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Hang on to Your Firefox

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Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#301

Post by kraken_cult »

nik282000 wrote: post #249
flir wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds peaceful. But seriously, web is asymptotically approaching zero usefulness precisely because of all those "capabilities". In those circumstances, can't you see a million nerds muttering "we'll build our own interweb! with blackjack and hookers!" And one of them might even get lucky, and get a tipping point. Gemini's just an example. I don't think web's ever going away for corporate stuff, but I can imagine the…

It's like Reddit and Lemmy. The majority of users did not switch to Lemmy but the ones that did seem to engage more and share cooler stuff. They are there on purpose, not because it's the default platform.

This is the most insane cope. The old web was good because a naive user could find the coolest thing imaginable. The naive user isn't digging into a forum, finding a reference to a niche forum from the other forum, figuring out how to install or access it, and then actively engaging in it. People don't know passwords can have spaces now.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#302

Post by s3p »

stephen_g wrote: post #291
Telaneo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Firefox. It just doesn't always feel like it loves me back.

I use Firefox and I like it (especially being able to use uBlock Origin), but I really dislike what Mozilla has become over the last ten years or so. I think that's the key distinction, I can mostly manage Mozilla's crap by turning off a bunch of stuff in my Firefox settings, but I think it's really important for the web to not use a Chromium based browser.

But they have to make money. Else they go away. I don't understand how people think Mozilla can just exist and be permanently solvent forever

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#303

Post by stephen_g »

999900000999 wrote: post #293

The issue is building a browser is not profitable by itself. You’d need to sell an annual subscription of 150$ to like 10 million people to get a browser that’s actually developed for users and not in some bizarre exploitive fashion.

The current spend on Firefox development is only about $290 million per year, not the $1.5bn you're talking about...

But at the end of the day, it's not the amount of money that matters, it's the goals of the people running it.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#304

Post by HaloZero »

em-bee wrote: post #144
HaloZero wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most people don't care about that though. My wife doesn't care about browser independence. If Ladybird wants to more than just a pet project for some tech companies it needs a sell. Something that makes it better than Chrome.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#307

Post by autoexec »

Barrin92 wrote: post #226
autoexec wrote: post #53

> 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…

>It isn't bots complaining about Firefox here, it's power users who are frustrated by what Firefox is turning into The problem isn't that they're frustrated it's that they don't have the theory of mind to distinguish between what they care about and what the average user cares about. They don't just complain for themselves, they think this is the causal explanation for Firefox declining market share. Which it isn't b…

> they don't have the theory of mind to distinguish between what they care about and what the average user cares about.

The average user doesn't really understand what a browser is, or how it works, and will never bother to look for an alternative to whatever default browser shipped with their OS. If Firefox plans on surviving by appealing to that audience they're doomed to fail.

Firefox got what success it's had by appealing to the people who care about browsers. They installed Firefox and then convinced the other people in their lives who couldn't care less about what a web browser is to install and use Firefox. It was easy for power users to recommend Firefox because it was a good product that offered clear advantages and didn't exploit its userbase. Alienating the people who know and care about browsers by enshittifying is probably not going to work out for Mozilla, and that means we all lose.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#308

Post by adamrt »

cyberax wrote: post #33
TimTheTinker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ladybird is steadily progressing: https://ladybird.org/

The last time I checked the source code, it was filled with horrible unsafe C++. They also re-implement everything whether it is needed or not.

> It was filled with horrible unsafe C++

Are you saying their code was horrible and unsafe, or just that its a byproduct of using C++. They've been rewriting parts in rust: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/8f0a1b19114....

> They also re-implement everything whether it is needed or not.

No they don't. SerenityOS did, and that was the goal of the project. But Ladybird has plenty of third party libraries.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#310

Post by Eji1700 »

autoexec wrote: post #53

> 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…

> 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 to push personalized ads, or the addition of anti-features and questionable design choices that force us to hunt for and modify poorly documented settings in about:config and make edits to userChrome.css

On the one hand, you're totally right. Pushback should exist.

On the other hand, I have seen some seriously lazy and wild justifications for sticking in the chrome universe because tech users aren't immune to justifying a bad product through inertia (and, honestly, are probably champions at it).

I have seen and heard plenty of firefox "can't handle all the sites they need" and I have always been curious as to what these people are doing because I've been on FF for decades and the ONLY time I switch to a chrome browser is for VIA (and that's a whole google did a standard no one else wants to do situation).

To be fair, I suspect some of that has to do with major web dev stuff that I don't have to do, so it is very possible I'm actually just missing the mark here and the tooling/use case is really that much better in chrome (although I know that's its own issue since that's kinda the problem), and there are those who've found some major feature on a chrome spinoff that they just love and FF doesn't do well.

Still accounting from those, I'd safely bet money a lot of people who claim firefox just cannot work for them haven't really bothered to try to adopt. It's functionally identical to me outside of the whole "better adblock" and "arguably better bookmarks i forget to use".

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