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Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

robert.ocallahan.org

251–260 of 303 posts

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#251
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox performance has been miserable on Linux and still is.

Here's what I find interesting about that: I tend to run Linux on a bunch of older hardware for various purposes. One of those devices is a netbook with an Atom N450 CPU, in other words a single core dog of a processor that struggles with the lightest of loads. With it running Slackware (which actually makes the netbook usable as a mobile daily driver) Firefox runs circles around Chromium. Granted, neither browser is…

On my machine there is no hardware acceleration, there is a noticeable lag with rendering and input response in Firefox. Pages load slower, scrolling is not smooth.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#252
post #40

What always strikes me about these pleas is how familiar they sound. They're reminiscent of all the things we "should" -- eat better, exercise more, lower our carbon footprint -- and I suspect they all see just about the same level of long term success. Firefox did well when their only real competitor (MS) was actively trying to make their own browser bad in order to preserve the relevance of the desktop OS and their…

I do agree with you. It's difficult to convince anyone with those kind of arguments. As I've written on The Unshut, I'd say the problem is the perception of value:

http://theunshut.com/2016/09/26/firefox-chrome-and-the-perce...

When I switched to Chrome I did because it felt better. The decision would be tougher today because Firefox, Chrome and Opera (Edge has to mature) are great options and not that different in performance and features. Change is tougher now because the perceived value isn't really there in most cases.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, that is exactly what made Chrome popular. Focussing on Dev-Tools, but that's a very expensive undertaking (it took firefox an extension to make this possible -> Firebug ftw). However, market success from other companies e.g. Stripe have shown that optimizing for developers today is by far the most effective way to get into market. MS did the same thing, although back then they used ActiveX extensions o…

Firebug is better than chrome dev tools mostly. The problem is stability especially for development, a rogue JS script can still kill a browser, chrome loses a page, Firefox loses its mind.

Indeed, I love Firebug and have been an avid user since it first came out.

For the rogue JS, that is indeed a problem. From a development perspective though, I even think this is a good thing: stuff that bricks your browser needs to be optimized first. the moment we'd allow a more easy grip in terms of development, a lot of slow stuff will find its way into the codebase.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For Firefox to gain market share, either the perceived "cost" of using Chrome has to skyrocket or Firefox has to be superior for a common use case. It wouldn't hurt either if we nerds, pros, superusers etc etc stopped spreading FUD like "Chrome is way better".

It's not FUD since Firefox does have many flaws. While I don't like Google and Chrome, for an average user it is better to use.

Just curious, why is Chrome better for you? I switched back to Firefox after e10s landed, and tbh they are now functionally equivalent (for me, at least). I now choose Firefox because I find myself more aligned with Mozilla's philosophy, and to promote cross-browser consistency.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#255
post #33
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you believe Chromium has better sandboxing than Firefox? That may have been true in the past, I doubt it has much truth to it today. Furthermore, if you use GNU/Linux it should be trivial to give your web browser better sandboxing than what it does by itself. (You can use AppArmor or SELinux, you can run it in a systemd-nspawn container, you can use Firejail…)

Chrome has a process for each tab that's sandboxed so that most exploits would be trapped and unable to escalate out of the sandbox. Firefox has nothing like that yet, but it's coming eventually with the new multiprocess architecture that they're ramping up.

that's not how processes works...

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> firebug is close but slow Hasn't Firebug been mostly replaced, long ago, by Firefox' built-in tools? Press Ctl+Shift+i, or click Tools > Web Developer.

I found it impossible to debug very large scripts on Firefox. Searching for a string in the script is next to impossible, it would hang the interface for minutes. In Chrome it take seconds to do something similar, you can tell that the script is too big but at least it's debuggable. Also as a user I cannot bear to use Firefox. I recently retried it (can't recall the version, IIRC it's the first version they introduce…

never had slow search on Firefox. also Firefox can search a string on all source files, while chrome you have to know the file beforehand

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#257
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you report it? for regular users i don't give this kind of assine reply, but here on hacker news, i expect everyone used Firefox for a good decade before switching to chrome now, so i expect you did the minimum to the project and have at least abugzilla account to say "me too" on some bug.

For Firefox, that's really not sufficient. I've reported FF bugs in the past that sit unfixed in the queue for 13 years. It has disincentivized me from bothering to continue reporting them. Yes, it's open-source and I could in theory pop it out and fix it myself (ha, because I have a spare weekend to burn on setting up a Mozilla dev environment and dependency stack). No, there's no incentive to do so when Chrome simp…

and when you trip on that chrome bug you will move to what? IE?

btw, try to disable referrer on chrome ;) ... or even set it to only send to the same domain

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#258
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they had no competition because they had it destroyed with illegal practices. And all they got fined with was a slap on the wrist while earning billions. More ontopic... IE6 was slightly better than Netscape 4, so almost everyone switched to IE6. Just as now Chrome is only slightly better than Firefox to a lot of people (not to me though). And a lot of people are switching to Chrome. If you trust Google (an adver…

Stagnation like Chromecast? Google has market incentive to improve on the browser's capabilities that Microsoft did not.

I think Chromecast would fall under the "lock in" category.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#259
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Firefox, that's really not sufficient. I've reported FF bugs in the past that sit unfixed in the queue for 13 years. It has disincentivized me from bothering to continue reporting them. Yes, it's open-source and I could in theory pop it out and fix it myself (ha, because I have a spare weekend to burn on setting up a Mozilla dev environment and dependency stack). No, there's no incentive to do so when Chrome simp…

and when you trip on that chrome bug you will move to what? IE? btw, try to disable referrer on chrome ;) ... or even set it to only send to the same domain

As I said, it'd be incentive to switch to Firefox (or actually set up that Mozilla devel dependency stack and fix the 13-yaer-old bug).

For referrer in Chromium, I think there's a flag?

https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/content/public/common/c...

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public at large will never be swayed to use less convenient alternatives for ethical reasons. But even so, if a small, dedicated group of people are convinced, they can keep the ethical alternative just alive enough that it remains a somewhat viable alternative. I don't think vegetarianism will ever be the norm, but there are enough vegetarians to create a market for vegetarian food. This creates options for peop…

Vegetarianism can be the norm, but for that to happen one of two things must happen: either the cost of meat has to be prohibitively expensive ("the stick") or vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large ("the carrot"). Neither of those things have happened yet. For Firefox to gain market share, either the perceived "cost" of using Chrome has to skyrocket or Firefox has to be superior for a com…

>Vegetarianism can be the norm, but for that to happen one of two things must happen: either the cost of meat has to be prohibitively expensive ("the stick") or vegetarian dishes have to be more appealing to the public at large ("the carrot"). Neither of those things have happened yet.

That's not really true, about them being appealing. There's several Italian pasta dishes that are quite tasty which I frequently make for myself because they're super-cheap: spaghetti, penne, etc. Pasta plus a tomato-based sauce is totally vegetarian AFAIK, and what kind of weirdo doesn't like spaghetti? (Of course, a lot of people eat it with meat sauce or meatballs, but that's not necessary for the dish.)

There's also macaroni & cheese; lots of people like that.

Of course, the problem with these dishes is that 1) personally I don't want to eat spaghetti or pasta every single night, and I'm probably not alone there, and 2)you don't get much protein this way.

The problem with vegetarianism is that there just aren't a lot of good plant-based protein sources that are actually appealing, and you need this for a balanced diet. Meat is a simple and easy way to get lots of high-quality protein into your diet.

I believe vegetarianism is going to die out in the next century, as artificially-grown meats are developed and commercialized. If you can eat filet-minion-quality beef cheaply and without having to kill a cow to get it, why bother being a vegetarian?

>Mozilla needs a killer web app that people want to use. Something like gmail that attracts millions of people, with features added to Firefox (new APIs or whatever) to make the app much more effective.

The problem with this idea is that it breaks the whole idea of the web, which rests on open standards. Web browsers aren't supposed to be walled gardens that are incompatible with each other, they're all supposed to show web content the same way. We should not be going back to the bad old days of site X needing browser A to work.

The main thing that differentiates browsers is features and extensions. Edge, for instance, is a mostly unusable browser because it doesn't support all the ad-blocking extensions that Chrome and Firefox do. Performance is also a big feature, and Firefox has been lagging there for some time by sticking to having a single process.

Personally I think that Firefox would be fine if they'd stop wasting time and effort on bullshit features like Pocket and work on making it the fastest, most memory-efficient browser possible, which also best supports uBlock Origin and other advanced features. It'd probably also be a good idea if they could support Netflix viewing out-of-the-box the way Chrome does. If they got all that right and working really well, and touted themselves as being "spyware-free", they'd have sufficient marketshare to be relevant and hold their position, which is all they really need to do. They don't need to be #1, they just need to be large and influential enough to keep the others in line and prevent fragmentation of the web like we had in the IE6 days. If 40% of the market wants to be suckers and use Edge and look at copious ads, let them; they don't matter as long as they're not a clear majority.

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