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Re: Browsers

#11

I find it kind of hilarious that people seem to think the solution to the Chrome monoculture is them personally switching to Firefox and then writing a blog post / comment / tweet about it. It's like saying we need to get serious about climate change, so you're going to start cycling to work, and encourage your friends to do the same. If that salves your conscience, then great, but your individual actions are statist…

So when MS controller the browsers we threw our arms in the air. But when google controls it we just sit here and go meh?

How does the next default Windows browser being forked from Chromium mean Google controls it?

You know what open-source is, right?

People threw their arms in the air because IE was substantially behind other browsers in stability and capabilities, and all their new features were IE-specific APIs that didn't work anywhere else.

Chromium is an open-source project that largely follows IETF/W3C/ECMA standards.

The two are not even remotely comparable.

Re: Browsers

#12
Sometimes I still browse Digg (it's different now). Since the last Firefox update from a week ago which disabled Symantec certificates the site doesn't work anymore. I bet the day Chrome disables Symantec certificates they will immediately notice and fix it.

It's sad that in one week not even one of their people opened it in Firefox, and not many of their users either (there was just a couple of mentions on Twitter about this issue)

Re: Browsers

#13
post #10

Firefox has one feature the other browsers will never have - privacy.

Brave seems to go for the same, but with a Chromium base (currently in beta). They seem to de-claw whatever's left by Google.

Re: Browsers

#14
post #7
post #3

The last time I enjoyed using the Firefox rendering engine on a Mac was back in the Camino days. I’d almost say that that browser is a better Mac experience than Firefox is today. I’ve started using Safari and it’s actually pretty OK and the resource utilization is a lot better than Chrome (no fans blowing!). I empathize with Firefox making a big deal out of avoiding a monoculture but i really hope they’re figuring o…

Correct me if I'm wrong, by all means, but I recently read somewhere that Firefox is genuinely trying to improve it's MacOS performance in one of the new releases. No sources, it was just in passing somewhere, but I distinctly remember it.

[deleted]

Re: Browsers

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when MS controller the browsers we threw our arms in the air. But when google controls it we just sit here and go meh?

How does the next default Windows browser being forked from Chromium mean Google controls it? You know what open-source is, right? People threw their arms in the air because IE was substantially behind other browsers in stability and capabilities, and all their new features were IE-specific APIs that didn't work anywhere else. Chromium is an open-source project that largely follows IETF/W3C/ECMA standards. The two ar…

It's great that it follows all these standards, but the browser (due to recent changes) and the company behind it doesn't seem to follow some necessary ethical standards.

Re: Browsers

#17
post #9

I find it kind of hilarious that people seem to think the solution to the Chrome monoculture is them personally switching to Firefox and then writing a blog post / comment / tweet about it. It's like saying we need to get serious about climate change, so you're going to start cycling to work, and encourage your friends to do the same. If that salves your conscience, then great, but your individual actions are statist…

> I find it kind of hilarious that people seem to think the solution to the Chrome monoculture is them personally switching to Firefox and then writing a blog post / comment / tweet about it. That's how change starts. "First they laugh at you..." > nowhere amongst the significant forces and trends will you find "there are insufficient nerds evangelising Firefox". Were you around when nobody knew what Firefox was?

Yes, my first browser was Mosaic, and I've been working as a professional web developer since before Firefox existed.

Firefox benefitted from years of stagnation and neglect of IE by Microsoft. And even then, when it was clearly the superior product, it took years to gain a significant portion of the browser market, and it still never managed to get much over 20%. Only Google, with the most popular website on the planet, and billions of dollars to spend, managed to actually dislodge IE.

As things stand, Chrome is not stagnating or neglected. Firefox is a good browser, but it is by no means a clearly superior product. There is a vastly larger number of deployed PCs, using Chrome as their default browser, than there was in the early 2000s. Mobile has replaced the desktop as the dominant consumer computing platform, where installing and using a replacement browser is far less likely. There are far more apps and content optimised for Chrome than there ever was even for IE, and the quantity is expanding all the time.

For all these reasons, and more, I am convinced that advocacy and evangelism alonge will not succeed to change the situation, and such efforts, while noble-minded, are mostly a waste of time.

Re: Browsers

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the next default Windows browser being forked from Chromium mean Google controls it? You know what open-source is, right? People threw their arms in the air because IE was substantially behind other browsers in stability and capabilities, and all their new features were IE-specific APIs that didn't work anywhere else. Chromium is an open-source project that largely follows IETF/W3C/ECMA standards. The two ar…

It's great that it follows all these standards, but the browser (due to recent changes) and the company behind it doesn't seem to follow some necessary ethical standards.

It's open source, the recent changes you mention (which I'm not aware of, a reference to these changes would be nice) can be reverted and the ethics of the company behind it aren't really relevant because it's an open-source project, the only way Google really benefits from it's use is if they receive contributions back to the Chromium project, which also benefits everyone else.

Re: Browsers

#19
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it kind of hilarious that people seem to think the solution to the Chrome monoculture is them personally switching to Firefox and then writing a blog post / comment / tweet about it. That's how change starts. "First they laugh at you..." > nowhere amongst the significant forces and trends will you find "there are insufficient nerds evangelising Firefox". Were you around when nobody knew what Firefox was?

Yes, my first browser was Mosaic, and I've been working as a professional web developer since before Firefox existed. Firefox benefitted from years of stagnation and neglect of IE by Microsoft. And even then, when it was clearly the superior product, it took years to gain a significant portion of the browser market, and it still never managed to get much over 20%. Only Google, with the most popular website on the pla…

But without healthy competition it's quite possible that Chrome will also start stagnating..

Re: Browsers

#20
I still remembered when i first time used Firefox in 2004, and it's like a life-saver to me to get out of the terrible Internet Explorer. What i want now, maybe from 2020, i could use Firefox, but as a replacement for Mobile App container.
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