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What We're Working on in Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#251

Post by diroussel »

no-dr-onboard wrote: post #71

After using FF for the past 7 years, every day at work I switched to Arc. It's been __okay__. I'm not a fan of them trying to nix the bookmark system and much prefer FF's implementation of just good old fashioned, indexable bookmarks. If FF can manage a good implementation of vertical tabs, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

Try TreeStyleTabs plugin, it's great. It also works well with Firefox Multi Account Containers, so you can keep peronal, work, research, shopping in different containers, so cookies aren't shared.

I love that I can start a web search open a bunch of links, each in a new tab, then once I have what I need, I can close the parent tab and all the child tabs are closed automatically.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#252

Post by diroussel »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #48
behnamoh wrote: post #22

Looking at the comments, I'm not surprised about FF's low market share. They chose to target geeks and nerds, and let's face it, we tend to be whiny about almost everything and complain about any new change. Meanwhile, Google Chrome doesn't even need to pretend like they care about privacy, so they automatically target the other "ordinary" people who are not so picky about every new release note. This kinda teaches y…

It also does not help that many of the big businesses break their website if you do not let them track you. I use Safari + Wipr Content blocker with iCloud Private Relay, and it is just so inconvenient to do anything on many major websites. At the least I have to reload the website without a content blocker, and at worst, I have to use Chrome, giving up my privacy. If a somewhat computer literate person like me who k…

I have the same problem in Safari with Wipr, and iCloud Private relay. But I still have it as my default browser.

Firefox with uBlock origin works much better, and I use for most reading, research, coding related things.

Arc for hacker news.

Then I only use Chrome when the above don't work. Which is very rare.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#253

Post by diroussel »

kwanbix wrote: post #30

I really love Firefox. I even organized events for them on my home country, so don't get me wrong, wouldn't it be best for the web/devs that they switched to chrome's engine? They can still implement whatever changes to privacy and their changes just like MS does, and devs will only have to target one engine. Or am I missing something? Please discuss it if you agree or disagree, do not downvote. Thanks.

I would prefer it if Mozilla continued is great rust rewrite, and innovate the core technologies. Just adopting Chrome's crumbs will mean giving up control and voice in stearing the web technologies.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#254

Post by pseudalopex »

lxgr wrote: post #201
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They changed the extension model which broke the extensions using the old model. Many of the developers didn't have the resources to rewrite the extension from scratch, or the new model had restrictions that made what the extension was doing difficult to impossible, so they disappeared.

That was the switch from their own API and unsandboxed model to the standards-based one, right? I think all in all getting sandboxing as well as making it easier to provide cross-browser extensions was worth the breaking change.

WebExtensions is Chrome based not standards based. And Firefox had sandboxed and unsandboxed extensions before.

What Mozilla promised would have been worth it. Parity with Chrome's APIs. APIs to support popular features of old extensions. Support for extension developers to develop new APIs. But they abandoned these promises.

And they managed the transition badly. They chose an arbitrary deadline before evaluating scope or designing a migration path. They held the arbitrary deadline as they missed estimates. Extension developers didn't know when or if APIs they needed would be implemented. And no version of Firefox supported old extensions and reasonably complete WebExtensions APIs. These decisions made many problems for developers and users. And this was shortly after many developers spent much effort making their XUL extensions multi process compatible or converting them to sandboxed extensions.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#255

Post by pseudalopex »

lxgr wrote: post #250
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, you can still grant permissions to web extensions, but the difference is that it's now explicit, and it is at least possible to design extensions with minimally-required privileges. The problem is the reverse. Some permissions are now considered "too dangerous" for the extension, so there is no facility to grant them even if the user wants the extension to do that and it has a good reason to. > Nothing would ha…

I agree, and that mechanism is to introduce a new, permissioned API into Firefox's Web Extension API implementation. Requiring them to maintain two completely different extension APIs (the old XUL-based one and Web Extensions) would work too but seems excessive.

> I agree, and that mechanism is to introduce a new, permissioned API into Firefox's Web Extension API implementation.

The problem is new WebExtensions APIs are not welcome.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#256

Post by pseudalopex »

Kye wrote: post #131
dralley wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The base of internet users was a lot smaller and more technically-inclined in 2004 than in 2014

Was it though? This was well after AOL and the Endless September. There were rows of Complete Idiots Guides and For Dummies books on using the internet in major book stores. You've Got Mail made a quarter billion in the box office a half decade before . This was the time of normies. All the @aol addresses still in use were minted here.

You are North American? Most of the world was much less online in 2004.[1]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/internet-history-just-begun

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#257

Post by pseudalopex »

squarefoot wrote: post #109
dagurp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or is it Google deciding for you what you should want?

Before someone flags the above comment as trolling, read on: "One thing Mozilla does have going for it is a lot of money—more than $1 billion in cash reserves, according to its latest financial statement. The primary source of this capital is Google, which pays Mozilla to be the default search engine on the Firefox home page. Those payments, which started in 2005, have been increasing—up 50% over the past decade, to…

What Google orders do you believe Mozilla followed?

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#258

Post by pseudalopex »

kwanbix wrote: post #232
Kye wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monoculture in software rarely goes well. Right now Safari and Firefox exist to push back on Google completely controlling the fate of the web. You do not want Google to have the same unquestioned power Microsoft did in the IE6 era.

But that wouldn't be the same. Everybody can work on the engine. Worst case, if google wants to take over, the others can push their own version of the engine, compatible whenever they feel like, and different otherwise. IE was different because was totally closed and only MS could add features.

What do you mean if Google want to take over? They control Chromium now. And maintaining a fork is harder than you think. Even harder when the fork maintainers have different agendas. Even harder when the upstream maintainers are hostile.

Look at Manifest V3. Microsoft said the harm to extensions would be acceptable. Opera hedged and echoed Google's FUD about the removed APIs. Brave acknowledged the problem, recommended their integrated blocker, said they would support MV2 until Google removed the code, and declined to promise more. Vivaldi said similar.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#259

Post by pseudalopex »

14113 wrote: post #227
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's worse than that - they chose to target geeks, then decided to throw out the geeks in an attempt to target a more mainstream audience[0] and then failed to actually get the mainstream userbase, leaving them with neither the nerds nor the normies. [0] Firefox has always been at its strongest as a power-user's browser, chock-full of extensions and tweaks. Mozilla met this advantage with... two extinction events…

No, Firefox never targeted geeks. It's just that, when it came out, the only people who used a browser other than Internet Explorer happened to be geeks. The audience came to them, rather than them going to the audience.

Power user features were part of Firefox's marketing from day 1. They never targeted geeks only. But they did target geeks.

Re: What We're Working on in Firefox

#260

Post by pseudalopex »

leoc wrote: post #185
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they should pick 2-5 things and focus on those, such as multi-device sync, privacy, speed, battery life performance, customization, etc. They did; they've been pushing on speed and privacy for a long time. It mostly turns out that the problem isn't usually technical superiority, unfortunately. (The problem is that Microsoft shoves Edge in users' faces every chance they get, and Google has been giving Chrome…

Didn't they fire the Servo team?

They did. Servo was a test bed for experiments. It wasn't the only place for speed work. And was privacy a focus for Servo?
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