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Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#21

Post by rtpg »

steve19 wrote: post #6
cknight wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched back to Firefox 57 about a decade after abandoning it for Opera. I remember the advocacy movement around Firefox 1.0 which I was quite involved in. I thought (and still think) it was great. I don't plan to go quite as far this time, but do plan to try and convince all my friends and family to get on board. It'll be a harder task for sure since Chrome is not IE6, but as the resident IT guy that everyone ask…

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…

Yeah, I'm a heavy Firefox for Android user and I _really_ want to use it but the performance is really rough. I wish I had the sort of skills to help contribute to performance, but the whole thing is so huge I wouldn't even know where to begin.

At this point if Chrome implemented the "open tab in background" feature (when I click on a link in an e-mail I don't want to switch directly to the browser) I would probably switch back.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#22

Post by rtpg »

I feel like there's a golden opportunity here to have things like Firefox be broken up into more independent parts.

We've already seen this in the JS engine space, though it's still pretty hard to integrate alternate JS engines into browsers. Having more and more of the app broken up makes it _much_ easier for contributors to come in and for work to be shared.

We don't all need to write our own implementations of CSS style sharing, even if higher level strategies are different.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#23

Post by jopsen »

baddox wrote: post #12
userbinator wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

mozillia research is sort of doing it with gecko.

But yeah, from scratch is hard... Google didn't even do that, they started from webkit.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#24

Post by sverhagen »

gjjrfcbugxbhf wrote: post #18
lucaspiller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wasn't it just released for Android and iOS? (I get that that might not be what you meant...)

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#25

Post by khedoros1 »

csydas wrote: post #19
LocutusOfBorges wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I expect swiping down to take me to the top of the page. It's frustrating when it does more (like reloading the page). I guess I'm the wrong person to ask whether 9/10 apps do it; I usually find a replacement when they do.

Firefox, Pale Moon, and Chrome all have a refresh command in the "3 dots" menu. I usually use that.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#26

Post by jopsen »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #15
scrollaway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

I know first hand that Mozilla is a highly competent organization, but it not an organization capable of keeping a nefarious secret :)

Leadership at Mozilla have already shown themselves willing to break with Google. And I doubt it's any secret that they've been looking for alternative revenue sources.

If you want to question Mozillas independence please bring something more substantive than baseless speculation.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#27

Post by birksherty »

csydas wrote: post #19
LocutusOfBorges wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personally I want to disable "swipe down to refresh" system wide and instead have a button at the top of those apps.

"on sites very clearly constructed around the mechanism"

Browsers have refresh buttons for that.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#28

Post by hossbeast »

tombert wrote: post #16

About 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…

You had a running css engine in a few minutes?

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#29

Post by jstewartmobile »

jopsen wrote: post #26
jstewartmobile wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

I know first hand that Mozilla is a highly competent organization, but it not an organization capable of keeping a nefarious secret :) Leadership at Mozilla have already shown themselves willing to break with Google. And I doubt it's any secret that they've been looking for alternative revenue sources. If you want to question Mozillas independence please bring something more substantive than baseless speculation.

It is no secret that for at least the past decade, the majority of Mozilla's revenue has been from search partnerships.

In what bizzaro world can you derive the majority of your revenue from a thing while simultaneously declaring independence from it?

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#30

Post by mercurial »

jopsen wrote: post #23
baddox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder: who could even feasibly introduce another browser today? The task seems almost impossible.

mozillia research is sort of doing it with gecko. But yeah, from scratch is hard... Google didn't even do that, they started from webkit.

With Gecko ? It's their original engine. You probably mean Servo (the experimental Rust engine).
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