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The Firefox Dilemma

blog.tawhidhannan.co.uk

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Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#51

Post by kodablah »

> I think this kind of conversation is naturally fatiguing, and creates a particularly negative means of ushering new users into the platform - almost as hostages, rather than excited participants.

Definitely true. Asking users to respect certain principles is tantamount to guilting them which doesn't work.

> It’s time we analyse what Firefox does better than Chrome, and sing those praises.

From the perspective of a non-technical user, the differences are not noticeable. Firefox and Chrome have continued to converge (...er...maybe one following the other) to the point that the differences listed are not real differentiators.

Oddly enough, you could argue that telemetry and the constant push for user happiness and adoption is what is hurting FF. FF looks like Chrome. I'm not saying stop listening to your users, but in general it's ok to differentiate yourself in ways that don't appear to be immediately beneficial to adoption. The primary way this can be done is in the UI. We can all recognize that there are still lots of efficiencies to be gained around the current state of internet navigation. Other approaches may not be better, and I understand the maintainability fear of multiple UI paradigms in the same software, but at least it's a way of differentiating yourself.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#52

Post by bayesian_horse »

rlv-dan wrote: post #10

A big problem is that the web standard is too complicated. Browsers are pretty much a virtual os that can do almost everything. For anyone to make a browser from scratch today is not feasible. We will move towards a monoculture, because there is no alternative unless we make a drastic shift in rethinking how the web should work.

Maybe Chrome can compete with itself by swapping out the rendering and Javascript vms.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#53

Post by austincheney »

Hands down there is one objective thing that Firefox does well and nobody else comes remotely close. DOM access. For some reason Firefox is thousands of times faster than other browsers when it comes to executing the standard DOM API methods.

I know that is a bold statement but it is easily verified with numbers using a perf tool. Chrome is faster at executing JavaScript than Firefox, but even still Firefox leaves everybody completely in the dust when executing the DOM API.

DOM access is so incredibly important to how the web works and nobody really talks about. For some unknown reason most developers are deathly afraid of the DOM and will do everything possible to hide from it. It is common in every job I have worked to see mountains of querySelectors and 10mb of supporting framework code so that developers don't have to fear the DOM buggy man. I could sympathize if the DOM were complicated, but it isn't.

I really believe if Firefox goes away and that competition is gone the web will get fundamentally slower. Everybody will see this slowness and yet very few people be able to diagnose why, and that is tragic.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#54

Post by mouldysammich »

olejorgenb wrote: post #45

1. I like firefox's omnibar/awesomebar more than chrome's. It seems to read my mind better [1]. It also have some features [2] I think most people are unaware of. 2. Firefox have bookmark tags. 3. Firefox scroll the tabs instead of compressing the width until they're unusable. (It's also possible to set the minimum tab-width) 4. It's much simpler to get ctrl-tab MRU behavior [3] in Firefox last time I checked. 5. Fir…

Firefoxs omnibar history search is significantly better than chromes; although i imagine that is down to them having no stake in sending google searches which google obviously does

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#55

Post by olejorgenb »

One thing Chrome does better than Firefox is third-party coookie blocking: It's MUCH simpler to whitelist certain cookies in chrome - simply go to the site's cookies dialog, open the blocked tab and whitelist the cookie..

Somewhat ironically since many people say Firefox is better at blocking tracking.

When it's hard to whitelist the cookies I need, I might cave and simply allow all third-party cookies.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#56

Post by sametmax »

Konryan wrote: post #41

I think there's another factor at play that isn't often mentioned: Google uses the dominant position of its services, as well as the strength of their brands, to promote Chrome as the better browser, in not-so-subtle ways. One is often repeatedly prompted to install Chrome when visiting Google on other browsers[1][2]. Most normal users would just give up and install just to get rid of the pop up. Microsoft has been d…

Actually in Europe, MS got forced to create a ballot screen for the windows for 5 years: https://www.clubic.com/pro/entreprises/microsoft/actualite-7...

It stopped because IE and Windows were not dominent anymore.

Surprised Google didn't get at least a warning for force feeding his browser.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#58

Post by kodablah »

olejorgenb wrote: post #45

1. I like firefox's omnibar/awesomebar more than chrome's. It seems to read my mind better [1]. It also have some features [2] I think most people are unaware of. 2. Firefox have bookmark tags. 3. Firefox scroll the tabs instead of compressing the width until they're unusable. (It's also possible to set the minimum tab-width) 4. It's much simpler to get ctrl-tab MRU behavior [3] in Firefox last time I checked. 5. Fir…

These differences do not affect the general audience's choice (except maybe #6, but it's a non-standard setup which means it requires multi-step user opt-in which is non-obvious to the market). They're hardly differences at all. Imagine if we were asked to pick between another two pieces of same-purpose software, we'd see such a list as saying they are essentially the same thing.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#59

Post by Tomte »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #2

Out of curiosity, before Chrome came along, why didn't Firefox eat IE's lunch? The Microsoft anti-trust case was 1999-2001 but Chrome came out in 2008.

In Germany it kind of did. "Everyone" was using Firefox. It's still bigger here than elsewhere, but Chrome has overtaken it here, as well.

Re: The Firefox Dilemma

#60

Post by rl3 »

An incredibly interesting alternate reality would have been one where Microsoft used Quantum/Servo to power Edge instead of Chromium.
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