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

Goodbye, EdgeHTML

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 679 posts

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#201

Post by joshtynjala »

_qbjt wrote: post #114

As an aside, does Apple or Google ever contribute to KHTML? Safari and Chrome would not exist without it and yet the last stable release was in 2014. Seems like yet another case of large corporations taking advantage of free software while giving little to nothing back to the community.

WebKit and Chromium are both still open source. While they may not be porting commits back to KHTML specifically, they are certainly making all of their enhancements available for free to the community. Personally, I wouldn't call that little to nothing.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#202

Post by jaredcwhite »

If NetMarketShare can be believed, the #2 browser across desktop, mobile, and tablets is Safari which uses WebKit.

https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?options...

Not much has changed in the past year, with Safari holding steady at around 19% and Chrome going from 60% to 63%. Firefox is baring holding on to its 5%.

So while it's concerning to see MS embrace the Chromium engine from the standpoint of adding fuel to the Google fire, I don't see this having any real effect in the near term on the browser market nor the development of new web technologies. Firefox is certainly right to promote its excellent Quantum-based browser these days, but honestly I only see Firefox as being relevant on Windows. On the Mac, Safari is an excellent browser and one I use personally as well as for web development, and iOS doesn't allow any engine other than WebKit to be used. And with Android, Google has the upper hand on that platform.

In summary, as much as I want to cheer for Firefox and the Gecko Quantum engine from a philosophical standpoint, the only real competition to Chrome and Chromium right now is Safari and Webkit. Let's just hope Apple continues to put adequate resources into the development of its browser and keeps pace with Chrome.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#203

Post by m-p-3 »

adontz wrote: post #116
tomphoolery wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is a way better experience than Chrome these days. Google, you constantly add new features that nobody wants, and furthermore, make it WAY more difficult for those of us who care about privacy to turn your tracking BS off. Google Chrome can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned.

Firefox added Pocket, and kind of nobody wanted it. So it happens in FF too.

I have a Kobo eReader with Pocket integration and I actually use it quite often.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#204

Post by pcwalton »

pickpuck wrote: post #198

Which is better: 1 specification in psuedocode that 4 companies implement unevenly, or 1 codebase that 4 companies contribute to?

The former, because I don't have to get the other four companies' permission to improve infrastructural things that don't affect web compatibility. (For example, parallel styling and layout, WebRender, etc.)

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#205

Post by bzbarsky »

ksec wrote: post #189
bzbarsky wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-201... the breakdown seems to be as follows, rounding to the nearest percentage point: 50% directly spent on Firefox development. 12% spent on marketing (for comparison, rumor has it that Chrome's marketing spend is comparable to Mozilla's total revenue). 13% general and administrative expenses (this includes things like leases on office space, as far as I…

Why do they pay tax when they are from what I know partly non profits?

The Mozilla Foundation is a nonprofit. It is involved in a number of efforts, including policy advocacy, but does not itself develop a web browser. When people make donations to "Mozilla", those go to the Foundation.

The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Foundation. It is _not_ a nonprofit and develops a web browser as well as most other software you would associate with "Mozilla". It pays dividends to the Foundation which the Foundation uses, alongside donations, to fund its work. The Corporation pays taxes on its profits, like any other corporation that is not explicitly a nonprofit. Note that I am explicitly not using "for-profit" to describe the Corporation, because profit is not the Corporation's goal. Again, the only shareholder in the Corporation is the Foundation, though they do have separate boards and somewhat separate governance.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#206

Post by tyteen4a03 »

cronix wrote: post #185
tyteen4a03 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, can confirm that FF is still killing my 2014 MBP.

Strange, it runs just as fast as Chrome on my 2013 MBP

It seems to only happen with certain Retina MBPs.

Which is a shame - I really wanted to like Firefox on Mac.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#207

Post by zokier »

nashashmi wrote: post #24
babuskov wrote: post #8

If anyone told me a decade ago that a day will come when I will feel sorry for Microsoft browser technology going away...

10 years ago it was forseeable that MS would lose the browser wars. BTW, this is not the first time MS has considered Chromium. Back before the fork of Edge, they considered using Webkit.

By 2008 it was fairly obvious that MS wasn't serious contender in the browser market anymore. This was two years after IE7 release which itself was pretty lackluster, and IE8 was still nowhere to be seen. Firefox popularity was pretty much at its peak, and Chrome was just released immediately starting to eat up the world.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#208

Post by Klonoar »

function_seven wrote: post #88

I use Firefox exclusively and am not happy with how the browser market is shaping up. For all of you that have a "last 10%" problem with Firefox (i.e. "I'd use Firefox if only it had X or Y feature"), please consider if that's worth contributing to the monoculture of rendering engines, and worth extending Google's monopoly on Internet standards.

I mean, it kind of is?

You have to understand that there's making a stand on what's right, and then choosing to focus on the rest of your life... which, in this case, means not being annoyed by a browser that isn't keeping up. Firefox is great, many of us have loved it since Firefox 2 (or even before!) but you don't get significant increases in users by being the "more greater good" option. You get them by keeping up in the race. A browser is a tool and I want it to feel like it belongs, let me move, and then get the hell out of my way.

Every single time I use FF on Mac there is something weird or buggy about it, and this holds true even if I install it on a freshly bought unpolluted MacBook Pro. The UI stands out like a sore thumb, and it doesn't feel like it belongs.

I'll continue using Safari.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#209

Post by txcwpalpha »

iscrewyou wrote: post #143
selrond wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t had a single perf problem with Chrome. It seems to be related to the platform - I’m on a Mac

I have a MacBook Pro. The fan spins up sometimes. So what? It also spins up when I’m doing other tasks. I’m always plugged in. So I have no opinion to share about battery performance.

Different commenter here, but same issue as the parent. I'm on a 2016 MBP. When I use Chrome, my fans stay off or at around 1200rpm at all times unless I open a video or a Twitch stream, at which point they jump up to around 1400rpm and the highest the CPU temp gets is around 50c.

On Firefox, my fans will randomly jump up to 3000rpm when doing only normal web browsing, even on simple sites like HN. I'm using FF right now to post this comment, and as soon as I opened HN, my CPU temp went from 40 to 50c. And this is the only tab I have open. If I open a video, or heaven forbid a Twitch stream or Google Maps, my fans instantly go to 7000rpm and my CPU temp goes to 70-80c. Even just opening Gmail makes FF go haywire. And it isn't just "my fans spin up, big deal". Browsing the internet on FF turns my MBP into a slag of near-molten metal that is too hot to even touch, and I can only imagine what it's doing to my battery life.

I want to like FF, I really do, but this is simply a dealbreaker for me, and even though it's a known issue, Mozilla seems uninterested in fixing it (I have previously seen a response from Mozilla that essentially amounted to "it's hard for us to optimize FF for certain sites, so we aren't going to even try").

It's clearly not an issue for everyone, but I definitely have noticed that I'm not the only one who has these issues, either.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#210

Post by seba_dos1 »

cronix wrote: post #185
tyteen4a03 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, can confirm that FF is still killing my 2014 MBP.

Strange, it runs just as fast as Chrome on my 2013 MBP

AFAIK there was a bug causing it to eat a lot of CPU on non-native resolutions (display scaling), which may explain some differences in user's experience.
Post reply on HN