Firefox 19 stuff

[menotu]

Emil Protalinsk - i11 January 2013 - thenextweb

Firefox Beta gets built-in PDF viewer on desktop, themes and Google widget integration on Android

Firefox Beta 19 for Desktop

Let’s take a look at the new desktop beta first, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. First of all, here are the release notes:

    NEW: Built-in PDF viewer.

    NEW: Firefox will offer to reset the Awesomebar search provider, if it has been changed by third-party software or through about: config.

    CHANGED: Canvas elements can export their content as an image blob using canvas.toBlob().

    CHANGED: Startup performance improvements (bugs 715402 and 756313).

PDF.js is a JavaScript library intended to convert PDF files into HTML5, started by Andreas Gal and Chris Jones as a research project that eventually picked up steam within Mozilla Labs. If you’re getting a huge feeling of déjà vu for the PDF viewer, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Here’s the story:

Technically, the PDF viewer has been in Firefox for many versions, but you had to manually enable it. It was only switched on by default for the first time in the Firefox 18 beta. It was thus expected to arrive in the final release of Firefox 18, out earlier this week, but it got pushed back. Now it’s scheduled for Firefox 19, and hence why it’s in this beta release.

The whole point of the built-in PDF viewer is to avoid having to use plugins with proprietary closed source code “that could potentially expose users to security vulnerabilities,” according to Mozilla. It also cuts down on extra bloat that Firefox can already do: PDF viewing plugins have their own code for drawing images and text.

PDF.js loads and renders PDFs quickly directly in the browser, and because it uses standard HTML5 APIs, it can run on many platforms (PCs, tablets, and phones). Furthermore, Mozilla expects performance to only improve as JavaScript engines continue to improve. The company is asking for your bug reports on GitHub.

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/01/11/firefox-beta-gets-built-in-pdf-viewer-on-desktop-themes-and-google-widget-integration-on-android/

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/19.0beta/releasenotes/

[craesz]

Thanks for the find.

It looks like I would have to reenable java in firefox to take advantage of this script. I think everything I've read on this forum shows that it is smarter to disable java than leave it enabled and subject yourself to whatever exploits may be coming..... thoughts??

[kjpetrie]

Javascript!

Java - an object-oriented semi-compiled (virtual machine) language written by Sun Microsystems and now maintained by Oracle.

Javascript - an object-based interpreted scripting language primarily used in web browsers. It has some syntactic similarities to Java (as do PERL, PHP and C for that matter) but is much less powerful and therefore much less able to access the machine beyond the browser.

[gseaman]

I've used the Nightly version of Firefox and unless it is greatly improved, I wouldn't use it. Even okular opens much faster than PDF.js. Since our pdf viewers are not proprietary plugins, we don't need this in Linux.

Galen

[kjpetrie]

Depends what your reason for needing it is. A javascript sandboxed within the browser is a more controlled environment than a plug-in which launches a program with full access to the computer with its user's permissions. Therefore there is a possible security gain as there are fewer potential vulnerabilities to worry about.

[menotu]

Depends what your reason for needing it is. A javascript sandboxed within the browser is a more controlled environment than a plug-in which launches a program with full access to the computer with its user's permissions. Therefore there is a possible security gain as there are fewer potential vulnerabilities to worry about.

+1

[menotu]

I enabled PDF.js in Firefox 16.02 and I've been using it for a day or so and speedwise it's on a par with Okular

(a couple of my add-ons aren't "yet" compatible in Firefox versions 17 & 18 & 19 )

[menotu]

I enabled PDF.js in Firefox 16.02 and I've been using it for a day or so and speedwise it's on a par with Okular

(a couple of my add-ons aren't "yet" compatible in Firefox versions 17 & 18 & 19 )

Having enabled the PDF.js in Firefox I thought I'd try loading a number of "on-line PDF's"  and for me at least it's quite a lot faster than Okular especially on large PDF's.

Ramchu posted about a new web site he'd built for his friend and I was searching for some info on IDOT Illinois Department of Transportation and I came across a 111 page PDF and it loaded very quickly, much faster than any other pdf viewers I've used.

http://www.dot.state.il.us/travelstats/vehicle%20inspection%20all%20field.pdf#page=89&zoom=100,0,792

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,112383.msg959657.html#msg959657

[gseaman]

I enabled PDF.js in Firefox 16.02 and I've been using it for a day or so and speedwise it's on a par with Okular

(a couple of my add-ons aren't "yet" compatible in Firefox versions 17 & 18 & 19 )

Having enabled the PDF.js in Firefox I thought I'd try loading a number of "on-line PDF's"  and for me at least it's quite a lot faster than Okular especially on large PDF's.

Ramchu posted about a new web site he'd built for his friend and I was searching for some info on IDOT Illinois Department of Transportation and I came across a 111 page PDF and it loaded very quickly, much faster than any other pdf viewers I've used.

http://www.dot.state.il.us/travelstats/vehicle%20inspection%20all%20field.pdf#page=89&zoom=100,0,792

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,112383.msg959657.html#msg959657

That's good to know. I use to use the Nightly firefox, and must have only tried the early, non-optimized versions. They were very slow on my machines. I look forward to trying again.

Galen

[menotu]

Looks like Firefox 19 has hit the servers but I don't think there's been official announcement as yet........

[menotu]

Looks like Firefox 19.01 has hit the servers but I don't think there's been an official announcement as yet........

[kjpetrie]

Why would there be? It's just a routine upgrade.

[Linuzoid]

Looks like Firefox 19.01 has hit the servers but I don't think there's been an official announcement as yet........

Looks like this is a Windows 8 update only. 

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/951928

[kjpetrie]

There's a tarball for Linux-64 at ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/19.0.1/linux-x86_64/en-GB/firefox-19.0.1.tar.bz2 - so I'm not sure why their forum administrator said otherwise.

[menotu]

As  kjpetrie advised it is on the server

The 32 bit version is under

linux-i686

and you can choose country of choice - mine is GB
 
/pub/firefox/releases/19.0.1/linux-i686/en-GB

The 64 bit version is under

linux-x86_64

/pub/firefox/releases/19.0.1/linux-x86_64/en-GB