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Firefox Was Always Enough

ianbicking.org

231–240 of 611 posts

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#231
post #216

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. 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…

> 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 bes…

"UX efficiency for dealing with large volumes of mail"

You should definitely check out mutt for this.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#232

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…

I think thunderbird is a dead end.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#233
post #109

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).

if you care about details (most people don't).

Most people don't care about battery life?

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox isn't even the best browser on Linux. On my aarch64 devices, Chromium in a Docker image loads faster, never dominates the CPU, renders video and websites faster, and has working DRM. Firefox is slower in every respect and can't render Netflix.

Really? Firefox works fine with netflix on my pop_os laptop.

GP is talking about aarch64 Linux laptops, and IIUC Pop_OS uses x86_64.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#235

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…

I hate to bring it to you, but every single one of your priorities have been long rejected: Thunderbird was officially discontinued like ten years ago, Mozilla had just let go a large number of devs in early 2020 and then again a couple weeks ago, among them all Servo developers. Even if you wanted to financially support Firefox or Thunderbird development through donations, there would be no way to. Your money will g…

Agree with all points except Rust and “standards”. The performance and stability of Firefox Quantum was largely driven by Rust. W3C standards are just out-of-date documentation. Do what’s good for the Web and the W3C will eventually document it.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misinterpreting the statement in your search for a soapbox. Brendan was one of "Mozilla's founders," not "Firefox's founders," so he was the wrong person for the job anyway.

I actually missed that too, I guess because it wasn't where it seemed he was going after the previous paragraph. So looking at that section again, his argument seems weak on that point. He is promoting founders as leaders because they have innate clout and don't have to engage in consensus building, but that should apply to Mozilla's founders too.

You're right, founder effect wears off in terms of consensus-free authority, and it should. Founder effects in code style and culture last practically forever, in my experience. But with Mitchell pulling $3M/year, the top job needs leadership and consensus around what to do to save Mozilla, not resting on laurels from a couple of decades ago. (BTW Mitchell was not on founding staff @ mozilla dot org; she was on Netscape's legal team and wrote the NPL and MPL.)

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#237

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…

I've been using Thunderbird for years probably since it was created. I was going to write a message about wishing they would invest more in Thunderbird and fix a particular bug.

As I was typing this it made me starting looking a bug I've found using it. So then I started Googling around to see if someone else found it. Looking at it, it appears it's been open for 3 years. But in the bug ticket they had steps to fix it. I now know few more menus in Thunderbird that I never considered clicking on. The bug now seem to be resolved and happier.

But then I also wish they would trim it down or at least give me the option to turn stuff off. I don't want an events and task organiser and all this stuff. I just want a mail client. I also wish their spam filter would be more consistent and stuff keeps getting through that I've flagged and is clearly spam as it's the same message I've been receiving for the last couple of months.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect, and based on misinformation from 2018. In 2018, Brave users could tip unverified content creators with BAT. Those tokens would go into a settlement wallet until claimed by the intended recipient. This was a bad design. Within 48 hours we had a new build of Brave out which held the tips locally, in the browser. The tip would be attempted for up to 90 days; if the unverified publisher were to verify…

> This is incorrect, and based on misinformation from 2018. Great, I love being incorrect and learning something new. > In 2018, Brave users could tip unverified content creators with BAT. Those tokens would go into a settlement wallet until claimed by the intended recipient. This was a bad design. So it wasn't incorrect or misinformation then? Glad you've fixed that shitty practice but that doesn't expunge it from h…

You're missing quite a bit of context here. Brave distributed tokens to users (from our User-Growth Pool of 300M BAT) as a means of ramping-up this new support model. Users then, in turn, could send received tokens to verified creators. If they wished to send the tokens to an unverified creator, the tokens would go [back to Brave] (in a settlement wallet), where they would reside until claimed by the publisher. Meanwhile, at Brave, we would reach out to unverified creators who had a growing balance waiting.

The change we made kept the tokens on the user's device. We also introduced better UI/UX as well, with many thanks to our community for helping us spot some areas for improvement. Although I'm part of the team, I still stand in awe of those few days in December, 2018. A great, yet flawed, system was radically improved in a matter of hours with a few small (yet profound) changes. And it wouldn't have been possible without Brave's incredibly engaged community.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#239
post #29
post #12

" remember when Brendan Eich was briefly the Mozilla CEO." Odd phrasing that glosses over how he was ousted by the early days "woke" mob (before they self-identified as such).

And that Eich went on to create the privacy focused Brave browser based on Chromium. Yet, these mistakes didn’t really change the downward trajectory. Apple and Google are the dominant mobile platforms and I can’t see how an independent desktop browser can grow against competent conglomerates.

Brave has grown every month since early beta launch. It can be done, but Firefox has lost share almost every month for a long time.

Google distributing and marketing Chrome definitely hurts Firefox, and yet Brave grows. A mystery to discuss another time.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#240
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> because google advertised it For a time, chrome was bundled along side JRE updates. I went over to my mother's multiple times and saw that Chrome had, yet again, replaced Firefox. Not to mention the constant advertising/banners to switch to Chrome on all of Google's web properties.

Chrome was also bundled with Adobe's Flash installer, which is ironic because Chrome bundles its own Flash plugin. So a Firefox user wanting Flash would download Adobe's Flash installer and (if they didn't watch the installer's default settings carefully) would be switched to Chrome. If a Firefox user wanted to switch to Chrome, they would have downloaded Google's Chrome installer, not Adobe's Flash installer.

Adobe had no incentive to change this relationship because they got paid by Google twice: for bundling Chrome in Flash and bundling Flash in Chrome.

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