Can it use Chromecast?
Unlikely, and I doubt Google would ever allow it.
Chromecast is a closed protocol. There are SDKs for it, but you only have three options: Android, iOS, and Chrome.
It’s time to give Firefox another chance
381–390 of 733 posts
Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
Around 2012 when they started Android still sucked, so IMO it was a reasonable choice. They also killed it off fairly quickly so no big deal.
It's also still considered one of the main-reasons for Chrome eating up all market share, that they now have the leading mobile OS under their control. You can invest a lot of money trying to remedy that, before it's actually a waste of money. And a lot of technologies and standards that were developed as part of Firefox OS still are very much around today. In terms of standards, they did a lot of work for camera and…
"It's also still considered one of the main-reasons for Chrome eating up all market share,"
I remember one reason Chrome gobbled up a lot of marketshare - it was the browser to install because it had Flash built in. Google definitely leveraged that, and then slowly roped people into the Googlesphere from there once they had the browser as your new default.
Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amount of work, the extent for how long they've been doing so, all relative to the funding they got.. it's even painful to think about. Chrome shadowed them overnight, had Google infinite wallet and started from scratch. Mozilla became the old slug.. Since then they got Rust off ground, servo yielding good fruits, firefox cool n quiet. Once again kudos.
That is not representative of either the time frame or the resources available to Mozilla. Mozilla has had Hundreds of millions of annual income through their search associations [1]. It’s surprising how they’ve wasted that amount of money to finally in 2017 build a browser that can compete again. This is 9 years after google chrome was released! They have absolutely no excuse for falling this far behind. They squand…
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Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox has has profiles since well before the first version of Chrome was released. Unfortunately the UI has always been sort of hidden. You can launch with `-P` or `-ProfileManager` to get a profile selection menu. Or nav to `about:profiles` for a slightly more convenient (but less attractive) version. Firefox profiles are great. Better than Chrome profiles, though less convenient, for now. Interested to see how Co…
"great" may be stretching it more than a little. They have indeed worked for a very long time (which is definitely great), but launching multiple firefoxes at once with different profiles is (has been? haven't tried for over a year) an absolute nightmare for anyone not launching it exclusively from the CLI with aliases. I actually made app wrappers just so I could click things instead of having a weird blend of "you…
Yeah, fair point.
My solution on macOS is an AppleScript with the usual Firefox name and icon, installed in the usual location, which runs a shell script with the proper args to pop the profile manager in a new session (`-ProfileManager -no-remote`).
The real Firefox binary is buried in a nondiscoverable location (`$HOME/Applications/.Firefox`) so that it doesn't get launched directly.
...but after getting around to making that work seamlessly, many forgotten years ago...Firefox profiles really have been great. :)
Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And the Nightly builds are (typically) _more_ stable than production-issue from other vendors. Yeah, I switched to Nightly a couple releases ago (I'd use Dev edition before that because in the past Nightly used to be really unstable) and it's been great. The only time I've been getting crashes are when I flipped stylo on early (which was to be expected), and a couple of random crashes here and there. In fact, I've…
> Netflix is force of habit, it works great in Firefox now Netflix doesn't work great in either Firefox or Chrome, but that's not the browser's fault. Netflix only streams 720p video to Firefox, Opera, and Chrome whereas it will stream 1080p or better to Safari, IE 11, and Edge: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742 You can see the playback details (formats, resolution, bit rate, etc.) of the video you're currently…
Yeah, I'm aware of that. IIRC a few years ago it was even worse on Firefox because of DRM issues or something (I don't recall).
Also in the past Firefox's media stack used to be a bit more RAM-hog-y, but that's no longer the case IME either. I still stick media stuff in a different browser so that if I'm doing a build or something expensive I can just close the browser.
Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not representative of either the time frame or the resources available to Mozilla. Mozilla has had Hundreds of millions of annual income through their search associations [1]. It’s surprising how they’ve wasted that amount of money to finally in 2017 build a browser that can compete again. This is 9 years after google chrome was released! They have absolutely no excuse for falling this far behind. They squand…
While Mozilla has had quite a few projects that didn't really pan out, I'm not sure you're giving them enough credit. They developed (well... became the first and most significant major backer of) an entirely new programming language, purely for the purposes of building a better browser. And then devoted tons of resources for years into developing Servo, a massive and complex project that is only being realized now.…
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Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's troubled past and weird current state, doesn't make me comfortable with sharing any info that Mozilla shares with them.
Mozilla acquired Pocket a while back. So "shares with them" really means "shares with itself" :)
1. It was 7 mos ago, I do not consider that "Awhile Back"
2. Mozilla Inc acquired it as a Commercial Proprietary Venture, not as a Open Source project under the Mozilla Foundation the non-profit
3. While it is Owned by Mozilla Inc, it of operated as a Separate Commercial Company separate from the Non-Profit so no it is "shares with it self"
4. The integration occurred long before the acquisition
Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's do a quick thought experiment and imagine all the completely legitimate reasons that a browser might have to call home. Off the top of my head: * Any of the disableable features like safe browsing * Addon code update checks (chrome web store) * Certificate pinning list updates * CA certificate bundle updates * Browser code update checks * Uploading crash reports * HSTS list updates * Settings synching I also be…
You've described perfectly valid use cases for a browser to request additional information. But I think we can both agree that collecting data for the purpose of improving a specific product that Google owns (outside of Chrome itself) is wrong.
The point is that whether there is any actual examples though.
Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chromium has been found to phone home on a regular basis. The data (or metadata) that is sent back is most likely beneficial for Google. I have Google Analytics on my startup's SPA when it can't even be crawled by Google due to the framework we use. The only logical explanation is that Chrome sends data back on the sites you visit.
Let's do a quick thought experiment and imagine all the completely legitimate reasons that a browser might have to call home. Off the top of my head: * Any of the disableable features like safe browsing * Addon code update checks (chrome web store) * Certificate pinning list updates * CA certificate bundle updates * Browser code update checks * Uploading crash reports * HSTS list updates * Settings synching I also be…
Just because there are legitimate reasons for sending all that data doesn't mean it's not also usable to track you or whatever. In fact, having all that data in the first place lowers the barrier to start using it for other things. We've seen that happen countless times.
What it comes down to is that Chrome sends a whole bunch of information about me to a company who's main product is serving ads. I don't know exactly what data they send or how they use it, and that in and of itself is a major problem.
In the end, sure, Firefox does the same things. But Mozilla's core business isn't selling my personal information to the highest bidder, so I trust them more than I do Google.
Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance
#390Worth looking at this resource, which seems to suggest that Chrome still leads in some of the benchmarks, even in memory usage: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-... Just one study among many, but, worth keeping in mind. Firefox is making strides, but Mozilla still has work to do if they want to stop losing market share. I say this as a Firefox user.
Here's a blog post from this week about memory usage: http://www.erahm.org/2017/09/25/firefox-memory-usage-in-the-...
That's a comparison on real websites rather than browser benchmarks.