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

Hang on to Your Firefox

newsonaut.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 550 posts

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#101

Post by bluGill »

jaggederest wrote: post #79
nubinetwork wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope people here never stop bitching about Firefox. Its getting harder and harder, at some point they'll deprecate their last sane ESR, and we'll all get stuck with all their junk.

This is exactly and precisely why open source exists, for both the "never upgrade frozen version" case, and the extension into "fork it and make your own" case

Something like Firefox is so complex that I could not fork it and make my own. I mean, I could, but the amount of changes I could put in would be trivial unless I'm getting paid full time. Even if I was paid full time, realistically, one person paid full time, no matter how good, just can't make an impact in the browser today.

I'm not paid full time to work on a web browser. As a volunteer, I can't find the time to dedicate to that. I could do a few lines here and there if I really got dedicated, but like most people, I have a life. I have kids and such. My retirement account won't fund my midlife crisis to quit my job and work on a web browser, so I depend on something to build a good browser. And that is assuming I even would work on a web browser if I could afford to do whatever I want full time. There are a ton of other activities in my community that need volunteer help, some of which I'm helping a little bit, but I could do more for.

I, like many here, have wished that we could donate a small amount to Firefox every month to fun development, however it turns out that the Mozilla Foundation does not fund development of Firefox and so any money would go not to Firefox but to other causes of which I may or may not support but are not a web browser which is what I want to support.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#102

Post by nickthegreek »

Mashimo wrote: post #17
hx8 wrote: post #6

I am under the impression that Firefox is the only web browser which has access to quality ad blocker. Am I incorrect in this? How is this not enough of a selling point for everyone to switch to it?

uBlock lite is enough for me. I switched from normal to lite and did not notice a difference.

the difference is you are being tracked but not seeing the ads. that’s what you lost when they sunset mv2 for mv3.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#103

Post by zamadatix »

jaggederest wrote: post #79
nubinetwork wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope people here never stop bitching about Firefox. Its getting harder and harder, at some point they'll deprecate their last sane ESR, and we'll all get stuck with all their junk.

This is exactly and precisely why open source exists, for both the "never upgrade frozen version" case, and the extension into "fork it and make your own" case

The moment it comes to that level of complexity is well past the moment it matters for browser diversity anymore. There is no shortage of open source browser codebases or random forks using them, there is a shortage of development paid in some form other than selling out the users.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#104

Post by nickthegreek »

Nail2680 wrote: post #26

Firefox is the best of a bunch of bad options, but isn't above critique. It does suck when they do anticonsumer stuff and shove weird stuff like pocket in, but you can't leave which makes it similar to the democratic party where you can't really do anything, but they keep making really poor decisions.

Firefox have forks like Zen which allow you to have the best of both worlds.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#105

Post by okanat »

jaggederest wrote: post #79
nubinetwork wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope people here never stop bitching about Firefox. Its getting harder and harder, at some point they'll deprecate their last sane ESR, and we'll all get stuck with all their junk.

This is exactly and precisely why open source exists, for both the "never upgrade frozen version" case, and the extension into "fork it and make your own" case

For a browser, that's not really possible without a significant team of over-the-average and paid developers. There are a lot of complexities in a browser. It has to have its own GPU driver, JIT compiler, optimized scheduler to pull page components, another scheduler to run JS, a cross-platform rendering abstraction, hacks for 30+ years of WWW. All of that should be fast. Because everything else is extremely slow and wasteful on Web.

People who can handle this complexity are extremely mobile in the industry. They can always find employment in a much better paying place than Mozilla. And a competitive browser has to have such developers on generous payroll.

One of the issues with Firefox is its codebase. Some parts of it are slowly rotting and it has its own fair share of 20-year-old bugs. Mozilla is slowly failing to keep up with the ever changing landscape and dealing with the age of their codebase. There is a reason why Electron could be developed with Chromium but not Firefox. Mozilla really tried this as well, it just didn't work.

If you're forking, Chromium or Safari are a better start point than Firefox.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#106

Post by grrben »

cromka wrote: post #16
hx8 wrote: post #6

I am under the impression that Firefox is the only web browser which has access to quality ad blocker. Am I incorrect in this? How is this not enough of a selling point for everyone to switch to it?

Brave is even better since the ad engine is actually built in (lower level) and written in Rust if memory serves me well. And before anyone says anything about crypto: pay a small fee for Brave Origin or use it for free on Linux.

$60 ain't exactly teensy.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#108

Post by flir »

folkrav wrote: post #62
happytoexplain wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laziness. Also I swear YouTube runs much worse on FF. But that's secondary.

That second part was indeed pretty self evident years ago, but I regularly watch 4k content on YouTube on low powered machine these days and can't say I see the difference anymore.

You might still in a power usage graph.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#109

Post by zem »

PKop wrote: post #88
bigyabai wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pay a small fee for Brave Origin "Hey, we recognize that normal Brave is exploitative and user-hostile by default. We'll fix it if you pay us $59.99 in mutual acknowledgement that you're a chump who can't install UBO." I'm glad (and unsurprised) that Brave's vision for the web never hit the big leagues.

It's not their "vision for the web" it's just an attempt at funding development of the browser given they aren't an ad-network behemoth like Google. Like Kagi charging for their search engine, a company charging money directly for the product is a good idea all things considered. How do you expect them to pay their developers?

I don't use brave, and I'm mostly going by this comment thread, but if the free brave is user hostile by default in an attempt to steer people over to the paid brave, that's a very legitimate thing to complain about. you can't compare it to kagi.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#110

Post by nickthegreek »

bastawhiz wrote: post #60

> Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition. This isn't really true, and hasn't been for some time. It's just the only other browser engine with meaningful production users. Servo and Ladybird are both making great strides.

It’s true up until those other browsers are released and stable.
Post reply on HN