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Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#211

Post by piotrkubisa »

Yoric wrote: post #123
mparramon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you elaborate?

Mozilla has been experimenting for years with ways to lead users to what they want to read without going through a search engine. This is both an attempt to improve user experience, an attempt to workaround Google's search quasi-monopoly and an attempt to find alternate revenue sources that would guarantee Mozilla's independence from Google. And yes, the difference between this and ads is paper-thin – just like the d…

> For these users, lots of private data was sent to Cliqz (pretty much the data that Chrome sends to Google).

This. I don't get it why people point out on and on the same three mistakes that Firefox team made in the past. In case of Cliqz, I guess they want to say: "I am not going to use Firefox, because it sends browsing history to Cliqz". Isn't that a bit weird? I agree, that was a mistake and Firefox does not have crystal-clear history, but in case of Google Chrome I am not really sure how Google collect, enrich and manage my data.

Personally, I can only notice two advantages of using Google Chrome over Firefox these days: a developer console and it is "faster" to develop websites targeting only one browser. I think I just got used to dev-console in Chrome, with each release the new developer console in Firefox is way better. About the second, it still doesn't matter much, because we have also mobile browsers, which also takes a lot of our precious time during development. Is there are any other unique selling point of Chrome which I've missed?

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#212

Post by ocdtrekkie »

nindalf wrote: post #9

Just so we can avoid rehashing the discussion whenever a post encouraging the use of Firefox is posted. - Yes, Mozilla is still the better browser when it comes to privacy. - Yes, Mozilla has made missteps with Pocket and Mr. Robot. - Yes, it is slow/resource heavy on certain Macs with non-default resolutions. Yes, Mozilla is working on a fix. - Yes, it has become really fast for most users after Quantum improvements…

Thank you for most of this, except: Chrome is the primary distribution method of malware, and we need to stop pretending it has better security. It doesn't.

The Chrome Web Store is full of active, known-about malware Google does not remove.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#213

Post by SilasX »

feanaro wrote: post #209
SilasX wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Yes, Firefox dropped support for remapping keys, an integral UX feature that was present in Super Metroid (SNES, 1992). (Well, that’s not fair, they still support an API for remapping keys that only takes effect after a page tab has loaded.)

Yes, I'm eagerly waiting for them to support a proper keyboard shortcut API since I'm a former Pentadactyl and present Tridactyl user so I know your pain.

Ditto! I maintained Pentadactyl compatibility for a while when the dev team pushed breaks and the extension's metadata needed to be updated. You'll love my Hitler parody about my reaction to them breaking unsigned addons, which specifically references Pentadactyl.

"If every addon must be personally signed by Mozilla, why not just shrink-wrap the browser and make me get it from Microsoft at Best Buy?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taGARf8K5J8

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#214

Post by Karunamon »

Yoric wrote: post #191
Karunamon wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could be said of the RSS support.

True. The big difference is that users use Pocket but didn't use RSS.

Meaning the nontechnical set of users that don't go out of their way to disable telemetry, at least...

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#215

Post by gambler »

codehalo wrote: post #170

Used to use Firefox, primarily for the dev tools. Switched to Brave. Easily the best browser out here right now.

What features Brave has that are missing in Firefox?

Brave is based on Chromium. It doesn't seem to have any radical UI features that would put it ahead.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#216

Post by bzbarsky »

astura wrote: post #138
neilsimp1 wrote: post #122

I've seen the comment here on HN and a few other sites in the past few days - are there sites out there that don't work in Firefox, but do work in Chrome? Like, I'm aware of a few CSS properties that work in Chrome but not FF, but I don't think I've ever come across a site that doesn't look or work completely fine in FF. The only exception to this that I can think of is Google Earth, which I'm pretty sure you can ope…

I was looking at this page yesterday in Firefox: https://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/Collections/TitleInfo/512 When I enter a name and click "search" I get a page with some JSON ({"Result":true,"Status":"success","Redirect":1}) rather than the results page. Worked in chrome, however.

I just tried this in Firefox, and it seems to be working ok for me. Are you still seeing the problem? If so, and if you have some time to help diagnose what's going on here, I would really appreciate it...

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#217

Post by lern_too_spel »

saagarjha wrote: post #103
jefftk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What design choices mean third party Android browsers can do JIT but third party iPhone ones can't?

Android doesn't do codesigning, at least in the way that iOS does: on iOS, all code that executes must be signed and approved by Apple before it is allowed to be loaded by the OS into memory (with some exceptions e.g. Safari). JIT gets around this because applications can now generate and execute arbitrary code, which is obviously something that Apple doesn't want. So this basically means that you are not allowed to…

It is a result of Apple's broken security model. On Android, generated code has no more provoleges than the code that generated it, just like interpreted code.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#219

Post by calcifer »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #178
calcifer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole reason Microsoft gave up on their own engine is because no one was using it, not even inside the company. Why would Edge suddenly become popular just because of a rendering engine change?

... because it is the default on Windows? The marketing effort of Chrome can be chipped away if "they are basically the same", which is a fair comment now that Edge is basically a glorified fork of Chromium

> because it is the default on Windows?

Which clearly didn't mean anything [1] for increasing market share.

[1] https://ferdychristant.com/the-state-of-web-browsers-f5a83a4...

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#220

Post by gambler »

Some reasons I like using Firefox over Chrome right now:

- Tags for bookmarks.

- Bult-in reader view that makes pages readable again and has hassle-free test-to-speech.

- I can customize toolbars to much higher extent.

What I would really like to see is more tools for managing large numbers of tabs.

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