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Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

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Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#61

Post by cageface »

userbinator wrote: post #42
NullInvictus wrote: post #32

I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. They certainly should be addressed to some degree, but the issues I find people are bothered about in Firefox are something that Mozilla has very little control over: Bugs in sites. As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. It's pretty easy to…

If developers are genuinely concerned with browser diversity and not handing the Web over to Google and whatever they deem to be the next IE6, it starts with having a test plan for other browsers. I'd say it starts with dialing back the "new feature/change fetish" that a lot of web developers have. Yes, I know some things simply can't be done without a JS webapp, but not all and probably not even a majority, so if HT…

The problem with this is that the web is competing with native apps. A vanilla HTML site might be good enough in some cases but often you really need to push the envelope of what’s possible the web and that’s hard to do and also support niche browsers on a tight development budget.

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#63

Post by lightedman »

NullInvictus wrote: post #32

I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. They certainly should be addressed to some degree, but the issues I find people are bothered about in Firefox are something that Mozilla has very little control over: Bugs in sites. As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. It's pretty easy to…

"As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest."

And guess what? Sites that appear to have bugs in FireFox, when I switch the user agent, suddenly render just fine.

Example: Before FB rolled out the FB Live feature to everyone, it was "Chrome only" until I figured out that a simple UA switch made it work.

No, I won't trust you to say "It doesn't work in FireFox" because one of the biggest companies on this planet said the same thing and it was an outright LIE. If you're actually coding to real standards, and not the crap Google dictates, your shit will work right down to Lynx (because you'll also be following best practice for the disabled.)

Good job demonstrating that you don't really know how to make a web page.

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#64

Post by tgv »

NullInvictus wrote: post #32

I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. They certainly should be addressed to some degree, but the issues I find people are bothered about in Firefox are something that Mozilla has very little control over: Bugs in sites. As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. It's pretty easy to…

Mozilla does have some way of dealing with bugs in sites. They're maintaining a site/database which Firefox consults for workarounds. More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/cd1lob/how_firefox_...

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#66

Post by pacavaca »

It has to freaking stop crashing first. And stop freezing my computer with just 20 tabs open (for 32gb of ram). And complete their password manager. And implement recent standards to make apps work. And... Yeah, I'm still using it instead of Chrome just because I want to depend less on Google, but dammit Chrome is better.

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#67

Post by potench »

cageface wrote: post #61
userbinator wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If developers are genuinely concerned with browser diversity and not handing the Web over to Google and whatever they deem to be the next IE6, it starts with having a test plan for other browsers. I'd say it starts with dialing back the "new feature/change fetish" that a lot of web developers have. Yes, I know some things simply can't be done without a JS webapp, but not all and probably not even a majority, so if HT…

The problem with this is that the web is competing with native apps. A vanilla HTML site might be good enough in some cases but often you really need to push the envelope of what’s possible the web and that’s hard to do and also support niche browsers on a tight development budget.

You can install a “progressive web app” as a native Android app now. There’s been a big push to develop PWAs on the heels of react and single page apps for a couple years now - google is doing a good job trying to support the web as users move so aggressively to mobile. Facebook basically has its own browser in-app(iOS and Android), i bet that browser has more traffic than Firefox.

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#68

Post by buboard »

firefox could work to create network effects that would "lock" its users to it, or at least make google unwillign to follow them. E.g. integrated sign-in like they tried with Persona, or integrates cryptocurrency micropayments. It doesn't have to be better to win, thats not how it works.

They could also take advantage of the flash deprecation in chrome to steal some disgruntled users from chrome. Yeah its a competition

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#69

Post by klingonopera »

brianpgordon wrote: post #57

> While I understand that they have to make money somehow I don't. I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees and over 500 million dollars in annual revenue. With that kind of money, Firefox should be absolutely dominating the browser space. They shouldn't be making Firefox worse with advertising in order to subsidize their flailing around trying to find traction in mobile or VR. It actually reminds…

Those 500 million are easily eclipsed if you compare it to what Google's revenue is...

EDIT: It was 136 billion in 2018: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-gl...

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#70

Post by xioxox »

mehhh wrote: post #20
blaisio wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly agree. It feels like Google has been mostly phoning it in on mobile chrome for a long time. Obviously it is very difficult to take something designed for a desktop and make it work well on a phone, but there definitely seems to be opportunity here.

Have you tried Firefox Android? The only complaint I have is when it hits 100 tabs, the tab count becomes ∞ which is slightly humorous.

I mostly use Opera on mobile, as it's the only browser I've found that can properly scale and reflow text.
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