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Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

jasonlefkowitz.net

111–120 of 211 posts

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I don't notice much bad with FF, so I don't know what I'm missing. What am I missing? What makes FF terrible and Chrome goodly?

This is Hacker News, where everything anointed by Larry and Sergei is to be revered and worshiped by all, forever and ever, amen.

> Account created after prior account( haploid )was inexplicably silent-banned.

A bit more civility might help you avoid a repeat of that.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Hacker News, where everything anointed by Larry and Sergei is to be revered and worshiped by all, forever and ever, amen.

> Account created after prior account( haploid )was inexplicably silent-banned. A bit more civility might help you avoid a repeat of that.

My understanding of the "civility" standard is whether I would say it in person. My comments do pass this test.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#113
Disable unnecessary extensions and plugins and Firefox 7 will be instantaneous and memory efficient.

Right now on OS X Leopard I have Hacker News, Slashdot, CNBC and Huffington Post (yuck) open in FF 7.01 and FF is using 179 MB.

When I had Firebug and the Stumbleupon tool bar enabled as well as some useless plugins that were enabled by default for media types I don't use, these same tabs were using 440 MB.

Google controls my email, phone, SMS and search information, I will not give them browser level access even if they let you opt out of data collection.

I like Firefox, it works great now and is rapidly improving. Mozilla's rapid release cycles should be applauded.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#114
post #82
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the impact of any specific bug is limited--but the gestalt of Firefox is of a development process that values press and feature creep over performance and correctness. I haven't looked back since switching to Chrome. FF ignored obvious bugs for years . X pixmap freeing? Open since 2004. [1] I waited for six years , having to restart my browser every few hours, because it would leak over 2 GB from having a netwo…

> Sure, the impact of any specific bug is limited--but the gestalt of Firefox is of a development process that values press and feature creep over performance and correctness. I'm not sure if you are just trolling or not. Assuming not, then since Firefox's development is done in the open, I assume you have some evidence for this - meeting notes or such that show that? Or some other evidence? The evidence to the contr…

> I'm not sure if you are just trolling or not.

He made a valid and extended argument, one can read and agree or disagree with.

You isolate just a phrase from it and call him on "trolling"?

In general, internet discussions would be much much better if "troll" and "FUD" weren't used to disqualify arguments we don't like (or, maybe weren't used, period).

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#115
post #70

The fundamental problem with Mozilla is that it is trying to do database queries in its UI loop, and it wants every single piece of state safely on disk after every single click. This results in a huge amount of disk space to get written to disk as you visit every single click. Now I don't know about you, but if my computer crashes, do I really care if everything up to the last click is safely on disk? I wouldn't car…

And if that means losing some history on a crash, is the fact that a user has visited one web site, but not another, really that important?

Yes, it is. Imagine you're typing a long comment, you've copied it into the clipboard just to be safe, and just before you submit, your OS crashes or you lose power.

Or, imagine you're looking for reference information on an obscure API, and you've finally found a useful page after 9 minutes of searching. Just before the 10 minute sync occurs, you lose power, and for the life of you, you can't remember how you got to that all-important page or what keywords to use. Having an up-to-date history would have let you continue working.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#116
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, the impact of any specific bug is limited--but the gestalt of Firefox is of a development process that values press and feature creep over performance and correctness. I'm not sure if you are just trolling or not. Assuming not, then since Firefox's development is done in the open, I assume you have some evidence for this - meeting notes or such that show that? Or some other evidence? The evidence to the contr…

> I'm not sure if you are just trolling or not. He made a valid and extended argument, one can read and agree or disagree with. You isolate just a phrase from it and call him on "trolling"? In general, internet discussions would be much much better if "troll" and "FUD" weren't used to disqualify arguments we don't like (or, maybe weren't used, period).

To throw around comments like "but the gestalt of Firefox is of a development process that values press and feature creep over performance and correctness" - that's textbook flamebait. It's a direct insult to Firefox developers and fans, and its only result will be to start an argument. So it's a natural suspicion that he might be trolling.

In any case, I gave a reasoned response, giving him the benefit of the doubt that he isn't trolling. But if he was, I guess I was wasting my time.

I do agree with you: Internet discussions would be much better if we did not use "troll", "FUD", "flamebait", etc., but also if people did not act in those ways.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#117
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned in the article's comments, this appears to have been recently resolved. Here is the full thread: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=686025

I'll believe it when I see it, pretty doubtful at this point.

Use the workaround that's in that thread. It works today.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#118
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure if you are just trolling or not. He made a valid and extended argument, one can read and agree or disagree with. You isolate just a phrase from it and call him on "trolling"? In general, internet discussions would be much much better if "troll" and "FUD" weren't used to disqualify arguments we don't like (or, maybe weren't used, period).

To throw around comments like "but the gestalt of Firefox is of a development process that values press and feature creep over performance and correctness" - that's textbook flamebait. It's a direct insult to Firefox developers and fans, and its only result will be to start an argument. So it's a natural suspicion that he might be trolling. In any case, I gave a reasoned response, giving him the benefit of the doubt…

> To throw around comments like "but the gestalt of Firefox is of a development process that values press and feature creep over performance and correctness" - that's textbook flamebait.

Sure, but it can also be his honest opinion, that he came to by comparing, say, the minimal changes between Chrome versions and the more evolved FF updates. What I'm saying is, the entirety of his comment matters to see if it's "trolling" or not, not just a juicy quote.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Account created after prior account( haploid )was inexplicably silent-banned. A bit more civility might help you avoid a repeat of that.

My understanding of the "civility" standard is whether I would say it in person. My comments do pass this test.

That's more of a guideline aimed at people who aren't assholes in person.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#120
post #82
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the impact of any specific bug is limited--but the gestalt of Firefox is of a development process that values press and feature creep over performance and correctness. I haven't looked back since switching to Chrome. FF ignored obvious bugs for years . X pixmap freeing? Open since 2004. [1] I waited for six years , having to restart my browser every few hours, because it would leak over 2 GB from having a netwo…

> Sure, the impact of any specific bug is limited--but the gestalt of Firefox is of a development process that values press and feature creep over performance and correctness. I'm not sure if you are just trolling or not. Assuming not, then since Firefox's development is done in the open, I assume you have some evidence for this - meeting notes or such that show that? Or some other evidence? The evidence to the contr…

Not trolling, but perhaps I was unclear.

First, my information is about a year out of date. I only used FF (well, Mozilla Suite/Galeon/Phoenix/FF) from around 2001-2010, and it's clear the FF team has moved to improve performance since then. Perhaps my impressions from that time frame are no longer valid, but the issues I checked in Bugzilla while writing my post seemed largely unresolved.

I said "gestalt" to criticize not Firefox's actual development process, but the impression one might get as a longterm user (e.g. me.) Things like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=474718, which stood unresolved for roughly two years. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185236 went unresolved for almost NINE years--was just fixed last week. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279048: five years.

    "This is an easily-demonstrated bug that "renders" (so to 
    speak) many pages unusable, or forces designers to impose 
    kludgey Javascript 'fixes' for Firefox users. This bug has
    been around for many versions, and has been mentioned many 
    times.

    Please, please someone on the Firefox team -- take on this project."
It's not just FF: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12916 is still unresolved, after eleven years, despite a hundred dollar bounty. Bugzilla is full of wontfix/worksforme legal wrangling where users unable to write the patches themselves (and having dealt some with FF's internals, I understand why) are told that their bugs don't matter.

Meanwhile, FF expanded from its stripped-down, single-purpose origins into a memory-consuming beast. On my Linux machines, it crashed daily. I would much rather see crashes, leaks, and slowdowns addressed before building new systems like the Awesomebar, tabs-in-titlebar, phishing prevention, and so forth.

Every developer I know has switched to Chrome. When I ask about it, I hear common rationales: speed, robustness, parsimony.

Does that clarify my criticism? There's a lot of great code in Firefox, but I don't think we should paper over the holes in the software or its development culture.

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