Firefox desktop market share now below 9% • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#251

Post by ripdog » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #161

chmln wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but the devtools can't even inspect my websocket API frames. The websocket inspector was a feature request filed 6 years ago . [1] Maybe Firefox devs didn't have time for it. But somehow they got all the time in the world to add clickbait Pocket articles on my new tab page. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508

As well as the time to code in product placements https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15956325

Financially, Mozilla is currently entirely dependent on a search contract with Google, their mortal enemy.

They obviously see that this relationship is extremely risky, especially as Firefox becomes less popular and thus their userbase less valuable to Google. As such, they're trying to diversify their revenue stream.

Do you have any better solutions? Browsers are absurdly expensive to develop, by the way.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#252

Post by dralley » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

baroffoos wrote: post #132

wvenable wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classic problem of being first to market in software, is that your competition can learn from your design and move forward with a fresh code. Firefox is still trying to shed off code from a decade ago. The history of browsers is littered with legacy code being defeated by new code.

The rust rewrites are ripping out loads of old code.

"Loads" is relative. There's still 20x more C++ in Firefox than Rust.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#253

Post by reaperducer » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:24 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #220

cjcampbell wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be helpful in development scenarios. I’m supporting a team that uses localstack to support local development against some AWS services. Unfortunately, the CORS settings for localstack break the development environment. With Chrome allowing them to disable from the command-line, I can provide a shortcut to launch with degraded security, no plugins, no user settings, etc. My only wish is that Chrome would make…

Why not just configure your server or a proxy to add the necessary headers that unlock CORS restrictions.

Because in real companies the IT department needs a real good reason, or a large number of devs that need it, to reconfigure a server that way.

If you're not a lone wolf, or working in the SV bubble, the IT and security departments are going to tell you to go pound sand.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#254

Post by giancarlostoro » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

Klonoar wrote: post #177

rangibaby wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a proper Mac fork of FF (Camino), maybe it’s time to revive that

Camino was fantastic, used it back in the day. :) I'm not sure what Mozilla's deal is these days, to be honest, but Firefox really just doesn't feel like it fits in on Mac. It's frustrating, because I want to support it... but I just end up back in Safari because it feels far more smooth and integrated.

I got into using macOS later on but after 10 years of Firefox I had no issue with it on the Mac. I guess I possibly did not even notice the bugs mentioned. Ironically I couldnt use Chrome after beta cause I was too used to how Firefox works.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#255

Post by 43920 » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:29 AM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #204

Brakenshire wrote: post #79

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…

If you've been following #servo lately, you'll see that we're starting a reboot of parallel layout right now (which I'm leading, more or less). It just so happens that I'm also juggling a million other things simultaneously. For example, I'm working on power usage improvements on macOS that should help address some of the complaints upthread. Also there's the entirely new GPU font and SVG renderer (which is a novel t…

I know it's probably really early to ask this, but do you have a rough estimate of when the power usage improvements will happen? Battery life is the main thing stopping me from using Firefox more, so I'm really looking forward to this being fixed.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#256

Post by linuxhansl » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:29 AM UTC

That is a true shame. I've been happily using Firefox and will continue to do so.

How people trust Google's Chrome (with many closed bits) is beyond me - but of course we're all free to do whatever we want to do.

Also last time I benchmarked Firefox and Chrome (on Linux) Firefox turned out to be faster at least for the sites that I frequent.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#257

Post by Groxx » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:31 AM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #222

Groxx wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

about:config has `browser.tabs.tabMinWidth` :) just set it to 0.

Though I firmly believe that about:config is in no way a user-viable option (as useful as it can be, for dev purposes), so I don't intend to imply that means "firefox has that too". It doesn't, it just has a workaround.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#258

Post by agumonkey » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:42 AM UTC

So Quantum didn't do any good in terms of market share... so much effective efforts. I hope they keep going.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#259

Post by agumonkey » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:44 AM UTC

43920 wrote: post #255

pcwalton wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've been following #servo lately, you'll see that we're starting a reboot of parallel layout right now (which I'm leading, more or less). It just so happens that I'm also juggling a million other things simultaneously. For example, I'm working on power usage improvements on macOS that should help address some of the complaints upthread. Also there's the entirely new GPU font and SVG renderer (which is a novel t…

I know it's probably really early to ask this, but do you have a rough estimate of when the power usage improvements will happen? Battery life is the main thing stopping me from using Firefox more, so I'm really looking forward to this being fixed.

I had a ~power related issue using Quantum. It "killed" my cpu (temp rising by 10s of degrees so fast I didn't have time to throttle before kernel thermal shutdown). I guess it's so parallel and so gpu intensive that my whole system goes into fever.

ps: a x201 core i5 520m

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#260

Post by AzMoo_ » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 5:44 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #253

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just configure your server or a proxy to add the necessary headers that unlock CORS restrictions.

Because in real companies the IT department needs a real good reason, or a large number of devs that need it, to reconfigure a server that way. If you're not a lone wolf, or working in the SV bubble, the IT and security departments are going to tell you to go pound sand.

Not really. In lots of relatively large companies there is a good relationship between infrastructure, development and security teams and they will work to find a solution that works for everybody.