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Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

batsov.com

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Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#171
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can still re-enable X through about:config Meaning X will be removed within ~three versions.

Weird, I've been using `toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets` for a lot more than three versions.

Weird, there's 'legacy' right there in the name. I wouldn't be surprised if that feature gets removed at some point.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#172

I've been meaning to write almost exactly this blog post for a while now, glad that someone else did it. Two things that I think are worth calling out: 1. In many ways Apple's anti-competitive behaviour on iOS/iPadOS is a blessing. It's one of the few things that keep Chromium's dominance in check. Of course, it's not great that Apple are stifling innovation like this, but consider the alternative: Chromium dominance…

FLoC has nothing to do with rendering, though.

Mozilla existing (and shipping spyware, just like Chrome) doesn't really do anything to stop any of that.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#173
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not ironic just puzzled: what was the UI change months ago? I'm using Firefox on two laptops and one Android and haven't noticed it...

What Firefox version are you on?

Always latest - it updates itself everywhere. So if there was a change, it was so minor I haven't even noticed it, less complain about it. But either way: what was the breaking UI change months ago again?

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#174
post #37

I think part of this discussion needs to be that Firefox, while open source, doesn't provide footing for the community to build browser forks the way Chromium does. This sort of open usage, ironically, feels very fitting to the spirit of Firefox, but they're not even close to Chrom(e|ium). I've been building a browser full time the past year+ (synth.app) and FF core wasn't really even an option. They've done very lit…

As a Vivaldi user I would really like to see more growth in this area. There are some great ideas in browser forks and I would like to enable them.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#175

It's a depressing situation, particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. It makes one seriously wonder whether it is feasible at all to maintain an independent open-source web browser in 2021. People tend to blame Mozilla's management and I'm sure there have been management failures but I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser. It s…

it would be great if we can move past the browser and debundle the tech, for example we should have a few different JS engines, a few different CS engines and a multitude of different GUIs ...

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me some of the things you mention sound like anticompetitive practices from behalf of Google.

Microsoft used these same anti competitive practices with Windows and Internet Explorer and they got an antitrust lawsuit.

Always wondered how Google can pull it off then. I assume their legal team figured out the threshold of what they can do, and now they do threshold - 1 so "it's ok"?

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#178

It's a depressing situation, particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. It makes one seriously wonder whether it is feasible at all to maintain an independent open-source web browser in 2021. People tend to blame Mozilla's management and I'm sure there have been management failures but I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser. It s…

I have to strongly agree with your last point - I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry. Perhaps it's just the loud minority, but to me it seems that most of them have never worked on an user-facing product (for-profit or not). Yes, users can themselves explicitly communicate feedback regarding the product or its features, and no, most of them don't do tha…

> I have to strongly agree with your last point - I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry.

I think it would be far less hostility if we as users got access to the information ourselves. E.g. I would think it would be very useful to see stats on which features I'm using in firefox, how often, which features I'm not using, how many tabs I have (compared to the average user) etc., and I would be much more happy to share that data with firefox if I can see it first.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#179

I used to hold the same opinion: Google controls the world because everything is Blink/Chromium based! Must use Firefox to protest! Then I looked closer look at the history of Chromium and Blink. The reality is that a lot of the other "Chromium-based" browsers actually only use the Blink renderer. They don't use many (if any) other Chromium components other than probably V8. In ancient times, Blink itself was a fork…

KDE now uses Blink to render KHTML IIRC.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#180
18ish years ago I was using Firefox as my primary browser and then testing in IE. Now I still run Firefox and instead test in Chrome. Rinse, repeat. Although I'll admit testing and fixing for Chrome is quite easier than it was dealing with IE and it's various versions.
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