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Why Mozilla Needs To Go Into Survival Mode

Posted by Soulskill on from the bears-are-dangerous dept.

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."

19 of 464 comments (clear)

  1. Firefox lite. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What they need to do is remember why the project started and get back to that.

    Themes in 3.6? WTF were they thinking?

    Chrome and Safari both have excellent built in Web dev/javascript tools, I don't even miss Web Developer Toolbar.

    1. Re:Firefox lite. by Jaysyn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
    2. Re:Firefox lite. by EvilBudMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What about Ad Block Plus? That keeps me on Firefox and of course the MASA theme. (Monkeys In Aftermarket Space Administration)

    3. Re:Firefox lite. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apparently, the adblockers for chrome still download the ads, they just prevent the ad from displaying

    4. Re:Firefox lite. by RanCossack · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Firefox lite. by Anonymusing · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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
    6. Re:Firefox lite. by uberjack · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I love Firefox because of its plugins (Firebug alone is the bee's knees), but it's an absolute memory hog. On both my Windows and Linux machines, I have to restart the application every few days - it's not shy about eating up 4-5 GB of RAM easily. In many cases (and if I leave the system running long enough, as I often do) it consumes all of the available memory until the system slows to a crawl. It especially annoys me that it's been this way for the last 2-3 years, and still nothing is being done.

    7. Re:Firefox lite. by ChronoReverse · · Score: 5, Informative

      Have you ever considered using a new profile and examining which plugins you use? Because a clean install of FF3.6 certainly won't do that.

    8. Re:Firefox lite. by MBGMorden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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
  2. What they need... by B5_geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)
  3. Re:No extensions, no FF killer by abigor · · Score: 5, Informative

    This will certainly interest you then: https://chrome.google.com/extensions

  4. Firefaux by T+Murphy · · Score: 5, Funny

    They should develop another browser, Firefaux, and make it appear to be the biggest threat in the browser wars. Firefox can then team up with Chrome and Opera to take down Firefaux, all the while distracting everyone from the need to take down Firefox instead. Just re-animate Firefaux as needed to keep up the distraction. No one will ever catch on to the connection between Firefox and Firefaux, and world domination will only be inevitable.

    --
    My webcomic
  5. Battle of the Browsers simply isn't what it used by rolfwind · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  7. Not buying it by Mr.+Spontaneous · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, Firefox has some issues. Yes, the Mozilla team needs to fix them. However, I think this article is being overly sensationalistic (surprise, surprise). In a wonderful bout of irony, the same forces that made long-standing IE users jump to FF are keeping them using FF. Some are averse to learning a new UI/control scheme, others needs certain extensions to remain productive. Then there are a few, like me, who don't see the performance/crashing issues that others report. I'm not saying that they don't exist, just that I haven't experienced them.

    Additionally, FF has been approved for use in many businesses, as well as the DoD/DHS to run on their networks. Chrome, AFAIK, hasn't.

    With these forces slowing down non-Firefox adoption, the Mozilla team has bought themselves some crucial time in the quest to right some of their browser's weaknesses. Hopefully they'll be able to meet that challenge, and, from reading the various blogs published to Planet Mozilla, I'm fairly confident that they will.

    --
    Its all fun and games until someone loses an eye... then its just fun.
    1. Re:Not buying it by shallot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

  8. #1 firefox issue by grasshoppa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
  9. Re:Go get your guns? by westlake · · Score: 5, Informative

    What does "survival mode" means in this case? Race in new features?

    Find new money. Before Google pulls the plug.

  10. Re:Go get your guns? by Burz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It means stop adding new features and bear down on the core mission:
    Make it more reliable, secure and faster.