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

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

robert.ocallahan.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 343 posts

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

#281

Post by tomc1985 »

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…

"- No, you can't just "fork Chromium" if you don't like the way Google is running the project. Web developers will still make their website work well with whatever Google releases, regardless of standards."

Hah, even compiling Chromium takes a huge amount of effort and a workday or so of time. Don't think I'd want to go spelunking through that codebase

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

#282

Post by opencl »

apetresc wrote: post #185
opencl wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently webrender only works on nightly builds unless you have NVIDIA hardware on Windows 10 (not considered mature enough on other hardware/platforms yet). But to enable it you turn on gfx.webrender.all in about:config.

For NVidia/Win10 users, is it in Stable, or only the beta channel? I have that configuration available but I still don't see the gfx.webrender.all key in about:config.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1432515

Going by this bugzilla thread it seems like it should be in stable. But maybe they changed it back.

Though the hardware requirement is actually NVIDIA desktop hardware on Windows 10, i.e. laptops are currently excluded. Which is implemented by checking if your computer has a battery.

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

#283

Post by Shorel »

gambler wrote: post #233
jillesvangurp wrote: post #90

Easy path to success for Firefox is to continue to beef up security and privacy tooling for their users and have sane defaults. They've been winning a lot of users who feel abandoned by the big companies in this space. A problem and conflict of interest for them regarding this is that they are funded mainly by Google. Firefox has a conflict of interest here because they are not doing all they can here because that wo…

Most people don't care. Firefox became popular by being fast and offering tabbed browsing when IE didn't. I think being fast and offering radical quality of life feature is a good strategy to follow even now.

Firefox became popular by copying Opera to the extent that right now one of the reasons I use it, is because it feels more like Opera 12 than the modern Opera ever could.

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

#284

Post by squarefoot »

nindalf wrote: post #126
feanaro wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Yes, Firefox does support Containers, which are a very innovative privacy feature allowing you to maintain separate browser sessions (cookies, site preferences, ...) towards different websites inside a single browser instance.[1][2] [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers#w_what-are-c... [2] https://www.thechiefmeat.com/guides/containers.html

Yes this is why > Mozilla is still the better browser when it comes to privacy

Not just privacy. When Chrome came out it could literally spank Firefox' ass in speed; there was absolutely no contest then. But over time Chrome became bigger and bigger while the folks at Mozilla optimized FF code so that today the latest Firefox can outperform the latest Chrome while still being more trustworthy privacy wise. To me as of today there's not a single reason to use Chrome over Firefox, and users should also avoid using products requiring Chrome; just remember what became of the Internet when web developers started making sites that required IE to work.

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

#285

Post by apetresc »

opencl wrote: post #282
apetresc wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For NVidia/Win10 users, is it in Stable, or only the beta channel? I have that configuration available but I still don't see the gfx.webrender.all key in about:config.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1432515 Going by this bugzilla thread it seems like it should be in stable. But maybe they changed it back. Though the hardware requirement is actually NVIDIA desktop hardware on Windows 10, i.e. laptops are currently excluded. Which is implemented by checking if your computer has a battery.

Yup, this is an NVidia GTX 1080Ti on a desktop, should've been fine. Based on the other response it looks like the toggle is only on Nightly in Windows too, they're only doing random A/B tests on the other channels. Too bad.

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

#286

Post by kgwxd »

saagarjha wrote: post #53
bad_user wrote: post #39

Note this advice is true for email services as well. Pay for and use an alternative now, or later you won't get the choice. Google is hellbent on locking people into their ecosystem. One such move is the promotion of AMP: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/13/amp-for-email-is-a-terribl... Speaking of email and browsers, the Gmail app on top of iOS presents the user with a choice between two browsers: 1. Safari 2. Chrome,…

> Firefox on iOS doesn't do that either, but at least Firefox has its own tracking protection. Firefox on iOS can't do this, unfortunately :(

Which is why iOS should be avoided too. They may appear to be playing kind of nice now, but they won't forever. That blatant disregard for openness is a sure sign they're going to end up the same way, no matter what they say now.

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

#288

Post by latexr »

wutbrodo wrote: post #272
jdofaz wrote: post #202

The future is here for at least one K-12 school district that I work with. The majority of the organizations computing devices are iPad, Chromebook or Windows S. None of those devices can run Firefox.

You can't run Firefox on an iPad? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-your-ip...

Seeing as browsers on iOS can’t have their own rendering engine, no, you can’t run Firefox on iPad in any meaningful way.

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

#289

Post by CWuestefeld »

jdofaz wrote: post #202

The future is here for at least one K-12 school district that I work with. The majority of the organizations computing devices are iPad, Chromebook or Windows S. None of those devices can run Firefox.

Recentish Chromebooks can trivially run Firefox Mobile.

I actually spent last night getting a full-blown desktop FF running on my chromebook (by way of Crostini, their Linux virtualization). It's not something my mom or even my wife would ever be able to do, but it is possible. And if Mozilla really cared, they could package it in a way that would make it a whole lot easier to install.

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

#290

Post by rchaud »

Santosh83 wrote: post #140
zymhan wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've stuck with it and preached it and told people why Google is just going to repeat IE's history with Chrome, and my tech friends still mostly use Chrome. There is something about A) what everyone else is doing, and B) inertia, that is just too difficult to overcome without some sudden significant change.

The single biggest advantage of Chrome is that it's bundled as the default, non-removable browser on the largest mobile OS in the world: Android. And nearly all those people then expect to use the same browser on laptops and desktops and even here it is often pre-installed by OEM. If Firefox had somehow had this clinching advantage in an alternate reality, they would be the Chrome now. The actual performance and tech…

Android phones sold in China don't come with Google Play Services or Chrome. Even my Canadian Samsung Galaxy S7 used Samsung's "Internet" as the default browser app, although Chrome did come pre-installed.

But otherwise, you are correct. For most Western markets, Android phones give Chrome a big advantage.

Post reply on HN