Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

State of web browsers in 2018

ferdychristant.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 217 posts

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#131

Post by jacobherrington »

azangru wrote: post #70
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 a…

I don't prefer one over the other. They both serve my purposes well enough. Generally, I've found that people who don't like Firefox's dev tools just haven't used them much.

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#132

Post by blackbrokkoli »

wvenable wrote: post #89
bad_user wrote: post #54

From TFA: >> " For developers, it’s one less browser engine to worry about " >> " For the open web: it’s complicated. If I were to put on the hat of a pragmatic developer, I fail to see the big gain in having competing browser engines. " The author does not understand web standards and probably doesn't remember IExplorer's monopoly and the era of " works best in IExplorer " websites. And what fewer and fewer people r…

The author says "Microsoft had a browser that sucked (IE6)." This is not true. Microsoft had the best browser -- fastest, most stable, and friendliest for development. They created many of the standards we now take for granted. IE was literally the Chrome of the day -- the best browser installed by default on the biggest operating system.

"fastest" doesn't mean "fast", "friendliest" doesn't mean "friendly".

Suffocating progress with monopoly abuse is not a good platform for claiming to have the "best" browser...

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#133

Post by kenhwang »

larrik wrote: post #98
jcranmer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PPS: also to add to less known evil moves by Google - their U2F websites refuse to work in Firefox, despite it supporting U2F for a long time. The one that still sticks in my craw is that they never bothered to add support for Hangouts in Firefox. Hangouts was modified to use WebRTC in Chrome, but relied on a plugin in Firefox--despite Firefox actually implementing the relevant WebRTC features first.

Hmm, I use Hangouts in Firefox...

The chat or the video? The video hasn't worked in long time now.

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#134

Post by yogthos »

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…

Has Mozilla considered focusing on the emerging federated ecosystem championed by Mastodon. I really think that federated sites are a way forward for the open web. Federated platforms are inherently decentralized, and they avoid the problem of a single company deciding what's right for all the users. Platforms like Mastodon and PeerTube are already able to interoperate via ActivityPub, and it would be great to see this ecosystem keep growing. I can see an ecosystem of federated platforms that fill the same niches as Twitter, Fb, Reddit, and Instagram. All developed independently, and all able to collaborate with one another.

One big aspect of traditional web is searching, and that's where Google built their empire originally. Why not invert that equation and build search and discoverability into federated platforms. Perhaps extend ActivityPub, or create a sister protocol that focuses on searching. This approach would address the problem of discoverability much better than an external search engine. Perhaps Mozilla could help come up with such a standard.

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#135

Post by Lio »

jnurmine wrote: post #96
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…

The tracking protection using DNT and the like is indeed a gimmick. It is an ineffectual and passive way to hinder tracking. Better ways are to be more active: to reject third-party cookies, disallow sites from storing anything, uninstall Flash and such, run AdBlock Plus, run uBlock Origin and so on. I mean, if I visit a random site which is full of non-original content and/or simple regurgitation of press releases,…

The purpose of DNT is not to stop tracking. It's to tell websites explicitly that you don't want to be tracked.

No one receiving a DNT header can say we didn't know people coming to the site didn't want to be tracked because they hadn't logged in.

It doesn't mater if it's on by default. It should still be respected.

That's different job to blocking trackers or ads.

That a site is ignoring DNT is just a sign that they are run by bad actors. It's no different to logging in to a site, opting out of tracking and the site ignoring that and tracking you secretly anyway.

...or putting some dark pattern UI in front of that option so that it's hard to tell if you've opted out or not.

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#137

Post by jolmg »

bunderbunder wrote: post #108
jolmg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't know what's better. While it's bad that having a free web has lead to multiple entities doing everything they can to track as much as they can, it's also a great benefit to society to have free access to so much knowledge. In the end though, I don't think we'll see a shift to people paying for their content. Societal problems arising from lack of privacy is one of those high-impact-low-probability-or-s…

> While it's bad that having a free web has lead to multiple entities doing everything they can to track as much as they can, it's also a great benefit to society to have free access to so much knowledge. This feels like a false dilemma to me. Many, if not most, of the corners of the web that are devoted to disseminating knowledge are funded by means that don't involve tracking ads. It's the entertainment corner of t…

I think you're right. Wikipedia (and other WikiMedia projects), MDN, StackExchange sites, wiki sites like wiki.archlinux.org, wiki.osdev.org, wiki.c2.com, public forums like lambda-the-ultimate.org or news.ycombinator.com would probably still be free. I can't think of any place that I've learned significantly from that provides their content for advertising money. They all seem to be up primarily for altruistic reasons.

EDIT: Thought of one: YouTube. I wonder, though, if the content providers I've learned most from in YouTube would have chosen not to provide if there weren't advertising options. Maybe they activate advertising because it's easy and would have uploaded regardless?

EDIT 2: The real question, though, would be if someone would be willing to make a YouTube alternative and eat the cost of development and maintenance of the site and hosting of those videos for altruistic reasons... It's a lot more costly than hosting a site that serves lightweight text.

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#138

Post by hnaccy »

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…

I have 1450 tabs open and Firefox is fine, Chrome would be an unusable mess.

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#139

Post by Lio »

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…

> DNT was a shit show. DNT should have always required manual user intervention to be respected. It doesn't mater if it's on by default or not.

Sorry but that is nonsense. You should respect the DNT just because you're are receiving it and so being asked not to track.

It's perfectly possible to serve content aware adverts using BATs[1] without the creepy surveillance. You don't need to track so if you're asked to stop, just stop.

https://basicattentiontoken.org/

Re: State of web browsers in 2018

#140

Post by cpeterso »

larrik wrote: post #98
jcranmer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PPS: also to add to less known evil moves by Google - their U2F websites refuse to work in Firefox, despite it supporting U2F for a long time. The one that still sticks in my craw is that they never bothered to add support for Hangouts in Firefox. Hangouts was modified to use WebRTC in Chrome, but relied on a plugin in Firefox--despite Firefox actually implementing the relevant WebRTC features first.

Hmm, I use Hangouts in Firefox...

Hangouts supports WebRTC video in Firefox now, four years after supporting WebRTC in Chrome (2014-2018).

I've maintained a timeline of Hangouts' WebRTC support (as part of my work to track the sunsetting of NPAPI plugins, other than Flash, in Firefox that blocked Win64):

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Win64#History

Post reply on HN