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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 g

by 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?

by wwalser 10y ago

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?