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Goodbye, EdgeHTML

blog.mozilla.org

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361–370 of 679 posts

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#361

Post by derefr »

pseudalopex wrote: post #346
turblety wrote: post #226

I really wish Mozilla would work on making their Gecko engine (or whatever backend they use now) more usable to external developers. WebKit always seems very easy for developers to integrate into their apps. Whether you think it's a good or bad move, Electron has made building cross platform desktop applications a lot easier. It's a shame it must use Chromium and V8. In fairness Mozilla used to have XUL [1] until it…

> Electron has made building cross platform desktop applications a lot easier For people who have web development experience, yes.

It's made building cross-platform desktop applications that are just wrappers for existing web-apps down-right trivial (and no web-dev experience required there.)

And that case applies more often than you'd think. For example, the Spotify app, the Slack app†, the various Facebook Messenger "clients", etc.

† the Slack app is built with http://macgapproject.github.io/, but it's pretty much the same thing.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#362

Post by derefr »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #62
kevmo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad Microsoft didn't get broken up in the 90s. We'd probably have more browser options.

It's too bad Google isn't being broken up now.

Didn't they essentially do that to themselves? The various ventures of "Google" are now several companies that just happen to be majority-owned by one company (Alphabet.) If the SEC didn't like that arrangement, all they would have to do is get Alphabet to divest its ownership.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#363

Post by esistgut »

davidp wrote: post #19

Seriously, switch to Firefox. It's good again, and prioritizes privacy.[0] After Chrome's forced-sign-in debacle [1] I switched away from Chrome on all my platforms (Windows, Linux, Android) and haven't missed a thing. [0]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055161

After quantum I did my best to switch but I had the following problems: no scrollbar search highlights, terrible Linux/gnome dark theme integration, angular source maps not working. After a couple of weeks I got back to Chrome.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#364

Post by derefr »

PunchTornado wrote: post #103
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...

as a frontender I'm not sad. A lot of bugs coming in from Edge. And Edge has a pretty shit debugger too. So no tears for me. Waiting for Safari to die. Firefox and Chrome are good.

Why would Safari [i.e. Webkit] die? Looking at desktop + mobile market shares, if anyone would be "the next to die", it'd be Firefox.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#365

Post by Steltek »

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #358
davidp wrote: post #19

Seriously, switch to Firefox. It's good again, and prioritizes privacy.[0] After Chrome's forced-sign-in debacle [1] I switched away from Chrome on all my platforms (Windows, Linux, Android) and haven't missed a thing. [0]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055161

> and prioritizes privacy.[0] It actually prioritizes calling home, stopping ad-blockers from working on Mozilla owned sites, etc. Don't get me wrong, I am a Firefox user myself, and I do think that Firefox is the most privacy oriented browser when compared to the other popular ones, but nowadays it is a pain in the butt to disable all of their spyware on about:config.

> stopping ad-blockers from working on Mozilla owned sites

Err, do you mean preventing extensions from modifying critical sites like addons.mozilla.org? Because that's seems like common sense to me.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#366

Post by blattimwind »

tptacek wrote: post #293
Someone1234 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't the case. Chrome supports multiple profiles. Mozilla's Multi-Account Container tabs isn't multiple profits. It is multiple isolated containers running under the same profile, in the same browser window. A closer analogy would be if Chrome allowed each tab to have its own profile, rather than each window, and for each one to be lighter weight than a full profile.

Your sibling comment pointed out the same thing. Other than having 2 tabs in the same window with 2 different sets of cookies, which is something I never want (but you might), is there anything Firefox's feature gets me that Chrome's feature doesn't?

Firefox has also supported multiple profiles since forever.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#367

Post by ethanpil »

I don't understand why Microsoft didn't partner with Firefox instead.

Strategically it would have been a super win - lots of good will value to gain, a way to keep themselves and others less reliant on Google, and perhaps even push/use Firefox as a poster child GitHub partner for further value. What gives?

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#368

Post by fireattack »

smt88 wrote: post #333
fireattack wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Fx as my main browser, but the quick search feature in Fx is miles behind Chrome's. 1. In chrome, you don't need to manually add anything; you don't need to assign a keyword that you have to memorize. All the websites that you frequent that support OpenSearch will be automatically added by Chrome and you use their domain as keyword. I can now type en + tab to search on Wikipedia, as well as hundreds of other we…

Those two features combined end up sending keystrokes to third parties in a way that is not transparent to users, and they haven’t consented to it, either. I prefer Firefox’s defaults on both counts.

Fair enough, but there is no way to change to that even if I consent to send my keystrokes for auto completion.

Also, Firefox has auto completion on by default on its default search engine, which is Google no less. So I'm not sure why this topic is about privacy other than purely technical.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#369

Post by ethanpil »

tomphoolery wrote: post #72
davidp wrote: post #19

Seriously, switch to Firefox. It's good again, and prioritizes privacy.[0] After Chrome's forced-sign-in debacle [1] I switched away from Chrome on all my platforms (Windows, Linux, Android) and haven't missed a thing. [0]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055161

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.

The only thing I miss in Firefox is the ability to Chromecast directly. It's useful.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#370

Post by metildaa »

m-p-3 wrote: post #199
Someone1234 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing about Firefox is Mozilla's Multi-Account Container tabs[0]. Essentially it allows you to put different tabs into different light-weight profiles, with their own session, cookies, and state. That means if you want to log into Facebook but don't want Facebook following you online, just give Facebook its own container. Mozilla has anti-tracking already baked in, but Multi-Account Containers are a whole ot…

I wish the addon would sync its container configuration accross Firefox Sync. Setting my containers manually on the multiple computers I use daily is a real pain in the ass.

For mobile use container syncing (even just ssyncing which domains go in which container) would make it sooo much easier to protect from tracking.

Firefox for Android is a notable improvement over Chrome, but the add-ons available for it, even simple ones like javascript toggle, are significantly worse. On desktop it retains state for each site, wheread on Android it is a global toggle for all websites.

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