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Firefox Was Always Enough

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181–190 of 611 posts

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#181
post #127

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…

I wonder why Firefox even has to beat Chrome. Wouldn't it be enough to have 30% marketshare again? Or even 10% would be enough to consider Firefox a serious competitor.

Somewhere along the line we got this idea that if you're not #1 you've failed. You don't need to crush every single competitor into oblivion to be successful, you just need to succeed at what you set out to do, and in Firefox's case, isn't that just to build a good browser?

The only way to beat Chrome, is the same way Firefox beat IE: Someone else will have to do it.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#182
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's somewhat a myth that Safari is less standard-compliant. True, Safari's release cycle is slower and Apple has the motivation to prevent PWAs to become too good, but in many things Safari has always been very innovative browser. Built on top of KHTML foundation, it then became webkit and later the most successfull engine. It was the first to implement full ES6 support, and basically invented CSS transformations/tr…

Internet explorer is also a very innovative browser. It introduced XHR and a bunch of other stuff. But that is a different measure from standards-compliant.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#183
post #95
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…

> there's no company behind them to put their name behind an SLA.

I agree that this is a sticking issue; most procurement offices have vendor/supplier questionnaires that ask about their cash flows etc., because companies want to deal with going concerns. FOSS without an org doesn't check that box.

BUT isn't this exactly the point of having a Mozilla Corporation, as separate from the nonprofit???

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#184
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was in the age of desktop browsers. Nowadays most browsing is mobile, and all mobile devices come with a high quality browser component which is effectively part of the operating system already, used pervasively by applications on the device as a component rather than a standalone browser. Installing a browser, any browser, is already a niche thing to do for the majority of internet users today.

Another thing working against Firefox on mobile is that it seems like every software update for Samsung phones resets the default browser/URL handler to Samsung Internet. Anyone not paying close attention will just click through the EULA and suddenly no longer be using Firefox.

I have a Samsung phone, and it's updated quite recently, but I've never noticed this.

I virtually never open Samsung Internet only because I virtually never open any web browser. Browsers launch as a side effect of something else. For example clicking on a link inside LinkedIn, Telegram, bank app help, etc.

When that happens, if a separate app gets opened it's usually Firefox Focus that opens for me, so I guess that means the default URL handler is Firefox Focus (must have set it years ago) and it's not being changed by software updates.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#185
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 Mozil…

If you're lucky, you traveled back in time and disabled Firefox updates before Fenix rolled out. If you're unlucky, you later visit a site with an exploit for that old version.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#186

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 j…

> 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.

K-9 mail should satisfy these requirements. It's been slow moving development wise the last two years, but it is not dead:

https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail

https://github.com/k9mail/k-9

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#187
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It might be because it's searching using the IMAP server, for some reason those can't often deal with non-ASCII characters. Searching with diacritics seems to work for me in locally-downloaded folders.

Well, wasn’t email designed in a time when the only supported standards were everyone’s form of Extended ASCII? So it would make sense that IMAP only supports ASCII. Heck, attachments are encoded in some base## form before being sent because the entire standard is based on text.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#188

>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…

> you forcibly kicked out founder Brendan Eich

That is total bullshit. Get your facts straight, and stop pushing your batshit crazy GamerGate conspiracy theories that are based on lies.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25303513

Mozilla didn't fire Brendan Eich. He resigned of his own free will, against the Mozilla board's request that he stay. His own words and the Mozilla FAQ quoted below, I'm not just making this up. Down the following thread, Brendan suggested googling "constructive separation" -- but I'm not sure if he meant for that euphemism to apply to how he left his job at Mozilla, or to how he wanted to cancel and destroy existing happy same sex marriages in California against their consent. All of the google results have to do with marriage, not employment. Brendan, care to clarify?

As JavaScript proves, Brendan Eich never really understood the concept of equality: https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24127716

DonHopkins 3 months ago | on: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses ...

Eich was not forced out or fired. In fact, just the opposite: the board actually tried to get Eich to stay, but he decided to leave all on his own. Don't try to rewrite history to make an ideological point. It's all very well and unambiguously documented what really happened, and there's no excuse for you spreading that misinformation.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...

Q: Was Brendan Eich fired?

A: No, Brendan Eich resigned. Brendan himself said:

“I have decided to resign as CEO effective April 3rd, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next.”

Brendan Eich also blogged on this topic.

Q: Was Brendan Eich asked to resign by the Board?

A: No. It was Brendan’s idea to resign, and in fact, once he submitted his resignation, Board members tried to get Brendan to stay at Mozilla in another C-level role.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#189
post #92

>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…

Just as an FYI, Brave has done some sketchy stuff in the past, including inserting affiliate links / ads into content.

Their entire business model is sketchy. They'll collect payments on your behalf whether you're signed up to them or not while removing your ad revenue.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#190
post #157
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this. Safari and Chrome are both noticeably better than Firefox on OSX. I'm a Firefox fanboy, still use it on OSX because it's important to me, but the amount of random pauses, crashes, etc is just painful on OSX. It's like none of the Firefox developers use it on OSX or something. And before someone says "oh it's your extensions", that IMO leads to two talking points 1. It's 2020 and major extensions…

Sorry for nitpicking, but it's 2020 and OS X has been called macOS since 2015 ;)

Well, if we’re nitpicking, it was 2016, not 2015 :)

And wow. Has it really been that long? I thought it was like 2 years ago, so when I first saw your comment, I had to go check myself!

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