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

The Firefox Dilemma

blog.tawhidhannan.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 208 posts

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#121

Post by hkt »

jefftk wrote: post #109
hkt wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! I'd be very happy with a fixed, lower tier of web standard that is easy to implement against. It should contain enough standards to build attractive, solid (eg) online banking interfaces, blogs and news sites, commenting etc. In other words, a minimum for media consumption, rather than apps.

Building a browser that supported only AMP would be one way to do this and have a significant number of pages you could handle. (Disclosure: I work for Google on AMP ads. I also know how much people here dislike AMP, so this is not entirely serious.)

Not actually a terrible idea if it can be done without tracking. Thank you for disclosing.

I'd quite like an RSS+reader view browser. At a guess, RSS+reader view+AMP could cover pretty substantial amounts of existing content.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#122

Post by Yoric »

chrismorgan wrote: post #108
waterhouse wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they get rid of bookmark keywords, without some other equivalent mechanism (i.e. one that lets me set up URL bar commands so that "wp X" -> roughly "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X", "g" -> "mail.google.com/u/0/h", and so on), then I will be really annoyed.

It’s possible to use search engines instead, but creating your own basically requires you to find or craft a search box that is equivalent to the desired action. It’s in no way easy to work with (not like making a bookmark with the %s placeholder), and isn’t quite as pleasant to use in the awesome bar either. I’m with you that removing bookmark keywords would be very annoying at present.

Note that it should be pretty easy to write an add-on that generates a search provider. It's just a simple (and open-standard) xml format.

Not enough time to write one myself these days, but if keywords disappear, I might.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#123

Post by TheArcane »

Konryan wrote: post #41

I think there's another factor at play that isn't often mentioned: Google uses the dominant position of its services, as well as the strength of their brands, to promote Chrome as the better browser, in not-so-subtle ways. One is often repeatedly prompted to install Chrome when visiting Google on other browsers[1][2]. Most normal users would just give up and install just to get rid of the pop up. Microsoft has been d…

Yes. Google translate integration is the only reason I keep Chrome around

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#124

Post by Yoric »

Eridrus wrote: post #116
toyg wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and Chrome did that in one simple way: marketing and monopoly power. They leveraged their position in search and webmail to push people to switch, and hammered the message in mainstream advertising (on buses and newspapers, even in Europe). If they had pushed FF instead of building their own browser, now FF would be in that position - regardless of technical merits (which were minor, and basically boiled dow…

This seems like an attempt to rewrite history. I was an avowed Firefox user, but Firefox was slow. I bought a EEE PC and Firefox was just too heavy to run, whereas Chrome ran fine. Eventually all my computers ran Chrome because Firefox wasn't the best option anywhere any more.

As an avid Firefox user, I must admit that Chrome was better for a long time – largely due to two reasons:

- Mozilla diverting devs towards Firefox OS;

- Mozilla attempting to maintain the old XUL/XPCOM-based add-ons architecture.

Both of these hurt Firefox a lot. Since Firefox 57, though, Firefox is back to being really quick.

On the other hand, most (non-dev) people I know who installed Chrome did it for marketing reasons – oftentimes simply because they had installed an anti-virus or Flash, which came bundled with Chrome – not out of actual merit.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#125

Post by soniman »

The best thing about Firefox is that the browser is separate from your Google account so you don't have to worry about your bookmarks/extensions getting synced behind your back by Google and messing everything up. Google requiring browser/Google account to be the same is a nuisance that you don't have to worry about with Firefox.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#126

Post by josteink »

> With the news about Edge switching to a foundation using Chromium a lot of the conversation has centered on browser engines slipping into something of a monoculture.

Not to come of as dismissive, but if this is the first time you picked up this conversation, you simply haven't been paying attention the last half decade.

If we've addressed things properly back then (with web developers using more than the Ad-company's browser), we wouldn't be in the situation where we are now with only 2 real engines remaining, down from 4, and mobile more crippled than ever.

And now it's going to be much, much worse encouraging web developers to actually adhere to the standards for a diverse browser-market.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#127

Post by TuringTest »

AFAIK, Firefox is positioning itself as the only open source, standards compliant web browser for Virtual Reality, including 3D support (not just 2D floating windows). Chrome is neither there, nor expected.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#128

Post by claudiawerner »

dmos62 wrote: post #37
rlv-dan wrote: post #10

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.

Yeah. In the early days of internet, web won, because of its relative expressiveness and lack of -rigidity- structure, compared to gopher for example. Now we see that the same unbounded expressiveness led to a monolithic system within a system, that is only feasibly maintainable by large organizations. One program should do one thing, (and do it well): that's what leads to healthy systems. For me, it's not the bloate…

But the web has also allowed for things which are way more than document delivery; imageboards, for instance, weren't around before the web, and the fact of carrying images made them unsuitable for previous technology.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#129

Post by pvinis »

hkt wrote: post #95
pvinis wrote: post #87

Imagine if Firefox used webkit/chromium underneath. Would that allow Mozilla to make Firefox more awesome by freeing up dev time that was taken by servo and gecko, and now can be used to make great UI and extensions and features?

No, they'd spend their time pruning all the google telemetry crud out of chromium. The fact is that Mozilla's next gen stuff is going to be streets ahead of Chrome, and I suspect their efforts will be rewarded in the end.

I know and I agree. I was more of a thought exercise. I would prefer for Mozilla to keep doing their thing.

If they were to put webkit on Firefox, and after the initial de-googling, they would start working on webkit and contribute there, or somehow merge some servo things in webkit. I guess in the end it would still take a few years until it's complete, but it is an interesting thought to me.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#130

Post by Yoric »

mcny wrote: post #68
bayesian_horse wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Chrome can compete with itself by swapping out the rendering and Javascript vms.

> Maybe Chrome can compete with itself by swapping out the rendering and Javascript vms. Not that I have any insider information but from the complaints I've read about how the committees that handle promotion requests at Google, I'd be surprised if there aren't Google engineers already trying their hand at this. What I'd like to know is how much does Chrome cost Google? I've read that Mozilla spends just under half…

I remember estimates (so, take them with a laaaaarge pinch of salt) on ads promoting Chrome, which were expected to be ~4x the total budget of Mozilla.

I would be surprised if (without counting ads), the Chrome paid devs were not at least 3x the number of Firefox paid devs.

Post reply on HN