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Mozilla lays off 70

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Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#341

Post by huntie »

pier25 wrote: post #255
throwaway123x2 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy how much FF's marketshare has dropped. It's such a great browser.

Hmm I don't know. I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great, it's simply not as polished as the competition. For example just look at the alert popups[0], or the non native contextual menus, or the video pop icon. The UI is full of little quirks like that. The tab bar is by far the ugliest one of all current browsers, at least on macOS. It also misses important features such as multil…

Firefox's spellchecking is just generally awful, even for English. It fails to recognize even basic words such as 'surveil' with the closest suggestion being 'survive'. I've found several other words I wanted to use that weren't found too. I have spellcheck off by default but when I write something long I do a quick check at the end so I don't normally notice this.

Firefox is by far my least favorite piece of software that I regularly use and I've considered throwing my computer out the window because of it.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#342

Post by kick »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #262
eschaton wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t sanitize it, he was fired for being anti-gay. That should make it a little clearer why funders won’t touch him (and many won’t touch his new work).

I did not know that. It is odd though. I used to remember no one cared what about your Views as long as you were good at what you did. CS was as close to meritocracy as it could have been. It is a shame.

CS was never close to meritocracy (I'd argue that finance is/was historically far closer to meritocracy than CS ever was). Eich was raised in the Valley, got a Master's in CS before he had gotten a job, and was a millionaire and investing in Silicon Valley real estate before he had been working for ten years (he never started a company, and only created Javascript after something like eleven). There are people working on life-saving infrastructure in CS who've been working for forty years who don't have a million.

Also, "your Views" are different from "your Actions." If I think you're ridiculous, so what? If I think you're so ridiculous that I pay people money to promote a law that would increase what you have to pay in taxes, suddenly everyone cares, and rightfully so!

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#343

Post by zozbot234 »

shpeedy wrote: post #309
throwaway123x2 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy how much FF's marketshare has dropped. It's such a great browser.

Firefox eats memory. 4GB of memory is barely enough to run browser and show few tabs.

No issues here on Linux. The latest ESR major release has even improved memory use slightly compared to the previous version.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#344

Post by throwaway123x2 »

lucis wrote: post #332
pier25 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I don't know. I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great, it's simply not as polished as the competition. For example just look at the alert popups[0], or the non native contextual menus, or the video pop icon. The UI is full of little quirks like that. The tab bar is by far the ugliest one of all current browsers, at least on macOS. It also misses important features such as multil…

Do you find Firefox Dev Tools better than Chrome? It's probably the only reason that I stick with Chrome, its dev tools are fantastic and often gets new incredible features.

I use Chrome for web development because of devtools. Personal use is all Firefox.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#345

Post by roca »

zelly wrote: post #171
strict9 wrote: post #43

Not sure of Mozilla’s financial or organizational structure but it seems to be part of a larger trend of de-emphasizing QA departments at software shops large and small over the past 10 or so years. In many ways test automation tooling has become much easier to use, develop, and manage. But I suspect the larger driving force is that it’s (arguably) a cost center for an org. The burden of ensuring software quality can…

If there's anything they need to axe, it's the Gecko team. Just replace it with V8. The whole layout engine too--replace it with Blink. It is inevitable, so might as well get over with it now and save the wasted human effort and $$$. I tried to use Firefox recently. It leaked 28 GiB of RAM on x86_64 GNU/Linux with no extensions except uBlock Origin. Happened a few times over the month whenever I visited JS-heavy webs…

> I tried to use Firefox recently. It leaked 28 GiB of RAM on x86_64 GNU/Linux with no extensions except uBlock Origin. Happened a few times over the month whenever I visited JS-heavy websites.

Of course this is not the experience of the vast majority of Firefox users, so it's pointless to suggest that this means something about Firefox's overall quality. You can easily find people making the same sorts of complaints about Chrome.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#346

Post by krn »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #326
phonon wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She also wrote this incredibly rude and grotesque obituary for Gervase Markham after he died of cancer (working for Mozilla until the end). You are welcome to disagree, but Gerv contributed just as much to Mozilla as Mitchell did. https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva...

Sorry, which bits are incredibly rude and grotesque? It reads like an honest appraisal of a person that the author has known for many years (and disagreed with occasionally as humans do)

> Sorry, which bits are incredibly rude and grotesque?

I wouldn't say this is how I would like somebody to be remembered after his early death:

> Gerv’s faith did not have ambiguity at least none that I ever saw. Gerv was crisp. He had very precise views about marriage, sex, gender and related topics. He was adamant that his interpretation was correct, and that his interpretation should be encoded into law. These views made their way into the Mozilla environment. They have been traumatic and damaging, both to individuals and to Mozilla overall.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#347

Post by phonon »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #326
phonon wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She also wrote this incredibly rude and grotesque obituary for Gervase Markham after he died of cancer (working for Mozilla until the end). You are welcome to disagree, but Gerv contributed just as much to Mozilla as Mitchell did. https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva...

Sorry, which bits are incredibly rude and grotesque? It reads like an honest appraisal of a person that the author has known for many years (and disagreed with occasionally as humans do)

Mitchel, as leader of Mozilla, was essentially speaking for the entire organization; an organization, and set of ideals, Gerv devoted his entire adult life to.

Saying things like--

"Eventually Gerv felt called to live his faith by publicly judging others in politely stated but damning terms. His contributions to expanding the Mozilla community would eventually become shadowed by behaviors that made it more difficult for people to participate.

...

Gerv’s default approach was to see things in binary terms — yes or no, black or white, on or off, one or zero. Over the years I worked with him to moderate this trait so that he could better appreciate nuance and the many “gray” areas on complex topics. Gerv challenged me, infuriated me, impressed me, enraged me, surprised me. He developed a greater ability to work with ambiguity, which impressed me.

Gerv’s faith did not have ambiguity at least none that I ever saw. Gerv was crisp. He had very precise views about marriage, sex, gender and related topics. He was adamant that his interpretation was correct, and that his interpretation should be encoded into law. These views made their way into the Mozilla environment. They have been traumatic and damaging, both to individuals and to Mozilla overall.

...

To memorialize Gerv’s passing, it is fitting that we remember all of Gerv — the full person, good and bad, the damage and trauma he caused, as well as his many positive contributions. Any other view is sentimental. We should be clear-eyed, acknowledge the problems, and appreciate the positive contributions."

I'm sure was a great comfort to his surviving wife, children and friends, in their time of grief.

David Anderson articulates some of my feelings on the obit better than I can.

https://lwn.net/Articles/762345/

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#348

Post by zhdyudshdh »

takeda wrote: post #270
pier25 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I don't know. I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great, it's simply not as polished as the competition. For example just look at the alert popups[0], or the non native contextual menus, or the video pop icon. The UI is full of little quirks like that. The tab bar is by far the ugliest one of all current browsers, at least on macOS. It also misses important features such as multil…

> It also misses important features such as multilingual spell checking. For people writing in multiple languages it's a real PITA. I know this functionality can be added with an extension but it slows down FF too much IMO. Really? Do you learn a new language every day? I installed languages that I am interested years ago and forgot about it until you mentioned it.

This is a let the wookie win situation. Smile, nod, and continue to prioritize English quietly or else the Europeans complain while refusing to build anything competitive and better. It's just how they are.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#349

Post by RaptorJ »

reaperducer wrote: post #279
pier25 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I don't know. I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great, it's simply not as polished as the competition. For example just look at the alert popups[0], or the non native contextual menus, or the video pop icon. The UI is full of little quirks like that. The tab bar is by far the ugliest one of all current browsers, at least on macOS. It also misses important features such as multil…

I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great it's simply not as polished as the competition. The polish of developer tools has exactly zero to do with a browser's popular marketshare.

Well maybe not exactly zero, more devs using FF tools --> more websites designed to be optimized for FF first.

Re: Mozilla lays off 70

#350

Post by pier25 »

gmanley wrote: post #331
pier25 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is not that it doesn't look native... It's a neglected part of the UI.

The person you responded to specifically explained that. It's made to look non-native on purpose so that users don't think a pop-up, phishing, asking for their password, is a native system prompt. Safari did the same thing. It's not that it's neglected, quite the opposite, actually.

The Safari alert doesn't look native and yet it looks polished.

https://imgur.com/rvsjJtO

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