Mozilla News: Less Microsoft, No Persona, More Mono, and Less Intrusive Addons
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-18 16:58:13 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-18 16:58:13 UTC
Microsoft
Just days before it was due to be included in Firefox's stable version, Mozilla has announced that its Metro-mode shell for Firefox has been cancelled.
It's been a couple of years since Microsoft delivered Windows 8 and we have never seen the touch-capable "Metro" version of the Firefox browser, designed for Windows 8, that Mozilla had talked up so frequently. Google Chrome, on the other hand, has been available in a Windows 8 Metro version since 2012.
Persona
Over the years Google has started and then abandoned so mamy projects that some people like to say that the company "throws spaghetti at the wall to see what will stick." Now, as Mozilla is shifting its entire company strategy toward mobile technology and focusing on its Firefox OS platform, it may be heading in a similar direction. After touting and actively testing its Persona authentication and sign-on system, the company is stepping down its participation in the project, citing low adoption.
Mono
Mozilla and Epic Games have been working together for some time now, but it looks like they are set to take their partnership to the next level. Last year, the two companies demonstrated Unreal Engine 3, the basis for many games, running in the Firefox browser via the WebGL 3D graphics API and some offshoots of JavaScript. Now, Epic and Mozilla have announced that they are porting Unreal Engine 4 to the web.
Extensions
-
Sony recently submitted an enhancement which allows widget like functionality on Firefox OS. Dubbed gadget, it is supposed to allow easy interaction with applications from homescreen and lockscreen. Currently the implementation is being reviewed on bugzilla by the Mozilla team.
-
Early last year, I posted a piece on Mozilla radically changing its approach to plugins in the Firefox browser. Plugins and extensions are, of course, part of the reason why many of us chose to use Firefox in the first place. There is a huge ecosystem of useful ones. However, especially since Firefox moved to a rapid release cycle, extensions have cause many performance problems. For that reason, Mozilla has been steadily overhauling its process of handling extensions in Firefox, especially when it comes to extensions that are automatically enabled.
-
Mozilla announced back in January 2013 that it planned to eventually require all plugins to be ‘Click to Play’ by default, meaning that users will need to click on plugins in-page in order to enable them and view their content.
JPEG
-
Mozilla has announced a new open-source JPEG encoding library, which it says could significantly reduce the amount of network traffic used by the web.
Misc.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- End of the Smartphone Era? No.
- Maybe the media should focus on producing accurate, factual news
- Slopwatch: Sites Gone Rogue, Google Promoting Lies, and DDoS Attacks by Plagiarism Giants
- Charlatans and frauds engage in a war against artistic industries, mislabeling plagiarism as "AI"
- Latest Is Not Greatest: The Case of "Foldable" Tech
- don't be shamed into abandoning old things just because the "fashion industry" of Apple and Samsung tells you to
- Gemini Links 21/08/2025: The Attraction of Back Alleys, Initramfs, and BSD ISPs
- Links for the day
-
- The "End Software Patents" Initiative of the FSF Explains "WHY [to] ABOLISH SOFTWARE PATENTS"
- We hope to cover patent-related issues more and more as the big anniversary of the FSF approaches
- This Saturday It's Gonna be 3.5 Years Since Russia Invaded Ukraine. No Microsoft Protests Against Microsoft Having Provided Russia With Services.
- Companies do not have consistent policies and enforcement of "corporate values" is somewhat of an egg salad
- Freenode Sniffing
- The grown-ups left the building
- The Only Thing Worse Than Misinformation is Misinformation Sold to Everyone as "Intelligence"
- Misplaced trust is worse than none at all
- The Register MS Now Openly Admits LLM Hype Does Damage, But It's Also Being Paid to Participate in the LLM Hype (With Paid 'Articles' and 'Webcasts' for Paying Advertisers)
- The Register MS gets paid to do this
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 21, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, August 21, 2025
- Enshittification of Airports, Airlines, and Airplanes
- If people are willing to tolerate standard declines and enshittification (nowadays sold as "pivot to AI" or "replaced by AI" or "AI layoffs") they will pay for it some other way
- Airlines and Their Tricks That Only Work in the 'Digital Age'
- People sceptical of the direction technology has taken are not "Luddites"
- Open Source Initiative (OSI), Which Became a Propaganda Front of Microsoft and "Hey Hi" (Hype, Misnomer), Wants You to Forget These Scandals
- A lot of these issues won't be set aside until there's a resolution
- The Culture of Overnight Coding
- An industry-wise push-back is needed
- Windows Down to New Lows in Guinea Bissau and Many Countries Around It
- If Android is accounted for, Windows is down to about 10%
- Gemini Links 21/08/2025: Modern Dating, Debian 13, and Apache
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Has Had About 10 Waves of Mass Layoffs So Far This Year (Not Two as Mainstream Media and Slopfarms Endlessly Claim)
- Notice how the MSM (Mainstream Media) never mentions the debt of Microsoft. It is a conscious, deliberate decision.
- Links 21/08/2025: Covid Cases on the Rise, "Social Media Trolls", Russia's Attacks Intensify
- Links for the day
- Links 21/08/2025: Stephanie Shirley Dies and "Groklaw Domain Hijacked?"
- Links for the day
- Search in 2025 (Age of DDoS Attacks Under the Guise of "AI" "Innovation")
- One common concern when things go "live" is that any random bot out there can execute queries, pumping up RAM and CPU usage, as happened when we used MediaWiki and WordPress
- Using Slop for Images Does Not Make Your Site Look Advanced or Witty, It Just Makes Your Whole Work Look Like Presumed Plagiarism
- Lazy slobs and Serial Sloppers use the guise/excuse of "AI" to plagiarise and spam the Web
- Financing of the "Hey Hi" (AI) Bubble by Those Who Profit From Planetary Destruction (Global Warming)
- It's about personal gain, too
- Richard Stallman Will Speak in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress
- it's good to see that the FSF pays considerable respect to it founder, who is moreover invited to speak at events
- (At Least) Second Wave of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft This Month
- This is not the first time this month that Microsoft has mass layoffs
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 20, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, August 20, 2025
- IBM Operatives Inside The Register MS and More Shady Money to Follow
- The Register MS bites every banknote it can sink its teeth into
- On the Internet, Nobody Knows Microsoft and Windows Are Becoming Niche Players Until Data is Shown Correctly, Not Microsoft-Sponsored Articles in Microsoft Publishers
- Microsoft controls a lot of publishers and thus it controls information
- Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers and Slopfarms in Google News (e.g. Linux Journal and WebProNews)
- Google plays an active role (if not deliberately then through utter neglect and carelessness) in plagiarism
- Links 20/08/2025: Mass Surveillance Framed as "Artificial Intelligence" (All Old Things Reworded to Misframe Old Computer Issues), Europe Resists Capitulation to US(SR)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 20/08/2025: Trips and Permacomputing
- Links for the day
- Links 20/08/2025: Oracle Layoffs in India, "AI" Scammers/Profiteers Admit It's a "Bubble", Softbank-Saudi (Oil) Control Tech Companies
- Links for the day
- Social Control Networks Give You False Metrics to 'Addict' You To Them
- Leaving social control media may seem hard, but the same is true for any other addiction
- A Lot of What Happened in Twitter Was Bots, Botfarms, and Troll Farms. It's Even Worse Now (Under X.com) and People Are Noticing.
- Last month we said the same was happening in YouTube
- Microsoft May Have Become - at Least Partially - Like a Boiler Room Scam
- Giving imaginary salaries using imaginary tokens based on imaginary value (with restrictions on conversion to cash)
- In Vietnam, Microsoft's Search Engine "Market Share" Fell to Almost 0%, CocCoc More Than 5 Times Bigger
- Why are people still investing in this company?
- All That's Left of MSNBC (Microsoft-NBC) is Microsoft NOW
- When plutocrats and large corporations (even deep in debt) buy all the communication channels
- The Register MS, Paid to Promote "AI" Hype, Does "Sez" (Says) Pieces
- every bubble-funded "news" site tries to make it a story about "AI"
- Many Companies Are Run by Liars Who Ride Other People's Money
- Or steal it
- Before CoreAI There Was Builder.ai
- GitHub isn't about "AI" (just a bunch of lies and storytelling for shareholders' patience)
- Microsoft Windows in Croatia at New Lows
- We've been keeping track of this trend for a while
- Using the Best Tool/s for the Job: RSS Feeds and RSS Readers
- Use RSS feeds. Reject those "modern" Web things
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, August 19, 2025
- Gemini Links 20/08/2025: Neovim, XML, and Alhena 5.2.9
- Links for the day