19 ms·
Another reason to be glad that Firefox is still standing.
by metalliqaz 8y ago
Another reason to be glad that Firefox is still standing.
- ultimoo 8y agoYep, made the switch to Firefox with DuckDuckGo little less than a year ago. It was surprisingly fast to get used to and I haven't been more at ease since. I highly recommend trying this out for at least 1 week for everyone out here!
- metalliqaz 8y agoWith the news that Edge would switch to chromium, Firefox is really the only thing preventing a complete web browser monoculture. Support Firefox if you can!
- saagarjha 8y ago> Firefox is really the only thing preventing a complete web browser monoculture WebKit?
- OptionX 8y agoTrading Google overlords for Apple overlords does not seem like an upgrade.
- saagarjha 8y agoThat's totally fine, but it's still disingenuous to claim that Firefox is the only other browser out there.
- vertexFarm 8y agoChrome------------------64.15% Internet Explorer--------10.83% Firefox-------------------9.89% Edge---------------------4.30% Safari--------------------3.80% Opera--------------------1.58% Safari will survive since Apple is their patron. Obviously Internet Explorer is only a lumbering undead husk at this point, and it's pretty shameful that it's still outgunning Firefox by a small amount. Even more sad that it's got over twice as many users as Edge, lol.
- twblalock 8y agoThese numbers do not appear to include mobile browsers. Mobile browsers are just as important as desktop browsers these days, because a lot of people use them as much or more than they use desktop browsers. If you include mobile browsers, Safari's market share is closer to 17%, which makes it the #2 most popular: https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Trend%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222018-01%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222018-12%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?options...
- vertexFarm 8y agoAh, I was getting my data from the same site but I forgot to toggle mobile browsers. Wonder why that's not the default option? That's silly.
- mattkevan 8y agoYour numbers are off by a bit. I work for a website with around 1.2 billion annual pageviews. Mobile Safari is about 55%, Chrome (mobile & desktop) 35% and everything else gets the leftovers. Samsung browser is growing fast while IE, Edge, macOS Safari and Firefox are rounding errors. Kindle browser does better than IE. It’s amazing how far and hard it's fallen.
- AYBABTME 8y agoWith Apple, you're the customer, not the product. For one, Apple defends and doesn't sell your data.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mrtweetyhack 8y agofor now and not if the share holders have anything to say about it
- justinclift 8y ago> For one, Apple defends ... It's fairly likely that's just PR. They're a US headquartered place, so would have to comply with NSL's (etc) just like every other US company.
- phs318u 8y agoYes, they have to comply with NSLs. Difference though is the level of data they harvest on you. Google's business model requires they harvest as much as possible and in a way they ensure they can read it. Further, the bigger risk to most users is not NSL's, it's having some dodgy ad-corp buy your data and sell it to even dodgier companies.
- auslander 8y ago> and sell it to even dodgier companies And banks and insurances for credit ratings. And for screening companies, that are contracted to evaluate your job application on basis of your purchases, locations and so on
- handzbagz 8y agoUnless you happen to live in China.
- beezischillin 8y agoI use Safari as my preferred browser and I'm really happy with it, it's become a lot faster with each update, noticeably so. But I don't trust Apple any more than I trust Google to fight for a free Internet. We need an open browser.
- auslander 8y agoWe sure do, but Apple is trustworthy. Their business is not grabbing user data but keep it as private as possible. That sells devices.
- youwishboye 8y agowell sure, but I mean they lag behind a lot in regards to web standards, and they already crippled extensions like chrome plans to
- Brakenshire 8y agoEdge moving to Chromium has handed Google a lot of extra power which gives them the ability to make changes like this.
- vertexFarm 8y agoThanks for the reminder. I try to give a little to Mozilla and Wikipedia on a regular basis. So far they are living proof that there is a way to make this whole mess work at a high standard of quality without resorting to the advertising model, which seems to become more heinous by the day. Please everyone help the other options survive, even if you don't personally like them or use them. There is no way legislators are ever going to catch up on their technical knowledge enough to manage even the most blatant monopoly. Who am I kidding, they wouldn't care anyway. Somebody has to get in there to offer competition and keep things honest. Having options improves all of the options.
- sixothree 8y agoI really just don't understand the obsession with Chrome, especially in hacker communities. Sorry Google, I feel "icky & gross" when I use you.
- devoply 8y agoIt fast. That most important thing.
- jay_kyburz 8y agoFirefox on Windows is no slower as far as I can tell, and renders fonts better. Firefox on Mac is noticeably slower.
- darkpuma 8y agoFirefox with uMatrix will smoke Chrome without it, in nearly any real world use-case.
- BadassFractal 8y agoI really want to like Firefox, but it has basic bugs that make it unusable for me. E.g. waking up macOS from sleep, or switching between two active users in macOS stalls Firefox regularly and requires restarting it.
- QML 8y agoSomeone correct me, but can’t ad blockers just be installed through the OS and not be dependent on the browser? I recall this is what I had to do for Safari since there wasn’t a supported extension for the new browser yet. This would lessen our dependency on a browser for ad blocking in this ongoing browser war.
- ZenPsycho 8y agohow does this interact with TLS, particularly DNS over TLS? An OS level http proxy would have to MITM the TLS stream.
- kossae 8y agoI think it can be done through /etc/hosts or similar yes? The downside is maintaining the blacklist, but I believe it’s still doable.
- bubblethink 8y agoThat can only do blocking at a coarse dns level. The browser extensions do a lot more. If you want to do everything at the OS layer without browser extensions, you'll have to MITM your ssl connections by trusting your CA and set up a parallel engine that does what extensions do right now.
- wongarsu 8y agoYou can block the network calls to ad networks on the OS level by intercepting the DNS requests. That's a lot cruder and less flexible than the fine grained control over the DOM provided by a browser-based ad blocker though. If DNS level ad blockers became prevalent websites would also move to circumvent them, which would be a lot easier than with browser-based ad blockers. It's better to just not let a browser that's user hostile enough to prevent ad blocking win a browser war.
- darkpuma 8y agoThat doesn't get you close to what umatrix offers. I can throw facebook's servers into my hosts file, but what if I want to permit connections to facebook servers if and only if I am on facebook.com? uMatrix makes that trivial.
- rgrieselhuber 8y agoI’ve been off of Chrome for almost a year. Don’t miss it at all.
- devwastaken 8y agoIn time it will go the way of edge. Reimplimenting the same features over and over makes no sense.
- yogthos 8y agoI really don't understand why people prefer Chrome to Firefox, it's a better browser all around in my experience.
- zmmmmm 8y agoI use FireFox full time, but I think it's inferior to Chrome. It's uglier, slower and clunkier. I use it because although I'm more than happy to hand a lot of my digital life over to Google (and I'm really not a zealot about this), the ability to observe every single web site I visit ever and every interaction I have with those sites is just a bridge too far.
- yogthos 8y agoPrior to 60x I would agree, but nowadays I personally prefer the look and feel of FireFox. I haven't noticed any real clunkiness outside of Google sites like Gmail either. Chrome might still be smoother, but I haven't used it in over a year now, and I don't miss it. That's the key part for me, FF works well enough that I don't feel like I'm settling. And I completely agree with you regarding ideological reasons to use FF. You don't have to be a zealot to value your privacy.
- m-p-3 8y agoAlso a good time as ever to donate to the Mozilla Foundation. They are basically our last hope at keeping the web open as we know it.
- echelon 8y agoThis is fantastic, actually. It flies in the face of end users, and there will be blow back. Power users won't stand for this sort of thing and will switch to Firefox. Firefox, in turn, will gain greater development mindshare. In aggregate, these privacy and "ads above all" stories will continue to taint the Google brand. Many of my layperson friends are starting to worry about their privacy when using Google products--it's a good thing!
- dTal 8y agoI find it rather odd that Googling "uBlock Origin" from Firefox does not return links to addons.mozilla.org - at all. The top result is of course the Chrome addon. The third result is the website for "uBlock" which is the unmaintained fork. Three pages in and you're getting dubious-looking repackaging sites, but no official addon. How on Earth does "Comorbidities Associated with Plaque Psoriasis | Dermatology Times" on page 10 have a higher PageRank and relevance for the search query "uBlock Origin" than https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... ?
- mikro2nd 8y agoThat's sort of weird. Searching DDG for "ublock origin" gives me: 1. Chrome web store 2. ublock.org 3. Microsoft store 4. Wikipedia 5. Mozilla addon, and finally 6. Gorhill's github for ublock origin. Can we finally say that DDG is better for some searches than Google?
- renholder 8y ago>Can we finally say that DDG is better for some searches than Google? I think we're close. For some things, it's still not the best but instead of going to <insert another search engine here>, I try to modify my query to scope to what I'm looking for. In a crude example, if I'm looking for the "LoadCrashDump" method,, which is specific to ClrMD[0], I can simply construct my query as "ClrMD: LoadCrashDump". [0] - https://github.com/Microsoft/clrmd/blob/ac36603e37ef7c8ba05d208777883daba31aceb0/src/Microsoft.Diagnostics.Runtime/src/DataTargets/DataTarget.cs https://github.com/Microsoft/clrmd/blob/ac36603e37ef7c8ba05d...
- erk__ 8y agoBing pretty much returns the same as the above
- mikro2nd 8y agoNot too surprising, since Bing is one of the engines DDG uses under the hood.
- CannisterFlux 8y agoI worry that Mozilla will copy the API changes ("for compatibility!") and disable ublock on Firefox too, as Mozilla gets most of their funding from advertising companies too.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fbender 8y agoIf the new API get's ported (which is likely to happen), it does not mean the existing API will get crippled. After all, they are different implementations and it's Mozilla who's behind that. I trust them to not deprecate the old API until all use cases, especially concerning privacy, are taken care of in the appropriate way. Let's hope I'm right. :)
- throwaway2048 8y agoThey didn't care too much about making APIs equivalent the last time they broke everything API related.
- lunchables 8y agoThe question then will be which fork of Firefox becomes the most popular.