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Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

robert.ocallahan.org

81–90 of 303 posts

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#81
I will switch when it has what I need. Currently my biggest need that Firefox doesn't support is MIDI access (i.e. hook a digital "piano" to it and Javascript in a page can talk to it). It's been in devlopment for who knows how long in Firefox, I'm not holding my breath.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#82
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But FF has been inferior to Chrome for many years. Can we please stop fueling this myth? Maybe for some of you Firefox lacks something you actually need . For others, like me and a bunch of others it is completely the other way, -if I was forced to use any other browser it would annoy me to no end (not tree tabs, etc etc). So while I think it is totally fine to point out where other does better, telling everyone th…

It is almost as though different people has tastes that stray from yours.

That is exactly what I point out.

But unlike others I hope that I don't tell everyone that my taste is better.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that is only marginally helpful without X sandboxing.

I agree, but the same applies to Chrome on X11.

No, I mean that even if you add additional layers of sandboxing, the chrome process can still access the X socket. A process with the ability to read and write to the X socket can record keypresses, issue mouse and key events, etc etc.

(There's not a well-supported way to avoid this, but there are some tools that use Xpra for it.)

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#84
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is your only or main issue with FF, it can't be that bad. I tried Chrome from time to time and the endless processes eating up an immense sum of RAM (I had to add together first to realize) as well as the missing addons drove me away. I never considered myself a participant in the ideological browser war and whenever I have to fix a computer somewhere around my friends and family (besides my parents) I left C…

It might be that the processes are genuinely eating your RAM, but on most unix-like OSs, RAM usage doesn't work quite the way people expect and it may be you're misunderstanding. Many pages of forked or threaded processes can be copy-on-write, so it actually costs the OS nothing to have multiple processes sharing them. They only actually become separate pages when the process actually writes to them. What this means…

The true picture is that I have a performance issue that forces me to look at the RAM usage in the first place.

As I've wrote below: I had one addon (ublock) on Chrome while my FF is so full with addons that I have to look up what they actually do from time to time ;)

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#85
post #60

This article convinced me personally to switch back to Firefox, but I'm disheartened by seeing a number of comments here which amount to "Firefox is fine," "Firefox is just as good," "The Foundation is fine," and so on. That attitude is a recipe for shrinking market share. FF is competing against extremely well funded, extremely aggressive and competent competitors. You don't get to stop listening to the market in an…

I maintain a copy of Firefox Developer Edition on my system and I make a concerted effort to open it every few days so it can update itself and so I can test any new sites or blog posts I'm working on. I've tried to switch back to Firefox cold turkey in the past and it never works for me, but I might introduce a personal policy of one week on, one week off, alternating between Firefox and Chrome.

A lot of it is just familiarity. I get the same thing moving from FF to Chrome - I find the Chrome UI annoying and it doesn't work for me as well as FF.

Perhaps a nod to how much google wants to own your experience is how the chrome browser doesn't use your desktop's windowing decorators, instead spludging down its own horror. I prefer my own horror, thankyouverymuch!

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#86
My primary browser is Brave with in-built ad-blocker because Mozilla does not want to ship ad-blocker with Firefox. As ads is the most likely vector of malware distribution channel, that means that safety of users stopped to be a priority for Mozilla unfortunately.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#87
post #47
post #40

What always strikes me about these pleas is how familiar they sound. They're reminiscent of all the things we "should" -- eat better, exercise more, lower our carbon footprint -- and I suspect they all see just about the same level of long term success. Firefox did well when their only real competitor (MS) was actively trying to make their own browser bad in order to preserve the relevance of the desktop OS and their…

It's not quality of Firefox. On desktop it's google having (almost) monopoly on search and abusing it market its other products. On mobile, it's Google abusing its power over the platform to make OEMs use Chrome in the same way MS pushes OEMs to ship Windows and Secure Boot and various other shit. Firefox could be perfect (and it isn't, because what do you know, developing good software takes insane amount of money)…

Yes, Google has market leverage. However, when IE was Firefox's competitor, MS was in just as powerful of a position, and Firefox was a success. They were a success because they clearly had the better browser.

These days, that's no longer the case. I know that I certainly did not switch from Firefox because of Google's marketing efforts or underhanded tactics.

But what if you're right? In a world where, I agree, it takes an insane amount of money to develop good software, where Google has more of that money than Firefox does, and where Google has really effective market leverage, do the "shoulds" have a chance? Is the future we want even a possibility?

I don't personally think that it is, which is why I wonder what larger changes we would need to see for that to become true.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#88
post #67
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I maintain a copy of Firefox Developer Edition on my system and I make a concerted effort to open it every few days so it can update itself and so I can test any new sites or blog posts I'm working on. I've tried to switch back to Firefox cold turkey in the past and it never works for me, but I might introduce a personal policy of one week on, one week off, alternating between Firefox and Chrome.

This is the problem. You value your convenience more than your freedom, and the future of privacy.

You can make people change their behavior by shifting the weights, but it is pointless to tell them what their value should be. Make FF more convenient, or show how bad competitors are regarding to privacy.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#89
post #40

What always strikes me about these pleas is how familiar they sound. They're reminiscent of all the things we "should" -- eat better, exercise more, lower our carbon footprint -- and I suspect they all see just about the same level of long term success. Firefox did well when their only real competitor (MS) was actively trying to make their own browser bad in order to preserve the relevance of the desktop OS and their…

The public at large will never be swayed to use less convenient alternatives for ethical reasons. But even so, if a small, dedicated group of people are convinced, they can keep the ethical alternative just alive enough that it remains a somewhat viable alternative.

I don't think vegetarianism will ever be the norm, but there are enough vegetarians to create a market for vegetarian food. This creates options for people who don't want to eat meat for ethical reasons, increasing their freedom to live life the way they want without it being prohibitively inconvenient. A similar argument can be made for desktop Linux or using Firefox.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#90

I never understood why Mozilla has allowed their main product and their only money maker to fall so far behind. They have a lot of income. I don't mind them going of on various edgy projects. But FF has been inferior to Chrome for many years. They should really refocus their efforts to concentrate on delivering the best browser again, as it was before Chrome came along.

> But FF has been inferior to Chrome for many years. Can we please stop fueling this myth? Maybe for some of you Firefox lacks something you actually need . For others, like me and a bunch of others it is completely the other way, -if I was forced to use any other browser it would annoy me to no end (not tree tabs, etc etc). So while I think it is totally fine to point out where other does better, telling everyone th…

Once accustomed to browsers with more comprehensive customization it does feels rather limiting using anything else. It's the customization aspect that keeps me with Firefox coming from Opera Presto, in addition to a host of other functionality that thanks to its far more moddable nature is possible.

One of the things I love about Chromium though is the responsive and device modes of the web inspector. Top quality.

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