Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox Was Always Enough

ianbicking.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 611 posts

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#141

Post by recursive »

Yaggo wrote: post #109
celsoazevedo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Windows or Linux, but on Mac it's far from the best browser. It uses more resources (power/battery, memory, etc) than Safari (and sometimes Chrome[ium]), the UI is a mix of old and new code, and system integration is worse than Safari and Chrome. I use it, but both Chromium and Safari are better on this platform.

It's not that Firefox isn't an excellent browser on its own, but on macOS Safari rises the bar very high if you care about details (most people don't).

How's that? It seems to be the least standards-compliant browser with any significant user share.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#142

Post by MaxBarraclough »

simias wrote: post #127
etempleton wrote: post #2

I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox n…

You won't be able to beat Chrome by technology alone. I actually don't know how Mozilla can beat Chrome. Google has an extremely strong incentive to capture the web client market. Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both. I want Firefox to win but unfortunately I just don't see a path for it. My mindset at the moment is "I'm going to…

> Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both.

Firefox isn't struggling on technical grounds though. It's not a charity case, it's a perfectly competent browser. Whether Firefox outperforms Chromium depends on which benchmark you use. As far as the user is concerned, they're both technically solid browsers.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#143

Post by jlokier »

the-dude wrote: post #126
jlokier wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. That payment problem is fixed now though. It was broken for a few months and is fine now.

Are you sure it was FF and not the adblocker?

Of course not.

There's also no way to be sure it was FF in general and not the particular version(s) of FF Beta I was running at the time.

There is no way to know which of numerous factors might contribute without running from a blank profile, which isn't something anyone would do unless really keen on investigating a problem, as it's easier to just run a different browser instead.

If a payment process gets stuck due to an FF-specific adblocker, I'd still count that as an accident of implementation affecting FF users, because final stage payment processes don't have any reason to call up ad-blocked services, and most FF users use an adblocker, don't they?

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#144

Post by senux »

buran77 wrote: post #95
ska wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect corporate is hooked on exchange, not outlook. Outlook 365 just goes along for the ride.

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…

Not to mention that companies like Google and Microsoft also offer different levels of technical support alongside their products.

For smaller companies, or companies that want to invest less in their technology stack IT department, it sounds like a better deal to have all services provided and backed by a larger computation corporation (even if that's not always actually cheaper in the long run).

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#145

Post by buran77 »

trinix912 wrote: post #114
buran77 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for the average user I think this was the key. No average user I know uses an email client on their PC, outside of the corporate one. It's one more thing to take care of and average users rarely want that. It's easier on mobile where people are used with the "app" concept, not really on the PC. This is one reason why Thunderbird doesn't enjoy the kind of popularity browser based email does.

I know quite a few (older) people who are familiar with Thunerbird and use it instead of the web interface. None of them is particularly tech savvy.

Of course it's not impossible. But also they must be tech savvy enough to go look for an email client where they already had the usual web interface, get to testing a few and settle on Thunderbird, then configure and stick with it.

But that obviously it doesn't happen that often or else Thunderbird would boast a lot more users than it actually does. Relatively few users use it at all, and it's a reasonable assumption that the usage is higher among the more tech savvy than the average user.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#146

Post by lucideer »

It's curious that the 4 bullet points in the final section don't make any mention of open source (in fact, the article doesn't at all).

I think Opera Software circa 2012 was doing all of the things we would hope for/expect from Mozilla & Firefox, and doing them much better than Mozilla could. Bar one: it was not open source.

When I made the switch to Firefox in 2012, it was my belief that I would not have been forced to switch browser had Opera originally been open source. I strongly believed in open source at the time; I used Opera in spite of that. When they shut down the Presto project, I lamented the loss due to the inability of the community to fork.

I'm wondering if Firefox went away, would a fork be likely to survive in any impactful way; browsers are massive, complex & enormously expensive to maintain, whether you have rights to the source or not. Maybe open source isn't the panacea we thought in this particular context.

I'm still on Firefox as I'm loathe to support any browsers built on Blink & contribute further to a monoculture, but the Vivaldi project have finally started to achieve similar things to what Opera was doing 8 years ago. It's notable that it's linked in blue in the section of this article headed "A better browser".

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#147

Post by walrus01 »

etempleton wrote: post #2

I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox n…

> 3. Invest more in Thunderbird the application and develop Thunderbird the privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses.

While I agree that Thunderbird as a standalone Windows/MacOS/Linux desktop email client is a very important project, and needs to be continued, maintained and refined, the paradigm of email has moved on somewhat since 2003.

People need to be able to do more than just access email on a desktop or laptop.

I'd like to see two new things under the Thunderbird/Mozilla name:

a) a fully open source GPL licensed, self-hostable, webmail server application that fulfills the same functions as rainloop or roundcube, implemented in the Thunderbird name. Maybe it could have its own new GUI to run inside the browser, or it could offer an optional "traditional" GUI that is similar to the Thunderbird desktop client. This has a possibility for a natural symbiotic relationship with Firefox, as the best and most optimal web browser client to view the webmail.

b) a Thunderbird Android email client. There should be no reason why people should be locked into the default Android google/gmail email client. I can't even view message headers on it. I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#148

Post by notriddle »

recursive wrote: post #141
Yaggo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that Firefox isn't an excellent browser on its own, but on macOS Safari rises the bar very high if you care about details (most people don't).

How's that? It seems to be the least standards-compliant browser with any significant user share.

Yes, Safari is the most buggy browser in common use other than IE11. It's also the one that uses the least battery life, it's standards-compliant enough to render most web pages, and it's the only option on iOS.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#149

Post by dblohm7 »

gravitas wrote: post #131
hermanradtke wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

about:about is the fastest way to look these up. :-)

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#150

Post by andi999 »

Miraste wrote: post #7
etempleton wrote: post #2

I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox n…

> 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.

It should to treat special characters first (somehow cannot search for ä,ö,ü)
Post reply on HN