cleanup continued: 5000s: optional opsec

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

after #1235

               TOT ACTIVE INACTIVE EFFECT
v60  MAY-2018  425   328      97    316
v66                                     <- 139kb / 2297 lines: peak
v68  JUL-2019  339   245      94    227 <- 109kb / 1776 lines: last major cleanup
v78  JUN-2020  330   229      99    214
v90  JUL-2021  322   207     115    188 <- 107kb / 1725 lines
v91                                     <- next major cleanup

at the time of writing (updated)

v90
- 106.9 KB
- 1725 lines
- end of section 4500: line 1497
- items with [WARNING]: 23

v91-alpha
- 89.3 KB
- 1469 lines
- end of section 4500: line 1108
- items with [WARNING]: 5

savings
- 16.5% - size: 17.6 KB
- 14.8% - lines: 256
- 26.0% - end of section 4500: 389 lines less
- 78.3% - items with [WARNING]: 18 less
-  0.0% - no parrots were sacrificed

ALL HAIL PANTS

There is still some descriptions, section headers etc that can be simplified, reduced. This is about moving items into 5000s

• except for one item they are all about state (touching the disk, or memory), or eyeballs, AFAICT. Most people won't care about this, and they were all inactive (except windows jumplists). Will post my initial list next comment

Obvious benefits

• makes the active prefs and applied sections, troubleshooting etc smaller
• clumps a large chunk of [SETUP items into a single group, with no warnings: do as you like

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

Excluding descriptions and musical chairs etc ... five pref changes so far (I didn't do a diff)

• graphite, asm.js, wasm, http alt services, and windows jumplists are all now inactive

FYI:

• the HTTP alt services is likely to break things soon and I don't fully agree with the threat. Besides, we can't control CDNs, or required 3rd parties, or HTTP2 or HTTP3 really, etc .. disabling APIs is not the answer
• the windows jumplists was so all items in 5000s are optional: i.,e default inactive
• the others, in 5500s optional hardening: are explained in the commit - 7144f8b

If you disagree, or want more info, speak up

[icpantsparti]

If anyone needs to see the user_pref difference... this link generates a table comparing two user.js files (fetched direct from the arkenfox github).

compare user_pref: master + version 90.0

https://icpantsparti.github.io/firefox-user.js-tool/userjs-tool.html?box=a&action=compare:1:4&load1=%68ttps://raw.githubusercontent.com/arkenfox/user.js/master/user.js&load4=%68ttps://raw.githubusercontent.com/arkenfox/user.js/90.0/user.js

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

quick summary so far

removed: [i] = inactive

[i] alerts.showFavicons
    dom.allow_cut_cop
[i] dom.battery.enabled
[i] dom.storage.enabled
    dom.vibrator.enabled
    general.warnOnAboutConfig
[i] gfx.direct2d.disabled
[i] layers.acceleration.disabled
[i] media.media-capabilities.enabled

changed to active

    network.http.referer.spoofSource // enforcing default

changed to inactive

    browser.taskbar.lists.enabled // <-- optional device/disk hardening
    browser.taskbar.lists.frequent.enabled
    browser.taskbar.lists.recent.enabled
    browser.taskbar.lists.tasks.enabled

    gfx.font_rendering.graphite.enabled // <-- overkill
    javascript.options.asmjs
    javascript.options.wasm

    network.http.altsvc.enabled // <-- overkill, perf, will probably start to break things like RR
    network.http.altsvc.oe

    privacy.donottrackheader.enabled // not needed with ETP
    ui.prefersReducedMotion // not a privacy issue
    webgl.disable-fail-if-major-performance-caveat // not needed with webgl disabled
    webgl.enable-webgl2 // not needed with webgl disabled

Honestly, you won't even notice anything .. except less breakage, and probably perf - apparently asm makes a noticeable difference, especially to people who went from enabled->disabled

Personally, I added prefersReducedMotion and jumplists to my overrides

closing, any other edits are going to be cosmetic