Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#661

Post by Brian_K_White » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 2:53 AM UTC

recursive wrote: post #593

Brian_K_White wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[ ] shitty option A [ ] shitty option B Telemetry showed that users overwhelmingly approve of shitty option B!

Whether or not any of your options are good is a completely separate concern from whether or not you're using telemetry. If option B is the least bad option available, it's still better than A. Of course, you could also include a good option, and then telemetry would show a preference for that one.

Will you next explain that water is wet?

The point of the comment is to show that telemetry is used to conclude things that aren't true, and it absolutely is, and only says the subset of things that someone wants to hear, or that even occurs to them to ask.

It's not even really a seperate issue, because even if you think you are only concerned with say how long a certain operation takes or how frequently it fails & retries, the more important issue may be why or whether that operation was even used at all in the first place.

This aspect of telemetry is simply a fact to be aware of and stands on it's own, and does not necessarily mean to say "therefor telemetry is an invalid tool that should not exist and should never be used" It just means it's incomplete at best and very susceptible to both deception and self deception.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#662

Post by rvz » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 5:21 AM UTC

executesorder66 wrote: post #646

rvz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market-share and global user usage says otherwise. [0] [1] [2] I know it is painful to admit, but the truth is that Firefox usage and market share is in constant decline and the users still do not care about it enough to use it. The decline started since the 2010s and continues to this decade with them still far behind. So to recycle your sentence: 'Firefox is not even close to being a contender since Chrome, Safari,…

> Market-share and global user usage says otherwise. Ah great. Thanks to Safari's market share I can now run it on Windows/Linux. Thanks that helps me a lot! :D

It is clear that the data is painful for you to accept, but it is what it is. Mac users are still using Safari or Chrome-based browsers over Firefox. Even when the users aren't on macOS, it is evident that Firefox has been totally replaced by Chrome, Brave, Edge on Windows.

As for 'Linux' on the Desktop, using the same sources, the data is insignificant for any browser as the usage numbers are extremely low. In fact, its so small that it is not even on the Top 10 global user usage data and is thus irrelevant to all browser market share for the Linux Desktop.

But sure, Firefox on the Linux Desktop has never been more popular than ever as evidently shown by the HN commenters on this post and is even used more than Chrome. /s

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#663

Post by dmitriid » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 6:35 AM UTC

mtomweb wrote: post #660

dmitriid wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> imply talk to any developer who has to do a significant amount of work building apps in Safari Don't build "apps" in the browser. Period. It's shitty, underperforming, and breaks all user expectations, regardless of the browser it's running on . I've yet to see a single app, PWA or not, that wasn't so. Unless it's just a re-skin of a simple website with text and images, and a few forms, but then it's just a website…

This is the we can't have competition, because otherwise poorer quality products will win argument?

I can't parse this statement

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#664

Post by dmitriid » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 6:48 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #658

dmitriid wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebUSB, Web Bluetooth, Web HID are chrome-only features they rammed through standards bodies. Both Firefox and Safari consider them harmful in their current state and will not implement them.

> they rammed through standards bodies. They have not been declared standards by any standards body.

Indeed they haven't. They are, at most, drafts or even "draft community reports".

And yet, Chrome goes through a superficial standards-track-like process:

- implements them behind a feature flag

- publishes a draft of the standard

- asks other browser vendors for their position on "emerging standard". Example, https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459

- ignores feedback, and enables by default (see link above)

- advertises as fait accompli (example, https://web.dev/hid-examples/)

- includes these APIs in standard web API counts https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/confluence

- proceeds to gaslight other browser vendors as being too slow, holding back the web, holding back innovation etc. through dozens of talking heads with outsized influence (Alex Russel, Justin Fagnani, ... to many to list)

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#665

Post by zepto » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 12:12 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #647

zepto wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user can’t do what they want where they want on the web. The web is an adware and privacy destroying machine.

> The user can’t do what they want where they want on the web. The web is an adware and privacy destroying machine. Sounds like you're setting a double standard when Apple also runs ads on their devices[0] as well as selling their user's private data[1] [0] https://stevestreza.com/2020/02/17/ios-adware/ [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/26/apple-italy-fine-user-d...

> Sounds like you're setting a double standard when Apple also runs ads on their devices[0] as well as selling their user's private data[1]

Anyone who claims those are equivalent to what is going on on the web is being dishonest.

Neither of the articles even claims that Apple was “selling user data”, so that’s a straight up lie.

I can’t help you if you are going to post links that don’t say what you claim they are saying.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#666

Post by mschuster91 » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 12:46 PM UTC

starik36 wrote: post #602

malermeister wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chanting "Say her name" is freedom of speech. Breaking and entering into the seat of government [1], building gallows in preparation for hangings [2] and calling for the murder of the Vice President [3] is not. Please don't try to disingenuously draw a false equivalency here. Your whataboutism is supporting attempted murder and contributing to the destabilization of the country. [1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/1…

You are just dead set to not see what you don't want to see. The link I posted was about the mob attacking Ron Paul. A sitting senator. He likely would have been injured or dead had it not been for the police. The article isn't about chanting. You asked "Did they attack the seat of government with the explicit goal of abducting, raping and killing elected officials". This is an "explicit" example of the mob attacking…

The US bombed and invaded other countries to fight authoritarians, most notably my home country of Germany in 1941-1945.

These days, the US lets their ideological successors sit in Congress and no one bats an eye. What a disgrace. Not that I like violence, it should not be a tool that's used in political discourse, but nevertheless - people like him, MT Greene and Boebert should not even be remotely near the Congress to begin with!

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#667

Post by France_is_bacon » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 12:05 AM UTC

I used to solely use Firefox, but now it does not work with so many apps that I need. It's completely unusable for me.

I've read many articles that say that Firefox is not working on what people want, just a bunch of stuff nobody needs, and has lost vast amounts of users in the last decade or two.

Salesforce CRM would not work on Firefox. Then I switched to Zoho CRM, and that did not work on Firefox. And my VOIP phone didn't work on Firefox. Those are the two apps that I use most - CRM and phone. So I had to stop using Firefox.

It's sad, I'd keep using if I could. I used Firefox a lot longer than I should have.

So now it's Brave Browser, which I've had no issues with since it's based on the Chrome engine.

I don't know what the heck Firefox team is doing.

Plus, all of a sudden, it just stopped working. Looking at resource usage, disk usage was at 100% and just shut down Firefox. Like, WTF?

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#668

Post by burnte » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #648

burnte wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gecko was ALWAYS embedable, it was literally designed that way from day one.

Mozilla removed the embedding APIs in 2011. And they were incomplete and unstable before.[1] [1] https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.dev.embedding/c/c_NMcO-N...

That's about being about to build out Gecko as a blob to be called like a library. That doesn't mean Gecko can be used without all the extra parts in your app.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#669

Post by _0ffh » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 8:25 AM UTC

1_player wrote: post #543

NateEag wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a religious impulse. It may not be literal religion, in the sense of believing "God says this is the right thing to do," but it is the same underlying instinct - "This is Right, and I must do all in my power to serve it." Humans pick other people who agree with them for their teams, so after a while corporate cultures are almost guaranteed to become homogeneous. Once they are, groupthink and lack of dissenting o…

It's a religious impulse for people, for companies is pure profit-driven marketing. They are into politics because people nowadays love politics. It is everywhere. People want to brand themselves and carry their political flag everywhere. So it sells.

I don't think they love politics per se, but they love to hate the opposing tribe.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#670

Post by 72deluxe » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

the_why_of_y wrote: post #566

72deluxe wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a repeat of the GNOME issues years and years and years ago where people would complain that donations were used to try and encourage women to program instead of spending it on infrastructure etc. I seem to remember people who complained about it were shouted down as mysogenist. It seems the organisations forget why they're here - to write software, not to try and solve all of mankind's issues and inj…

> I seem to remember people who complained about it were shouted down as mysogenist. Yes, that would be because the whole story was basically lies. https://fortintam.com/blog/outrageous-outreach/

Ah interesting. I wasn't aware of the bankruptcy claims later on. I just remember the original issue where people were complaining about the focus on outreach programs instead of just software in general.

Interesting, thanks.