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A look at Firefox forks

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301–310 of 390 posts

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#301

It is an indictment on the state of the web that regardless of Mozilla's missteps, Firefox remains the best choice for a secure, open-source web browser that isn't another chromium reskin.

You can’t get an OSS team to fix vulns in a meaningful amount of time, let alone research them. Waterfox/Palemoon stay months behind the official branch and are always vulnerable.

Waterfox is not months behind? We follow ESR releases fairly promptly.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#302
post #245
post #240

I've tried using LibreWolf on MacOS but there's a few annoying bugs. HN has a really small text size for me and I usually read HN at 120-133% text size. LibreWolf does not remember this setting on per-site basis and even opening HN-to-HN link in a new tab doesn't preserve text size and I need to increase text size constantly. In addition, posting images to Bluesky doesn't work. Every attempt results in an image of pr…

You can use the Stylus extension to get HN to look any way you want. There are some good community made styles for HN as well.

Take me back to when user stylesheets were a normal browser feature and not a special extension

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#304
post #4

Microsoft, a company that competes directly with Google, thought it was a good idea to use Chromium as a base for Edge. Why doesn't Firefox switch its efforts into improving Chromium for users instead of reimplementing so many pieces?

Wow you really don't remember what it was like to have a single browser engine dominate the landscape.

Imagine a world where the state of the web ecosystem's faith is down to just Google and Apple.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#305
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This structure sounds completely broken. So the people who work on it answer only to the people who hold the purse, but not the people (the Foundation). Do I get that right?

The Foundation owns the Corporation, so technically the Corporation answers to the Foundation, but because the Foundation is a non-profit it can't actually transfer resources to its for-profit arm, only the other way around. Usually the theory with this kind of setup is that the Corporation is profitable and forwards funds to the Foundation so that the foundation can accomplish its work. But putting Firefox in the Fo…

Let me get this straight, NOT A SINGLE DOLLAR of donations are used to fund development for Firefox!?

How many are under the false impression of "helping Firefox" when in reality their donations are used to fund advocacy campaigns [0] and managerial bloat [1]?

[0] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/donate/help/#frequently-as...

[1] https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#306
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did Google in 2008 chose to built its own browser instead of helping to improve Firefox, which was around since 2002?

They wanted a browser they have full control over. And you can move much faster when you don’t have to negotiate every change with third parties. Also, Firefox 1.0 and Chrome 1.0 were released within months of each other (though Firefox 0.x had existed for a little while), so Firefox wasn’t that established yet. The main competition at the time was Microsoft Internet Explorer with over 90% market share.

> They wanted a browser they have full control over

Yup and they got it. Now we see them using that power and market dominance to further their business goals with their attempts to kill Manifest V2

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a short time with it, I find it kinda funny. Back then, power users were up in arms about things like the omnibar, and chrome removing more and more parts of the actual URL. And here is a browser marketed at power users that goes beyond that, showing only a small fraction. There doesn’t even seem to be a Zen mod that restores a real usable URL bar. For me, I manipulate URLs every day, both for work and private…

There’s an option under Settings > Look and Feel for a full length URL bar.

I had checked there before, just checked again, and I still only see an option for a smallish bar with the two floating options. Where there exactly?

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a short time with it, I find it kinda funny. Back then, power users were up in arms about things like the omnibar, and chrome removing more and more parts of the actual URL. And here is a browser marketed at power users that goes beyond that, showing only a small fraction. There doesn’t even seem to be a Zen mod that restores a real usable URL bar. For me, I manipulate URLs every day, both for work and private…

> I manipulate URLs every day, both for work and private usage Zen/Arc are actually much better for this use case, albeit after an adjustment period for people who’ve become accustomed to the way Firefox/Chrome do it. The idea is that URLs are out of your way when you don’t need them and front-and-center when you do. Instead of simply focusing on the URL bar when you CMD+L or CMD+T, it brings up a modal dialog in the…

> it brings up a modal dialog in the center of the screen

Incredibly tiny modal dialog. I just tried checked one, and it fit 65 characters. Compared to firefox right now, after 112 characters the URL bar is slightly over halfway filled.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#309
post #304
post #4

Microsoft, a company that competes directly with Google, thought it was a good idea to use Chromium as a base for Edge. Why doesn't Firefox switch its efforts into improving Chromium for users instead of reimplementing so many pieces?

Wow you really don't remember what it was like to have a single browser engine dominate the landscape. Imagine a world where the state of the web ecosystem's faith is down to just Google and Apple.

> Wow you really don't remember what it was like to have a single browser engine dominate the landscape.

My memory is definitely fuzzy, but I remember Netscape Navigator 4 wasting years on a scratch rewrite, and Internet Explorer becoming complacent.

Why would it be a problem for an open source browser engine to become dominant? At what point should we be worried if Linux becomes too popular?

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that this idea would work for literally just Firefox, but I strongly believe that people would be willing to pay for a Firefox fork that has a laser focus on fit and finish and poweruser features. Think a “Firefox Pro” of sorts. Why do I think this? Three reasons: - It elevates the browser into a higher category of tool, where currently Firefox inhabits the same space as OS-bundled calculators and text e…

If someone was building "Arc but for Firefox" I'd gladly pay for that. Firefox is, because of its position in the market, incapable of doing anything broadly interesting that's not "Be as Chrome-like as possible." They sneak in features that are nice, but I simply don't think we'll ever see Mozilla put out something that does anything that really sets Firefox apart. We'll only ever just get marginally better privacy…

That’s exactly what Zen Browser is - Arc but off a fork of FF.

https://zen-browser.app/

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