6 ms·

I hope not, vive la Firefox! I am disheartened though that I feel compelled to use Chrome now in some cases because Google's UI's are poorly optimized outside

I hope not, vive la Firefox! I am disheartened though that I feel compelled to use Chrome now in some cases because Google's UI's are poorly optimized outside Chrome (looking at your GCloud UI and YouTube) and some companies have made a decision to only support Chrome (looking at you Slack voice chat).

whatshisface 8y ago
>some companies have made a decision to only support Chrome (looking at you Slack voice chat) Well, there you have it. The beginning of the process that will remind everybody why browser monocultures are horrible things.
- Zelphyr 8y ago
  How have we not learned this lesson from when Microsoft did it? Believe it or not, there are still companies that require sites built for them to be compatible with IE7 because that’s what they standardized on and they don’t want to go through the trouble of an upgrade. When you hitch your wagon to the same horse you eventually get left behind.
  - nothis 8y ago
    Microsoft was only held back by their own incompetence. GFWL, Internet Explorer, Zune, Windows mobile, the Microsoft Store,... they had all the power in the world to force that upon us but failed because their products were _so_ bad even non-tech people went through the trouble of finding alternatives. Google, however? Their stuff at least works. They never had the luxury to send people through hoops, 3 seconds and people give up on the web. So that’s what makes Google so scary. They’re omnipresent _and_ competent. My only hope ist that, as they grow, their products get worse which empowers better competitors.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - cimmanom 8y ago
      Tell that to users putting up with the new gmail.
      - ta999903 8y ago
        I had to wait for ~12 seconds after pressing 'Reply'. I gave up and migrated.
      - Zelphyr 8y ago
        Agreed. Google is already doing things to make their products bad. Companies that size seemingly can’t help it. Maps looks real nice and all but the old version was WAY easier to use. They won’t stop with these changes because they feel like they need to stay relevant and fresh and no amount of user complaining will outweigh their hubris.
  - mevile 8y ago
    I think Slack is actually using standardized tech that hasn't been implemented/or not implemented well in Firefox. Chrome doesn't have an ActiveX analogy. Anything you use in Chrome is based on a standard, although some, like the directory traversal, are standards that never saw completion and exist only because Chrome kind of jumped the gun and can't remove those things now.
    - Yoric 8y ago
      Well, it's not ActiveX, but Google has been known (and is still known) to use a number of non-standards (often, as you point out, could-have-been-standards-but-weren't) in their own web properties, locking away non-Chrome users. Last time I checked, this was still the case with Google Hangouts, for instance, which used non-standard WebRTC. I don't know about Slack specifically, but third parties have been known to follow suit.
      - mevile 8y ago
        WebRTC is a standard... https://www.w3.org/TR/webrtc/ https://www.w3.org/TR/webrtc/
  - timrichard 8y ago
    There are some similarities, but it's not an identical situation. When IE6 was parked and browsers were considered 'done', it was a closed source monolith tightly coupled to the dominant OS. Today Chromium is open source, even if Chrome isn't, and browsers are used on a greater variety of operating systems. Just as it's common for an owner of a new Mac or PC to install Chrome as a first task, there are no technical reasons why something else couldn't be the dominant choice - just familiarity and inertia. Those things change. The other reason things are slightly different is because of better compliance with Web standards. For a web developer in the late 90's, it was easy to get drawn in to using Microsoft's proprietary tinkering with the DOM (only now are they able to resist the temptation to EEE, probably not through choice or natural instinct). Browsers now put much more emphasis on standards compliance, making web site and app portability common and expected.
    - bad_user 8y ago
      The fact that Chromium is open source is completely irrelevant. Fact of the matter is that Google controls its development, which means that whatever they push in Chrome becomes a de facto standard. DRM for HTML to prevent ads from being blocked? Sure. Want to bet it will happen due to Google and Chrome? We've got the same situation with Android too. That AOSP is open source is completely irrelevant, it's still a Google controlled monopoly, nobody can fork it due to the massive resources required and Google can effectively coerce phone makers into doing whatever they want via the threat of blocking access to Google Play. The blind spot and double standard people have for Chrome and Android is huge. --- Also, do you know what's most hilarious? People switching to Chromium-derived browsers to get away from Google. I can almost hear the evil laugh from Mountain View.
      - timrichard 8y ago
        Run Firefox on Cyanogenmod. Sites will still work. > Fact of the matter is that Google controls its development, which means that whatever they push in Chrome becomes a de facto standard. Which is why webp, webm, Amp has dominated over other standards? > Want to bet it will happen Weak speculation. The context under discussion was "fully taken over yet", and "dominant".
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    The only reason Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox got a foothold was that IE6 was basically abandoned and there was so much low hanging fruit (Tabs! Ad blockers!). But then Firefox got complacent with their performance, giving Chrome an in, and in the meantime IE/Edge got a lot better, so there is less incentive to try something else. At this point, Firefox doesn't really solve any pain points for most users. Some people like the greater flexibility Firefox has (had?) with extensions, some people care about the anti-tracking work they're doing, but at this point the selling point seems to be an abstract notion of competition/freedom, which most people don't really care about. Firefox needs a vision of what is missing from the browser that really resonates with people. They seem to be banking on the idea that privacy is that differentiator, and it's smart in the sense that it's not a direction that Google will go with Chrome, but all signs point to people not actually caring that much about privacy. My personal take is that Firefox should really invest heavily in their Android browser (e.g. improve reliability of the media stack, get e10s, etc), build in an ad blocker, or bundle uBlock in the default install, and market that. Chrome will never ship an ad blocker on Android, and blocking ads is far more of a thing people care about than privacy. [EDIT]: Maybe all the Rust stuff will pay off and Firefox will have a really good performance/security(battery life?) story. That would be a good path as well.
    - bdcravens 8y ago
      Are you describing a situation where Firefox should be the dominant one instead of Chrome?
      - Eridrus 8y ago
        I don't have a strong opinion on what the market share of various browsers should be, but I don't think "we're a competing implementation that exists to keep Google/Apple/Microsoft honest" is really enough of a reason for most people to care about it. If Firefox wants to see their usage grow, they need to be providing a real value proposition to users, because there are real costs for users of using software with low adoption numbers, e.g. in compatibility & support.
        8y ago
- bpye 8y ago
  Sadly using Firefox on Android is an exercise in frustration. There are numerous sites I have to open in Chrome as they are in some way broken in Firefox.
  - kingofpandora 8y ago
    I only have FF installed on Android and don't have any issues.
  - esotericn 8y ago
    Can't say I've ever had an issue. Do you have an example?
  - cpburns2009 8y ago
    It's not that bad. Having an ad-blocker is a godsend. Chrome does feel noticeably faster on Android but the ads aren't worth it.
  - enitihas 8y ago
    I think firefox android user experience can be improved in a lot of cases by simply setting the User Agent to chrome. I have found that this works very well with a lot of sites. For example, doing a google search for any sports league gives you a nice interactive table with matches and standings in chrome, but with firefox the table lacks any interactivity. However, setting the UA to chrome makes the table work very well. Also, I feel firefox consumes less battery than chrome on Android. I used to use chrome exclusively, and it would always show up as the largest consumer of battery. After switching to firefox battery life has been much better.
    - rwmj 8y ago
      I wonder if this could be considered anticompetitive (in the legal sense)?
  - meddlepal 8y ago
    Really? Such as? I love Frefox on Android and have not noticed any issues, but I also admit I really don't do a lot of web browsing outside the handful of websites o care about.
warent 8y ago
With the advent of Firefox Quantum, and with the god awful Chrome 69-70 updates, I abandoned Chrome once and for all and it feels great. There's no point in the foreseeable future where I'll be going back.
bad_user 8y ago
I was a die hard Chrome user until about 4 years ago, switched to Firefox since then and I rarely feel the need to open Chrome, which I keep around just for the occasional testing of websites. I never had problems with YouTube. That said Gmail or the GSuite Admin are a little slower in Firefox. But you know what? They are slow enough in Chrome too. Latest Gmail is a piece of shit. So the solution to that was to switch to a desktop client (Mailmate, which can handle Gmail just fine) and for my personal email I switched to FastMail. And I'm very happy about it. Get out of the Google bubble. The air is clean on this side of the fence ;-)
- _justpassingby_ 8y ago
  Latest Gmail is, indeed, a piece of shit. I think it's for the same reason a lot of websites now are (including my university's course portal): everyone is using frameworks that purport to work just as good on mobile as desktop but in reality end up compromising both platforms down to a mediocre workable level. That's not a Google issue, and I honestly don't know if a resurgence of desktop apps in general would be a good thing or not.
- meddlepal 8y ago
  Its somewhat difficult to get out of the Google bubble when your company uses GSuite and GCloud and you're the ops guy :P
  - cmroanirgo 8y ago
    There's nothing forcing you to adopt their whole ecosystem, even if your core functionality is using G. Move away from their client based products though: Chrome-> FireFox, Gmail app->any other, Maps->Bing/OpenStreetMap. (Personally I still use maps, because the others aren't quite quite up to par in my region).
nothrabannosir 8y ago
If you’re on a Mac, I recommend Safari in those cases. It’s so much more performant and energy saving than FF, it’s hard to ignore. (Signed: an ardent FF user :) )
- bad_user 8y ago
  For a large increase in efficiency for Firefox on MacOS set gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque to true in about:config. Credits goes to @pcwalton: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18048844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18048844
  - Yoric 8y ago
    Ooohhh... Giving it a try.
Consultant32452 8y ago
I'm making a point to use FF because of privacy concerns, but the experience is poor. It hangs/crashes at least once a week, and the Reddit infinite scroll thing doesn't work for some reason.
- Yoric 8y ago
  That sounds odd. I haven't had issues with Firefox in forever. Any chance you're using an antivirus? They've been known to hack the Firefox binary in... interesting manners. Also, if you have anything reproducible, I can help you file a bug.
cpburns2009 8y ago
Don't forget Google Hangouts and Google Analytics (the interface). I had to stop even trying to use Firefox for those. Granted, I haven't tried Firefox in those in about 2 years. I haven't had any trouble using Youtube in Firefox.
dmytrish 8y ago
Ironically, I use YouTube in Firefox on Linux, because sound quality in Chrome is audibly worse.
strict9 8y ago
I love Firefox but so many years later still cannot get used to that giant round duplo back button. It's obnoxious.
- yoasif_ 8y ago
  You can customize the tool bar size; select "compact".

whatshisface 8y ago

>some companies have made a decision to only support Chrome (looking at you Slack voice chat) Well, there you have it. The beginning of the process that will remind everybody why browser monocultures are horrible things.

Zelphyr 8y ago
How have we not learned this lesson from when Microsoft did it? Believe it or not, there are still companies that require sites built for them to be compatible with IE7 because that’s what they standardized on and they don’t want to go through the trouble of an upgrade. When you hitch your wagon to the same horse you eventually get left behind.
- nothis 8y ago
  Microsoft was only held back by their own incompetence. GFWL, Internet Explorer, Zune, Windows mobile, the Microsoft Store,... they had all the power in the world to force that upon us but failed because their products were _so_ bad even non-tech people went through the trouble of finding alternatives. Google, however? Their stuff at least works. They never had the luxury to send people through hoops, 3 seconds and people give up on the web. So that’s what makes Google so scary. They’re omnipresent _and_ competent. My only hope ist that, as they grow, their products get worse which empowers better competitors.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    Tell that to users putting up with the new gmail.
    - ta999903 8y ago
      I had to wait for ~12 seconds after pressing 'Reply'. I gave up and migrated.
    - Zelphyr 8y ago
      Agreed. Google is already doing things to make their products bad. Companies that size seemingly can’t help it. Maps looks real nice and all but the old version was WAY easier to use. They won’t stop with these changes because they feel like they need to stay relevant and fresh and no amount of user complaining will outweigh their hubris.
- mevile 8y ago
  I think Slack is actually using standardized tech that hasn't been implemented/or not implemented well in Firefox. Chrome doesn't have an ActiveX analogy. Anything you use in Chrome is based on a standard, although some, like the directory traversal, are standards that never saw completion and exist only because Chrome kind of jumped the gun and can't remove those things now.
  - Yoric 8y ago
    Well, it's not ActiveX, but Google has been known (and is still known) to use a number of non-standards (often, as you point out, could-have-been-standards-but-weren't) in their own web properties, locking away non-Chrome users. Last time I checked, this was still the case with Google Hangouts, for instance, which used non-standard WebRTC. I don't know about Slack specifically, but third parties have been known to follow suit.
    - mevile 8y ago
      WebRTC is a standard... https://www.w3.org/TR/webrtc/ https://www.w3.org/TR/webrtc/
- timrichard 8y ago
  There are some similarities, but it's not an identical situation. When IE6 was parked and browsers were considered 'done', it was a closed source monolith tightly coupled to the dominant OS. Today Chromium is open source, even if Chrome isn't, and browsers are used on a greater variety of operating systems. Just as it's common for an owner of a new Mac or PC to install Chrome as a first task, there are no technical reasons why something else couldn't be the dominant choice - just familiarity and inertia. Those things change. The other reason things are slightly different is because of better compliance with Web standards. For a web developer in the late 90's, it was easy to get drawn in to using Microsoft's proprietary tinkering with the DOM (only now are they able to resist the temptation to EEE, probably not through choice or natural instinct). Browsers now put much more emphasis on standards compliance, making web site and app portability common and expected.
  - bad_user 8y ago
    The fact that Chromium is open source is completely irrelevant. Fact of the matter is that Google controls its development, which means that whatever they push in Chrome becomes a de facto standard. DRM for HTML to prevent ads from being blocked? Sure. Want to bet it will happen due to Google and Chrome? We've got the same situation with Android too. That AOSP is open source is completely irrelevant, it's still a Google controlled monopoly, nobody can fork it due to the massive resources required and Google can effectively coerce phone makers into doing whatever they want via the threat of blocking access to Google Play. The blind spot and double standard people have for Chrome and Android is huge. --- Also, do you know what's most hilarious? People switching to Chromium-derived browsers to get away from Google. I can almost hear the evil laugh from Mountain View.
    - timrichard 8y ago
      Run Firefox on Cyanogenmod. Sites will still work. > Fact of the matter is that Google controls its development, which means that whatever they push in Chrome becomes a de facto standard. Which is why webp, webm, Amp has dominated over other standards? > Want to bet it will happen Weak speculation. The context under discussion was "fully taken over yet", and "dominant".
- Eridrus 8y ago
  The only reason Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox got a foothold was that IE6 was basically abandoned and there was so much low hanging fruit (Tabs! Ad blockers!). But then Firefox got complacent with their performance, giving Chrome an in, and in the meantime IE/Edge got a lot better, so there is less incentive to try something else. At this point, Firefox doesn't really solve any pain points for most users. Some people like the greater flexibility Firefox has (had?) with extensions, some people care about the anti-tracking work they're doing, but at this point the selling point seems to be an abstract notion of competition/freedom, which most people don't really care about. Firefox needs a vision of what is missing from the browser that really resonates with people. They seem to be banking on the idea that privacy is that differentiator, and it's smart in the sense that it's not a direction that Google will go with Chrome, but all signs point to people not actually caring that much about privacy. My personal take is that Firefox should really invest heavily in their Android browser (e.g. improve reliability of the media stack, get e10s, etc), build in an ad blocker, or bundle uBlock in the default install, and market that. Chrome will never ship an ad blocker on Android, and blocking ads is far more of a thing people care about than privacy. [EDIT]: Maybe all the Rust stuff will pay off and Firefox will have a really good performance/security(battery life?) story. That would be a good path as well.
  - bdcravens 8y ago
    Are you describing a situation where Firefox should be the dominant one instead of Chrome?
    - Eridrus 8y ago
      I don't have a strong opinion on what the market share of various browsers should be, but I don't think "we're a competing implementation that exists to keep Google/Apple/Microsoft honest" is really enough of a reason for most people to care about it. If Firefox wants to see their usage grow, they need to be providing a real value proposition to users, because there are real costs for users of using software with low adoption numbers, e.g. in compatibility & support.
      - 8y ago
bpye 8y ago
Sadly using Firefox on Android is an exercise in frustration. There are numerous sites I have to open in Chrome as they are in some way broken in Firefox.
- kingofpandora 8y ago
  I only have FF installed on Android and don't have any issues.
- esotericn 8y ago
  Can't say I've ever had an issue. Do you have an example?
- cpburns2009 8y ago
  It's not that bad. Having an ad-blocker is a godsend. Chrome does feel noticeably faster on Android but the ads aren't worth it.
- enitihas 8y ago
  I think firefox android user experience can be improved in a lot of cases by simply setting the User Agent to chrome. I have found that this works very well with a lot of sites. For example, doing a google search for any sports league gives you a nice interactive table with matches and standings in chrome, but with firefox the table lacks any interactivity. However, setting the UA to chrome makes the table work very well. Also, I feel firefox consumes less battery than chrome on Android. I used to use chrome exclusively, and it would always show up as the largest consumer of battery. After switching to firefox battery life has been much better.
  - rwmj 8y ago
    I wonder if this could be considered anticompetitive (in the legal sense)?
- meddlepal 8y ago
  Really? Such as? I love Frefox on Android and have not noticed any issues, but I also admit I really don't do a lot of web browsing outside the handful of websites o care about.

warent 8y ago

With the advent of Firefox Quantum, and with the god awful Chrome 69-70 updates, I abandoned Chrome once and for all and it feels great. There's no point in the foreseeable future where I'll be going back.

bad_user 8y ago

I was a die hard Chrome user until about 4 years ago, switched to Firefox since then and I rarely feel the need to open Chrome, which I keep around just for the occasional testing of websites. I never had problems with YouTube. That said Gmail or the GSuite Admin are a little slower in Firefox. But you know what? They are slow enough in Chrome too. Latest Gmail is a piece of shit. So the solution to that was to switch to a desktop client (Mailmate, which can handle Gmail just fine) and for my personal email I switched to FastMail. And I'm very happy about it. Get out of the Google bubble. The air is clean on this side of the fence ;-)

_justpassingby_ 8y ago
Latest Gmail is, indeed, a piece of shit. I think it's for the same reason a lot of websites now are (including my university's course portal): everyone is using frameworks that purport to work just as good on mobile as desktop but in reality end up compromising both platforms down to a mediocre workable level. That's not a Google issue, and I honestly don't know if a resurgence of desktop apps in general would be a good thing or not.
meddlepal 8y ago
Its somewhat difficult to get out of the Google bubble when your company uses GSuite and GCloud and you're the ops guy :P
- cmroanirgo 8y ago
  There's nothing forcing you to adopt their whole ecosystem, even if your core functionality is using G. Move away from their client based products though: Chrome-> FireFox, Gmail app->any other, Maps->Bing/OpenStreetMap. (Personally I still use maps, because the others aren't quite quite up to par in my region).

nothrabannosir 8y ago

If you’re on a Mac, I recommend Safari in those cases. It’s so much more performant and energy saving than FF, it’s hard to ignore. (Signed: an ardent FF user :) )

bad_user 8y ago
For a large increase in efficiency for Firefox on MacOS set gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque to true in about:config. Credits goes to @pcwalton: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18048844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18048844
- Yoric 8y ago
  Ooohhh... Giving it a try.

Consultant32452 8y ago

I'm making a point to use FF because of privacy concerns, but the experience is poor. It hangs/crashes at least once a week, and the Reddit infinite scroll thing doesn't work for some reason.

Yoric 8y ago
That sounds odd. I haven't had issues with Firefox in forever. Any chance you're using an antivirus? They've been known to hack the Firefox binary in... interesting manners. Also, if you have anything reproducible, I can help you file a bug.

cpburns2009 8y ago

Don't forget Google Hangouts and Google Analytics (the interface). I had to stop even trying to use Firefox for those. Granted, I haven't tried Firefox in those in about 2 years. I haven't had any trouble using Youtube in Firefox.

dmytrish 8y ago

Ironically, I use YouTube in Firefox on Linux, because sound quality in Chrome is audibly worse.

strict9 8y ago

I love Firefox but so many years later still cannot get used to that giant round duplo back button. It's obnoxious.

yoasif_ 8y ago
You can customize the tool bar size; select "compact".