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Firefox on the brink?

brycewray.com

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Re: Firefox on the brink?

#491

Post by worik »

Animats wrote: post #486

If only Firefox still worked. Every time I open Firefox on Linux, it does disk I/O for about two minutes before it is usable. No idea why. On current Ubuntu, about once a day, Firefox stops accepting keyboard input. Sometimes right in the middle of a text box. Other windows still accept input. Restarting Firefox is usually necessary.

> Every time I open Firefox on Linux, it does disk I/O for about two minutes before it is usable. No idea why.

I have no idea either

But I do not think it is Firefox. I open it regularly on three computers, Ubuntu, mint, and Debian 12 and I don't see that

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#492

Post by theteapot »

Animats wrote: post #486

If only Firefox still worked. Every time I open Firefox on Linux, it does disk I/O for about two minutes before it is usable. No idea why. On current Ubuntu, about once a day, Firefox stops accepting keyboard input. Sometimes right in the middle of a text box. Other windows still accept input. Restarting Firefox is usually necessary.

I've used Firefox on Debian for years. Boot time is perceptibly zero. Performance is on par with Chrome. And I can't remember it ever crashing except for maybe a tab crashing every now and then due to some errant Javascript.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#493

Post by dvngnt_ »

preinheimer wrote: post #489
hs86 wrote: post #117

I switched over after the Manifest v3 debacle, and after a couple of months, I wonder if the implications of using a browser with a lower market share are overblown. I haven't encountered any site that misbehaves, and the only missing feature so far is within the Google Drive web app because it uses a Chrome-only extension [1]. Maybe the ongoing standardization of the web shows its effects here, and using a standard-…

Specific problems I've had as a firefox user: - I can't pay municipal license fees (Site says "Use Chrome") - I can't use the Vendor management portal for $largePopularTechCompany type company for my small business ("We support Chrome") - Xero my small business accounting software just doesn't work properly ("Use Chrome")

i assume this is just a user-agent check though i don't expect regular users to know how to switch.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#494

Post by worik »

whakim wrote: post #475
jdlyga wrote: post #90

Firefox needs to focus all their effort on making a good web browser first . If the browser is slow, has a clunky interface, or lags behind on features, then people won't use it. Mozilla focus way too much of their attention on privacy and non-browser related projects. Look at how much attention that The Browser Company has gotten for their Arc browser on Mac. Their primary focus is great UI and making an excellent b…

I always see comments like this on HN, and I struggle to understand why. Firefox is plenty fast. Its interface is extremely similar to most of its competitors. It works well. What special sauce do you expect Mozilla to implement that'll suddenly change their fortunes? It's a browser, after all. And why do you think that such features aren't being implemented due to lack of resources or muddled priorities - surely Moz…

> I always see comments like this on HN, and I struggle to understand why.

Many years ago Firfox was very slow

It has improved enormously, obviously, but some people never forget

It is a lesson. Never take your eye off the ball. Firefox did, back in the day, and Google ate their lunch

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#495

Post by amanzi »

preinheimer wrote: post #489
hs86 wrote: post #117

I switched over after the Manifest v3 debacle, and after a couple of months, I wonder if the implications of using a browser with a lower market share are overblown. I haven't encountered any site that misbehaves, and the only missing feature so far is within the Google Drive web app because it uses a Chrome-only extension [1]. Maybe the ongoing standardization of the web shows its effects here, and using a standard-…

Specific problems I've had as a firefox user: - I can't pay municipal license fees (Site says "Use Chrome") - I can't use the Vendor management portal for $largePopularTechCompany type company for my small business ("We support Chrome") - Xero my small business accounting software just doesn't work properly ("Use Chrome")

I've used Xero for years with Firefox without issues.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#496

Post by [deleted] »

K0nserv wrote: post #77

Two things about this: 1. Firefox blocks various analytics and tracking quite aggressively by default. Additionally, users of Firefox are, by and large, privacy minded and will have further mitigations. Any count of Firefox users is likely to be undercounting. 2. For the kind of basic web stuff(simple pages, forms etc) that USWDS supports it shouldn't matter greatly if Firefox is not supported. Theses standards are m…

[deleted]

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#497

Post by culi »

isodev wrote: post #476
culi wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on iOS all browsers are forced to use WebKit And how could Firefox possibly complete against default browsers? Is it even worth the investment?

The rendering engine doesn't really matter - nothing is stopping Mozilla from implementing a better browser app than Safari. Safari is _really_ good and a very high bar to catchup to, even if you don't have to implement the rendering engine and Mozilla is not exactly known for their friendly and refined UIs. Vivaldi on iOS is much younger by comparison and looks a lot better than Firefox.

> The rendering engine doesn't really matter

I disagree. For the purposes of this conversation, I feel like it's the only thing that matters. The web doesn't benefit at all from a WebKit-based browser by Mozilla capturing some of the iOS marketshare. Websites will still have to cater to WebKit. Not Gecko or something new

> Mozilla is not exactly known for their friendly and refined UIs

I actually strongly prefer the Firefox app's UI to safari

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#498

Post by ndriscoll »

crazygringo wrote: post #459
ndriscoll wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government should set or adopt standards, not serve them. And they can and should provide a reference implementation. We could easily and reliably do forms on mainframes. This is not complicated. And de facto, every browser supports HTML 4 forms anyway, so that's a non-concern. They already set standards for things like needing to support TLS 1.3 with specific cipher suites. There's no reason they can't say HTML…

No -- I don't want the US government (or any other) involved in setting web standards. The W3C is not going to be helped by being run by governments instead. No -- I don't want the US government providing a reference implementation of web browsers. No -- I don't want to log into a mainframe computer to fill out my taxes or sign up for Medicaid or a health plan. The government should simply build services that work, i…

Like I said, the US government should just adopt the existing W3C standard.

It's crazy to me that 10 years ago people were against the standard for government documents being essentially "whatever Microsoft office does", but in 2023, we've decided it makes sense for the standard for government web sites to be "whatever Chrome and Safari do".

And as I've pointed out, for historical reasons, we already have an adequate standard that the major browsers already support. So just target that standard. It happens that this is also the cheapest, simplest, most reliable way to do things anyway.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#499

Post by JohnFen »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #297
Chabsff wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the government HAS to make that determination in a data-driven way. It cannot be based on anything subjective, for what should be obvious reasons. On top of that, said lack of knowledge is a stated goal of all privacy-focused browsers. GA-blindness is an implementation detail of these policies. Any method the government could use to accurately track that information is effectively a bug in need of fixing fr…

There is no standard that you can use instead of a set of browsers. There is no way of making sure that a website works with a browser other then testing it with that browser. The reason people test with different browsers is not that they want to use non-standard features, it's that even standard features often do not work in certain browsers.

> The reason people test with different browsers is not that they want to use non-standard features, it's that even standard features often do not work in certain browsers.

This is exactly why sites should be tested for their conformance with the standard rather than with specific browsers. Testing against specific browsers just encourages browser-makers to continue to avoid fixing their shit.

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