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Firefox May Already Be Dead

pcworld.com

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Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead

#61

Post by screwperman »

chairface wrote: post #57
screwperman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually looking for somehing a lot simpler: vi/Emacs keybindings and a better mouseless browsing experience in general. EDIT: Sorry, I'm looking for such features in Chrome.

Have you tried the Firemacs extension for Firefox? I use it with Emacs bindings, but I think it should be able to do an approximation of vi bindings as well.

I'm really sorry for not making myself clear: I meant that I would start using Chrome if it had such a feature.

And yeah, Firemacs is awesome. As a matter of fact, it does allow for navigation using some vi bindings by default. Even though I'm an Emacs guy, I find using hjkl a lot more comfortable than C-b C-n C-p C-f. I've heard great thing about vimperator, too.

Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead

#62

Post by screwperman »

dmix wrote: post #58
screwperman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually looking for somehing a lot simpler: vi/Emacs keybindings and a better mouseless browsing experience in general. EDIT: Sorry, I'm looking for such features in Chrome.

I use the Mouseless Browsing add-on in Firefox. It basically adds a number next to all the links on a page, for example you press ctrl + 21 and the link opens. It also can be turned on/off with a shortcut.

I could never get myself to use that; it's possibly because I refuse to remap one control key to the caps lock.

I usually navigate by searching for some substring of the link.

Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead

#63

Post by amirnathoo »

zandorg wrote: post #14

Mozilla makes over $100,000,000 a year from affiliate Google searches. What happens when Google doesn't need that?

I'd bet that Microsoft would pay a lot more than that, but Mozilla wouldn't accept it (at least not for the moment) since Google's is perceived to be the best search engine. So they do the right thing and have Google search being the default.

Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead

#64

Post by mst »

evdawg wrote: post #2

Sensationalism. If you're looking for a faster Firefox look towards the 3.1 betas. If you're willing to use unstable software (alpha Chrome), there's no reason not to check out 3.1. The new Javascript engine is just as fast as Chrome's.

Yeah, and Chrome is ... well, it's a reasonable 80% solution for an alpha product from what people keep saying, but I still can't actually try the damn thing on my usual machine.

Because, once again, a bunch of software developers have forgotten to obey the %*&(ing theme. Chrome's URL bar successfully takes my foreground colours and completely ignores the background colour setting - so I get a white hostname and a light green path on a white background.

And Firefox 3's awesomebar and the way it handles self-signed SSL certs both make me incredibly happy - maybe chrome does these just as well, as I say I can't tell yet (FVO "can't" meaning "choose not to fill the prerequisites in order to be able to", of course :).

But it strikes me that there are probably a lot of issues like the one I'm complaining about that don't matter to most people but are a showstopper for -somebody- - and firefox has probably nailed almost all of those by now, either in core or in an addon.

Seems to me that the key point of chrome is to provide a decent amount of testing for the tech that's going to go into site-specific browsers for various google applications - really, truly going head to head with firefox doesn't really seem to me to achieve anything for google when -somebody- crushing IE is likely more important to them than specifically them doing it and firefox already has a head start.

Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead

#65

Post by 10ren »

bobbyi wrote: post #60
10ren wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, firefox is a platform. The total value is higher than the thing itself, and that makes it hard to displace. Like DOS and Windows. Adblock is very popular, and although I use Greasemonkey (and scripts accumulated for that platform) and others, I doubt that many of the userbase do. And so for them, this isn't a factor. It's worth remembering that Google doesn't care to win this war - they just want faster browsers…

The latest builds of Chrome support greasemonkey scripts: http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/18/google-chrome-adds-greasemo... There is also greasemonkey support in safari (with greasekit) and opera (no extension needed).

Do GM scripts from Firefox work without modification?

Thinking further, most GM scripts only operate on the html received, and are independent of the browser. So all one needs is the GreaseMonkey platform to act as a holder, and existing GM scripts can run straight off, without modification. (maybe some use special Firefox functions, or their job is to interact with firefox specifics, but I think most wouldn't).

Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead

#66

Post by bobbyi »

10ren wrote: post #65
bobbyi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest builds of Chrome support greasemonkey scripts: http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/18/google-chrome-adds-greasemo... There is also greasemonkey support in safari (with greasekit) and opera (no extension needed).

Do GM scripts from Firefox work without modification? Thinking further, most GM scripts only operate on the html received, and are independent of the browser. So all one needs is the GreaseMonkey platform to act as a holder, and existing GM scripts can run straight off, without modification. (maybe some use special Firefox functions, or their job is to interact with firefox specifics, but I think most wouldn't).

I don't know about Chrome, but last I tried with Safari (greasekit) and opera, they did not have 100% GreaseMonkey compatibility yet, unfortunately.
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