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We Need Chrome No More

redalemeden.com

391–400 of 536 posts

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chrome's appeal was primarily technical. Each tab got its own process and could crash without taking down the entire browser. Curious, I remember speed being the primary reason. Google invented V8 (the javascript engine), with some pretty decent optimizations and a well-working JIT on i386/amd64 platforms. At the time when chromium came out, it handled some JS-heavy applications very nicely that Firefox struggled w…

I'm surprised there aren't more people on here who moved to chome for the dev tools. That is what moved me over there. Firebug was great in it's day but at some point Chrome's dev tools just became too much better to make staying on Firefox possible.

The problem was I was so used to Firebug after using it for so many years that I just kept using it out of inertia up until the day Mozilla dropped it from Firefox entirely. Then I just moved over to Firefox's developer tools (still out of inertia).

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#393
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it ironic that they kept lowering the priority since an extension already added the ability, yet that very same extension no longer works thanks to their recent API changes. Perhaps lowering the priority several times wasn't that best idea after all?

The decision to revamp their extensions API also cost a lot of goodwill from the community. FF today may be faster and more secure than two years ago, but from my perspective it has permanently lost some of its utility and appeal.

As a long time Firefox user I think the change in its extensions APIs is one of the greatest moves they did and I’m glad they did it.

Chrome’s extensions were isolated, easy to develop and had a permissions system in place.

To this day Firefox is still lagging behind in its isolation. For example Chrome can disable extensions in Incognito, but Firefox does not.

Also if you’re not paying attention, Chrome won and it’s nearly a monopoly. This means browser extensions get developed for Chrome first. Having similar APIs helps with migration.

I view the change as a good thing because I can finally develop my own extensions without headaches.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#394
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had to use both on and off for years. My patience with software is small but I had few issues with Firefox except on Google properties. Not saying your experience didn't happen but it doesn't match mine. I even used to be a Google fan and without being able to pinpoint a date I have memories of trying (and failing to) start using Chrome as my default browser at least once. So I agree with GP and personally think…

Until the Firefox quantum update, the reason a lot of sites only worked in Chrome, was that it was the only browser with kind of decentish performance.

Rather Electrolysis. Switched it on when it was not default yet, and happy with it. That killed the performance plus for Chrome (Chromium at least), but either way I was never satisfied enough with Chromium.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decision to revamp their extensions API also cost a lot of goodwill from the community. FF today may be faster and more secure than two years ago, but from my perspective it has permanently lost some of its utility and appeal.

It could never deploy multi-process with XUL cruft. Then the argument would be that Firefox is too far behind. You can never win everybody.

"e10s compatible" add-ons were as fully-featured as the "original" XUL add-ons and did not interfere with multi-process at all. For instance, VimFx was e10s compatible and could even run with Firefox Nightly (which allowed "legacy" add-ons), without disabling multi-process, until about Firefox 65(!), without major changes.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#396
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a professional web developer, but in the experience I've had building a couple of JS heavy sites, I've actually found the Edge developer tools to be the best. If there's one thing microsoft knows how to do well, it's build developer tools.

> If there's one thing microsoft knows how to do well, it's build developer tools. This is probably very subjective, but I can absolutely not relate to that.

Me neither. It may or may not be true in Edge, I've never tried, but it absolutely wasn't true in any IE so I wouldn't naturally expect it to be true in Edge.

I certainly see where GP is coming from, Microsoft do have an awesome legacy in dev tooling that lives on to this day with products like VSCode, but browser tooling might be the glaring exception to this - perhaps since Microsoft never really was or became an 'internet' company.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's laughable that the author suggests Apple as a viable alternative. Apple, the last company pushing license encumbered formats into web standards. Apple, the perennial laggard on standards support in general.

I agreed to your comment before you edited it, simply because on a price point, Apple stuff isn't viable for laptops and desktops for many people. I don't agree with your weird rant, without any sources. Apple has shown with Safari that some people do like privacy features baked in, and while I can't say for sure, I hope it played a part in emboldening Firefox/Mozilla to focus a bit more on privacy.

> I don't agree with your weird rant, without any sources.

We are in a thread about browsers and web standards. Do I really need to explain that Apple pushed h.264 on the web, ultimately forcing a binary blob on Firefox? The lagging on web standards is a common complaint among web developers.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's laughable that the author suggests Apple as a viable alternative. Apple, the last company pushing license encumbered formats into web standards. Apple, the perennial laggard on standards support in general.

Probably because Apple take privacy seriously, which is a direct threat to Google's bottom line.

And Apple takes the web platform not seriously at all, which is why the author's suggestion is ludicrous.

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#399

I try to switch to Firefox (or even Safari) every few months or so. Firefox was close this time, but there were still a few things that forced me to switch back: - On Chrome I can type 'thisisunsafe' (previously 'danger' and 'badidea') to skip security warnings, sometimes I have to do this at work when testing things with invalid certs. On FF there's a class of these issues (HSTS I think?) that doesn't let you bypass…

My experience is that on Chromium you can bypass HSTS-related errors by typing something, but expired certificate gives you patronizing "you have clock set wrong, go fix it" message and no way to bypass it. (But maybe I'm just doing something wrong)

Another issue is that Chrome uses trust store from underlying OS which means that it does not support ECC certificates (ie. Cloudflare) on Windows XP. (Lets just say that there are valid reasons why one would want to use XP today and download something from web...)

Re: We Need Chrome No More

#400
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had to use both on and off for years. My patience with software is small but I had few issues with Firefox except on Google properties. Not saying your experience didn't happen but it doesn't match mine. I even used to be a Google fan and without being able to pinpoint a date I have memories of trying (and failing to) start using Chrome as my default browser at least once. So I agree with GP and personally think…

Until the Firefox quantum update, the reason a lot of sites only worked in Chrome, was that it was the only browser with kind of decentish performance.

This is plain wrong.

1. Firefox worked very well, thank you and I'm no natural saint when it comes to patience with software.

2. I am frontend (and backend) developer so I should know the difference between using bleeding edge features that doesn't exist in all browsers yet, non standard quirks that developers abuse, and performance problems.

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