121–130 of 949 posts
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> until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives Do you mean WebKit derivatives? Or are you predicting that Apple would switch to Chromium? (No way)
Imagine going back to 1997 and trying to convince tech people that one day KHTML on ARM would be the most popular web browsing platform.
I want to be done with Firefox so badly. I just don't want to go to Google. There's this really obnoxious issue where search in the address bar has taken a complete dive recently. For example, if I want to go to reddit.com/r/videos and it's a page I go to often, I can't just type "videos" because the suggestions that come up are links to threads I've visited recently. None of the suggestions are to reddit.com/r/video…
Bonus if it's a searchable site and you often search bookmark the search url, replace the get parameter with %s and you can search using the keyword
I can't think of any other solution.
They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…
>> We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives. The diversity of truly independent browser engines is far too important to give up without a fight. There are a lot of people oh HN who agree with that but then use a different browser for whatever reason. I feel like these people are being very hypocritical and should use what they want to succe…
Are you intentionally underselling it or is this what I can expect of Firefox? Because it's not a super awe-inspiring endorsement.
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They could pivot to compete with the Big Tech conglomerates in general. Provide their own suite of integrated tools, search engines, communication platforms, and so on. But with a privacy-focused and ad-free approach. DuckDuckGo already proved there is an appetite for something like this. They could go further, and remain relevant and viable in the way that DDG is, even if they never again are the most popular browse…
> DuckDuckGo already proved there is an appetite for something like this. An appetite, yes. But not a major one. A privacy-focused, ad-free approach would be hugely appealing to the HN crowd. But I’m less convinced about the public at large.
schools, local/regional/state governments, non-profits - types of orgs that have some long-term interest in privacy.
One thing missed when talking about Firefox's market share is desktop versus mobile market share. If you look at Wikimedia's metrics, Firefox still has ~10% market share of the desktop browser market[0], not too bad considering Firefox is not the default browser on any platform outside of linux systems for the most part, and that Mozilla is much smaller entity than competing browser vendors. Still down from the ~30%[…
I suspect that it's poor market share is due the very poor performance of the older fennec implementation.
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This. However, I think they need to answer the question, why should Firefox exist? If there is no compelling reason, well, there you go. If there is, double down on that make that reason shine. They have wasted so much money on the wrong things, IMO.
>they need to answer the question, why should Firefox exist? If there is no compelling reason, well, there you go. If there is, double down on that make that reason shine. Unfortunately, that reason (browser engine diversity)is compelling to people who understand the situation, but not general consumers - and it's impossible to make general consumers care, unless maybe Firefox went for an edgy "rebel against the man"…
(In case it's not clear, I'm asking in earnest. I'm not trolling.)
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edit: Okay, pull requests alone are not enough, but the objections y'all are raising seem like they could all be answered by forking, no? If Google upsets their users then a different browser has a chance to gain users:
- Ad-blocking
- Better extension API
- Maintaining backwards compatibility
- No Manifest V3
- Better vision of the web than Google
In other words, effort expended on duplicate functionality for it's own sake is wasted. Why not let Google do the heavy lifting and then improve on their work, rather than trying to compete head-to-head on the whole enchilada (of a complete browser engine)?
- get Web extensions (real ones, like uBlock) into Firefox for iOS.
- start a campaign around Web browsing speed (using numbers with Privacy Protection and/or uBlock0 enabled). That’s the last competitive advantage FF has, and it needs to use it to gain marketshare.
- Keep investing in Open Web initiatives (such as ActivityPub). Mozilla, like it or not, is one of the last bastions of the open web, and they need to keep investing in it (with research such as Persona).
What if we forked it with a Kickstarter campaign to fund core engineering salaries, followed by a low monthly subscription. Personally I'd happily pay if I knew the money was going where it should.