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Firefox Browser: best for a free web

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Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#231

Post by tentacleuno »

Liquid_Fire wrote: post #230
tentacleuno wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else do you reasonably expect them to bundle with Android, though? Safari?

I agree that it's probably too far to call that one a dirty tactic. However, Microsoft was once forced to offer a choice of browsers to EU users of Windows, which included all major competitors and even a number of minor browsers. Google doesn't have quite as strong of a monopoly as Windows did, but it wouldn't be too unreasonable to offer the user a choice. Additionally, while I see a small number of Android apps th…

> However, Microsoft was once forced to offer a choice of browsers to EU users of Windows, which included all major competitors and even a number of minor browsers. Google doesn't have quite as strong of a monopoly as Windows did, but it wouldn't be too unreasonable to offer the user a choice.

I mean technically apps on Android can bundle whatever web rendering engine they want. The majority of them either use Android's WebView components (see: DuckDuckGo, and a LOT of others), or are just a hard fork of Chromium (see: Kiwi Browser, Bromite, Brave, etc.)

On that note, I remember trying to find a non-Chromium browser on Android (bar Gecko / Firefox, of course). It was practically impossible. I think there was some sort of WebKit thing, but it was like 10 years out of date.

The only practical alternative is Gecko, but IMO it has a lot of catching up to do with performance, battery life, etc. etc. Personally I don't like the redesign, but I'm not sure what the public sentiment is aside from vocal Firefox users.

It's the same with desktop mostly IMO: either Firefox or Chromium. I'd love to be proven wrong here, though.

It'd be interesting to see if Servo would change things on both mobile and desktop, though. Again, it has a lot of catching up to do in comparison to Chromium.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#232

Post by throwaway_v9edc »

I was a long time Chrome user, I switched to Firefox 1 year ago and I won't look back:

1. Firefox has Ctrl+Tab MRU

2. Firefox has a way more usable address bar - Chrome breaks it on purpose and returns weak results to push you to use Google search for things which should immediately pop up in the address bar.

3. Firefox has container tabs - a feature so crucial to browsing the web (whenever you need to login to 2 different accounts on the same site) that you would wonder why on Earth would the leading web browser not implement it (until you remind yourself that the browser is brought to you by a certain company that has the word "evil" in it's motto and likes tracking too much).

4. Firefox has a sidebar, enabling interesting extensions.

5. This is small - but I recently noticed how Chrome broke the bookmark UI, after clicking the star icon, you don't add bookmark immediately, no. You have to choose between a bookmark or reading list first.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#233

Post by elchupanebre »

The main problem with Firefox is Gecko.

Technically it's a great rendering engine, fast, standards-compliant, maybe only slightly more buggy than Webkit. Unfortunately it has a different set of bugs than webkit. Web developers have just so much time to debug the apps. Once the app works for ~90% of users on webkit, spending as much time or more testing and debugging for ~7% of FF users is not always justified.

This is a catch 22: FF users get more bugs - more pressure to move to Chrome, fewer users on FF - less money to develop Gecko leading to more bugs. My prediction is that FF will either drop Gecko or die.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#235

Post by pxc »

inside_out_life wrote: post #226
tentacleuno wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After that whole search engine scandal with Kiwi Browser, a lot of people don't trust it anymore. I believe it also majorly lagged behind Chromium versions.

It got updated to newest Chromium version recently, the build process seems to be semi-automated now too. Isn't it open source too? Unfortunately it's a bit buggy on some of my devices. Newest FF beta got unexplained speed bost and tablet UI, it's approaching irreplaceablity steadily for me, There's IceRaven FF fork which has enabled even more addons.

Just spent some time playing with IceRaven and I like it a lot so far.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#236

Post by kaba0 »

tentacleuno wrote: post #219
7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but I use Firefox across windows, Linux, macOS, and Android without any problems. I suspect you're seeing hardware issues or just trolling. Firefox may not be perfect but shouldn't behave the way you're describing. I agree it's not as fast as blink based browsers, but the issues you're calling out are not common unless your system is doing something weird to break it.

I don't agree with assuming he is trolling.

Well I guess he could open an issue if that’s the case?

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#237

Post by unicornporn »

tentacleuno wrote: post #220
unicornporn wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kiwi supports extensions on Android...

After that whole search engine scandal with Kiwi Browser, a lot of people don't trust it anymore. I believe it also majorly lagged behind Chromium versions.

> that whole search engine scandal

Tell me more!

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#238

Post by BrendanEich »

cinquemb wrote: post #144
fabrice_d wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reason Brave finally forked Chrome (they went from gecko based, to electron based, to chrome fork) was to not suffer from the Web Compatibility issues that Firefox has.

Not too familiar with the "Web Compatibility" issues firefox has, but that would have been from when they moved off gecko at least, i doubt that was the case from using electrons chromium fork to upstream chromium. I wonder if they'd consider servo or would be too much work for them at this point? This[0] says they started off with electron pre dec-2018, nothing about gecko. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(w…

Electron uses Chromium, so as Fabrice noted, our reasons for moving off our fork of Electron were unrelated to the prior move from Gecko to Chromium/Blink.

Electron's architecture is insecure by default in too many ways, even if one enables the Chromium Sandbox (which was off by default at least when we used Electron).

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#239

Post by cinquemb »

BrendanEich wrote: post #238
cinquemb wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too familiar with the "Web Compatibility" issues firefox has, but that would have been from when they moved off gecko at least, i doubt that was the case from using electrons chromium fork to upstream chromium. I wonder if they'd consider servo or would be too much work for them at this point? This[0] says they started off with electron pre dec-2018, nothing about gecko. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(w…

Electron uses Chromium, so as Fabrice noted, our reasons for moving off our fork of Electron were unrelated to the prior move from Gecko to Chromium/Blink. Electron's architecture is insecure by default in too many ways, even if one enables the Chromium Sandbox (which was off by default at least when we used Electron).

Deff agree with electron.

> unrelated to the prior move from Gecko to Chromium/Blink

Is there publicly available reason for this move? No worries if there isn't.

No plans on forking from ff v ~70-ish with the servo stuff and going with the rust stuff or just more with chromium? Too much work and not worth it at this point or other tradeoffs? I like a lot of stuff you have been doing with brave (use the default search instead of ddg now in my ff fork) and wish some of it was in ff without me personally having to do it xD

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#240

Post by BrendanEich »

cinquemb wrote: post #239
BrendanEich wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron uses Chromium, so as Fabrice noted, our reasons for moving off our fork of Electron were unrelated to the prior move from Gecko to Chromium/Blink. Electron's architecture is insecure by default in too many ways, even if one enables the Chromium Sandbox (which was off by default at least when we used Electron).

Deff agree with electron. > unrelated to the prior move from Gecko to Chromium/Blink Is there publicly available reason for this move? No worries if there isn't. No plans on forking from ff v ~70-ish with the servo stuff and going with the rust stuff or just more with chromium? Too much work and not worth it at this point or other tradeoffs? I like a lot of stuff you have been doing with brave (use the default search…

We couldn't even get HTML5 DRM for Gecko-based Brave, never mind a ton of other webcompat problems vs. Chromium/Blink. We did a full spreadsheet and the winner was very clear. This is a reflection of Google's market power, in large part, but it is what it is.
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