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Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

theguardian.com

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Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#191

Post by ken »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #167
ken wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a convenient excuse on iOS, but Firefox is doing poorly on macOS, too, where no such restriction exists. According to the first statistics I found, Firefox is only about half as popular on the Mac as it in on Windows -- and it's still under 10% there, too. Privacy-compromising systems aren't winning today because people seek out systems that compromise their privacy. They're winning because these companies foc…

> Privacy is important, but it's a feature, not a product. You still need to have a great product. Do you consider Firefox to be a less-than-great product? I use it as my main browser, from Windows 10. No complaints. I don't experience performance issues or UI issues. Chrome and Firefox are both solid browsers, on Windows at least. Perhaps Firefox for Mac is a weaker product, and loses to Safari 'fair and square' on…

Yes, Firefox on the Mac is absolutely a less-than-great product, to put it mildly. That's why I called its UI "lousy".

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#192

Post by lcall »

I hope Firefox succeeds, as I like the idea of not concentrating yet more power in few hands, but, on OpenBSD, I use Iridium (Chromium derivative), so I see these benefits, and am wondering what Firefox would add for me, privacy- and security-wise: 1) Iridium doesn't send info to Google like Chrome does (or that is the idea);

2) It is easier (last I checked) than with Firefox to leave some config tabs open so I can quickly turn on/off javascript, images, and/or cookies for those sites where I need them (by exception list or temporary exception, and easy to manage it without a mouse once the tab is open; separately, I do change the search engine also, and create search keywords), and

3) OpenBSD adds pledge/unveil system calls from the browser, to prevent it from reading/writing files where it should not (plus I browse under a different user than I do other things with high confidence there will not be a privilege escalation; also they say the pledge/unveil support is easier to implement in Chrome/Iridium than in Firefox because of the cleaner separations of concerns in the code organization (my wording; though they have probably also put pledge/unveil in FF also for all I know),

4) Maybe the security of Chrome/Iridium benefits from Google's bug bounties, more than what Firefox has done (ie, the security track record of each, frequency of major holes over, say, the last 1-3 years). I don't really know but I'm glad they try.

Given those things, what are the remaining biggest reasons I might prefer Firefox? (I am aware of OBSD removing DNS-over-HTTP from Firefox, indicating that is a choice that should be made by the user at the system level instead).

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#193

Post by clairity »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #181
hoptank wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you suggest Mozilla do instead? Mozilla don't just fund the development of their own products they also fund research [1] and other projects [2]. [1] https://research.mozilla.org/research-grants/ [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/grants/ In a perfect world Mozilla would be funded by donations. I donate to Mozilla but it's a pittance compared to what they get from Google.

> What do you suggest Mozilla do instead? Mozilla should sell two products: 1) Storage a la iCloud 2) Payment processing a la Paypal And for marketing purposes they should get into discovery of free/open web services, a la old school Yahoo. As a web site builder, I don't want to have to manage credit cards. As a user, I don't want to have to trust random web sites with my credit card info. I also don't want to be red…

i like the gist of both of your ideas but i'm not sure they are feasible for firefox, since both are expensive services (in different ways) that are a bit outside the competency and mission of firefox.

i could see firefox providing hooks for 3rd parties to make those services easier to integrate however (and maybe charging a fee, e.g., to certify the 3rd party). that would fall squarely in their wheelhouse.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#194

Post by k1m »

yborg wrote: post #189
k1m wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I find uBlock Origin so refreshing. The entire ad-blocking universe is so tainted with business interests it's hard to trust any of them. The uBlock Origin developer is genuinely principled from what I've seen.

Who should be getting a MacArthur grant or equivalent. I mean, it's literally gorhill or nothing, it's terrifying. Someone could walk up to him with $10M dollars and say 'Here. Stop making your thing and you can have this money." It would be a fraction of the revenue he's blocking and who could turn it down? Wladimir Palant suddenly became a big fan of whitelisting when he realized how much Google would pay for it. E…

Agree. Although I don't really understand gorhill's refusal to take donations for his work. I hope it's just that he doesn't need it.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#195

Post by Royalaid »

ripa wrote: post #177
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Privacy is important, but it's a feature, not a product. You still need to have a great product. Do you consider Firefox to be a less-than-great product? I use it as my main browser, from Windows 10. No complaints. I don't experience performance issues or UI issues. Chrome and Firefox are both solid browsers, on Windows at least. Perhaps Firefox for Mac is a weaker product, and loses to Safari 'fair and square' on…

Firefox for Mac has been more or less unusable up until the most recent release where they actually started using the Core Animation libraries in macOS. Now it won’t drain all the battery in no time, and it’s actually quite snappy. I’ve tried to run Firefox so many times in the past, but eventually always go back to Safari because it’s more native, fast and unobtrusive.

I will say that the latest changes on nightly really feel like it is close enough to other browser to be a decent replacement

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#196

Post by alwillis »

throwGuardian wrote: post #184
alwillis wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Apple is giving privacy the product treatment: https://www.apple.com/privacy/

Why allow competition when they can simply claim to productize.

There are literally hundreds of apps on the App Store that compete with Apple’s own offerings, especially email clients, calendaring, productivity, etc.

So clearly it’s not about competition. Disney+ is being heavily promoted on the App Store, which is direct competitor to Apple’s TV+.

We’ve seen 3rd parties like Google and Facebook subvert iOS security before; if Mozilla gets low-level access, then so does Google and they can’t be trusted.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#197

Post by alwillis »

alwillis wrote: post #186
johnsea wrote: post #7

The article once more reiterates the fact that Apple doesn't allow other browser engines. You cannot even fight, there is no future ;-) on iOS.

As Apple has reiterated, browser engines require low-level access and for security reasons, other rendering engines aren’t allowed. You can see from Apple’s updates that keeping up with the vulnerabilities for WebKit and iOS, etc. is already keeping them plenty busy: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210725 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210721 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210624 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210603

My point is this gets dramatically worse if every browser engine has low-level access to iOS.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#198

Post by Zak »

nfriedly wrote: post #121
notduncansmith wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, why does using “real Firefox” hold so much weight for you? Also, what steps have you taken to secure your device? One reason I haven’t switched from iPhone is that I’m not confident in my ability to secure an Android, and I’d rather trust Apple than Google.

A big part of it is extensions, I have a handful of extensions that I use on a regular basis, and Firefox is the only mobile browser that actually supports extensions. Another part of it is that I just trust Mozilla more. Both in terms of conflicts of interest, and just plain fixing bugs. For example, Safari on iPod touch has been unable to access the microphone for years, even though Safari on iPhones can. I will co…

Extensions don't get enough attention in this discussion. They're the main reason I prefer Firefox on Android. Anything that's missing or not to my liking, I can usually find an extension to provide or change. If something annoyed me enough and there wasn't an existing extension, I could look up the API docs and write one myself.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#199

Post by Yoric »

radarsat1 wrote: post #18
johnsea wrote: post #7

The article once more reiterates the fact that Apple doesn't allow other browser engines. You cannot even fight, there is no future ;-) on iOS.

How is it technically enforced though, I am curious. I mean, if I wrote an application that downloaded text files and rendered the text to the screen, I am sure that would be possible. If I wanted to add images to draw next to the text I am sure it is feasible. So how can one technically prohibit doing that? Implementation-wise, how is a web browser really that different from e.g. a video game? Or is it only policy-e…

Policy-enforced.

Mozilla ported the true Firefox to iOS many, many years ago and Apple just rejected it from the store.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#200

Post by ImprovedSilence »

kilburn wrote: post #183
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have way too many tabs open at all times, and chrome makes it way way easier to see what I have open and get to the tab I want quickly.(it just shows more tabs than Firefox, this is my main complaint) The top bar uses less vertical real estate and is just much cleaner overall. I can see more if not all of the url. Chromes next tab left, next tab right, and close tab, automatically map to the keyboard shortcut I set…

The vertical space you can easily fix by opening the hamburguer menu > customize > density (bottom left) > compact. It then uses less space than chrome. You can also add/remove items from the top bar there, making your address bar larger if you want to. The default hotkeys for next/prev tab are cmd+option+left/right arrow. I don't know how to change those...

yeah, I'm muscle-memoried into cmd-' and cmd-; for tabbing right and left, I like using those keys, and this is across pretty much everything I use (I suppose chrome and terminals, mostly..). It's firefox, there's probably an extension for it, but that takes work to find and feels kludgy.

good to know about the density, thanks.

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