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The endless browser wars

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Re: The endless browser wars

#151

Post by chromie123 »

worble wrote: post #10
approxim8ion wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that chromium can't be run on Windows or Mac. Chrome Canary or some testing variant can but not Chromium. It's hard to consider it a mainstream option in that case for me. EDIT: this is untrue, chromium builds are available for all platforms from chromium.org. Please ignore

>can't be run on windows I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that. chromium.org doesn't offer chroimium builds on their website but there are a number of places you can get someone elses build, for example https://chromium.woolyss.com/ or https://github.com/macchrome/winchrome/tree/master or presumably just build it yourself if you wanted to.

The Chromium project does maintain an official alternative to those: download-chromium.appspot.com. I think it's discoverable via documentation on chromium.org albeit perhaps (I don't remember) not from the main download page.

(Disclosure: I work at Google on Chrome.)

Re: The endless browser wars

#152

Post by latexr »

015a wrote: post #115

This is rather written in the perspective of "shame on google for removing these API keys", but it feels to me that this should be a (small, incomplete, but still a) win for open source; if I want to run an open source, free browser, I don't want it phoning home to Google every day. There's a separate problem in that Chromium isn't capable of any other ways of more freely and openly syncing the things it used to sync…

> Firefox is somewhere within the range of 98% to 102% as good as Chrome, depending on the website you're visiting.

Perhaps when only taking into account webpage rendering. But how you interact with the browser is also important, and to many of us Firefox falls short in that regard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26036353

Re: The endless browser wars

#153

Post by w0mbat »

There is a major factor that kicks in when a browser gets the most market share, particularly >50% of the total, as Win IE did in the 90s and Chrome did a few years ago. Because web site developers test their site in the "top" browser, and then maybe other browsers too, becoming the top browser gives you a huge boost in compatibility through no virtue of your own. Every website works in that browser now because website developers make sure they work.

This creates a shift among users, who notice that every site works in the top browser, but only 90% work in browser x, and they start shifting to the top browser and often won't even report problems they have with other browsers. The effect is obviously self-reinforcing, and the top browser continues to gain share.

The counter-measure to this is standards. With rigorous web standards followed by websites and browsers, if the top browser works, so do all the rest.

There isn't much to enforce this though, and there are temptations on all sides not to do the right thing.

Re: The endless browser wars

#154

Post by m-ce »

All the arguments about Chrome being insecure due to its proprietary software built upon it, are true, but why not use Ungoogled Chromium? (or another chromium fork that implements those features themselves). Mozilla is in a very bad position, their main source of income as I understand it is Google, because they're the ones that pay the most to have Google as a default search engine in Firefox. That and Googles anti-competitive practices, like when they implemented the Polymer redesign on YouTube, which had Firefox and Edge loading the site way slower than Chrome.

I don't know what Mozilla can do even if they do all the right things, because Google will just keep throwing money punches.

Re: The endless browser wars

#155

Post by 1MachineElf »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #138
xg15 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't tolerate Firefox because of Mozilla's problems, how can you possibly stomach Chrome/Chromium with Google at the wheel? OT, but I think this is an interesting psychological phenomenon that occurs in a lot of settings, in particular politics: People, services, products etc are not judged by objective (or even just common) standards but by the standards they announce for themselves . So someone who claims…

There's another angle here I think you are missing > If you can't tolerate Firefox because of Mozilla's problems, how can you possibly stomach Chrome/Chromium with Google at the wheel? It's because it's not enough to be wrong about something (according to certain people), but you must be punished for being wrong. And narcissists can't handle a company not being "100% right" so they punish them by going to their compe…

How about Brave as a Chromium-based alternative to Firefox that isn't worse for the cause?

Re: The endless browser wars

#156

Post by 1MachineElf »

CivBase wrote: post #111

> The larger problem, though, is that it's not at all clear that Firefox will remain a viable alternative to Chrome. Its market share has been falling for years, and not everybody is pleased with the directions that the Mozilla Foundation has taken. I'm disappointed by how many people cling to Chrome/Chromium under the justification that they don't like where Mozilla is going. If you can't tolerate Firefox because of…

If not leaving Firefox, what is the preferred way to signal to Mozilla that we aren't happy with their leadership's choices?

Re: The endless browser wars

#157

Post by gryn »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #149
CivBase wrote: post #111

> The larger problem, though, is that it's not at all clear that Firefox will remain a viable alternative to Chrome. Its market share has been falling for years, and not everybody is pleased with the directions that the Mozilla Foundation has taken. I'm disappointed by how many people cling to Chrome/Chromium under the justification that they don't like where Mozilla is going. If you can't tolerate Firefox because of…

I've tried to use Firefox, even though I don't like Mozilla's direction. But it just sucks too much. The new updates have made it worse, not better: these days, it leaks CPU. What do I mean? If I leave it running for too long with a bunch of tabs open, it will eat more and more of my CPU until it's hogging it all. Killing and re-opening solves it, but I can't do that all the time. Surf, Midori, and Qutebrowser are al…

I've been using it for the last 2 years. both on linux and windows, works ok on the later, but on linux I keep getting random corrupted graphics / black screens each time ram/swap are almost full. looking into filled bugs this doens't seems to be something new, I can find some bug reports dating back to 6 years and no sugestions for a fix beside disabling hardware acceleration, which doesn't work for me at least.

Re: The endless browser wars

#158

Post by maceurt »

aquova wrote: post #136
maceurt wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could stomach firefox, but everything about it just absolutely infuriates me. Even with a bunch of addons it is bothersome to run. The issue is that most people spend majority of their time on a PC in a web browser, including myself. Even a 5% worse product is still going to add up to a sizable amount of wasted time/ unneeded frustration. I personally spend hours tinkering with my OS to make it better for me…

Out of curiosity, what is it that makes Firefox 5% worse than Chromium-based browsers in your eyes?

1. general UI

2. keyboard shortcuts

3. moving around tabs/ windows

4. crashes/ memory issues

Re: The endless browser wars

#159

Post by acheron »

CivBase wrote: post #111

> The larger problem, though, is that it's not at all clear that Firefox will remain a viable alternative to Chrome. Its market share has been falling for years, and not everybody is pleased with the directions that the Mozilla Foundation has taken. I'm disappointed by how many people cling to Chrome/Chromium under the justification that they don't like where Mozilla is going. If you can't tolerate Firefox because of…

Same. The Mozilla organization has not covered themselves in glory over the past few years. And I like some of the things Brave is doing. But using a Chromium browser is a non-starter for me. I will not switch to one until I have no other choice.

Re: The endless browser wars

#160

Post by hackerman_fi »

Don’t know if I’m in minority but I couldn’t care less about these Google provided services.

I have no reason to bookmark pages between devices - different devices for different purposes. I don’t need my work bookmarks on my gaming computer.

For posting random comments to social media I don’t need spell checking either. If grammar needs to be spot on, I use Word etc.

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