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Firefox Was Always Enough

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Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#431

Post by chipotle_coyote »

The_Colonel wrote: post #393
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

Of course it would be stupid to cut it out suddenly. The real successful strategy is to do it very slowly and gradually. With each release make it a tiny bit more annoying to install and run non-store apps. Make them slower - "this app is not trusted so it needs to be monitored for your safety which might negatively affect its performance". Users will prefer store apps and will put pressure on app developers to publi…

For all the reasons I've elucidated in other replies, I simply don't buy this. Also: this year has seen the move, after nearly two decades, from OS X/macOS 10.x to macOS 11.0, a new UI redesign clearly modeled on iOS, and a change to Apple's own processors derived from the ones they use for iPhones and iPads. There would have been no better year to make such a move than this year. It would have been the absolute perfect cover.

If and when both iOS and macOS are replaced by one unified operating system, this would be back on the table. But personally, I wouldn't bet a whole lot of money on it happening even then.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#432

Post by mekoka »

fragmede wrote: post #281
mekoka wrote: post #135

It seems to me that Mozilla isn't just technologically pessimistic, but they also just lack vision for the future of the web and what roles the browser could play in it. Right now, the only reason we're talking about them is that Firefox is sitting atop a sizable share of a practically impenetrable market. Very successful companies are being started around much less of a product, but Mozilla seems to genuinely have n…

Can be done with a browser in the future? There's no shortcoming of vision , the problem is monetizing it. A browser in the future is going to let me copy and paste seamless between mobile and desktop. What, are you going to charge 1 cent per completed copy and paste? Am I going to pay a dollar to get nightly builds of Firefox onto my device? If I have an Apple device that's not even possible!

What you're thinking of is selling the browser as a product, but what about the browser as a platform? In the former the browser is considered the end product, in the latter it's only the starting point. You must create an ecosystem around it by making it easy for people and organizations to augment it beyond its simple browsing functions. When I say "augment it" a few of us may be tempted to point at HTML/CSS/JavaScript. That's pretty much Mozilla's position as well. Meanwhile others who get it come up with such things as Airtable and Retool. Is it hard to imagine versions of Firefox that cater to businesses and work like Visual Basic? Drag & drop buttons, scripting in Dart or TypeScript natively, can connect to various types of datasources. The possibilities are immense.

There clearly is value in using browser technology in business. If Mozilla was a browser company they would've pushed more aggressively to understand novel ways it can be leveraged in those environments (who are also generally willing to pay for such things). I can imagine business applications being developed in a marketplace and Mozilla at the center taking a cut somewhere.

Why do we have to deal with "tree-shaking" in 2020? That's because the browser makers have completely divorced themselves from the idea that they could be part of the app ecosystem. They just build a browser that abides by the standards and push it out the door with their foot. You guys out there figure it out.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#433

Post by yabatopia »

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.

Just imagine how boring the web would have been without Flash - at that time. Or did you prefer crashing Java applets? Yes, you had the annoying unskippable intros, but some jaw dropping websites were made with Flash, something you barely see these days. I still remember sites like heavy.com, music bands and movies mini-sites, ...

Take a look at The Web Design Museum, Gallery of Flash Websites: https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/flash-websites/ . Beautiful visuals, terrible SEO.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#434

Post by bsdubernerd »

tristan957 wrote: post #337
bsdubernerd wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still use FF on a desktop, but on Android is not Firefox for me. It's just as dumb (if not dumber) than chrome, and serves no purpose whatsoever without addons. I also don't get the point of limiting addons to a vetted whitelist. I feared this would be the case since they introduced signing requirements, and that's precisely what happened. I waited a bit, but I completely lost interest since the new mobile redesign…

A browser with 10 add-ons is as dumb (if not dumber) than a browser with no add-ons. A browser backed by a company committed to open-source and privacy is as dumb (if not dumber) than a browser backed by an ad company. Dear god stop over-reacting. Open source communities are so toxic. Can't believe you actually typed these words into existence.

I wouldn't complain if work from the community (which is just as important as the browser itself) wasn't artificially restricted. As a previous extension developer, an avid extension user, and also OSS contributor, it strikes against all my values.

I'm fully supportive of Mozilla for their work, a doubly so for being the main alternative to Chrome, however Android always felt as a double-standard to me. FF on Android is not (and was really never) on the same page as the desktop version, and I don't understand why it can't.

I'm complaing because the reason why I love FF on desktop is the reason why I find it unusable on Android.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#435

Post by mmphosis »

myfonj wrote: post #400

> Remember what was really cool in Firefox? Tabs! Ah how this resonates with me so much, I remember the difference of tabless IE and oh so magical Netscape / Firefox when those were new. I consider myself Mozilla fanboy to this days. But alas, every time I try clean installation with default settings I cannot believe how … bad this became and how far it diverged from original experience: by now Firefox is browser wit…

I've yet to be sold on tabs. I sometimes modify the user chrome to hide the tab bar - although it is problematic.

Currently, I have the hn comments in one window, and the article in another window, and hn front page in another window on a "smaller" 2K monitor. Customized for compact density, os tab bar moved to the right, menu bar off (the default) and still the 30 links on the hn front page don't fit on the page. Why can't the tab bar be hidden when there is only one tab? I don't need to see a tab with a truncated title that already appears in the title bar. I guess I am supposed to hide the title bar, and learn to love a Lotus Notes era "Tab" interface. In my opinion, tabs are not cool.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#436

Post by blacklight »

Firefox must obviously be the core product, the one that people know, love and trust and can easily use - although this doesn't mean that Mozilla can't try other projects as well, maybe with with more constrained resources so projects that don't get enough momentum don't linger for too long.

And the writer has a point when he says that the weight of Firefox has allowed Mozilla to be a heavyweight at the table of the standards of the web.

But there's a point he misses (and he was nearly there when he mentioned Gecko).

What do Chrome, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge and basically every browser on Android and iOS have in common? That's the web engine - and that's WebKit/Blink, with Chromium usually being the foundation.

That wasn't a big problem when the guys at Google were still pushing for better web standards, but that's no longer the case. Gecko may have a big window to become a really modular engine that any browser can use on any platform, and it could advertise itself like the modular, corporate-free, privacy-aware, fully standard-compliant solution that can power the next generation of browsers out there - or at least be an alternative to the WebKit/Blink/Chromium monopoly. I know that a while ago Mozilla had considered exposing Gecko as a browser-agnostic engine, but at some point for some reason they dropped the plan - and that's quite a shame.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#437

Post by BlueTemplar »

kome wrote: post #179
lucideer wrote: post #146

It's curious that the 4 bullet points in the final section don't make any mention of open source (in fact, the article doesn't at all). I think Opera Software circa 2012 was doing all of the things we would hope for/expect from Mozilla & Firefox, and doing them much better than Mozilla could. Bar one: it was not open source. When I made the switch to Firefox in 2012, it was my belief that I would not have been forced…

I did exactly the same. I switched to Firefox after Opera changed direction, with Opera 13. It's incredible how much Opera 12 was advanced and snappy. It was 2012... I used Firefox since then. And I never had an issue with it. But, especially at the beginning, I really felt it was an inferior browser. But still better than chrome for sure. Just because I don't want google to know all my chronology.

Yeah, Opera 12 is probably better than today's Firefox...

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#438

Post by BlueTemplar »

inglor_cz wrote: post #386
kome wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did exactly the same. I switched to Firefox after Opera changed direction, with Opera 13. It's incredible how much Opera 12 was advanced and snappy. It was 2012... I used Firefox since then. And I never had an issue with it. But, especially at the beginning, I really felt it was an inferior browser. But still better than chrome for sure. Just because I don't want google to know all my chronology.

Opera Mobile worked great on Symbian smartphones with very limited screen resolution and system resources, too. Much better than the built-in Web browser from Nokia itself. Often, Opera Mobile was your only chance to get something done online on such a device. For example, purchase a ticket.

Not to mention the reduced data usage (literally ~10 000 times more expensive than today!)

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#439

Post by cwyers »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #370
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…

> Mozilla doesn't have a real sustainable business model right now. This is the meat of my problem with Firefox as it stands. I've not stopped using Firefox since the mid 2000's but come on, you need something more than just checks from Google. Charge me for a commercial version of FireFox that includes a VPN subscription and funds its development. Just do it ten years ago. Honestly, if they're not going to embrace R…

But then the VPN product is the revenue driver, not the browser. You still aren't making money off the browser. The whole point of the article is decrying the lack of focus on browser in order to focus on other revenue streams. I don't think one other other revenue stream is the solution.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#440

Post by err4nt »

blindm wrote: post #24

I think Firefox is like some banks in that it is too big to fail [0]. Not that Firefox is a financial institution, but something that has embedded and woven itself so deeply into the web in general that I can't imagine the web without it. If it dies in some fantastical way, something else (hopefully better and evolved) will fill its place. We can't have the Chromes of the world slurping up all our data in the near fu…

But it's not that big, comparatively. 2/3 people are using Chrome, 1/6 are using Safari, and ~1/28 are using Firefox. If you look at a trend line over the last 10 years Firefox has fallen from its peak around ~30% in a steady decline toward 3% (and eventually 0%). It's not big, it's barely hanging onto numbers on the chart, alongside Internet Explorer and Edge. Some data: https://caniuse.com/usage-table
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