The Firefox Dilemma

#1

Post by tannhaeuser » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 8:57 AM UTC

The Firefox Dilemma
blog.tawhidhannan.co.uk

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#2

Post by TAForObvReasons » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 10:27 AM UTC

Out of curiosity, before Chrome came along, why didn't Firefox eat IE's lunch? The Microsoft anti-trust case was 1999-2001 but Chrome came out in 2008.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#3

Post by cyberjunkie » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 10:31 AM UTC

I wonder if there is a term to describe the sheer ignorance of the (tech-aware) masses. Sadly, Firefox is fighting a hard battle that it's possibly, and slowly losing.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#4

Post by philliphaydon » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 10:31 AM UTC

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #2

Out of curiosity, before Chrome came along, why didn't Firefox eat IE's lunch? The Microsoft anti-trust case was 1999-2001 but Chrome came out in 2008.

There was basically no marketing of browsers in 2000... I found opera and Firefox on a cd from pc world. But never saw anything on the internet about it... Google pushes chrome easily by plastering it in front of you every time you go to Google or gmail...

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#5

Post by AndrewDucker » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 10:32 AM UTC

My main reasons for using Firefox are side tabs and being able to prevent tab reuse when searching or using the address bar.

Chrome simply isn't configurable enough to make it nice to use for me.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#6

Post by baybal2 » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 10:33 AM UTC

Mozilla directors are wholly responsible for turning Firefox into what it became now. They have no moral right whatsoever to plead for mercy now.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#7

Post by dTal » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 10:33 AM UTC

>I think about Chrome’s usurping of Internet Explorer (IE), and I wonder (antitrust and all aside) would Chrome have usurped IE if it wasn’t for IE stagnating? I remember when I was younger and jumped ship to Chrome - personally, it wasn’t about using Chrome because it wasn’t IE, it was about Chrome beating IE in a foot race and offering me a clean user experience.

Chrome ate Firefox's lunch, not IE's. Firefox was the first browser to take a chunk out of IE, in large part because of the stagnation of IE6. People were switching away from IE at a fairly consistent rate. When Chrome came along, the rate remained the same, but people started switching to Chrome instead of Firefox.

This graph shows it clearly (starts a little late to catch Firefox's initial bump but you can see the trend): http://i.imgur.com/7bP2pmj.png

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#8

Post by hugh4life » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 10:33 AM UTC

I wouldn't rush into it, but with webassembly I can't help but think that a browser rendered mobile OS is a concept worth reviving at some point. And google is unlikely to pursue that since they have Android.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#9

Post by zecg » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 10:34 AM UTC

Firefox would do well to remove Pocket integration and stop placing ads.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#10

Post by rlv-dan » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 10:34 AM UTC

A big problem is that the web standard is too complicated. Browsers are pretty much a virtual os that can do almost everything. For anyone to make a browser from scratch today is not feasible. We will move towards a monoculture, because there is no alternative unless we make a drastic shift in rethinking how the web should work.