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Firefox Was Always Enough

ianbicking.org

11–20 of 611 posts

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#11

I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox n…

You are right but think about the following :

Rust to solve the problem with memory and runtime safety a super important issue for browsers that run code from anyone

Deepspeech - so Firefox can support web speech api, extremely useful api to enable accessibility

There are so many more as the web as a platform grows to support an increasingly complex web...

WebRTC is massive having software tools to exercise the use cases is important

Just my 2 cents

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#12
" remember when Brendan Eich was briefly the Mozilla CEO."

Odd phrasing that glosses over how he was ousted by the early days "woke" mob (before they self-identified as such).

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#13

I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox n…

What about a @firefox.com webmail service. I’d pay for it.

Way to devalue the brand. Would be like Google giving away @google.com addresses.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#14

I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox n…

#3. I agree. Amd yet Ian has this to say under "Firefox was never enough" -

All encompassing: The web hosts most of our desktop applications. It should host even more of them, it should host mobile applications, it should be the universal platform. More APIs. More ways to package and present sites. (See Project Fugu)

I fundamentally disagree with this one. There's just too much of a bad security track record on all 6 of the first 6 levels of the OSI model for me to use web apps for office apps.

And so, as I said, I strongly agree with your #3.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#15

I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox n…

On 2, I actually think that the right sideproject does have the ability to market Firefox and grows its userbase better than making incremental gains in the browser. For example, Firefox Send was a clever way of putting the brand in front of many people who might never have seen it.

On 3, I too would love to see that happen, but, from the outside at least, the project has seen so much upheaval [1]. I don't really understand the significance of the latest change, at the start of the year [2], but hopefully it's a good sign.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird#History [2] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#16

> Now it’s focused on technological pessimism in the form of a security and privacy emphasis. First time I've seen this phrased that way. If all you can think of with regards to tech is security and privacy, you are the EU: "technological pessimism".

The EU's focus is more "consumer protection" than security or privacy as such, in my view.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#17
Safari is definitely in the technological pessimism camp as that's Apple's party line on the open web.

Safari has continuously caused "headache" to businesses that rely on tracking user behavior for years now, as Apple is very bent on protecting your privacy from every other company outside or inside their walled garden.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#18
post #9

Firefox lacks in the default UX area, just from the top of my head: Print to PDF is better in Chrome, comes with a preview. Search marks matches in the scroll bar. Opening a recently closed tab opens a new tab in Chrome instead of replacing the existing one. There were probably 5-10 more annoyances in Firefox for me that I don't recall right now. Maybe it was my familiarity with Chrome but overall I still think Chrom…

I just switched a bit on mobile from Firefox to Chrome. I was annoyed by the fact that the address bar is at top in there and I think it's unfair to say at all points that the UX is better on Chrome.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#19

I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox n…

Firefox is already the best browser and has been for a long time. The problem is that most laypeople don't even know it exists. Combined with dark patterns used by microsoft and google to steer users toward their own browsers, it's an uphill battle. I'll stick firefox and appropriate extensions on a friends computer so they can watch youtube etc completely ad free, which is a major tangible QOL improvement, but then find them watching ads in ms edge a few days later without having realized.
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