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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 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
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.
I'm not aware of anyone who used to use email who has stopped using email, are you? Given how effective spam blockers are these days, I'm not feeling a need to drop SMTP quite yet myself.
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.
you shouldn't judge a browser on it's ability to support java and flash
If it limits your ability to browse today, especially to site you want to visit then it is relevant when choosing a browser to use.
I can't see myself using webmail. Ultimately, I download all my email.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
If you have a webcam and want to use it, how about running one of dozens of popular webcam programs? Webcam software doesn't need to be built into your browser, any more than "Mozilla Hello" (or is it Loop?) VOIP phone calling, etc. The reason I *quit* using Firefox was because it ceased to be a web browser and started trying to do everything. Each update ships with yet more pretty "features," enabled by default, many of which can't be completely disabled and therefore still suck up RAM even if you never use them.
I already *have* a fucking operating system, all I wanted Firefox to be is a web browser. They did it well for a long time. Nowadays Firefox just invokes the old bloatware life cycle of Netscape Navigator turning into Netscape Communicator, trying to cram everything you use your computer for into one single program.
Keep in mind that happy users are silent users. I use Firefox, and enjoy it. It runs fast, supports the plugins I want, and seems to be quite stable. More than that, it largely keeps out of my way, so honestly, I don't think about the browser all that much. I've never thought of submitting feedback on that site, because I have no real feedback to offer. That is, I have no real problems, and can't think offhand of anything the program is really lacking.
The only way you can get a true picture is if you get a random sampling among regular Firefox users. Any action initiated by the user to send feedback automatically will skew the result.
If 86% of users didn't like Firefox, I don't think they'd have the market share they do now. BTW, let's take a look at one of the sad faces I picked from the top of that list:
Stop that annoying paranoid shit about "update you flash or it will burn all your family to ashes and eat your left eye while pooping in your mouth". It's not THAT dangerous, user should have a possibility to shut it OFF. And not by clicking on every damned page to allow older plugin work, but by just choosing that option in the settings. I thrusted(sic) you, you were the last normal browser in a pile of shiny useless shit that thinks that user is an idiot. Now you doing this. Damn.
This user apparently wants an option to stay silent about older versions of Flash, which undoubtedly have security issues that need fixing. Should Mozilla "fix" this problem to the user's satisfaction? It's ironic that the user complains the browser "that thinks that user is an idiot" when he's advocating doing something incredibly stupid - not keeping all his plugins current.
Here's another frowny faced gem:
Please fix Norton toolbar 2014.7.8.23 been to long now makes me not want to use Firefox .....
Mozilla apparently needs to fix the Norton toolbar, or this user won't be happy. Good luck with that Mozilla!
I'm not saying that Firefox doesn't have legitimate issues, but my point is that looking at a feedback site such as that one is going to give you very, very skewed results. I've just pointed out two examples on the front page.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
Your post advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
(x) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(x) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(x) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!