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Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

jasonlefkowitz.net

101–110 of 211 posts

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#101
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's nice for you that it works, usually works for me at home. I run about 200 desktop linux machines and sqlite locking is a common problem on firefox. Users are often completely unaware of how to fix even though they are quite technical.

As mentioned in the article's comments, this appears to have been recently resolved. Here is the full thread: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=686025

I'll believe it when I see it, pretty doubtful at this point.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#102

"Firefox, on Linux at least, is busted. It’s busted so bad that it’s painful to use. And it’s been this way ever since Firefox 3 launched" I'm suprised I don't see posts like this more often, specifically about the Linux version. I've been on Ubuntu since 7.04, and Firefox has always felt like beta software, especially when running any Flash media. I get far less crashes on Chrome, so I've started moving away from Fi…

I have the opposite problem: flash will consistently fail to work on a page in Chromium but work fine in Firefox, even though they're using the same copy of libflashplayer.so.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#103
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's nice for you that it works, usually works for me at home. I run about 200 desktop linux machines and sqlite locking is a common problem on firefox. Users are often completely unaware of how to fix even though they are quite technical.

As mentioned in the article's comments, this appears to have been recently resolved. Here is the full thread: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=686025

Hmm, from reading the thread it does not appear to have been solved, at least not the underlying problems. What was solved was the removal of a couple of synchronous calls. The fact that there are slow queries on some profiles seems to have been caused by the fact that ANALYZE does not run for some people[1], and this does seem like it has been fixed yet. I should check this for my Firefox profile at work to see if old stats are the reason for it hanging.

So what needs to be fixed ,if I follow that thread, is the removal of all synchronous calls and some solution to either not have to run ANALYZE or run it more often.

1. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=686025#c89

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#104
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people not use bookmarks? I have thousands of them. What are the alternatives that I'm missing out on? (big xmarks user too so sync is a must)

I store all my bookmarks in http://pinboard.in , much better organisation, sorting, faster, cross-os, cross-browser.

Looks great, but I'm happy with what I have now so I'm not too pushed about spending money on a service. I'm also old enough to worry about trusting a site to hang around for 10 years with my data. (and by old enough, read: stuck in my ways enough) Must look into the migration effort though. And browser addon support. Its definitely a sweet looking service.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point, the point is that Firefox still gives you the choice, while Chrome devs don't think you should have a choice.

Chrome's FOSS, but it's not driven by the FOSS mentality like FF is. Choice is great, but when it interferes with UX one or the other has to go. Google is a consumer app company, so they went with simplicity and a clean interface. That's their right. We aren't living in the MS EEE days anymore. You always have the choice to use a different browser. Hell, if you care that much, you can download the source, re-enable t…

I didn't make any comment or complaint about the practical difference...

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#106
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people not use bookmarks? I have thousands of them. What are the alternatives that I'm missing out on? (big xmarks user too so sync is a must)

I have roughly a dozen sites I go to. Most of them happen to have different first characters, so I type "f" and Chrome autocompletes http://fark.com/ and off I go. No bookmarks other than the shared history Google keeps for me.

I use them pretty heavily for reference/todo/toread type of stuff. And I have a terrible memory.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#107
post #12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people not use bookmarks? I have thousands of them. What are the alternatives that I'm missing out on? (big xmarks user too so sync is a must)

Most people use Google, or something like Facebook gets autocompleted.

I'd say I do too, even for stuff I have bookmarked. In fact 80% of my bookmarks provide nothing other than peace of mind for a person with a terrible memory. :)

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#108

Now that AdBlock Plus is fully functional in Chrome/Chromium, we've been moving all of our clients -- a few hundred individuals and businesses -- off of Firefox. So far, everybody's been a lot happier with that. Firefox is terrible . It's embarrassing. And, I've completely lost interest in arguing over it anymore. The responses from Mozilla, Asa especially, have either been, "We don't think that's a problem", or some…

So, I don't notice much bad with FF, so I don't know what I'm missing. What am I missing? What makes FF terrible and Chrome goodly?

This is Hacker News, where everything anointed by Larry and Sergei is to be revered and worshiped by all, forever and ever, amen.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#109

Now that AdBlock Plus is fully functional in Chrome/Chromium, we've been moving all of our clients -- a few hundred individuals and businesses -- off of Firefox. So far, everybody's been a lot happier with that. Firefox is terrible . It's embarrassing. And, I've completely lost interest in arguing over it anymore. The responses from Mozilla, Asa especially, have either been, "We don't think that's a problem", or some…

So, I don't notice much bad with FF, so I don't know what I'm missing. What am I missing? What makes FF terrible and Chrome goodly?

Just to chip in with why I personally refuse to use Chrome:

-A window begins to be unwieldy at 15 tabs, and is impossible to navigate at 20

-Occasional Flash problems render the browser utterly useless for several minutes before it asks whether I am interested in continuing what I was doing

-Not visiting a tab for a while results in a ridiculous wait for it to load

My screen size makes having multiple rows of tabs simply take up too much screen space.

Honestly, I just haven't had any complaints with firefox (beta channel) apart from the recent interesting decision to change dragging tabs to bookmarks to require hitting ctrl - https://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/bro...

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#110
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I store all my bookmarks in http://pinboard.in , much better organisation, sorting, faster, cross-os, cross-browser.

Looks great, but I'm happy with what I have now so I'm not too pushed about spending money on a service. I'm also old enough to worry about trusting a site to hang around for 10 years with my data. (and by old enough, read: stuck in my ways enough) Must look into the migration effort though. And browser addon support. Its definitely a sweet looking service.

If you go for the premium service, a bargain $25 a month you get the ability to have it scrape and download every site you bookmark. So even if the site you bookmarked goes down, you retain the content.

Pinboard also has good APIs so you can backup your data. No lock-in.

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