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Firefox Was Always Enough

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Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#571

Post by iggldiggl »

dblohm7 wrote: post #162
jcranmer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've long wondered why Mozilla hasn't worked on a embeddable Gecko engine as an alternative to Electron. They have. Several times, in fact. There was the old embedding, then XULRunner, then Firefox apps (I'm not sure if that's the same as webapprt). But these efforts generally only lasts a couple of years before Mozilla decides it's the wrong approach and kills off the embedding.

Though it is embeddable on Android via GeckoView.

Although unfortunately at the same time increasing your app size by dozens of MBs just so you can use Gecko doesn't seem like an easy sell for mobile apps, especially when you have to compete with the Webview provided by the OS for free.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#572

Post by lenkite »

krmboya wrote: post #313
throw_m239339 wrote: post #271

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

They just needed a bit of persistence. In a 5K run, they sprinted for 2K and then gave up and threw away the baton. Other companies picked what they ditched and profit now. Deeply irritating.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#573

Post by lenkite »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #484
heavyset_go wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine a web developer learning just a few APIs and being being able to customize their web app for smart TVs This was WebOS in 2009. Windows Phone, WebOS, Meego and Ubuntu Phone all "failed" around the same time period as Firefox OS. I have a hard time laying blame solely on Mozilla there.

> Windows Phone, WebOS, Meego and Ubuntu Phone all "failed" around the same time period as Firefox OS. I have a hard time laying blame solely on Mozilla there. I've seen a number of comments on Windows Phone since then (on HN), and one and all they emphasize how much better and nicer Windows Phone was -- from a consumer perspective -- than any other phone. What was the failure? This isn't a retrospective that makes a…

Google forced Microsoft to remove Youtube and other apps. Also Microsoft kept 're-inventing' the phone OS multiple times requiring app authors to keep rewriting the app to new API's.

A lot of patent fees paid to Apple and Google for every phone sold.

Windows Phone was really good and it had millions of fans. It would probably do well in today's duopoly market if relaunched but MS has lost interest in phones presently.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#574

Post by arvinsim »

apozem wrote: post #422
krmboya wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Bill Gates explained why everybody but Google and Apple failed at mobile OSes: > “In the software world, particularly for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets. So the greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is. That is, Android is the standard non-Apple phone platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win. It really is winner take all.…

Was he implying that a duopoly in the mobile space was a foregone conclusion?

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#575

Post by leadingthenet »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #296
bosswipe wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so weird to me this type of comment pops up on every firefox discussion, but I use firefox on mac everyday and it's rock solid, never run into any problems.

I think it's for non default scaling.

And the non-standard UI, the weird animations, the increased power consumption, the general non-macOS-ness of it all.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#576

Post by higerordermap »

laumars wrote: post #318
terracatta wrote: post #26

I think Safari is going to have the market cornered on technology pessimism (aka privacy features) and browser performance per watt on macOS and iOS. Google is rapidly locking down enterprise by building in tight integrations with Google Workspace/G-Suite (see: context aware authentication). In 10 - 15 years the web should be better than it is today. The first step in their recovery is to convey what their vision of…

Firefox is a great deal more privacy focused than Safari when you start factoring in containers. I also wouldn’t trust Apple to stick to their privacy mission long term. It’s a marketing strategy that they seemingly care about at the moment but it’s supplementary to their core demographics so who’s to say they stick with this vision long term? I’m less concerned about the same happening with Firefox. > In 10 - 15 yea…

Privacy focused people is a fringe market at best.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#577

Post by Banana699 »

geogra4 wrote: post #303
robertlagrant wrote: post #170

> I don’t have a read on Edge My guess it's MS will let Chromium do the heavy lifting, and they will integrate it nicely with AD etc and all IT departments will make it the new corporate default.

What's scary is that even Microsoft has essentially given up on an independent browser engine

A bit out of the loop here, apparently: what's wrong with the browser market agreeing on an open source core ?

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#578

Post by ahartmetz »

usr1106 wrote: post #505
ahartmetz wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except one time they did and it was wonderful - the N9. Then Elop came and canceled it, as ordered by the the Nokia board that hired him.

Well, wonderful... It was a huge mess. Maemo was gtk based until Nokia bought Qt. Guess there was some friction in the conversion. Maemo was deb based until Nokia management brought Intel into the boat for no technical reasons, then they switched to rpm. Well, the packaging is a relatively small detail, but many other parts of the distro saw similar switches from choice A to choice B for no real benefit. Friction aft…

The main problem with Meego etc was that they never released a damn phone. The N9 was both released and a very good phone. That was the "wonderful" part. I know that it was a bit of a mess technically behind the scenes. But it was also a mess that was possible to clean up.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#579

Post by [deleted] »

betwixthewires wrote: post #552
dralley wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Recently, they artificially limited the extensions available in Firefox mobile. I uninstalled Firefox immediately on all my machines. They did not "artificially limit" the extensions available, you are misinformed. They rewrote the engine of their mobile browser, and swapped the old engine for the new one before the new one had 100% support for all of the extension APIs. They have been working on this, and over the…

I am going to quote directly from the following blog post from Mozilla.org https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/firefox-recommended-extensi... "Extensions can add powerful customization features to Firefox. However, we have noticed that the number of add-ons available for Firefox today can be overwhelming for some users. And even though our policy provides clear guidelines for the behavior of add-ons, they sometimes find…

[deleted]

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#580

Post by simias »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #142
simias wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't be able to beat Chrome by technology alone. I actually don't know how Mozilla can beat Chrome. Google has an extremely strong incentive to capture the web client market. Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both. I want Firefox to win but unfortunately I just don't see a path for it. My mindset at the moment is "I'm going to…

> Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both. Firefox isn't struggling on technical grounds though. It's not a charity case, it's a perfectly competent browser. Whether Firefox outperforms Chromium depends on which benchmark you use. As far as the user is concerned, they're both technically solid browsers.

I wasn't talking solely about technical merits. I was also talking about marketing and everything else. Google can (and does) push Chrome aggressively through a multitude of channels. How can Mozilla beat that?
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