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Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

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Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#381

Post by technobabbler »

luch wrote: post #126
technobabbler wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still use Microsoft? My experience is largely in small medium biz and academia, both of which use a lot of Google. I haven't seen a Microsoft shop in decades. But that's just my own limited spheres of work. (edit: to be clear, wasn't trying to be snarky. Genuinely surprised. Thought Microsoft intranets were a thing of legacy dinosaur companies, didn't know that modern enterprises still did that. But I don't wo…

I know several security professionals who do incident response and therefore see a lot of IT setup across multiple domains since ransomwares are endemic nowadays, and according to them 99% of the shops they intervene run Office or Outlook(365) in some capacity.

Probably a self-selecting sample?

Also, I'd be willing to believe your average Google Workspace, preconfigured by Google, is more secure out of the box than your average Microsoft LAN administered by somebody who once took a certification course twenty years ago.

But when something breaks on self-hosted Microsoft stuff, at least you can hire someone to fix it. When something breaks on Google Workspace, hey, it's a free vacation day for the whole staff!

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#383

Post by Hidios »

brianguertin wrote: post #343
_jal wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry. > it seems that most of them have never worked on an user-facing product If you have worked on user-facing products, then I think you do understand. I think you just don't like the answer. Here it is in a nutshell: In the general case, how do you distinguish 'telemetry' from 'surveillance'? And the answer is you c…

> how do you distinguish 'telemetry' from 'surveillance'? Granularity. Telemetry data can be privacy-respecting (e.g. anonymously aggregated) while still being useful. E.g. "143 people flew from NYC to LA this month" vs. "John Smith flew from NYC to LA at 2:00 pm on Tuesday."

That is true for people with the same level of access as you. The 3 letter agencies have access to much wider array of data and yours can and will be used to track people of interest and those who they deem problematic.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#384

Post by chmod775 »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #103

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…

> [..] but I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser.

They could focus on building that browser, instead of getting sidetracked and wasting money on other things. Also reduce the friction of contributing to their projects from the outside, streamline the process, bring it into the 21st century while keeping top-down politics and egos out of it. I wouldn't be surprised if their rivals see more outside contributions (in total) simply because they are somewhat easier to work with.

However, overall the vast majority of contributions to Mozilla's projects is likely still coming from the outside.

Mozilla is afraid it will fail with Firefox if they don't diversify. But if Firefox fails, the world doesn't need Mozilla. If that happens they should just pack up and hand the custody of surviving technologies (Rust etc.) to someone else.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#385

Post by defaultname »

dragonwriter wrote: post #358
defaultname wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"supports the smallest number of features out of any browser." This is a bit like saying India has the smallest number of people in countries named China or India. It's still an enormous number of features, and it is simply extraordinary what is capable in the browser. "this is reflected in all the developer surveys" Remember "Made for IE"? IE was dogshit , yet there were loads of devs who thought ActiveX was the bee…

> IE was dogshit, yet there were loads of devs who thought ActiveX was the bee's knees and having to deal with other browsers and platforms was just an annoyance in their lives. I don't think that's true. There were loads of devs that thought that ActiveX was the quickest route to the best experiences for the largest market segment and having to deal with other browsers and platforms was something the people signing…

We seem to agree entirely.

Many developers would prefer a single, universal browser. A single platform. A single input mechanism (a single development language, compiler, RDBMS, filesystem, cloud provider, backup system, etc). All for obvious, practical reasons, at least in the short term.

That would be devastating for the future, but if it makes projects easier today, many developers are entirely onboard.

That was very much a dominant position among developers in the IE days. Other browsers were a nuisance, and maybe they should just be cut out entirely.

If Safari weren't such an important part of the market, Firefox would have been cut out long ago and we'd be awash in "Made For Chrome (and skinned Chrome)" badges. It is only the economic necessity of supporting iOS users that keeps cross browser development alive.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#386

Post by celsoazevedo »

isaiahg wrote: post #300
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #260

Firefox isn't an acceptable alternative, over the past few years it's completely obvious the priorities of the organization in control of it are not to build a great browser and to de-homogenize the web tech stack. Best thing that could ever happen for the browser problem is for Mozilla to go under and FF be taken over by the community who actually care about the problem that FF is the solution for, not just some ove…

I use Firefox as my daily driver and I couldn't disagree more. But it's hard to reply adequately because you don't actually tell us what your problems with it is. In what ways is Firefox not an acceptable alternative?

The parent comment seems to be referring to some of the things Mozilla has been doing lately. I'll focus only on the browser.

I think it's fair to say that the experience with Firefox will depend a lot on the platform and how much its imperfections affect you.

For example, I use macOS. Until last year Firefox would cut my laptop's battery life in half compared to a Chromium browser. That alone would make it a bad browser for me. Some sites that rely a lot on JS are often noticeably slower than Safari or Chromium. Then you have Firefox's UI. One thing that annoys me... CTRL/CMD+Click means opening on a new tab, right? On Firefox, by default, links on pages works like that, but links on the bookmarks bar don't! Talking of the bookmarks bar, after many UI updates, it no longer has the correct margins and doesn't fit with the rest of the UI, not to mention that favicons are a pain in the rear to update. And then there are the little things... Firefox moved to a "settings in a tab" for some things, but stuff like downloads and the bookmarks manager still open on windows with sizes that don't fit the OS or even Firefox's design. This old code was also stopping context menus and other parts of the browser from using the OS dark theme until recently.

Is Firefox terrible? No, but it's a mix of old and new code, UIs, etc, and the macOS version has been neglected for years. It's usable. Firefox's problem on this platform is that Safari and Chromium are so much better platform. Even with the recent improvements, Firefox is still behind in many areas.

I use Firefox daily, but only as a secondary browser. I've tried... but I get annoyed after a week or two and end up going back to a Chromium-based browser.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#387

Post by latexr »

asoneth wrote: post #271
latexr wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems that the market niche of tech-capable people who value privacy and customisation over a simplified UX is not capable of sustaining Firefox on its own. Perhaps they could care for the automation niche. There are thriving communities on macOS who are deeply into automation, and virtually no one uses Firefox. The ones who do stop because Firefox’s AppleScript support is non-existent, while Chromium’s (and thu…

If they're going to be paying developers to do it they'd need an expectation of a stronger ROI than their other efforts. I wonder if the size of the macOS automation community is large enough to make much of an impact on their market share. Would you estimate they'd gain hundreds of users? Thousands? Tens-of-thousands? If they're relying on volunteers then they'd need a few folks with the right set of skills and a mo…

> I wonder if the size of the macOS automation community is large enough to make much of an impact on their market share.

The automation communities (plural) create tools for themselves and for others. That’s the important bit. It’s common for non-coders to resort to those communities (which can be as simple as a subreddit) to achieve a simple recurring task. If they use Firefox, they get turned away from it because it’s the only major browser lacking AppleScript support. Not only do those developers abandon Firefox, so do all their users.

> Would you estimate they'd gain hundreds of users? Thousands? Tens-of-thousands?

I estimate they wouldn’t lose as many as they do. What good is it to gain market share if you can’t stop the bleed? If Firefox can’t even be interesting to large sections of developers and power users, what chance to they have with the general populace?

I lost count to how many people asked for my tools to be ported to Firefox, and I’m a single data point with a single need. Before I stopped caring, I checked every (front page) Firefox story on HN and without exception I collected a new macOS grievance by someone different. Tellingly, I noticed that no matter how polite or constructive the criticism, it was invariably met by defensiveness of the “I don’t care for that feature, so it’s not the problem” kind. That’s in line with what I felt in my interactions with the Firefox developers I spoke to, despite ostensibly most of them using macOS.

It’s fine for Firefox developers to ignore whatever communities they want; that’s their prerogative. But they then need to accept when those same people assert they can’t use Firefox as their daily driver.

> they'd need an expectation of a stronger ROI than their other efforts

Their latest efforts are constantly criticised on HN precisely because they are gimmicks not related to the browser. I’m not a marketing expert, but I expect making a browser people want to use is better ROI than Mr Robot marketing stunts or short-lived file sharing services with no innovative features.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#388

Post by halostatue »

kumarsw wrote: post #334
K0nserv wrote: post #153

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…

I'll go ahead and point out the obvious that the chances of Safari going Chromium-based are high given that (1) iOS Safari sucks and (2) Microsoft has had good success with Edgium. So the likelihood of Mozilla being the only dissenting voice is high.

The chance of Apple switching from a browser engine whose security and energy profile they control completely to one built specifically to advance the goals of a competitor is somewhere close to the chance of the heat death of the universe happening in the next five minutes.

It could happen, but even if it were to happen, there would be a split from Blink in a very short time period because Google’s values and mission do not align with Apple’s values and mission.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#389

Post by mlinksva »

aembleton wrote: post #337
mitul_45 wrote: post #229

I've been using Firefox for almost a year now (on Phone and Desktop) and the only reason I switch to Chrome is to translate websites. I live in Netherlands and don't speak Dutch so to browse any local website I have to rely on Chrome's auto-translate thingy.

I find this plugin works well for auto translating https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/traduzir-pagi...

Thanks! That works great. Like the parent, easy access to autotranslation is a reason I sometimes reach for a non-Firefox browser. It really ought be a feature shipped with Firefox; without it most of the web is effectively inaccessible.

The plugin relies on Google and Yandex for translations. Mozilla doesn't seem to have a problem with relying on or providing proprietary services (for better or worse) so that shouldn't be an obstacle, though I'd love to see an open source translation service replace them eventually -- maybe LibreTranslate https://github.com/FilipePS/Traduzir-paginas-web/issues/278

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#390

Post by InvisibleUp »

stupendousyappi wrote: post #371
KennyBlanken wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because Mozilla collects a massive amount of "telemetry" on users, in a way that is personally identifiable, despite zero need for it to be so? https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/t... Or maybe it's because you can toss some money at Mozilla and they'll silently install a browser extension on behalf of an advertising company for a shitty TV show about a l33t haxx0r d00d? By the way, the b…

What is the browser extension incident you're referring to? Can you provide a link to an article or previous HN discussion?

They're referring to https://www.engadget.com/2017-12-16-firefox-mr-robot-extensi..., an event that occurred 5 years ago, was immediately rolled back after launch, and hasn't happened again.
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