221–230 of 755 posts
Quantum I think was too incremental and conservative, trying to integrate Servo into Gecko. They’ve ended up making a desktop browser which is as good as Chrome, but not good enough to demand attention. Mobile, where parallelism should be most beneficial, has lagged behind, and parallel layout, which is where the real prize is, has disappeared over the horizon. Servo has been relegated to WebVR experiments which are…
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Is that the timeline here? In that case it was Chrome using its market position cleverly and Firefox not responding adequately. I can only speak for linux interfaces btw. Small "bullshit" interface changes can have dramatic user and marketshare impact. We can all sit around and wish the world didn't work this way but it's not going to change.
Firefox has alternatively had closer-to-curved-rects or boxy tabs for practically its whole lifetime. Chrome went heavy on diagonal-edged tabs early on, and relatively recently they've been undoing that. they're even mimicking Firefox's scrollable tab-bar since it's such an obvious win over a million super-narrow tabs that you can't possibly identify.
The non-scrollable tabs are what I miss most about Chrome. I know I'm not in a majority there, but I wouldn't call it an obvious win.
Been really enjoying Firefox, especially after Quantum. More devs should support and use it, lest we be beholden to Chrome for the rest of time.
How sad... I have switched to Firefox about 8 months ago and have been really enjoying the browser. It's just difficult to compete against the giants of Google and Microsoft. I mean anywhere you go there will be messages like "Try a faster browser- Download Chrome" on any Google site, or the extremely difficult user interface to switch default browser on Windows. I really wish for Firefox to succeed in the long run,…
>or the extremely difficult user interface to switch default browser on Windows. I agree that it's annoying and user hostile, but "extremely difficult"? It's one button in settings.
Quantum I think was too incremental and conservative, trying to integrate Servo into Gecko. They’ve ended up making a desktop browser which is as good as Chrome, but not good enough to demand attention. Mobile, where parallelism should be most beneficial, has lagged behind, and parallel layout, which is where the real prize is, has disappeared over the horizon. Servo has been relegated to WebVR experiments which are…
Been really enjoying Firefox, especially after Quantum. More devs should support and use it, lest we be beholden to Chrome for the rest of time.
I'd like to use Firefox. I've tried it out several times the last year. It's okay. Unfortunately, I always end up going back to Safari. Despite the performance improvements, Safari still feels like a faster, smoother browser. Firefox is still pretty ugly, too. On macOS, it feels chunkier and less natively integrated. Safari's "omnibar" is superior to Firefox's. Safari actually suggests web sites, which I use all the…
Safari's autosuggest of the numeric code from 2FA text messages is outstanding. I don't hear anyone talk about this feature, but I could never live without it. I use 2FA for every website possible and this makes it easy.
I switched to desktop with Quantum and love it. But the huge win for me was switching to Firefox Mobile on my iPhone. It may just be a wrapper for WebKit. But it integrates with Firefox Sync. The killer feature is "send this tab to your iPhone". Great when you're looking at a recipe / restaurant address / funny picture on your computer and want to have it on your phone.
If I notice something cool whilst at work I can send to my Home desktop, and vice versa. when at home and see something that would be useful at work send it there.
Awesome feature.
Being visually nearly indistinguishable from chrome hasn't really worked in its favor. (quick, which is which: http://9ol.es/double-browser.png ). Probably north of 95% don't know about or understand licensing differences or differences in rendering engines or core architecture. Interfaces and obvious features with compelling narratives are what matter because that's how the user engages with the product. Asking user…
When this becomes necessary you know you've lost your power user audience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18589555