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Firefox Was Always Enough

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471–480 of 611 posts

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So yes Firefox was always enough. Leadership at Mozilla doesn't get it. that is why founder started brave.

We've all been curious how Brave would have panned out as a Firefox for instead of Chromium

Is there any background on that decision? I'd use Brave at the drop of a hat if it didn't involve giving yet more market-share to Google-based browsers.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#472
post #381

I had been using Firefox as the primary browser since before it was v1.0 until some time in 2016, which is when I switched to Chrome. The reason was mostly usability related. Chrome felt faster and easier to use. With the reach of Google, Firefox had to be that much better to keep up, like it was compared to any version of IE. Unfortunately, Firefox kind of remained the same while Chrome became better and better. In…

Brave is basically a chrome with preinstalled extensions, which would wither away the second chrome stopped being developed. Firefox is a treasure we should keep alive, because otherwise the web would turn into the same closed source walled garden, as most other things do.

Firefox made a mistake of getting paid by Google and getting too comfortable with it. I think they won't have much happening for them.

I mean something could still happen, who knows? Maybe Huawei or Xiaomi or Canonical or IBM will see some value in it and make something out of it, but I fear it might be too late for them.

And Brave is not Chrome. It's based on Chromium. Many other companies depend upon Chromium codebase for their browsers, companies like Microsoft, Samsung, Amazon, Tesla. If Google does stop the development, there is a good chance that someone else will pick it up and keep it shared and open to distribute the work required to develop and maintain it.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all internet users out there, how many would choose Firefox just because it's written in rust? An insignificant fraction. That said. I've been using Firefox as my main browser for years. I only use chrome when a website needs it or works better in it.

If you stipulate that 'Rust is going to yield a lot of result when it comes to security, memory safety and maintainability' (see parent comment), then a great many Internet users out there would choose Firefox if as a result of being written in Rust it's more secure, memory-safe (less crashing/bugs) and maintainable (more and better features).

Neither Firefox or Chrome right now crash for me, they're actually both very stable and have been for a while, and memory consumption and performance bottlenecks seem to have largely moved from the browser engines themselves to the rich web applications.

I'm not convinced changes to the browsers themselves at this point is anything other than a very marginal improvement.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#474

Mozilla doesn't have a real sustainable business model right now. FireFox OS could have provided such model, in fact, its successor kaios is doing very well and one can imagine that in the future, it will be the primary OS of half the mobile users on the planet. 'Feature phones' aren't dead. They provide a cheap alternative to touch phones, are usually more robust, and allowing them to run web apps instead of MIDP st…

I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. From where I am at it was a massive opportunity for Mozilla and Web developers all round the world. They didn't have to take on Android and iOS directly, but may have gotten there eventually thru 'worse is better'. Imagine a web developer learning just a few APIs and being being able to customize their web app for smart TVs

Remember launching a phone just isn’t FirefoxOS: you need a device to load it on, a carrier willing to support it (this is the biggest hurdle by far), and to negotiate the baseband blob that you have absolutely no reason idea what it does and has DMA.

I have personally gone through carrier negotiations and they’re the reason why Android phones come with bloat ware and people go to such lengths to build and distribute minimalistic Android systems.

When the pandemic is over and the world opens again go visit Mobile World Congress. Bring a tissue because the industry might make you cry.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#476
post #297

> (Ironically [the Firefox UI bits] were called “chrome” before Chrome even existed.) Not ironic, intentional. Chrome was made by former Firefox engineers, and the name was a joke about exactly this. I remember struggling to come up with a better name for the app other than this code name and then they eventually launched it with it anyway.

It's not even a codename.

> The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface#User_...

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#477
It occurs to me that web standards are a lot like a government. A lot of users, a few rich stewards with vested interests, and no real democracy.

If I, a random user, come up with a really great standard that solves a bunch of real problems that users have, it has no chance of being accepted unless it solves the problems of the few rich stewards.

So, today, The Web(TM) and its Internets(TM), which now pretty much defines our global economy, is currently being developed by advertising and consumer product companies, and a handful of companies who profit off of the standards that they make. Our future rests not a little in their hands.

Feels kinda like watching a big capitalist train moving towards global society in really slow motion.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercially, it totally did. Without Whatsapp we could not sell enough devices, but without enough volume Whatsapp was not interested to build an official app. Chicken, meet egg!

I wonder what markets WhatsApp is important to. In the UK quite a few people used it while briefly lived there, but in the US, Thailand, Vietnam, et.al. I didn't see anyone using or ever talking about it.

it's huge in india. a phone that did not support it would definitely be a non-starter.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#479
post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What complexity are you referring to? And do you actually encounter issues while browsing using Firefox? I am curious as I don't relate to this and recommend Firefox to friends and family.

I've seen things that don't work quite right in Firefox. The Zoom webapp doesn't recognize some of my audio devices, but Chrome does. The Citrix gateway also fails to log in on Firefox sometimes. I don't know whether those are bugs in Firefox or if Chrome is doing something funky that causes it to work but not Firefox.

Zoom is using experimental API in production. Just another on a list of their cowboy tricks.

I haven’t tried using Citrix for years. It used to work fine in Firefox, but given the quality of it I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve broken something.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercially, it totally did. Without Whatsapp we could not sell enough devices, but without enough volume Whatsapp was not interested to build an official app. Chicken, meet egg!

I wonder what markets WhatsApp is important to. In the UK quite a few people used it while briefly lived there, but in the US, Thailand, Vietnam, et.al. I didn't see anyone using or ever talking about it.

European countries.
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