I've loved Firefox for years. There's also been a bug that I've never been able to track down: clicking on dropdowns doesn't "stick" and it take multiple tries to select something. Today I finally cracked. I just can't have that irritation in my life any more. So Brave it is. #myfirefoxstory
Firefox Was Always Enough
371–380 of 611 posts
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#372Recently switched back to Firefox after meandering between Edge and Chrome on multiple platforms (Linux, macOS and Windows) for work and non-work purposes. Firefox Dev Tools are fucking awesome. Firefox sync works great. All the extensions I want are here. It's fast enough in ways that microbenchmarks don't mean anything to me...and it's free as in Liberty (last but not least). I've been looking for a VPN, and even t…
Raindrop is the best bookmark extension/app I've ever used.
Since the desktop app has a reader view, it's great both for organizing things for classical bookmarking, and for maintaining a "live" set of things you need have at hand, such as documentation. It's very good for "read it later" use cases, too.
Pocket is a very good offline reader for having a queue of web articles (and only that; it does not do handle things like PDFs well) to read later, but not good for anything else.
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and more. See https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/ and prior posts in the series.
We support uMatrix as extension and will continue to do so even after Chrome breaks it via Manifest V3. We don't build all its powers in (yet).
uMatrix was abandoned. Did you mean uBlock Origin?
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#374I prefer Firefox over Chrome for better usability.
An example of glaring UI bug in Chrome: https://webm.red/view/XWtg.webm
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#375Mozilla 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…
Mozilla business model :
1. Ask that the DOJ strips Chrome from Google. You can't make the browser, search, and ad platform. Monopoly power. Google needs to exit Chrome right now.
2. Ask the DOJ to force vendors like Apple to allow other browser engines. They can't lock down all "code execution" on generic computers they sell.
3. Integrate Ad Blocking in Firefox.
4. Collect money from advertisers willing to make non-invasive ads that want to be seen.
Brave's business model, but with much more badass tech.
After revenue comes back, make a mail service.
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Since I have your ear, in hindsight do you think the promotion of IndexedDB over SQLite/WebSQL was a good move?
I think persistent SQLite is on the verge of returning to the browser via WebAssembly but it needs a proper POSIX-like WASI [1] (WebAssembly System Interface) implementation in the browser. If you are looking for (very) small footholds in the market for Brave, a WASI implementation supporting a SQLite VFS [2] extension has my vote.
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#377I just hope any Firefox-only developments at Mozilla won't strand Pocket, one of my favorite apps (and which I pay for).
Man. You have to be careful.
Pocket has been pushing too much of political content. Specially from the left's point of view.
I believe anything with a bias is bad. Right or Left. Specially such sites where people see or read. Otherwise pocket is great.
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#378I 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…
Firefox is a great deal more privacy focused than Safari when you start factoring in containers. I also wouldn’t trust Apple to stick to their privacy mission long term. It’s a marketing strategy that they seemingly care about at the moment but it’s supplementary to their core demographics so who’s to say they stick with this vision long term? I’m less concerned about the same happening with Firefox. > In 10 - 15 yea…
Apple can try to swing around the privacy bat right now because they have alternate revenue streams.
It will be interesting how long their shareholders will buy the premise that "we can earn more by using privacy to convince people to buy our high-margin kit and run Safari than we would by casting off the privacy mantle and getting deep into the data-grab business."
The other side of the coin is that I really believe there's a bubble waiting to burst in that exact industry. The price of building and feeding hyper-targeted, data-bloated marketing machines is far out of scale with their utility for most use cases, but people are throwing silly money at it right now. (Compare the Smart TV/IoT device model, where they believe that peddling usage data is enough to justify an increased BoM AND frequently selling the product near or under cost). If they expect the bubble to burst (either through marketers coming to their senses or heavy-duty GDPR style regulation), they might be just "passively" pushing the privacy angle-- don't bother building out an infrastructure that will be worthless as soon as the bubble bursts, and you come out of it with a huge branding/goodwill win when everyone else reinvents their business model and invents privacy.
I was surprised Chromium!Edge ended up being such a mess with privacy because, somewhat like Apple, MS has associated businesses that let them subsidize its development without having to leverage user data. They could have come out looking good-- weren't they the only ones who tried to make a go of Do Not Track headers?
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 c…
> - waiting for 20 megs of minified JS to load over 3G I don't use Slack.
I didn't use pages with un-skippable Flash intros.
Re: Firefox Was Always Enough
#380I always thought with Firefox + Thunderbird, the next natural evolution would be mail service integration and SaaS mail offerings. So many companies now outsource their mail and the Thunderbird devs had so much insight into the space it could have been a natural extension with revenue diversity.
They could have been on the path of Google Apps and Office 365 before they even existed. Now, who knows.