Firefox on the brink? • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#681

Post by quesera » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 10:47 PM UTC

mcfedr wrote: post #571

ako wrote: post #380

What should Firefox do for you to select it as your default browser? (It’s my default browser, I’m pretty happy with it, also use the pocket functionality quite bit)

Multiple profiles

Enter "about:profiles" into the URL field.

The UI on this page is rough, but once you have more than one profile you will get a popup at launch to select from your list or to create more.

I have dozens of profiles, custom launchers etc. I run four or five simultaneously most of the time. If you only need a couple profiles, the standard launch UI will do.

...

But, see also "Multi-Account Containers" which segregate cookies between sites so you can have multiple simultaneous logins to various services in a single profile.

Containers share preferences and browser config (and window), but segregate cookies. Profiles are completely independent.

I use both, extensively. E.g. my work profile has containers for user, admin, owner, and machine accounts at GitHub. My personal profile has my private personal GitHub account only.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#682

Post by riversflow » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 10:52 PM UTC

gafage wrote: post #665

riversflow wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No browser deserves special treatment here. Completely disagree. Privacy is a 4th ammendment right, so the government has a duty to support privacy first browsers. How am I "secure in my ... papers and effects" if I must use a privacy destroying browser to interact with the Government? If anything, chrome support is what should be questionable.

That's the mother of all reaches.

How?

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#683

Post by quesera » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 10:54 PM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #529

billiam wrote: post #320

The organization that gave the world Rust, Web Assembly, and countless other useful technologies is in a probable death spiral, and most of the blame goes to Mitchell Baker. If Mozilla was not primarily driven by greed and laziness, smart people that still exist in around Firefox would have made the difficult technical decisions needed to continue to ship a useful product that protects user privacy while still being…

Firefox letting go of many important teams such as MDN, Rust etc was its death knell in developer community. Mitchell Baker will surely get a golden parachute even if Firefox is sold for scraps.

If it takes a hundred million dollars to get Mitchell to leave Mozilla, it would be money well-spent.

Just do it soon.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#684

Post by kemotep » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 10:56 PM UTC

the_third_wave wrote: post #528

the_third_wave wrote: post #389

Here's an idea on how to turn this ship in the right direction: get Musk interested in funding a project which will fork the code base, clean up the cruft - pocket etc. - and relaunch Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox. That is what a Phoenix is supposed to do after all, when the time has come to die it will burn to ashes from which it arises all new and fresh. Why Musk? The choice seems clear as are the tangents to his other…

To the downvoters: tell us what you think instead of trying to get an opinion contrary to your own greyed out. Is it just that I mention undesirable person #1 which caught your ire, is it that you do not think a fork would be a good idea, is it because you do not agree that Mozilla has been abused by Baker? Discuss, do not just click that down-vote button.

People are probably turned off to the comment because of all the complaining about “identity politics”.

There also exists several forks of Firefox already. Suggesting the nth idealogical fork that will be funded out of the kindness of a billionaire’s heart doesn’t sound productive. Why not donate to Librewolf? Why must Musk actually have any involvement besides funding?

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#685

Post by quesera » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 10:56 PM UTC

kps wrote: post #633

ako wrote: post #380

What should Firefox do for you to select it as your default browser? (It’s my default browser, I’m pretty happy with it, also use the pocket functionality quite bit)

Personally: 1. Let me install extensions locally (without making me hunt down some alternate build that harasses me to upgrade every day). 2. Fix using the GUI key for GUI shortcuts, which has been buggy since the Quantum transition. 3. I like Chrome's collapsible tab groups. I think Firefox also once had some sort of tab grouping I liked.

To #3, extension Sidebery is great.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#686

Post by conradfr » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 10:59 PM UTC

simbolit wrote: post #664

conradfr wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a modest (non-technical) side project (a few thousands visitors per day) that is used worldwide. GoAccess puts Firefox at 7.8% and Google Analytics at 3.3%. GoAccess puts Chrome at 57% and Google Analytics at 73%.

Non-technical as in "the average user isn't a nerd" ? For non-nerd populations, these numbers seem high.

Yes I realized too late the term might be confusing. It's a radios streaming website/app, so not nerdy.

There is an Android app that uses a webview so that even favours Chrome. Also GoAccess doesn't unfortunately filter all scrappers/bots and most of them declare themselves as Chrome.

A sizeable part of the traffic is (non-app) Android and I don't think Firefox is huge there so maybe on desktop Firefox market-share is actually not as bad as we think?

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#687

Post by russelg » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 11:00 PM UTC

Steltek wrote: post #558

isodev wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rendering engine doesn't really matter - nothing is stopping Mozilla from implementing a better browser app than Safari. Safari is _really_ good and a very high bar to catchup to, even if you don't have to implement the rendering engine and Mozilla is not exactly known for their friendly and refined UIs. Vivaldi on iOS is much younger by comparison and looks a lot better than Firefox.

Mobile browsers aren't sufficiently differentiated enough for a significant amount of people to bother changing the default. Does anyone really think Samsung Browser would get close to 1.6% if it were a free and unbiased choice? Apple sets the rules, gets special access (new releases, features, platform changes, countless other things), and relentlessly captures their users into the Apple ecosystem/moat. You seem to…

Firefox on iOS exists so desktop Firefox users can sync their bookmarks, tabs, passwords and history. I use Firefox on my iPad all the time.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#688

Post by cjpearson » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 11:04 PM UTC

hs86 wrote: post #117

I switched over after the Manifest v3 debacle, and after a couple of months, I wonder if the implications of using a browser with a lower market share are overblown. I haven't encountered any site that misbehaves, and the only missing feature so far is within the Google Drive web app because it uses a Chrome-only extension [1]. Maybe the ongoing standardization of the web shows its effects here, and using a standard-…

In my experience there are almost never issues. Standardization has gotten much better, and as a web developer I appreciate all the effort the various browser teams have put into ensuring common behavior.

The effort of "supporting Firefox" as a developer is basically opening the app in Firefox and confirming that it works, which it basically always does because the app is built on standardized web features. (Other types of support might be different. e.g maybe you have help doc that tells your users how to clear the site cookies. Do you also want to write instructions for Firefox, Safari, Opera etc?)

The bigger concern is that some day Google might not need web standards. If developers target Chrome rather than the web platform, Google has free reign and no longer needs to compromise with Apple and Mozilla. For example, Mozilla's veto of the controversial Topics API would hold little weight if nobody cares about Firefox support. If Chrome gets to a dominant enough position it could move from embracing to extending quite quickly.

People have different opinions on Google, but even those who believe Google has no ill intentions still feel better if there are some checks and balances. Were Firefox to become obsolete, Apple would be the last one standing. And with the DMA, some are predicting that Safari could soon follow Firefox's decline.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#689

Post by cycomanic » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 11:05 PM UTC

amadeuspagel wrote: post #297

Chabsff wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the government HAS to make that determination in a data-driven way. It cannot be based on anything subjective, for what should be obvious reasons. On top of that, said lack of knowledge is a stated goal of all privacy-focused browsers. GA-blindness is an implementation detail of these policies. Any method the government could use to accurately track that information is effectively a bug in need of fixing fr…

There is no standard that you can use instead of a set of browsers. There is no way of making sure that a website works with a browser other then testing it with that browser. The reason people test with different browsers is not that they want to use non-standard features, it's that even standard features often do not work in certain browsers.

Sure there is a standard, are you saying the w3 doesn't exist? The issue is that somehow people here are arguing that it is sufficient to test that you are adhering to a standard by only testing against chrome, edge and safari (two of which are the same engine).

If you want test that you are adhering to a standard (if there is no testsuite available) you need to test against more than 2 independent implementations.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#690

Post by thayne » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 11:10 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #679

mcfedr wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple profiles from chrome is such an important feature for me, I don't know people cope without it.

Firefox has separate profiles and multiple containers per profile.

true. but it is much harder to switch between profiles in firefox, and containers don't really work for all the use cases you might want to use multiple profiles for (like, say having different bookmarks, and settings for different profiles).

And I say this as someone who uses Firefox.