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Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

civilityandtruth.com

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Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#261
post #131
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They abandoned it because Edge team got tired to play catch-up, while still fixing IE 11 bugs. Slowly but steady we will start seeing ads for Chrome developers instead of Web developer, ChromeOS has won.

Just the other day I saw a job opening for a "Chrome developer." First time I've seen that, and I thought to myself, "wow, we've really turned a corner..."

Was it for a position at Google?

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If users have 200+ tabs open and are experiencing slowness, I'd suggest that altering the users behavior isn't a fix. To me that's pure failure from Product designers to realize that "they shouldn't do that" doesn't cut it. Fix it. Spending time and money on solving these issues isn't going to generate new revenue. I find it hard to believe engineers wouldn't want to try fix performance issues. I find it easy to beli…

I think you are wrong there. As a product designer one never caters to edge-cases. Besides having 200+ tabs open is very impractical, the way Chrome minifies all the tabs instead of making them slidable is just one prime example where the designers chose not to cater to the extreme. Even with a tab-behaviour like Firefox's it is a very unmanageable situation. Also note that one might encounter a tradeoff in system-de…

I wasn't necessarily meaning the visual experience of having tab inception open, more along the lines of people feel that FF is slow. The 200+ comment was based around that there were quantifiers - it's the users fault for having slow software. "You're just doing it wrong".

From a Product perspective Chrome is the better product. I want to believe that Mozilla is capable of making FF the better product. Maybe it all boils down to Youtube and Facebook and in actuality it's impossible and they can't actually have a better browser. I don't really believe that. I do believe that Mozilla isn't on a trajectory to make that happen.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#263
post #244
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Initially, IE6 was much better than the competition. But it was still buggy, and had some very weird rendering behavior. Over time, other browsers became much less buggy, but IE6 was still around. That's how IE6 came to be viewed, in retrospect, as a very buggy browser.

Should we have a look at Chrome's bug database?

Chrome was the first browser to adopt an evergreen model, where updates were installed automatically. While Chrome (and Firefox, once they adopted this model) have had many bugs over the years, when they fix a bug everyone gets the fix. The problem with IE6 (and later, up until Edge) was that bugs were here permanently: something that web developers needed to work around for as long as anyone was still using that browser.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#265
post #176

Yesterday I started donating $10/month to the Mozilla Foundation. TIL it’s not the Mozilla Foundation that develops Firefox. I stopped using Chrome when they added the “feature” that logging into gmail was the same as logging into the browser. If there was a little notification to the top right in the Firefox with a link to “pay”, even if it was optional, there is some proportion of users who would. And I would bet t…

I had the same question. And what's even stranger is that the Mozilla.com (not.org) website has no way to send them money, and doesn't even mention the paid products like the VPN. At least Pocket gets a mention which I think you can pay for.

Those who seek shall find. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ Got the link from the Thunderbird-site where https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/ redirects to https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US

So yeah the link is out there but you really have to look for it. Which is actually s.th. quite nice. Imagine they would go about nagging people. You might say one of 2 things: a) So in their face, others are probably donating what do they need me for b) So in my face, that is indescent, I do not donate. Whatever the choice happy donating; I already did.;)

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#266
post #263
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we have a look at Chrome's bug database?

Chrome was the first browser to adopt an evergreen model, where updates were installed automatically. While Chrome (and Firefox, once they adopted this model) have had many bugs over the years, when they fix a bug everyone gets the fix. The problem with IE6 (and later, up until Edge) was that bugs were here permanently: something that web developers needed to work around for as long as anyone was still using that bro…

Should we go through all open tickets that are open since 2013? Or start even earlier with the "forced closed" ones?

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#267
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple ideas: - specify profiles that can be targetted by web developers and browser developers; demand web assets to be delivered in sane and portable formats (rather than a mish-mash of JSON configs and plugins) - in public tenders, demand that web sites for public information don't become apps: announce sites requiring JavaScript as application/html - promote, invest into new web frameworks for apps (not sites) th…

> announce sites requiring JavaScript as application/html You assume sites would deliberately make their sites stop working in browsers because you don't like JS? This is not going to happen. What would be the incentive?

Don't know; a noscript browser that doesn't suck?

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave's made a big mistake in the past, so I'd hold out on using it until there's no other non-Chrome option: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...

Brave is moving fast (and not doing a perfect job) trying to find a revenue stream that doesn't involve selling out their users. They're trying a lot of new ideas and from what I can tell are learning from their missteps (though I think the linked situation was blown way out of proportion for what it actually was). Seems like exactly what's needed in the context of the current situation, no?

Well.... move fast and break things it not necessarily a nice motto especially if you burn down the very house people live in. And let's not forget, it was deliberate move. I for one am glad I never used Brave. There are only a very few rules that shan't be broken. Breaking trust is one of them, because it is easy to loose and hard to regain, so far FF/Mozilla 1, Brave/Chrome 0, I do not know about Vivaldi.... MS and Apple do not really count, as they are OS-Vendors and can betray user trust in a different manner.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#269

Personally and strictly my own ignorant and informal opinion, Firefox and by extension Mozilla Corp. was doomed the moment it decided to compete with Chrome by being more like Chrome. Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser, then decided the only way to not die was to be exactly like the dominant browser except with less icky behind-the-scenes privacy behavior. That was a fundamental m…

I can't speak for the other 25%, but this is certainly true for me.

I stopped using the official Firefox when they decided to throw away the entire plug-in ecosystem and moved to Quantum or whatever. After they did, it's been a long, but very stable slide down in power user functionality and what made it Firefox.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#270

Personally and strictly my own ignorant and informal opinion, Firefox and by extension Mozilla Corp. was doomed the moment it decided to compete with Chrome by being more like Chrome. Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser, then decided the only way to not die was to be exactly like the dominant browser except with less icky behind-the-scenes privacy behavior. That was a fundamental m…

It's really a shame, and I've mentioned this before. If Mozilla sells a 'Developer' version of Firefox that is technically fully open source, but the idea is that it will directly support Firefox development, I will pay, you can add tiers, a VPN (since they're going to offer this anyway) and other goodies (maybe I can finally have a cool @firefox / mozmail.com / foxmail.com email or whatever) and I would probably subscribe to pay for higher tiers if it brings me other benefits, the email bit I mention because they do already provide an email client, it's a shame they never produced their own email service to subsidize their efforts elsewhere.

Mind you they already have Firefox Developer edition, they can keep it free and add a Firefox Professional Developer Edition that guarantees funds go to better funding Firefox development and I will be one of the first to pay for it, if it's got a monthly subscription or yearly. No "discount" tactics either, please, it makes no sense for someone trying to maintain a lot of non-profit open source projects.

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