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TechRepublic: Mozilla 'Is Desperately Needed to Save the Web' (techrepublic.com)
"I can't remember the last time I cared about Mozilla," writes Matt Asay at TechRepublic. "I also can't remember a time when we needed it more."
An anonymous reader quotes TechRepublic:
Mozilla's Firefox is almost a rounding error in desktop market share, and nonexistent in mobile browser market share. It offers a few other services, like Pocket, but largely gets ignored... This is a mistake. Our world is increasingly mediated by the internet, and that internet has just a few gatekeepers, collecting tolls as we browse. As Python guru Matt Harrison put it, "Vendors control the default browser which 99.9% of people use." Those vendors are happy to sell us access to information. Nothing about it is free. You are most definitely the product.
On mobile, where the majority of the world's content is now consumed, Google and Facebook own eight of the top 10 apps, with apps devouring 87% of our time spent on smartphones and tablets, according to new comScore data. For that remaining 13% of time spent on the mobile web, Google and Apple offer the two dominant browsers... the majority of our time online is now mediated by just a few megacorporations, and for the most part their top incentive is to borrow our privacy just long enough to target an ad at us. Then there's Mozilla, an organization whose mantra is "Internet for people, not profit." That feels like a necessary voice to add to today's internet oligopoly, but it's not one we're hearing... We clearly need an organization standing up for web freedom, as expecting Google to do that is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Google does many great things, but its clear incentive is to sell ads. We are Google's product, as the saying goes.
The article applauds the Mozilla-sponsored Rust programming language as promising, "but not to save the web from the all-consuming embrace of Facebook and Google, especially as they wall off the experience in apps... "If I sound like I don't know what to propose Mozilla should do, it's because I don't. I simply feel strongly that the role Mozilla played in the early browser wars needs to be resurrected to save the web today."
On mobile, where the majority of the world's content is now consumed, Google and Facebook own eight of the top 10 apps, with apps devouring 87% of our time spent on smartphones and tablets, according to new comScore data. For that remaining 13% of time spent on the mobile web, Google and Apple offer the two dominant browsers... the majority of our time online is now mediated by just a few megacorporations, and for the most part their top incentive is to borrow our privacy just long enough to target an ad at us. Then there's Mozilla, an organization whose mantra is "Internet for people, not profit." That feels like a necessary voice to add to today's internet oligopoly, but it's not one we're hearing... We clearly need an organization standing up for web freedom, as expecting Google to do that is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Google does many great things, but its clear incentive is to sell ads. We are Google's product, as the saying goes.
The article applauds the Mozilla-sponsored Rust programming language as promising, "but not to save the web from the all-consuming embrace of Facebook and Google, especially as they wall off the experience in apps... "If I sound like I don't know what to propose Mozilla should do, it's because I don't. I simply feel strongly that the role Mozilla played in the early browser wars needs to be resurrected to save the web today."
... except Mozilla.
Every release they make the browser worse. Their mantra is "just like Chrome, except slower and with more bugs." No wonder people switch to Chrome.
Firefox is supposed to be the browser that people use because they care - they want to customize, they want features, they want control. But with every release this slips a little farther away. Things constantly stop working, and it gets harder and harder for the extension makers to keep up.
Oddly, Android is the one place where Firefox is still actually better than Chrome - because it's got a real ad blocker. Sure, it's slow and crashes all the time, but it's a worthwhile tradeoff.
But at least there's Pocket! Oh yay.
Mozilla is too busy trying to be an inferior version of Google as evidenced in their attempts to convert Firefox into an inferior version of Chrome.
Mozilla lost its philosophy and soul during that period when it was subsidized by Google, and that's when everything started turning to shit for the company.
As far as wasting money on diversity programs and social justice instead of improving its products, well the latest financial report that emphasizes ruin talks for itself.
Forget about Mozilla, it's time to give some of the Firefox forks some support and attention. Mozilla has been corrupted by Google and its philosophy.
The entire browser is going to be hidden under one giant hamburger button. No menus, no URL bar, no scroll bars, hell no rendering window. Just one giant hamburger button that crashes the browser when you click it.
You heard it here first, folks.
Interesting, post. I'll check it out!!
... As long as you don't think any incorrect thoughts. Then you can't work there any more.
We absolutely need projects like Mozilla's to fight once again against monopolistic powers. But their focus must be on technology and OSS. Not prosecuting unrelated thought crimes.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
I started with SPRY Mosaic. I remember seeing boxed Netscape in stores - it was commercial back then. At some point I remember trying a free version, maybe shareware, of Netscape. I liked it better than Mosaic and switched. Not long after Internet Explorer seemed better because it supported background pictures and music. Then Netscape 3.0 came out with frames which was super cool back then. I've been a Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox user for most of the past 25 years, but there were times when I switched to IE when Netscape wasn't doing very well (4.x - 6.x). Now I keep a copy of Chrome around for sites that are broken in Firefox. It sucks that things don't always work in Firefox anymore.
Firefox at one time had nearly half of all browser usage, but then they dumbed it down and moved things around just to follow fashions and trends, or just for the hell of it. And when users complained, they told them to shove it, more or less, which made their users go to chrome, safari, Opera, and even edge (lol).
Firefox dug their own grave. As noble as their intentions may be to open up the Web, maybe they should first start by respecting their own customers.
Selfish viewpoint but Makes my job easier. Hope Edge drops by the wayside as well. With desktop and mobile platforms already complicating things, two browsers is enough.
...specifically since January 8, 2008, working to be as irrelevant, feckless, and misguided as they are now. The only positive and notable thing they've done for the web in that time is Let's Encrypt.
Two versions of Firefox from now, they will jettison what made their browser great: the extensions. Mozilla needs a radical change in direction to save itself.
How will using firefox with ublock origin instead of chrome with ublock origin stop facebook or whoever tracking me or what?
what is the fucking point of this article?
Microsoft was punished because of the way it abused it's position and power in the market place. Linux is *chosen* by companies because of it's qualities (technical and otherwise), Linus doesn't go around twisting companies' arms.
I really don't see who you would punish and how.
I moved from Spry Mosaic to IE when I read about it in a magazine. This was IE version 2.0. Yes, it was primitive. Yes, it sucked. Why did I choose the at-the-time inferior IE over Netscape which reigned supreme? It was *free* - and I was poor. How quickly people forget Netscape cost something like $50 for a copy back in the day (this was the mid-90s, pre-Crashscape 4.x).
Linux is open source. It's not owned by anyone. Therefore, it can't be a monopoly when anyone can just fork it and compete with it.
Mozilla is more interested in funding pet political projects than actually developing their software. The fact that they're turning their software into a tweaked version of someone else's software with the engine swap-out does not help matters at all.
When I tried it circa 2014, it was just too slow. I gave up and moved to Chrome (only on Android). Is the Mozilla team making progress on Android?
why not aim for a secure browser audience...
Ditch SSL Certificate authorities unless users trusted them and verify the DNS responses (DNSsec) present that information to the user
This whole argument looks like a lot of hand waving and FUD. The only rational argument I can see is that we need to Save the Web from the oh so horrible fate of being controlled by corporations whose "top incentive is to borrow our privacy just long enough to target an ad at us". Just what is wrong with targeted advertising? How would resurrecting Firefox prevent it in any way?
In each of the country, nominate a fsf/Mozilla Evangelist and publish his name on Mozilla site. The person should openly persue their respective country's govt to ask Google,Apple,Microsoft to stop restrictive trave practices (like Google making it mandatory for vendors to install g-apps on thier phones). Secondly viral collection of user information without user's concent (Facebook's shadow profile, whasapp uploading whole contact list) should be pursued by Mozilla to make the govt ban it with serious fines.
Thirdly, if a user concent is had for one app, the same cannot be shared by another app even if the company owns the other app. Forthly, when a company closes, the identifyable user data should be destroyed. Fiftly, buying user data should be considered criminal. If MozillaIn each of the country, nominate a fsf/Mozilla Evangelist and publish his name on Mozilla site. The person should openly persue their respective country's govt to ask Google,Apple,Microsoft to stop restrictive trave practices (like Google making it mandatory for vendors to install g-apps on thier phones). Secondly viral collection of user information without user's concent (Facebook's shadow profile, whasapp uploading whole contact list) should be pursued by Mozilla to make the govt ban it with serious fines.
Thirdly, if a user concent is had for one app, the same cannot be shared by another app even if the company owns the other app. Forthly, when a company closes, the identifyable user data should be destroyed. Fiftly, buying user data should be considered criminal. If mozill can persue these rules within each country or union, that will be service to the society. Upvote me if you like my suggestions. can persue these rules within each country or union, that will be service to the society. Upvote me if you like my suggestions.
With the release of extention killing Firefox 57, which also comes with a clippy clone and a doge meme logo and another new theme worse than australis.
On November 14 there will be millions of browser refugees. Some will go back to 52 ESR or 56, others will experiment with forks of Firefox, but most will be sent to the clutches of Google and Microsoft.
We can stop this, we need to stage a coup against Mozilla and fire the traitors responsible for web extentions.
As far as I am concerned Mozilla can die. The company wanted to be political when they ousted Brendan Eich. Well the last thing I need to see is free speech being "saved" by people who clearly don't give a shit about it. Having Mozilla liberate the web will be a lot like Tibet being liberated by China.
This is such an incredibly stupid post that it can only have been put here as a seed for debate. For a start, Linux is not a company, nor is it a single person or group in any shape or form. It has no headquarters. The most that can be said is that it is a diffuse group who have co-operatively created something. You cannot take it to court "much like what was done against Microsoft". In any case there is nothing to take it to court for. Linux does not control or attempt to control what people do; it does not advertise and has no sales reps. It does not force anyone to install it. An analogy to "Linux" is "the world of sci-fi" or "astronomy". Try taking action against astronomy.
Anway, this is off-topic, nothing to do with browsers. Sorry, I've fed the troll.
but when i do, it's to say that articles like this are very right on.. I couldn't imagine using another browser besides firefox these days, and I feel a sense of dread when I have to use chrom(ium/e).. it's disheartening that I'm the weirdo.
US$0.02++
Firefox on Android is my everyday browser, I have no issues with it. I kinda appreciate it more when I see Google is tracking everything.
But then I also use Here maps instead of Google maps, because Google maps says "improve location by using wifi data... agree/disagree" and if you select "disagree" it closes. So I tell it to fuck off because I don't want anymore of Google's invasive tracking.
Google play is the last thing I want rid of, that's a huge piece of spyware that holds third party apps hostage. You take their surveillance, or you uninstall every app.
The entire browser is going to be... Just one giant hamburger button that crashes the browser when you click it.
No it won't crash the browser. It will get a a pack of hamburgers delivered to you together with a crate of cola. Don't worry about paying, it will debit you automatically. Then the hamburger button will be replaced by a theatre ticket button. And so on.
you must first save mozilla (from itself), before mozilla can save the internets.
It's that simple. The open standards internet has been taken over by shiny services like a commercial Usenet with a web interface that Facebook is.
We need an entirely new set of services and protocols with finished implementations of working and well designed applications that support them. Firefox used to be the best usable browser. Then chrome came along and had a great fast JavaScript engine, a new platform people could build client side logic on. In many ways Chrome is the new Flash, which makes it so attractive.
We just had this issue a few weeks ago. The internet we all use needs a redo. Hard encryption and signing on the lowest app protocol layer and by default with no option out, independant namecoin DNS, asynch and offline capable base protocols and services, an interactive capable web replacement that does away with the HTML 5/CSS bloat of today and a useful optional binary app format including baked font rendering, 3D, audio and some other gadgets people want. All new email/Usenet/IRC would also build on top of said base protocols. Bye bye spam, bye bye NSA, bye bye Farcebook and WhatsCrap.
Maybe Mozilla should put some effort into that. ... Just saying.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Reminds me of this gem from the Windows Insider forum:
Discussion: Use photos of hamburgers for the hamburger buttons
Edit: Captcha is 'hungry'
Yes, Mozilla is destroying the web with censorship together with George Soros! Fuck Mozilla!!!
There are many other options. Never touched Chrome... Google has been too big for a long time and I didn't want to feed it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I've been using Chrome for quite some time simply because it seamlessly allows me to have the same configured bookmarks whether I fire it up at home, at work or on my phone or tablet. Now at work we have very strong lock down policies on data sharing so keeping a common set of bookmarks somewhere like Dropbox or GoogleDocs isn't directly possible, but applications that use Google APIs to save data into a GMail profile are still allowed.
But the desktop version has become so horribly bloated that Chrome seems to always be the biggest memory and CPU user and on the mobile devices there is one extremely annoying default operation that Google could fix easily and won't:
Even though you're using a large screen tablet there is no option in Android Chrome to tell the browser to always use the desktop version of a web site, it always goes to the mobile version first then you have to click an option and reload the page. And as everyone knows, if you hit a website using a mobile device, you have better than a 50-50 chance of being spammed to download their app to view their content.
I've started using Opera on my Androids because at least it allows setting a global value to go to change the user agent so you get the desktop versions, for some reason Google won't add that even though it has been requested on Google Groups over and over, now if I can find a way to share bookmarks that will operate in the office I'll switch completely.
the amount of m$ and google shills here lol...
firefox is needed because it's a open source browser backed by a commercial entity.
Also mozilla should bring back firefox OS but this time with a little bit better marketing and engineering.
Mozilla's Code of Conduct is driving contributors away.
They should cherish their contributors who are voluntary spending their time trying to help.
Instead when you use a word like "guys", you get blocked. I'm just stupified by the bullying behavior of Mozilla's employees: https://mzl.la/2gu5521
It pains me to see you insert "Edit:" into your post
Mozilla totally screwed up Firefox: ...) ...)
- really slow (the marketing BS the last weeks was hilarious)
- half-baked features (no search function for the PDF viewer, can't adjust the line width for Reader View,
- enforced changes ignoring users (APIs, PulseAudio for linux users,
- integrated Google services (I don't want my web browser to call Google at each start-up)
- every time you think you got the latest version the "new version" window pops up
Firefox was a good alternative, but now it's just a waste of resources.
This ideal of Mozilla as some noble entity that has to exist to save the internet is dumb. Its a company that has taken the wrong paths so many times that it fails at succeeding on its own. Can you imagine anyone paying for a Firefox or Thunderbird suit? I guess this author fails to remember how Google basically supported Mozilla for years, and now its part of Verizon Wireless given how Verizon bought Yahoo which did a deal with Mozilla for default search engine. The only thing I agree with is we do need competition, but its clearly decided on what users want, not some need to save the internet. If Chrome wins its because users like it and want to use it. If Firefox becomes a distant memory its because they failed at providing a product people want.
If that's the case then Mozilla should fail like any other entity that cannot serve the people what they want.
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In regards to applauding Rust; I point to n-gate.com
Anybody who claims that Firefox protects their privacy probably hasn't actually looked at Firefox's privacy policy.
Below are some excerpts from the Firefox privacy policy that is dated July 31, 2017.
Be sure to notice the type of information being collected and possibly even transmitted to third parties (including Google, some "Leanplum" company, a "mobile analytics vendor", and "certain developers"). We see terms like:
Here are the excerpts:
The intro says Firefox is little more than a rounding error of use, but August 2017 stats have it at 12% (only slightly behind IE) on desktop.
The Alt Right formed as a response to left-wing lunacy, and is going to MAGA.
Two Scoops
Two Genders
Two Terms
Trump 2020!
Firefox? Save the web? AYFKM?!?!
Firefox is one of the WORST offenders, second only to Chrome, for excessive bloat and support of the DRM web.
Mozilla and its whole corrupt foundation can go to hell as far as I am concerned.
I just ran here maps with location turned off and it did no such thing, it opened with a generic location for my country.
I think you also misunderstand what "improve location with wifi" actually means. It sniffs other peoples SSIDs in the local area and sends it to Google for triangulation.
i.e. not GPS, it's really sniffing around other people's wifi, including mobile and transient devices.
It DOES NOT NEED Wifi triangulation to use location services. Google could simply use the location service settings I've chosen. It INSISTS on misleading people to accept this, and after that it sniffs the WIFI SSIDs, even turning the phone on to see whose around and sending that data off to Google.
You can say "yes" to it, or "not at the moment", but never "no".
What's happening with browsers is just a part of what the ICT industry is doing with the interwebs. It'll soon be the new cable TV :(
I use firefox in a true stress environment- loads of tabs on an old two core system. 4GB of RAM. In truth nothing a competent programmer couldn't handle. But here's the thing...
Version by version Firefox gets notable worse doing the SAME thing. Memory management (the main issue) actually decreases in quality- how is that even possible. Tab handling gets worse. Threading- well that's an utter joke. Mozilla STILL can't understand the basics of Windows GUI API coding- and still fails to give the window 'frame' and non-page content its own worker thread.
It gets worse. Mozilla is depreciating the system that allows Firefox mods- the only reason to use Firefox. Most good addons are now effectively banned.
On my monster system Firefox's faults are mostly hidden by the power of that computer- tho it still clearly runs like a very bad joke. And 'Rust' is a SJW programming language that makes things exponentially worse. You see REAL engineering is HARD and needs 'dangerous' tools that only true experts ever master. But the answer is never to blunt the edge of the scalpel so the surgeon won't cut herself. Think about it!
Mozilla is a massive, mega rich corporation that can afford to employ the best. But it chooses to be a SJW horror that employs the 'correct' - so Firefox is a bad joke of a project only getting by cos you can now bang a cheap 6-core CPU into your system with 16GB of RAM. And dribblers are trained to praise barely functioning code that jsut about runs if your system is super powerful- telling the critics that they are at fault for not 'upgrading' their system.
SJW engineering is not engineering at all. Today, you are supposed to be impressed by an app running (barely) in a browser frame that would have worked faster (as a pure application) on a computer FIFTEEEN years ago. SJW types tell you it is "good" that your system wastes 99.99% of its processing power running insanely inefficient code just so said code might be written by a clueless person with the 'right' physical form. And funny how the same SJW types never worry about the astonishing waste of electrical energy that such dreadful code requires.
Assembler, C and C++ "save the Earth"- as I hope every true coder here understands. The 50 layers of abstraction that drive the average browser app use hundreds of times more power. But then the SJW movement has always been built on pure hypocrisy.
I don't think they included that 1 billion Chinese from main land and a few 100 million restricted user from other pockets of the world in the survey.
Mozilla has many products, of course Firefox gets most of the attention however Thunderbird is a pretty popular mail client. I've been using it on Linux for at least 10 years yet I still can't search... Mozilla as a company is spending way to much time and effort on their technology demo's that never go anywhere (i.e. the h264 player in javascript ... great idea... if you want your CPU to melt) but never fix the glaring problems in their existing products.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
People decide what to use and what not to. When normal users are unaware and don't care/know about privacy they use what's most popular.
I'm worried that there be so many spit before I found you. Most of the previous comments I read are just petty indeed :-D /. audience is becoming :-(
That's a concern about what
H.
(using FF on linux, pc and mac for everything
-quietly forgetting iCab, the first ad-blocking browser 10y before FF was born, because indeed FF is easier to set -and, well, I'm migrating everything on linux now)
Herve S.
Emoji uploading in the chat site Discordapp.com works in Chrome and Chromium but not Firefox.
1. Log into your Discord account.
2. Switch to a "server" (Discord's name for a collection of channels that share the same user list) that you own or on which you have been assigned a role with the Manage Emoji permission.
3. Right-click the server's icon and choose Server Settings > Emoji.
4. Click Upload Emoji.
Chrome result: File chooser appears.
Firefox result: Button does nothing, and nothing appears in Console.
Emoji uploading used to work in Firefox before May 23, 2017, when the server settings user interface changed to its current form. Others report this happening even with a fresh profile.
The impression that I get is "We just rewrote our extension in Jetpack months ago. If you require us to now rewrite our Jetpack extension in WebExtensions, we quit."
From Keybinder README:
Firefox works faster because when I accidentally press Ctrl+Q instead of Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+W, it ends up using zero CPU because it quits, taking unsubmitted form data with it. I had used the Keybinder extension, but that will not be ported to WebExtensions. I would use the Disable Ctrl-Q and Cmd-Q extension, but bug 1325692 makes the Disable Ctrl-Q and Cmd-Q extension do nothing on either of my machines (Xubuntu 16.04 at work, Debian 9 at home).
They need to create a whole alternative ecosystem, that is their own search, their own "facebook", "youtube", mobile OS, etc., with higher ethical standards, and slowly grow it. Get momentum step by step, never losing hope. It might catch up eventually when the masses realize what the alternative is doing and find there is a wholly developed alternative patiently waiting.
In it I remind people of the history of Firefox.
The original firefox was gtk(2?) only, without xul or extensions.
All that stuff only became successful because phoenix (firefox's origiinal name before the Phoenix bios company sued them, then never actually came out with a web browser...) had already become successful amongst nerds as a fast, lean, low resource browser containing only the gecko renderer and a VERY minimal gtk2 interface. The early versions didn't even really have preferences pages. Most of that crap got added *BACK* into firefox sometime after 1.0 I believe it was. Maybe the 1.5 release. XUL and crap came later and tacked on extensions and other stuff that had really been from the mozilla browser suite, and only worked because they had finally 5+ years later improved their javascript engine enough to not be a memory and cpu wasting pile of shit. Firefox wasn't even originally a mozilla project until I think the 0.6 release, and after the developer of it joined mozilla he got bumped from his leadership position on Firefox then eventually reassigned to a different department. I am not sure if he's still there or quit.
All of this should be verifiable via either web.archive.org, the google ftp site's old firefox/phoenix releases, and internet history various places.
Point being: Mozilla has been fucked up for more than a decade before they ever became relevant and people thinking this 'change in attitude' is something new, really haven't been paying attention to how the foundation has been managed, and how netscape corp was acting BEFORE the foundation, the AOL purchase, etc. The incompetence is systemic and even predated the creation of the foundation.
Some of the SJW stuff might be new, but this is how Mozilla has always acted. And if people hadn't thrown money at them, Yahoo, Google, AOL, and previously the VCs during the original dotcom bubble, they would have never gotten this ridiculously elevated opinion of themselves and would have successfully mismanaged themselves into the ground two decades prior to now.
Mozilla needs to stop pushing retarded politics and actually go back to making a great browser...
The people behind Mozilla have decided to exert editorial control over what content users can access through their browser. This is not a function that an application should have, the user should be able to decide what content they wish to see.
Yes, even if it's fake news and the user is too stupid to figure it out.
Hamburger button, aka. threesome button.
You must be working for Mozilla's team. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Ever since Mozilla stepped outside of its focus on writing good software, they have steadily become less and less meaningful as a whole. Once they became a tool of the SJW, they cemented their long slow decline into obscurity. Fuck Mozilla and their crappy software
Have you ever looked at a product on Amazon, Target, or another online store, only to have banner ads for that product stalk you to other, unrelated websites? This is called "retargeting", and it's creepy, and it's powered by cross-site tracking.
Would you want an ad network or ad exchange to sell your browsing history, including websites about sensitive medical conditions, to your health insurer so that the insurer can raise your premiums based on the websites that you have visited?
Have you ever had an ISP that cuts you off or charges you extra if you exceed your agreed monthly allowance of Internet data transfer volume? Video ads on textual articles use a disproportionate data volume per page view.
Chrome is winning because Google aggressively pushes its use on all its web services and sites. It's also auto-installed as bundleware in tons of downloaded software and utilities. It also benefits from so many people not understanding what a browser is and how it's different from a website, i.e.people install it because they think they need it to use Google.com. It may be a faster browser, but the vast majority of clients I work with do not notice a difference, they just use it because it was offered and they didn't know how to say no or didn't realize they had a choice. Rather like Windows 10, actually...
It was a stupid dev decision possibly motivated by politics. Every Linux desktop have ALSA installed. Not every Linux desktop have PulseAudio. It seems to me that if reducing maintenance overhead was the real reason to drop an Audio API, they would have dropped PulseAudio. Not the other way around. When you don't listen to your userbase to find out what is important for them, you might not have a bright future ahead of you. Last FireFox version that I have used is 53. I have no intention to return back without ALSA support!
> If they want to change their ways, they can start by apologizing
> to Brendan Eich, the father of Javascript, whom they ousted.
Brendan Eich should apologize for inventing Javascript.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Ooh superman where are you now
When everything's gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour.
What actually killed Firefox is that so many people moved to Chrome for mere performance. Then, as FF lost critical mass, the security model around their previous extension model became too onerous to maintain. Shrinking the security perimeter involved moving to an extension API which doesn't allow the programmer to do very much.
I bet it's the mainly the same damn pond of fools who one day post "Firefox performance sucks ass" and the next day post something infused with hand-squeezed law-of-the-jungle pathos concerning network effects/other economies of scale.
Well, yeah. And where was all that brilliance yesterday when you switched to Chromium to shave off 50 ms here or there at the ultimate price of freedom?
So, yes, Firefox memory management sucks (it has since forever now), and that tends to drive performance into the ground, but I won't stop using Firefox as my primary browser until the very cliff face is crumbling out from under my toes.
We just rewrote our extension in Jetpack months ago.
Jetpack 1.0 was released over 6 years ago. I don't have much sympathy for people who only rewrote to Jetpack a few months ago.
If you require us to now rewrite our Jetpack extension in WebExtensions, we quit.
Firefox's move to WebExtensions was announced over two years ago and you could start using WebExtensions over a year ago. The rate of change has hardly been rapid.
I'm probably going to move to Vivaldi or something, I guess.
Sure. That sounds rational.
Maybe the point is not saving the web anymore, but ensuring that applications built on top of the Internet (like the web or the email protocol) are free and open. For years, the web used to be the only part of the internet visible to the final user, at least for the most part. Even email was often accessed through a web interface. Now Facebook and other social networks are new systems that run on top of the Internet, and even have a web interface too, but are fundamentally different from the web. Contrary to the web, these systems have a single central authority, and are not designed for enabling a free interchange of information between peers, because all the social interactions are moderated by the central authority. This is even more concerning because the business model of all those top 10 apps is based on exploiting the user data, so privacy in unavoidably under a threat. And these systems are not primarily accessed from a web browser, but from native apps. So does the battle for the browser even make sense anymore? Instead, maybe Mozilla should expand the scope from just the web to other Internet applications (arguably Thunderbird is already an example of that). The usage data in that article shows that the web is not necessary the most relevant application that runs on top of Internet anymore, as it is just a fraction of the Internet traffic. A possible course of action could be working on ensuring all these new applications have open standards. If we already have working alternatives to gmail, like protonmail, is because email is an open standards technology with a publicly documented protocol. We don't have such clear alternatives to Facebook for the mainstream Internet user, because Facebook is mostly a closed system. The highest threat to privacy between those 10 apps are social networks IMHO. In that field Mozilla could work developing open standards, and use that to connect GNU social compatible networks (maybe OStatus is already the most suitable standard) like Mastodon, with mainstream networks like Facebook. Mozilla could also work on the analogous of a web browser for that field, which is a high quality native app for any social media that supports that open protocol, and also on connecting Facebook and mainstream social networks to that protocol through their public APIs. That would be similar to using Thunderbird for accessing your gmail or yahoo mail account, a kind of hootsuite but based on open standards, and bridging different social networks. A combined timeline for different social networks, and that allows to simultaneously publish in all of them from a single place. That could help transitioning out from the current single authority model for social networks. That would be the social networking analogous of sending an email to a gmail account from my protonmail account, optionally encrypting the email. Besides social networks, these 10 apps included streaming media players, messaging, email, and maps. For streaming media, something like K.im (https://betanews.com/2017/08/31/k-im-bitcache-piracy/amp/) could be a suitable path, with Mozilla playing the role of ensuring open standardization and high quality open source implementations. TL;DR: Maybe Mozilla should broad their scope beyond the web, and work to ensure open standards and high quality native apps for the new systems built on top of the Internet, but beyond the web, like social networks or streaming media services.
Time, yes. But the problem isn't time. The problem is that it's outright impossible to do lots of things with WebExtensions, because they just plain don't get the access to Firefox that they need (and if you try to work with Mozilla to get that access, they refuse to work with you, and instead accuse you of refusing to work with them).
No amount of time will help when the sandbox you're required to use just plain doesn't support what you need it to do.
One word- "Fork". Fuck their sandbox, the whole point of FOSS is that in addition to giving you access to their sandbox, they also gave you blueprints for building your own using materials that are just about cheap as dirt. Quit whining, start coding.
"outright impossible" please...
https://www.brave.com/
I'm baffled by this. Save Mozilla == Save the Internet?
How did this happen? Mozilla is dying cuz it's got nothing over anyone else.
Where is the path that Mozilla going the way of the floppy that leads to endangered internet?
IE is free, Edge is free, Chrome is free, Pale Moon is free, Opera is free... and there's a lot more I'm sure.
On a personal note, I am a little disappointed by Mozilla. Not because of Firefox, its a fine enough browser, but killing further development of Thunderbird, now that's a crime.
On another personal note, Facebook and Google aren't the internet. They're just big players. One is just plain evil and the other, well, I haven't decided yet. Google is awfully useful, and still gives it all away for free. However, Google has an established history of taking things away, with no recourse. That makes me wary.
Make trolling great again!
The entire browser is going to be hidden under one giant hamburger button. No menus, no URL bar, no scroll bars, hell no rendering window. Just one giant hamburger button that crashes the browser when you click it.
Also, the hamburger button will be an ad for McDonalds.
I wrote all Mozilla products off after I found out Soros was funding them. No this is no joke. I suggest everyone to boycott Firefox and all other Mozilla products immediately.
Mozilla is no longer capable of saving anyone. And they did it to themselfs. Mozilla is no longer relevant.
For Firefox clones, Waterfox is good so far and rarely mentionned. Works with the extensions, youtube, ..
I'm testing out the brave browser right now - I like what I see...
I don't have much sympathy for people who only rewrote to Jetpack a few months ago.
In many cases of a legacy pre-Jetpack codebase, there wasn't a business case to make a port that would be perceived as "chasing the latest fad" until multiprocess.
you could start using WebExtensions over a year ago
Many popular Firefox extensions could not exist if WebExtensions-over-a-year-ago were all that were available. A lot of APIs exposed by XPCOM and Jetpack have no equivalent in WebExtensions-over-a-year-ago. Some have no equivalent in WebExtensions even as of Firefox 56, such as those used by the Keybinder extension to override Ctrl+Q and other built-in shortcuts.
if WebExtensions-over-a-year-ago were all that were available.
WebExtensions-over-a-year-ago weren't all that was available. The point is that there has been plenty of time for add-ons to properly plan and execute the transition. Software projects are either well managed or they aren't. This particular add-on seems to have been poorly managed.
there has been plenty of time for add-ons to properly plan and execute the transition.
I don't see how time helps if the API on which a particular add-on relies has no counterpart in WebExtensions.
I don't see how time helps
Mozilla has invited add-on developers to get involved from the beginning, two years ago. That's exactly what NoScript's developer did, two years ago. There's been plenty of time for add-on authors to get involved with developing and extending the APIs their particular add-ons need.
Mozilla has invited add-on developers to get involved from the beginning, two years ago. That's exactly what NoScript's developer did, two years ago.
And many of the APIs requested, two years ago, are not in the shipping version of Firefox, two years later. The article "NoScript’s Migration to WebExtensions APIs" by Caitlin Neiman states: "Some of the APIs required for full parity with the legacy version won’t land until Firefox 57." This means no feature-complete version of NoScript will work on both Firefox 52 ESR and Firefox 56 on the one hand and Firefox 57 and later on the other hand. This effectively forks NoScript into two extensions with disjoint codebases, and disjoint codebases mean disjoint bugs.
Perhaps I can express to you the practical effect on end users' perception of usability through an example: Please type your reply to me, press Ctrl+Q, and attempt to restore your reply.
The article "NoScript’s Migration to WebExtensions APIs" by Caitlin Neiman
This is the web. Link to things.
This means no feature-complete version of NoScript will work on both Firefox 52 ESR and Firefox 56 on the one hand and Firefox 57 and later on the other hand.
Yeah? And? So? What? The old version dies, the new version prospers. It's time to move on. Firefox 57 is the future. Embrace it.
Please type your reply to me, press Ctrl+Q, and attempt to restore your reply.
I pressed Ctrl+Q and nothing happened. The effect doesn't appear to be practical.
This is the web. People insert links with an excessively commercial nature into comment sections. Some comment sections on sites other than Slashdot reject comments containing a URL as a measure against spam. Some end users adapt to the different behavior of multiple sites' comment sections by sticking to the common subset of behaviors considered acceptable by all comment sections that the user frequently uses. In addition, the on-screen keyboard that comes with a mobile phone or tablet computer running a mobile phone operating system makes it a code to enter HTML tags, with the necessary punctuation (less than sign, greater than sign, quotation marks, equal sign) spread across multiple pages of keys. Furthermore, links break as web sites reorganize. So in many cases, end users end up using author and title as enough of a citation that any competent web search engine can retrieve the intended link.
Some organizations have valid reasons for running the extended support release of a web browser. In the past, before Firefox provided an ESR, these organizations "embraced" the lack of an ESR by sticking to IE. Firefox 57 will not be ESR upon release.
On what operating system did you try the Ctrl+Q test? The misbehavior is noticeable on Linux, perhaps less so on Windows and on macOS (where the shortcut in question is Command-Q rather than Ctrl+Q).
This is the web. People insert links with an excessively commercial nature into comment sections.
So what you're saying is that you can't be trusted. Very well. I won't trust you.
So what you're saying is that you can't be trusted.
I'm saying that people on the web who can be trusted share the same web with people on the web who cannot.
Please see https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/08/01/noscripts-migration-to-webextensions-apis/. There are two separate codebases. Many projects are managed only well enough to raise the funds to maintain one codebase but not two.