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Firefox Browser: best for a free web

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Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#201

Post by [deleted] »

eric_cc wrote: post #196
indymike wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has less users than desktop Safari. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. When you factor in mobile it gets worse because Chrome (the Android default) and Safari (the only real choice on iOS) are so dominant. Also, the market share numbers reported by client side trackers like StatsCounter are very close to log file collection and analysis by companies like Kinsta.

How are you so sure? You really didn’t address OP’s point about content blocking and privacy tools.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#203

Post by jamie_ca »

indymike wrote: post #31
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.

Firefox has less users than desktop Safari. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. When you factor in mobile it gets worse because Chrome (the Android default) and Safari (the only real choice on iOS) are so dominant. Also, the market share numbers reported by client side trackers like StatsCounter are very close to log file collection and analysis by companies like Kinsta.

iOS Firefox is actually quite nice, I've been using it as my default for a year now. Biggest win for me is tab sync, so it's pretty easy to open a tab I had loaded on my phone in my desktop browser.

Sure, it's using Safari as a renderer, but these days that's hardly where the differentiating value is.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#204

Post by freediver »

rossy wrote: post #163
freediver wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fence-sitters already switch in droves, Firefox lost 250M users in the last ten years. So keeping the status quo already clearly leads to demise. And how can you claim you are free* when 90% of your revenue comes from your main competitor? Maybe making a paid browser is what they need to become truly free* and reset to a user-centric product development culture, which could then actually make it an exciting product a…

I think you're underestimating the size of the demographic who care about FOSS, or who believe FOSS to be more trustworthy. It's not big globally, but I think it has a lot of overlap with people who use Firefox and people who care about online privacy. There's no way that the intersection of people who care about online privacy, don't mind that Firefox is less web-compatible than a Chromium-fork, but also don't care…

Nothing prevents a paid product to be FOSS.

What I am advocating for is making Firefox users also become its customers, vs current situation where user!=customer, and customer being Google. This obvious and giant conflict of interest has to be a major contributing factor to the decline of Firefox.

I am aware that Firefox may lose 90% of its user base if it switched to a paid model, but my point is it will do so eventually anyway - if things do not change radically.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#205

Post by freediver »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #85
errantmind wrote: post #46

I've used Firefox since release but I'm curious what other less popular browsers people are using these days? For example, I have tried Bromite on my phone but the adblocking is limited. I've tried ungoogled-chromium on desktop and the speed is impressive. The main things I want: 1. Speed 2. Speed 3. Native plugins that can preempt network requests 4. Configurable for privacy (referrer, first party isolation, etc) Al…

Brave is interesting. Built-in ad blocker even on mobile. Not as good as uBlock Origin on Firefox but it's an option. It also has its own advertising platform. The ads are simple notifications, no bullshit. It actually pays users in cryptocurrency for their attention. It can also be completely disabled.

Not sure the world needs another ad-monetized browser. We need less ads on the web, not more. And what is the point of shipping a browser with an ad blocker only to serve your own ads built into the browser?

My personal experience with it is that it is slow to start, bloated, the ad-blocker doesn't block Google ads by default and it fills home screen with some kind of crypto sites by default. It looks like it is trying to be a general purpose browser but judging by the choice of default options it looks more like a very niche browser for the crypto community.

The most innovative thing they have right now is Search, hopefully it doesn't end up being ad-monetized too.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#206

Post by indymike »

eric_cc wrote: post #196
indymike wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has less users than desktop Safari. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. When you factor in mobile it gets worse because Chrome (the Android default) and Safari (the only real choice on iOS) are so dominant. Also, the market share numbers reported by client side trackers like StatsCounter are very close to log file collection and analysis by companies like Kinsta.

How are you so sure? You really didn’t address OP’s point about content blocking and privacy tools.

Content blocking does not change requests to the originating server. Firefox would have much better market share in log file analysis method studies than it does in client side tracker based studies if the OP was correct.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#207

Post by toastal »

lucasyvas wrote: post #200
toastal wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't disagree with the monopoly statement, then start altering your speech to reflect it. You can use the phrase “(public) Git forge” and avoid using the trademark generically and encompass all alternative forges.

In this case, I think that the leading Git provider is where it should be hosted, due to community size. And that's GitHub for now. That can absolutely change in the future.

Git was created to be distributed. Endorsing an account-required, closed-source platform is not the best play for Git as platform (nothing wrong with it having accounts, and the account providing an improved experience). IMO, it is important regardless of what platform's in vogue to use a more generic term here.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#208

Post by techrat »

kaba0 wrote: post #181
techrat wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is a dumpster fire half the time. I use Firefox still for exactly ONE website: Facebook. To keep it sandboxed. I still have to restart Firefox at least once every other day because it leaks and becomes a runaway process. No plugins/addons. As stock as it gets. One single website only... and it still pukes all over itself.

Are you even using an updated version? Because I have firefox instances running for months with tremendous amounts of tabs open on 8GB of RAM laptop and has absolutely zero problem with it.

64GB Desktop.

Apt runs weekly.

Firefox still blows.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#209

Post by dralley »

techrat wrote: post #208
kaba0 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you even using an updated version? Because I have firefox instances running for months with tremendous amounts of tabs open on 8GB of RAM laptop and has absolutely zero problem with it.

64GB Desktop. Apt runs weekly. Firefox still blows.

Something is F'ed with your system. I have 10 extensions installed, nearly 900 tabs (most of which aren't actually cached) and my Firefox stays open for weeks and it still never uses more than a few GB of RAM.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#210

Post by techrat »

dralley wrote: post #209
techrat wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

64GB Desktop. Apt runs weekly. Firefox still blows.

Something is F'ed with your system. I have 10 extensions installed, nearly 900 tabs (most of which aren't actually cached) and my Firefox stays open for weeks and it still never uses more than a few GB of RAM.

Or maybe you have rose colored glasses on from using Firefox in isolation.

It's a memory leaking hog on every system I use it on. Windows, Ubuntu, even Android.

Even back to the days of Phoenix, it always had issues with not eventually turning into a leaking process.

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