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A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

computerworld.com

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Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#81

Post by JoshMnem »

corford wrote: post #22

The latest FF builds have been rock solid for me (Win7 x64 with 4 or 5 big name extensions and that's it). I've currently got about 130 tabs open, FF is using ~ 1.1GB of RAM and has been sitting open & running in this state for 3 or 4 weeks with no problems or slow downs whatsoever. The plugin container also finally works reliably so shitty sites with buggy flash code don't take the browser down when flash decides to…

Google has advertisements for Chrome on their search page -- that's why they have a large market share. They also spread a lot of propaganda about Chrome's being faster.

In reality, Chrome is intentionally designed to slow users down by sending them to Google search results instead of directly to the destination URLs. People then click on the camouflaged AdSense.

Firefox is now faster than Chrome in independent tests, and it doesn't use up as much memory. Firefox is a much better browser in many ways.

Mozilla's big mistake is that they aren't reaching out enough to developers. It's developers who set the trends. Example: I started a Firefox developers group in the Bay Area, and no one from Mozilla replied to my messages about their helping out, even if nothing more than offering us occasional meetup space.

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#82

Post by nandhp »

batiudrami wrote: post #27

My mum always told me not to extrapolate so I'm not very worried about Computer World's alarmist forecasts of Firefox going the way of the typewriter and Smallpox. That said, while I'm a fan of Firefox - I have used it since it was called Phoenix and I had unzip it off a CD I got with a magazine - I can't help but think this is partially their own fault. Sure, Google has a massive advertising budget for Chrome, and t…

> per tab processes [...] are still nowhere to be seen.

Electrolysis (separate content processes) is available now in Nightly, and "The e10s team estimates e10s with a single content process will be enabled in Firefox Release by the end of 2015."

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#83

Post by kibwen »

JoshMnem wrote: post #81
corford wrote: post #22

The latest FF builds have been rock solid for me (Win7 x64 with 4 or 5 big name extensions and that's it). I've currently got about 130 tabs open, FF is using ~ 1.1GB of RAM and has been sitting open & running in this state for 3 or 4 weeks with no problems or slow downs whatsoever. The plugin container also finally works reliably so shitty sites with buggy flash code don't take the browser down when flash decides to…

Google has advertisements for Chrome on their search page -- that's why they have a large market share. They also spread a lot of propaganda about Chrome's being faster. In reality, Chrome is intentionally designed to slow users down by sending them to Google search results instead of directly to the destination URLs. People then click on the camouflaged AdSense. Firefox is now faster than Chrome in independent tests…

The SF office has a street-level room set aside for use as a community space, theoretically it shouldn't be too hard to convince them to let you use it. I know this because I intend to use it for various Rust-relates purposes for the next month or so. :)

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#84

Post by tdsamardzhiev »

millietaint wrote: post #71

I dumped Firefox ages ago, when I first heard of Eich's hatred towards the gay and lesbian community. It is inconceivable that his colleagues at Mozilla did not know about his bigoted beliefs and the financial support he gives to similarly bigoted organisations. Yet they decided he was the best person to run Mozilla, a company that only pays lip service to equal rights - clearly at the top levels of management it is…

They chose Eich because he is a great engineer and a great manager. He's evidently also able to separate his job from his political views. I'd like to think that's what really matters, but I'd be wrong :) We are in year 2015 and marketing is what makes-or-breaks one's company. He'd piss off LGBT people - in that and only that sense he was a bad CEO pick. There was this joke running - when Samsung's CEO learned that Tim Cook is gay, he announced he's twice as gay AND waterproof.

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#85

Post by JoshMnem »

kibwen wrote: post #83
JoshMnem wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has advertisements for Chrome on their search page -- that's why they have a large market share. They also spread a lot of propaganda about Chrome's being faster. In reality, Chrome is intentionally designed to slow users down by sending them to Google search results instead of directly to the destination URLs. People then click on the camouflaged AdSense. Firefox is now faster than Chrome in independent tests…

The SF office has a street-level room set aside for use as a community space, theoretically it shouldn't be too hard to convince them to let you use it. I know this because I intend to use it for various Rust-relates purposes for the next month or so. :)

Thanks for the info. I got too busy and stepped down from the Meetup group. I encouraged Mozilla to take over as organizer, but they didn't. I hope that someone else will start one up.

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#86

Post by eloisant »

mytochar wrote: post #35
threeseed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there will be three Google, Microsoft and Apple. Whilst it is better to have some competition there really does need to be an open alternative.

Doesn't Apple use Webkit, same as Google? Isn't that functionally the same, except for Google's optimizations?

Even when they were using WebKit, it was never the same version, and they had patches. So there never was a unique WebKit rendering engine.

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#87

Post by aurora72 »

No other browser can beat Firefox, because all the others including Vivaldi are RAM hungry, GPU and CPU abuser show-offs. I don't even talk about their dictative approaches such as minimal feature UI, unauthorized update daemons runnin on background, etc. Firefix does have an Android version and it works great on my 2010 HTC phone, it doesn't dictate a minimum version of Android or something.

If the majority of users aren't familiar with such concepts than I don't need to worry on Mozilla's side because they don't do something fundamentally wrong.

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#88

Post by mg1982 »

mytochar wrote: post #35
threeseed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there will be three Google, Microsoft and Apple. Whilst it is better to have some competition there really does need to be an open alternative.

Doesn't Apple use Webkit, same as Google? Isn't that functionally the same, except for Google's optimizations?

They forked webkit, actually, and use something called Blink.

Check this out for a good summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Re: A shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

#90

Post by dragonwriter »

kaolinite wrote: post #8

The problem I feel with Mozilla is that they mistook why they were successful. They attributed the success of Firefox to the openness of the browser and the company and have doubled-down on that. In reality though, that wasn't why it was successful at all. Firefox was great because it was a great browser at a time when other browsers weren't so good. The fact that it was open-source was a huge plus for people in tech…

> The problem I feel with Mozilla is that they mistook why they were successful. They attributed the success of Firefox to the openness of the browser and the company and have doubled-down on that.

I think you've mistaken the purpose of Mozilla: the purpose of Mozilla is not to have a successful company independent of openness, it is to promote "openness, innovation, and opportunity on the Web".

Mozilla isn't a for-profit company (well, the Foundation isn't, and the Corporation is wholly owned by, and exists to further the purposes of, the Foundation.)

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