Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox Browser: best for a free web

mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 240 posts

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#171

Post by skinkestek »

techrat wrote: post #160
skinkestek wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without having to resort to tenuous claims or outright falsehoods. Do you mean that tree style tabs now works on Chrome or that everyone agrees that Chromes memory issues have been sorted? Or something else? > Google had to have had the better product otherwise you wouldn't have been introduced to Chrome by using their search engine. Maybe ten or fifteen years ago this was true. These days it is so broken you can s…

Funny how you say 'we old timers' when you remind me exactly of the same sniveling types who whined about everything "Micro$uck" etc... on Slashdot back in the day... It's tiresome and doesn't contribute one bit when you defeat any points you may legitimately have with all that griping. What's the point in tossing out the age card here? Being smug is a sign of immaturity, not wisdom. So you may call yourself an old t…

> A company putting an ad on their own website for their own product isn't an abuse of market position. That's the falsehood I'm referring to.

In that case bundling IE with Windows definitely isn't abuse of market power either.

> It's tiresome and doesn't contribute one bit when you defeat any points you may legitimately have with all that griping. What's the point in tossing out the age card here?

First time I've heard anyone at HN indicating age is an advantage.

I put that there for humorous effect, a self depreciating joke in between the serious comparison of two abusing monopolies.

> Everything else that you keep tossing back in as "do you mean..." is an attempt to evade that point that I made and to put words in my mouth.

So tell me what you mean then.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#172

Post by techrat »

skinkestek wrote: post #171
techrat wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how you say 'we old timers' when you remind me exactly of the same sniveling types who whined about everything "Micro$uck" etc... on Slashdot back in the day... It's tiresome and doesn't contribute one bit when you defeat any points you may legitimately have with all that griping. What's the point in tossing out the age card here? Being smug is a sign of immaturity, not wisdom. So you may call yourself an old t…

> A company putting an ad on their own website for their own product isn't an abuse of market position. That's the falsehood I'm referring to. In that case bundling IE with Windows definitely isn't abuse of market power either. > It's tiresome and doesn't contribute one bit when you defeat any points you may legitimately have with all that griping. What's the point in tossing out the age card here? First time I've he…

> So tell me what you mean then.

I already have.

Being disingenuous is all you have left, apparently.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#173

Post by executesorder66 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #24
doomrobo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's not a likely explanation. If you do even the simplest possible measurement, which is just recording user agent strings and IPs, you won't end up undercounting Firefox clients

Either uBlock Origin or Matrix comes with user agent spoofing, it's not like the practice is that rare.

By mozilla's own metrics only 30% of their users use any addon at all.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#174

Post by unityByFreedom »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #170
unityByFreedom wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix used to do this but doesn't anymore [1] and uBlock never had that feature. Please don't make stuff up. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/927

I don't think it's fair to call not knowing that a feature was removed from a discontinued app "making stuff up." I was clearly wrong, though it is easy to change your user agent it's unlikely that many Firefox users have done it.

You're right, I misunderstood your comment. I interpreted what you said as in, you can get this feature via either Matrix or uBlock. I see now you meant one of those has the feature and you weren't sure which one had it. Sorry about that. In my defense I think it can be read both ways.

I'd add there is a large gap in usage between uBlock and Matrix. uBlock has over 10 million users whereas Matrix is somewhere over 100,000.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#175

Post by executesorder66 »

starik36 wrote: post #11
trts wrote: post #2

It makes me sad that FF browser share has continued to decline steadily. The past couple years of releases have been some its the best in terms of my own UX, since perhaps the Phoenix era. It's pretty fast these days, the UI is good, has a lot of great extensions and privacy features. I use Brave at work to have a better chrome-based experience with gsuite. It's also a fast, excellent browser with good privacy featur…

> FF browser share has continued to decline steadily Is that really a fact though? I read somewhere that >80% FF users have Ad Blocker installed. Wouldn't that keep it hidden to Google Analytics and similar outfits that come up with browser usage stats?

It's actually about 30% that have any kind of addon :

https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/usage-behavior

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#177

Post by timo_h »

Firefox is great on desktop, been my primary browser for 15+ years.

Sadly though, the mobile version (still) lacks support for "pull to refresh" gesture. Other than that, mobile FF is great (privacy features, browser addons...).

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#178

Post by PostThisTooFast »

jakub_g wrote: post #166
dont__panic wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still ask myself: has FF browser share actually dropped that much, or has FF's privacy focus caused browser share estimates to mostly miss FF users in their counts? Most of these stats come from the exact kind of skeevy companies that I (and many other FireFox users) are using FireFox to avoid.

My take on FF "decline" is that FF user share (%) dropped because the pie started expanding (especially on mobile). New internet users are likely to be Safari or Chrome users for whom the browser they have is good enough. And Firefox on mobile is simply not as fast as alternatives (the bar set by Chromium Android is very high), kinda painful to use unless you have a highend device, esp. JS heavy sites like Twitter wo…

It doesn't help that Apple effectively bans competing browsers from iOS, by forcing them all to use abysmal WebKit. So they're little better than re-skinned Safari.

"You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."

HACKER NEWS, YOU'RE JAGOFFS. SHOVE YOUR DISRESPECT FOR USERS STRAIGHT UP YOUR ASS. THANKS.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#179

Post by kaba0 »

tigroferoce wrote: post #167
dralley wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of few worse business plans than a paid browser, in 2021. I would bet money that even the majority of HN readers wouldn't pay money for something so heavily commoditized.

Maybe you are right, but if you present yourself like a privacy-first browser, the paladin of the free internet, and then you end up taking money from Google, your position and credibility don't look great.

Why exactly? It is just as much a positive for Google paying some (to them) small money to avoid lawsuits as it is for firefox to be able to stay afloat.

Do you have any reference to issues where firefox lost credibility?

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#180

Post by kaba0 »

techrat wrote: post #160
skinkestek wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without having to resort to tenuous claims or outright falsehoods. Do you mean that tree style tabs now works on Chrome or that everyone agrees that Chromes memory issues have been sorted? Or something else? > Google had to have had the better product otherwise you wouldn't have been introduced to Chrome by using their search engine. Maybe ten or fifteen years ago this was true. These days it is so broken you can s…

Funny how you say 'we old timers' when you remind me exactly of the same sniveling types who whined about everything "Micro$uck" etc... on Slashdot back in the day... It's tiresome and doesn't contribute one bit when you defeat any points you may legitimately have with all that griping. What's the point in tossing out the age card here? Being smug is a sign of immaturity, not wisdom. So you may call yourself an old t…

> The difference between then (IE/Windows Bundling) and now (Chrome/Google Advertising Might) is that we still get everything Google releases as open source. Use de-Googled Chromium and move then fuck on with your life.

Except that having only one implementation of the web will make it into a closed ecosystem. The current few (partial) implementations are a very weak state and firefox should be kept alive for this reason alone.

And with the grossly huge scope of web browsers, creating a new one is basically impossible to even large players.

Post reply on HN