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In 2024, please switch to Firefox

roytanck.com

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Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, can you give some examples of PWAs you use, and why? I've rarely seen any benefit of actually installing a PWA vs just bookmarking the site. On mobile, I could see privacy reasons for wanting to use a PWA vs a native app, but every time I've seen a site that supports a PWA, they also support a native app and the PWA is usually a sad substitute in comparison.

Along those lines, does macOS 14's Safari's support for "Add to Dock" count as installing a PWA? I have a couple frequently used websites in my dock, acting more or less like regular Mac apps (or at least like Electron apps). What would a "proper" PWA add to that? (Not a leading question. I'm genuinely asking people who like and use PWAs: is there something cool I'm missing out on?)

You're correct. I'm actually not sure what installing a PWA does that visiting the website in your browser doesn't, but it's essentially opening the website in a headless browser. So very much like electron except instead of having to bundle the browser in the executable it uses your machine's browser.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#324

I use PWAs extensively and Firefox decided they won't bother to implement them, so that's going to be a no from me. Rather than wanting the web platform to be first class, they really want it to languish as a second-class citizen. Really sad, seeing as they also fired devs, and invested in "AI" instead.

What's the real use case of PWAs? They just seem like another way to attempt to shift users from the 'proper web' into a place where blocking ads is more difficult. Personally, I wish we could purge the vast majority of 'apps' from the world, they shouldn't be apps in the first place, most have no need to run native code, they should be links to websites, sites that can work on more-or-less any device in any browser.

On Windows the Twitter, Instagram, TikTok apps are PWAs. I like to use them because I can pin them to the start menu, have them start on a separate window by default and remember the window position.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#325
post #35

Firefox is the web browser equivalent a dying language. It will be a tragic loss for the culture of the web for Firefox to fade away. But, there are powerful macro forces pushing us to that outcome. "Switch, please," calls to action are a noble but insufficient countermeasure.

Maybe not dying (yet) but it is technologically behind with a lot of things by now. This is annoying if you want to try out new web platform features. Sometimes, there isn't even a signal from Mozilla while Google marks a feature as stable. Average people probably don't care about the latest features but Google pushes Chrome very aggressively, so they end up using it anyway. What annoys me the most, however, is that…

Is Fairphone 5 such an inconvenience you describe it? On paper, it seems pretty usable

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#326
Hi, macOS user here. I know Firefox is great, and I'd love to use it (again), but Mozilla's decision to remove all user-facing, OS-level scripting capabilities from it (i.e., AppleScript) made me drop it a few years ago. Getting anything out of FF on macOS, locally, is a major pain in the ass, actually. Try to grab the current URL from the active tab…

Add to that the non-macOS text handling, macOS-unlike font rendering, its insistence to not use the system-wide spell checker provided by the OS etc. It feels a bit rude at times.

I think it's a super-solid browser that unfortunately doesn't give a shit about the platform it's running on. Irritatingly, it's fine with being a black box, so much more than the Chromiums are (for all their various faults).

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#328
post #79

As someone in the Apple ecosystem, Firefox is not a very compelling alternative. I've certainly tried: Firefox Focus was my main iOS browser for a few years (I know it's Webkit-based) and I've tried switching on desktop as well. On desktop, various Firefox updates would change my settings subtly and nag me about features I had no interest in. On top of that, it was simply a slower browser, both with DOM manipulation…

Weird, I have very little problems with Firefox on macos. I had performance issues with Chrome for big tables. Firefox was sluggish, but Chrome took 30s to render it (about 3000 rows, 300 columns). I ended up writing something that displays a small view of the table using absolute positioned divs which depend on the scroll bar. Now it works smoothly on all browsers (including some older tablet). It was not a simple workaround, though.

Orion is also webkit, but buggy, isn't it? I don't care for it.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#329
The Mozilla CEO earned $6,903,089 in 2022 up from $5.6 million in 2021, while Firefox continues to lose market share. If you think Mozilla's priorities are tied to making Firefox the best browser on the Internet, at least in terms of privacy, freedom, and features, you're seriously blind.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#330
I've been using Firefox on the PC and phone for years now. I had the temptation a couple of years ago to use Chrome due to some issues I had on Linux (I don't remember what exactly) but then I concluded the obvious: using a browser made by a company that profits mainly on abusing user's privacy? Nah, I think I'm gonna pass.
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