacy-focused tools saw a big boost in their userbase, Mozilla's Firefox is looking at a constant decline. Especially when Firefox manages to introduce some industry-first privacy practices. Quite the irony, eh? Just for fun, here's a timeline of our stories reporting on Firefox's download milestones from the mid-2000s:

September 19, 2004: 1 Million Firefoxes in 4 Days
December 12, 2004: Firefox Reaches 10 Million Downloads
February 17, 2005: Firefox Breaks 25 Million Downloads
April 26, 2005: Firefox nears 50 Million Downloads
July 29, 2005: Firefox Downloads Reach 75 Million
October 19, 2005: Firefox Tops 100 Million Downloads
September 11, 2007: Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads
July 3, 2008: Firefox Breaks 8 Million, Gets Into Guinness

A post on Mozilla's security blog calls FTP "by now one of the oldest protocols still in use" — and it's suffering from "a number of serious security issues." The biggest security risk is that FTP transfers data in cleartext, allowing attackers to steal, spoof and even modify the data transmitted. To date, many malware distribution campaigns launch their attacks by compromising FTP servers and downloading malware on an end user's device using the FTP protocol.

Aligning with our intent to deprecate non-secure HTTP and increase the percentage of secure connections, we, as well as other major web browsers, decided to discontinue support of the FTP protocol. Removing FTP brings us closer to a fully-secure web which is on a path to becoming HTTPS only and any modern automated upgrading mechanisms such as HSTS or also Firefox's HTTPS-Only Mode, which automatically upgrade any connection to become secure and encrypted do not apply to FTP.

The FTP protocol itself has been disabled by default since version 88 and now the time has come to end an era and discontinue the support for this outdated and insecure protocol — Firefox 90 will no longer support the FTP protocol.

Firefox 90 introduces the next version of SmartBlock, the browser's tracker blocking mechanism built into its private browsing and strict modes, which now has improvements designed to prevent buttons that let you log into websites using your Facebook account from breaking, Mozilla announced on Tuesday. From a report: SmartBlock was first introduced with Firefox 87 in March, and if you aren't familiar, here's Mozilla's description of how it works, from the company's blog: "SmartBlock intelligently fixes up web pages that are broken by our tracking protections, without compromising user privacy. SmartBlock does this by providing local stand-ins for blocked third-party tracking scripts. These stand-in scripts behave just enough like the original ones to make sure that the website works properly. They allow broken sites relying on the original scripts to load with their functionality intact." Sometimes, though, the feature would break Facebook login buttons. In a new blog post, Mozilla's Tom Wisniewski and Arthur Edelstein explain why this would happen, using an example of trying to log in to Etsy.

"New data from Statcounter shows that Edge has now overtaken established rival Firefox in the rankings," reports TechRadar: In recent months, the pair have been neck-and-neck, but Microsoft's browser has now put daylight between itself and Firefox. Figures for June suggest Microsoft Edge now holds 3.4% of the browser market, while Firefox has slipped to 3.29%, continuing a downward trajectory that has seen the browser either lose or maintain market share in ten of the last twelve months.

The change pushes Edge into third position in the browser rankings, behind only Chrome (65.27%) and Safari (18.34%). Launched in January 2020, the new Chromium-based Edge got off to a slow start, but began to gather momentum as the year progressed. Since last summer, the browser's market share has more than tripled.

The increase in adoption can be attributed in part to renewed marketing efforts, but also to improvements that brought the experience in line with other modern web browsers.
That may be true, but the article also acknowledges that it was just last month that Microsoft began rolling out Edge to all Windows PCs (via Windows 10 updates), "expanding the install base by millions almost overnight.

"Now, Microsoft is doing everything in its power to encourage users to abandon Internet Explorer in favor of Edge, such as removing support for Microsoft 365 web apps and automatically launching certain web pages in the new browser."

In a few weeks, Firefox will start the by-default rollout of DNS over HTTPS (or DoH for short) to its Canadian users in partnership with local DoH provider CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. From a report: DoH will first become a default for 1% of Canadian Firefox users on July 20 and will gradually reach 100% of Canadian Firefox users in late September 2021 -- thereby further increasing their security and privacy online. This follows the by-default rollout of DoH to US users in February 2020. As part of the rollout, CIRA joins Mozilla's Trusted Recursive Resolver (TRR) Program and becomes the first internet registration authority and the first Canadian organization to provide Canadian Firefox users with private and secure encrypted Domain Name System (DNS) services.

An anonymous reader writes: Following in the footsteps of browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome is also in line to receive an HTTPS-Only Mode that will upgrade all unencrypted HTTP connections to encrypted HTTPS alternatives, where possible.

Currently, the new Chrome HTTPS-Only Mode is still under development in Chrome Canary distributions. Work is being done to add specific settings in the browser's interface, and no actual HTTP-to-HTTPS functionality is currently present. The feature is expected to be ready for Chrome 93, set to be released later this fall.

Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan helped turn Google into an ad giant. Now they're starting over with a service whose only customers are its users. From a report: A new search engine? One that people have to pay to use? At first blush, it may seem like a textbook example of a startup idea destined never to get anywhere. By definition, any new search engine competes with Google, whose 90 percent-plus market share leaves little oxygen for other players. And we've been accustomed to getting our search for free since well before there was a Google -- which might make paying for it sound like being expected to purchase a phone book. But Neeva is indeed a new search engine, officially launching today, that carries a subscription fee.

Though it's extremely similar to Google in many respects -- with a few twists of its own -- it dumps the web giant's venerable ad-based business model in the interest of avoiding distractions, privacy quandaries, and other compromises. It's free for three months -- long enough for users to grow accustomed to it without obligation -- and $4.95 a month thereafter. Apps for iPhones and iPads, and browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Brave, are part of the deal. Neeva may have a certain whiff of improbability about it, but its cofounders, Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, are the furthest thing from naifs. Two long-time Google executives with more than a quarter-century of experience at the web giant between them, they have an insider's understanding of how it operates. Moreover, about 30 percent of the roughly 60-person staff they've assembled at Neeva consists of ex-Googlers, including Hall-of-Famers such as Udi Manber (a former head of Google search) and Darin Fisher (one of the inventors of Chrome). They've also secured $77.5 million in funding, including investments from venture-capital titans Greylock and Sequoia.

Google is announcing today that it is delaying its plans to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome browser until 2023, a year or so later than originally planned. From a report: Other browsers like Safari and Firefox have already implemented some blocking against third-party tracking cookies, but Chrome is the most-used desktop browser, and so its shift will be more consequential for the ad industry. That's why the term "cookiepocalypse" has taken hold. In the blog post announcing the delay, Google says that decision to phase out cookies over a "three month period" in mid-2023 is "subject to our engagement with the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)." In other words, it is pinning part of the delay on its need to work more closely with regulators to come up with new technologies to replace third-party cookies for use in advertising. Few will shed tears for Google, but it has found itself in a very difficult place as the sole company that dominates multiple industries: search, ads, and browsers.

Earlier this year a new support page appeared at support.Mozilla.org describing sponsored shortcuts (or sponsored tiles), "an experimental feature currently being tested by a small percentage of Firefox users in a limited number of markets." Mozilla works with advertising partners to place sponsored tiles on the Firefox default home page (or New Tab page) that would be useful to Firefox users. Mozilla is paid when users click on sponsored tiles.... [W]e only work with advertising partners that meet our privacy standards for Firefox.

When you click on a sponsored tile, Firefox sends anonymized technical data to our partner through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. The code for this proxy service is available on GitHub for interested technical audiences. This data does not include any personally identifying information and is only shared when you click on a Sponsored shortcut....

You can disable a specific Sponsored tile... You can also disable Sponsored shortcuts altogether.
Describing the as-yet-experimental feature, Engadget wrote a story headlined "Don't freak out: Firefox is testing advertisements in new tabs." These are just the tests, still mainly aimed at fresh installs of the Firefox web browser and always to beta users, before the rollout of sponsored tiles.

It does sound like adverts are in the pipe, but it depends on the reaction to Mozilla's initial tests. Mozilla's Jonathan Nightingale says that, last time around, the reaction wasn't as positive as his company hoped. "It didn't go over well," he states. Further, he insists that Firefox won't become "a mess of logos sold to the highest bidder; without user control, without user benefit."
Long-time Slashdot reader angryargus says they spotted the feature when they noticed an Ebay advertisement, but appreciated the ability to opt out, and suggested the feature is "an annoying tradeoff off using a browser that's not as directly funded by a search engine."

AmiMoJo writes: Mozilla Ideas is a new platform by Firefox-maker Mozilla to improve communication with the Firefox userbase. At its core, Ideas works similarly to Uservoice and other services of its kind. Firefox users and developers may post new content on the platform, and everyone else may comment and vote on the idea. Users may access the latest, top voted, most discussed or even random topics on the Ideas platform. Current ideas include re-adding the compact interface option, improving the master password protection, or providing a higher contrast default theme.

Today ZDNet's "Technically Incorrect" columnist Chris Matyszczyk discussed a new pop-up message that's now appearing in Windows 10's notification center.

It's warning Windows users that "Microsoft recommends different browser settings. Want to change them?" The notification adds that you'll get "Search that gives you back time and money." And "fast and secure search results with Bing." Oh, yes. Bing, the MySpace to Google's Facebook, is still being pushed.

I learned that this Bing-pushing is pushing Windows users' buttons. There's a little Reddit thread where you'll see laments such as: "You're not the first to have this Microsoft Annoyance. Apparently, there are thousands in front of you." The most poignant, perhaps, was this: "Miserably I get this despite using Edge AND having Bing set as my default search engine... (the latter of which for Microsoft Rewards). I think the 'problem' is that not ALL of my browsers had Bing as the default search engine? Which is ridiculous because I never use Chrome or Firefox anyway. But after clicking the popup, it ludicrously opened up all my browsers...."

What's most distressing is the lack of any attempt at charm or humor in these notifications. Are they all written by engineers? Or robots, perhaps...? Perhaps Microsoft believes that irritation works. Perhaps it simply has no better ideas to persuade anyone to try Bing.

And really, it's not as if Redmond is alone in pursuing this sort of communication. Why, I've even had Apple notifying me of its angry feelings whenever I open, oh, Microsoft Edge.

Mozilla's Firefox 89 releases to the general public today complete with the new Proton interface which simplifies the browser's menus and alters the tabs bar beyond anything we've seen from previous Firefox releases or other web browsers. From a report: This update also improves macOS integration and includes further privacy enhancements. The first thing that people will notice in this update is the Proton interface, the browser chrome and toolbar have been simplified so that redundant and less frequently used features have been removed, menus have been altered so that the most used features are prominent and visual noise has been reduced.

Proton also updates prompts so they have a cleaner appearance and unnecessary alerts and messages have been removed. The attached tabs have also been supplanted by floating tabs; Mozilla says the rounded design of the active tab "signals the ability to easily move the tab as needed." While almost everyone will support cleaner menus, the new tabs are drawing the ire of some who are not pleased with the radical departure from the traditional look and feel of tabs.

"The web browser is a crucial part of modern life, and yet it hasn't really been revised since the '90s," writes Protocol. "That may be about to change." The browser tab is an underrated thing. Most people think of them only when there are too many, when their computer once again buckles under Chrome's weight. Even the developers who build the tabs — the engineers and designers working on Chrome, Firefox, Brave and the rest — haven't done much to them. The internet has evolved in massive, earth-shaking ways over the last two decades, but tabs haven't really changed since they became a browser feature in the mid '90s.

Josh Miller, however, has big plans for browser tabs. Miller is the CEO of a new startup called The Browser Company, and he wants to change the way people think about browsers altogether. He sees browsers as operating systems, and likes to wonder aloud what "iOS for the web" might look like. What if your browser could build you a personalized news feed because it knows the sites you go to? What if every web app felt like a native app, and the browser itself was just the app launcher? What if you could drag a file from one tab to another, and it just worked? What if the web browser was a shareable, synced, multiplayer experience? It would be nothing like the simple, passive windows to the web that browsers are now. Which is exactly the goal.

The Browser Company (which everyone on the team just calls Browser) is one of a number of startups that are rethinking every part of the browser stack. Mighty has built a version of Chrome that runs on powerful server hardware and streams the browser itself over the web. Brave is building support for decentralized protocols like IPFS, and experimenting with using cryptocurrencies as a new business model for publishers. Synth is building a new bookmarks system that acts more like a web-wide inbox. Sidekick offers a vertical app launcher and makes tabs easier to organize. "A change is coming," said Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker. "The question is just the time frame, and what's actually required to make it happen."

They have lots of different ideas, but they share a belief that the browser can, and should, be more than it is. "We don't need a new web browser," Miller said. "We need a new successor to the web browser."

While he was at the White House, Chief Digital Officer (and Miller's boss) Jason Goldman said something Miller couldn't forget. "Platforms have all the leverage," is how Miller remembers it. "And if you care about the future of the internet, or the way we use our computers, or want to improve any of the things that are broken about technology ... you can't really just build an application. Platforms, whether it's iOS or Windows or Android or Mac OS, that's where all the control is."

An anonymous reader quotes Inside.com's developer newsletter: GitHub is blocking Google's new third-party cookie tracking alternative, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), across all of GitHub Pages. Those GitHub Pages served from the github.io domain will now come with a Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=() header set, although Pages sites with custom domains will not.

Several big names have also spoken out against the new alternative and implemented similar moves. WordPress is proposing automatically blocking FLoC by default on its websites, dubbing it a security risk. However, WordPress says it may add a setting that will enable admins to control whether FLoC is allowed.

Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi have also issued similar moves...

One web developer recently published a guide showing others how to opt their site out of Google's FLoC Network. Developer Paramdeo Singh shows you how to ensure your web server doesn't participate in the network by adding a custom HTTP response header to web and proxy server configurations.

Artem S. Tashkinov writes: Over the past ten years, Firefox market share has decreased substantially and the web browser has lost its appeal and coolness. Seeing that, someone at Mozilla probably decided that the best way to entice people back is by changing its UI, thus Firefox has already seen quite a huge number of changes despite other major web browsers staying relatively the same in terms of their visuals; i.e. Google Chrome and Apple Safari look almost the same as they did a decade ago. The most substantial redesign, which is being prepared for the next release, called Proton, promises to drive most power users away because it's broken on a number of levels and makes using the browser a very unpleasant experience.

So, what has changed:
- The compact density option for the address bar is now gone, and not only that, the title bar is now a lot taller than before. Overall, vertically, the title bar and address bar now take almost a dozen pixels more than previous Firefox releases, which steals very precious vertical space.
- The floating tabs. The active tab is now totally disconnected from the active web page and it looks out of place.
- The inactive tabs now completely lack a delimiter between them; and in the case of websites lacking a favicon, all inactive tabs look like one, which makes understanding what's open and what to click very difficult and time consuming.
- Mozilla has removed icons from menus, which makes navigating them slower and more difficult. Human beings can easily recognize and memorize icons, and now instead you have to read 20 menu items and try to understand what you actually need to click. Just to illustrate it, check how Firefox 88 looks and what is up and coming.

It surely looks like whatever UX studies Mozilla has done were either not run properly, or the data being collected was not properly understood. Mozilla has disabled feedback for Firefox, they've made it abundantly clear that you cannot leave comments in their Bugzilla, and considering they want to deprecate userChrome.css, it makes it impossible to restore the semblance of a good web browser experience. The Slashdot crowd loves free and open-source web browsers, so the question is, how can we make the company stop maiming and destroying their most important product?

ewhac writes: Firefox has long had a built-in PDF viewer, allowing users to view PDF files in the browser without having to install a third-party application. In addition to the other weird things PDF files can contain, one of them is JavaScript. Putatively offered as a way to create self-validating forms, this scripting capability has been abused over the decades in just about every way you can imagine. Firefox's built-in viewer, although it has apparently had the ability to execute embedded JS for some time, never turned that feature on, making it a safe(r) way to open PDFs... Until now. The newly released Firefox version 88 has flipped that switch, and will now blithely execute JavaScript embedded in PDFs. Firefox's main preferences dialog offers no control for turning this "feature" off.

To turn off JavaScript execution in PDFs: Enter about:config in the address bar; click "I'll be careful." In the search box near the top, enter pdfjs.enableScripting. Change the setting to False. Close the page.

Slashdot reader LeeLynx shares news from The Register about a Slackware 15 beta release (following the debut of February's alpha), "nearly five years after the distribution last saw a major update." (And nearly 28 years after its initial release back in 1993...) Created by Patrick Volkerding (who still lays claim to the title Benevolent Dictator For Life), the current release version arrived in the form of 2016's 14.2... The Linux kernel has been updated to 5.10.30 (at time of writing) with 5.11.14 available for testing. Desktop fans may be pleased to see, among the many updates, KDE Plasma hitting 5.21.4 as well as updates for old faithfuls, such as Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.

The beta itself dropped on 12 April (with the 5.10.29 kernel) and Volkerding noted: "I'm going to go ahead and call this a beta even though there's still no fix for the illegal instruction issue with 32-bit mariadb. But there should be soon."

Tinkering has continued since, judging by the change log, although the beta tag brings hope there will be a release before long.