14 ms·

It's worth pointing out that Mozilla can only continue to put pressure on Google and fight for the open web if people continue to use Firefox and support them.

It's worth pointing out that Mozilla can only continue to put pressure on Google and fight for the open web if people continue to use Firefox and support them. Consider switching to Firefox even if you prefer Chrome. Report websites that don't support FF. We are all better off for the existence of Mozilla, and strong viable competition to Chrome and IE.

SquareWheel 9y ago
You make it sound like Mozilla is somehow fighting against Google for the open web. But virtually all browser vendors are aligned on this issue, and have been working towards improving the web through standardization, improved performance, and functionality for years now.
- sanxiyn 9y ago
  The point of the article is that while Google is mostly aligned on the issue, Google also does things like creating PNaCl, which is not an aligned behavior.
  - SquareWheel 9y ago
    (P)NaCl was introduced to replace NPAPI, at a time when the majority of rich web interaction still happened through plugins. I'm glad to see it killed off, and have been expecting it for a few years now. JS/asm and (hopefully soon) WebAssembly have supplanted many of its features and benefits. Still, this doesn't strike me as anti-open web. Google offered a solution when one was needed - it didn't gain traction, so they eventually retired it.
    - roca 9y ago
      Google introduced PNaCl and made it available as a feature any Web page could use, knowing that there was effectively zero chance it would ever become a cross-browser Web standard. That was anti-open-Web.
- falcolas 9y ago
  And yet I can still only use Google Meet in Chrome. And many "standards" are only partially implemented in other browsers, or require browser-specific prefixes. I'd also go so far as to say that Google's AMP project, as implemented, displays a distinct step away from an open web.
SirensOfTitan 9y ago
> Consider switching to Firefox even if you prefer Chrome. I have given Firefox plenty of chances. It's just too slow: webpages load slower, and when they are loaded interactions feel awful (low FPS on large webapps).
- falcolas 9y ago
  I haven't noticed this myself, and I use both extensively on a daily basis. I currently only use Chrome for work because of Google Meet. Drives me batty that I don't have a choice there.
  - sirfz 9y ago
    Same here, can't stand the fact it's taking so long to get Hangouts support on newer versions of Firefox.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Keep giving it a try every now and then: there's a lot of focus to improve in these areas.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  I have the opposite problem somehow. Chrome is incredibly slow and pages take dozens of seconds to load. Firefox feels so fast and responsive. I think the issue is due to adblock though, which I keep off of firefox.
  - SirensOfTitan 9y ago
    Try using uBlock Origin on Chrome next time. It's way more efficient than adblock.
jeswin 9y ago
Even if thousands of developers from HN switch, that would hardly move the needle. Ordinary users just won't care about any of this. Servo, which I think is the most important software project in the world, is where it will start to change. That's when those of us who may not be directly contributing code into Servo need to come out and do our thing. I still fondly remember the NYT ad and the crop circle. We should do it all over again.
- kuschku 9y ago
  I doubt that would help. As the lead dev of VLC in a recent interview said, they’ve been offered huge amounts of money to include Google Chrome in their installer, and saying no was the hardest decision he’s ever made. As long as Google has fraudulent ads for Chrome "your browser is outdated, update now to Google Chrome" on their websites, as long as Google intentionally makes the experience worse for Firefox (see the youtube redesign), as long as Google pays developers to ship Chrome as malware with every single installer, as long as Google forces OEMs to install Chrome with Android, Chrome will rule the market. The only solution now is the EU.
  - fiala__ 9y ago
    can you elaborate on that last point? What does the EU have to do with this?
    - NiLSPACE 9y ago
      Perhaps he means a similar thing to what they did to Microsoft by forcing them to make it possible to choose a different browser when installing Windows.
    - hacksonx 9y ago
      I think, I could be wrong but I think he/she is referring to what the European Union did with Microsoft and asked them to include a way that asks new Windows users to select a default browser and offer them choices besides Internet explorer.
    - 9y ago
_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
I use FF, although Mozilla focuses on thousand of other things instead of making FF a great browser. As a developer I'm annoyed every time I enter "com.scala.List" in the address bar and FF does not use google to search but thinks this is an url. No, "List" is not a TLD and no that website does not exist.
- ComodoHacker 9y ago
  Try "g com.scala.List" instead. It's not that much inconvenience.
  - _Codemonkeyism 9y ago
    What other arcane commands do I need to use to make FF work like Chrome?
    - falcolas 9y ago
      Why should Firefox work like Chrome? They're two separate products, and Firefox offers an explicit search bar for disambiguating searches from addresses. Especially important since 'List' could indeed be a TLD in the near future.
    - ComodoHacker 9y ago
      No reason to force X to work like Y. The point of these commands (invented by Opera by the way) is to give you choice what search engine to use while not sacrificing your performance. Google's approach is different: remove choices that might confuse or distract you. Choose what you like.
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  - Symmetry 9y ago
    Does the 'g' prefix do anything? On my Firefox it still searches for 'g com.scala.List' in Duck Duck Go, my default search engine. When I run that on Chrome it searches for 'com.scala.List' on Github because I've chosen g as a search leader for Github (which is super convinient and I wish I could do that on Firefox).
simias 9y ago
I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? I use Firefox as my main browser but my girlfriend uses chrome on her computers so I get to use it from time to time. I don't notice any major differences, the extensions I care about are available on both browsers, the speed is not noticeably different etc... On top of that Firefox predates chrome so it's not like people not switching away from IE because they didn't know better. So what happened exactly? Is there some chrome killer feature that I just happen not to use myself?
- NiLSPACE 9y ago
  > I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? Because every time people go to google.com they see a popup that google works better in Google Chrome.
  - ice109 9y ago
    Firefox should start reporting its user agent as chrome :)
    - NiLSPACE 9y ago
      There are people who actually do that because otherwise they get an inferior version of a website even though it works perfectly fine on Firefox as well.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- spcelzrd 9y ago
  What happened is tighter integration with google services and every time you go to google.com, there's a prompt to download Chrome.
  - eli 9y ago
chrshawkes 9y ago
Unfortunately it's not as easy as that. My web development is hugely dependent upon chrome's browser debugging. It's made my life a lot easier being a JavaScript dev. I'm sure Firefox has made strides but does it offer something better than Chrome? Probably not, there is a reason most web development shifted to Chrome in the first place.
- agmcleod 9y ago
  It's true. I've been using firefox again for about a month now. It's pretty decent, but definitely lags behind. Stack trace errors in the console don't respect source maps. A 3D scene ive been working on has been slow to load/refresh, where it's a non issue in chrome. I'm sticking with it for now, as I don't want to be all in on one company, but it's hard at times.
- ionised 9y ago
  What's the difference between the two? I've only done a little front-end development but I tried both browsers debugging tools and other than layout, I couldn't see any differences. They both seem to offer the same things.
xiphias 9y ago
I'll try Firefox after they complete the switch to Project Quantum. It will be a very serious competitor, especially on mobile phones, where using multiple processors and GPU rendering matters even more. But I'll switch because it will be safer and faster, not because of ideological reasons.
tmaly 9y ago
I donate to Mozilla every year, and I use Firefox on phone and desktop. I like that I can install ublock origin on mobile firefox. Chrome does not support this option.
- btschaegg 9y ago
  You pretty much sum things up as they were for me half a year ago. I'm not happy about them putting the sword of Damocles over Vimperator and Pentadactyl though, which is why I'm mainly using Qutebrowser on the desktop now. That said, Mozilla is still awesome and FF will most likely remain my second go-to browser.
  - tmaly 9y ago
    One other thing I stumbled upon, the responsive design mode in Chrome was not working correctly. I was pulling my hair out when developing with it. I switched over to Firefox in their responsive mode and it worked correctly and reflected what I saw on an actual phone. What has always frustrated me most about Chrome is that certain bugs or fixes can take an eternity to fix despite there be many reports on an issue.
Kiro 9y ago
Report to what?
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Preferably to the website owner, optionally to Mozilla: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/pulse https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/pulse
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  https://webcompat.com/ https://webcompat.com/ is a good start.
deleted 9y ago
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DiNovi 9y ago
Or use the browser that works better for you...
joobus 9y ago
No, I won't support Mozilla. I used Firefox for a long time, but then they decided to drop their extension capabilities for something very similar to Chrome's. Why wouldn't I just use chrome? Second, the zoom functionality in Firefox is broken. On a 4k display, pages just get jacked up after doing Ctrl-+ a few too many times. Chrome's zoom is far superior. People have told me, "just change the default pixels per inch" nonsense. No, Firefox's zoom is just broken. Lastly, after the SJW witch hunt and ousting of Brendan Eich, I don't care what happens to Mozilla.
reacweb 9y ago
At my office, there is a proxy to access internet. When a site is blocked by blue coat filter, I launch putty to open a tunnel to my webserver and I launch firefox portable using my tunnel as a proxy. I used to do it using chrome, but the enterprise has set a policy to block configuration of chrome proxy (like internet explorer). firefox is the only browser that allows uncensored (and private) internet access in my office. At my house (ubuntu gnome), windows firefox on wine is the only way I have found to access some webTV based on flash.
fixermark 9y ago
It may not be sufficient to just switch to FF. I think it likely that what FF needs is people putting in the grunt work of continuing to optimize the hell out of it so that it's performance-competitive with Chrome. Users will choose the fastest browser that works, in general.
- nathancahill 9y ago
  Have you tried it recently? Mozilla has done exactly that. The latest version is faster than Chrome in some benchmarks.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    I'm more interested in the elusive-but-oh-so-important "Feels faster" metric, which is harder to capture in benchmarks. To my taste, Chrome juuuust edges out at a cursory glance, but barely (though at this point, it's a little sticky for me because it has my Google account credentials, my bookmarks backed up to the cloud, etc., etc.). But it's definitely looking better than it did when last I tried that comparison.
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SquareWheel 9y ago

You make it sound like Mozilla is somehow fighting against Google for the open web. But virtually all browser vendors are aligned on this issue, and have been working towards improving the web through standardization, improved performance, and functionality for years now.

sanxiyn 9y ago
The point of the article is that while Google is mostly aligned on the issue, Google also does things like creating PNaCl, which is not an aligned behavior.
- SquareWheel 9y ago
  (P)NaCl was introduced to replace NPAPI, at a time when the majority of rich web interaction still happened through plugins. I'm glad to see it killed off, and have been expecting it for a few years now. JS/asm and (hopefully soon) WebAssembly have supplanted many of its features and benefits. Still, this doesn't strike me as anti-open web. Google offered a solution when one was needed - it didn't gain traction, so they eventually retired it.
  - roca 9y ago
    Google introduced PNaCl and made it available as a feature any Web page could use, knowing that there was effectively zero chance it would ever become a cross-browser Web standard. That was anti-open-Web.
falcolas 9y ago
And yet I can still only use Google Meet in Chrome. And many "standards" are only partially implemented in other browsers, or require browser-specific prefixes. I'd also go so far as to say that Google's AMP project, as implemented, displays a distinct step away from an open web.

SirensOfTitan 9y ago

> Consider switching to Firefox even if you prefer Chrome. I have given Firefox plenty of chances. It's just too slow: webpages load slower, and when they are loaded interactions feel awful (low FPS on large webapps).

falcolas 9y ago
I haven't noticed this myself, and I use both extensively on a daily basis. I currently only use Chrome for work because of Google Meet. Drives me batty that I don't have a choice there.
- sirfz 9y ago
  Same here, can't stand the fact it's taking so long to get Hangouts support on newer versions of Firefox.
Vinnl 9y ago
Keep giving it a try every now and then: there's a lot of focus to improve in these areas.
Houshalter 9y ago
I have the opposite problem somehow. Chrome is incredibly slow and pages take dozens of seconds to load. Firefox feels so fast and responsive. I think the issue is due to adblock though, which I keep off of firefox.
- SirensOfTitan 9y ago
  Try using uBlock Origin on Chrome next time. It's way more efficient than adblock.

jeswin 9y ago

Even if thousands of developers from HN switch, that would hardly move the needle. Ordinary users just won't care about any of this. Servo, which I think is the most important software project in the world, is where it will start to change. That's when those of us who may not be directly contributing code into Servo need to come out and do our thing. I still fondly remember the NYT ad and the crop circle. We should do it all over again.

kuschku 9y ago
I doubt that would help. As the lead dev of VLC in a recent interview said, they’ve been offered huge amounts of money to include Google Chrome in their installer, and saying no was the hardest decision he’s ever made. As long as Google has fraudulent ads for Chrome "your browser is outdated, update now to Google Chrome" on their websites, as long as Google intentionally makes the experience worse for Firefox (see the youtube redesign), as long as Google pays developers to ship Chrome as malware with every single installer, as long as Google forces OEMs to install Chrome with Android, Chrome will rule the market. The only solution now is the EU.
- fiala__ 9y ago
  can you elaborate on that last point? What does the EU have to do with this?
  - NiLSPACE 9y ago
    Perhaps he means a similar thing to what they did to Microsoft by forcing them to make it possible to choose a different browser when installing Windows.
  - hacksonx 9y ago
    I think, I could be wrong but I think he/she is referring to what the European Union did with Microsoft and asked them to include a way that asks new Windows users to select a default browser and offer them choices besides Internet explorer.
  - 9y ago

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago

I use FF, although Mozilla focuses on thousand of other things instead of making FF a great browser. As a developer I'm annoyed every time I enter "com.scala.List" in the address bar and FF does not use google to search but thinks this is an url. No, "List" is not a TLD and no that website does not exist.

ComodoHacker 9y ago
Try "g com.scala.List" instead. It's not that much inconvenience.
- _Codemonkeyism 9y ago
  What other arcane commands do I need to use to make FF work like Chrome?
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Why should Firefox work like Chrome? They're two separate products, and Firefox offers an explicit search bar for disambiguating searches from addresses. Especially important since 'List' could indeed be a TLD in the near future.
  - ComodoHacker 9y ago
    No reason to force X to work like Y. The point of these commands (invented by Opera by the way) is to give you choice what search engine to use while not sacrificing your performance. Google's approach is different: remove choices that might confuse or distract you. Choose what you like.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Symmetry 9y ago
  Does the 'g' prefix do anything? On my Firefox it still searches for 'g com.scala.List' in Duck Duck Go, my default search engine. When I run that on Chrome it searches for 'com.scala.List' on Github because I've chosen g as a search leader for Github (which is super convinient and I wish I could do that on Firefox).

simias 9y ago

I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? I use Firefox as my main browser but my girlfriend uses chrome on her computers so I get to use it from time to time. I don't notice any major differences, the extensions I care about are available on both browsers, the speed is not noticeably different etc... On top of that Firefox predates chrome so it's not like people not switching away from IE because they didn't know better. So what happened exactly? Is there some chrome killer feature that I just happen not to use myself?

NiLSPACE 9y ago
> I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? Because every time people go to google.com they see a popup that google works better in Google Chrome.
- ice109 9y ago
  Firefox should start reporting its user agent as chrome :)
  - NiLSPACE 9y ago
    There are people who actually do that because otherwise they get an inferior version of a website even though it works perfectly fine on Firefox as well.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
spcelzrd 9y ago
What happened is tighter integration with google services and every time you go to google.com, there's a prompt to download Chrome.
- eli 9y ago

chrshawkes 9y ago

Unfortunately it's not as easy as that. My web development is hugely dependent upon chrome's browser debugging. It's made my life a lot easier being a JavaScript dev. I'm sure Firefox has made strides but does it offer something better than Chrome? Probably not, there is a reason most web development shifted to Chrome in the first place.

agmcleod 9y ago
It's true. I've been using firefox again for about a month now. It's pretty decent, but definitely lags behind. Stack trace errors in the console don't respect source maps. A 3D scene ive been working on has been slow to load/refresh, where it's a non issue in chrome. I'm sticking with it for now, as I don't want to be all in on one company, but it's hard at times.
ionised 9y ago
What's the difference between the two? I've only done a little front-end development but I tried both browsers debugging tools and other than layout, I couldn't see any differences. They both seem to offer the same things.

xiphias 9y ago

I'll try Firefox after they complete the switch to Project Quantum. It will be a very serious competitor, especially on mobile phones, where using multiple processors and GPU rendering matters even more. But I'll switch because it will be safer and faster, not because of ideological reasons.

tmaly 9y ago

I donate to Mozilla every year, and I use Firefox on phone and desktop. I like that I can install ublock origin on mobile firefox. Chrome does not support this option.

btschaegg 9y ago
You pretty much sum things up as they were for me half a year ago. I'm not happy about them putting the sword of Damocles over Vimperator and Pentadactyl though, which is why I'm mainly using Qutebrowser on the desktop now. That said, Mozilla is still awesome and FF will most likely remain my second go-to browser.
- tmaly 9y ago
  One other thing I stumbled upon, the responsive design mode in Chrome was not working correctly. I was pulling my hair out when developing with it. I switched over to Firefox in their responsive mode and it worked correctly and reflected what I saw on an actual phone. What has always frustrated me most about Chrome is that certain bugs or fixes can take an eternity to fix despite there be many reports on an issue.

Kiro 9y ago

Report to what?

Vinnl 9y ago
Preferably to the website owner, optionally to Mozilla: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/pulse https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/pulse
bzbarsky 9y ago
https://webcompat.com/ https://webcompat.com/ is a good start.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

DiNovi 9y ago

Or use the browser that works better for you...

joobus 9y ago

No, I won't support Mozilla. I used Firefox for a long time, but then they decided to drop their extension capabilities for something very similar to Chrome's. Why wouldn't I just use chrome? Second, the zoom functionality in Firefox is broken. On a 4k display, pages just get jacked up after doing Ctrl-+ a few too many times. Chrome's zoom is far superior. People have told me, "just change the default pixels per inch" nonsense. No, Firefox's zoom is just broken. Lastly, after the SJW witch hunt and ousting of Brendan Eich, I don't care what happens to Mozilla.

reacweb 9y ago

At my office, there is a proxy to access internet. When a site is blocked by blue coat filter, I launch putty to open a tunnel to my webserver and I launch firefox portable using my tunnel as a proxy. I used to do it using chrome, but the enterprise has set a policy to block configuration of chrome proxy (like internet explorer). firefox is the only browser that allows uncensored (and private) internet access in my office. At my house (ubuntu gnome), windows firefox on wine is the only way I have found to access some webTV based on flash.

fixermark 9y ago

It may not be sufficient to just switch to FF. I think it likely that what FF needs is people putting in the grunt work of continuing to optimize the hell out of it so that it's performance-competitive with Chrome. Users will choose the fastest browser that works, in general.

nathancahill 9y ago
Have you tried it recently? Mozilla has done exactly that. The latest version is faster than Chrome in some benchmarks.
- fixermark 9y ago
  I'm more interested in the elusive-but-oh-so-important "Feels faster" metric, which is harder to capture in benchmarks. To my taste, Chrome juuuust edges out at a cursory glance, but barely (though at this point, it's a little sticky for me because it has my Google account credentials, my bookmarks backed up to the cloud, etc., etc.). But it's definitely looking better than it did when last I tried that comparison.

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