Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

civilityandtruth.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 405 posts

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#271

Post by pjmlp »

eyko wrote: post #136
ohgodplsno wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using google properties is a bit of an easy jab, but: Youtube using polymer/shadowdomv0 and absolutely destroying performance on Firefox is a an easy example. Google Earth used non-standard APIs. Otherwise, have a quick search for "non-standard" on MDN, and see how many of those Chrome implements.

But both of those are Google products. Yet here we are in a thread blaming an entire generation of web creators and users.

Ah, so only when Microsoft does it is bad, but when that generation worships Google for doing the same it is suddenly alright.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#272

Post by tomc1985 »

outadoc wrote: post #40
causality0 wrote: post #2

Personally and strictly my own ignorant and informal opinion, Firefox and by extension Mozilla Corp. was doomed the moment it decided to compete with Chrome by being more like Chrome. Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser, then decided the only way to not die was to be exactly like the dominant browser except with less icky behind-the-scenes privacy behavior. That was a fundamental m…

> the constant deprecation of power features and customizability They made ONE switch to a superior and standard extension model, and HN loses its minds. Do you really think you're in the majority here? Making it a more secure, faster and just better browser is just the only way forward. Without that Firefox would just be slow as hell, wouldn't play YouTube or Netflix videos, and not have any extensions left because…

It's soo more than that. They'd destroyed all the old UI in favor of Chrome-style HTML+JS instead of platform-native XUL

They added all sorts of weird commercial initiatives to someonething that was supposed to be privacy-oriented and nonprofit

They torched an entire ecosystem of extensions so they could be more Chromelike

They put out landing pages and press releases full of weasely PR speak instead of the "mainstream engineering" vocabulary they used to use

Maybe Firefox should get in touch with the Pale Moon guys and use their code as a basis for resurrecting everything that made FIrefox great

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#273

Post by tomc1985 »

marcinzm wrote: post #228
forgotpwd16 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WebExtension API even years later is afaik still less capable than XUL. They also deprecated plugins (NPAPI), a recent version has disabled userChrome.css and userContent.css by default and the pref is noted as legacy and the same is now considered for user.js if not removed. Also you cannot set a locally-hosted newtab page any longer.

>The WebExtension API even years later is afaik still less capable than XUL. XUL extensions were an ungodly mess and arguably hurt Firefox more than they helped. Stability, performance, etc. issues were common to be caused by them. Which when everything is in a single execution context is not fun. Most of the popular extensions simply hijacked random internal Firefox functions which is why they couldn't just be insta…

I also wrote extensions and I did not find them to be an "ungodly mess". XUL was rather pleasant to work with compared to some of the other technologies I was programming with at the time

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#274

Post by [deleted] »

Dunedan wrote: post #68

Does somebody know what the remaining ~750 people are working on? How many of them work on Firefox, Pocket, Lockwise, VPN, HR, marketing, ...? Is there somewhere an overview about that? Many here disapprove with the recent layoffs and especially the areas affected by them, but I'd like to better understand how many people still work on Firefox (desktop browser, mobile browsers, dev tools, servo, ...), compared to top…

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#275

Post by majewsky »

emteycz wrote: post #225
bishalb wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best things about tabs in Firefoxia the scrollable tab bar. I am not sure why chrome doesn't add this.

Can you imagine having to respond to all these "chrome ate my tabs" tickets?

As if Google ever replies to tickets.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#276

Post by sp332 »

alcoholic_byte wrote: post #265
sp332 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same question. And what's even stranger is that the Mozilla.com (not.org) website has no way to send them money, and doesn't even mention the paid products like the VPN. At least Pocket gets a mention which I think you can pay for.

Those who seek shall find. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ Got the link from the Thunderbird-site where https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/ redirects to https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US So yeah the link is out there but you really have to look for it. Which is actually s.th. quite nice. Imagine they would go about nagging people. You might say one of 2 things: a) So in their face, others are probably donating wha…

That's .org and the donation does not fund Firefox development or any other activity of the Mozilla Corporation.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#277

Post by tannhaeuser »

c-smile wrote: post #235
goto11 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you "radically simplify" the web without causing breakage?

Let's imagine a browser (UA) that supports basics of HTML (language portion of HTML5) and CSS (e.g. v 2.1). Yet it has WebVM instead of JS. WebVM is a virtual machine similar to JavaVM but with DOM, CSSOM and layout APIs exposed in it as a runtime. So if some site needs flexbox in its CSS then it can be included as: If JS then and so on. This would allow a) keep browser small and maintainable and b) open room for inn…

Not bad an idea at all! Hadn't considered bytecodes for layout algorithms, though I guess it would work with regular js as well, and I AFAICS Project Houdini is about providing the necessary core rendering API.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#278

Post by tomc1985 »

badsectoracula wrote: post #191
outadoc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the constant deprecation of power features and customizability They made ONE switch to a superior and standard extension model, and HN loses its minds. Do you really think you're in the majority here? Making it a more secure, faster and just better browser is just the only way forward. Without that Firefox would just be slow as hell, wouldn't play YouTube or Netflix videos, and not have any extensions left because…

> switch to a superior It is so superior that to this day, Downthemall - an extension which is literally all about downloading - cannot even let you choose an arbitrary directory to put the files you downloaded. > and standard That was Google's "standard" that Firefox decided to adopt and even if Firefox decided to implement it, there was no reason to not also keep its own extension system - this way it would be able…

> > switch to a superior

> It is so superior that to this day, Downthemall - an extension which is literally all about downloading - cannot even let you choose an arbitrary directory to put the files you downloaded.

So much this.... the amount of bullshit extension devs have to do just to write basic features expected of desktop software is insane.

DownThemAll was a treasure, as was the old version of VideoDownloadHelper. They. Just. Worked. Exactly like one would expect them too. I haven't used DownThemAll since the transition but while VideoDownloadHelper stil does what is used to do -- technically -- its functionality is so gimped now that I've resorted to using youtube-dl

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#279

Post by tomc1985 »

marcinzm wrote: post #230
ekianjo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> superior and standard extension model, Superior as in, that can do less things than XUL extensions? I am at loss, has the meaning of 'superior' changed recently?

It can do less but won't cause your browser stability, performance and other issues. Nor will writing them require reading the Firefox source code. XUL extensions routinely hijacked random internal Firefox functions which is why many had issues being installed together. Then all of it was executed in a single context (which is why they could hijack those functions to begin with) along with the UI and web page Javascr…

Those are all things they could have fixed incrementially, over time, but chose not to.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#280

Post by momokoko »

mandreyel wrote: post #79

A possible alternative source of income for Mozilla I think would be, and one I haven’t seen mentioned before, providing consulting services in their areas of expertise. For example, demand for Rust engineers seems to be steadily increasing[1] and I can’t think of a better company with a larger concentration of Rust expertise than Mozilla. Perhaps the same could work for other areas (ex frontend), but I’m biased towa…

There are so many ways for Mozilla to leverage their core competencies. Unfortunately failed management with no means to remove them means none of that will happen.

Executive leadership at Mozilla is a disgrace that has now caused a tangible negative result on the future of the internet. The fact that Mitchell Baker still leads this organization is insane. An absolutely inept failure somehow still leads Mozilla. It’s absolutely crazy

Post reply on HN