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Browse Against the Machine

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Re: Browse Against the Machine

#51
> Chrome wants you to only use Chrome.

This is no different than saying Microsoft only wants you to use Hotmail.

Firefox did not build Gmail, nor does it have any serious interconnected bookmarks manager. Why would I use Firefox when Gmail does not render well on it and there is no way for me to seamlessly carry bookmarks, history and everything else which is part of daily browser activity?

Sure, I use Firefox for work as well. It is fine. I don't need to worry about gmail and personal bookmarks, etc at work.

Re: Browse Against the Machine

#52
post #6

I just use it because Mozilla is the only browser I trust with my information and privacy. They are the only ones who I think are genuine about trying to protect me.

Yet Firefox doesn't sync cookies block/whitelist and permissions [0] Something Chrome has supported since the beginning.

I, also, use (only) Firefox on mobile and desktop but sometimes I'm really suprised by the lack of features to control data/privacy.

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=978010

Re: Browse Against the Machine

#53
post #20

Why did I move from Netscape to IE? Speed. Why did I move from IE to Firefox? Speed. Why did I move from Firefox to Chrome? Speed. Why did I move from Chrome to Firefox? Negative feelings about Google. So for myself the only things that work, hand on heart, are Speed or Repulsion. You can't really sell repulsion. Therefore, I think their only hope is Speed. Admittedly I may be a crap example.

I think features play can play a role. I switched to DuckDuckGo a long time ago more because of their extra features than because of Google. The old Opera was also moderately successful because of their proxy-like feature (it was pre-rendering webpages and compressing the result) that was very appreciated by mobile users. Before their downfall they also integrated peer-to-peer file sharing and chat. I believe that ma…

I think the problem is that once you consider "features" in general, it tends to diffuse attention from what is absolutely essential. Of course nobody can know what is essential. But someone with vision needs to kick everything non-essential into touch and pick something.

My vote is for speed. Then again, I use almost no non-core features of any browser.

Re: Browse Against the Machine

#54
post #25

> Firefox for work, Chrome for play If the Marketing head for Firefox opens like this, I'm honestly not optimistic. So even he states that for some reason, using Firefox alone is not sufficient for him. I think unless they find out the reasons for that, they have little chance to become meaningful competition again - even though we really need it. Slightly OT, that being said, my feeling is that Chrome played on an u…

Do you realise Firefox's marketshare was in large part due Google? It's not surprising that when they decided to go their own way they made rapid gains

Re: Browse Against the Machine

#55

Firefox is still set as my default browser, but it feels like every month more and more sites just seem to QA only on Chrome :(.

I see this a lot too, but I figure continuing to use Firefox and complaining when I see broken websites is a good way forward. Far better than slipping into a browser monoculture.

Re: Browse Against the Machine

#57
post #20

Why did I move from Netscape to IE? Speed. Why did I move from IE to Firefox? Speed. Why did I move from Firefox to Chrome? Speed. Why did I move from Chrome to Firefox? Negative feelings about Google. So for myself the only things that work, hand on heart, are Speed or Repulsion. You can't really sell repulsion. Therefore, I think their only hope is Speed. Admittedly I may be a crap example.

That was pretty much the same story for me. On the negative feeling about google, I seems that Google has done massive work trying to get your whole life (online and offline) into their databases. The whole point is to "enhance" the experience of you as a user and business as a google customer. I am not comfortable with the convience-privacy tradeoff but many people are.

Re: Browse Against the Machine

#58
post #22
post #15

> It’s faster, lags less, hogs much less memory than chrome, and in June we’ll release multi-process Firefox, putting us at performance parity with Chrome in most of the ways we mere humans can actually perceive. I'm rooting for them but I really​ hope they get this done quickly. On Firefox, I often have ~.5 second UI freezes throughout the use which lead to an impression of sluggishness. Chrome, with the same number…

> I really​ hope they get this done quickly You don't have to wait for them to enable it for everyone. Enable it yourself by setting browser.tabs.remote.autostart to true in about:config (on ff48-53 this'll use one one process for ui and one for all tabs, I believe on 54+ it'll use more). (As long as you don't have any addons that don't support it, anyway -- after enabling it, check in about:support under "Multiproce…

browser.tabs.remote.autostart should already be default-enabled, unless your extensions aren't compatible with it. It'll tell you "disabled by add-ons" in about:support, if that's the case.

And you can enable multiple content processes prior to Firefox 54 by setting dom.ipc.processCount to a number higher than 1. This is the maximum number of content processes that it'll use, as you open more tabs. So, if your number of tabs exceeds that value, it'll currently still distribute them among your content processes round-robin-style.

You get the best performance vs. RAM ratio with this value at 4 (or I believe rather just the number of cores your CPU has). This is also what Firefox 54 will ship with. You get the best security and best performance, disregarding RAM, by setting it to something really high, like 500, so that a new process starts up with each tab that you open (which allows each tab to be sandboxed individually).

Re: Browse Against the Machine

#59

I trusted them until they de facto fired a prominent employee for his political opinions - opinions shared by a large portion of the population. If they can do that to an employee, what can't they do to you , an anonymous user? That said, I stick with Firefox for private use. But the trust is gone.

The last thing we were keeping it around for was the extension support, but they unfortunately killed that so I now recommend Edge over Firefox for resource-constrained systems. It's not there yet, but it's got a brighter future than Firefox.

But yeah nothing pissed me off more than them saying they support choice when they kill off well-supported standards they don't like [1], fire employees over their (common) religious beliefs [2], take the longest to roll out critical security features [3], and prioritize shitty UI updates that nearly everyone hates [4].

All I keep hearing is that the new multi-process is so much faster, everything is great now, but every time I run it on fairly decent systems (i7 from late 2013) it takes multiple seconds to switch tabs.

It really is a joke that their head of marketing wasn't fired for that post, it only supports the true thing that Mozilla has come to stand for: hypocrisy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_SQL_Database [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich [3] https://community.qualys.com/thread/12421 [4] https://www.ghacks.net/2013/11/23/80-unhappy-firefoxs-austra...

Re: Browse Against the Machine

#60
post #20

Why did I move from Netscape to IE? Speed. Why did I move from IE to Firefox? Speed. Why did I move from Firefox to Chrome? Speed. Why did I move from Chrome to Firefox? Negative feelings about Google. So for myself the only things that work, hand on heart, are Speed or Repulsion. You can't really sell repulsion. Therefore, I think their only hope is Speed. Admittedly I may be a crap example.

Why did I move from chrome to firefox? Stability. I don't know if it's just me, but nowadays, chrome just sucks so much firefox manages to be better . Chrome tab crashes occur more often than ever before and it uses a shitcrapton of memory. I remember the days where chrome was lean and small and fast. Those days are long gone. I've been sailing firefox for a year now, and to my great surprise, it has gone from being…

Yeah, on linux Chrome just chews through my battery.
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