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Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

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Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#111

Post by pluma »

synotna wrote: post #82
trome wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The journalists definitely got their facts wrong here, but they missed the overarching story. Why is Mozilla acting like a tech company/startup, and not as a non-profit here to push Firefox and other projects under their management to new heights? Mozilla has basically ignored Firefox for the past few years and let it languish as a single threaded browser in a multi-threaded world, where the other 3 major competitors…

Electrolysis? Servo? Rust? I'm far from an expert, but the switch to multithreading has been perilous to not break everyone's favourite plugins, likewise the switch from XUL Electrolysis is basically here and working, slowly rolling out

> Electrolysis is basically here and working, slowly rolling out

Unless you use extensions, which used to be one of Firefox's biggest advantages.

I gave Firefox on Ubuntu a try for a week last month because I was looking for a replacement for Chrome and if I wasn't tech savvy I wouldn't have been able to figure out that Firefox was running in single-process mode and how to fix that.

E.g. the default "Ubuntu integration" extension that Firefox ships with on Ubuntu (where it is the default browser) is not compatible with electrolysis. Additionally the (now outdated) Lastpass extension from the Firefox addon shop isn't compatible. I think the Trello Scrum extension also isn't compatible. The React developer tools also only just experimentally enabled compatibility.

I'm not nitpicking -- users don't care why Firefox is slow or why electrolysis is disabled. If an extension is available for Firefox, especially if it's available on the official addon shop, users expect it to work and not to make Firefox slow to a crawl.

That said, even with multiprocess mode I found that Firefox would often be considerably slower when having many tabs open (it's normal for me to keep 30-40 tabs open and this isn't rare, even among my non-developer friends). And as a developer the dev tools are still lightyears behind.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#112

Post by Brakenshire »

Analemma_ wrote: post #19
rrdharan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> web apps will be able to cover 50-80% of native app use-cases in the next 2-3 years Feels like this has been 2-3 years out for almost as long as "native apps" have existed. Reminds me of the first scene in "Snatch" - Turkish: What's happening with them sausages, Charlie? Sausage Charlie: Five minutes, Turkish. Turkish: It was two minutes five minutes ago.

> Feels like this has been 2-3 years out for almost as long as "native apps" have existed Yup. I've been reading about the imminent demise of native apps forever, but even Steve Jobs couldn't sell that vision. Web apps on mobile are the way of the future, and always will be.

It's not really the demise of native apps. I think it's almost undeniable that a percentage of native apps should be websites, it's just a question of whether that's going to end up as 30% or 80%. Seems unlikely it will ever be 100%.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#113

Post by sametmax »

trome wrote: post #104
sametmax wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. From where I stand Mozilla is working hard at making the transition it's just: - it's a hard problem - they don't have the resources of MS or Google - they have a much bigger extension culture and must support it - the current work is not sexy and visible and hence get little advertisement Mozilla created an entire freaking language to level up their game. And in a few years it became one of the most promisin…

It is a hard problem, and Mozilla has put a ton of effort into Rust, but at this point they aren't supporting any of their current extensions (XUL) and WebExtensions will not cover most use cases that XUL covered. This isn't a Python 2 to Python 3 event, this is Mozilla going from the equivalent of C to Java. Most of your favorite extensions will die, and it is directly forcing me to drop firefox for chromium at work…

Yes they had to make a some very hard choice on this one. It's going to piss of a lot of people on the way. But on the long run I think it will result in a better browser. With less versatility, yes. But I got an entire OS at my disposal for advanced used, it's rather have a very good browser doing browser things.

I'll the tab group extension though. I loved it and it won't be possible with webextensions.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#114

Post by Sacho »

pjmlp wrote: post #102
Baeocystin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am reading this article correctly, it looks like the %/market that Chromebooks have managed to capture in the field of education is large worldwide. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3058517

Ah, one of those Gartner studies that companies buy from 2015, yet we don't see them on the stores. When we do happen to see one, if it is a store we visit regularly, what we see is the same device on display being discounted to death until the store finally manages to get rid of it. I must have seen around 5 like that, so I don't get where Gartner is getting their values from.

I'm all for skepticism of statistics, but you're offering an anecdote to refute it...

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#115

Post by coldtea »

trome wrote: post #106
coldtea wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where they have an illicit monopoly Not in any legal sense of the word.

Its the exact same deal as with IE on Windows just a decade ago, by force bundling it, and then with Apple taking the additional step of blocking ALL competition, you get no choice. Today, I can build a SIP client for the browser and it will work well on every major platform except iOS, where Apple is still dragging ass years after WebRTC was standardized and implemented by every other browser.

>Its the exact same deal as with IE on Windows just a decade ago, by force bundling it, and then with Apple taking the additional step of blocking ALL competition, you get no choice.

No, Microsoft was a monopoly on the OS market.

You cannot be a monopoly with In other words, people and devs dissatisfied with how iOS does things, can always go to Android (or Windows Phone).

People couldn't do that when Windows had 95%+ of the desktop and enterprise market, because there was no escaping it.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#116

Post by pjmlp »

Sacho wrote: post #114
pjmlp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, one of those Gartner studies that companies buy from 2015, yet we don't see them on the stores. When we do happen to see one, if it is a store we visit regularly, what we see is the same device on display being discounted to death until the store finally manages to get rid of it. I must have seen around 5 like that, so I don't get where Gartner is getting their values from.

I'm all for skepticism of statistics, but you're offering an anecdote to refute it...

It might be an anecdote, but apparently it is one shared by the majority of European HNers.

So where are those units that Gartner states were sold over here?

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#117

Post by homarp »

sametmax wrote: post #113
trome wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a hard problem, and Mozilla has put a ton of effort into Rust, but at this point they aren't supporting any of their current extensions (XUL) and WebExtensions will not cover most use cases that XUL covered. This isn't a Python 2 to Python 3 event, this is Mozilla going from the equivalent of C to Java. Most of your favorite extensions will die, and it is directly forcing me to drop firefox for chromium at work…

Yes they had to make a some very hard choice on this one. It's going to piss of a lot of people on the way. But on the long run I think it will result in a better browser. With less versatility, yes. But I got an entire OS at my disposal for advanced used, it's rather have a very good browser doing browser things. I'll the tab group extension though. I loved it and it won't be possible with webextensions.

>With less versatility, yes.

isn't/wasn't that the point of firefox though.

>a very good browser doing browser things.

Chrome is the competition. Quite good at 'browser' things

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#118

Post by Certhas »

trome wrote: post #104
sametmax wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. From where I stand Mozilla is working hard at making the transition it's just: - it's a hard problem - they don't have the resources of MS or Google - they have a much bigger extension culture and must support it - the current work is not sexy and visible and hence get little advertisement Mozilla created an entire freaking language to level up their game. And in a few years it became one of the most promisin…

It is a hard problem, and Mozilla has put a ton of effort into Rust, but at this point they aren't supporting any of their current extensions (XUL) and WebExtensions will not cover most use cases that XUL covered. This isn't a Python 2 to Python 3 event, this is Mozilla going from the equivalent of C to Java. Most of your favorite extensions will die, and it is directly forcing me to drop firefox for chromium at work…

> WebExtensions will not cover most use cases that XUL covered.

This is just FUD. Especially as Mozilla is working closely with the developers of the most popular add ons to make sure all capabilities they need will be available (see also webextension experiments).

Of course not all capabilities of XUL will make it, but as Chrome has a vibrant extensive add on community around WebExtension the idea that most usecases are affected is implausible.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#119

Post by soggypopsicle »

Ezhik wrote: post #58
Apocryphon wrote: post #26

Never mind sufficient adoption to challenge iOS/Android, what are the chances any of these other OS's even manages to survive? * Windows Phone * Tizen * Ubuntu Touch * Sailfish OS Honorable mentions: CyanogenMod, Plasma Mobile

CM is dead for sure.

Well yes and no: http://lineageos.org/

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#120

Post by sametmax »

homarp wrote: post #117
sametmax wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they had to make a some very hard choice on this one. It's going to piss of a lot of people on the way. But on the long run I think it will result in a better browser. With less versatility, yes. But I got an entire OS at my disposal for advanced used, it's rather have a very good browser doing browser things. I'll the tab group extension though. I loved it and it won't be possible with webextensions.

>With less versatility, yes. isn't/wasn't that the point of firefox though. >a very good browser doing browser things. Chrome is the competition. Quite good at 'browser' things

Yes. But do in need sqlite manager to be a firefox extension ? I can probably live without it.

Do I need it to be at least as fast as chrome ? Yes.

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