I-Firefox Isithangami Sokwesekwa

There are 2 processes involved in Firefox Sync, and 0 differentiation between them in the language used to describe what Firefox Sync does in any of the documentation, this makes nearly every discussion on the topic highly confusing to borderline misleading.

When you press Sync, you are pushing settings to Firefox servers. When you sign in to Sync, you are pulling settings from Firefox servers.

Both of these steps are referred to interchangeably as "syncing" and there is next to no documentation of what causes each to occur nor what they actually do.

Why is this dangerous you might ask? Well, let's say I buy a new computer, I want to set it up the same way I use all my devices, so I sign in to sync to synchronize my settings, makes perfect sense. Nothing tells me anything is happening when I sign in, so I click the sync button because I want to synchronize my settings with my other devices. Big mistake. I've just overwritten the server-side sync profile with a default Firefox profile. You know how you fix that? You sign in and press the sync button to overwrite the sync profile again. But you know what happens when you sign in? You become synced with the now blank sync profile and lose all the settings that you want to be pushing to the sync profile. This just happened to me. Thankfully I was only choosing to sync add-ons and options AT THE TIME and I have backups that are about 6 months old and I rarely change settings, but some things like my homepage URLs are something that I do change fairly often, and I'm sure some additional sites were whitelisted since by default I just reject all cookies. I also thankfully use policies.json to block updates so I didn't immediately get assaulted by that too.

SO! I HIGHLY suggest that when merely signing in to Sync, the default should be for syncing to be off to start off with, so that you can choose what to "sync" BEFORE it occurs. However, because of the language, the question arises, what am I choosing to sync for? Am I choosing what to PULL from servers? Or am I choosing what gets PUSHED to the servers? When syncing is turned on, does that mean I an pulling the settings that I have chosen? Or am I am pulling ALL settings while only pushing what I have chosen IF I click the Sync button? Or do I push EVERYTHING?

It's incredibly unclear how the Sync feature works and both of the "main" articles on it are completely useless for understanding it because the term "sync" is used interchangeably for pushing or pulling settings.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-choose-what-information-sync-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sync-custom-preferences

What are the correct steps to rectify this horrid situation? Sign-in, set-up sync, choose "Options" and "Add-Ons" again, THEN copy over the backup settings, THEN Sync them to the "cloud"? If I have 2 different devices setup with sync, and 1 chooses to sync options and the other chooses to sync bookmarks, then I click sync on BOTH devices repeatedly, what occurs?

Suddenly when I try to go on Youtube, I get messages that I'm blocking ads. I'm on a Mac-mini using X El Capitan V10.11.6, which is the highest I can upgrade to. I'm using Firefox Browser 78.15 (64-bit) and info shows it's up to date. My old Safari browser still will work with Youtube, but Foxfire is my go-to browser.

My Firefox 78 browser is supposed to auto update when a new version comes out. I need Firefox 98 in order to use FreshBooks but for some reason the browser is not updating. So how can I fix the auto update?

When I try to log on to hmnow.com, all I get is a white screen. I worked with Hallmark support, but they couldn't figure it out even though I have a paid subscription with them. I've rebooted my Mac and it says I have the latest Firefox version installed. This has gone on for weeks. I've had no problem with any other website.

I did a refresh yesterday and lost my passwords. I have another computer where the passwords are functioning and I have the "old file" but I don't know how to use it. I clicked on the old file, but just came up with another file called EP7i0nok. It doesn't do anything but it just opens up and it doesn't have anything to restore data.

Hi All,

I'm using an iMac with OS X El Capitan 10.11.6. I am using Firefox 78.15. When I click on links, nothing happens. I have to right click and select "open link in new tab." I suspected it might be an out-of-date Add-On. So, I disabled all add-ons and restarted Firefox. It had no effect.

This problem is getting annoying Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Version: 78.15.0esr (64-bit)

The bookmark dropdown submenus won't open any more. I can click Bookmarks>next random menu>next menu and it won't show the bookmarks. To be clear, I am going to a folder bookmark and then a sub-folder bookmark which won't show what is inside this sub-folder.

Any idea why this is happening?

TIA

My bank is telling me that my browser is not secure. I check my account daily and this is the first time I have received this notification. What must I do to renew security?

In Amazon.co.uk, when I tried to remove items for view option, the option is not working. I tried with Safari and it works?? so is it a bug with firefox or amazon, but then again why aill it work with other browser....

On start-up the Firefox browser shows a list of articles/topics that is referred to as Pockets. I clicked on one from Orion Magazine this morning and after the article was up for about 30 seconds a graphic appeared that showed a large metal looking sphere and was suppose to augment the article. This graphic completely locked up my computer. I am running an ancient iMac, mid-2007, and it took bringing down my wi-fi network and a little frustration to get my computer unfrozen. Please take down this article.

I've been using Firefox browser for Facebook and other online purposes for several years. Over much of that time I periodically (several times per week, minimum) get a small pop-up box, usually while I'm on Facebook, which is headed "Apple wants to make changes. Enter your password" The "USERNAME" box shows only my first name, John, (which is my admin password for the laptop) and the "PASSWORD" box is empty. No indication of what changes Apple wants to make, so I've never put my password in, and when I hit "cancel" I have to cancel three times before it goes away, only to show up sometimes within minutes, or sometimes days. Until today I'd not been able to get a diagnosis from Apple, but their help person, after a screen-sharing session today said it doesn't come from Apple and she suggested I contact Firefox Support and ask about it. So I'm asking. The screen shot below shows what it looks like, although I closed Firefox before i took this screen shot, just to see if the box would remain, and obviously, it did. Any thoughts as to whether this is somehow coming from Firefox? Thanks, John Jessup