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Firefox on the brink?

brycewray.com

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Re: Firefox on the brink?

#331

Post by abirch »

widdershins wrote: post #260
tnorthcutt wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would e.g. take 33M users who agree to pay $5/mo for a Mozilla "support subscription" to collect $400M a year. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but when I do the math (33M x 5 x 12) I get $1.98B. Maybe you meant $1/month?

Yep, you're right. At 5$/month they'd need 6.66M subscribed users. Still a lot, but more acheivable.

Most people don't want to pay for anything. Look at all of the workarounds for news sites. I try to pay or donate for most of what I use but there seem to be a lot of people who want to get everything for free.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#332

Post by mrgalaxy »

jjoonathan wrote: post #49
nequo wrote: post #3

I want Firefox to not be on the brink. I have had no problems with it on Linux over the last few years since I switched from Chrome. I do not wish to touch Chrome with a ten-foot pole.

Google finally beat my hands with a stick firmly enough to get me off Firefox. It was youtube. Not the ads -- I pay for premium -- but the fact that on FF they added an artificial 5s page load delay on firefox plus a bug has lingered for months where it always loads the last video, so you have to load every video twice. 12s/video is too much delay. Ah well, it was good while it lasted.

I use Chrome for Google's sites (Gmail, Youtube, etc) and Firefox for everything else. On Chrome you can install Youtube as an "app". That makes it easy for me to keep YT up and running while using Firefox for general browsing. Definitely recommend trying this approach out!

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#333

Post by abirch »

I think these metrics are going to be jacked in a few years.

1) Firefox will be the only browser to support ad blocking

2) Internet Sites that are funded by ads will block Firefox

3) Firefox or a Firefox Extension will change the User Agent field to a corporate browser

4) All of these browser market share metrics are going to be incorrect.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#334

Post by crazygringo »

ndriscoll wrote: post #237
DrBazza wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should support a standard like HTML 4 with no CSS or JS required. i.e. make the actual functionality on their sites simple to reduce the chance it doesn't work somewhere. You're right of course. It's not really a case of 'supporting' browsers, it's a case of testing their sites against other browsers in case developers have accidentally written some non-portable Chrome only code. This was very much the case in t…

> Developers wrote and tested their sites for and with IE6, and were then surprised they rendered (in)correctly on Firefox and looked wrong But that's the point: rendering shouldn't really matter. For things that are important like government systems, we should treat web "apps" much like TeX encourages: you specify the semantics, and let the rendering engine do what it will. Don't try to precisely control it. You can…

You're asking government websites to run differently from 99.9% of commercial websites out there.

First of all, that's just not going to happen for all sorts of practical reasons.

But secondly, you're totally ignoring UX and design. "Specifying semantics, and let the rendering engine do what it will" might work for developers who are used to interacting with API's. It will not work for regular users.

Regular users need to understand which button is the primary action. They need to understand which part of the content is the main body, versus a sidebar versus a header. They want columns that are correctly sized for their content. They don't want to have to scroll horizontally. They want responsive design that works on mobile too. They want something that looks trustworthy and familiar.

Websites are apps now. Asking to go back from presentation to semantics is like asking people to use the command line instead of GUI's. It's not going to happen, nor should it, because it's not user-friendly.

The only people it's friendly to are a niche set of developers with certain ideological beliefs that most web technologies shouldn't be used.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#335

Post by culi »

blackhaz wrote: post #223
tiahura wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Motherfuck! Mozilla's board and their funding projects almost makes me want to abandon Firefox and go to Chrome.

After Microsoft giving up on their rendering engine and joining the Chromium train I think the internet is in a perilous place. We're down to Blink, Gecko, and WebKit. Apple's monopoly on iOS browsers (soon to be undone) is unfortunately one of the last things keeping us from recreating the dark ages of IE's near monopoly on the market. I'd recommend at least supporting a non-Blink based browser like:

  * Lunascape (actually has all 3 major engines built in. Great for web dev)
  * Pale Moon - uses Goanna, a fork of Gecko
  * Waterfox - focused on speed and privacy and compatible with Firefox addons
See also: Floorp, IceCat, and SeaMonkey

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#336

Post by nine_k »

mariusor wrote: post #305
tnorthcutt wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would e.g. take 33M users who agree to pay $5/mo for a Mozilla "support subscription" to collect $400M a year. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but when I do the math (33M x 5 x 12) I get $1.98B. Maybe you meant $1/month?

I'm deeply disturbed of this normalization of software as a subscription service. I want the return of good old days when people could pay once for their software and use it in perpetuity.

This is not a subscription to use the browser. You can always build it from source and use for free, as designed.

This is a commitment to support the development, because the development should be oingoing. Not Netflix-style, but Patreon-style.

(Also see how JetBrains handles "subscriptions" to their closed-source software. Once you've paid, the version is forever yours. Updates are bought with some additional sums if desired.)

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#337

Post by crazygringo »

ndriscoll wrote: post #318
pavon wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that negates the need to test on various browsers to ensure compatibility.

What compatibility? If Firefox breaks forms, then Firefox broke forms and needs to fix it. Not your bug. If Chrome renders differently from edge because they decided the default color on .gov sites will be pink on white and all padding will be multiplied by 1.5, then that's fine. Not a bug. Chrome just decided to present a different look. If it's even possible for basic functionality to break in a way where you would…

> then Firefox broke forms and needs to fix it. Not your bug.

Not in the real world. In the real world, you've delivered a site that doesn't work and contractually, you can be sued or not paid for not fulfilling your contract.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#338

Post by hooverd »

sergiotapia wrote: post #12
malermeister wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The browser itself is good these days. All these complaints are themselves activist bullshit that doesn't really matter.

Is it? Firefox has had this sheen of "jank" for the past 6 years.

I use Firefox as a daily driver and it just works.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#339

Post by thayne »

Certhas wrote: post #270
loganmarchione wrote: post #36

Mozilla also just posted their State of Mozilla 2022 (this includes financial statements). From what I've read, it seems that expenses are up and revenue from search deals is down. https://stateof.mozilla.org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38530382 https://www.ghacks.net/2023/12/05/mozilla-earned-close-to-60... Firefox's market share has been on the decline since 2010. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market…

Am I reading the documents you link right? Mozilla is wildly profitable. They made a profit of roughly 150 Million dollars last year. They have 1.2 Billion dollars in assets. They have increased revenue from non-search deals significantly (56M -> 75M, up one third). Despite all the gnashing of teeth in this comment section about woke Mozilla, they spent only 5 Million on grants last year. The vast majority goes towar…

So that means instead of investing money into making the browser better and clawing back some market share, Mozilla Corporation is sending money up to the owning Mozilla Foundation, in the form of profits, to spend on non-browser initiatives.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#340

Post by slig »

trealira wrote: post #150
ravenstine wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know their average user in 2023 is not the type to be cognizant that they're even using a "web browser" when opening an app like Chrome. I think it's really up to geeks like we to install Firefox on our moms' computers and inform them on why they should try it. That's how I got my mom to try Firefox with ad blocking around 15 years ago; otherwise she either wouldn't have known about it or she might have thought…

I don't know if that's still true. I have no data, but just anecdotally, I'm pretty sure almost everyone knows what a web browser is and what an ad-blocker extension does nowadays.

> I'm pretty sure almost everyone knows what a web browser is and what an ad-blocker extension does nowadays

Most of the users do not use ad-blocker and most of the users uses whatever browser come with their mobile device or Windows install.

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