FF70 password manager sucks! How to show all passwords

[jetspeedz]

Not sure why Mozilla would do this, but than nothing surprises me.

Prior to FF70 when you put in your master password all the passwords would be visible, with this new password manager every website i want to view a password for I have to put in the master password each time. Is there a way to force it to behave like older FF so you only have to put in the master password once to see all the passwords?

[the-edmeister]

See if this works:

Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter
(promise to be careful, if asked)

Type this pref in the search bar at the top:
signon.management.overrideURI
Right-click that pref (below that search bar} and select Modify, then set its Value to blank.

I doubt if that pref will be around more than another version or two, as I suspect that is just a temporary pref, so it's not a true fix.

[jetspeedz]

You are a saint. Like you said I wonder how much longer they will keep this option around. I simply don't understand the logic behind the new password manager. If someone already has the master password why make them enter it over and over again. It makes no sense and it is no safer if they already have hacked the master password.

Any other way to fix this with the new manager possibly? I know I'll be back here asking again when it stops working.

Bad enough I have to constantly change the browser.launcher behavior to save shortcuts to the desktop

[Brummelchen]

not sure how long it will last:
https://support.mozilla.org/de/questions/1268367

XUL gets deprecated so it will disappear for sure of firefox - like the old addons manager. the new addons manager has not finished yet, the Update (all)-button is in work but has less priority.

I simply don't understand the logic behind the new password manager.

its no longer XUL, its html based. it offers a different handling and new features like creating logins. some like it, some not. the only option not to use is an external password manager. someone asked how to delete more than one entry in a single click - this feature has been lost now, its only available in the older XUL dialog. i never had to do this way although the mass of logins - i would take a big cup of coffee and some cake for an afternoon the shorter way may to delete the logins.json and start from scratch or a json editor if present

[jetspeedz]

Thanks for the background info.

My issue isn't with the interface, it's the function. With the new password manager you are forced to enter the password each time you want to view a different password, it does not make you inherently any safer typing the same thing 100 times, it's just poor coding bad design.

I have not tried to delete multiple passwords but that would be another annoyance when the old one you can delete multiple at one time.

[Brummelchen]

With the new password manager you are forced to enter the password each time you want to view a different password

you speak about the master password? not sure if that might be a bug. the new password manager could still be buggy.

[jetspeedz]

Yes the master password, if it is a bug it is quite irritating. But you also mentioned that deleting multiple passwords is not possible either, is this also a bug or by design bc that is just as irritating. None of these changes make Firefox any safer. It does a damn good job of making people switch to another browser that doesn't have these bugs or features which ever it is.

[the-edmeister]

Be patient. Since Quantum came out it seems that Mozilla will introduce new / changed features (? modules ?) in what I consider in an unfinished state, and then over the next few Releases continue to work on completing it. IMO, Mozilla is treating the "new" Release versions of such as an extended Beta phase, and then tweaking it over the nest 1 or 2 Releases until they're done.

[jetspeedz]

If they fix it that is fine, but why release something buggy when they have beta channels? Sooner or later they will lose the trust of their users like Netgear for example. Making all users be your beta tester is just bad practice. Fix the issues than relase to the public. I find it odd that no one bothered to check this since it's such a big change from the previous password manager. It is not a small code change obviously so if this turns out to be by design it is going in the wrong direction. Css code change is another debacle in itself.

Time will tell but I'm not holding my breath they will fix this anytime soon.

[therube]

Be patient. Since Quantum came out it seems that Mozilla will introduce new / changed features (? modules ?) in what is in an unfinished state, and then over the next few Releases continue to work on completing it, never to finish it, of course. Mozilla treats the "new" Release versions of such as an alpha, tweaking it over the nest 1 or 2 Releases, never to finish.

And while I say that in jest (kind of), in reality, it is basically true, in that you can no longer consider any version of Quantum, "stable".

why release something buggy

Well, that is rather obvious - because they have a release schedule that they must adhere to, come hell or high water.
(Likewise said in jest, kind of, but in reality, that is what they do.)

Sooner or later they will lose the trust of their users

Too late.

Time will tell but I'm not holding my breath they will fix this anytime soon.

The correct thing to do.

[jetspeedz]

why release something buggy

Well, that is rather obvious - because they have a release schedule that they must adhere to, come hell or high water.
(Likewise said in jest, kind of, but in reality, that is what they do.)

Sooner or later they will lose the trust of their users

Too late.

Schedules are all artificial & subjective based on who created the deadlines. Mozilla is non-profit from my understanding, they don't have shareholders to make happy, what constitues hell or high water is beyond me.

I guess like you said trust is no longer their priority

[therube]

Mozilla Foundation is non-profit.

Mozilla Corporation is a money ...
They are not saints, & they don't do it for the good of [cough, cough, cough].

[kerft]

If a feature or software version is not released until it is 100% finished and as perfect as the programmers can make it, it may be delayed by years, even.

Firefox 4 was supposed to come out about a year after 3 - 2009, after the 2008 Firefox 3 release. Instead, it was not released until 2011. At that time there were many good programmers at work, Firefox was getting praise and money. The delay must have been because managers kept telling them to go back to the drawing board and re-design features over and over again. Perhaps some of the delay was to give extension authors time to rewrite for 4 or to have their APIs disabled in an orderly fashion after a long warning period.

After that delay, Firefox decided to learn from that and take the path that most successful software follows, that of time-based releases, used by Windows, Ubuntu, Libreoffice.

Why did the password manager have to be changed urgently, instead of releasing it when it was feature complete? It was a priority to remove the last remnants of XBL from Firefox, to reduce the weight of technical debt on programmers and to allow better code optimization and refactoring. There are effectively no programmers who know anything about XBL, and modern tools to improve code are not designed around it.

The delay of Firefox 4 was eventually followed by another delay, the one that was the nail in the coffin for Firefox. Although time-based releases were adopted and new versions came out often, one feature, e10s, was greatly delayed. When Chrome came out and was obviously better at performance, memory freeing when tabs were closed, and security due to being designed for multi-process, many at Mozilla knew they wanted Firefox to be multiprocess. (Around 2010) Plans were announced, but then they were put on the back burner. Multiprocess work was slowly restarted in 2013. https://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/27/firef ... this-year/ Even when the code was nearly ready for Firefox to be multiprocess (around 2017, probably earlier much of the code existed in test versions), it was not enabled and turned on by default, because enabling it would break extensions. To give extension authors time to update their extensions to jetpack - note, very importantly, not webextensions, and to create a set of emulators and shims that would allow old extensions to work, e10s continued to be delayed. Then, after many extensions were rewritten for multiprocess/jetpack and after a ridiculous delay, multiprocess finally was released, but near the same time it was announced that all jetpack and old extensions were going to be killed anyway, to allow for the adopting of webextensions instead. So, in the end after all the additional delay once the feature was done to keep extensions working, the extensions were thrown out anyway.

Multiprocess had been delayed, but the extension developers who had just finished re-writing for jetpack were told, that was all a waste, now you will have to re-write for webextensions. As you can imagine, most of them gave up.

By this point, Firefox market share had fallen to the point that most websites do not need to support it or test for it. Sadly, the performance and security of multiprocess Firefox are good, in the top-tier of browsers. If it had been released a few years earlier, things might be different.

So, if you are ever a programmer, do not try to make your software perfect with every feature under the sun and backwards compatible with everything. Release it with the features that are essential, and release it on time. And do not make whatever the equivalent of extension developers are for your software start from scratch twice in a row.

It took Firefox 8 years to become multiprocess. The same amount of time it took to land men on the moon.

[jetspeedz]

Mozilla Foundation is non-profit.

Mozilla Corporation is a money ...
They are not saints, & they don't do it for the good of [cough, cough, cough].

Go figure, that explains a lot

[jetspeedz]

Release it with the features that are essential, and release it on time.

You have valid points but you also made a very important point above. Is the new password manager essential when the old one is working fine until they get the bugs sorted out.

What is one of the biggest failure of software companies, they don't listen to their customers or continue to put out buggy software to the point it becomes unusable. There is a fine balance of managing software release cycles and releasing a working code base. What good is an artificial schedule riddled with released bugs to the point your customers(profitability) no longer trust to use your software. You see this far too often, if you are big enough like Mozilla to absorb the losses they will continue and move on but smaller companies go under all the time. It is only a matter of time until a better mouse trap comes out that is more reliable. As an end user i don't want to debug for Mozilla or anyone else, i do that already enough and get paid for it at work. My my .02