91–100 of 128 posts
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Most users would probably just set Google as the default search engine themselves if it wasn't default.
Most users never touch defaults. I'd bet you $100 million a year that AltaVista would stay default in the majority of Firefox installs, if it were released that way.
1. Type "Google" on the search bar 2. Click on the first result 3. Use Google
I've seen that over and over again.
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Most of your post is emotion and opinion, so I thought I'd address the part that is factually incorrect: > On a technical note each version isn't really getting any better That's simply not true. To take a single example, the type inference engine added to the JS engine in FF9 significantly improved performance. With the new high frequency release strategy, it's not guaranteed that there will be huge new features or…
You're not addressing his key point, I'm recommending Chrome to anyone I speak to, many other developers I know are too. Firefox is slow, sluggish to use and confusing compared to Chrome. The edge it had over IE was that it was a better user experience. It's not compared to Chrome anymore. Even IE is better than FF apart from the weird crash like blank screen glitch when opening a new tab that IE has.
And modern versions of Firefox are doing a lot better again. It is much faster these days. They now have a much better release cycle, and their updater is smoother encouraging people to keep on the upgrade treadmill.
I wouldn't write Firefox off. The recent increase in competition in the browser space has done great things for all of the browsers; they have all improved dramatically over the past couple of years.
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Firefox is doomed because its lost its developer foot hold, anecdotally most devs I know refer to it as a joke and use Chrome instead. Its a browser that relies on recommendation to exist, and it no longer is getting recommendation. On a technical note each version isn't really getting any better, historical problems have never been addressed, version fragmentation is occurring, on several matters its in direct confl…
"anecdotally most devs I know refer to it as a joke and use Chrome instead." Ahh the world of cargo cult browser fanboyism. All I can say is that the devs you are hanging out with aren't very good, any dev who would write off and "laugh at" a browser which boasts the widest and the most mature array of development tools is probably not very good to begin with.
I would, however, love to know what the development tools in Firefox are that you find less mature or nonexistent in Chrome. There were some omissions in the first year or so of Chrome's development, but I find myself quite happy with it these days.
I'd gladly switch, though, if there are things I don't know about that could make me more productive.
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I think the issue here is that Mozilla can't afford to still exist without that 100 million from Google a year. But yeah, I don't see why someone else wouldn't come in and swoop on that.
Bing?
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Most of your post is emotion and opinion, so I thought I'd address the part that is factually incorrect: > On a technical note each version isn't really getting any better That's simply not true. To take a single example, the type inference engine added to the JS engine in FF9 significantly improved performance. With the new high frequency release strategy, it's not guaranteed that there will be huge new features or…
You're not addressing his key point, I'm recommending Chrome to anyone I speak to, many other developers I know are too. Firefox is slow, sluggish to use and confusing compared to Chrome. The edge it had over IE was that it was a better user experience. It's not compared to Chrome anymore. Even IE is better than FF apart from the weird crash like blank screen glitch when opening a new tab that IE has.
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I don't have a problem with you recommending Chrome (and I work at Mozilla). However, it's not fair to say Firefox is sluggish. With a new profile, it's just as fast as Chrome. Try it. Chrome has an advantage because it's relatively new. It doesn't have to deal with over a decade of add-ons and browser history and cookies. Much like how a computer gets slow and needs to be reformatted, people who are browser power us…
"Chrome has an advantage because it's relatively new. It doesn't have to deal with over a decade of add-ons" You'd have a point here if Firefox hadn't started blithely breaking everyone's add-ons by bumping the version number about 5 times per week. Okay, that's hyperbole -- I know it wasn't that often, but the point is that a "rapid release schedule" comes with real costs. If you have 500MM users, and the mean user…
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Firefox is doomed because its lost its developer foot hold, anecdotally most devs I know refer to it as a joke and use Chrome instead. Its a browser that relies on recommendation to exist, and it no longer is getting recommendation. On a technical note each version isn't really getting any better, historical problems have never been addressed, version fragmentation is occurring, on several matters its in direct confl…
"The UI is polarising" What exactly do you mean by that? The UI in a browser shouldn't do anything but get out of the way and display the web page's UI. Personally, I don't even want to see a menu bar unless I hit the ALT key - which is working nicely for me in Firefox right now. And I don't notice any "laggy behaviour". Although I haven't run any comparison tests so maybe I'm missing out.
However I can assume by the positive comments I read online that myself and my friends probably aren't the standard, and may be unjustly noicsey as people who don't like somethign are generally mroe vocal than people that do.
So what I'm hearing/reading is lots of people who really like it, and around me people who vocally don't. Thats what I consider polarising, its drawing out harsh criticism and favourable reviews.
The modern laggy behaviour complaint I think is unfair and a marketing lie. What I think is that its a combination of historical problems with FF still in peoples memories and comparisons to Chromes 'snappiness'.
Chrome feels like it loads pages faster, so does Opera, and Safari, I doubt that it really does, but thats the bench mark people are expecting now. Like I said its unfair, people are now expecting speed everywhere as thats whats been marketed to them.
Its the little things that count, for a quick test I just fired up an aurora firefox build, it took roughly 15 seconds to load, chrome took 10 seconds (I stopped counting with safari when I got to 30 seconds but its loading probably the last 10 pages I left open at once). Thats the sort of thing people remember and sticks in there minds, and often takes alot for them to unforget.
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Firefox is doomed because its lost its developer foot hold, anecdotally most devs I know refer to it as a joke and use Chrome instead. Its a browser that relies on recommendation to exist, and it no longer is getting recommendation. On a technical note each version isn't really getting any better, historical problems have never been addressed, version fragmentation is occurring, on several matters its in direct confl…
Most of your post is emotion and opinion, so I thought I'd address the part that is factually incorrect: > On a technical note each version isn't really getting any better That's simply not true. To take a single example, the type inference engine added to the JS engine in FF9 significantly improved performance. With the new high frequency release strategy, it's not guaranteed that there will be huge new features or…
Yeah, this is false. Gecko is still arguably the gold, um, standard for page rendering.
That said, I dread using Firefox now, for reasons that are completely emotional. There's too much UI, and web pages have an unfortunate uncanny valley thing happening when compared side-by-side with Webkit-rendered pages. The best way I can a explain it is that it's like when you see a photo of a Russian Buran, and your mind goes, "There's something not quite right about that Space Shuttle."
Firefox isn't doomed. Not only is it still a good web browser that many (myself included) continue to use daily, inertia will keep it installed on millions of PCs. As far as I know, Mozilla and Google maintain good relations. Even if the deal that provides money from Google to Mozilla isn't renewed, I doubt they will entirely disentangle themselves from each other.
Firefox is doomed because its lost its developer foot hold, anecdotally most devs I know refer to it as a joke and use Chrome instead. Its a browser that relies on recommendation to exist, and it no longer is getting recommendation. On a technical note each version isn't really getting any better, historical problems have never been addressed, version fragmentation is occurring, on several matters its in direct confl…
I agree with the first part of your statement, and partially agree with the second. I personally recommend it to everyone over chrome, because firebug is better than chrome's dev tools...well, chrome's js tool is perhaps as good now, but firebug's better for everything else.
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You're not addressing his key point, I'm recommending Chrome to anyone I speak to, many other developers I know are too. Firefox is slow, sluggish to use and confusing compared to Chrome. The edge it had over IE was that it was a better user experience. It's not compared to Chrome anymore. Even IE is better than FF apart from the weird crash like blank screen glitch when opening a new tab that IE has.
I don't have a problem with you recommending Chrome (and I work at Mozilla). However, it's not fair to say Firefox is sluggish. With a new profile, it's just as fast as Chrome. Try it. Chrome has an advantage because it's relatively new. It doesn't have to deal with over a decade of add-ons and browser history and cookies. Much like how a computer gets slow and needs to be reformatted, people who are browser power us…
Maybe I'm asking to much, but this seems totally unacceptable to me -- both things seem totally unacceptable to me. And while it may still be just true, Firefox suffers worse from this problem than any OS, software or other browser that I use.