4 ms·

To be fair, there's little reason that browsers shouldn't support syncing among each other for most or all data. History, bookmarks, passwords, open tabs/sessio

by chungy 11y ago

To be fair, there's little reason that browsers shouldn't support syncing among each other for most or all data. History, bookmarks, passwords, open tabs/sessions? Why can't this be serialized to a common format and synced between Firefox, Chrome, Opera, whatever else?

toyg 11y ago
In fact, this sort of work is what Mozilla should concentrate on, rather than an irrelevant "me too" mobile os nobody asked for: standards. Mozilla has the credibility and neutrality required in order to successfully lobby for standards across commercial players without threatening them. To be fair, they do a lot of that already, but they often approach it in adversarial terms, which is doomed to fail. Persona, for example, is interesting but will never align with anyone else's interest; whereas easy sync would (making it easier to switch OS would appeal to at least one between MS and Apple, and to Google too).
- berkes 11y ago
  > ... this sort of work is what Mozilla should concentrate on, rather than an ... One does not exclude the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma > .. an irrelevant "me too" mobile os [citation needed]
  - toyg 11y ago
    > > .. an irrelevant "me too" mobile os > [citation needed] It's been developed for more than 4 years and still nobody wants it: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/ultracheap-smartphones-running-on-firefox-os-gets-cold-shoulder-in-india/articleshow/46628157.cms http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/ultrac... Now they're going to compete at the high-end, which means they have to find OEMs that will bet their flagship models on it. Good luck with that. There are three elements to OS choice: standardization, marketing and openness. Looking at the desktop market, you can see how Microsoft dominated standardization, Apple managed to dominate marketing, and Linux used its unrivaled openness to sneak in between the two. In the mobile world, Android already occupies two of those slots, basically pre-empting any linux-like effort from ever gaining significant traction. That means the only ways you can break in the mobile OS market (assuming you're not producing breakthrough tech creating its own market) are 1) flooding the market with such a massive amount of units that standardization stops being a factor, or 2) flooding the airwaves with such a massive amount of excellent advertising that your devices become more desirable than Apple ones. Good luck with that. (Note how price is not a factor. Mobile devices are inherently aspirational, as Nokia found out.) The hard truth is that the land grab is over: if your mobile OS has not made it yet, chances are that it never will -- at least as long as devices stay in this particular form factor and nobody comes up with groundbreaking tech. Mozilla should concentrate on standards, including a kick-ass Android browser; everything else is a waste of time.
  - wutbrodo 11y ago
    > One does not exclude the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma You're right that this doesn't follow devoid of context, but luckily we're talking about a specific entity and a specific situation. The assumption that motivates this assumption is the idea that Mozilla has finite resources, not just in the literal sense, but in the sense of having to make significant trade-offs in what to focus on. This seems like a fairly reasonable assumption to make given that they're often so far behind on things that are fairly widely considered positive, like one-process-per-tab. You may disagree with that assumption, but at least address it instead of being wearisome and linking to a Wikipedia logical fallacy page.
- gsnedders 11y ago
  To have any real influence on standards, you need to have marketshare, otherwise whatever you say is just hot air.
  - toyg 11y ago
    That's why you need a kick-ass Android browser, and the best you can do in the iOS walled garden: pouring your marketshare from desktop to mobile as much as you can, without threatening actual OS makers. Mozilla are not (or should not be) interested in setting standards for device drivers, so they don't need any marketshare at that level. To be honest, I think they've finally realized that the OS was a pipe dream -- the iOS release could have happened years ago, but now it's finally been sanctioned. Coincidence?
    - gsnedders 11y ago
      Getting marketshare on Android or iOS is very hard though: there's some real argument that you will never have enough influence there to make any difference. Certainly trying to get people to install alternate browsers seems harder on mobile OSes than desktop ones.

by chungy 11y ago

toyg 11y ago

In fact, this sort of work is what Mozilla should concentrate on, rather than an irrelevant "me too" mobile os nobody asked for: standards. Mozilla has the credibility and neutrality required in order to successfully lobby for standards across commercial players without threatening them. To be fair, they do a lot of that already, but they often approach it in adversarial terms, which is doomed to fail. Persona, for example, is interesting but will never align with anyone else's interest; whereas easy sync would (making it easier to switch OS would appeal to at least one between MS and Apple, and to Google too).

berkes 11y ago
> ... this sort of work is what Mozilla should concentrate on, rather than an ... One does not exclude the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma > .. an irrelevant "me too" mobile os [citation needed]
- toyg 11y ago
  > > .. an irrelevant "me too" mobile os > [citation needed] It's been developed for more than 4 years and still nobody wants it: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/ultracheap-smartphones-running-on-firefox-os-gets-cold-shoulder-in-india/articleshow/46628157.cms http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/ultrac... Now they're going to compete at the high-end, which means they have to find OEMs that will bet their flagship models on it. Good luck with that. There are three elements to OS choice: standardization, marketing and openness. Looking at the desktop market, you can see how Microsoft dominated standardization, Apple managed to dominate marketing, and Linux used its unrivaled openness to sneak in between the two. In the mobile world, Android already occupies two of those slots, basically pre-empting any linux-like effort from ever gaining significant traction. That means the only ways you can break in the mobile OS market (assuming you're not producing breakthrough tech creating its own market) are 1) flooding the market with such a massive amount of units that standardization stops being a factor, or 2) flooding the airwaves with such a massive amount of excellent advertising that your devices become more desirable than Apple ones. Good luck with that. (Note how price is not a factor. Mobile devices are inherently aspirational, as Nokia found out.) The hard truth is that the land grab is over: if your mobile OS has not made it yet, chances are that it never will -- at least as long as devices stay in this particular form factor and nobody comes up with groundbreaking tech. Mozilla should concentrate on standards, including a kick-ass Android browser; everything else is a waste of time.
- wutbrodo 11y ago
  > One does not exclude the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma You're right that this doesn't follow devoid of context, but luckily we're talking about a specific entity and a specific situation. The assumption that motivates this assumption is the idea that Mozilla has finite resources, not just in the literal sense, but in the sense of having to make significant trade-offs in what to focus on. This seems like a fairly reasonable assumption to make given that they're often so far behind on things that are fairly widely considered positive, like one-process-per-tab. You may disagree with that assumption, but at least address it instead of being wearisome and linking to a Wikipedia logical fallacy page.
gsnedders 11y ago
To have any real influence on standards, you need to have marketshare, otherwise whatever you say is just hot air.
- toyg 11y ago
  That's why you need a kick-ass Android browser, and the best you can do in the iOS walled garden: pouring your marketshare from desktop to mobile as much as you can, without threatening actual OS makers. Mozilla are not (or should not be) interested in setting standards for device drivers, so they don't need any marketshare at that level. To be honest, I think they've finally realized that the OS was a pipe dream -- the iOS release could have happened years ago, but now it's finally been sanctioned. Coincidence?
  - gsnedders 11y ago
    Getting marketshare on Android or iOS is very hard though: there's some real argument that you will never have enough influence there to make any difference. Certainly trying to get people to install alternate browsers seems harder on mobile OSes than desktop ones.