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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)

#111

Post by danso »

acqq wrote: post #48
danso wrote: post #14

I personally use Chrome and I teach a class that involves some lessons on HTTP/web scraping/web app dev and I ask the class to use Chrome. For me, my bias is towards how much I like Chrome's dev tools, though I haven't used Firefox's in awhile. The ease of creating multiple browser profiles is great, too, though I hear FF has the same thing. I'm not much of a plugin user, but I'll be using Chrome's Secure Shell [0] f…

Can it be said that your bias is purely based on the familiarity? Yes, Firefox has multiple profiles. Putting "all your eggs in one basket" in security context is suspicious. For SSH, Putty is a small program compared to the whole Chrome, security-wise much easier to evaluate. I don't know how using Chrome for SSH can be rationalized. Who is behind of that "Secure Shell" plugin ("offered by chrome-secure-shell-publis…

Definitely, the bias is familiarity, as it usually is. I started my webdev days when Firebug was big, so FF was my main browser. Then Chrome came, and besides being a nice browser, its dev tools had the same familiarity of Firebug's. IIRC, FF's default tools, for some time, were different than Firebug's and I think I just liked not having to fight with the FF defaults over time (as I moved between machines frequently).

As for my class, yes, I'm not enthusiastic about shelling from the browser no matter how many people like it. But the main mitigation is that the class work we do is based off of my AWS setup: I spin up the EC2 instances and I manage/distribute the keys. None of the assignments require using their own personal info. And another reason for teaching them how to use browser profiles (something I've never seen students have set up) is so that they if they want to build something with Twitter's API, i can strongly advise for them to make a fake account and operate it in a different profile, to prevent accidental Twitter snafus (among other problems).

Why Chrome shell over PuTTY? I remember struggling with things like copy and paste, to the point where I think it is easier to use the mouse...but I push students pretty hard on using the mouse as little as possible. Chrome Shell feels as close to the OSX Terminal with the exception of key handling and the inability to access or transfer files from your own system.

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

#113

Post by Jyaif »

bigbugbag wrote: post #72
_hao wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opera was and still is the best and most innovative browser.

It used to be but the current opera has 0 innovation in it, it even dropped the innovating par the previous opera had to make the switch to being a google chrome clone. vivaldi is the browser from opera founder which strive to recreate this innovation and more. As the company refused to open source the old opera, there is an open source project to recreate it: otter[2]. [1]: https://vivaldi.com/ [2]: https://otter-br…

note: vivaldi is also a google chrome clone.

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

#114

Post by necessity »

wz1000 wrote: post #94

I've been using firefox exclusively for the last 5 years, and have been extremely happy with it. Sadly, I think my time with it is about to come to an end. With e10s, extensions that have been crucial to my daily needs, namely vimperator and pentadactyl, won't be compatible any more. I know this isn't entirely firefox's fault, as no one is willing to invest the significant amount of effort required to port them. Howe…

There is some discussion on porting Pentadactyl/Vimperator and on alternatives that support Electrolysis here: https://github.com/5digits/dactyl/issues/99

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

#115

Post by eklavya »

tschellenbach wrote: post #56

The only effective monetization strategy I've seen for a browser is search. So Google is in a very strong position to make money on Chrome. The problem that Firefox has is that there is no real competition for search anymore. That limits their ability to monetize and their ability to invest in the browser.

We can still donate. They ask every year, this year I did donate even if I use Safari right now.

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

#116

Post by bigbugbag »

nachtigall wrote: post #80
EJTH wrote: post #51

I would really like to support Mozilla again, but they have had an unreasonable amount of exploits recently, add to this the fact that support for my most beloved tools are gone (Firebug & TamperData) I really see no other point in sticking with FF than a political or ideological agenda.

In my experience the firefox devtools are much better (more features, better UX) than Firebug nowadays. I've been using them for one and a half years now (Firebug before). Give it a try: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Migrating_fro... and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools

In my experience from yesterday in the latest firefox: firebug still works and firefox devtools are lacking from the start and I go back to firebug after 2 minutes trying to edit live code.

I still miss the old opera dev features that offered way better and advanced features years ago.

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

#117

Post by Certhas »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #47
jonchang wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure this is necessarily the case - Google cross-promoted Chrome extremely heavily across all its web properties, ran massive ad campaigns, and contractually obligated Android vendors to preinstall and use Chrome as the default on their handsets. Mozilla, lacking the power or money to do any of these things, wouldn't be able to compete on these fronts, regardless of who built the better product.

Firefox was over reliant on plug-ins, gave plug-ins too much power and the plug-in as well as firefox update mechanisms were messy. Chrome did more out of the box than firefox reducing the need for plug-ins, sandboxed plug-ins from destroying general browser performance and most importantly realised that updating was not a user concern and performed updates silently. There were also other innovations that Chrome did…

Of course they "won" (or their "win" achieved its current magnitude) because of adverts. It's naive to say otherwise. The technical innovations put them ahead of the curve for a brief period of time. Firefox reacted quite quickly (and was accused of blindly copying Chrome for it), and today there really is little to differentiate the two browsers in terms of performance. That's been the case for a while now. The difference is in google leveraging both its own platform as well as buying billboards and TV ad space for Chrome. That's unprecedented. If you don't think that's having an effect you're essentially saying the people who decided to finance that ad push are idiots.

Despite that, Firefox still leads in market share in Germany (though with current trends that will change this year).

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

#118

Post by nishs »

Tharre wrote: post #74
nishs wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even more relevant today. Especially after yesterday's fiasco where Chrome doesn't allow installing self-made extensions permanently—forcing you to publish on the Chrome Web Store [0]. There were a few years (2010-2014) when Chrome was a clear industry leader: in design, web standards, resource consumption, and championing openness on the Internet. Not anymore, at least for me: * Firefox has built-in Reader mode…

> * Chrome hasn't embraced the WebExtensions specification (I'd love to be wrong on this). I'm by no means an expert on this, but aren't WebExtensions based on the chrome extension API? Says pretty much that on the developers page[0] of Mozilla as well. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions

Yes. But according to wiki.mozilla.org on WebExtensions [0]:

We strive for compatibility to make developers lives easier and are participating in a W3C community group to work on a standard.

Although Chrome is by no means obligated to, it would be nice to see a company such as Google—that claims to support openness on the Internet—adopt this more open standard. (That is, "browser.storage.local" instead of "chrome.storage.local").

[0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/FAQ#Are_they_compatib...

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

#119

Post by midgetjones »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #97

Daily Firefox user here. Switched back from Chrome a couple years ago and haven't looked back. Just seeing the comments here exasperates me... So for those who don't know, the Internet is heavily biased towards Chrome. Simple pages that should render no differently in FF than Chrome are often broken. This "Chrome is great, screw everything else" attitude is exactly how we ended up with IE and stagnation in standards/…

So much this. It just seems like everyone repeats the "Chrome is better and Firefox is slow" mantra without spending a couple of days trying Firefox.

It's a browser owned by an advertising company. An advertising company that knows a lot about you, and constantly strives to learn more by whatever nefarious means they can think of. I can't see how anyone is okay with that.

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

#120

Post by roystonvassey »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #97

Daily Firefox user here. Switched back from Chrome a couple years ago and haven't looked back. Just seeing the comments here exasperates me... So for those who don't know, the Internet is heavily biased towards Chrome. Simple pages that should render no differently in FF than Chrome are often broken. This "Chrome is great, screw everything else" attitude is exactly how we ended up with IE and stagnation in standards/…

+1. Moreover, I find Google/Chrome behaving like MS of late 90s when they used to force IE down Windows users. For instance, to use Chromecast to stream youtube videos from my laptop, I am required to necessarily use a buggy, bloated Chrome that takes ages to boot up. There's no plugin made available for Firefox which is exasperating.
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