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State of web browsers in 2018

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Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#61

Post by detaro »

SamWhited wrote: post #55
CWuestefeld wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until Mozilla gets the performance problems under control Performance is 1/2 of the reason that I prefer Mozilla. As one of those people that typically has 50-100 tabs open, the Firefox model for memory management is vastly superior. The other half of the reason is TreeStyleTab, again because I'm one of those zillion-tab users. Vertically-stacked tabs in a sidebar is the only way to manage that mountain of tabs - hor…

That's actually really interesting; I don't tend to have a ton of tabs, but coworkers always told me Firefox did a terrible job with 100+ tabs and that Chrome worked better. This always made sense to me because of the multi-process architecture of Chrome, but I've never seen it myself. So you're suggesting that Firefox actually performs better now? Maybe all my coworkers complaining about it are just repeating lore t…

The Quantum change introduced multi-process to Firefox too. With a proper adblocker, hundreds of tabs are not a problem in my experience ( Chrome needs one too: in hundreds of random pages it's just too likely some crazy ads stress the system by playing video, constantly loading data, ...).

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#62

Post by xte »

IMO the actual state of web browsers is: "there is NO browsers.", we have labeled as browsers awful monsters that are a sort of OS-cancer that try to reduce OS itself as a mere kernel and basic userland needed to run that monster.

Actual size of those project is so big that practically no one, their devs included, can know the entire big picture, there are so any day new critical security vulnerabilities and a constant refrain, repeated following the nazi Goebbels principles of "repeat a lie enough and it became reality", that desktop is dead and the sole possible evolution are those monsters and, of course, "the cloud", because "we need integration and the sole really integrated platforms are cloud and mobile" and other classic marketing phrases.

Unfortunately, as with physical cancers, he are in the process of succumb. And even worse there are many people happy with that, like few crazy individual happy to have AIDS "so they know that they can get nothing worse STM and they feel free"... Or like south Koreans that pay a "prison hotel" to "free them for daily life"...

I think a ~60g rifle cartridge charged with salt and a small forest can be a good playground, only I fear we may run out of salt...

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#63

Post by xte »

Reinmar wrote: post #17
sstangl wrote: post #11

As a Mozilla employee, speaking from my own limited perspective, it seems the company as a whole broadly agrees with this analysis even if it isn't vocalized quite this succinctly. Chrome started out being force-installed alongside Flash, and there is no solution to the bundling problem -- the problem is even larger in scale than the article suggests because of Chromebooks affecting desktop. People who use Firefox in…

You say that Mozilla will be well-positioned as an alternative to Google. That sounds realistic and I hope it will be able to team up with bigger companies which would like to compete with Google (instead of helping it). However, that made me think about Brave ( https://brave.com/ ). What are your thoughts about it? It's also privacy oriented, but it's actually built on top of Chromium. What is even more interesting,…

Only a sidenote: did you think any human being can have properly reviewed webkit source code before using it?

If not, how can be anything based on webkit considered to be safe, privacy oriented etc?

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#64

Post by tapoxi »

danShumway wrote: post #45
tapoxi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the downside of "pulling an Edge" and just making Firefox a Chrome fork with some Mozilla specific features? There's an alternative to Google, Mozilla saves a ton of money/time on duplicated effort, and developers only have to worry about testing against Blink/Webkit. Servo/Quantum is cool, but it seems to be too late for that. I'm worried that Mozilla is simply in denial about this and when reality set…

It would give the Chromium dev team a massive amount of leverage in directing web standards. This matters because, on-the-whole, Mozilla's dev teams tend to be much better at writing standards than Google's are; partially because many of the standards Chromium focuses on are prioritized and developed with the intention of being helpful to Google's long-term strategies. There have been multiple instances (html imports…

There are enough large, interested parties (Samsung, Microsoft, Mozilla) out there that they could literally fork Blink if organizational issues arise and gain a sizable install base.

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#65

Post by mike22223333 »

As a publisher, most of us do not care about Firefox either. They have done us no good. So we don't even bother to test on it.

Their so called "Tracking Protection" is nothing more then a gimmick. It can be bypassed easily using methods other then cookies. All it did was reduce the revenue from ads because of no cookies (the legitimate way to track id's). It did an insignificant harm to Google. But it reduced the revenue from Firefox users by a huge percentage for publishers.

Firefox is losing because it favors the wrong demographics. Firefox offers nothing much exclusive to users and neither to developers. Most people using ad blockers, use Firefox on mobile.

Sad to see it the way it is. Safari did the same. But the market share is still relevant, but it is declining as well. Once it reaches a certain point, no one will bother to test for it either.

DNT was a shit show. DNT should have always required manual user intervention to be respected.

Google's interests apart from their AMP project aligns with the publishers. If we win, they win.

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#67

Post by akavel »

SamWhited wrote: post #44
akavel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, crashing??? I, like, never actually switched to Chrome in the first place (only using it sometimes for sites that "only work in IE^H^HChrome"), am using Firefox on multiple computers on Linux and Windows, and absolutely don't remember it crashing, for years at least! (edit: tweaked to clarify) edit 2: using Firefox on mobile (Android) too, for ~2 years now (i.e., since I have a smartphone), cannot recall a single…

Chrome or Firefox? I meant that Firefox mobile crashes more frequently than the others (in fact, specific sites make it crash consistently and have done for years; I could probably dig some up, but I gave up reporting them since none of the bugs have been fixed for years to my knowledge). For the most part it's still not a frequent occurrence I suppose, but it only has to happen once or twice on a popular website to…

Would be curious about the websites indeed!

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#68

Post by GonzaloQuero »

mike22223333 wrote: post #65

As a publisher, most of us do not care about Firefox either. They have done us no good. So we don't even bother to test on it. Their so called "Tracking Protection" is nothing more then a gimmick. It can be bypassed easily using methods other then cookies. All it did was reduce the revenue from ads because of no cookies (the legitimate way to track id's). It did an insignificant harm to Google. But it reduced the rev…

So Firefox's Do Not Track is harming the way you track people through advertising?

I'd say it's working perfectly, then. Maybe it is your business that is broken.

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#69

Post by asituop »

tapoxi wrote: post #64
danShumway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would give the Chromium dev team a massive amount of leverage in directing web standards. This matters because, on-the-whole, Mozilla's dev teams tend to be much better at writing standards than Google's are; partially because many of the standards Chromium focuses on are prioritized and developed with the intention of being helpful to Google's long-term strategies. There have been multiple instances (html imports…

There are enough large, interested parties (Samsung, Microsoft, Mozilla) out there that they could literally fork Blink if organizational issues arise and gain a sizable install base.

If Mozilla can't reach enough user now, why would they do with a fork of Blink ? It's not a web engine problem, it's just that Google is too powerful and Chrome is everywhere, so they decide.

And actually it is better for innovation not to use to Blink. WebRender is potentially much more performant than any other engine and it would never had existed if Mozilla were just aligning with Blink

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#70

Post by azangru »

jacobherrington wrote: post #27

I'm a developer and a Firefox user. I'm always a little sad when I pair with another developer, and they ask why I'm not using Chrome. Mozilla is one of the few tech companies that care about the well-being of its users. In my opinion that is very special.

> I'm a developer and a Firefox user.

By developer, do you mean web developer?

I tried to use Chrome dev tools, and they were incredibly easy to pick up; however whenever I try to use Firefox dev tools, they feel embarrassingly awkward. Perhaps it's just the familiarity with the tools (and if so, I am very curious to hear whether you prefer Firefox dev tools over Chrome's), but have a nagging feeling that it's just an inferior developer tool.

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