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The Firefox Dilemma

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Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#171

Post by bzbarsky »

tarruda wrote: post #69
chrismorgan wrote: post #65

I’ve been using Firefox since about 0.93, with about a year in the middle when I used Chrome as my primary browser, because it ran from a USB disk much better than Firefox did at the time, and that was what I needed at the time. (I am glad that Chrome came along, because by showing how bad Firefox was in some areas it spurred Mozilla on to improve it, so that it’s no longer bad like that.) I look at the sessions of p…

> I currently have 165 tabs spread across three windows How do you manage this setup? I'm specifically interested in how you can assign tabs to different windows and have this information persist across restarts.

Firefox persists which tabs are in which window across restarts, if you have it set to restore your session.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#172

Post by sebazzz »

sametmax wrote: post #50
olejorgenb wrote: post #45

1. I like firefox's omnibar/awesomebar more than chrome's. It seems to read my mind better [1]. It also have some features [2] I think most people are unaware of. 2. Firefox have bookmark tags. 3. Firefox scroll the tabs instead of compressing the width until they're unusable. (It's also possible to set the minimum tab-width) 4. It's much simpler to get ctrl-tab MRU behavior [3] in Firefox last time I checked. 5. Fir…

Also tab containers are fantastic.

Not fantastic, but necessary in any web development activity. Being logged in as different users in the same browser, while at the same time not suffering from the limitations private mode has. Makes testing and developing very easy and saved me a lot of time.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#174

Post by _coveredInBees »

olejorgenb wrote: post #45

1. I like firefox's omnibar/awesomebar more than chrome's. It seems to read my mind better [1]. It also have some features [2] I think most people are unaware of. 2. Firefox have bookmark tags. 3. Firefox scroll the tabs instead of compressing the width until they're unusable. (It's also possible to set the minimum tab-width) 4. It's much simpler to get ctrl-tab MRU behavior [3] in Firefox last time I checked. 5. Fir…

Firefox is never going to lose me as a user as long as the awesome Tree-style tabs extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

is supported on it. It completely changed my browsing experience, and I cannot use any other browser except for quick, temporary browsing (like how one might use Notepad on Windows in a bind).

I'd highly, highly recommend this extension to anyone who has never had the pleasure to use it.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#175

Post by _coveredInBees »

javajosh wrote: post #143
chrismorgan wrote: post #65

I’ve been using Firefox since about 0.93, with about a year in the middle when I used Chrome as my primary browser, because it ran from a USB disk much better than Firefox did at the time, and that was what I needed at the time. (I am glad that Chrome came along, because by showing how bad Firefox was in some areas it spurred Mozilla on to improve it, so that it’s no longer bad like that.) I look at the sessions of p…

My understanding was that TreeStyleTabs (which was FF's killer feature the last time I used it) was incompatible with their new plugin APIs? Or did I misread that?

Nope, the author did a great job porting it - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

You do have to make some custom css tweaks in userStyles.css as outlined on the extension page so as to hide the default firefox tab bar. But it works a charm. I held out on upgrading to Quantum, right up until this extension was made available.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#176

Post by bzbarsky »

toyg wrote: post #85
Delmania wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps Firefox should research why Chrome is so successful and adopt that? I use Edge, Safari, FF Dev Edition, and Chrome, and I consistently return to Chrome because of the smooth user experience. In my uninformed opinion, FF is losing for the same reason the FSF's products never went mainstream, which is they're focusing too much on their message than delivering a solid product. Which is sad, because I do remember…

They could have the best browser on the planet and they would still be a bit player. Google owns mobile and webmail like MS owned the desktop, and most people will use what the platform owner tells them to use. As long as the ruler doesn't fall asleep at the wheel, like MS did with IE, everyone else will be a bit player. I think market share is the wrong metric to fixate on. FF market share has never been particularl…

Market share is important for two reasons:

1) If your market share is too low, sites don't bother testing in your browser. Since most sites are not written based on standards but rather by trying things until they work [1], this means that sites will start breaking in your browser and it will become harder and harder for anyone to actually use it. This is what happened with Opera and Edge.

2) If your market share is too low, you don't get much say in standards discussions.

It's not about having "big" market share. Having 90% market share or whatnot is a not really a goal for Firefox. But it does need "enough" market share that it can actually meaningfully achieve its mission [2]. Producing a browser that no one can actually use in practice and having no impact on the evolution of the web would both be failures in mission terms. 0.01% market share is "not enough". 20% is "enough". Where the line is in between is hard to tell.

[1] Hard to fault web developers for this; the standards are so complex that writing "to the standard", which requires understanding it, is hard. It doesn't help that recent web standards have had a tendency to be over-engineered, partly due to being created by a large company at the behest of other parts of that large company, so having a tendency to be designed to be usable by large companies but not necessarily worrying about anyone else.

[2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#177

Post by bfrydl »

bugmen0t wrote: post #147
artificialidiot wrote: post #28

Mozilla lacks the financial strength to shove their merchandise down people's throats. Microsoft used OS market share, Opera used small device market share and Google used web search market share to promote their offerings. Mozilla never had a similar advantage, only technical superiority for a while, which others caught up in a few years and average users didn't care about that anyway.

Of all people, the folks here on hacker news, are in the best situation to change that. Be vocal! Use your influence! And if you have the means: donate!

> Be vocal! Use your influence!

When I tell people to use Firefox they just laugh like it's a quirky personality trait that I use the underdog browser instead of the one everyone knows is best.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#178

Post by nkristoffersen »

_coveredInBees wrote: post #174
olejorgenb wrote: post #45

1. I like firefox's omnibar/awesomebar more than chrome's. It seems to read my mind better [1]. It also have some features [2] I think most people are unaware of. 2. Firefox have bookmark tags. 3. Firefox scroll the tabs instead of compressing the width until they're unusable. (It's also possible to set the minimum tab-width) 4. It's much simpler to get ctrl-tab MRU behavior [3] in Firefox last time I checked. 5. Fir…

Firefox is never going to lose me as a user as long as the awesome Tree-style tabs extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... is supported on it. It completely changed my browsing experience, and I cannot use any other browser except for quick, temporary browsing (like how one might use Notepad on Windows in a bind). I'd highly, highly recommend this extension to anyone who has never…

Looks like a ton of similar extensions exist for Chrome as well.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk...

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#179

Post by tapoxi »

toyg wrote: post #164
jcbrand wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree, and Chrome did that in one simple way: marketing and monopoly power. When Chrome came out, it was much faster than Firefox. IIRC, it was also an evergreen browser from the start and you could install plugins without restarting. It was in many ways a superior product.

That is not my recollection. When Chrome debuted, some people had bazillion of FF extensions that were bogging it down, installed an extension-free Chrome, and went "much speed so wow". Later Google started pushing JS performance. It doesn't matter that much anyway - Google didn't make the difference by converting FF users, but by being better than Mozilla at pushing IE users to switch. Which, again, was not a techni…

V8 and multiprocess were a huge part of the original announcement comic: https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

At the time I remember this was a huge performance gain on my machine with my workflow (dozens of tabs), since you could easily open up the Chrome Task Manager and see which tab was causing problems. It was also the first browser to make updates invisible, so I installed it on every family member's PC.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#180

Post by slavak »

nkristoffersen wrote: post #178
_coveredInBees wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is never going to lose me as a user as long as the awesome Tree-style tabs extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... is supported on it. It completely changed my browsing experience, and I cannot use any other browser except for quick, temporary browsing (like how one might use Notepad on Windows in a bind). I'd highly, highly recommend this extension to anyone who has never…

Looks like a ton of similar extensions exist for Chrome as well. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk...

Chrome doesn't support the APIs needed to make a full Tree-style Tabs replacement. Anything that attempts to do it by necessity runs in a separate window disconnected from your browser.

So it's there, but it's nowhere near as seamless and convenient as it is in Firefox.

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