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Firefox Hello

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Re: Firefox Hello

#71

Post by Tloewald »

mattmanser wrote: post #63
jlebar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. Exactly. Firefox doesn't include "Firefox Hello" anymore than it includes "Gmail". Instead, Firefox (and other web browsers) include XMLHttpRequest and WebRTC, which can be used to implement whatever you want. I'm getting pretty tired of hearing this trope ("teh bloat!") anytime a browser announces new functi…

My parents had an uncanny knack for always buying slightly the wrong thing when I was a kid. Betamax, Amigas, minidiscs. I used to have a cassette player that had a tape recorder on it. It made it bigger and heavier, and probably more expensive and I never used the record feature. Just because part of the product works well, doesn't mean the rest of it is good.

Most people probably used the record feature on their cassette players and the cost of simply including it in every device may well have been lower than the cost of two production lines. Incidentally, for five years or so the Amiga was a great choice and any PC bought instead of an Amiga would have been horribly obsolete by the time the Amiga ecosystem collapsed.

Your parents sound cool ;-)

Re: Firefox Hello

#72

Post by TheDong »

mattmanser wrote: post #63
jlebar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. Exactly. Firefox doesn't include "Firefox Hello" anymore than it includes "Gmail". Instead, Firefox (and other web browsers) include XMLHttpRequest and WebRTC, which can be used to implement whatever you want. I'm getting pretty tired of hearing this trope ("teh bloat!") anytime a browser announces new functi…

My parents had an uncanny knack for always buying slightly the wrong thing when I was a kid. Betamax, Amigas, minidiscs. I used to have a cassette player that had a tape recorder on it. It made it bigger and heavier, and probably more expensive and I never used the record feature. Just because part of the product works well, doesn't mean the rest of it is good.

That's a bad and misleading comparison here though. Your cassette player had to add the bulky recording feature to become a recorder, but did not need it to be a player.

Firefox is a webbrowser, not a video conferencing software, but it had to add WebRTC to be a web-browser (the bulky bit), so adding in recording is trivial.

A more honest analogy would be saying you had a cassette player that already had all the hardware to record -- necessitated by it being able to play cassettes for some reason -- but didn't have a record button vs one having the button.

Re: Firefox Hello

#73

Post by nevergetenglish »

BSousa wrote: post #54
mahouse wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was probably years ago, because by now, they are the ones that serve more homes with FTTH technology.

Nope. Last year. Started their service Oct 2013 and left Oct 2014. It maybe area dependent (was in Andalucia) but I heard nothing but bad things about their service from the locals. Manilva (small town) was without internet for 2-3 days during the summer last year and no one in their customer service would even acknowledge it!

Telefonica is the one that is getting out manilva from the prehistoric in the FTTH (comments from this web)

in Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKHUA3bs1iY

translated: Published on Jan 15, 2015

The Mayor of Manilva, Urieta Diego and director of the South Territory of Telefónica Spain, María Jesús Almazor, held a meeting to present the expansion plans the company has planned for the town. Thus, they have confirmed that it has begun the deployment of Fiber to the Home (FTTH) and that citizens already have 4G technology.

According highlighted the mayor, Manilva, later this year will be the first municipality in Andalusia to have installed fiber optic network in the hundred percent of the town.

Re: Firefox Hello

#74

Post by barbs »

cjensen wrote: post #10

A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. In my view, this is true for most values of X, including Skype, Mail, Word, Excel... To add insult to injury, there is no simple way of disabling the functionality[1]. Firefox Hello is ludicrous. [1] about:config is not a valid value of simple

According to the homepage:

Because Hello is built right into Firefox, you can rest easy knowing that your conversations and information will remain private and secure.

I'm not sure exactly why this is though.

Also, out of curiosity more than anything else, what's a decent web-site that implements the same functionality (i.e. set up a VOIP session, let people join by sending a link, ideally anonymously)? I could've sworn AOL had a service like this, but Google results return nothing.

Re: Firefox Hello

#75

Post by TheDong »

cjensen wrote: post #10

A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. In my view, this is true for most values of X, including Skype, Mail, Word, Excel... To add insult to injury, there is no simple way of disabling the functionality[1]. Firefox Hello is ludicrous. [1] about:config is not a valid value of simple

Disabling it is damn simple.

All I have to do is right-click on the icon and click "Remove from toolbar", or "Customize" and remove it.

But wait, you say, it's not actually removed... well, for the sort of person that "about:config" is not a valid answer, it is removed.

If your actual complaint is about the functionality / bloat, well, it turns out WebRTC is required for firefox to be a browser and the delta from that to this is essentially nothing.

Re: Firefox Hello

#76

Post by iamcreasy »

mattmanser wrote: post #63
jlebar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. Exactly. Firefox doesn't include "Firefox Hello" anymore than it includes "Gmail". Instead, Firefox (and other web browsers) include XMLHttpRequest and WebRTC, which can be used to implement whatever you want. I'm getting pretty tired of hearing this trope ("teh bloat!") anytime a browser announces new functi…

My parents had an uncanny knack for always buying slightly the wrong thing when I was a kid. Betamax, Amigas, minidiscs. I used to have a cassette player that had a tape recorder on it. It made it bigger and heavier, and probably more expensive and I never used the record feature. Just because part of the product works well, doesn't mean the rest of it is good.

Developers shouldn't be afraid to implementing new features just because they don't know if it's the best decision yet. And to drive innovation many times you will have to step into an unknown territory.

Moreover for someone who hasn't used anything but IE for his entire life, the video chat feature might be the only reason to sway towards FF.

Re: Firefox Hello

#77

Post by icebraining »

nevergetenglish wrote: post #67
icebraining wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal experience is not FUD. I'm not a user, but all I've heard about Telefonica is complaints and grievances. They were also the ISP which forced a caching proxy on its ADSL users, breaking a lot of sites. Granted that was a few years ago.

"Lack of service for hours every day", is that a personal experience? Telefonica was providing services in villages and small towns with very difficult geography (mountains, roads, ...). Now there is a big competition in Spain, for example Jazztel is offering 200Gigabit/s up-down for 36 euros/moth and phone tax included. Our country is getting better in the IT sector and telefonica was the pioneer. It is easy to crit…

"Lack of service for hours every day", is that a personal experience?

Yes, it's clear from the post that it is from personal experience. Why would you think otherwise?

Telefonica was providing services in villages and small towns with very difficult geography

Yes, back when it was a public company; that was just their responsibility.

It is easy to critique but in the old times there was no other option

Yes, but neither BSousa nor I were talking about dial-up times. Nor was the EU when they fined Telefonica for anti-trust violations, multiple times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefónica#Monopoly

Re: Firefox Hello

#78

Post by DanWaterworth »

suyash wrote: post #17

Now the question is can you enable 'Screen sharing' utility to it? It could then be a killer app for meetings and conferences getting rid of all the expensive external software applications? When I say screen share, I mean not just the browser's screen but the whole computer screen?

Have you tried using hangouts?

Re: Firefox Hello

#79

Post by stegosaurus »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #11

Do they have the specs anywhere on their encryption?

I am also very interested in this.

A secure and easy to use solution for web chat is really needed. If it's easy to use but insecure, that simply raises the bar for competing secure solutions to meet, which is a shame.

Re: Firefox Hello

#80

Post by marcosdumay »

criley2 wrote: post #25
cjensen wrote: post #10

A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. In my view, this is true for most values of X, including Skype, Mail, Word, Excel... To add insult to injury, there is no simple way of disabling the functionality[1]. Firefox Hello is ludicrous. [1] about:config is not a valid value of simple

Just call it the "Chrome-ification" of Firefox. Chrome is automatically updated to be jam-packed full of browser-specific APIs and functionality. Like when Chrome automatically updated and registered itself as a background service without permission. Or when Chrome automatically installed a microphone listening service for always on "OK Google" hotword detection. Or the fact that Chrome Apps are less and less "webpag…

You know, all of this already happened once.

This time we don't have an all powerful Microsoft fighting the web, but Google seems very wiling to take their place. Last browser wars stopped the web evolution for about a decade, just because of a single party that didn't want to be nice.

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