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Firefox 90

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Re: Firefox 90

#271

Post by dannyw »

fleddr wrote: post #213
yborg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FF market share isn't a technical or ideological issue - it's marketing and platform capture. Chrome is the new IE and has the entire Google ecosystem tied in with it to make it a compelling platform. They were also smart to push the Chromebook into schools so a couple of generations of kids grew up with The Web = Google Chrome. Microsoft installs Edge by default on Windows. These two companies alone have hundreds of…

Agree with most of what you said, but want to add some nuance to some statements. The IE comparison in dominance would be accurate, but it's worthwhile to point out that Google aggressively pushes web tech forward, whilst IE largely stagnated it. I think that's a meaningful difference, at least to developers. And it's not just a passing note either. Firefox' once strong position was made possible by the gap left behi…

You are right that Google is aggressively pushing the web forward, but it's debatable whether it's a good thing; if you look at recent initiatives like FLoC, Web Packaging and Manifest v3.

Re: Firefox 90

#272

Post by k12sosse »

joelthelion wrote: post #174
fleddr wrote: post #160

I noticed in the comments below how somebody mentioning Firefox's limited market share was heavily downvoted. I'm a Firefox user since forever, and will keep using it. I also want Mozilla to win, and strongly empathize with their engineers whom are trying to make the best of it. That said, I think the reality check should not be avoided. There is no good in do-good software without reach. Based on statcounter, Firefo…

As a side note, I don't understand why nobody uses Firefox on Android. It's an excellent browser, has ublock which is fairly rare on mobile. Why not use it?

ad blocking is the #1 reason I open FF on mobile.

Re: Firefox 90

#273

Post by benrbray »

atatatat wrote: post #263
twelvechairs wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So whats the better, more ethical alternative? Certainly not Chrome

Edge

I was really rooting for Edge back before they switched to Chromium. Now it's just worse Chrome. I do use it as my default PDF viewer though as I don't know of any other free tool for linux that lets you annotate PDFs. (there's Master PDF but it's a bit overkill when I just want some multicolored highlighters.)

Re: Firefox 90

#274

Post by ByThyGrace »

SonnyTark wrote: post #214
411111111111111 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just remember that Mozilla gets over 90% of its revenue from Google.

So if I was a dominating business, and you're an opensource more ethical solution, all I need to do is make a generous donation to you and publicize that I did, then people like you will say what you just said in every public comparative discussion to try to lower the value of my competitor for me. Investment well spent I say.

Don't you just love and hate game theory?

Re: Firefox 90

#275

Post by int_19h »

twelvechairs wrote: post #253
xpressvideoz wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time I lost my faith in Firefox was when the CEO of Mozilla got a huge pay increase, whilst firing many technical people at the same time. How can a tech company improve their product without those technical people? Oh, never mention the ever-decreasing number of Firefox users. Weren't the C-level people responsible for that? Anyway, that was the moment when I realized Mozilla was just another company, not a flag…

So whats the better, more ethical alternative? Certainly not Chrome

Vivaldi.

Re: Firefox 90

#276

Post by claviska »

fleddr wrote: post #213
yborg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FF market share isn't a technical or ideological issue - it's marketing and platform capture. Chrome is the new IE and has the entire Google ecosystem tied in with it to make it a compelling platform. They were also smart to push the Chromebook into schools so a couple of generations of kids grew up with The Web = Google Chrome. Microsoft installs Edge by default on Windows. These two companies alone have hundreds of…

Agree with most of what you said, but want to add some nuance to some statements. The IE comparison in dominance would be accurate, but it's worthwhile to point out that Google aggressively pushes web tech forward, whilst IE largely stagnated it. I think that's a meaningful difference, at least to developers. And it's not just a passing note either. Firefox' once strong position was made possible by the gap left behi…

IE pushed the web forward initially. It was only after it won that it stagnated. As a developer, this is my biggest fear for Chromium.

Re: Firefox 90

#277

Post by smhost »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #173
bergheim wrote: post #122

I think Firefox news is what I comment most on here. I don't know why. Well I guess I do. Web browsers, javascript etc is front and center here - which somewhat means the digital world. All my friends use Chrome, and think I'm weird. I think _they_ are. They care about human rights, at least I think they do. But, having Google, an ad company, dictate how our window to the digital world looks like, is now _way worse_…

The general mass of humanity never does things because they're "right": Ethical, Forward-Thinking, Better For Society etc. They do them because they're easy. To the extent that wide social change ever happens, it only happens because the path of least resistance shifted from one thing to another. If you despair for the actions of the masses, never try to reason with them. Skip straight to assembling a good marketing…

> They do them because they're easy

If you want to see a counterpoint to this, watch Goebbels' Total War speech. You can absolutely mobilize a great mass of people by promising them pain and hardship. Similar idea with JFK's moonshot speech.

Re: Firefox 90

#278

Post by badsectoracula »

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #188
ergot_vacation wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general mass of humanity never does things because they're "right": Ethical, Forward-Thinking, Better For Society etc. They do them because they're easy. To the extent that wide social change ever happens, it only happens because the path of least resistance shifted from one thing to another. If you despair for the actions of the masses, never try to reason with them. Skip straight to assembling a good marketing…

I sense some cognitive dissonance between your two paragraphs. In the first you argue for a focus on consumerism and marketing, in the second you criticize Firefox for competing by appealing to styles and trends.

I do not see these two as being in opposite to each other, or more specifically i do not see the second contradicting the first.

Firefox's owners can be corrupted and focused on the wrong things (i'm not saying they are, btw - actually i do not exactly agree with the idea of Firefox having "owners" in the first place, at least not the same way as Microsoft owns Windows) and have the wrong priorities. If you consider that Firefox needs to do things right, you may want to prioritize making Firefox "good" (whatever that means, e.g. making it the fastest and/or most secure browser and/or giving the most control to the user, etc) and then (in terms of priority) try to promote and create a marketing campaign that focuses on those aspects of Firefox. It isn't like marketing is all about style. And even if it focused on the style, one might disagree that the proper way to go about it is to copy Chrome.

There are many ways to interpret these two paragraphs as not being contradicting.

Re: Firefox 90

#279

Post by atatatat »

benrbray wrote: post #273
atatatat wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edge

I was really rooting for Edge back before they switched to Chromium. Now it's just worse Chrome. I do use it as my default PDF viewer though as I don't know of any other free tool for linux that lets you annotate PDFs. (there's Master PDF but it's a bit overkill when I just want some multicolored highlighters.)

Security-wise, it's far better Chrome.

Privacy score really depends on your views on MS/Google/Mozilla. Firefox is taaaaalkative.

Re: Firefox 90

#280

Post by atatatat »

astrange wrote: post #163
laurent92 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bothered with the values of open source and how this pertains to democracy and human values It does, but Mozilla is not representative of those values to my opinion. They represent the values on the left of humanism, but are opposed to right values, and therefore it doesn’t embody neutrality or democracy. They go as far as thinking everyone should share their opinion on gay marriage, and a private donation in that…

There's no reason to dig up every opinion on Earth just so you can maintain neutrality between all of them. Brendan Eich is surprisingly un-cancelled for a guy who thinks his employees shouldn't be able to visit their spouses dying in hospitals[1]. He's literally still around. [1] Which happened a lot during the AIDS pandemic and was essentially the purpose of the gay marriage campaign. It was actually relatively cul…

> He's literally still around.

Low-quality.

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