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IE9 vs. Firefox 4 (done in canvas)

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Re: IE9 vs. Firefox 4 (done in canvas)

#61

Post by johncaverns »

jlongster wrote: post #25
tmgrhm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but it's not the contender they should be focusing on. It's like Apple comparing iOS to Symbian and lauding how great iOS is, when really they should be watching Android.

I work for Mozilla, and we are watching Chrome. It's just not the right time to campaign against Chrome. Chrome is only eating away from IE's market share, and IE 9 could attract a lot of non-techie users. Adopting a process-per-tab model is currently being implemented ( https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis ), and I imagine once that's done we will be discussing Chrome a lot more.

I switched from Mozilla to Chrome... Mozilla is just waaay too slow. The only thing I missed were the extensions, but Chrome is getting better on those as well.

Based on my experience, Mozilla has a lot of reasons to be afraid of Chrome.

Re: IE9 vs. Firefox 4 (done in canvas)

#62

Post by bzbarsky »

profitbaron wrote: post #40

I really don't get why Mozilla posted this, other then to say to the 'tech' crowd "we're better then IE" but they already know that. If, Mozilla really want to impress the 'tech' crowd they should show how they compare to Chrome because, mainstream users ONLY care about being able to view the websites they want to visit which is why most of them stick to Internet Explorer which came installed on their PC's (despite n…

Your mistake is mistaking the personal blog of someone on Mozilla's marketing team for an official Mozilla position, I think...

If you want to know why _Paul_ posted this, you should probably ask him.

Re: IE9 vs. Firefox 4 (done in canvas)

#64

Post by nextparadigms »

rbanffy wrote: post #53
mmazing wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that Microsoft has been terrible at this since 1999. They consistently do their own thing instead of going with standards, and they are always behind the curve. They seem to be trying to catch up with standards but have been unable to make any sort of impressive progress. To be honest, if they've put five years into it and are still so far behind, they need to fire some people. Does anyone actually consi…

> To be honest, if they've put five years into it and are still so far behind, they need to fire some people. You are assuming Microsoft wants to adhere to standards. I find it more likely their strategy is to fragment the market because the day web applications become the norm, as opposed to desktop applications, they become OS-independent and Microsoft will have its main advantage (the Windows software ecosystem) n…

It's in their best interest, too, like for WP7 or Windows 8 for ARM. Otherwise, both WP7 and Windows ARM for tablets will be less appealing for consumers because they won't have enough apps.

Re: IE9 vs. Firefox 4 (done in canvas)

#65

Post by blub »

rbanffy wrote: post #60
blub wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the day web applications become the norm, That will never happen. Web apps have critical issues that can't be solved even by HTML8.

Care to explain those issues?

The issues are quite noticeable for someone that isn't heavily invested in web apps. Most of HN is - and that's why they prefer to ignore them.

But let's look at the market... Have web apps displaced desktop apps? No. Have they displaced mobile apps (as per HN mantra 90% of iPhone apps could be web apps)? Not even close.

Now why is this? It's because web apps offer a significantly poorer user experience across the board.

* with all the progress that's been made in performance, web apps are slower than native apps and will continue to be. There is only so much that you can offload from JS.

* web-apps don't have access to the platform's entire range of graphics capabilities, including standard widgets, animations and so on.

* web apps don't have access to special platform functionality such as GPS, sensors, camera, etc.

Furthermore, the biggest mobile players have all started to invest in native mobile apps to the detriment of web apps. Including Google. It's in their interest to lock-in users to their platform, even more so since Android became a major player.

These issues can be worked around eventually (maybe).

The core issues with web apps can't be worked around:

1. Web apps are using a text-transfer protocol with a pile of hacks on top to make it stateful. To this day engineers are still working on solving this problem (web sockets, web sql, etc). They can't solve it.

2. One does not own web apps, one merely rents them.

Re: IE9 vs. Firefox 4 (done in canvas)

#66

Post by udp »

Ugh. What's with the caps lock? This is incredibly hard to read (for me, at least). It just looks offensive.

This is going to be far less effective than a nice, polite feature comparison would be.

Re: IE9 vs. Firefox 4 (done in canvas)

#67

Post by est »

dillon wrote: post #7

This is why Developers hate IE, we have to make code specifically for that browser. I guess if you truly hate Microsoft, you wouldn't code it and just tell the user to download Firefox.

> This is why Developers hate IE, we have to make code specifically for that browser.

Stop using -webkit, -moz, -o first.

Re: IE9 vs. Firefox 4 (done in canvas)

#68

Post by moxiemk1 »

We really need to stop measuring "compatibility" numerically. Its dishonest and encourages engineering decisions to be made instead of policy ones, when the data is purely the result of someone else's policy decision.

Not all things have equal weight; choosing which things to call an element, which ones to merge, which ones to split is always subjective.

Valid discussions are where we fully state our chosen assumptions, not ones where we then make fake data out of them.

Re: IE9 vs. Firefox 4 (done in canvas)

#69

Post by rbanffy »

nextparadigms wrote: post #64
rbanffy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest, if they've put five years into it and are still so far behind, they need to fire some people. You are assuming Microsoft wants to adhere to standards. I find it more likely their strategy is to fragment the market because the day web applications become the norm, as opposed to desktop applications, they become OS-independent and Microsoft will have its main advantage (the Windows software ecosystem) n…

It's in their best interest, too, like for WP7 or Windows 8 for ARM. Otherwise, both WP7 and Windows ARM for tablets will be less appealing for consumers because they won't have enough apps.

Unless, of course, the whole Windows on ARM thing is just vaporware to show customers "look - you don't have to switch away from Windows when you switch to ARM" hopping this delays customers looking into alternatives in the x86 space.

Re: IE9 vs. Firefox 4 (done in canvas)

#70

Post by tmgrhm »

jlongster wrote: post #25
tmgrhm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but it's not the contender they should be focusing on. It's like Apple comparing iOS to Symbian and lauding how great iOS is, when really they should be watching Android.

I work for Mozilla, and we are watching Chrome. It's just not the right time to campaign against Chrome. Chrome is only eating away from IE's market share, and IE 9 could attract a lot of non-techie users. Adopting a process-per-tab model is currently being implemented ( https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis ), and I imagine once that's done we will be discussing Chrome a lot more.

"Chrome is only eating away from IE's market share" Really? I'd love to see some sources on that, because I know of dozens of people who've switched from Firefox to Chrome.

Obviously I wasn't suggesting you weren't watching Chrome at all, but it's good to hear you're making the right decisions in competing with Chrome (primarily the reduction of Firefox's inherent clunkiness and slowness).

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