141–150 of 218 posts
If this WebExtensions move makes Tab Mix Plus stop working (I use multi-row tabs extensively) then I will no longer have any reason to continue to use Firefox. I put up with it's poor performance and instability merely for this one feature. Nobody needs a clone of Chrome; we already have Chrome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Got it, spite. Even if that's true, isn't it a pretty poor reflection on a product if its users dislike its direction so much that they are willing to abandon it in spite?
I don't think so. The product is the binary, which can perform better or worse, or have more or fewer features than the competition. The direction of the product isn't the product itself, and reflects more upon the people who direct the "direction" of the product. This feels more like damage to the brand -- but as usual, I don't know whether the opinion on HN actually translates to the overall population of web users…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jesus from the rest of the comments, you'd think Mozilla was removing the XUL interface just to spite people. It's being removed because it's incompatible with making Firefox multi-process and sandboxed. Firefox is literally the only major browser that hasn't moved to a multi-process and sandboxed model yet, and it shows hard in performance and in security vulnerabilities. I'm very excited to see Firefox finally catc…
>>Firefox is literally the only major browser and I view that as a good thing, not a bad thing. Being a clone of "every other browser" is not desirable to me >and it shows hard in performance and in security vulnerabilities. I'm very excited to see Firefox finally catch up. I care less about performance and more about functionality. I can overcome performance with larger processors and more memory, I have 12 core sys…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think so. The product is the binary, which can perform better or worse, or have more or fewer features than the competition. The direction of the product isn't the product itself, and reflects more upon the people who direct the "direction" of the product. This feels more like damage to the brand -- but as usual, I don't know whether the opinion on HN actually translates to the overall population of web users…
I agree, perhaps that's more about the brand than the product per se. But in a market where you have to convince your users to replace the pre-installed browser that more or less works pretty well already with your alternative implementation, it seems like brand perception is a pretty important thing. And while a community like HN might not be accurately representative of users at large, it does tend to have a dispro…
Yes, but now we're talking about people who (likely) moved to Chrome because it just felt so darned snappy, not because it had great extensions (it didn't) -- or just had Chrome preinstalled.
If Firefox is faster, people who are after speed might just move over from Chrome. If the Firefox brand represents "faster than Chrome" rather than "it doesn't do tree style tabs anymore", they might still be okay. If they had Chrome preinstalled and had never used Firefox, they wouldn't miss the extensions, and probably wouldn't care that tree style tabs doesn't exist.
> And while a community like HN might not be accurately representative of users at large, it does tend to have a disproportionately high percentage of "trend-makers" who influence other people's decisions on technical subjects.
Meh. I think people just use what they want to use. How else do we explain why the Rio Karma didn't destroy the iPod? I mean, it's pretty obvious to me that technical, music loving "trend-makers" required gapless playback. How else do you listen to live albums/mixtapes/DJ mixes? The iPod is "just" an intuitive UI/UX and good branding! It makes you use Musicmatch/iTunes!
(Yes, I had a Rio Karma and I later switched my iPod over to Rockbox -- guess how much luck I had "recommending" people to switch to their iPods to Rockbox?)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, perhaps that's more about the brand than the product per se. But in a market where you have to convince your users to replace the pre-installed browser that more or less works pretty well already with your alternative implementation, it seems like brand perception is a pretty important thing. And while a community like HN might not be accurately representative of users at large, it does tend to have a dispro…
> But in a market where you have to convince your users to replace the pre-installed browser that more or less works pretty well already with your alternative implementation, it seems like brand perception is a pretty important thing. Yes, but now we're talking about people who (likely) moved to Chrome because it just felt so darned snappy, not because it had great extensions (it didn't) -- or just had Chrome preinst…
Maybe, but I'd hesitate to throw an existing user out in hopes of wooing a new one. You're right that it might work, might even pay off in the end, but it's a risk that I'm not convinced they have to take.
> Yes, I had a Rio Karma and I later switched my iPod over to Rockbox
I only used the earlier solid-state Rio's, and never knew much about the Karma, so can't really comment there. I did try Rockbox and at least for me was a pretty dismal failure due to bugs and crashes...not something I would have recommended to anyone.
If this WebExtensions move makes Tab Mix Plus stop working (I use multi-row tabs extensively) then I will no longer have any reason to continue to use Firefox. I put up with it's poor performance and instability merely for this one feature. Nobody needs a clone of Chrome; we already have Chrome.
> I put up with it's poor performance and instability merely for this one feature. Ah, but performance and stability is exactly what Mozilla is improving with WebExtensions, Electrolysis and Servo/Quantum, so you won't need to put up with the poor performance and instability any more! What's more, it will still respect your privacy more than Chrome, be open source unlike Chrome, and allow you to configure it more tha…
Firefox's primary distinguishing feature is the powerful plugin system. With that gone, it's just another browser.
There seem to be a lot of people that are saying "oh, without XUL based extensions, Firefox is just a (worse) Chrome clone, so I might as well just use Chrome." I think what they might be missing is that Mozilla's conclusion is a lot like the people seem to be thinking here -- even though Chrome doesn't have the fancy extensions that are possible in Firefox, many many more people are using Chrome than Firefox, becaus…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>Firefox is literally the only major browser and I view that as a good thing, not a bad thing. Being a clone of "every other browser" is not desirable to me >and it shows hard in performance and in security vulnerabilities. I'm very excited to see Firefox finally catch up. I care less about performance and more about functionality. I can overcome performance with larger processors and more memory, I have 12 core sys…
great! multi-process firefox will better utilize your 12 cores and 64GB of memory
If Firefox included vertical side tabs and committed to supporting many-tabbed browsing as it went pseudo-Chrome-mode, I imagine many fewer people would be irritated.
There seem to be a lot of people that are saying "oh, without XUL based extensions, Firefox is just a (worse) Chrome clone, so I might as well just use Chrome." I think what they might be missing is that Mozilla's conclusion is a lot like the people seem to be thinking here -- even though Chrome doesn't have the fancy extensions that are possible in Firefox, many many more people are using Chrome than Firefox, becaus…
After vertical side tabs are impossible in Firefox because Chrome banned them because someone at Google "didn't like how they looked", I want to see you run 679 tabs on Firefox.
Firefox has three APIs: XUL, Jetpack, and WebExtensions. XUL has been on the way out for years, and never worked in mobile Firefox anyway. (Almost nobody runs mobile Firefox, so that turned out not to matter much.) Jetpack was introduced in 2013, and by 2014, it was actually usable. It's not clear when and whether Jetpack add-ons will stop working. Mozilla's developer documentation is so confused that you can't tell.…
> Almost nobody runs mobile Firefox, so that turned out not to matter much. FWIW, I love mobile Firefox and I really don't understand why folks use Chrome instead.
I'm sure there are more such examples. Even if a default was changeable the initial setting (as we saw in the Microsoft vs. Europe over IE) is very powerful.