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Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

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Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#201

Post by toweringgoat »

ece wrote: post #186
thristian wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Firefox Focus (on Android and iOS) uses the OS native web view (effectively, Chrome or Safari), but the actual Firefox for Android uses Gecko.

^ This seems right from my quick googling, there is this project for a gecko webview, which needs work: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView and mentions firefox focus' gecko build option. Firefox on android is too slow to use a lot of times. Something mozilla should be able to do better.

Mozilla just don't care about Firefox on Android, the naive observer would be forgiven for thinking they're actively sabotaging it.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#202

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

syrrim wrote: post #169
yAnonymous wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. They're behind in speed, security, quality of the developer tools etc. and introduce new useless toy features and one re-design after the other. I appreciate a lot of stuff Mozilla do outside the browser for the open internet, but the development of Firefox is pretty bad and it looks like the project leaders are incompetent. Firefox is a sad example of how a successful software can be overtaken by a new co…

>due to a lack of focus. And due to their competitors ability to advertise on the majority of people's home page. For most people, chrome wasn't a firefox alternative, it was an internet explorer alternative.

I would buy that if FF would be technically the best or most secure browser. But for a very long it hasn't been.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#203

Post by tomc1985 »

dingo_bat wrote: post #192
tomc1985 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh c'mon it's not that much slower. Some things feel chunkier (scrolling) but JS performance is 80%-90% of the way there.

Oh so apart from the one thing that needs to be perfect, everything is fine? Sorry but if scrolling is not smooth af you don't have a viable browser.

Someone should dump all y'all in some redneck craphole out in the middle of third-world nowhere for a few years. With that environment you'll find out just how important "perfect scrolling" is when most of the web loads for shit under your spotty 3G connection.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#204

Post by bobajeff »

woranl wrote: post #113
bobajeff wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's becuase of their declining marketshare (which is mostly due to strategic disadvantages in distribution channels and marketing budget) not their brand or split focus.

Budget has always been their disadvantages, yet in the pre-Chrome days, they were core product focused and won many developers support. Their vision was once inspiring and admirable. This was how they won over IE. However, ever since Chrome was introduced, most of their innovations are either catch up or gimmicky features - not to mention the political turmoil/non sense. I really wish they can focus on their core pro…

They got kind of lucky too. Their main competition abandoned development of their browser for about 4 years. Now, there are four browsers in active development each regularly communicating with web developers.

Given their pick it's obvious web developers would rather focus on the browsers with the most share of users.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#205

Post by dingo_bat »

tomc1985 wrote: post #203
dingo_bat wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh so apart from the one thing that needs to be perfect, everything is fine? Sorry but if scrolling is not smooth af you don't have a viable browser.

Someone should dump all y'all in some redneck craphole out in the middle of third-world nowhere for a few years. With that environment you'll find out just how important "perfect scrolling" is when most of the web loads for shit under your spotty 3G connection.

I was born and have lived my whole life in India :/

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#206

Post by bartvk »

sirfz wrote: post #83
notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

I just wish it was .. faster. Lately I've been moving away from Google everywhere I can. I moved everything but Google Voice. Yes, even Google Search - I've moved to DuckDuckGo. On windows however, I had to fall back to Chrome, because I was just shocked at how slow Firefox was. Opening pages like Twitch.tv proved to be shockingly slow. Furthermore, my habit of opening many tabs in the background like I do in Chrome/…

What does "faster" mean? honest question. I've been using Firefox since its early days and never jumped on the Chrome bandwagon simply because I didn't see the need to do so. When Firefox felt slow, it usually was the whole operating system that's slow and neither Chrome or any other browser could solve that. Nowadays, all the machines I use are powerful enough to not feel any such slowness and I just don't understan…

Not OP, but what I think is that FF renders the twitch.tv page very slow. On macOS, not just the tab but the whole FF app locks up, showing a spinning beach ball. It's the only site that I found that does that.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#207

Post by _tulpa »

Vinnl wrote: post #198
jacquesm wrote: post #88

Browsers should be browsers, not a way to get a whole bunch of trojan horse software installed on your machine. If I wanted voice search, file sharing and/or note taking I would find the appropriate piece of software for that task and install it separately. All this does is increasing the attack surface of the browser in a ridiculous manner providing features that only very few will use. File-sharing? What could poss…

I wonder which browser you're using, because there are plenty that come rather close to your definition (e.g. Midori), but odds are really high that you're not using them - because nobody is. Thing is, if Mozilla wants to stay relevant, it has to find out what users want and deliver that. These experiments are one way to do that.

Nobody uses them because they're broken and slow.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#208

Post by yAnonymous »

alex_duf wrote: post #176
yAnonymous wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. They're behind in speed, security, quality of the developer tools etc. and introduce new useless toy features and one re-design after the other. I appreciate a lot of stuff Mozilla do outside the browser for the open internet, but the development of Firefox is pretty bad and it looks like the project leaders are incompetent. Firefox is a sad example of how a successful software can be overtaken by a new co…

For every 100 experiment maybe one will be fruitful. No one is criticising Mozilla for coming up with Rust, yet if they didn't take the time to experiment Rust wouldn't be around. So yeah, good on them, I'm happy for them to try voice recognition and other endeavours, who knows what they might discover?

Rust is a technical improvement, so it's exactly what many users are asking.

>who knows what they might discover?

They'll discover, just like Opera, that an abundance of useless features doesn't make up for a browser that is lacking speed, security, a clear design, ease-of-use and configurability.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#209

Post by yAnonymous »

Vinnl wrote: post #197
yAnonymous wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. They're behind in speed, security, quality of the developer tools etc. and introduce new useless toy features and one re-design after the other. I appreciate a lot of stuff Mozilla do outside the browser for the open internet, but the development of Firefox is pretty bad and it looks like the project leaders are incompetent. Firefox is a sad example of how a successful software can be overtaken by a new co…

> speed, security, quality of the developer tools Coincidentally, all of the examples you mention have been a major focus for far more people within Mozilla than their experiments are, and improvements in these areas have really been noticeable if you've been using Firefox lately.

Yes, but these changes take time and they only started working on them when users started leaving for Chrome.

Like many others, I used Firefox for a long time despite it being technically inferior to Chrome, but at some point you say 'fuck it' and make the change.

Mozilla, given their market share, should have been first to offer 64-bit support, separate processes for tabs, sand-boxing and a lot of other stuff, but they've been asleep, because for a long time there was no strong competitor.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#210

Post by nkkollaw »

Looks like a good waste of resources to implement things people don't want in a browser anyway, in a desperate attempt to get people to consider using Firefox again.

If I was Mozilla I'd allocate programming time to catch up with Chrome now that they don't have the phone OS thing anymore, instead of creating more distractions.

They really blew it. I remember a few years ago when I used both Firefox and Thunderbird as my default browser/email client...

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