I just hope any Firefox-only developments at Mozilla won't strand Pocket, one of my favorite apps (and which I pay for).
Firefox Was Always Enough
161–170 of 611 posts
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#162I'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…
> I've long wondered why Mozilla hasn't worked on a embeddable Gecko engine as an alternative to Electron. They have. Several times, in fact. There was the old embedding, then XULRunner, then Firefox apps (I'm not sure if that's the same as webapprt). But these efforts generally only lasts a couple of years before Mozilla decides it's the wrong approach and kills off the embedding.
Though it is embeddable on Android via GeckoView.
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think any of this fundamentally beats the main problem. That being platform control and advertising. Google advertises chrome with it's services and is the incumbent. It's also preloaded and unremovable on Android. Microsoft advertises edgium on Windows and makes it unremovable. Apple only allows webkit and safari clones on their platform. Firefox even if it's the best browser in the world would have the same…
Chrome didn't dethrone IE and displace FF because google advertised it, it was legitimately the best browser at the time. FF was awful, and so was IE. I keep trying FF, but I honestly haven't found it sufficiently compelling to go back. I don't mix work hardware and personal business, so I don't need multiple profiles. I prefer chrome's debug tools. Maybe we will see how manifest v3 plays out with uBlock, that might…
Yes enthusiasts care about adblock, manifest v3 and performance. That is a very tiny minority of users.
>Chrome didn't dethrone IE and displace FF because google advertised it.
This I almost heavily disagree with. Surprisingly, marketing and advertising is far, far more effective than product performance. Performance helps retain users, but advertising is what moves users. That is nearly always the case.
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#164I think Safari is going to have the market cornered on technology pessimism (aka privacy features) and browser performance per watt on macOS and iOS. Google is rapidly locking down enterprise by building in tight integrations with Google Workspace/G-Suite (see: context aware authentication). In 10 - 15 years the web should be better than it is today. The first step in their recovery is to convey what their vision of…
>In 10 - 15 years the web should be better than it is today. Is the web better now than it was in 2005-2010? I don't think it is and I don't see the trend arbitrarily reversing. Tons of regular people (and even tech-savvy folks who should know better) voluntarily use, love, and advocate for using a browser (and email service!) made by the modern equivalent of DoubleClick.
modern equivalent of DoubleClick
Nitpick: they are DoubleClick:
> DoubleClick was a company acquired by Google in 2007
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> It's also the one that uses the least battery life
Battery life has always been very top priority for Apple. That's the reason why Apple stopped supporting Flash and basically killed it (thank gosh).
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#166Mozilla should launch a stripped-down version of Firefox, with all the past 20 years' legacy support removed. No quirk mode etc. Just bare minimum implementation of modern core web tech. How fast would it be?
I love the idea of this. But what exactly should be stripped away? I can think of Pocket but thats about it. What do you mean by legacy support?
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple only allows webkit and safari clones on their platform. Firefox runs on macOS
Yea from the old MacOS sure. However, now that iOS apps are looking to be pushed to desktop, do you really think that is gonna continue in the future? As soon as universal binaries/iOS apps becomes fully fledged on ARM Mac I can imagine Apple just removing support completely. It's almost inevitable the way Apple is progressing to basically move to the iOS style platform control to OS X. Even from Mozilla's economics…
Yes. I do really think that is gonna continue in the future.
I've said this before and I'll probably say it in increasingly irascible tones, but "next year macOS is gonna become just like iOS" is becoming the new "next year is the year of Linux on the desktop."
Yes, Apple will almost certainly keep making security decisions people (including me) don't like, but there's no compelling business decision for trying to lock the Mac down to only App Store installs. Yes, I know Apple gets 30% of software sales that way. No, that is not enough of a reason for them to take the hit to their hardware profits that would undoubtedly entail. Even if it were just a loss of a few percent of Mac sales -- which I think is extremely optimistic -- it'd be coming out of the sales of the most expensive Macs, and making up one lost Mac sale literally requires hundreds of sales on the App Store to make up for it. Any executive at Apple who suggested that would be beat senseless by their accounting department.
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ostensibly, they pay Firefox for eyeballs, but.... Google certainly values the eyeballs they get via Firefox, but Firefox could disappear tomorrow and that barely affect Google one bit from a pure "eyeballs" perspective. How much traffic would Google lose? People would just use those same Google services through Chrome, Safari, native apps, whatever. So, I believe Google funds Firefox mainly as a hedge against monopo…
If Google decided not to pay Mozilla someone else would. Google would lose traffic and eyeballs in that case. Though I do think there is some truth to the monopoly hedge as well.
Yeah, those eyeballs certainly are not without value!
200 million monthly users is still a lot of people.
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
Not to mention half of Mozilla's board of directors at the time quit because of him.
(I work for Mozilla and was there when this all happened)
That is false. Only one of them quit "because of" him. You don't need to take my word for it: Stephen Shankland's piece [1] is the least-inaccurate account of what happened there.
And in fact, your statement is not even logical. Think about it: Who hires a CEO? A company's board. Now you're saying that a huge chunk of the board quit because of a hire that they themselves were responsible for making? That makes no sense.
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-under-fire-inside-the-9-da...
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#170> I don’t have a read on Edge
My guess it's MS will let Chromium do the heavy lifting, and they will integrate it nicely with AD etc and all IT departments will make it the new corporate default.