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

robert.ocallahan.org

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

#101

Post by Scarbutt »

glogla wrote: post #47
moxie wrote: 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)…

Agree with everything you said but you are blaming everything on google, mozilla dropped the ball with mobile, they were too late.

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

#102

Post by trungaczne »

hackuser wrote: post #72
anilgulecha wrote: post #7

The only reason chromium is my primary browser is the developer tools (it's a pain to use Firefox for normal browsing, but Chromium for debugging.) I can only hope for chrome's devtools to be ported to firefox. (firebug is close but slow).

> firebug is close but slow Hasn't Firebug been mostly replaced, long ago, by Firefox' built-in tools? Press Ctl+Shift+i, or click Tools > Web Developer.

I found it impossible to debug very large scripts on Firefox. Searching for a string in the script is next to impossible, it would hang the interface for minutes. In Chrome it take seconds to do something similar, you can tell that the script is too big but at least it's debuggable.

Also as a user I cannot bear to use Firefox. I recently retried it (can't recall the version, IIRC it's the first version they introduced multiprocessing) and it still underperforms: I experienced (sub second) lag on UI interactions whereas I wouldn't using Chrome.

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

#103

Post by cyberpunk »

The only thing I miss after switching Safari->FF (moved away from OSX) for regular browsing is that all 'incognito' tabs in safari are completely isolated from each other and share no cache, cookies, bla. This seems like a small thing and I barely noticed it at the time I switched TO safari for all non-devtools related tasks (battery and perf was better on my lappy) but now, I do miss it.

Otherwise, I've no probs with FF these days. 49 seems solid on BSD, at least.

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

#104

Post by blub »

apatters wrote: post #35

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…

Firefox is good. It has support for modern standards, is performant, has tracking protection built in and plenty of extensions.

Google is winning because it's bundling its browser just like Microsoft used to and is aggressively advertising it on all of its web properties, which might have a reach of close to 100% of the web-using population. Firefox also has a reputation for being slow, gotten probably from people doing ridiculous things as keeping tens of tabs open and not restarting it for days - learn to use bookmarks!

Silly Mozilla thought they were fighting hand in hand with Google for web standards when Google was fighing for ad money all along.

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

#105

Post by anoplus »

If money can help Firefox, I think the community needs to rethink crowdfunding. A crowdfunding system should be implemented and taken to a new level. I imagine a system where features/issues are organized and funded case by case in a way a simple person can "vote with the wallet" for the desired FireFox.

This is an idea for open source in generally. I know BountySource try to do it.

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

#106

Post by ocdtrekkie »

aluhut wrote: post #49
moxie wrote: 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…

I rather have people write such texts to encourage people to switch to Firefox then have Chrome installed accidentally because they again bundled it like some crappy AntiVirus software in the installer of another program (together with the google updater service and god knows what).

One of those things I only realized recently: Google CEO Sundar Pichai's claim to fame at Google was the Google Toolbar. Under him, how can we expect Google to do anything but push pack-in bloatware?

Dark patterns like prechecked bloatware install boxes aren't going anywhere under him.

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

#108

Post by hubert123 »

microcolonel wrote: post #56

Chromium is actually a good browser. Until Servo picks up the technical slack, Mozilla will not have a browser I can afford to waste my time running. Firefox is completely unusable for me. The UI is slow, ugly, clunky, and complex. The rendering performance is abysmal. The extensions ecosystem has collapsed from a decade of API breakage, and now total deprecation. The organization is hostile and political because Moz…

Yep, Firefox cannot play the moral superiority card when it pushes good people like Brendan Eich out for political reasons.

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

#109

Post by cygned »

s9w wrote: post #98

My neutral (?) view on firefox/chrome: - Firefox uses way less RAM - Chrome is usually faster/smoother, even if not by much. For very odd or intensive sites. And for things like dragging a tab into another window and how long it takes until inspect element loaded. - Firefox has Tree Style Tab, Chrome doesn't and will never have. This alone makes FF the only usable browser for me - I find the non-optional non-native a…

Also using Firefox (Developer Edition) as my primary browser.

But my observations are quite different:

- On my machine, Firefox uses more RAM than Chrome (Canary) for the same workloads and is slower

- Chrome is way faster. As a web application developer I notice that all the time. Chrome renders faster and the JavaScript engine also processes faster. Firefox likes to crash when reloading a page that uses WebSockets.

- I don't know your platform, but on OS X the default UI of Firefox is awful. That's the primary reason why I use the Developer Edition.

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

#110

Post by blub »

Scarbutt wrote: post #101
glogla wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

Agree with everything you said but you are blaming everything on google, mozilla dropped the ball with mobile, they were too late.

They didn't drop the ball. They tripped on it and fell on their face. Remember FirefoxOS?

iOS not allowing competitors also stuck a knife in their back.

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