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Chrome Won

andreasgal.com

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Re: Chrome Won

#111

Post by digi_owl »

Houshalter wrote: post #86

Maybe they could compete on having a better extension system. Chrome extensions are absolutely awful. Every single one I've ever used has had some kind of serious bug, often deal breaking. I could easily fix many of them, but there is no method to do so. Let alone fork it or submit a pull request. You can't even load your own extensions, and you have to pay money to submit them to the web store. A scary percentage of…

Sadly Firefox is going the opposite way right now, because "security".

But at the same time we have Vivaldi, a Chrome "fork", that seems to be gunning for just that.

I swear there is a disease in the FOSS world these days, one carried by SJW busy bodies. Thing is that they are not in it to actually correct social ills, but personal aggrandizement. Thus what we get are shallow platitudes and economic sinkhole projects.

Re: Chrome Won

#112

Post by cbryan »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #66
gkoberger wrote: post #51

I agree with this blog post. But I don't think Mozilla lost. I worked for Mozilla for a few years, after seeing John Lily (CEO at the time) speak. It was right after Chrome started getting popular, and a smug person in the crowd asked him about how he felt about Chrome. John's response was awesome. "This is the web that we wanted. We exist not because we want everyone to use Firefox, but because we wanted people to h…

Agreed that Mozilla's original mission has been accomplished in spades, but I wouldn't count Mozilla out of the browser race just yet. Servo and Webrender[0] will completely shake up the browser landscape, and will allow web apps to match (maybe even surpass?) native mobile apps in terms of rendering performance. Unless Chrome, IE, and Safari can develop an answer to Servo and Webrender by the time those technologies…

The problem with your point is that it assumes users' are using Chrome because of its rendering speed. I don't think that's the case.

Re: Chrome Won

#113

Post by kibwen »

gkoberger wrote: post #104
pcwalton wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Servo barely existed 5 years ago.

But it did exist, no?

Yes, but even five years ago people acknowledged that it was going to take more than five years to write a browser engine from scratch. I'm on the record as stating in ~2012 not to expect a usable Servo any sooner than 2017 at the earliest (basing my estimation on the time it took to write V8 from scratch). And that was indeed optimistic, but we are seeing bits of Servo (most importantly WebRender and Stylo) being integrated into Firefox this year.

Re: Chrome Won

#114

Post by 10165 »

"Mozilla's founding mission was to build the Web by building a browser."

I have been using the Web since 1993.

I always thought the Web had the definition given in its Wikipedia entry.

Web servers and hyperlinks.

Apparently some people believe "the Web" is actually a browser, or a small set of them.

This is like suggesting a galaxy is actually a telescope, or a small set of "standards compliant" telescopes.

Browser-centrism is truly myopic.

What is relevant is the ever expanding practice of installing web servers into all sorts of devices, not simply racks of computers in server rooms and offsite data centers.

Re: Chrome Won

#115

Post by kenshi » 

  I started Firefox OS in 2011 because already back then I
  was convinced that desktops and browsers were dead. 
  Not immediately–here we are 6 years later and both 
  are still around–but both are legacy technologies that
  are not particularly influential going forward.

  ...snip...

  To stick with the transportation metaphor: Google makes the 
  best horses in the world and they clearly won 
  the horse race. I just don’t think that race matters 
  much going forward.
It certainly doesn't matter if what you are interested in is: catching whatever the next technology wave is.

But the browser certainly still matters to all those Firefox users who switched to Chrome, and are using it every day.

"Legacy" isn't seen as sexy in tech. It might not be exciting for someone who wants to explore the next frontier or create the next platform. But, legacy is important for users (customers). Legacy is your brand. It's your influence. The foothold that will help you set the direction of what happens next. It's what you bootstrap your play in the next tech wave upon. Legacy is yesterday's hard earned success ready to be leveraged as a head start for tomorrow. (It's just important that you remember to do the leveraging part, and not just sit pretty and self-satisfied with your legacy).

Firefox's decline is abysmal and a failure of leadership.

FirefoxOS was a terrible, terrible decision.

How much influence does Mozilla really have on the direction of web if they have don't have influence on the desktop? Don't many features in mobile browsers start on the desktop browser first?

I hope whoever is in charge of Firefox now is a true believer of the power and importance of the web browser, and the desktop that it's used on, by the most influential band of users you can wish to have: creators.

Edits: formatting

Re: Chrome Won

#116

Post by woranl »

Firefox failed to innovate and alienate developers. Refusing to implement File System API is a perfect example!

Mozilla can choose to be arrogant. Well.. guess what? We can also choose to move on without you.

Broken apps make users to switch browsers. It's that simple. Mozilla can only blame itself for the vicious cycle.

Re: Chrome Won

#117

Post by pcwalton »

gkoberger wrote: post #104
pcwalton wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Servo barely existed 5 years ago.

But it did exist, no?

It started in 2012. It was a total toy for most of that year, though. I would barely consider it a real engineering project in that state--heck, for quite a while it was a readme and nothing else :)

Re: Chrome Won

#118

Post by Larrikin »

andrepd wrote: post #64
gkoberger wrote: post #51

I agree with this blog post. But I don't think Mozilla lost. I worked for Mozilla for a few years, after seeing John Lily (CEO at the time) speak. It was right after Chrome started getting popular, and a smug person in the crowd asked him about how he felt about Chrome. John's response was awesome. "This is the web that we wanted. We exist not because we want everyone to use Firefox, but because we wanted people to h…

We cannot possibly be talking about the same Google. This is the Google of AMP et al. You think they won't do the exact same thing Microsoft did with IE when they find themselves in a similar dominant/monopolistic position in the market? You're sorely mistaken. We already find many examples of websites and Web apps that work only on chrome or the chrome "web store". This not to mention the surveillance and privacy nu…

I currently have zero hope that Google voice calls will ever be reimplemented to work on Firefox again.

Re: Chrome Won

#119

Post by home_boi »

andrepd wrote: post #64
gkoberger wrote: post #51

I agree with this blog post. But I don't think Mozilla lost. I worked for Mozilla for a few years, after seeing John Lily (CEO at the time) speak. It was right after Chrome started getting popular, and a smug person in the crowd asked him about how he felt about Chrome. John's response was awesome. "This is the web that we wanted. We exist not because we want everyone to use Firefox, but because we wanted people to h…

We cannot possibly be talking about the same Google. This is the Google of AMP et al. You think they won't do the exact same thing Microsoft did with IE when they find themselves in a similar dominant/monopolistic position in the market? You're sorely mistaken. We already find many examples of websites and Web apps that work only on chrome or the chrome "web store". This not to mention the surveillance and privacy nu…

But there is more than just web browsing. Microsoft owned the entire platform at one point.

Re: Chrome Won

#120

Post by lewisl9029 »

cbryan wrote: post #112
lewisl9029 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that Mozilla's original mission has been accomplished in spades, but I wouldn't count Mozilla out of the browser race just yet. Servo and Webrender[0] will completely shake up the browser landscape, and will allow web apps to match (maybe even surpass?) native mobile apps in terms of rendering performance. Unless Chrome, IE, and Safari can develop an answer to Servo and Webrender by the time those technologies…

The problem with your point is that it assumes users' are using Chrome because of its rendering speed. I don't think that's the case.

No, I'm not actually assuming that, because I realize there is only negligible difference between major browsers today in terms of rendering performance, and none can approach the rendering performance of native UI frameworks on mobile.

But I am assuming that a browser offering a gigantic leap in UX through native-like rendering performance will entice web app developers to recommend that browser over others, because it's nigh impossible to build a consistently 60fps non trivial app with native-like interactions and transitions on the web today, while Servo and Webrender aim to make 60fps on the web the norm rather than the exception.

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