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Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

robert.ocallahan.org

111–120 of 303 posts

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#111
post #87
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quality of Firefox. On desktop it's google having (almost) monopoly on search and abusing it market its other products. On mobile, it's Google abusing its power over the platform to make OEMs use Chrome in the same way MS pushes OEMs to ship Windows and Secure Boot and various other shit. Firefox could be perfect (and it isn't, because what do you know, developing good software takes insane amount of money)…

Yes, Google has market leverage. However, when IE was Firefox's competitor, MS was in just as powerful of a position, and Firefox was a success. They were a success because they clearly had the better browser. These days, that's no longer the case. I know that I certainly did not switch from Firefox because of Google's marketing efforts or underhanded tactics. But what if you're right? In a world where, I agree, it t…

I think people think Chrome is a best browser is because it performs better on Google products than any other browser. And as people are using GMail, Youtube or other, they see Chrome as the best browser.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#112
post #104

This article convinced me personally to switch back to Firefox, but I'm disheartened by seeing a number of comments here which amount to "Firefox is fine," "Firefox is just as good," "The Foundation is fine," and so on. That attitude is a recipe for shrinking market share. FF is competing against extremely well funded, extremely aggressive and competent competitors. You don't get to stop listening to the market in an…

Firefox is good. It has support for modern standards, is performant, has tracking protection built in and plenty of extensions. Google is winning because it's bundling its browser just like Microsoft used to and is aggressively advertising it on all of its web properties, which might have a reach of close to 100% of the web-using population. Firefox also has a reputation for being slow, gotten probably from people do…

> Firefox also has a reputation for being slow, gotten probably from people doing ridiculous things as keeping tens of tabs open and not restarting it for dayes

Do you mean it has the reputation from people doing this 5 or 10 years ago and it's stuck? Or is this still a problem for Firefox?

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#113
post #97

What does Chrome offer that FF cannot match currently? What kind of convenience improvements would you need to start using FF? Developer tools not withstanding.

I find the design of Chrome to be nicer in general. Feels like there's less going on.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#114
post #96

I stop use Firefox due to Brendan Eich story.

Did you stop using javascript as well?

I started using FF since 0.7 version guy, I switch to chrome after the internal Mozilla stupid polemics for Brendan marriage position. Open web? please, do me the favour..

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#115
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because capitalism and technological progress (unlike science or art) is about greed and money, and a non-profit is not a competitive vehicle for it.

And still, Linux outperformed most commercial competitors in the embedded and server spaces without being a single commercial entity. Apache was the most successful webserver for a long time, despite coming from a non-profit organisation, etc. I also believe that Firefox should look to exploit Google/Chrome's weaknesses more: Google relies fully on ad income. Firefox relies on sending users to someone's search engine…

Very good point. Linux and Apache however are not consumer products, and the for profit companies that are using them are heavily contributing to the projects. The end users of Firefox are not contributing to its code, all development is done by Mozilla foundation.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#116
post #98

My neutral (?) view on firefox/chrome: - Firefox uses way less RAM - Chrome is usually faster/smoother, even if not by much. For very odd or intensive sites. And for things like dragging a tab into another window and how long it takes until inspect element loaded. - Firefox has Tree Style Tab, Chrome doesn't and will never have. This alone makes FF the only usable browser for me - I find the non-optional non-native a…

My opposite viewpoint as a web developer:

Chrome is faster and renders better than Firefox is pretty much every way. Safari delivers faithful color reproduction and speed. I spent 10x as much time fixing Firefox rendering issues compared to every other browser, including Microsoft Edge.

Firefox has lost its edge. I do miss tree style tabs, though.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#117
post #109
post #98

My neutral (?) view on firefox/chrome: - Firefox uses way less RAM - Chrome is usually faster/smoother, even if not by much. For very odd or intensive sites. And for things like dragging a tab into another window and how long it takes until inspect element loaded. - Firefox has Tree Style Tab, Chrome doesn't and will never have. This alone makes FF the only usable browser for me - I find the non-optional non-native a…

Also using Firefox (Developer Edition) as my primary browser. But my observations are quite different: - On my machine, Firefox uses more RAM than Chrome (Canary) for the same workloads and is slower - Chrome is way faster. As a web application developer I notice that all the time. Chrome renders faster and the JavaScript engine also processes faster. Firefox likes to crash when reloading a page that uses WebSockets.…

Another thing people don't seem to understand is that Chrome uses as much memory as it sanely can for the task provided. There are situations where it will use more, or less than Firefox, but I guarantee you in 99% of those situations, Chrome will be the one performing faster.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#118

The only reason chromium is my primary browser is the developer tools (it's a pain to use Firefox for normal browsing, but Chromium for debugging.) I can only hope for chrome's devtools to be ported to firefox. (firebug is close but slow).

Nonsense! Firefox Developer Edition [0] is the best browser for web development and it doesn't need Firebug as it has better built-in tools! Not to mention the lovely dark theme!

[0]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#119
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem. You value your convenience more than your freedom, and the future of privacy.

Do you honestly believe that switching to firefox will be the change? Its purely symbolic considering firefox has been heavilly funded by google in the past [0] and likely still influences their decisions. A few developers doesnt account for the millions of people that use chrome, widescale change requires influencers and those willing to stand up, not a bunch of upset introverts with a distaste for authority. Honest…

[deleted]

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#120
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because capitalism and technological progress (unlike science or art) is about greed and money, and a non-profit is not a competitive vehicle for it.

And still, Linux outperformed most commercial competitors in the embedded and server spaces without being a single commercial entity. Apache was the most successful webserver for a long time, despite coming from a non-profit organisation, etc. I also believe that Firefox should look to exploit Google/Chrome's weaknesses more: Google relies fully on ad income. Firefox relies on sending users to someone's search engine…

Linux did not outperform anyone. Companies did. Companies used and abused linux in such a way that the other simply followed the trend. Mainly because of the costs. And btw this is what Facebook and Google will be doing to most of other competitors as well. This is pure / chinese style capitalism. We give you something good enough for free but forget about normal wealth distribution only a single entity / group of people will get rich and the others will have to pay a hefty price of loosing their privacy.

Linux and Apache and the others succeeded because they spawned a lot of other businesses that were just cheaper than the offerings from Microsoft or Oracle.

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