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Firefox Was Always Enough

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Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#351

Post by pfraze »

krmboya wrote: post #313
throw_m239339 wrote: post #271

Mozilla doesn't have a real sustainable business model right now. FireFox OS could have provided such model, in fact, its successor kaios is doing very well and one can imagine that in the future, it will be the primary OS of half the mobile users on the planet. 'Feature phones' aren't dead. They provide a cheap alternative to touch phones, are usually more robust, and allowing them to run web apps instead of MIDP st…

I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. From where I am at it was a massive opportunity for Mozilla and Web developers all round the world. They didn't have to take on Android and iOS directly, but may have gotten there eventually thru 'worse is better'. Imagine a web developer learning just a few APIs and being being able to customize their web app for smart TVs

Well you know what's really tragic: FFOS is a pretty big success. It was forked and became KaiOS, which has decent market-share in India.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#352

Post by emn13 »

toyg wrote: post #265
karaterobot wrote: post #88

What would happen if Firefox took away a significant number of users away from Chrome? Wouldn't Google just stop paying for search placement, removing Mozilla's main source of income? I get that Chrome isn't Google's direct source of income, ads are. But, it seems like controlling the web in order to facilitate serving advertisements (e.g. AMP, Extension Manifest v3) is part of its strategy. If Mozilla made a more su…

> Wouldn't Google just stop paying for search placement, removing Mozilla's main source of income? They would haggle a bit more but they would still pay. That's because Firefox's very existence is their insurance against accusations of monopolistic practices in a field where antitrust caselaw actually exists.

Also, it's not like chrome is googles main source of income or anything. I don't think google really would be impacted all that much anymore in todays market if chrome shrank, especially if they lost market share to firefox (as opposed to say, apple, and maaayybe microsoft). Why would they care?

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#353

Post by btilly »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #4

I dont think I understood the point about mozilla wanting to influence the web being bad for firefox. Particlulalry if having lots of users is how you influence things, since then you need to provide a good product (or lock users in via some external ecosystem). Maybe some recent EU legislation moves can help them in the same way the browser choice thing helped.

The goals have a lot of compatibility, but occasionally come in conflict. And example may illustrate.

If you care about making Firefox good for users, you will work to improve current performance, and prioritize compatibility with badly coded websites. Even if it makes it harder to adopt future standards coming down the pipeline.

If you care about pushing standards, you'll put more energy into those future standards, even at the cost of performance and compatibility with badly coded websites.

Firefox has consistently chosen to prioritize standards that are someone's idea about how to do things better over the real world that exists right now.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#355

Post by heavyset_go »

jdc wrote: post #343
heavyset_go wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine a web developer learning just a few APIs and being being able to customize their web app for smart TVs This was WebOS in 2009. Windows Phone, WebOS, Meego and Ubuntu Phone all "failed" around the same time period as Firefox OS. I have a hard time laying blame solely on Mozilla there.

FWIW webOS is still alive and well. https://www.webosose.org https://github.com/webosose

LG also has it running on smart TVs. I had the Pre over a decade ago, and having webOS in my pocket was great.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#356

Post by nfriedly »

tomrod wrote: post #59

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

Can't say that I agree. I've been using Firefox on Android for years now and it just keeps getting better IMO. I'm satisfied with the performance and the UI, but what I really love the extensions.

I know they rejiggered the UI a bit recently, but it seems like a moderate improvement to me.

Also, I use Firefox to sync across all of my devices. I know you can do that with Chrome, but I trust Mozilla more than Google with my data.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#357

Post by Yhippa »

jdc wrote: post #343
heavyset_go wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine a web developer learning just a few APIs and being being able to customize their web app for smart TVs This was WebOS in 2009. Windows Phone, WebOS, Meego and Ubuntu Phone all "failed" around the same time period as Firefox OS. I have a hard time laying blame solely on Mozilla there.

FWIW webOS is still alive and well. https://www.webosose.org https://github.com/webosose

Hey, thanks for this link. I was a huge fan of webOS since the days of the Palm Pre. I noticed that this runs on the Raspberry Pi 4. Do you know what the use case for this is? Store displays?

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#358

Post by old-gregg »

krmboya wrote: post #313
throw_m239339 wrote: post #271

Mozilla doesn't have a real sustainable business model right now. FireFox OS could have provided such model, in fact, its successor kaios is doing very well and one can imagine that in the future, it will be the primary OS of half the mobile users on the planet. 'Feature phones' aren't dead. They provide a cheap alternative to touch phones, are usually more robust, and allowing them to run web apps instead of MIDP st…

I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. From where I am at it was a massive opportunity for Mozilla and Web developers all round the world. They didn't have to take on Android and iOS directly, but may have gotten there eventually thru 'worse is better'. Imagine a web developer learning just a few APIs and being being able to customize their web app for smart TVs

> I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS.

Because this product could only be sold to a hardware maker. It doesn't matter how good it was/is, because hardware makers are smart enough now not to rely on a 3rd party supplier of an OS, in fact they've been working hard on degoogling Android as much as possible.

Another failed alternative that comes to mind is WebOS, and yes indeed, it got acquired by LG for the reasons above.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#359

Post by geogra4 »

jonathansampson wrote: post #336
geogra4 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's scary is that even Microsoft has essentially given up on an independent browser engine

I was at Microsoft (and on the IE/Edge team) when that movement started. The writing was on the wall; too many developers were targeting (and testing in) Chromium (and/or Webkit) alone. The iPhone in 2007 pretty much claimed the mobile-web as its own. Massive efforts were made to bring IE up-to-speed. Support for -webkit- prefixes and more were added, but that proved to be too little, too late. IE 11 eventually even…

> I've seen saying for years that I think Firefox will eventually do the same, or suffer the same drift into irrelevancy that Microsoft had been experiencing for so long.

Man, that would be something? Firefox forking Chromium to replace gecko would be a very sad day for the internet, but as of now it does kind of seem inevitable.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#360

Post by minikites »

jeffbee wrote: post #317
minikites wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Were you actually alive in 2005-2010 or are you just guessing? Flash-based unskippable intros on fixed 640x480 centered viewports are the reality of the 2005 web, regardless of whatever nostalgia you suffer from.

We've replaced "waiting for unskippable Flash intros" with:

- a web that is thoroughly unusable without an ad-blocker (ad-blocking was pretty optional in 2005)

- waiting for 20 megs of minified JS to load over 3G

- waiting for Google web fonts to load because apparently shipping more than 4 fonts in common is beyond the ability of plucky upstarts like Microsoft, Apple, and Google

- web "apps" with worse performance characteristics than programs that ran on 66 MHz machines

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