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The endless browser wars

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Re: The endless browser wars

#211

Post by joe_the_user »

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…

One nice thing with open source is that often you don't have to use a "vanilla" version of a given system. I'm using Ubuntu but I view Unity and Gnome-Shell as brain-dead, tablet oriented interfaces but fortunately, I can use Ubuntu Mate and don't have to deal with this stuff at all.

I mostly like where Firefox is going, I like it's multiple identity tabs and it's general look. But it might help Mozilla to work out various ways to make sufficiently "skinnable" that someone else could maintain a Chrome-like version for all those people who like whatever it is about Chrome that's cool.

Re: The endless browser wars

#212

Post by MR4D »

tjoff wrote: post #148
MR4D wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think natural entropy will solve that problem over time. Give Microsoft another year or two, and I think we’ll see a hard fork. Looking back at WebKit, Google forked that into Blink. I don’t know why Firefox couldn’t do the same. I suppose in a couple years we’ll be able to check this post to see if Microsoft has done a hard fork or not. Will be interesting to see.

I don't know why we'd want Firefox to do that...

I don’t either, but the option is there if it’s ever needed. I guess I wasn’t as clear with my point for Firefox (which was a very different point for Microsoft).

Re: The endless browser wars

#213

Post by Tagbert »

maceurt wrote: post #158
aquova wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That sounds like some of my complaints about Chrome. Different strokes.

Re: The endless browser wars

#214

Post by Lev1a »

toyg wrote: post #210
Lev1a wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to the sibling comment, MEGA download of large files apparently only works if you use a Chromium-based browser since those quasi-standardised a feature that IIRC allows websites direct access to local storage. W.T.A.F.

Define “large file”, that’s not my experience (but I’ve not used MEGA in a while, they might have broken something...)

IIRC, it was >3GB or >4GB either in a single file or as a combined download.

Re: The endless browser wars

#215

Post by foobiekr »

playpause wrote: post #129
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’m not sure anyone claims their reason for not using Firefox is that they think Google is a better organisation than the Mozilla Foundation. I agree that browser diversity is a good thing for the web, and I’d love it if Firefox was more popular. But I’m not going to let that motivate my reasoning about whether it’s a good web browser.

That depends - is software quality, especially security, a relevant part of "better organization"?

I want to use Firefox, but when I use it, mobile or desktop, I notice a lot of page-induced crashing bugs or severe rendering errors (e.g., things that absolutely look like pointer discipline issues, blocks copied into the wrong area, etc.), which makes me extremely uncomfortable using it, as those crashes may be exploits in waiting, and there are a lot of them.

Re: The endless browser wars

#216

Post by oarsinsync »

jjav wrote: post #189
da_big_ghey wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. That's not normal Firefox behavior. I run multiple windows (one in each monitor), each of them with many dozens of tabs and only time I ever quit Firefox is if I have to reboot the machine for an update, so it runs for many months on end. Never seen this runaway CPU consumption.

> so it runs for many months on end

Danger. You want to restart it more frequently than this for updates.

Re: The endless browser wars

#217

Post by kenniskrag »

dblohm7 wrote: post #207
tjoff wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why we'd want Firefox to do that...

As a Firefox developer, I'm not sure why we'd want to do that. Forking isn't cheap if you want to make significant changes to that fork. We'd be better off staying with Gecko. (Oh, and we're still all-in on Gecko)

why is a redirect after the submission of a login form needed? Usually they say, that's to avoid the misuse of the history function to login. But firefox already knows, that there is a password field and could clear the data after the submit. Why it's not done?

Re: The endless browser wars

#218

Post by kelnos »

mortehu wrote: post #140
aquova wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not GP, but I decided to try Firefox again last week, and had to give up because I couldn't navigate to intranet URLs without explicitly typing http:// Strangely foo/ works (goes to http://foo/ ) while foo/bar does not (instead does a web search for foo/bar).

It's these sorts of things that make me realize that people just don't care about the health of the open web, or about protecting their privacy.

Ultimately this is a super minor issue (and turns out there's a way to fix it, per the sibling comment), but everyone just has their own pet excuse why they "can't" change to a browser that is objectively better for the web in every way.

Tragedy of the commons, I guess.

Re: The endless browser wars

#219

Post by [deleted] »

apostacy wrote: post #164
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 believe Firefox is a good enough browser to go toe-to-toe with Chrome. It and it's developer are not without problems. However, at this point I'd use Firefox even if Mozilla was just as bad as Google because I think the diversity is worth it. But what good is it if it won't deviate from Google's vision of the web? It will go toe-to-toe with Chrome at being Chrome, and almost nothing more. Mozilla is fine with DRM…

[deleted]

Re: The endless browser wars

#220

Post by kelnos »

sinkflay wrote: post #83
doublerabbit wrote: post #38

Until someone creates a new browser with a new render/scripting engine. Which everyone always jumps on saying "it's impossible", the war is over. Chrome has won. Chrome is currently giving life support to Mozilla and when they decide to axe that, well it's game over for Mozilla. The depressing part is the freedom, the new that the internet once provided is over. It's been turned in to a commercial breeding ground and…

> Chrome is currently giving life support to Mozilla and when they decide to axe that, well it's game over for Mozilla. Mozilla has a viable business model: making a browser and selling placement of search engine. They aren't on "life support" from Google. I use Firefox every day and it's a great browser. Chrome has not leap-frogged the competition. It's just the default choice for most people.

> Mozilla has a viable business model: making a browser and selling placement of search engine.

The problem is that the latter thing is only valuable while the former thing has enough users. As Chrome continues to siphon market share away from Firefox, Google will be willing to pay less and less for default search engine placement.

Honestly I think the main reason Google keeps being so "generous" is because Firefox is ammunition they can use to fight anti-trust claims.

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