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Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

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Re: Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

#61

Post by AlphaSite »

hutzlibu wrote: post #57
mch82 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. Mozilla is competing for the same talent as Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Browsers are the most important software at those companies because most other software runs on them. The Hacker News community doesn’t seem to appreciate the work Mozilla has done to establish web standards. I’ve experienced what it’s like to be stuck with IE6 and IE11 for a decade, holding back web projects at work. Firefox broke t…

"Mozilla is competing for the same talent as Google, Microsoft, and Apple." Not exactly the same. Many are willing to accept less pay, to work on meaningful open source and not for advertisement.

Maybe 10-20% less, but it’s not enough to meaningfully make a difference.

Re: Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

#62

Post by asiachick »

cies wrote: post #2

Death to w3schools! When search engines allowed blacklisting domain, w3schools was my first and only pick. It always seems to show up on top for many web tech questions, but the quality is rubbish. MDN is a breath of fresh air in this regard. I expect it will knock w3schools of it's search result throne in the coming years. The end of a era of low quality, ad sponsored (4 ads, just counted) web technology reference.

I'm often disappointed witu mdn as well. Lots of old examples using dated JavaScript passing on bad practices

Re: Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

#63

Post by hutzlibu »

AlphaSite wrote: post #61
hutzlibu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Mozilla is competing for the same talent as Google, Microsoft, and Apple." Not exactly the same. Many are willing to accept less pay, to work on meaningful open source and not for advertisement.

Maybe 10-20% less, but it’s not enough to meaningfully make a difference.

20% less would be already quite meaningful. Add to that volunteers who work completely for free, and this could give an edge and I would argue, that this is mainly what keeps firefox alive. Despite their management increasingly acting like a ordinary company.

"In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008.[14] On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to." "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Mozilla_Foundat...

Re: Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

#64

Post by Jarwain »

cies wrote: post #24
onion2k wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect it will knock w3schools of it's search result throne in the coming years. There's no practical incentive for Google to prioritize MDN over w3schools though. Google doesn't seem to rank sites on quality any more. I suspect they rank sites on "ad profitability" instead. Showing users websites that have adverts means users click on more adverts, which Google benefits from (by encouraging that user behavior even…

I did not ask Google to change it, I just hope they will soon loose to MDN (which is currently the second).

Recently MDN feels like it has been surpassing w3schools on more of my searches

Re: Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

#65

Post by tannhaeuser »

mch82 wrote: post #56
themihai wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a browser so expensive to maintain? $400m/year?

Of course. Mozilla is competing for the same talent as Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Browsers are the most important software at those companies because most other software runs on them. The Hacker News community doesn’t seem to appreciate the work Mozilla has done to establish web standards. I’ve experienced what it’s like to be stuck with IE6 and IE11 for a decade, holding back web projects at work. Firefox broke t…

Maybe. I'm glad FF exists, am using it all the time on desktop.

But here's another perspective: FF led an audience towards Google's web of shit. It would've been entirely possible for Moz to have said no to the latest fad; then, by the power of having a dominating browser in the field, the web could've been preserved as a medium for relatively simple text-mostly information. I, for one, am interested in individual info and personal sites rather than thousands of nice-looking content farms with tracking.

I'm particularly puzzled by those CSS apologists always painting a naive creationist story about how much we progressed etc etc. Yet, realistically, CSS is so bad, like consider-your-career-choices bad, that I have a hard time accepting this as a result of so much energy of so many intelligent people. CSS will go down as this generation of web "developers" retire, since it's an irrational, overcomplicated piece of shit only understandable in discourse as it has happened. Why did I put "developers" in quotes? Because the web was a vision for easy good-enough self-publishing for layman, not an "industry".

Saying this as someone who's a sucker for design, and sucks at it, too.

Re: Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

#66

Post by asiachick »

toastal wrote: post #8

The new MDN design looks snazzy but no longer works in NetSurf. I would hope a resource like this was highly accessible, even to browsers without CSS3 support (isn't this why we have @supports?). It's also furthering a trope of themes being a binary toggle; there are more options than just white and gray--how about OLED black to conserve the least about of power (looks better on my screens too).

I find the purple on black to be too low contrast for my eyes and setup.

Re: Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

#67

Post by strbean »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #65
mch82 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. Mozilla is competing for the same talent as Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Browsers are the most important software at those companies because most other software runs on them. The Hacker News community doesn’t seem to appreciate the work Mozilla has done to establish web standards. I’ve experienced what it’s like to be stuck with IE6 and IE11 for a decade, holding back web projects at work. Firefox broke t…

Maybe. I'm glad FF exists, am using it all the time on desktop. But here's another perspective: FF led an audience towards Google's web of shit. It would've been entirely possible for Moz to have said no to the latest fad; then, by the power of having a dominating browser in the field, the web could've been preserved as a medium for relatively simple text-mostly information. I, for one, am interested in individual in…

If a camel is a horse designed by committee, CSS is the product of 10 generations of camel breeding by different committees, followed by some rounds of competing evil geniuses creating genetically modified variants.

We should also keep in mind that the use cases have completely and wildly changed.

That being said, it does seem like we are overdue for a clean slate.

Re: Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

#68

Post by strbean »

ydlr wrote: post #46

I think Mozilla's structure of having a for-profit owned by a nonprofit has a lot of potential. The problem is that the products they are trying to make money from are also the primary vehicles for accomplishing their nonprofit mission. A better example is Newman's Own. Their mission is not to make the world's best tomato sauce. That is just how it makes money. Mozilla needs to find its tomato sauce. Then Firefox and…

I love the sly assertion that Newman's Own Tomato Sauce is the best in the world :)

Now they just need to make Newman O's better. Aside from the mint ones, those are great.

Re: Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

#69

Post by diggernet »

hutzlibu wrote: post #63
AlphaSite wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 10-20% less, but it’s not enough to meaningfully make a difference.

20% less would be already quite meaningful. Add to that volunteers who work completely for free, and this could give an edge and I would argue, that this is mainly what keeps firefox alive. Despite their management increasingly acting like a ordinary company. "In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008.[14] On the same period, Firefox marketshar…

> That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.

And she said that while laying off 250 people, imposing a 100% discount on them and their families.

Re: Mozilla and Open Web Docs Working Together on MDN

#70

Post by chrisseaton »

montroser wrote: post #11

I hope this works for them, but it seems a little bit contrived to me. If they just took a fundraising approach like how public radio and Wikipedia do, I would gladly contribute a few times per year when a big banner shows up asking for donations. That would be a nice direct value proposition -- "please contribute so we can keep this awesome resource free and high quality" But paying for customizations? This seems li…

> If they just took a fundraising approach like how public radio and Wikipedia do

People notoriously _hate_ both these group's approach to funding.

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