Slashdot Mirror
Why Mozilla Needs To Go Into Survival Mode
Crazzaper writes "I have been using Firefox for many years, and the war of the browsers has been around for longer than that. It just so happens that now we have a lot of options out there: IE, FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and others. People are always talking about how one browser is going to take down another, but maybe that's not the issue at all. It seems very possible that one browser, like Firefox, can be taken down by multiple browsers at once, whether or not there was any intention to compete specifically with Firefox. I hadn't seen it this way, but I do now."
One browser can be taken down by others? I thought they should have been competing on technical excellence instead of name recognition. Nobody was complaining when it was IE being taken down by Firefox! Falling into the trap that I like it so everyone should is just weakening yourself in the long-term. If something better than Firefox appears then the logical choice is bu-bye Firefox! But people are rarely logical and tend to just do what others are doing.
Shh.
Not themes, personas. Themes have been around for a long long time, but I think the personas as silly & superfluous.
There is a war going on for your mind.
What about Ad Block Plus? That keeps me on Firefox and of course the MASA theme. (Monkeys In Aftermarket Space Administration)
They really just need to go on a diet.
Hey guys; remember how it was supposed to be a fast browser?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
to be.
Back in the early 1990s, it was seen as a threat by Microsoft to usurp the OS paradigm. They thought whoever controlled the browser market controlls the internet and what it can do -- the tail wagging the dog and it seemed like the future of computing was at stake. And for a while, it succeeded when IE took over and had ridiculously large marketshare.
But now that the ecosystem is more varied, the browser simply does not have this power. Until a browser become so dominant again that they can embrace, extend, extinguish standards, it really doesn't matter that much anymore. Now, the best browser is almost as impotent to change computing as the best picture viewing software (except for maybe data gathering and ad revenue) -- if everything is correctly specced JPGs, PNGs, etcetera -- the picture viewer doesn't matter that much and can be readily interchange with regards to personal preference.
Mobile phones is one exception but also because you can't swap out browsers/rendering engines.
I can't manage it in a corporate/enterprise environment. Push out updates? Not as a limited user. Push out configuration? Not simply. Push out plugins, or plugin updates? Not simple.
That, more than anything else, will keep firefox out of the enterprise/corporate markets. If that even matters to them, seeing how this is still an issue.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I know. You'd be surprised how many people would love an internet browser that does nothing but display a web page as fast as possible.
Better way of phrasing that starts with 'You'd be surprised how few people..."
Let's face it -- Aurora, Midori, and other browsers that do that have been around for years. People don't use them because they want more their browser to do more.
"You'd be surprised how many people would love an internet browser that does nothing but display a web page as fast as possible."
Those are probably the same idiots who want a cell phone that reliably makes phone calls.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
People don't use them because they don't know about them. You think Firefox would have taken off if every Geek didn't install it on their mothers computer?
However, I think this article is being overly sensationalistic (surprise, surprise).
It's not actually so much sensationalist as much as it's pointless. It's a huge laundry list of statistics that don't actually add up to any really worthwhile conclusions on their own merit. And I always hate it when people blow up the graph of a 1-6% change (in this instance Chrome) to the same absolute size as the other graphs where data is tenfold, but the slope is steeper so it looks fantastic. That's just plain silly. A less generic graph would have been one showing changes relative to IE6's graph (decline), or something like that, something that actually paints a picture of what is going on, beyond the obvious. But that would take some real effort...
The thing that concerns me the most is the issue with HTML5 video codecs. Microsoft, Google and Apple all want Flash to die. Apple's latest licensing change with iPhone OS 4.0 is a full-out declaration of war against Adobe.
HTML5, SVG, hyper-optimized Javascript and the embedded video tag will make Flash redundant. If Firefox cannot stay on the bleeding edge of these advancements then it does not stand a chance.
So I suggest less bells and whistles (skinning / themes, for example), and more concentration on HTML5 - especially the video codec licensing / patent issue.
Better known as 318230.
I hope Mozilla gets a clue about their video tag implementation while they still have a chance. It is quite obvious that sites want HTML5 but they also want to stream h264. If Mozilla doesn't provide a way to do this, the browser is going to get sidelined.
Chrome is the future because what could go wrong with giving one company complete domination of the Internet?
I don't have anything against Google, but the thought of them having the browser market share that IE currently has scares me. It is not unreasonable to think that it might happen. Google is already the overwhelmingly dominant search engine. They have been fairly successful at most of the things they have worked at.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You'd be surprised at the number of people who think that's what they want, but if they got it would then complain that Facebook didn't work properly, or Google mail or maps, etc.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It means stop adding new features and bear down on the core mission:
Make it more reliable, secure and faster.
FF loads in about 1-2 seconds on my machine. I'm calling bullshit on your friend downloading, installing, and getting right back to work in that amount of time. If it's true, your friend has other problems besides Firefox.
When people gush about Firefox extensions they gush about PARTICULAR extensions. They just don't mindlessly drone on about the feature in general. They tend to specifically cite what it is that they personally get out of the extensions that are available and what needs to be on competing browser.
All you've told me is that IE has some similar extension feature.
I have no clue whether or not any of those extensions are someone I would actually want to use.
Although IE just has a long history of being a malware magnet. Even if you compare pristine versions of browsers, IE sucks.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And if you're concerned about bloat, maybe try Mozilla's seaMonkey? It looks like the old 90s-era Netscape, but with the same engine as Firefox.
Maybe my sarcasm detector is just failing, but you do realize that Firefox originated as a branch off of Seamonkey because it was thought that Seamonkey had become too bloated?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Um, I think you've got it backwards. The advertisers are paying the bill for the content you're viewing.
Not that I have a moral issue with ad-blocking; quite the opposite. I just think it's silly that you're expecting to be reimbursed for your ad downloads. The CONTENT is the reimbursement.
No, it's called "Ease of Use". Not everyone even knows what an IP address is, and expecting every single person on the planet to understand the concept is ludicrous.
And some of us who know what an IP address is don't want to waste time mucking with system files when there is a far more elegant solution.
Some of us are not 14 anymore, and don't think that taking the hard route makes one "hardcore".
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey