4 ms·

Electrolysis? Servo? Rust? I'm far from an expert, but the switch to multithreading has been perilous to not break everyone's favourite plugins, likewise the s

by synotna 10y ago

Electrolysis? Servo? Rust? I'm far from an expert, but the switch to multithreading has been perilous to not break everyone's favourite plugins, likewise the switch from XUL Electrolysis is basically here and working, slowly rolling out

sametmax 10y ago
Indeed. From where I stand Mozilla is working hard at making the transition it's just: - it's a hard problem - they don't have the resources of MS or Google - they have a much bigger extension culture and must support it - the current work is not sexy and visible and hence get little advertisement Mozilla created an entire freaking language to level up their game. And in a few years it became one of the most promising technology of the decade, with a vibrant community. If it was a movie, this period of their life would be the scene with a small outsider named "Moz" training by night in a dirty gym or during the night under the rain. Next one will be the training paying off and him kicking the other guy's ass in the ring. But you need the unsexy and hard training first.
- trome 10y ago
  It is a hard problem, and Mozilla has put a ton of effort into Rust, but at this point they aren't supporting any of their current extensions (XUL) and WebExtensions will not cover most use cases that XUL covered. This isn't a Python 2 to Python 3 event, this is Mozilla going from the equivalent of C to Java. Most of your favorite extensions will die, and it is directly forcing me to drop firefox for chromium at work, which I abhor. Sadly the feature I need (decent kiosk mode) will die in its current form (as a XUL addon) only a year after deploying this solution, versus with chromium its built in, and not going away any time soon.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Yes they had to make a some very hard choice on this one. It's going to piss of a lot of people on the way. But on the long run I think it will result in a better browser. With less versatility, yes. But I got an entire OS at my disposal for advanced used, it's rather have a very good browser doing browser things. I'll the tab group extension though. I loved it and it won't be possible with webextensions.
    - homarp 10y ago
      >With less versatility, yes. isn't/wasn't that the point of firefox though. >a very good browser doing browser things. Chrome is the competition. Quite good at 'browser' things
      - sametmax 10y ago
        Yes. But do in need sqlite manager to be a firefox extension ? I can probably live without it. Do I need it to be at least as fast as chrome ? Yes.
        mercer 10y ago
        Your comment is a good example tightrope that Mozilla is on. I've switched to Firefox a few times over the past years, but usually I'd switch back to Chrome because, whether true or not, it felt more performant/cleaner/better. The main reason I bothered trying to switch back to Firefox was always the versatility or 'freedom'. Stuff like the tree-style tab plugin. Realistically, for me to break my usual patterns and try Firefox again would have to involve at least one of the following: - equal (perceived) performance to Chrome - freedom/versatility in regards to plugins - some as-of-yet not seen before advantage With all else being equal, or even ever so slightly worse than Chrome, I'd go for Firefox simply because I distrust Google. Thing is, I'd characterize myself as much more security- and privacy-conscious than most people, and yet I'm still on Chrome despite giving Firefox a shot at least once a year for the past few years or so. I catch myself forgetting to test the stuff I make on FF occasionally (I'm a web developer). While I'm by no means a paragon of sticking with my beliefs, I'm still a bit of a privacy-weenie. The fact that I'm not using Firefox worries me a bit. The fact that I can't quite explain it frustrates me. If I had to give a reason as to why I use Chrome instead of Firefox, I'd say there are two primary reasons and a very vague third one: 1. Chrome is just more familiar at this point, especially its dev tools 2. Firefox feels like one of those Java applets: slow to boot and alien to my OS (moreso than Chrome). 3. Chrome feels snappier
  - Certhas 10y ago
    > WebExtensions will not cover most use cases that XUL covered. This is just FUD. Especially as Mozilla is working closely with the developers of the most popular add ons to make sure all capabilities they need will be available (see also webextension experiments). Of course not all capabilities of XUL will make it, but as Chrome has a vibrant extensive add on community around WebExtension the idea that most usecases are affected is implausible.
    - sametmax 10y ago
      Apparently, some very popular extensions still have problems with it. The one that bother me the most is tab group: https://github.com/Quicksaver/Tab-Groups/issues/535 https://github.com/Quicksaver/Tab-Groups/issues/535 It was an feature of Firefox that I loved. They removed it. So I now use the extension. And the author is now announcing he won't be able to port it.
trome 10y ago
Electrolysis is here and fairly reliably working with my main XUL based extensions, but the ship for WebExtensions has sailed and I'm not gonna be on the wrong side of things (eg. Python 2 vs 3, Systemd vs "fun" init scripts), just gonna prepare for the realities of it, no matter that it breaks my heart to be forced to chromium at work :( I get that Mozilla wants to dump all the cruft added by XUL based extensions, and that they offed all the Firefox OS bits ASAP, but there are still markets for both those things. The latter prolly had more life in it if it were targeted as a Firefox chromebook type deal to give to the parents/kids, as that is eating into laptops marketshare in the double digits, and that on a Pinebook could easily make it the year of the Linux Laptop.
pluma 10y ago
> Electrolysis is basically here and working, slowly rolling out Unless you use extensions, which used to be one of Firefox's biggest advantages. I gave Firefox on Ubuntu a try for a week last month because I was looking for a replacement for Chrome and if I wasn't tech savvy I wouldn't have been able to figure out that Firefox was running in single-process mode and how to fix that. E.g. the default "Ubuntu integration" extension that Firefox ships with on Ubuntu (where it is the default browser) is not compatible with electrolysis. Additionally the (now outdated) Lastpass extension from the Firefox addon shop isn't compatible. I think the Trello Scrum extension also isn't compatible. The React developer tools also only just experimentally enabled compatibility. I'm not nitpicking -- users don't care why Firefox is slow or why electrolysis is disabled. If an extension is available for Firefox, especially if it's available on the official addon shop, users expect it to work and not to make Firefox slow to a crawl. That said, even with multiprocess mode I found that Firefox would often be considerably slower when having many tabs open (it's normal for me to keep 30-40 tabs open and this isn't rare, even among my non-developer friends). And as a developer the dev tools are still lightyears behind.

by synotna 10y ago

sametmax 10y ago

Indeed. From where I stand Mozilla is working hard at making the transition it's just: - it's a hard problem - they don't have the resources of MS or Google - they have a much bigger extension culture and must support it - the current work is not sexy and visible and hence get little advertisement Mozilla created an entire freaking language to level up their game. And in a few years it became one of the most promising technology of the decade, with a vibrant community. If it was a movie, this period of their life would be the scene with a small outsider named "Moz" training by night in a dirty gym or during the night under the rain. Next one will be the training paying off and him kicking the other guy's ass in the ring. But you need the unsexy and hard training first.

trome 10y ago
It is a hard problem, and Mozilla has put a ton of effort into Rust, but at this point they aren't supporting any of their current extensions (XUL) and WebExtensions will not cover most use cases that XUL covered. This isn't a Python 2 to Python 3 event, this is Mozilla going from the equivalent of C to Java. Most of your favorite extensions will die, and it is directly forcing me to drop firefox for chromium at work, which I abhor. Sadly the feature I need (decent kiosk mode) will die in its current form (as a XUL addon) only a year after deploying this solution, versus with chromium its built in, and not going away any time soon.
- sametmax 10y ago
  Yes they had to make a some very hard choice on this one. It's going to piss of a lot of people on the way. But on the long run I think it will result in a better browser. With less versatility, yes. But I got an entire OS at my disposal for advanced used, it's rather have a very good browser doing browser things. I'll the tab group extension though. I loved it and it won't be possible with webextensions.
  - homarp 10y ago
    >With less versatility, yes. isn't/wasn't that the point of firefox though. >a very good browser doing browser things. Chrome is the competition. Quite good at 'browser' things
    - sametmax 10y ago
      Yes. But do in need sqlite manager to be a firefox extension ? I can probably live without it. Do I need it to be at least as fast as chrome ? Yes.
      - mercer 10y ago
        Your comment is a good example tightrope that Mozilla is on. I've switched to Firefox a few times over the past years, but usually I'd switch back to Chrome because, whether true or not, it felt more performant/cleaner/better. The main reason I bothered trying to switch back to Firefox was always the versatility or 'freedom'. Stuff like the tree-style tab plugin. Realistically, for me to break my usual patterns and try Firefox again would have to involve at least one of the following: - equal (perceived) performance to Chrome - freedom/versatility in regards to plugins - some as-of-yet not seen before advantage With all else being equal, or even ever so slightly worse than Chrome, I'd go for Firefox simply because I distrust Google. Thing is, I'd characterize myself as much more security- and privacy-conscious than most people, and yet I'm still on Chrome despite giving Firefox a shot at least once a year for the past few years or so. I catch myself forgetting to test the stuff I make on FF occasionally (I'm a web developer). While I'm by no means a paragon of sticking with my beliefs, I'm still a bit of a privacy-weenie. The fact that I'm not using Firefox worries me a bit. The fact that I can't quite explain it frustrates me. If I had to give a reason as to why I use Chrome instead of Firefox, I'd say there are two primary reasons and a very vague third one: 1. Chrome is just more familiar at this point, especially its dev tools 2. Firefox feels like one of those Java applets: slow to boot and alien to my OS (moreso than Chrome). 3. Chrome feels snappier
- Certhas 10y ago
  > WebExtensions will not cover most use cases that XUL covered. This is just FUD. Especially as Mozilla is working closely with the developers of the most popular add ons to make sure all capabilities they need will be available (see also webextension experiments). Of course not all capabilities of XUL will make it, but as Chrome has a vibrant extensive add on community around WebExtension the idea that most usecases are affected is implausible.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Apparently, some very popular extensions still have problems with it. The one that bother me the most is tab group: https://github.com/Quicksaver/Tab-Groups/issues/535 https://github.com/Quicksaver/Tab-Groups/issues/535 It was an feature of Firefox that I loved. They removed it. So I now use the extension. And the author is now announcing he won't be able to port it.

trome 10y ago

Electrolysis is here and fairly reliably working with my main XUL based extensions, but the ship for WebExtensions has sailed and I'm not gonna be on the wrong side of things (eg. Python 2 vs 3, Systemd vs "fun" init scripts), just gonna prepare for the realities of it, no matter that it breaks my heart to be forced to chromium at work :( I get that Mozilla wants to dump all the cruft added by XUL based extensions, and that they offed all the Firefox OS bits ASAP, but there are still markets for both those things. The latter prolly had more life in it if it were targeted as a Firefox chromebook type deal to give to the parents/kids, as that is eating into laptops marketshare in the double digits, and that on a Pinebook could easily make it the year of the Linux Laptop.

pluma 10y ago

> Electrolysis is basically here and working, slowly rolling out Unless you use extensions, which used to be one of Firefox's biggest advantages. I gave Firefox on Ubuntu a try for a week last month because I was looking for a replacement for Chrome and if I wasn't tech savvy I wouldn't have been able to figure out that Firefox was running in single-process mode and how to fix that. E.g. the default "Ubuntu integration" extension that Firefox ships with on Ubuntu (where it is the default browser) is not compatible with electrolysis. Additionally the (now outdated) Lastpass extension from the Firefox addon shop isn't compatible. I think the Trello Scrum extension also isn't compatible. The React developer tools also only just experimentally enabled compatibility. I'm not nitpicking -- users don't care why Firefox is slow or why electrolysis is disabled. If an extension is available for Firefox, especially if it's available on the official addon shop, users expect it to work and not to make Firefox slow to a crawl. That said, even with multiprocess mode I found that Firefox would often be considerably slower when having many tabs open (it's normal for me to keep 30-40 tabs open and this isn't rare, even among my non-developer friends). And as a developer the dev tools are still lightyears behind.