4 ms·

> Now, the same thing is happening again, except that Mozilla is on board with it. Mozilla doesn't have as much leverage now that a large part of "the communit

> Now, the same thing is happening again, except that Mozilla is on board with it. Mozilla doesn't have as much leverage now that a large part of "the community" has abandoned Firefox for Chrome. If you care about these issues, stop and consider the effect of your choice in user agent. > It's only a matter of time until Firefox is just a wrapper for webkit It will be a very cold day in hell before this happens. Mozilla is only investing more in its browser engine tech with Quantum and Servo.

the8472 10y ago
> It will be a very cold day in hell before this happens. I hope you're properly bundled up. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ios/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ios/
- packetslave 10y ago
  ALL web browsers on (non-jailbreak) IOS are a wrapper around Webkit. Apple won't allow anything else.
bubblethink 10y ago
Mozilla also picked the wrong battles. Firefox languished while they chased mobile OSes and other projects. They have a much more formidable competitor in Google than they did with MS in the early days. So trying to go for both Android and Chrome's market when there isn't a whole lot wrong with those products is a hard sell.
flukus 10y ago
> Mozilla doesn't have as much leverage now that a large part of "the community" has abandoned Firefox for Chrome. If you care about these issues, stop and consider the effect of your choice in user agent. Mozilla still has nearly an order of magnitude more market share than they did when activex was everywhere.
- wwalser 10y ago
  At the time that Firefox started really turning heads, it took an order of magnitude less money to build a better browser. JIT innovations that were once just good research ideas from the Smalltalk world had an open source implementation in Java which then got ported to open source dynamic languages like Python (see polymorphic inline caching & similar techniques). Then Adobe came along and donated a bunch of it's JIT code form ActionScript to Mozilla as well. To top that off, Microsoft was visibly asleep at the wheel with respect to Internet Explorer. All of this allowed Mozilla to both build a better browser and show the community a way forward with rich experiences that leveraged Javascript instead of ActiveX based solutions. With Google pouring resources into Chrome and Microsoft actually paying attention to Edge, competition is much harder. Mozilla is spending large sums of money on Firefox and delivering an experience that is just okay compared to the other players.
  - rb666 10y ago
    I encourage you to try out Firefox Nightly. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis has made me switch from Chrome to FF as the experience has improved greatly.
    - wwalser 10y ago
      Will do. I only reluctantly admitted that Chrome was better than FF about a year and a half ago. Would be thrilled to switch back.
  - apostacy 10y ago
    > At the time that Firefox started really turning heads, it took an order of magnitude less money to build a better browser. JIT innovations that were once just good research ideas... Is that really how things are, though? Isn't it possible that the underlying software ecosystem was manipulated by Google, so that they would have a problem to solve with Chrome? Imagine if trends continue, and every website is just an "app" for a js vm. Then Google would really have the advantage. I don't think Mozilla could fight Google on their own turf like that. Why should we let Google set the direction that our technology goes?
syshum 10y ago
>>browsers have less leverage as more Netflix subscribers get their content either on set-top boxes or mobile devices (where Netflix has total end-to-end control), and fewer are stuck with browsers. Yea they will us Blink, not Webkit... Mozilla is trying their hardest to make Firefox the best Chrome Clone on the market... Ofcourse Vivaldi is giving them a run for their money, but I I am sure Adopting EME, Web Extensions, and every other Chrome Tech will really get them their market share back.. Copy Cats always win...
smokedoutraider 10y ago
I use Chrome because it doesn't look and feel like a dated browser with substandard performance. It is up to Mozilla to modernize and improve their browser in order for me to care about them and not the other way around.

the8472 10y ago

> It will be a very cold day in hell before this happens. I hope you're properly bundled up. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ios/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ios/

packetslave 10y ago
ALL web browsers on (non-jailbreak) IOS are a wrapper around Webkit. Apple won't allow anything else.

bubblethink 10y ago

Mozilla also picked the wrong battles. Firefox languished while they chased mobile OSes and other projects. They have a much more formidable competitor in Google than they did with MS in the early days. So trying to go for both Android and Chrome's market when there isn't a whole lot wrong with those products is a hard sell.

flukus 10y ago

> Mozilla doesn't have as much leverage now that a large part of "the community" has abandoned Firefox for Chrome. If you care about these issues, stop and consider the effect of your choice in user agent. Mozilla still has nearly an order of magnitude more market share than they did when activex was everywhere.

wwalser 10y ago
At the time that Firefox started really turning heads, it took an order of magnitude less money to build a better browser. JIT innovations that were once just good research ideas from the Smalltalk world had an open source implementation in Java which then got ported to open source dynamic languages like Python (see polymorphic inline caching & similar techniques). Then Adobe came along and donated a bunch of it's JIT code form ActionScript to Mozilla as well. To top that off, Microsoft was visibly asleep at the wheel with respect to Internet Explorer. All of this allowed Mozilla to both build a better browser and show the community a way forward with rich experiences that leveraged Javascript instead of ActiveX based solutions. With Google pouring resources into Chrome and Microsoft actually paying attention to Edge, competition is much harder. Mozilla is spending large sums of money on Firefox and delivering an experience that is just okay compared to the other players.
- rb666 10y ago
  I encourage you to try out Firefox Nightly. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis has made me switch from Chrome to FF as the experience has improved greatly.
  - wwalser 10y ago
    Will do. I only reluctantly admitted that Chrome was better than FF about a year and a half ago. Would be thrilled to switch back.
- apostacy 10y ago
  > At the time that Firefox started really turning heads, it took an order of magnitude less money to build a better browser. JIT innovations that were once just good research ideas... Is that really how things are, though? Isn't it possible that the underlying software ecosystem was manipulated by Google, so that they would have a problem to solve with Chrome? Imagine if trends continue, and every website is just an "app" for a js vm. Then Google would really have the advantage. I don't think Mozilla could fight Google on their own turf like that. Why should we let Google set the direction that our technology goes?

syshum 10y ago

>>browsers have less leverage as more Netflix subscribers get their content either on set-top boxes or mobile devices (where Netflix has total end-to-end control), and fewer are stuck with browsers. Yea they will us Blink, not Webkit... Mozilla is trying their hardest to make Firefox the best Chrome Clone on the market... Ofcourse Vivaldi is giving them a run for their money, but I I am sure Adopting EME, Web Extensions, and every other Chrome Tech will really get them their market share back.. Copy Cats always win...

smokedoutraider 10y ago

I use Chrome because it doesn't look and feel like a dated browser with substandard performance. It is up to Mozilla to modernize and improve their browser in order for me to care about them and not the other way around.