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Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

robert.ocallahan.org

151–160 of 266 posts

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

#151
post #34

People choose firefox over IE because firefox was better. People choose chrome over firefox and IE because chrome is better. Want to beat google? create better. Not negativity.

This. I think we've seen throughout societal history that if you want to affect change you have to do it through the path of least resistance for consumers; this means creating a better browser experience that people use not because they want to revolt, but because they gain utility from doing so.

For me, knowing that Firefox doesn't spy on me is an enormous advantage. I don't care about a tiny speed difference or reliability. All browsers are mostly equal when it comes to what I do with them. But the spying stuff, naaahh, that's completely different.

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

#152

Daily Firefox user here. Switched back from Chrome a couple years ago and haven't looked back. Just seeing the comments here exasperates me... So for those who don't know, the Internet is heavily biased towards Chrome. Simple pages that should render no differently in FF than Chrome are often broken. This "Chrome is great, screw everything else" attitude is exactly how we ended up with IE and stagnation in standards/…

There are broken because like IE Firefox don't support all standard. Chrome has been every time pushing news technology, ban or isolate adobe flash for the best for the users. Firefox take decision for me and I don't like it.

> Firefox don't support all standard

Could you give some examples? Let me make it easy for you. Check out [1] and tell me which API you found difficult to manage without.

> ban or isolate adobe flash

Firefox doesn't come bundled with Flash. Chrome does. Does that count as a decision taken on your behalf?

[1] - http://caniuse.com/#compare=firefox+53,chrome+58

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

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium is a better choice from a privacy standpoint, certainly. It unfortunately doesn't help prevent the vendor lock-in situation. The ideal equilibrium for the open web right now would be 33% each for evergreen Chrome (or other Webkit/Blink browsers), Edge, and Firefox. Bleeding edge prove-of-concepts aside; developing a website or web application that works in all modern browsers has never been so developer-frie…

Wow! your ideal equilibrium is really scary. It leaves no room for a lot of the existing browsers and features two that I do not want to use ever and one that I use reluctantly because it lives on google advertisement money. So your ideal open web is 66% google and 33% microsoft which seems pretty closed up for something open.

A third of the total market share for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox respectively.

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

#154
post #142
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question from someone not well versed in this topic but interested in learning more, can you give me some examples of what Google is doing that is abusive of their monopoly power, particularly as it relates to Chrome? I'm aware of some of the issues involving Android licensing/bundling of apps but not well informed on other aspects.

ChromeOS, while not that much successful outside USA, it appears to be a thing there. So if you have a browser based OS, which happens to be loved by the USA school system, which browser do you think many US devs will care mostly about?

I'm not trying to be contrarian here but why do you consider ChromeOS to be an abuse of monopoly power? Is it because ChromeOS development is being subsidized by ad revenue to enter into a new market?

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

#155

Daily Firefox user here. Switched back from Chrome a couple years ago and haven't looked back. Just seeing the comments here exasperates me... So for those who don't know, the Internet is heavily biased towards Chrome. Simple pages that should render no differently in FF than Chrome are often broken. This "Chrome is great, screw everything else" attitude is exactly how we ended up with IE and stagnation in standards/…

I regularly find myself with 200-300 tabs open, it was a very sad day when Mozilla axed the Tab Group feature, but luckily addons stepped up and even improved it a bit.

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

#156
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what people don't know can't hurt them, right? More seriously, there is a battlefield on the web. Since the demise of Opera, Firefox is the only mainstream browser left standing that actively attempts to not violate your privacy. This doesn't mean that Firefox developers don't need to work on ways to make Firefox the best browser – incidentally, Firefox in January 2017 is orders of magnitude better than Firefox i…

Firefox was always my default browser since ever but 2-3 years ago I switched to Chrome full time. Every month or so, I try Firefox again with all the websites I care about, check how fast it feels, the JS performance, etc and, while it's pretty good, Chrome still is/feels faster. My tests are pretty subjective at times but I never find a huge reason to switch from Chrome (privacy issues aside). Each time I think I'v…

Thanks for admitting that your tests were subjective.

My only suggestion is that people do not use phrases such as "felt faster" with friends and relatives who might take the (admittedly subjective) test results at face value and choose Chrome over Firefox.

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

#157
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question from someone not well versed in this topic but interested in learning more, can you give me some examples of what Google is doing that is abusive of their monopoly power, particularly as it relates to Chrome? I'm aware of some of the issues involving Android licensing/bundling of apps but not well informed on other aspects.

Yesterday they banned a privacy extension that doesn't fit their business model and forcefully removed it from users who already had it installed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327228

Thanks, I completely missed that thread.

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

#158
post #6

Maybe these other browsers should stop being complete shit and maybe I will. You want to know why people pick Google products? Because they work and they work well with each other. The only people that don't like Google are tech people that write stupid blogs like this. Sorry, but the general population doesn't give a fuck if Google does any of this. They just want products that work. They don't even give a fuck abou…

I actually asked people around me and none of the answer I got is the one you put forward. The most common answer is that they feel they didn't have a choice, they have an android phone because they needed a phone and didn't want to pay the overpriced premium for an apple product and they seem to hate android with a passion. they have a gmail account because they didn't have a choice and had to make one to use their…

Personally I hate what Google did to Sun, forking Java which is only going to get worse with Java 9 and 10 planned features, and how constrained the NDK is versus what the iOS and WP SDKs allow for.

Also that Google has the balls to put all sets of restrictions on Play Store certifications, but "forgets" to put a clause related to device updates.

I own a few Windows Phone devices and still look forward to a possible Surface phone coming up.

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

#159
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox was over reliant on plug-ins, gave plug-ins too much power and the plug-in as well as firefox update mechanisms were messy. Chrome did more out of the box than firefox reducing the need for plug-ins, sandboxed plug-ins from destroying general browser performance and most importantly realised that updating was not a user concern and performed updates silently. There were also other innovations that Chrome did…

> _That's_ why they "won" not because of fucking adverts. Given that Opera was basically "Chrome without Google marketing" I heavily doubt that. (The first version of Chrome was such a blatant Opera clone, it was just funny)

When chrome arrived opera had tons of features that were never present on chrome, to call it a copy is ignoring the main point of chrome early success. It was fast and simple, no extensions, no tons of features that no one cared about. It was wicked fast and simple. Thats it. Compare them for yourself: https://veeven.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/opera-96-te.png http://blogoscoped.com/files/google-chrome-browsing/home-lar...

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

#160
I use both browsers a lot. I use Chrome more but I do a lot of testing in FF, especially when I need to log in as a different user. The only better thing in FF is the address bar. Google is being an asshole because it doesn't want to improve the history lookup and instead wants you to go to their site and search there. That's probably the only reason I'd start using FF again as my default browser.
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