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Firefox Succeeded In Its Goal -- But What's Next?
trawg writes: It's been more than 10 years since Mozilla released version 1.0 of Firefox, one of their first steps in their mission to 'preserve choice and innovation on the Internet'. Firefox was instrumental in shattering the web monoculture, but the last few years of development have left users uninspired. "Their goal was never to create the most popular browser in the world, or the one with the best UX, or the one with the most features, or the one with the best developer mode. ... It would be foolish to say a monoculture will never arise again (Google are making some scary moves with Chrome-only web applications). But at this point in time while Chrome is the ascendant browser (largely at the expense of Firefox), Mozilla’s ability to impact the web in general is greatly reduced." Perhaps it is time to move on to the next challenge — ensuring there is a strong Thunderbird to help preserve a free and open email ecosystem.
I've used Chrome on BSD for years but recently moved back to FF. The main reason I moved in the first place is sync of personal data across instances. FF now has this.
Also Chromium isn't as open source friendly as one would think so it's feature set is largely reduced on BSD's. Now that they've removed the ability to run 32-bit NPAPI plugins, I can't use java/flash anymore either. Plus all the Chrome UI Nazi stuff was getting annoying like the malfunctioning middle click to paste. Chrome devs calling it a feature not a bug didn't help either. Regardless, things are good again in BSD w/ FF.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
"...Chrome-only web applications..."
It isn't a web application if it requires non-web-standard features or a very specific software platform.
I don't understand your closing sentence: "ensuring there is a strong Thunderbird to help preserve a free and open email ecosystem" - Thunderbird is stable, and if anything, they need to stop messing with the UI.
It's a mail reader. That is all it needs to be.
Not dead yet.
From: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firef...
"50% of Fx users on Windows run 64 bit OS. We've reached a threshold where the effort makes sense."
Work on the webcam side now that HTML5 video is supported.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I've never used or even seen Thunderbird in my life but I'm pretty sure email cross-platform compatibility is not something we need to worry about.
In fact I think email should either die or have a massive protocol update of some kind to block spammers, otherwise it's a lost cause.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The original goal of Phoenix(?) or whatever name they chose for the code-split from Navigator; was to build a fast, responsive and resource-minimal web-browser. When it was first released it was a HUGE success because not everybody wanted an all-in-one email/browser/calendar/contact/NNTP client.
Then they added the ability to run 3rd-party scripts, they called those 'extensions' (omg what is this new thing!) and that was super popular.
I like many of the /. readership was there at the birth of what we now call Firefox. We have loved it for what it was, and have tolerated it for what it became.
It is still my primary browser, but if I ever find a minimal-resource browser that offers functionality equal to 'NoScript' and 'Adblock-Edge' I'll switch.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I'd love to see an instant messaging app that is great for all platforms, and has a UI suited to each platform individually.
Hangouts is awful.
Isn't a pc email client an obsolete concept for most people. I have an email app on my phone. But I havn't used an pc email client outside of work since the 90's
and why? conservative, i say.
shills and astroturfers.
this article screams agenda.
ensuring there is a strong Thunderbird to help preserve a free and open email ecosystem.
Why would having an open email client help preserve free and open email? Is something threatening email rfc's recently?
Firefox has become the new Netscape. Every release was slower and once they switched to Australis I dumped them entirely for Chrome. Most of the addons I used are also available for Chrome now. I got a good laugh reading about their video chat client. Nobody ever asked for that. How about making existing features better instead of adding shit for no good reason? No wonder Google stopped funding them. Google saw the direction it was going for and pulled out.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I thought the goal was to take Netscape communicator, strip out all the crap, leaving just the lean, fast web browser. Funny they seem to have forgotten that as every release adds more and more bloat and unwanted "features". It might as well be Netscape all over again.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Mozilla was the original code-split from Navigator, and it's purpose was to preserve Navigator as a browser for the half of the web that was optimized for it (remember the old "best viewed with..." buttons? Good days). Firefox née Phoenix was a fork from Mozilla to strip out Netscape-sponsored features of the Mozilla engine (giving us the Gecko engine). It succeeded in this goal, as well, for a time.
I like Pentadactyl too much. None of the chrome "equivalents" come close...
exactly, communicator was a resource hog and simply the only (usable) browser for linux/bsd. Opera had some issues (not showing everything correct) with the HTML world of IE and was shareware.
Firefox was not super in its pre 0.9 versions, but IMO became worse after version 3. (Coincidentally, this was also the case with Netscape Navigator 3 growing into Communiicator 4).
That said, Firefox has proved to be an indispensible tool for web development (firebug).
Where is this statistically significant group of people who are not using webmail today? BTW - That is from someone who has used Thunderbird for the past 10 years. If you are going to post questions then at least raise the postulation above troll-bait levels.
Oh jeeze the last thing Thunderbird needs is to be raked over the trendy UX coals the way Firefox has. If Chrome's market share has come at the expense of Firefox it may be in part because many people who jumped ship - myself included - found that each Firefox release was becoming successively more and more "chrome-like" without offering any of the benefits that make Chrome a compelling offering. In my case it was speed and performance on a 2006 Mac Mini running 10.6 - firefox was bloated slug that constantly screamed at me to upgrade my OS; Chrome ran as fast as it does on modern hardware and never complained about anything. Chrome's UI and core functionality haven't changed much since I started using it, either - I grew to dread Firefox updates as you never knew if it was going to pull an iTunes and reboot with some new horrible "feature" that didn't have extensions to revert the behavior back to prior functionality - Firefox deciding it was going to handle PDFs inline, and that functionality being far beyond slow and a real pain in the ass to disable - was the last straw for me. When I left the browser half of my extensions and customizations were to undo things the devs had "improved" over the years - the other half were ad and flash blocking extensions, which Chrome does almost as well.
TLDR; Firefox was awesome when it was Mozilla Without The Cruft. Then it started to cruft up and bloat up and horrible terrible very bad things started to happen to the UI and now it's Just Another Browser. Which is fine, really. Thunderbird does not need to be "innovated" in the same way - Firefox needs to be replaced by Firefox Without The Cruft the way Firefox replaced Mozilla. Maybe stick to the UNIX idea of "do one thing well" this time around, instead of "do one thing reasonably well and an increasingly lengthy list of perpedicular things in a totally half-assed fashion."
I used Netscape Navigator until IE5 (Mac) came along, then I used Mozilla until Safari popped up, then Firefox until it drove me to Chrome. Chrome Just Works on everything I run it on and has never nagged at me to update or screamed at me to upgrade my operating system Because Reasons. It has yet to roll out a game-changing UI element that I hate, and it isn't slowly modeling its overall UX to resemble the competition. I hope the Mozilla foundation keeps going because we need choice, now more than ever - and maybe one day they'll be my choice again.
The goal may not have been to take over the world. But the goal was also not to become a bloated browser with an unusable UI that is driving users away.
Well, presumably that's what we were told at the time, but truly what was going on was Netscape throwing as much open source code out there before being gobbled up by AOL. There was zero promise AOL would continue browser development, they had a deal with IE. Netscape was very much aware that IE might be the only game in town. Much of the email code couldn't be open sourced because I don't think Netscape had full rights to the code.
----- obSig
Long live Firefox!
It is still my primary browser, but if I ever find a minimal-resource browser that offers functionality equal to 'NoScript' and 'Adblock-Edge' I'll switch.
Lynx has got you covered!
The source is open, but i read about how chromium's way of packaging dependencies with itself has had it rejected from official software repositories on various linux distros. Perhaps this also reduces it's portability.
On an unrelated note, you shouldn't judge a browser on it's ability to support java and flash, that's really not how the web should work or will work in the future. (for the record i'm fairly browser agnostic, except when talking about IE of course :P).
Right now, I use three different web browsers (on Windows that would be IE, FIreFox, and Chrome, and on Linux, that would be Opera, Firefox, and Chrome) because there are too many websites that only work under one or the other of them. A few years ago, this wasn't necessary, so we have backslid a fair ways. The "success" is far from complete, and getting farther as each day goes by. I expect HTML 5 to make the situation even worse.
Firefox has lost favor with me because it has pretty much abandoned the things that I loved about it, while continuing to make changes that are not only unnecessary, but actively make the browser worse. Mozilla needs to realize that their original goal is far from accomplished and get back on that horse. If they did that, I'll start giving them money again.
For a long time, I was pretty sure that Firefox's goal was to suck up all of the free memory space in the universe. It's better now, but they damn near succeeded there for a while.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
How is open code everybody can see, work on, understand and create with "a different monoculture?"
The past closed proprietary DHTML features?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The only thing Mozilla has done is to utterly ruin FireFox. What was their goal?
They shuffled menu items around. They deleted the status bar which showed you the full URL when you hovered over it. They came out with FireFox 29 which is a UI abomination.
If ruining FireFox was the goal, they succeeded and they can quit now.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
Uninstall adblock and never look back.
Firefox isn't based on WebKit. Chrome and Opera are based on Blink, which is a fork of WebKit.
Firefox is NOT based on webkit. It's based on Gecko, Mozilla's own rendering engine. IE is also based on Trident, Microsoft's own rendering engine. There are essentially three engines today, Trident, WebKit/Blink, and Gecko. That's not a monoculture at all.
Whether its anything having to do with certificates, javascript, or just the OPTION to control what I want, Firefox chooses the secure way to implement it. They are doing a superb job compared to the competition. End of story.
Firefox does not use WebKit. It uses Gecko.
Recoil in horror all you want, but being able to send web pages as if they were IMs is where the future's at.
Firefox Hello bundles this kind of thing right into the web browser. I kind of like this idea for allowing basic functionality (think of the browser-based IM in Google and Facebook) and even extending that to voice and video (the way Google Hangouts does), but I'd ideally like to see a more powerful stand-alone client for people that want more than just a few casual conversations here and there. (This is an even better idea for Thunderbird, since your contact list lives there.)
Fortunately, we have pidgin, a stand-alone IM client with a great feature set and wonderful cross-platform support (Adium is merely an OS X implementation of Pidgin). Pidgin desperately needs help, as it hasn't successfully had an easy-to-use voice (let alone video) capability. I'm hoping that WebRTC (which powers Firefox Hello and, I think, Google Hangouts) can provide this, at least for using Firefox Hello and/or bridging between two Pidgin/Adium/Libpurple users.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Mozilla was the original code-split from Navigator, and it's purpose was to preserve Navigator as a browser for the half of the web that was optimized for it (remember the old "best viewed with..." buttons? Good days). Firefox née Phoenix was a fork from Mozilla to strip out Netscape-sponsored features of the Mozilla engine (giving us the Gecko engine). It succeeded in this goal, as well, for a time.
Your history is a bit off. Gecko was Mozilla's focus since Mozilla itself was created to continue Netscape's work on the next version of their browser after failing on their goal of improving the (horrible) Netscape 4.x layout engine, which was their original goal for version 5 (although I think they might have been experimenting with both possibilities at the same time before giving up the former). Firefox (originally Phoenix then Firebird) was created with the goal of taking that same layout engine, Gecko, but wrapping only a simple browser around it rather than the entire Mozilla/Netscape Communicator-style suite. Netscape never had many Netscape/AOL features in the Mozilla suite itself; those (e.g., AIM integration, branding, and a different default theme--Modern instead of Classic, etc.) were mostly confined to the Netscape-branded releases that AOL/Netscape released using the Mozilla suite as a base (starting with Netscape 6--skipping the scrapped version 5 attempt, though version 6 was horribly delayed and based on a somewhat unstable pre-1.0 release of the Mozilla suite). In any case, Gecko has not only been there since before Firefox, but it's one of few things that Firefox and the Mozilla Suite (which effectively lives on as Seamonkey) share, albeit a very large and important thing since it's used for so much (not just HTML rendering but also creating the UI itself via XUL and a theme).
Thunderbird was created with a pretty similar goal: take the same layout engine but include only the e-mail features from the suite.
R.Mo
Unlike some other mobile operating systems, FirefoxOS is completely open and uses HTML5 to deliver content. BlackBerry and Windows Phone each have small market shares, and I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. So we mostly have only two choices of mobile OS. Don't get me wrong: I very much like my Android phone (Sony Xperia Z3 Compact) and my iPad, but I think that it's a worthwhile challenge to contribute to the FirefoxOS platform and/or to build apps for it.
Just thinking out loud here, the IE6 monoculture was terrible, and we all hated it...and justifiably so. However, with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera all based on WebKit now, have we simply embraced a different monoculture? Admittedly the main difference here is that WebKit is more open than Trident, and the days of ActiveX and Java are more behind us than not...But is having an alternative render engine a better situation, or just redundant coding?
Firefox is Gecko based not WebKit.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Opera has been using the same rendering (and JS?) engine (Blink) as Chrome for over 1.5 years (ever since Opera 15), so you may only have to run your preferred choice of Opera vs Chrome in addition to Firefox on Linux.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
The greatest ever success of Firefox was raising the stock market value of DRAM chip makers by 400%. A web browser for Windows that consumes a mere 550 to 900MB of RAM (and does that with 32 bit code) is a marvel of resources usage efficiency, comparable only to the soviet block's centrally planned socialist economy!
Look at the user feedback about Firefox to see the real picture.
Right now, for the last week, 86% of the 10,000-plus reports are "sad". Only 14% are "happy".
That feedback shows exactly why Firefox's usage is dropping: people hate it, they hate what Mozilla has done to it, and they hate how Mozilla refuses to fix the many problems plaguing Firefox.
A 14% approval rating is shameful, even when it comes to people, companies and products that are generally despised.
A 2% failure rate is deemed unacceptable in most fields. An 86% failure rate is unbelievably terrible, yet that's exactly what Mozilla has "achieved" with Firefox.
I think I learned about uBlock from someone's sig here. It accomplishes the same goal as Adblock Plus/Edge, but uses significantly less memory. A freshly launched Firefox instance with Adblock Plus (only one empty tab open) used slightly over 230MB of RAM; with uBlock that figure is down to around 100MB.
I too first started using Firefox when it was called Phoenix, but I disagree that Mozilla has failed. In my experience Firefox is fast and responsive. Resource-minimalness (is that even a word?) isn't an issue for me, as I don't think Firefox requires unreasonable amounts of disk space or RAM. Especially after switching to uBlock. I suppose RAM usage starts to matter more if you like to keep hundreds of tabs open; it's a valid concern but not relevant for me.
(I couldn't figure out how to get the micro sign to work on Slashdot.)
Mozilla can hardly be accused of standing still when they're putting so much energy into Servo and Rust:
https://github.com/servo/servo
They have already achieved great things with Rust 1.0 which promises to be the most secure concurrent programming environment available. Also, let's not forget Mozilla's asm.js which may yet prove to be a significant challennger to the dominance of Javascript.
Fuck off. You have nothing useful to say.
>"Firefox Succeeded In Its Goal -- But What's Next?"
Here is what I *HOPE* is next:
1) Stop trying to be and look like Chrome. Just stop.
2) Stop trying to force users to not have tabs on bottom, having a menu bar, having separate buttons, etc. Let users control their user interface how they want.
3) Remove all that developer stuff that 99.99% of users don't use or care about and put it in an addon.
4) Remove all that chat and conferencing stuff that 99% of users don't care about and put that also in an addon.
5) Focus on speed, security, stability, bug-fixing, and documentation. You don't have to be a feature-of-the-month club.
6) Continue to support as many platforms and systems as possible, including old ones.
Oh- and thank you for all the hard work that went into Firefox- the browser of my choice (and that for my users, family, and friends) for the last decade.
the last few years of development have left users uninspired.
Users are tired of having unwanted changes to the UI and Firefox features rammed down their throats with security releases. It's not any better than having search bars as part of the installers. Mozilla used to be cutting edge, now they're just another marketing department playing to the lowest common denominator. "Let's see how well we can clone Google Chrome and dumb down the browser." Yawn.
Remember when FF was all about making it a lean, mean browsing machine compared to the silver-bullet one-for-everything Netscape behemoth? I think FF would really benefit from making these virtues of old their new priorities again, instead of the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation trying out-do Apple in feel-good, empty world-improvement campaigns and slogans and trying to out-do Apple and Google in UI design with yet another "UI improvement". Or doing things like completely crippling developers who are using self-signed certificates. This paternalism is just ridiculous.
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
monoculture = all one thing. How exactly is having several different browsers all based on the same engine NOT a monoculture? It's not a *proprietary* monoculture, and as such may avoid many of the pitfalls that made the IE monoculture so toxic, but it is definitely a monoculture.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Current Firefox is very resource-friendly and minimalistic - most days, it even takes less than 2 minutes to close the application, on my Core i7-based laptop.
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net...
Firefox has been around long enough and on enough platforms to bring email archives to the cloud and web bookmarks to permanance.
Be the solution to the world's most vexing problem. Saving a trilion emails and parsing which 1% matters.
JJ
I'm sure he would have. It was the person he was responding to who should call them Chrome Applications.
I can't see myself using webmail. Ultimately, I download all my email.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Dear Firefox,
Thank you for playing a small part in protecting the Internet from monoculture. I am sad to report that since Mozilla came out over 20 years ago, I have lost freedom up and down the Internet supply chain. For years you have protected me at the browser level, and even the email comm level......well perhaps not since that is an open channel to marketers......but every day I can feel my freedom being eroded. I feel it when I can no longer just publish to an FTP server to share my creation on any device.... no I have to publish to an app store, and be reviewed for corporate compatibility. Heaven forbid I create a new more efficient ad-hoc content launcher. The wild Internet forest of my youth is overrun with walled gardens holding herds of captive users grown dumb on the prescribed meals of content sanitized for consumption.
Is the laptop now the mainframe of our time?
Is the "Smart Phone" the AOL-sanitized Internet of the modern world?
Where is the P2P promise of the network as the computer?
I don't want another app that chains me to the contract of next year's Internet access device
Oh Firefox, I miss the sound of a modem handshake as all the social contract I needed to access the collective consciousness of my species.
Oh Firefox, my handshake has been co-opted by the telephone monopoly.
I have been forced to sign a contracts for my music, my access, the internet rig in my hand is the manacle to my labor.
My profile has been packaged, my use of the internet has been analyzed profiled and packaged to the highest bidder.
Is my Internet self free? Am I now just a virtual asset on their ledger?
How can you let them take money from my family and then sell us as slaves to their customers.
Firefox Free us your users!
Firefox, I ask you to break down the walls of the gardens, let the consumer cows run free into wild pastures and evolve into proud bulls of evolution and growth.
Break this quagmire dam and give the new generation the meritocracy of the USENET of yore.
- @shinkaze
I haven't been paying close attention, but I believe IE's use has dropped pretty hard. I wouldn't say Chrome has just been sniping Firefox.
Regardless, FF is still the most configurable browser I know of. I like Chrome, but FF has plug-ins that give it superpowers Chrome still can't match. And THAT is Firefox's raison d'etre.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
when i started the pyjamas-desktop project i assumed that the "open-ness" that is written into the mozilla foundation charter would be an inviolate quantity that they would adhere to. taking this on faith i found the python-hulahop bindings of the OLPC project to be perfect to allow HTML5 DOM to be entirely (even exclusively) manipulated *python-side* instead of using javascript.
for anyone not familiar with the difference between pyxpcomext and python-hulahop, pyxpcomext was a project funded in 2000 by the mozilla foundation to *literally* embed python - making it a peer language of javascript - *within* a firefox browser. you downloaded a whopping 10mbyte extension for either linux or windows and you could do *not* just script language equals javascript and it would work, *including* accessing the *FULL* and complete DOM manipulation functions that we normally expect to have from javascript (exclusively, as it turns out in most peoples' mindsets).
python-hulahop on the other hand is (or was) a pygtk widget which allowed one to create a GTK window that happened to have a Gecko (HTML5/DOM) engine running in it, which *happened* also, amazingly, to provide one with the full set of DOM manipulation functions, starting from a python function GetDOMDocument() and going from there to the thousands of functions one normally expects to be the exclusive monopolistic domain of javascript.
the irony is that the python-hulahop project was only created so that the OLPC team could create their own embedded browser (in python), and they went to the trouble of using just a tiny fraction of the available functionality to implement the "Go" button, "Back" button, history and so on, all using the python bindings to the internal XPCOM interface that allows direct access to the full functionality of the Gecko Engine.
one other thing is needed to be explained before we can get on to what the problem is: XPCOM was "inspired" by Microsoft COM, and it *could* have been absolutely brilliant. COM is... deeply awe-inspiringly powerful, it is that flexible and ubiquitous. you may have heard me mention in the past that COM is what allows binary Active-X components compiled *TWO DECADES* ago to still be useful and useable on modern Windows (and Wine) systems today, even though in some cases the company that created them will have gone out of business.
technically the problem with XPCOM is that they forgot to implement co-classes, meaning that the only choice available to them is to *remove* quotes broken quotes functions and to constantly upgrade upgrade upgrade. this problem is at the heart of every single complaint for the past *TEN YEARS* by 3rd party developers using the Gecko Engine in java or c++ applications. they're SICK of having to recompile their applications to suit the mozilla foundation's schedule, particularly as it is such a mammoth task and may need to be done frequently (especially due to a security fix).
so with that as background we start to get some hints as to inherent problems that have been stressing out the developers for some considerable time. ...so what did they do about it? well, they responded to the "threat" of webkit (the engine behind chrome) by announcing a "speed, speed, speed" pathological binge - this was around 2010 or 2011. the ABSOLUTE top priority became not to be "open" - even to the extent of violating the spirit *and* the letter of the mozilla foundation charter - but to be "The Best". "The Fastest".
one of the first things that were removed was a single line from a header file - a "friend class" declaration. this one tiny change was utterly profound: it was a key absolutely critical change that prevented and prohibited the python-hulahop source code from accessing the XPCOM infrastructure. without that "friend class" declaration, there was absolutely no way that the GNU/Linux distros could take the standard gecko / xulrunner source code and have hulahop get that key strategic pointer to the Gecko Engine's top level XPCOM object.
So we know the Mozilla code for the most part is finally reliable. I think it's performance time, it really is time for this to kick into high gear, ASAP.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Elect...
http://roundcube.net/
There's even a Bitnami stack for it: https://bitnami.com/stack/roundcube.
While potentially overkill, Horde is a nifty groupware stack: http://www.horde.org/
Firefox is our weapon to tame misbehaving behemoths. Be it Microsoft. Be it Google. Be it Apple.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I've used Thunderbird since the beginning of time it seems.
I can see why Firefox was created, and I used it quite happily for years. But when it kept memory-leaking worse and worse with every release, I had to let it go. (My job necessarily involves a LOT of web browsing and tabs... and no, I don't work for a porn site.) Chrome does what I need it to, never locks the HDD light on with swap activity, and I cannot remember the last time it crashed. It's fast, and has all the function I require.
GMail. I have essentially infinite storage, access on every internet device in the world, a nearly-perfect spam filter, a great search engine (which is necessary as I do not use folders), and it's fast.
I know what Google "charges" for Chrome and GMail (privacy) and it's a price I'm willing to pay for two products that have made my life much easier.
It is understandable that adding new features is fun and easy but what is needed most is to make Internet browsers more secure!
The question is if the Firefox developers have any good ideas to increase security or not.
Since when did people on Slashdot start confusing such "nerd" obvious things? Maybe I am getting "old".
1) Chrome's layout engine is not based on WebKit
2) Firefox's layout engine is not based on WebKit
3) Opera's layout engine is not based on WebKit
4) And for what it's worth, it was a big deal when Apple chose KHTML over Gecko when they started developing Safari.
Now get off my lawn!
The only way back is if they can dare to unfuck the UI
and ditch australis...
I don't use chrome because I can stand the UI, I don't use that steaming POS Internet Exploder which apes chrome, and I have to run an addon to get a sensible UI on firefox FFS.
All I wanted was a nice fast netscape like brower with the mail client split off nicely...
Firefox was an also ran pile of poo. It may sound juvenile but it is the simple truth.
Netscape was briefly ahead but Opera and Internet Explorer were better browsers. Not once, not briefly but for years.
"Firefox" was at best a crude over-hyped rebranding attempt to convince people to give the failed Netscape Navigator another go. It was no great leap forward, only yet another rebranding when the Mozilla engine had finally stopped sucking rocks.
I used Seamonkey for years and I still use the other damn browser out of habit but frankly they are a case study in pointless rewriting and failing to find a real target audience.
1. Cheap, sub 7 inch unlockable firefox tablet, and 2. In-browser support for browsing zipped webpage bundles.
.. what is wrong with your laptop? In 2 minutes I could shut firefox down, reboot the computer, get back to the desktop, fire up firefox, shut it down again, and still have some time to twiddle my thumbs.
I have complained for years about memory leaks, all to no avail. I have asked for a way to enumerate memory/cpu usage on a per-tab basis - all of this also goes on deaf ears. They just turn around and pass the buck and blame the addins. In the meantime I routinely have to kill firefox and then restart it. It apologizes about how embarrassing it is that Firefox has "crashed", but the real embarrassment are the memory leaks.
I use Chrome some, but I can't say that I really like it that much. But I am increasingly disgusted with Firefox, and as time goes on, I use it less and less..
Please, PLEASE implement CardDAV for Thunderbird. The SoGO plugin doesn't work at all for me, and it doesn't support multiple accounts. Some time ago I read a Mozilla ticket saying that they were delaying CardDAV development because they were reimplementing the whole address book, but that work was abandoned and incomplete.
CardDAV is the only thing Thunderbird is missing, the only thing keeping it from being a complete Outlook replacement.
But I have to say, the last year of Firefox has SUCKED!!! It crashesit's slow...it chews up huge amount of resourcesit just SUCKS. And I know I'm going to get flamed with a bunch of "it's not Firefox, it's Flash/Java/other plugin", but that doesn't change the fact that Internet Explorer is handling the same plugins and isn't crashing/slow/eating memory. I'm at the point where I only have 5 websites which I'll use firefox for because I know it can handle them okay. The rest of my surfing has gone back to IE. I'm praying that the next version improves on this, but I'm losing faith...
Firefox abandoned its roots. It started as a "light weight" version of netscape. It is now by far the most bloated application living on my PC.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Chrome uses Blink, so does Opera. Firefox uses Gecko, so of your list, it's just Safari using WebKit. Not a monoculture.
'15 megabytes can save you 15% of frustrations on the internet..'
oh, wait. it's bloated way the fuck past 15 megs now.
Fri Feb 6 2015 22:52:58 PST
This list is too long for Bugzilla's little mind; the Next/Prev/First/Last buttons won't appear on individual bugs.
Status: UNCONFIRMED, NEW, ASSIGNED, REOPENED
Product: Firefox
10000 bugs found.
Firefox bug list (probably incomplete because of a query limit of 10000)
You would think that with that many open bugs, they would know what to work on.
And I don't mean just close them as "won't fix", but actually work on them, fix them.
Pale Moon 64-bit is Firefox without the "self-induced failure" mentioned in the parent comment.
Pale Moon with Adblock Latitude is AdBlock Plus without the corruption mentioned in this story: Google, Amazon 'n' pals fork out for AdBlock Plus 'unblock' -- report
It is not necessary to use the Classic Theme Restorer add-on in Pale Moon because Pale Moon didn't change the user interface.
Firefox is becoming less and less stable. When many windows and tabs are open, the memory usage begins increasing even when there is no activity, and then Firefox crashes. Now, in recent versions, Firefox crashes but often doesn't report the crashes. The screen just becomes black. The crash reports aren't reliable, they show far fewer crashes than actually occurred.
Yahoo paid Mozilla Foundation to change the search configuration of Firefox, without notifying users. Most users of Firefox don't now how to change it back. Instead, they may change to another browser. See this Slashdot story: Firefox Signs Five-Year Deal With Yahoo, Drops Google as Default Search Engine. But "Yahoo search" is just Microsoft Bing search. It's mind-bending: Microsoft is paying Yahoo to corrupt Firefox.
The newest version of Firefox took the "Duplicate Tab" choice out of the right-click menu of each tab, and put that choice in the right-click menu of the displayed page. Often, however, right-clicking on the page itself brings up a different menu because of the way the page is coded underneath the mouse pointer. So it may be necessary to try right-clicking on several areas of the page to find the Duplicate Tab menu choice.
In Pale Moon, the right-click menu contains the "Duplicate Tab" choice in both the tab and the displayed page.
Apparently Mozilla Foundation is trying to discourage the use of the Thunderbird email client. The newest version of Thunderbird, 31.4.0, has the Save-As bug. All file saves are Save As, and suggest a different file name than the name with which the email was saved before. The Save-As bug was reported in September 2014, and has not been fixed in more than 4 months. Is it possible that the bug is deliberate?
I haven't found the bug report of the Save-As bug in Thunderbird. Here is the report for SeaMonkey Composer, the same software that Thunderbird uses: When I click save, the button does what Save As should do, even if I previously saved said file.
Other obvious bugs were recently introduced into Thunderbird. For example, the fields for email addresses are now much more difficult to read.
Pale Moon has been removing some of the issues in their FossaMail version of Thunderbird. I haven't tested it to see if the Save-As bug is fixed.
The underlying problem is that Mozilla Foundation needs better management. At present, Mozilla Foundation management is sometimes excellent and sometimes very unreliable.
Please don't "upgrade" Thunderbird. I stopped using Firefox when it became a bloated eye candy. Hopefully, the Thunderbird development will restrict itself to security fixes.
...when PDF display in Chrome is *significantly* slower than in Firefox. I just switched to mostly Chrome because I watch a lot of Youtube lecture videos and HTM5 support esp. for Youtube still is lacking in FF, but whenever I open a PDF I often find myself stopping Chrome and opening FF just for the PDF. Firefox's inline PDF display is a clear winner by a big margin over the slooooow Chrome. Once it's loaded it's fine, but Chrome takes about 10 times as long to load the same file. Since that's hardly due to download speed differences I guess it's processing of the incoming PDF is much slower.
If I use a chat program, I use a chat program that everyone uses not one that happens to be integrated with whatever browser I use. If I use a pdf reader, I use a pdf reader that's good and not integrated in my browser to the level that it is annoying me. If I use a browser, I want the browser to be fast, responsive and not stuck all the time because some slow loading pages or slow plugins.
Seriously. Remove half your code base and FF might stand a chance in the future.
It is still my primary browser, but if I ever find a minimal-resource browser that offers functionality equal to 'NoScript' and 'Adblock-Edge' I'll switch.
SeaMonkey.
It is still my primary browser, but if I ever find a minimal-resource browser that offers functionality equal to 'NoScript' and 'Adblock-Edge' I'll switch.
Have you tried the Opera-derivatives like Otter and Fifth? I always found Opera-like blocking superior to Adblock-like.
Apparently, people from Mozilla Foundation are attacking comments that give facts about Firefox they don't want people to know.
"Chrome development seems to not only be heavy-handed, but sometimes smacks of the old days of Microsoft in terms of compatibility/heterogeneity."
/svc
/medsvc
I agree. That's why I stopped using Google's Chrome. On one computer Google installed three system services without notifying me:
Google Update Service (gupdate), "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe"
Google Update Service (gupdatem), "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe"
Google Updater Service (gusvc), "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Common\Google Updater\GoogleUpdaterService.exe"
Why does Google want to run programs every time I use that computer, rather than notifying me of available updates when I run Chrome? I wasn't asked if it was okay to do that.
Also shocking: Installing Google Chrome caused the installation of a Google Chrome plug-in into Firefox. Why does Google want to have control over my use of Firefox?
seems firefox has turned tails on its customers and is now acting like a trojan..
when u click the red "close" X in the top right corner, it does not shut down the browser, it remains running in the background, to close the actual browser you have to open the options menu and choose "exit firefox" which looks like a power button at the bottom of the options menu.. very deceiving.
uninstalling now.
warn yr friends.
"Pale Moon is an Open Source, Firefox-based web browser available for Microsoft Windows, Android and Linux (with other operating systems in development), focusing on efficiency and ease of use. Make sure to get the most out of your browser! link
I still use suite version, SeaMonkey (used to be called Mozilla). It was designed since Netscape days, especially its Communicator.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
"The memory leak? It simply doesnt exist." -- Part of the parent comment.
If I have a lot of windows and tabs open in Firefox, the memory usage begins increasing even when I am doing nothing with Firefox. Eventually there is a crash. With the most recent versions of Firefox, the crash seldom starts the crash reporter. Instead of reporting the crash, the screen goes black. So, there are more crashes than are being reported.
I posted this +5 comment 9 years ago: Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.
In 2006, there were only 12 excuses for the instability. Now there are many more.
Mozilla Foundation
Top 21 Excuses
for Not Fixing the
Firefox Memory and CPU Hogging bugs
These are actual excuses given at one time or another. They are not all the excuses, just the top 21.
1) Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly build. [The same memory and CPU hogging bug has been reported many, many times over a period of TEN years.]
2) Yes, this bug exists, but other things are more important. [The bug eventually causes Firefox to take 100% of the power of one CPU, and makes Windows 7 unusable, even after Firefox is killed. The bug affects the heaviest users of Firefox, those who do a lot of research online.]
3) Yes, this bug exists, but it is not a common occurrence. [Numerous users have reported the bug. See the links.]
4) Works for me. [The bug is complicated to reproduce, so the developers did a simplified test, which didnt show the bug.]
5) No one has posted a TalkBack report. [If they had read the bug report, they would know that there is often no TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too, or a TalkBack report is not generated. TalkBack cannot generate a report if the bug takes 100% of the CPU time.]
6) If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug. [They didnt bother to reproduce the bug using the detailed information provided.]
7) This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is invalid. [The other bugs arent specified.]
8) You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. [But the same use does not crash any version of Chrome or Opera.]
9) I dont like the way you worded your bug report. [So, he didnt read it or think about it.]
10) You should run a debugger and find what causes this problem yourself. [Then when you have done most of the work, tell us what causes the problem, and we may fix it.]
11) Many bugs that are filed arent important to 99.99% of the users.
12) If you are saying bad things about Mozilla and Firefox, you must be trolling. [They say this even though Firefox and Mozilla instability is beginning to be reported in media such as Information Week. See the links to magazine articles in this Slashdot comment: Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.]
13) Your problem is probably caused by using extensions. [These are extensions advertised on the Firefox and Mozilla web site, and recommended.]
14) Your problem is probably caused by a corrupt profile. [The same bug has been reported many times over a period of five years. One of the reports discusses an extensive test in both Linux and Windows that used a completely clean installation of the operating systems, not just a clean profile. The CPU hogging bug and instability was just as severe.]
15) If you are technically knowledgeable, you can spend several hours (or days) trying to discover the problem: Standard diagnostic - Firefox
So I just use Chrome.
Slashdot removes "& # 39 ;" HTML characters (Without spaces or quote marks that is an apostrophe.). So, there are many places in the above comment where the ' characters aren't shown.
Disband and move on with your life.
Mozilla has been a mess for a couple of years already. Just let it die.
I use Seamonkey for most of the critical stuff like online banking and also for Email. (on my previous machine I used Thunderbird for Email, but I figured that since I had Seamonkey running anyway I might as well use the mail section of it.
For general browsing (like /. ) I still use FF
I don't use Chrome, and I don't hsve a Google or GMail account.
BTW SM is now up to 2.32.1
Up to 3.6.
Then they decided, lets make it worse, follow the gnome approach and remove all useful settings, next they decided "it does not look like chrome" and today its not the browser it used to be.
http://www.cnet.com/news/ex-op...
APK
P.S.=> I haven't tried it myself, but if it has all the niceties of "OLD Opera" (such as by site preferences - my personal favorite)? Then, it's going to be great - that's a "tech preview" but from what I've seen, it's already, debug-code & all, up there in performance with the other major browsers-> http://www.networkworld.com/ar...
... apk
Your testing convinced me: I *was* going to "give it a go" myself, but after reading what you've written, & so I'll take your word on it & hold off (until it's finalized @ least).
Me? Well - I'm *STILL* mostly using Opera 12.17 64-bit (but it doesn't render ALL pages well)!
Why??
It has a LOT of features (like that "by site preferences", ability there to control cookies, addons like FLASH, scripting, IFrames - all sources of online "problems" etc. - et al) that other browsers, don't, MINUS addons. What I liked BEST about Opera, was exactly that - it has "everything under the sun you need" and addons, though they exist for it, aren't necessary for MY particular online needs in a browser's all.
IE 11 being a prime candidate - you disable scripting on it, & every site that has a script NAGS YOU TO DEATH that it "wants to run this script AND that script" each time on sees a scripting tag - I only run scripts where I absolutely need them (online banking, shopping, etc.)
In any event: I've been THINKING of trying the latest FireFoxes (in 64-bit like Waterfox OR PaleMoon) since FF's, in my experience @ least, as good as IE is for rendering pages of *ANY* kind & design, well.
* Lastly - Nice to have a DECENT conversation with you, for once, lol...
APK
P.S.=> See? It *IS* possible - "will wonders NEVER cease"... apk
I any day prefer FF over Chrome, it is much more developer friendly (no certificate warning permanent store/page source reloads/do not check updates everytime/etc), but the ridiculous over-use of version #s and breaking of addons incompatible with new versions ticked me off. I would rather be with a less-friendly browser which doesnt break its addons time to time.
Email is not just the way of the future. My kids use imessage to communicate with their trendy friends with Apple gear. Indeed we needed to buy them an ipad touch just so they could keep up. My wife uses Facebook to communicate. Less fashionable people communicate with Kick, and a few neanderthals even use Skype.
The idea that somebody on GMail or Outlook or even Thunderbird cam communicate with an iPhone is an accident of history. Why would anybody want to support technology that can help others steal the customers that they own? Blogs and RSS are already dead, long live Facebook! Email will follow.
See subject: Vs. bogus downmods - I'm not stupid! It's advertisers, malware makers/botnet masters, webmasters & no doubt, inferior competitors.
Plus, 100's here (+ elsewhere) that use hosts files.
NOW - I wouldn't repost (just to spite them + to get my points out to others), & *ESPECIALLY* if they could prove ALL of my points wrong in favor of hosts vs. other "so-called 'solutions'" that are, to be blunt about it, VERY inferior on many levels (one of which you've pointed out in your exploration of various webbrowsers now - memory efficiency, messagepassing overheads, cpu use, & what have you).
Barb - lastly: Have you considered what I said above, as to WHO is doing it? After all - THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES "THREATENED" by the technical superiority of hosts files & thus, ARE the logical culprits *trying* their "you're spamming" bullshit directed my way (quit downmodding me then, with NO VALID JUSTIFICATIONS why on technical grounds too, which "gives away their game" & also SHOWS they cannot take me down OR stop me... & that, IS that, on that note!)
QUESTION: *WHY* do you think Google removed hosts from Android KITKat & beyond? That alone PROVES my points in & of itself!
I suspected you & yes, still do, doing that. You KNOW why -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
(Ala when you told others to stalk & harass me by AC posts, how do you THINK that looked to me? I also know you're a webmaster as well... no ads = NO MONEY, & hosts, block ads).
I won't stop, until the idiots vainly attempting to STOP ME, stop doing that. Now, *IF& they want me to stop? Do it right: PROVE ALL OF MY POINTS ABSOLUTELY WRONG.
APK
P.S.=> Leaning towards FireFox again in 64-bit form (WaterFox &/or PaleMoon) - neither had (@ least in past models) as much "natively built-in" as Opera did - I do have HIGH HOPES for VIVALDI though (I wish Jon Von Techner would open source the PRESTO engine - I'd be on it like "white-on-rice" in fact)... apk
On your sexchange? If you felt like a girl in a guy's body do as you see fit. 1 of my friends lived w/ a man that did what you have. He told me the estrogen doses made the guy go thru WILD emotional swings. Maybe that's part of what you underwent. Since you were a guy (full blown) before, it's not like guys don't go thru those too (especially over women - @ least when you're young). I had friends in this life turn up gay, for instance. Did I "hate them" for it? Not at all. I tried to make peace with you before. WebmistressRachel your pal told me you said no. Too bad.
I have no need for using an account here. I see no benefits to it (There's downside, making one too easy to track for trolling & I've had "threats" of that directed my way here too -> http://it.slashdot.org/comment... & I've had trolls say I fucked my mother, raped + murdered kids, I suck dick, my wares are malware, "impersonating" me, catching SOME (mmell & Jeremiah Cornelius)). I don't intend to make it ANY easier on those type of scum by getting a registered account here that gains me nothing.
You left coding? Fine. I used to work w/ law enforcement & left it for coding. I understand.
APK
P.S.=> What I do knowis motivations. Money's a HUGE one!
Blocking ads adversely affects the marketing/advertising crowd, & webmasters. They're going to *TRY* to "take me down" (they always fail vs. facts & truths I put out).
Inferior competitors that do less & use more (AdBlock/Ghostery etc.) will for the SAME reasons. Malware Makers/Botnet masters? Same deal, since hosts work to stop them also!
Google removing hosts on KitKat onward PROVES they're scared.
Man... it's ALL about "The Holy Dollar" for them - for me? Far from it - it's about doing the RIGHT THING in this life, & via hosts, that's giving folks more speed, security, reliability, + even anonymity (to a lesser extent) &, it works!
To me? It's MORE about Karma (in the real world, not here)... apk
Every time they added features the addon developers took a hit. In many cases the features already existed as addons. They kept the addon developers busy because for every feature they added there was someone who wanted to disable it. But the worst thing they did was to keep changing the API. Some of these changes required pretty much rewritting the addon just to continue functioning.
A lot of the addon developers have walked away. A few addons have been revived from dormancy or forked, but many have just died off. The features are still needed but the developers aren't willing to keep rewriting their code. There are only a few addons that are worth maintaining. And without all the addons Firefox is just another browser.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Couldn't understand why you'd do that as I am not in your shoes. I look @ the late Michael Jackson (whom I feel was a good hearted person/innocent child imo) altering himself to be Dianna Ross - Didn't work out well.
E.G.-> Doctors wanted to tear up my leg after a sports injury. Told them no after seeing Joe Namath not comeback off his knees as an example thereof. Arthroscopy has a LONG WAYS TO GO. I'm walking, even running (took years) minus their help though.
WebmistressRachel said she'd LITERALLY stop:
"Anyways, as agreed, I will now stop trolling you." - by webmistressrachel (903577) on Monday April 18, @08:00PM (#35862196)
& hasn't - there's others.
I know who doesn't LIKE hosts (or adblockers in general):
Again - Google proved it to me in KitKAT for ANDROID literally removing hosts!
Plus, MS (VISTA/Win8 debacle w/ "Windows Defender" blocking hosts - easily gotten around)
BOTH ADVERTISING GIANTS! Both "tipping their hand & showing me their 'tell'".
Want me to stop? Prove me wrong.
If they were to pay me to stop, like AdBlock? I would (removing the program from the web entirely). I think adblock's nuts. Those types of people, you cross them? Eventually, they say "We gave you the gold, you fucked us - now you take the lead!" (bullet). AdBlock, imo, forking, did.
Ironic - Advertisers used to be allies of mine! They control pursestrings in magazine, books - they are NOT GOING TO HELP ME NOW for sure & IF *anything*, will attempt to discredit me:I strongly doubt I'm wrong.
Lastly: Ever heard the saying "Whom the Gods would destroy, they first must make mad"? Whenever you see/hear "he's crazy" etc.?? That's the game afoot. DON'T HELP THEM ALONG. Keep it to yourself. Friendly advice that.
APK
P.S.=> Opera 12.17 64-bit's getting "long in the tooth" by FORCE e.g. YouTube - told me it's "deprecated" & so is FLASH - An OPERA FEATURE "saved me" (IDENTIFY AS FF so I still use flash vs. HTML5 there) - how long though?
For YOU it's the right thing. What I'd do I can't say. I'm no expert in it. I'm not in the same place as you there.
---
On hosts? So far so good - Thus, I'm not one to mess with something that has been working.
How do I know that?
hpHosts (owned by malwarebytes) had to move to AMAZON "Un-DDoS'able" servers.
Is it "mere coincidence" demand's gone up SO MUCH on hosts data since I've used THIS VERY SITE as a "p.r. mechanism" (doing what advertisers themselves do except I use undeniable facts - which is to be "LOUD" as you call it "yelling from the rooftops")?
I'd say NO coincidence - it didn't get so heavy in demand for them for a decade (or so) there until I did this here.
I couldn't do it without their help.. They're out there pushing it as am I (not here though on their end) & we're a GOOD team!
Correlation vs. causation?? Perhaps/perhaps not.
Seems to be working & makes sense since so many come here - "many eyes" works.
It's why "primetime" advertising works. PURE "reverse-psychology" really.
Barb - in my 1st of 2 degrees I took "marketing science" & psychology of it - I know, from the 'inside', how they work (mostly mindgames like "jump on the bandwagon" & 1/2 truths)
---
On reg'd acct? Again: No point for me/NO REAL GAINS, only losses - no thanks. It'd make me a trackable animal & what do advertisers also use? Heh - trackers!
(I'm no tagged animal & refuse to be, it's that simple).
---
As far as normal users, hey - it's no challenge to them:
For my naysayers it is & they NEVER meet the mark.
To users here it's merely extolling factual virtues of hosts vs. far weaker in abilities competition in browser addons that use more resources & do less, using verifiable tests' facts!
A shitty part personal program project? YOU do PR - I like it as much as doing helpfiles! Necessary evils.
APK
P.S.=> Not a "very hard sell" here (considering it's free/not selling anything & isn't "pre-crippled" by default + hosts do more with less - can't beat it)...apk
Especially vs. bogus downmod attempts to stifle free speech: Vs. myself? They're powerless & I love it. It made me really laugh when you said "some people here are upset by it" & again - I'll tell you EXACTLY who they are:
1.) Advertisers
2.) Webmasters in collusion with them
3.) Malware makers/Botnet herders
4.) Inferior competitors
* Me? Hehehe - Honestly: I am LAUGHING AT THEM specifically now. Why? Like with hostfiles vs. them?? They are EASY to "nullify"...
(It just must kill them that their "1 weasel weapon" in rotten downmods = zilch vs. myself)
APK
P.S.=> Scumbags like that are outclassed easily by myself - every single time! That's the way it is, and the way it will ALWAYS be... apk