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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

#211

Post by doomlaser »

anonymousab wrote: post #201
doomlaser wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has more power user features and a robust plugin system. One of my must-have features for a browser is the ability to define search engine macros for the address bar, to quickly and directly search sites like Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, Google Image Search, IMDB, Metacritic, RottenTomatoes, etc. It's a lot faster to type command-L t whatever - to do a search of Twitter than navigating in any other way. So fa…

Chrome seems to have this - that is, you define a domain+query string and a keyword that, when typed, indicated that it should be used on that domain query. Did Brave remove that feature?

Last time I tried using it, they did not have this feature enabled in their interface. There was a popular support request ticket to fix that, so this may have changed.

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

#212

Post by lcall »

soulofmischief wrote: post #205
lcall wrote: post #192

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 q…

> what are the remaining biggest reasons I might prefer Firefox? Neither Firefox nor Chromium let you reassign hotkeys without recompiling, and while Firefox's defaults could use some tweaking, Chromium's default keybindings are insane and counter-productive. Of course, Mozilla's organization is in shambles atm so Firefox has been getting worse in many regards, even if its speed has caught up with Chrome. > It is eas…

> Not sure when you last checked, but about:config is its own tab.

It was last I checked also, but felt awkward to use, and then you have to know what settings to look for, as opposed to having them in the UI (all can be easily overcome, but it is a little more work i think, maybe not enough to matter for some use cases or if I just forced myself to get used to it).

Is it possible to define ongoing exception lists there? How easy? And how many options to they allow for cookies (always, never, save until exit, ...)?

> Anything this offers over Linux containers / AppArmor / SELinux+permissions on a theoretical level, implementation nonwithstanding?

I don't know fully, but for any of those I definitely have to think more, as the user, and there is (probably?) more room for error due to complexity.

> I don't have any citation on hand (one would be welcome) but AFIAK Firefox typically has had less major 0-days than Chrome in the past, due to Chromium team's "move fast, break things, and don't communicate" policy.

Thanks for pointing that out.

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #209
lcall wrote: post #192

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 q…

You're still on Blink. Contributing to that monoculture is no win.

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by Karrot_Kream »

These articles always seem to elide over the WHATWG/W3C fight. Firefox and other browser vendors chose a living, implementable HTML spec over a consensus-based standards body (with its own deep problems), and now we lament the lack of alternatives. If you let browsers create the standards and change them unchecked, the natural conclusion is to own the entire stack for yourself.

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

#215

Post by millstone »

throwGuardian wrote: post #207
alwillis wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

There are literally zero browser engines allowed on iOS, other than Safari/webkit, with a purposefully depleted feature set, to force developers and users to the app store. It is astounding that overzealous Apple employees and fan boys will employ circuitous mental gymnastics to substantiate Apple policies, instead of simply allowing an open-market to thrive on iOS. It's as if open markets where consumers are allowed…

What is this hope for a "thriving open market?" On Android, Chrome/Chromium engine has more than 99.5% marketshare.

Consumer choice is a red herring. So for that matter is Firefox, which Google has stomped out on Android. Apple's policy is 100% aimed at preventing Google from controlling the future of iOS.

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

#216

Post by catalogia »

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.

> Firefox for Mac has been more or less unusable up until the most recent release

This is a gross exaggeration. I've been using firefox on MacOS for 3 years and it's worked fine the entire time.

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

#217

Post by mormegil »

lcall wrote: post #192

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 q…

> 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

I wouldn't want to switch everything on/off manually. I use the uMatrix extension which allows you to enable disable cookies, images, Javascript, iframes, etc. for each domain separately, and configure the exceptions permanently or temporarily. I have JS disabled by default, and enable it only for trusted sites or temporarily. Even on the sites I trust, Google Analytics scripts, etc. are disabled.

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

#218

Post by endemic »

notduncansmith wrote: post #106
nfriedly wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple allowed Firefox on iOS - real Firefox with the rendering engine and extensions and everything, just like Android - I probably would have switched already. As it stands, I stay on Android mostly for Firefox.

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.

Extensions. On my Android phone I run LineageOS without gapps. I don’t install 3rd party applications, simply because the majority (in my experience) try to abuse your device in spite of limitations put in place by Apple/Google.

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

#219

Post by saagarjha »

thekingofh wrote: post #142
sebazzz wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically I think you are free to build have other browser engines on iOS. However, JIT or other dynamically compiled code is not allowed because that's a security risk. You can't have a browser in 2019 with interpreted javascript.

I think you mean that you can have interpreted javascript, just not JIT compilers. They don't allow you to mark memory as executable. That syscall is completely disabled on their systems.

It is not, moprotect (and mach_vm_protect) work just fine if you have the appropriate entitlements or have a way of getting around its checks.

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

#220

Post by saagarjha »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #135
andrewl-hn wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. technically, Apple doesn't force Firefox to use WebKit. They could still use their Gecko WebRenderer and use Apple's JavaScriptCore to run page scripts. Same goes to Chrome: Blink + JSC instead of Blink + V8. In practice in seems like both Chrome and Firefox have their renderers and JavaScript runtimes so tightly integrated that it's very hard to replace the later.

Elsewhere in this debate sharpneli says that there is no public API to call into JavaScriptCore and using non-public APIs violates the App Store rules. So that would explain it.

There is API to use JavaScriptCore in your apps: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/javascriptcore. No JIT, though, so it’s slow.
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