5 ms·

There seem to be a lot of people that are saying "oh, without XUL based extensions, Firefox is just a (worse) Chrome clone, so I might as well just use Chrome."

by yoasif_ 10y ago

There seem to be a lot of people that are saying "oh, without XUL based extensions, Firefox is just a (worse) Chrome clone, so I might as well just use Chrome." I think what they might be missing is that Mozilla's conclusion is a lot like the people seem to be thinking here -- even though Chrome doesn't have the fancy extensions that are possible in Firefox, many many more people are using Chrome than Firefox, because they see it as a better Firefox. Clearly, that has something to do with either security or performance, where Firefox has a perceived lag. Mozilla is actively working to improve performance, and you may not want to switch to Chrome after all, because Chrome may instead be the poor man's Firefox (I personally think this is already the case, simply because with my 679 open tabs, Chrome would simply kill itself [44 loaded]). This video is one of the most exciting I have seen with regards to web browser performance, and it's Mozilla: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an5abNFba4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an5abNFba4Q More info on what this means for Firefox: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum TL;DR: What if even with the missing XUL extensions, you wouldn't want to switch to Chrome, because Firefox was just plain faster?

syshum 10y ago
>>Clearly, that has something to do with either security or performance, where Firefox has a perceived lag. This is completely false It has something to do with MARKETING and the fact the Google is largest marketing company in the world and has the ability to market chrome far far far more effectively than Firefox IE is crap, so Windows users seek a replacement for IE, use to their only option was Firefox. Once Chrome came on the market with a HUGE marketing push people started to migrate It was 80-90% marketing, not technical Even if Firefox is better preforming people are not going to switch as only Technical people give a shit about performance numbers. Edge on windows 10 is starting to eat into Chrome partly because MS is bringing back the IE6 marketing and integration tactics that got them in Anti-trust hot water in the 90's No Firefox, absent Google Discontinuing the chrome Browser, will never break 20% market share again, I do not care how must better it preforms. Mozilla needs to focus on Power Users, and Privacy. They are failing at both with these moves IMO >>you wouldn't want to switch to Chrome, because Firefox was just plain faster? They they take away my TreeStyle Tabs and a few other Extensions I dont care how much faster it is, FF will be removed my all my systems TreeStyle Tabs is the the Main reason I use FF today. I dont understand why browsers have tabs horizontally across the window, it looks stupid and is unusable once you get above 20 or 30 tabs open So you talk about have 100's of tabs open, it is pointless if I do not have TreeStyle or some kind of Vertical Tabs. And no the Stupid Dock style of doing it on Chrome and other WebExtensions based hack is neither desirable or usable
- yoasif_ 10y ago
  > They they take away my TreeStyle Tabs and a few other Extensions I dont care how much faster it is, FF will be removed my all my systems This is what I don't understand. What would you use instead? Do you see another vendor attempting to recreate XUL-like extensions? Built in functionality like the stuff in Vivaldi doesn't count, since those aren't extensions.
  - syshum 10y ago
    >>This is what I don't understand. What would you use instead? Does not matter, Likely Vivaldi, or Chrome. I will not reward FF or Mozilla, it may seem petty but I will not continue to use FF after mozilla ignored its users in this manner. From day one Devs, users and the wider community has been telling mozilla we do not want these changes. Clearly they do not want me as a user of their product so I will oblige them and stop using their product I expect to be ignored by a large for-profit corporation like Google, if Mozilla is going to act like google I might as well just move to Chrome.
    - yoasif_ 10y ago
      > Clearly they do not want me as a user of their product so I will oblige them and stop using their product Got it, spite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP0MXJAQhmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP0MXJAQhmo Chrome never tried to cater to users like you, so you'll reward that browser because they never bothered to try.
      - syshum 10y ago
        >>Chrome never tried to cater to users like you That is right, and that is the point. If you do not understand why or how that makes a difference I likely will be unable to explain it to you. I may not go to chrome, Vivaldi, the new Opera, Some Fork of the good firefox, we are still a little ways away from the the day Mozilla commits Suicide so.... Also I do want to add, my problem is not them removing XUL, my problem is them removing FUNCTIONALITY, if they come up with something else that REPLACES feature for feature XUL fine, if they take everything people are losing and build it in as not an extension that would be fine to, if they Add a option in the Configuration for TreeStyle Tabs with out an extension that would be grand I am not beholden to extensions, I am beholden to the FUNCTIONALITY.
AgentME 10y ago
Jesus from the rest of the comments, you'd think Mozilla was removing the XUL interface just to spite people. It's being removed because it's incompatible with making Firefox multi-process and sandboxed. Firefox is literally the only major browser that hasn't moved to a multi-process and sandboxed model yet, and it shows hard in performance and in security vulnerabilities. I'm very excited to see Firefox finally catch up.
- kevincox 10y ago
  The "XUL Interface" is largely a misnomer. Firefox has had extension interfaces that are compatible with multiprocess firefox for years. Yes, you can break compatibility, but if you do it right it will keep working. Also the browser will tell the extension that it's not allowed to do that so the extension developer will know to fix their extension. Don't get me wrong. I love the webextension idea. But it doesn't replace the ability to have extensions with the same power as the browser itself. I would love for Mozilla to promise compatibility for webextensions and say "you are on your own" for traditional extensions. They can mark them as bad in the store, even refuse to fully review them so that I know that they are why my browser is broken. But sometimes that power is incredibly useful, and I would hate to see that taken away. Like many others the only reason I use firefox over chrome is because of a couple of extensions and if they were gone I would switch because internal sites at my work tend to break less and internal extensions generally only support chrome.
- syshum 10y ago
  >>Firefox is literally the only major browser and I view that as a good thing, not a bad thing. Being a clone of "every other browser" is not desirable to me >and it shows hard in performance and in security vulnerabilities. I'm very excited to see Firefox finally catch up. I care less about performance and more about functionality. I can overcome performance with larger processors and more memory, I have 12 core system with 64GB of memory, FF is not hurting my system.
  - khc 10y ago
    great! multi-process firefox will better utilize your 12 cores and 64GB of memory
otakucode 10y ago
After vertical side tabs are impossible in Firefox because Chrome banned them because someone at Google "didn't like how they looked", I want to see you run 679 tabs on Firefox.
- buovjaga 10y ago
  What do you mean? They are running this experiment: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/
  - jhlgkhkhil 10y ago
    Does that do collapsible tree structures of tabs? Does that allow me to bookmark a whole tree and reload it later? Can that auto hide and auto reveal? Or is it a shitter half copy of tree style tabs that will never actually be released because it would "confuse normal users". I'm not a normal user I don't want a crippled product. Normal users use Edge, Safari, IE or Chrome anyway. They won't use Firefox because it doesn't come pre-installed or get advertised on google.com. There is no point in Firefox chasing normal users. They need to chase power users and importantly web-developers.
    - buovjaga 10y ago
      No, it won't do trees: https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/498 https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/498 But I found this: https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/868 https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/868 "I've been talking with the people implementing WebExtensions for a while now, and they are committed to adding the APIs necessary to support something like TabCenter (or TreeStyle Tabs, or any of the other side-tabs add-ons). I don't know their final timeline, but I would be very surprised if the new APIs weren't available before we turned off old-style extensions, and I have already started working on a new branch that implements TabCenter as a WebExtension." So TreeStyle Tabs can be ported to the new system or an equivalent addon can be built. I personally use TreeStyle Tabs. I have not tried this Tab Center thing and did not know about the tech behind it.
baby 10y ago
plain faster is still slow if you don't have tabs on the side like with Tree Style Tab :/
anmolparashar 10y ago
Is it weird that I prefer Firefox? The only time I use Chrome is when I'm debugging some code.
hobarrera 10y ago
Chrome gained a lot of market quickly because of perceived faster speed. Note that perceived is in great part because they took effort to make it seems faster that it was (it was faster that FF at some point though, there's no denying that). Firefox is now working on well-designed speed upgrade, which will very clearly overtake Chrome. It just takes longer, due to design, and available manpower.
- yellowapple 10y ago
  Chrome gained a lot of market because it was marketed well as an IE replacement. Speed was one of the features in the marketing material, yes, but speed alone is doubtful to be the reason why Chrome exploded in popularity the way it did. I'm excited about things like Servo, too, but not if critical (to my use case) features are removed. I switched from Chromium to Firefox solely because of the existence of Tree-Style Tabs. I really hope Mozilla has a plan to preserve that workflow.

by yoasif_ 10y ago

syshum 10y ago

>>Clearly, that has something to do with either security or performance, where Firefox has a perceived lag. This is completely false It has something to do with MARKETING and the fact the Google is largest marketing company in the world and has the ability to market chrome far far far more effectively than Firefox IE is crap, so Windows users seek a replacement for IE, use to their only option was Firefox. Once Chrome came on the market with a HUGE marketing push people started to migrate It was 80-90% marketing, not technical Even if Firefox is better preforming people are not going to switch as only Technical people give a shit about performance numbers. Edge on windows 10 is starting to eat into Chrome partly because MS is bringing back the IE6 marketing and integration tactics that got them in Anti-trust hot water in the 90's No Firefox, absent Google Discontinuing the chrome Browser, will never break 20% market share again, I do not care how must better it preforms. Mozilla needs to focus on Power Users, and Privacy. They are failing at both with these moves IMO >>you wouldn't want to switch to Chrome, because Firefox was just plain faster? They they take away my TreeStyle Tabs and a few other Extensions I dont care how much faster it is, FF will be removed my all my systems TreeStyle Tabs is the the Main reason I use FF today. I dont understand why browsers have tabs horizontally across the window, it looks stupid and is unusable once you get above 20 or 30 tabs open So you talk about have 100's of tabs open, it is pointless if I do not have TreeStyle or some kind of Vertical Tabs. And no the Stupid Dock style of doing it on Chrome and other WebExtensions based hack is neither desirable or usable

yoasif_ 10y ago
> They they take away my TreeStyle Tabs and a few other Extensions I dont care how much faster it is, FF will be removed my all my systems This is what I don't understand. What would you use instead? Do you see another vendor attempting to recreate XUL-like extensions? Built in functionality like the stuff in Vivaldi doesn't count, since those aren't extensions.
- syshum 10y ago
  >>This is what I don't understand. What would you use instead? Does not matter, Likely Vivaldi, or Chrome. I will not reward FF or Mozilla, it may seem petty but I will not continue to use FF after mozilla ignored its users in this manner. From day one Devs, users and the wider community has been telling mozilla we do not want these changes. Clearly they do not want me as a user of their product so I will oblige them and stop using their product I expect to be ignored by a large for-profit corporation like Google, if Mozilla is going to act like google I might as well just move to Chrome.
  - yoasif_ 10y ago
    > Clearly they do not want me as a user of their product so I will oblige them and stop using their product Got it, spite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP0MXJAQhmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP0MXJAQhmo Chrome never tried to cater to users like you, so you'll reward that browser because they never bothered to try.
    - syshum 10y ago
      >>Chrome never tried to cater to users like you That is right, and that is the point. If you do not understand why or how that makes a difference I likely will be unable to explain it to you. I may not go to chrome, Vivaldi, the new Opera, Some Fork of the good firefox, we are still a little ways away from the the day Mozilla commits Suicide so.... Also I do want to add, my problem is not them removing XUL, my problem is them removing FUNCTIONALITY, if they come up with something else that REPLACES feature for feature XUL fine, if they take everything people are losing and build it in as not an extension that would be fine to, if they Add a option in the Configuration for TreeStyle Tabs with out an extension that would be grand I am not beholden to extensions, I am beholden to the FUNCTIONALITY.

AgentME 10y ago

Jesus from the rest of the comments, you'd think Mozilla was removing the XUL interface just to spite people. It's being removed because it's incompatible with making Firefox multi-process and sandboxed. Firefox is literally the only major browser that hasn't moved to a multi-process and sandboxed model yet, and it shows hard in performance and in security vulnerabilities. I'm very excited to see Firefox finally catch up.

kevincox 10y ago
The "XUL Interface" is largely a misnomer. Firefox has had extension interfaces that are compatible with multiprocess firefox for years. Yes, you can break compatibility, but if you do it right it will keep working. Also the browser will tell the extension that it's not allowed to do that so the extension developer will know to fix their extension. Don't get me wrong. I love the webextension idea. But it doesn't replace the ability to have extensions with the same power as the browser itself. I would love for Mozilla to promise compatibility for webextensions and say "you are on your own" for traditional extensions. They can mark them as bad in the store, even refuse to fully review them so that I know that they are why my browser is broken. But sometimes that power is incredibly useful, and I would hate to see that taken away. Like many others the only reason I use firefox over chrome is because of a couple of extensions and if they were gone I would switch because internal sites at my work tend to break less and internal extensions generally only support chrome.
syshum 10y ago
>>Firefox is literally the only major browser and I view that as a good thing, not a bad thing. Being a clone of "every other browser" is not desirable to me >and it shows hard in performance and in security vulnerabilities. I'm very excited to see Firefox finally catch up. I care less about performance and more about functionality. I can overcome performance with larger processors and more memory, I have 12 core system with 64GB of memory, FF is not hurting my system.
- khc 10y ago
  great! multi-process firefox will better utilize your 12 cores and 64GB of memory

otakucode 10y ago

After vertical side tabs are impossible in Firefox because Chrome banned them because someone at Google "didn't like how they looked", I want to see you run 679 tabs on Firefox.

buovjaga 10y ago
What do you mean? They are running this experiment: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/
- jhlgkhkhil 10y ago
  Does that do collapsible tree structures of tabs? Does that allow me to bookmark a whole tree and reload it later? Can that auto hide and auto reveal? Or is it a shitter half copy of tree style tabs that will never actually be released because it would "confuse normal users". I'm not a normal user I don't want a crippled product. Normal users use Edge, Safari, IE or Chrome anyway. They won't use Firefox because it doesn't come pre-installed or get advertised on google.com. There is no point in Firefox chasing normal users. They need to chase power users and importantly web-developers.
  - buovjaga 10y ago
    No, it won't do trees: https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/498 https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/498 But I found this: https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/868 https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/868 "I've been talking with the people implementing WebExtensions for a while now, and they are committed to adding the APIs necessary to support something like TabCenter (or TreeStyle Tabs, or any of the other side-tabs add-ons). I don't know their final timeline, but I would be very surprised if the new APIs weren't available before we turned off old-style extensions, and I have already started working on a new branch that implements TabCenter as a WebExtension." So TreeStyle Tabs can be ported to the new system or an equivalent addon can be built. I personally use TreeStyle Tabs. I have not tried this Tab Center thing and did not know about the tech behind it.

baby 10y ago

plain faster is still slow if you don't have tabs on the side like with Tree Style Tab :/

anmolparashar 10y ago

Is it weird that I prefer Firefox? The only time I use Chrome is when I'm debugging some code.

hobarrera 10y ago

Chrome gained a lot of market quickly because of perceived faster speed. Note that perceived is in great part because they took effort to make it seems faster that it was (it was faster that FF at some point though, there's no denying that). Firefox is now working on well-designed speed upgrade, which will very clearly overtake Chrome. It just takes longer, due to design, and available manpower.

yellowapple 10y ago
Chrome gained a lot of market because it was marketed well as an IE replacement. Speed was one of the features in the marketing material, yes, but speed alone is doubtful to be the reason why Chrome exploded in popularity the way it did. I'm excited about things like Servo, too, but not if critical (to my use case) features are removed. I switched from Chromium to Firefox solely because of the existence of Tree-Style Tabs. I really hope Mozilla has a plan to preserve that workflow.