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Firefox Was Always Enough

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Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#131

Post by gravitas »

hermanradtke wrote: post #111
capitainenemo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from personal experience doing user support in firefox IRC channel on freenode and formerly moznet, the vast majority of "resource hog" complaints are due to the user running AdBlock with a million block rules (or some similar addon). Occasionally it is a particular long running website with JS memory leaks though. Like a gmail pinned tab. In terms of performance, until recently a common issue was lack of de…

How can someone determine this? I wonder Firefox itself does not tell me the resource issues are due to an extension.

Firefox has a suite of `about:` URLs[1], one of them is about:performance which will show you the Task Manager (their name) which has a sort of CPU and RAM column. It even shows you when it's javascript on a tab chewing up resources and not the extension.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/The...

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#132

Post by AntiImperialist »

I had been using Firefox as the primary browser since before it was v1.0 until some time in 2016, which is when I switched to Chrome. The reason was mostly usability related. Chrome felt faster and easier to use.

With the reach of Google, Firefox had to be that much better to keep up, like it was compared to any version of IE. Unfortunately, Firefox kind of remained the same while Chrome became better and better.

In hindsight, they could have done what Opera did. But then they didn't. I don't think they did anything particularly wrong. Firefox just aged beyond its usefulness and will die, just because it's not needed anymore.

I see Brave as the spiritual successor of Firefox. Just like Firefox challenged the then status quo and made way for better browsers to come, Brave is challenging the current status quo Chrome and Google's business model at the same time.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#133

Post by jillesvangurp »

I'm a happy Firefox user. IMHO the thing that needs sorting out is the relation between Mozilla the company and Mozilla the Foundation.

I just browsed the website of the Mozilla Foundation and to my surprise learned that Firefox development is not one of its responsibilities. I was assuming that that was in fact its primary mission. It's not apparently. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just a vague website but it reads to me like they are spending their time doing activism and marketing and that they do not employ any developers.

The reason the foundation leading product development would make sense to me is that having no commercial conflicts of interests are kind of a per-requisite to do what most users (including me) value in Firefox, is to protect their privacy, commit to open standards (over any competitive advantages that proprietary/exclusive features could bring), be as secure as they can be, etc.

Except it seems that Firefox development is currently not structured like that and Firefox is instead an OSS product developed by a commercial for profit business competing with other companies backing a different OSS product (i.e. chromium) where users have some concerns about the conflicts of interests of the companies backing that (e.g. Google and MS) with respect to exactly the things I value in Firefox.

So, given that, what's the point of having the foundation and what's the point of Firefox as a commercial product (other than guilt tripping Google into keeping the money coming)? I don't mean pretty words and mission statements of a commercial entity. But what's the point for users picking one company over another? They are both companies that ultimately are run by their share holders; not by their users. A foundation is different: it serves its members and its mission without a goal to enrich shareholders.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#134

Post by input_sh »

pantelisk wrote: post #79

If I understand this correctly. Mozilla let the author go, and the author still went out of their way to write a comprehensive and clear minded article full of feedback and honest recommendations. If I see one big problem with Mozilla, is that they chose to let go people like the author. Engineering & product culture only follows.

It's rare to find someone who worked for them that's dissatisfied with the experience. They employ nowhere near the amount of people that FAANG employs, but people that work there are usually really passionate about their work and receive good benefits in return.

Point being that the author is more of a rule than an exception.

Disclaimer: Was a Mozilla fellow a few years back.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#135

Post by mekoka »

It seems to me that Mozilla isn't just technologically pessimistic, but they also just lack vision for the future of the web and what roles the browser could play in it. Right now, the only reason we're talking about them is that Firefox is sitting atop a sizable share of a practically impenetrable market. Very successful companies are being started around much less of a product, but Mozilla seems to genuinely have no idea what else can be done with a browser in the future. If they knew, they would become a proper browser as a platform company.

Maybe it's me being too naive, but if you had asked me 10 years ago to predict where they would be, I would've said that in the future Firefox would come in different versions. The main one, the flagship, would remain the general purpose browser that we know. But there would be some special editions custom tailored to specific markets. You'd have "Enterprise" editions, that facilitate internal app development for organizations. If your organization needed to quickly build internal tools, you wouldn't need to tussle with WebPack and all the other front-end nonsense. The browser would come already equipped with a development toolkit and environment, ready to connect to your db of choice, etc. I imagined that they could come up with other special versions of Firefox already customized to facilitate integration with popular platforms like Salesforce, Amazon, and others for people who work or develop for those.

A proper browser as a platform with an ecosystem. I still think it's possible.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#136

Post by buran77 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #103
buran77 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What many don't realize is the reason open/free software doesn't easily make it in the corporate zone is that there's no company behind them to put their name behind an SLA. This and integration with the ecosystem (MS has an easier time selling Windows+365+Exchange+cloudstuff). The jump from "providing an email client" to "providing a privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses" is…

Or just nobody to write the RFP. So many ways of doing business assume that something will be purchased.

> Or just nobody to write the RFP

Then look no further than public institutions, where (leaving everything else aside) almost every tender is public [0]. You'll never see Thunderbird in any of the submitted bids because there's no company behind it to write the bid and put its weight behind it.

It's a good canary to see if a service or product has anyone capable of supporting it, or if it can be monetized in any way. This doesn't have to be the developer, just any company that can realistically push it into the corporate world.

[0] https://ted.europa.eu/TED/main/HomePage.do

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#137

Post by DoingIsLearning »

tomrod wrote: post #59

Except for mobile, where recent updates made it a hot mess.

This absolutely boggles my mind!

Who in their right mind pushed the Fenix upgrade for release while absolutely breaking compatibility with the whole universe of Firefox add-ons?

The whole point of using firefox is the control that add-ons and the about:config actually give you. Failing to realize that is failing to understand who you're user are.

I hope that Mozilla the company fail as fast as possible, so that Mozilla the foundation is allowed to carry on Firefox's purpose and fund actual work from people like the author, instead of ivory tower board and C-levels.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#138

Post by RobertoG »

open-source-ux wrote: post #27

I've long wondered why Mozilla hasn't worked on a embeddable Gecko engine as an alternative to Electron. The Mozilla alternative could be promoted as a modular, cross-platform component but in a stripped-down, faster and less memory hungry form than Electron (assuming these features can be achieved). The traction that Electron has gained as a cross-platform option for building apps is huge. It's only set to get bigge…

What I would like is to be able to use Firefox as a UI for my local projects. Now if I want to do it, I have to run a server and duplicate code.

The ability to create extensions for my personal use that can interact in local with my computer would be great.

I understand that a browser have to be sandboxed but there are ways that could work without being unsafe. Maybe even two separate downloads, one for people that want to use the browser UI capabilities but work in local.

This would not solve Mozilla problems, so it's a little tangent to the current discussion.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#139

Post by [deleted] »

mrlala wrote: post #86
SmokeyHamster wrote: post #54

>The problem? Firefox’s founders are all long, long gone. Brendan and Mitchell are Mozilla’s founders. Well then, you should have thought about that before you forcibly kicked out founder Brendan Eich because you disliked his unrelated politics. You can be a woke company that belittles everyone who doesn't share your narrow ideology or a company that makes a good web browser with a sound business model. You can't be…

>forcibly kicked out founder Brendan Eich because you disliked his unrelated politics >belittles everyone who doesn't share your narrow ideology Wake up to the present. People who actively try to ban same-sex marriage are just as bad as segregation was back in the day. Calling this "narrow ideology" is preposterous. There is nothing wrong with homosexuality and they should be given the same rights as everyone else. I…

[deleted]

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#140

Post by dataminded »

raxxorrax wrote: post #71
Miraste wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. Invest more in Thunderbird the application and develop Thunderbird the privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses. I know Mozilla's non-Firefox projects aren't popular here, but if Thunderbird really wanted a niche in the business world Mozilla would need to start an email service to go with it. The age of non-integrated email clients for the average user ended a while ago.

In my experience, the vast majority of corporate is hooked on Outlook, which is actually quite unreliable in its 365 version and constantly has annoying bugs and performance issues. It still might be a good idea to host an e-Mail service or create an Exchange pendant. I often wonder why there never has been a popular open pendant to domain controllers in Windows. I think there were multiple attempts, but I don't thin…

I think there's tremendous space for people that want privacy and doesn't want Google/Microsoft to have access to all of their data.
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