Live data from Hacker News

Hang on to Your Firefox

newsonaut.com

141–150 of 551 posts

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#141
post #62

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.

I'm not saying it's FF's fault, but it undeniably runs worse on my machine.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#142

Part of the blame for what's wrong with the web right now is on web developers: - We "need" firefox or else everything's just chrome - Forks of chrome don't count as different browsers because they all use the same engine - Using the same engine makes you basically just chrome because you can't diverge from upstream - You can't diverge from upstream because it moves too fast and you need to keep merging with it - You…

There are more layers, if you'd like to look into it.

- Web developers don't support older browsers because they lack the skill and economic motivation for it.

- The managers of web developers will not support them, because there is no money to be made in supporting older browsers. Nor are there career benefits in maintenance projects. No developer or manager will get promotions for it.

- The actual management of the companies will not promote or compensate engineering managers or developers for maintenance projects since it doesn't contribute to "line goes up"-economics.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#143
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?

Firefox probably has the best support of the best ad blocker (uBO), which is really nice in a lot of ways, but whether or not that means it can be the only "quality" one is completely subjective. Keep in mind the typical user doesn't care enough to go install any ad blocker, let alone debate the differences between the top implementations.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#144

Related: There's also Ladybird that is developing quickly and is aiming for an alpha release this year. It's a truly independent browser engine built from scratch. https://ladybird.org/

What’s the real selling point? Yeah non profit but is it gonna be faster and better than WebKit? The reason I switched to chrome a long time ago was tab isolation, how much faster it was than Firefox, and built it better developer tools. What’s ladybug got going for it?

completely independent development. not based on any existing browser. we need more browser variety.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#145

I use Zen (firefox under the hood) and I just don't understand all of the bitching people do about Firefox. Once I learned all about manifest v2 deprecation it was such an easy decision to move away from Chromium based browsers. The transition was one of the most painless things I've ever done in the software world. Literally what is the issue?

Abject fear. They are afraid that the best option will go away. They're afraid that their perfectionism and critiques have driven it to a point of failure. They're afraid that a project is big as a browser can't really be open source. They're probably also angry at the squandering of resources at Mozilla particularly on executive salaries.

But yeah it's ultimately fear.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#146
post #109
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No one is steering towards paid version. Every for profit feature can be disabled in free version. Whoever said hostile absolutely abused that phrase to make their point. And be the judge of it yourself: try it.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the goal is browser diversity, is the answer really Firefox? Or is it one of the active in development projects from people who are motivated to do something new? What exactly is Firefox going to do differently to grow its market share? Or just "more of whatever the last fifteen years have been"? Unless they have a plan to do better it seems foolish to trust that they'll steer the project miraculously towards succ…

> If the goal is browser diversity, is the answer really Firefox? Or is it one of the active in development projects from people who are motivated to do something new? The former. Ladybird is currently not practically usable, it is unclear whether it will ever catch up to the main engines, and even if it does, it is unclear whether it will ever reach the market share that Firefox has. It is a nice project but science…

ladybird is passing more than 90% of the browser test suite. that's not science fiction.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#149

> Meanwhile, the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises...Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition. It's exactly because Firefox is so important that you'll see people here complaining when Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company, collecting data on users, and using firefox…

i hate being jaded because you can see where things are headed every time on repeat, but i also hate the term "power user" carries a lot of pc gamer energy and i simply could never assess that i know more then the next guy for certain. my opinion doesn't matter more then the next guys. but when you see where this is headed because you've seen it countless times, there is always the "it works fine for me" guy and that is the most infuriating thing ever. a great example is microsoft teams, which is by every metric the shittiest application on my computer and there is always a "i don't have a problem with it" guy somewhere.

the frustration i have with that is the "i don't have a problem with it" crowd is the poster child for lower standards and shittier software experiences. there seems to be no meaningful way to convey "hey, you should care about this".

firefox fumbled super hard earlier this year trying to push their on-by-default AI. it took entirely too long to get them to backtrack a little. you could feel the insulation between customer feedback and their teams working it, they already have the operating models in place to try and force an enshittified offering and you can tell their new MO means they are hungry to do it and i expect more bullshit from firefox up ahead. hopefully we have other options locked and loaded before we get there because they're playing with fire considering how much user share they don't have. mozilla has completely shifted its priorities and structure, i do not expect them to move independently in a direction that benefits us anymore. no one should be surprised if/when they resume shipping some real bullshit up ahead

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#150

> Meanwhile, the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises...Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition. It's exactly because Firefox is so important that you'll see people here complaining when Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company, collecting data on users, and using firefox…

> Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company, collecting data on users, and using firefox to push personalized ads

oh ok I'll change to Chrome then surely they would never do stuff like this

Post reply on HN