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Firefox Browser: best for a free web

mozilla.org

91–100 of 240 posts

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#91
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox seems to be the only hope to avoid a duopoly dominated by forces that are anti-privacy and anti-user. I recently made the move from Safari to Firefox and I am very pleased. This being said, I agree with you about the optics of Firefox management. There is a lot going on that isn't good and the personal enrichment of the executives feels all sorts of wrong. If FF management can not be good stewards of a vital…

Is there a way to simplify moving password management out of Keychain and into Firefox?

You can just use Firefox Sync and Lockwise on mobile to manage passwords etc instead of using Keychain I suspect. I'm not sure of the import functionality of that ecosystem but it wouldn't surprise me if someone figured it out already and posted the code.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#93
Pleas into a niche tech communities to use a different browser isn't going to stop FF's slow slide to irrelevance. Microsoft saw the writing on the wall with IE and launched Edge which by comparison looks to have a much more promising future then Mozilla.

This does nothing to improve browser engine diversity but at this point Mozilla's best path to commercial success would be to launch a new browser product that's a rebranded Blink/WebKit with a focus on privacy, e.g. ad/tracker blockers, optional integrated VPN, simple UX for clearing browser history per site/date range/etc. Personally I'd prefer they adopt Safari's WebKit over Chrome's Blink to remove the dependency from Google.

I'm too old to deal with navigating the web with rendering inconsistencies of browser web developers don't test against. For the same reason I've no hesitation to use their gorgeous Firefox Focus iOS browser over Chrome since they're all forced to use the same rendering engine, and given all things being equal I trust Firefox to protect privacy much more than Google.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#94

when did "In-browser screenshot tool" become a key feature, seems like a job that most operating systems handle quite well. Anyone who uses this feature, feel free to chime in.

It can take a screenshot of the entire page, including what's not currently displayed in the viewport.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#95

It's beyond me why they haven't thrown it up on GitHub yet. Let the community have a way bigger involvement and drive the future of the browser. Yes, I can go find the source for Firefox, but I sincerely doubt the engagement is anywhere near as high as it could be.

I’m not sure accessibility of source code is the biggest problem. You can get the code very easily. Also github is another kind of Microsoft lock-in, ironically.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox seems to be the only hope to avoid a duopoly dominated by forces that are anti-privacy and anti-user. I recently made the move from Safari to Firefox and I am very pleased. This being said, I agree with you about the optics of Firefox management. There is a lot going on that isn't good and the personal enrichment of the executives feels all sorts of wrong. If FF management can not be good stewards of a vital…

Right, it's not productive to throw the baby out with the bathwater because you might not like the politics or management of Mozilla as an organization. Like it or not, Firefox is the last free browser and needs support from people who care about a free Internet.

I think we're eventually going to see more DAO's focused on purely FOSS where their members can pool some resources and autocompound their treasury in a decentralized overcollateralized lending protocol to fund core operations and free ourselves from some of these centralized foundations desires.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#97

Are the three headline features important to you? They are: - Picture in Picture - Expanded Dark Mode - DNS over HTTPs I really like Firefox, but features like this are not going to cause people to switch browsers. I'm pretty sure most end users would never even notice them. DNS over HTTPs is actually a bit of a pain if you want to host your own DNS.

DoH on by default is great for regular users, in order to access websites banned at the ISP DNS level. Depending on the country that can include a whole lot of websites, even not including warez and porn.

Anyway, they should really put more focus on polishing the containers extension, and make it one of the main selling points. This is the feature that has converted the most people in my experience. And since it's unique to any browser AFAIK, it has great retention power once one integrates it in their workflow.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#98

Too many distractions from Mozilla (Firefox OS, VPN etc and a complete dissonance from the core- browser. It doesn't help when senior management takes fat bonuses and fires away employees during the pandemic. That doesn't make for pleasant optics and also distanced me away from their product.

Firefox OS was ahead of its time and the marketing and targeting set was a bit too niche, but it was (and is) a great idea to build a mobile OS around web tech. KaiOS has forked FxOS to some success on lower-end devices with a respectable feature set (though it seems tooling is limited and monetization isn't amazing which is a feedback loop). Imagine if FxOS was a better success and instead of Chromebooks if the education system, children were raised using Firefoxbooks (FxBooks for short) as their first machines.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#99

I’ve opted to using librewolf as I prefer its out of the box changes removing everything that sucks about firefox. I refuse to use chrome (unless its for work in that case I use an isolated chromium) I despise the monopoly of the web and I despise google. Personally I think Brave is a honeypot and even if it isn’t, it’s still supporting the monopolized web standard. I hope things get better because we need more choic…

I agree. I still vividly remember the bad old days of IE, and I find it puzzling that so many web developers are willingly going back to a monoculture, with such an anti-privacy organization holding all the cards.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#100

More like: "Firefox Browser: 1. It is not google. 2. It's not a Chrome fork maintained by potentially flaky/untrustworthy players. 3. uBlock Origin. 4. Multi-Account Containers."

I wish brave forked ff… i guess i'll be working of my own fork of ff for the end of time for my family, going on 6 years or so now lol

I think people are forking Chrome because it’s better code, but I might be wrong.

I have only seen the code of Chrome and it’s very Google-like C++, with truly enormous codebase.

Even Chrome did not fork Firefox back in the day and forked Safari.

Electron did not use Firefox either.

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