Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A look at Firefox forks

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 390 posts

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#331

Post by voytec »

saint_yossarian wrote: post #253
voytec wrote: 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…

Check `browser.zoom.siteSpecific` in `about:config`, in Firefox it defaults to true.

Firefox, LibreWolf and Zen, all have this value set to true by default. This behavior is only present in LibreWolf.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#333

Post by askvictor »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #255
PufPufPuf wrote: post #188

Zen looks like Arc Browser, but Firefox-based and open-source. Exactly what I'm looking for! The UX pattern for tabs in Arc is amazing. No, it's not just "vertical tabs". It's an innovative blend of the concepts of bookmarks and open tabs. Sort of like files: they can be open or closed, and live in a folder hierarchy. But the development of Arc stopped half a year ago (except security Chromium updates), with a well-w…

I've been using Zen for a few months now and love it. There are some rough edges (the article mentions how customizing it is confusing because multiple mechanisms affect different parts of the app). However, it's getting regular updates, and once it's set up, it's really a pleasure to use. Apart from the elegant, minimalist user interface, I particularly like how it implements workspaces. It makes it super easy to sw…

Same here. My main gripe has been address in the latest update - the icon! The old stylised 'Z' just didn't look a like a browser icon when alt-tabbing, and I had to think about where my browser is, rather than instinctively going straight to it. At this point my brain only seems to accept that browser icons are circle-based.

The vertical tabs and side-by-side tabs are fantastic

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#334

Post by lolinder »

MrAlex94 wrote: post #299
lolinder wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm pretty uncomfortable with Waterfox because of that episode. In the HN thread the creator responded to complaints about this privacy-unfriendly turn by saying that they "tried to stay away from branding Waterfox as" being about privacy or user control. That's fine, but an immediate turnoff for me even now that the advertising company is apparently out of the picture. If Waterfox isn't about privacy or user c…

Well the issue I’ve always found is that privacy is a sliding scale. At the time especially, everyone was after “absolute” privacy - i.e. everything Tor offers. But people were coming in to use Waterfox with that expectation and it wasn’t meeting it - but communicating how “much” privacy you’re being offered is difficult. I did settle on the current terminology and when people ask in user forums I try and make it cle…

Well, this is the opening line from that comment:

> > Those needs are privacy related and having control over the software you use.

> That’s fair enough, but I’ve tried to stay away from branding Waterfox as such to try and avoid issues like this.

I guess maybe you were only talking about privacy and not about "having control over the software"?

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#335

Post by lolinder »

culi wrote: post #293
lolinder wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't donate to Firefox anyway—you can only donate to the Mozilla Foundation, which isn't alowed to work on Firefox. The Mozilla Corporation owns Firefox, and money can only flow from the Corporation to the Foundation. So every donation that has ever been made to "Firefox" has actually gone to whatever random stuff the Foundation is working on this week and, yes, to the Foundation's CEO.

To be fair, Mozilla has come out with a lot of new services that have dramatically decreased their dependency on Google. They went from over 95% of their revenue being google royalties to less than 70% just in the past half decade

That's progress, but also: why is this the structure? It makes no sense to not send donations to the thing they think they're donating to, and I really can't believe that there's no way they could have structured it to make that work.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#336

Post by lolinder »

infinitifall wrote: post #305
lolinder wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

To the best of my knowledge that is correct, yes. The way that they've structured it they can't legally do otherwise.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#337

Post by [deleted] »

bastawhiz wrote: post #76
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #68

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…

[deleted]

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#338

Post by MrAlex94 »

culi wrote: post #300
MrAlex94 wrote: post #126

> Waterfox is a browser that began in 2011 as an independent project by Alex Kontos while he was a student. It was acquired and then un-acquired by Internet-advertising company System1. Its site does not, at least at the moment, have enough specifics about the browser's differences and features to compel me to take it for a test drive. Are the others that much more descriptive in their features on their website? IMO…

Wait, aren't you a developer of Waterfox? Why don't you just tell us...

I can: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43206110

(Just to avoid c+p massive blocks of text)

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#339

Post by Olreich »

taftster wrote: post #312
culi wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Mozilla has come out with a lot of new services that have dramatically decreased their dependency on Google. They went from over 95% of their revenue being google royalties to less than 70% just in the past half decade

Still though. 70% is a lot to be dependent on Google for. And the way Google operates these days, I'm honestly surprised that their interest in Firefox remains.

Google wants Firefox to remain viable (or at least one other browser) so that they can avoid monopoly issues with Chrome. If they pay Firefox to keep Google as default search engine, they keep 80% of the money they’d get by having those users use Chrome, and they keep the other browser alive, but not enough to really keep up with Chrome’s feature set.

That’s the most likely bet they are making, similar to Apple/Android or Safari/Chrome. Spending a minor fraction of your revenue to avoid anti-trust probably makes sense for them.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#340

Post by dmurray »

jug wrote: post #330

The ecosystem of forks is currently healthy but what concerns me is a lack of Firefox browser support leading to lagging in standards support over time as the browser goes out of fashion for ideological or marketing reasons that this article touches upon. All forks depend on a strong Firefox base and no fork seems to do heavy lifting in terms of web standards, or as a prioritized feature. Instead, they focus on enhan…

Firefox seems to be good enough - is there anyone who wants to fork Firefox out of a frustration over how it handles some web standard and a feeling that they could do it better?

Hard forking a browser and implementing all future features on your own is daunting enough that even Microsoft - a company with more engineering resources than all but a handful of others, and for whom having a branded browser is existentially important - decided not to do it and just to reskin Chrome.

So I expect that any truly new browser comes not out of a desire to improve Firefox or Chromium, but from an independent, not economically useful, hacker-driven desire to create something cool. Either Ladybird or someone's RIIR project.

Post reply on HN