I really hate it when things are not for sale to the highest bidder. Everyone knows that’s the best way to go.... ;)
Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive
11–20 of 310 posts
Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive
#12A reminder that, as article points out, a healthy web needs multiple independent client implementations and we're already down to less than a handful major ones. Ideally they should hold equivalent usage share which implies that as currently usage is heavily tilted towards Google Chrome, the best way in which you can help Mozilla is to use their browser and get your friends and family to use it too, unless there's a…
...and ideally, we should also encourage the use of the "lesser" browsers like Dillo, NetSurf, and all the text-based ones. They can't really run "web apps" and the like, but will be fine for viewing the "long tail" of content-focused sites out there (including this one.) What has become quite obvious to me within the past few years is that the whole "move the Web forward" thing seems to be really about coming up wit…
I wonder: who could even feasibly introduce another browser today? The task seems almost impossible.
Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive
#13A reminder that, as article points out, a healthy web needs multiple independent client implementations and we're already down to less than a handful major ones. Ideally they should hold equivalent usage share which implies that as currently usage is heavily tilted towards Google Chrome, the best way in which you can help Mozilla is to use their browser and get your friends and family to use it too, unless there's a…
...and ideally, we should also encourage the use of the "lesser" browsers like Dillo, NetSurf, and all the text-based ones. They can't really run "web apps" and the like, but will be fine for viewing the "long tail" of content-focused sites out there (including this one.) What has become quite obvious to me within the past few years is that the whole "move the Web forward" thing seems to be really about coming up wit…
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Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive
#14Mozilla is only "independent" if you take an extremely loose interpretation of that word. Follow the money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Affiliatio... I only dug into this after having a mildly unproductive run-in with what-wg. Mostly Google and Mozilla guys, and not terribly open. Asking them "why" typically gets very evasive replies, if any at all! The guy Phillip at Opera was a class act thoug…
Mozilla has many flaws, lack of transparency is not one of them.
I don't even know where to start with your comment. You're linking the Mozilla Corp wikipedia page, insinuating they're "not terribly open" (and putting Google in that basket), on a subject you give almost no hints about, but hey Opera is a thing? And somehow this comment means that Mozilla is not independent?
Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive
#15Mozilla is only "independent" if you take an extremely loose interpretation of that word. Follow the money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Affiliatio... I only dug into this after having a mildly unproductive run-in with what-wg. Mostly Google and Mozilla guys, and not terribly open. Asking them "why" typically gets very evasive replies, if any at all! The guy Phillip at Opera was a class act thoug…
Mozilla has many flaws, lack of transparency is not one of them. I don't even know where to start with your comment. You're linking the Mozilla Corp wikipedia page, insinuating they're "not terribly open" (and putting Google in that basket), on a subject you give almost no hints about, but hey Opera is a thing? And somehow this comment means that Mozilla is not independent?
Read again.
I doubted Mozilla Corp's "independence" in the first sentence. "not terribly open" in the last paragraph was in reference to the WHAT-WG group, which is "[m]ostly Google and Mozilla guys". From the posts in that group, those guys seem more like co-workers than competitors.
For anyone who believes money to be some kind of motivating thing, it isn't hard to come to the conclusion that Mozilla is Google-by-proxy.
edit: And apparently I have to have "hits" to my name to state that getting 85% of your revenue from Google puts your independence into question???
Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive
#16About three years ago, I decided that I was going to build my own browser from scratch, and I thought it would be really easy to implement as long as I strictly followed the web standards.
Within a few minutes, I got stuck with the fact that I could not get any performance out of even a simple attempt at a CSS engine.
After about three days of mucking with that, I gave up on the project, and gained a lot more respect for Mozilla.
Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive
#17Mozilla is only "independent" if you take an extremely loose interpretation of that word. Follow the money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Affiliatio... I only dug into this after having a mildly unproductive run-in with what-wg. Mostly Google and Mozilla guys, and not terribly open. Asking them "why" typically gets very evasive replies, if any at all! The guy Phillip at Opera was a class act thoug…
Mozilla has many flaws, lack of transparency is not one of them. I don't even know where to start with your comment. You're linking the Mozilla Corp wikipedia page, insinuating they're "not terribly open" (and putting Google in that basket), on a subject you give almost no hints about, but hey Opera is a thing? And somehow this comment means that Mozilla is not independent?
I agree, and this is not to mention that a lot of the companies funding Mozilla that may love not to pay them, but they have to because there is a viable independent company that provides a browser.
I am glad that Mozilla exists, and I was glad that they existed even when I used Chrome (pre Firefox Quantum).
Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive
#18A reminder that, as article points out, a healthy web needs multiple independent client implementations and we're already down to less than a handful major ones. Ideally they should hold equivalent usage share which implies that as currently usage is heavily tilted towards Google Chrome, the best way in which you can help Mozilla is to use their browser and get your friends and family to use it too, unless there's a…
There is a third major independent option: Microsoft Edge. I assume (like me) a lot web of developers aren’t using Windows, but we can at least help people out by making sure our applications work fine on those browsers. Since IE 9, with a polyfill, most things just work unless you need some very recent HTML5 APIs. Microsoft provides free VMs for testing different browsers here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/…
If only ms would just make their software available cross platform.
Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox on Android is so frustrating. Things like no swipe down to refresh, despite all other apps implementating that pattern. On my phone, scrolling by swiping is slow, it scrolls such a short distance. Meaning going down a long NH page takes many swipes. All other Android browsers seem to get it right. Fonts also seem "off". It's these small things that make the experience frustrating. I truly want to use it, but…
Things like no swipe down to refresh This is the thing that made me switch to it from Chrome. Something as experience-breaking as refreshing the page isn't something that the user should encounter just through energetic scrolling.
I can see the flip side on this too though - the user action is pretty universal in apps, and it's disruptive when 9 out of 10 apps use this and you're trying to get fresh data out of app #10. There should be some consistency in user expectations across apps, or a clear way of performing the same action.
That being said, I agree with you and really like that FF doesn't have a motion for refresh. It's mildly annoying sometimes, but usually it's only on sites very clearly constructed around the mechanism which have no other way of refreshing the page without going somewhere else first. HN is convenient enough on mobile with FF because you can just tap on the HN Title to refresh the page. Other pages are not as kind.
Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
...and ideally, we should also encourage the use of the "lesser" browsers like Dillo, NetSurf, and all the text-based ones. They can't really run "web apps" and the like, but will be fine for viewing the "long tail" of content-focused sites out there (including this one.) What has become quite obvious to me within the past few years is that the whole "move the Web forward" thing seems to be really about coming up wit…
I wonder: who could even feasibly introduce another browser today? The task seems almost impossible.
Well you could also fork Chromium I guess.