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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)

#231

Post by toyg »

moxie wrote: post #87
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)…

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 t…

> MS was in just as powerful of a position, and Firefox was a success.

But the success parameters were very different. At the time, gaining a 5% to 10% market share for non-MS browsers on the desktop was considered raging success. Firefox never gained a majority market share, they likely never even reached 25%.

Nowadays, "success" requires 30% of a much larger market including gazillions of mobile devices, fighting not 1 incumbent but 3 on a multitude of different hardware and software platforms, in a scenario (web standards) evolving faster than ever before. The posts have moved quite dramatically.

> what larger changes we would need to see for that to become true.

Mozilla could flip the bird at Javascript and implement something that the hordes of desktop-orphan developers might adopt enthusiastically. More, I think Mozilla should partner with Microsoft, which is the only way to break the Apple-Google "axis of webkit".

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

#232

Post by parley »

icebraining wrote: post #220
sangnoir wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What did cause you to switch? I'm not GP, but I switched because Chrome had better dev tools. For a while, I was using Firefox for browsing and Chrome for dev, but I ended up using just Chrome. It also didn't help that Firefox dropped its 1st party browser sync (Weave) and Chrome had bookmark & history syncing natively

Firefox dropped its 1st party browser sync (Weave) No, it didn't. It was renamed to Sync and incorporated into Firefox itself. It works great, it's end-to-end encrypted and it supports nifty features like Send Tab To Device[1] (unlike in Chrome, where you have to either bookmark or keep the tab open on the origin device and then trawl for it on the destination). [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/send…

I love Firefox and use it heavily every day as main browser for 99% of web browsing, which is a big reason why I also donate money to Mozilla.

However, Sync has a dissappointing property: Despite the (simplified) claims on the most readable user facing pages about it, it will not sync your open tabs across devices. It will only sync your last 100 (?) active open tabs on each device.

I will happily admit to being an outlier with >100 tabs per device, and I'm very grateful to Mozilla for this free service they're providing me. I also understand that any such service may need an upper limit.

However, had there been any mention of this fact anywhere other than the bugzilla issues I found while trying to figure out why Sync was (in my perception) not working properly, I wouldn't have tried it. I'd love it if they were just accurate about this in their feature description.

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

#233

Post by josteink »

staticelf wrote: post #194
chrismorgan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox can cope with hundreds of tabs just fine. Way better than Chrome can cope with a similar workload, both in terms of memory usage and UI (Chrome winds up with tabs only a few pixels wide, with no information visible!). Firefox’s reputation is because of its history: when Chrome was new it did perform really well and Firefox did have serious performance issues. Chrome has been marvellous for Firefox. The sad th…

My issue with firefox is mainly it's startup time. It's horrible. Edge and Chrome start instantly while firefox takes 20-30 seconds. Maybe its because I have pinned tabs only in firefox since its my main browser and that I have more plugins there but it's still unresponsive and feels sluggish.

> My issue with firefox is mainly it's startup time.

I'm 'll try not to argue the details too much here, but at least I'll outline how I experience it:

Firefox's start time may not be instant, but its quick enough and more importantly is consistent no matter how many windows and tabs I have. Starting Firefox does not impair the overall performance of my machine.

Chrome presents an initial window pretty quickly, but its not done loading, and from there on it's slow until everything is loaded, and its startup gets progressively slower the more tabs and windows you have. And due to Chrome's multi-process implementation, this can lock up your machine because Chrome uses it 100% across all cores. That's bad IMO.

The closest analogy I can think of is how Windows 95 booted and seemed to be "ready" back in the days, but then you had tons of background-processing slowing the machine down for another minute or so before things stabilised and the machine was actually ready. That's how I perceive Chrome's "quick" loading, and I find it genuinely annoying.

Personally I much prefer the predictability of Firefox here.

That aside: How often do you honestly restart web-browsers? Not questioning your answer or anything, I just find it a weird problem to have, so I'm genuinely curious :)

Personally I only restart browsers when I reboot my machine. So for me, the metric that matters is time from reboot to having ready to use browser session. If that takes 20 seconds, or 25, I really don't care.

That's 5 seconds once a month which I definitely wont worry over. How's your usage pattern since you think this is a big thing?

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

#234

Post by FatalBaboon »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #144
ookdatnog wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

Vegetarianism can be the norm, but for that to happen one of two things must happen: either the cost of meat has to be prohibitively expensive ("the stick") or vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large ("the carrot"). Neither of those things have happened yet. For Firefox to gain market share, either the perceived "cost" of using Chrome has to skyrocket or Firefox has to be superior for a com…

One argument that has good traction lately around me is data privacy. It remains the killer argument of Firefox against Chrome.

What's old is new again.

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

#235

Post by Nexxxeh »

emn13 wrote: post #140
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…

This is a misleading comparison. You imply that firefox is far behind chrome in terms of general quality. Although I use chrome a lot, I also use firefox daily. And the quality difference is essentially nil(1). In many relevant ways firefox was at times better; but the details shift from release to release. I certainly isn't true that typical users would run into huge problems by using firefox. 1: on a desktop. I als…

Firefox is unusually slow on my low-end Windows tablet, while Opera/Chrome is grand. My desktop will power through anything, so Firefox on there.

My phone, however... Firefox on Android with uBlock Origin is the best mobile browsing experience I've ever had.

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

#236

Post by asveikau »

Razengan wrote: post #153
ookdatnog wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

> The public at large will never be swayed to use less convenient alternatives for ethical reasons. There have been countless practices which were once the convenient norm but are now seen as archaic or barbaric, at least in some parts of the world; Slavery, serfdom, monarchies, dowry, arranged marriage, virgin sacrifices, involuntary circumcision, blood feuds, war crimes, excessive pollution... I'm sure the transiti…

> Slavery, serfdom, monarchies, dowry, arranged marriage, virgin sacrifices, involuntary circumcision, blood feuds, war crimes, excessive pollution...

To be clear, we are comparing all this to using chrome and having browser homogeny?

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

#237

Post by mikekchar »

Jaruzel wrote: post #210
mikekchar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly did. Searching for it doesn't seem to bring anything up. Care to post a link? I even did a duckduckgo search for binary blobs in Chromium and only found the 18 month old discussion of Chromium installing hotwords (which has been resolved now). You're not, by any chance, thinking of the Chromium OS are you?

You can't miss it - it's riding #1 on HN right, and has been for a few hours now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12577787

Odd... That's not on my front page at all... Interesting. It must be different for each person.

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

#238

Post by Bartweiss »

icebraining wrote: post #214
qplex wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are far removed from seeing the actual results of their decisions. Humans are also very good at self deception. Even if you sort of know your beef is butchered, it carries little meaning since you never have to see it happen. Same goes for Google stealing your data or Apple making pretty phones with slave labor. Basically pretty much everybody needs to be smacked hard with a stick now and then and told what ki…

Humans are also very good at self deception. Even if you sort of know your beef is butchered, it carries little meaning since you never have to see it happen. I never understood this argument vis-a-vis butchering, since it implies pastoral farmers are particularly immoral people, unlike "regular" people who would stop their behaviour if only they'd see the results. Is that really your view? In my opinion, the opposit…

I've always been conflicted on the "don't know how it's made" argument. On one hand, I've known people who learned about farming practices and butchery and were horrified (but most went back to meat after a brief stretch of dissonance). On the other hand, I grew up knowing what butchering an animal involves. It never turned me (or a lot of other people) off of eating those animals.

I think you're right - it's not that ignorance is required, just that the moment of discovery is a bit shocking.

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

#239

Post by qplex »

icebraining wrote: post #214
qplex wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are far removed from seeing the actual results of their decisions. Humans are also very good at self deception. Even if you sort of know your beef is butchered, it carries little meaning since you never have to see it happen. Same goes for Google stealing your data or Apple making pretty phones with slave labor. Basically pretty much everybody needs to be smacked hard with a stick now and then and told what ki…

Humans are also very good at self deception. Even if you sort of know your beef is butchered, it carries little meaning since you never have to see it happen. I never understood this argument vis-a-vis butchering, since it implies pastoral farmers are particularly immoral people, unlike "regular" people who would stop their behaviour if only they'd see the results. Is that really your view? In my opinion, the opposit…

The argument does not imply that killing animals for food is wrong, but that it is wrong to disconnect people from that reality and expect them to make moral decisions.
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