9 ms·

Browser diversity starts with us

172 points by ccnafr 8y ago

deca6cda37d0 8y ago
I recently replaced chrome on every company computer for Firefox. We shared a google account with passwords that everyone needed. But some fools that don’t understand their actions properly start deleting password by accident as the cleared the browsing history. Yes I know you have options when you clear history. In Firefox passwords and browsing history / data is separated. So they can delete browsing history and they don’t accidentally delete the passwords anymore. And with a Firefox account all our passwords that employees need are synced safely. In one day 150 employees changed to Firefox :D
- throwmeback 8y ago
  >We shared a google account with passwords that everyone needed. I am speechless.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - berkes 8y ago
    I'm intrigued by the `needed` in there. Why would that ever be a necessity?
    - deadbunny 8y ago
      There isn't, the only excuse is lazyness and a complete disregard for any kind of security.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        Lets say your company has a profile on a platform that uses a Google account login. How many Google accounts do you want to wager can be permitted to administer that profile?
        deadbunny 8y ago
        On a properly written platform? As many as needed, RBAC exists for a reason. On a shitty platform? Zero, that shit isn't production ready.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      There's mundane stuff, like letting a small group of people log into Gmail for support@mysmallbiz.com There's ways around that, but for some orgs, it would be unneeded overkill, and not protecting anything notable.
      - berkes 8y ago
        > but for some orgs, it would be unneeded overkill, and not protecting anything notable. I can honenstly not think of a single venture where "support@" is not one of the most critical resources wrt privacy and security. On top of that, "support@" is typically the account that has a high churn rate. Where people move on and new people are hired. Of all the cases, I'd say that "support@" ranks amongst the top for need of proper account management. That said, it's dead simple to grant jane@ and john@ access to an inbox in Google. Researching how to do this may take 30+ minutes. But getting it configured afterwards is really a two minute job. The only reason I've came across why people shared Google accounts was "we have a business domain and we need to pay for every extra seat". Which is a valid excuse. I'd argue that its not a good enough excuse to lower your security for, but valid nontheless. For one, 2fa is almost impossible when sharing accounts. Which is why having a "pay per seat" model for any SAAS is perpendicular to having proper security practices. You are not rewarding good security, but rather punishing it by letting organisations with proper separation of accounts pay more then the ones that choose to have as few as possible.
        tyingq 8y ago
        I've seen functionality where one gmail account can send an email so that it appears to be from another email address. I haven't seen anything that allows a seamless view of the inbox/outbox, and a way of sending that doesn't accidentally use their normal email address if they forget to click a drop down.
      - kerng 8y ago
        Support emails fall into the "interesting" GDPR bucket often overlooked. I see only few companies actually share/keep track of that data bucket when doing a data request, or deletion request.
  - marcosdumay 8y ago
    And I'd bet you never worked in any OPS task. Not every password identifies a user.
    - deadbunny 8y ago
      I've worked in ops for a decade. There is no legitimate excuse for sharing accounts/credentials. Ignoring the myriad security issues with shared credentials auditing alone is completely ruined with shared creds.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- PeterBarrett 8y ago
  What's the reasoning behind everyone needing that level of access? We use 1password and have multiple vaults depending on what sort of clearance is needed. Need access to support emails? We'll add you to the appropriate vault. This way dev teams can be separate from marketing etc and no one can unexpectedly gain access to what they shouldn't be able to or wipe passwords they shouldn't have access to.
  - deca6cda37d0 8y ago
    Small online tools that everyone needs to use. Passwords that needs to change often because of security settings of those tools. Yes I know other solutions are there. Like 1password and step by step I will get there. At the moment they are unwilling to move to a password managers. A Firefox account with synced passwords is a huge step forward. Before that there was a excel file with all passwords. Or worse post-it’s.
tyingq 8y ago
We lost some diversity when Microsoft decided to adopt chromium[1]. I assume, though, that Google will eventually make some change that Microsoft doesn't want, and they'll be forced to fork chromium. The recent proposals from Google[2] that hobble ad blockers and extensions like tampermonkey might even be enough. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18125238/microsoft-chrome-browser-windows-10-edge-chromium https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18125238/microsoft-chrome... [2] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/chrome-extension-manifest-v3-may-break-ublock-origin-content-blocker/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/chrome-extens...
- Yoric 8y ago
  > I assume, though, that Google will eventually make some change that Microsoft doesn't want, and they'll be forced to fork chromium. This assumes that Microsoft still has a browser engine division by then. I suspect that adopting Chromium was largely a cost-cutting measure and this division is on the chopping block already.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    Yes...you have to make the leap that they would see some opportunity worth reincarnating a browser group for. That set of proposed changes from Google looks like one to me, but it's possible they don't to MS.
  - Touche 8y ago
    They're implementing some features in Chromium, so they still have that division.
    - Yoric 8y ago
      Well, I know one-person teams who implement individual features in a browser. Maintaining a fork, on the other hand, takes a much larger team.
  - brudgers 8y ago
    I think it was a cost cutting measure too. But more about removing duplicated effort based on the premise that Microsoft was already spending a lot of time working on Chromium compatibility. And Google was inside Microsoft's decision loop. Microsoft was in the position of having to port every arbitrary evolution Google made to Microsoft products...browsers and tooling.
mooreds 8y ago
How about downloading and installing Firefox and seeing if it meets your needs? I totally understand if it doesn't, and then you should keep using chrome or safari or whatever, but I am a back end web dev and Firefox (+ edge) meet all my desktop needs. Give it a try, you might like it. And that'll have a lot more impact than testing cross browser regularly.
- berkes 8y ago
  > And that'll have a lot more impact than testing cross browser regularly. That depends entire on what you mean with "impact" here. One site that does not work on Firefox has a great impact too. When that "one site" becomes every fourth site, then "we", the webdevelopers have handed Chrome their monopoly.
  - mooreds 8y ago
    > That depends entire on what you mean with "impact" here. Fair enough. I meant that using Firefox regularly as a web developer would have a larger impact on keeping the web free than testing periodically on Firefox. Why? Because testing periodically won't exercise the browser quirks as thoroughly as every day use (and sometimes time intensive cross browser testing gets sacrificed to schedule concerns). There's also an additional bonus of keeping browser share up, but that's not the primary benefit in my mind.
- irrational 8y ago
  At my work I only work in Firefox, another Dev only works in Chrome, etc. By each developer only working in one browser all the time we get pretty good cross browser testing. This has led me to only using Firefox at home too since it works really really well.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Same here. When I joined my current team, I was told I should use Chrome, because nobody really tested the site on Firefox, so there may be some breakage. That made me double-down on Firefox use, just so that I could report if any problem actually occurs.
kkarakk 8y ago
lol, no one complains when apple shoves webkit down your throat or google does the same with mobile chrome. the battle has already been lost mostly-who uses mobile firefox really? on play store, by installs firefox - 100million+,chrome - 1billion+. firefox is great but it's awkward focus on freedom over usability has led to it's downfall imo
- est31 8y ago
  > firefox - 100million Actually, that's more than I thought. I've always thought that Firefox on mobile is virtually nonexistent but it seems to have more users than any european country (except russia). In any other instance an install base of 100 mil would be wonderful.
- detaro 8y ago
  Lots of people complain about your two examples. Google is even changing their Android licensing, making it easier to not ship Chrome by default, because the EU told them off for it.
- pteraspidomorph 8y ago
  100 million is actually pretty good. Isn't Chrome the default for many vendors, not to mention what people are most familiar with in the first place? (I use mobile Firefox myself, it's fine.)
- bgarbiak 8y ago
  It's obviously a matter of money, politics, and things beyond my imagination but I can't understand why Firefox didn't double down on Servo (and friends) for mobiles. At one point there was talk about Samsung being a partner and Firefox/Servo becoming the default browser on the Samsung phones. Which would make a perfect sense, since every non-Apple phone gets its performance from multi-core SoC, and Firefox would be the only browser taking advantage of that. Now, after Google getting their hands slapped by the UE regulators, this Samsung/Firefox marriage could be even more fruitful. And yet, the Servo team got assigned to some pointless VR experiments, and it turned out Android was never a priority. Again: I can't understand why, oh, why.
lj3 8y ago
This could be a huge opportunity. We have a web monoculture now. It's only going to get increasingly so over the next few years. Google will let the platform stagnate, as it has little to no reason to compete. It's time to come up with something better. Something designed for both documents and applications.
- Yoric 8y ago
  Do you have any starting point?
  - lj3 8y ago
    Maybe something similar to what we have now, but exposes much lower level aspects of the browser and gives you more fine grained control over it. WASM is a good starting point in that it lets you use whatever language you want. Now, we need a browser API that will let us draw directly to the window if we want to. I think a lot could be accomplished by creating the UI portions of a site programatically then dumping the content into a "renderMarkdown()" function. That's just my idea, though. Hopefully, the current sad state of the web and the coming browser monoculture will spur others to experiment too. I know some gaming companies have experimented with the distributing and executing of x64 binary executables using the browser. I know others are looking into ways to chop up and do progressive loading on binary executables.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - ohithereyou 8y ago
    The appification of the Internet qualifies here, with Google Fuchsia running on Chromebooks and ARM-based desktops being a good opportunity for them to move most Internet based activities in apps on a platform they control.
- est31 8y ago
  > Google will let the platform stagnate, as it has little to no reason to compete. If they do, they will be replaced, just like iexplore was. So they won't stagnate unless they are stupid and want Firefox to take over.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
MagicPropmaker 8y ago
I use Edge and ( seriously ) all you guys did was mock me for it.
phn 8y ago
I agree with the post, but it should be noted that there's a big difference between Chromium -- an open source project -- and IE 6 being the de-facto browser engine on the web.
- AlexandrB 8y ago
  I think the difference is mostly theoretical. Consider the proposed extension changes: no one seems to like them, but Google will be able to push them through anyways. Maintaining a Chromium fork is a huge undertaking that only a few companies would be willing to invest in.
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    Maintaining a fork is much less of an undertaking, than reimplementing all Chromium quirks. Hence plenty of Chromium forks exist, but only one last barely competing browser.
    - jonathanyc 8y ago
      No nontrivial Chromium forks exist, to my knowledge. Do you know of any?
      - zzzcpan 8y ago
        I don't think Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, Yandex browser are trivial by any measure. Heck, even something small and independent, like ungoogled-chromium, is in no way trivial.
        Yoric 8y ago
        I haven't checked, but it was my understanding that – outside of the UX – these are all very shallow forks. Does anyone know more about this?
        jonathanyc 8y ago
simula67 8y ago
> Chromium will be the web’s de facto rendering engine I think Blink is the rendering engine. Chromium is Chrome without Google branding I think that the problem with Firefox right now is that it does not have something unique to offer. Before moving to the new plugin model, there were plugins that were not available on Chrome which was available for Firefox : DownThemAll, Tab wheel scroll etc. But in their desire to chase Chrome they threw it away. I also seem to have an annoying bug in mobile where after a while long tap on link no longer opens the contextual menu. I wonder if I should report it since last time I reported a defect it turned out to be a problem with uBlock and this one takes a while to reproduce. I think it might be a good idea for Mozilla to invest in good extensibility. It helped them a lot last time and is therefore a battle hardened tactic
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > I also seem to have an annoying bug in mobile where after a while long tap on link no longer opens the contextual menu. I encountered a bug matching this description on my S7. So far I discovered that it's correlated to the number of tabs open; around 70 tabs, the context menu appears after perceptible delay, which increases with the number of open tabs. I think I reached something around 90 tabs before I couldn't long-tap on links any more. Closing tabs makes the problem go away. I'd say "go ahead and report it", but I too have uBlock installed, so I can't say if it's unrelated. uBlock was the very reason I switched to Firefox on Android anyway.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    > I also seem to have an annoying bug in mobile where after a while long tap on link no longer opens the contextual menu I thought I was the only one. I don't have uBlock installed, but also don't really bother reporting bugs because mobile Firefox doesn't appear like a supported project to me at all (where can I find ANY documentation?). It happens to me occasionally, but I can't say anything about my number of open tabs because it just displays "∞" (wtf man?).
  - PrototypeNM1 8y ago
    Maybe temporarily disabled Ublock next time you notice the behavior and test? My experience has been positive when submitting bug reports for Firefox.
kome 8y ago
I never ever used chrome: I used Opera, and after Opera 12 I am using Firefox. What am I missing?
superkuh 8y ago
You gotta be the change you want to see. Stop using Chrome/Chromium/Opera/Brave/etc/etc. Stop using Firefox. Start using forks.
tln 8y ago
What's the best way to port a puppeteer-based suite to one that uses Firefox? Is there an npm package that will include up-to-date versions of all components without further environment setup or use of external services? Ideally, with great support for taking snapshots and running headless or headed in simple fashion?
- zakember 8y ago
  https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer/tree/master/experimental/puppeteer-firefox https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer/tree/master/experi...
  - tln 8y ago
    I use this now, and love the ease of installation and api. If it's up to developers to use Firefox it'd be great to port our test suites.
g45y45 8y ago
Stop using Google Spyware Browser. Google has abused its market position for a long time now, and we are seeing the impact. Forced browser logins, and now proposed deprecation of Ad Blocking API's are the two that bother me the most. The Fox is cool again, Mozilla has your back.
- denniskane 8y ago
  >Mozilla has your back That's kinda funny when you consider where Mozilla came from... the ashes of a thing called Netscape... who tried to rule the world while a couple grad students were busy plugging away at Stanford, doing it the right way.
  - ohithereyou 8y ago
    Okay, please state the supposed crimes of the ashes of Netscape because I think a lot of people here aren't following your line of reasoning.
- YetAnotherNick 8y ago
  I don't think Chrome is a spyware for me, but I am still trying to get to Firefox, if only because I don't want chrome to be the only browser remaining in next 10 year and then turn to spyware. Firefox is much more open on the moral issues and on most instance has better track record than Google.
dehrmann 8y ago
If you insist on using Chrome but back this cause, set your user agent to Firefox.
Karupan 8y ago
This rings true with me. I want to use Firefox and ditch chrome, but until it gets less laggy on macOS, I don’t think I have a choice. I do use safari for day to day browsing and move to chrome only for development. Multiple successful browsers is a good thing for the web. I hope that doesn’t just die away.
mastrsushi 8y ago
You guys can do whatever you want to "diversify" internet browsers, but the writings on the wall. Not only is the majority using Chrome, but all minorities other than Firefox are now derivatives of Chromium. The average tech illiterate consumer isn't going to say "You know what, this isn't right! We can't let Google take control as the dominant layout engine!". They want something relevant that performs well, and Firefox hasn't been relevant in years. Stop wasting your time and drop it. You're ancient browser will crumble just like Netscape, IE, and Mosaic.
- paulryanrogers 8y ago
  This critique amounts to "it's not working so give up". Thankfully minorities in the past haven't always been so hopeless. Every vote counts.
  - mastrsushi 8y ago
    Yes but this isn't an election, it's a choice of software. Regular people do not care enough about internet browser dominance. Software projects like these are largely supported by the size of their user space and corporate backing. Your voice will never be heard.
    - paulryanrogers 8y ago
      Much like voting in politics our usage does add up. If a significant portion of users abandon a browser then the producers will notice. It's only hopeless if we all agree to do nothing.
- chriswarbo 8y ago
  > You're ancient browser will crumble just like Netscape, IE, and Mosaic. The exact same argument could be made about IE around 2000, yet now you list IE as ancient and crumbled, which completely undermines your argument.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  I am unsure how a .exe file "crumbles". Most websites are already broken, due to anti-adblocking, newsletter signups, GDPR consent, etc. I don't really care if most websites requires Chrome, most websites are broken anyway. Plus this is Firefox. It has been down this patch before, heck it was born in it.
chriswarbo 8y ago
I've been a happy Conkeror user for years. Recent changes to Firefox seem to have broken it, so I'm sticking with the older version for now. Chrome/IE/Edge/Safari/etc. aren't FOSS so I don't touch them. Firefox and Chromium are getting increasingly slow and bloated, plus their chrome takes up a bunch of screen space, doesn't follow the system theme particularly well, and they rely far too much on the mouse (there are extensions which help, but they're still not particularly good). Out of the two I would still recommend Firefox over Chromium, since Mozilla seem more ethical than Google, contribute less bloat and churn to Web APIs, etc.

172 points by ccnafr 8y ago

I recently replaced chrome on every company computer for Firefox. We shared a google account with passwords that everyone needed. But some fools that don’t understand their actions properly start deleting password by accident as the cleared the browsing history. Yes I know you have options when you clear history. In Firefox passwords and browsing history / data is separated. So they can delete browsing history and they don’t accidentally delete the passwords anymore. And with a Firefox account all our passwords that employees need are synced safely. In one day 150 employees changed to Firefox :D

throwmeback 8y ago
>We shared a google account with passwords that everyone needed. I am speechless.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- berkes 8y ago
  I'm intrigued by the `needed` in there. Why would that ever be a necessity?
  - deadbunny 8y ago
    There isn't, the only excuse is lazyness and a complete disregard for any kind of security.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      Lets say your company has a profile on a platform that uses a Google account login. How many Google accounts do you want to wager can be permitted to administer that profile?
      - deadbunny 8y ago
        On a properly written platform? As many as needed, RBAC exists for a reason. On a shitty platform? Zero, that shit isn't production ready.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    There's mundane stuff, like letting a small group of people log into Gmail for support@mysmallbiz.com There's ways around that, but for some orgs, it would be unneeded overkill, and not protecting anything notable.
    - berkes 8y ago
      > but for some orgs, it would be unneeded overkill, and not protecting anything notable. I can honenstly not think of a single venture where "support@" is not one of the most critical resources wrt privacy and security. On top of that, "support@" is typically the account that has a high churn rate. Where people move on and new people are hired. Of all the cases, I'd say that "support@" ranks amongst the top for need of proper account management. That said, it's dead simple to grant jane@ and john@ access to an inbox in Google. Researching how to do this may take 30+ minutes. But getting it configured afterwards is really a two minute job. The only reason I've came across why people shared Google accounts was "we have a business domain and we need to pay for every extra seat". Which is a valid excuse. I'd argue that its not a good enough excuse to lower your security for, but valid nontheless. For one, 2fa is almost impossible when sharing accounts. Which is why having a "pay per seat" model for any SAAS is perpendicular to having proper security practices. You are not rewarding good security, but rather punishing it by letting organisations with proper separation of accounts pay more then the ones that choose to have as few as possible.
      - tyingq 8y ago
        I've seen functionality where one gmail account can send an email so that it appears to be from another email address. I haven't seen anything that allows a seamless view of the inbox/outbox, and a way of sending that doesn't accidentally use their normal email address if they forget to click a drop down.
    - kerng 8y ago
      Support emails fall into the "interesting" GDPR bucket often overlooked. I see only few companies actually share/keep track of that data bucket when doing a data request, or deletion request.
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  And I'd bet you never worked in any OPS task. Not every password identifies a user.
  - deadbunny 8y ago
    I've worked in ops for a decade. There is no legitimate excuse for sharing accounts/credentials. Ignoring the myriad security issues with shared credentials auditing alone is completely ruined with shared creds.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
PeterBarrett 8y ago
What's the reasoning behind everyone needing that level of access? We use 1password and have multiple vaults depending on what sort of clearance is needed. Need access to support emails? We'll add you to the appropriate vault. This way dev teams can be separate from marketing etc and no one can unexpectedly gain access to what they shouldn't be able to or wipe passwords they shouldn't have access to.
- deca6cda37d0 8y ago
  Small online tools that everyone needs to use. Passwords that needs to change often because of security settings of those tools. Yes I know other solutions are there. Like 1password and step by step I will get there. At the moment they are unwilling to move to a password managers. A Firefox account with synced passwords is a huge step forward. Before that there was a excel file with all passwords. Or worse post-it’s.

tyingq 8y ago

We lost some diversity when Microsoft decided to adopt chromium[1]. I assume, though, that Google will eventually make some change that Microsoft doesn't want, and they'll be forced to fork chromium. The recent proposals from Google[2] that hobble ad blockers and extensions like tampermonkey might even be enough. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18125238/microsoft-chrome-browser-windows-10-edge-chromium https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18125238/microsoft-chrome... [2] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/chrome-extension-manifest-v3-may-break-ublock-origin-content-blocker/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/chrome-extens...

Yoric 8y ago
> I assume, though, that Google will eventually make some change that Microsoft doesn't want, and they'll be forced to fork chromium. This assumes that Microsoft still has a browser engine division by then. I suspect that adopting Chromium was largely a cost-cutting measure and this division is on the chopping block already.
- tyingq 8y ago
  Yes...you have to make the leap that they would see some opportunity worth reincarnating a browser group for. That set of proposed changes from Google looks like one to me, but it's possible they don't to MS.
- Touche 8y ago
  They're implementing some features in Chromium, so they still have that division.
  - Yoric 8y ago
    Well, I know one-person teams who implement individual features in a browser. Maintaining a fork, on the other hand, takes a much larger team.
- brudgers 8y ago
  I think it was a cost cutting measure too. But more about removing duplicated effort based on the premise that Microsoft was already spending a lot of time working on Chromium compatibility. And Google was inside Microsoft's decision loop. Microsoft was in the position of having to port every arbitrary evolution Google made to Microsoft products...browsers and tooling.

mooreds 8y ago

How about downloading and installing Firefox and seeing if it meets your needs? I totally understand if it doesn't, and then you should keep using chrome or safari or whatever, but I am a back end web dev and Firefox (+ edge) meet all my desktop needs. Give it a try, you might like it. And that'll have a lot more impact than testing cross browser regularly.

berkes 8y ago
> And that'll have a lot more impact than testing cross browser regularly. That depends entire on what you mean with "impact" here. One site that does not work on Firefox has a great impact too. When that "one site" becomes every fourth site, then "we", the webdevelopers have handed Chrome their monopoly.
- mooreds 8y ago
  > That depends entire on what you mean with "impact" here. Fair enough. I meant that using Firefox regularly as a web developer would have a larger impact on keeping the web free than testing periodically on Firefox. Why? Because testing periodically won't exercise the browser quirks as thoroughly as every day use (and sometimes time intensive cross browser testing gets sacrificed to schedule concerns). There's also an additional bonus of keeping browser share up, but that's not the primary benefit in my mind.
irrational 8y ago
At my work I only work in Firefox, another Dev only works in Chrome, etc. By each developer only working in one browser all the time we get pretty good cross browser testing. This has led me to only using Firefox at home too since it works really really well.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Same here. When I joined my current team, I was told I should use Chrome, because nobody really tested the site on Firefox, so there may be some breakage. That made me double-down on Firefox use, just so that I could report if any problem actually occurs.

kkarakk 8y ago

lol, no one complains when apple shoves webkit down your throat or google does the same with mobile chrome. the battle has already been lost mostly-who uses mobile firefox really? on play store, by installs firefox - 100million+,chrome - 1billion+. firefox is great but it's awkward focus on freedom over usability has led to it's downfall imo

est31 8y ago
> firefox - 100million Actually, that's more than I thought. I've always thought that Firefox on mobile is virtually nonexistent but it seems to have more users than any european country (except russia). In any other instance an install base of 100 mil would be wonderful.
detaro 8y ago
Lots of people complain about your two examples. Google is even changing their Android licensing, making it easier to not ship Chrome by default, because the EU told them off for it.
pteraspidomorph 8y ago
100 million is actually pretty good. Isn't Chrome the default for many vendors, not to mention what people are most familiar with in the first place? (I use mobile Firefox myself, it's fine.)
bgarbiak 8y ago
It's obviously a matter of money, politics, and things beyond my imagination but I can't understand why Firefox didn't double down on Servo (and friends) for mobiles. At one point there was talk about Samsung being a partner and Firefox/Servo becoming the default browser on the Samsung phones. Which would make a perfect sense, since every non-Apple phone gets its performance from multi-core SoC, and Firefox would be the only browser taking advantage of that. Now, after Google getting their hands slapped by the UE regulators, this Samsung/Firefox marriage could be even more fruitful. And yet, the Servo team got assigned to some pointless VR experiments, and it turned out Android was never a priority. Again: I can't understand why, oh, why.

lj3 8y ago

This could be a huge opportunity. We have a web monoculture now. It's only going to get increasingly so over the next few years. Google will let the platform stagnate, as it has little to no reason to compete. It's time to come up with something better. Something designed for both documents and applications.

Yoric 8y ago
Do you have any starting point?
- lj3 8y ago
  Maybe something similar to what we have now, but exposes much lower level aspects of the browser and gives you more fine grained control over it. WASM is a good starting point in that it lets you use whatever language you want. Now, we need a browser API that will let us draw directly to the window if we want to. I think a lot could be accomplished by creating the UI portions of a site programatically then dumping the content into a "renderMarkdown()" function. That's just my idea, though. Hopefully, the current sad state of the web and the coming browser monoculture will spur others to experiment too. I know some gaming companies have experimented with the distributing and executing of x64 binary executables using the browser. I know others are looking into ways to chop up and do progressive loading on binary executables.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- ohithereyou 8y ago
  The appification of the Internet qualifies here, with Google Fuchsia running on Chromebooks and ARM-based desktops being a good opportunity for them to move most Internet based activities in apps on a platform they control.
est31 8y ago
> Google will let the platform stagnate, as it has little to no reason to compete. If they do, they will be replaced, just like iexplore was. So they won't stagnate unless they are stupid and want Firefox to take over.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

MagicPropmaker 8y ago

I use Edge and ( seriously ) all you guys did was mock me for it.

phn 8y ago

I agree with the post, but it should be noted that there's a big difference between Chromium -- an open source project -- and IE 6 being the de-facto browser engine on the web.

AlexandrB 8y ago
I think the difference is mostly theoretical. Consider the proposed extension changes: no one seems to like them, but Google will be able to push them through anyways. Maintaining a Chromium fork is a huge undertaking that only a few companies would be willing to invest in.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Maintaining a fork is much less of an undertaking, than reimplementing all Chromium quirks. Hence plenty of Chromium forks exist, but only one last barely competing browser.
  - jonathanyc 8y ago
    No nontrivial Chromium forks exist, to my knowledge. Do you know of any?
    - zzzcpan 8y ago
      I don't think Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, Yandex browser are trivial by any measure. Heck, even something small and independent, like ungoogled-chromium, is in no way trivial.
      - Yoric 8y ago
        I haven't checked, but it was my understanding that – outside of the UX – these are all very shallow forks. Does anyone know more about this?
        jonathanyc 8y ago

simula67 8y ago

> Chromium will be the web’s de facto rendering engine I think Blink is the rendering engine. Chromium is Chrome without Google branding I think that the problem with Firefox right now is that it does not have something unique to offer. Before moving to the new plugin model, there were plugins that were not available on Chrome which was available for Firefox : DownThemAll, Tab wheel scroll etc. But in their desire to chase Chrome they threw it away. I also seem to have an annoying bug in mobile where after a while long tap on link no longer opens the contextual menu. I wonder if I should report it since last time I reported a defect it turned out to be a problem with uBlock and this one takes a while to reproduce. I think it might be a good idea for Mozilla to invest in good extensibility. It helped them a lot last time and is therefore a battle hardened tactic

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> I also seem to have an annoying bug in mobile where after a while long tap on link no longer opens the contextual menu. I encountered a bug matching this description on my S7. So far I discovered that it's correlated to the number of tabs open; around 70 tabs, the context menu appears after perceptible delay, which increases with the number of open tabs. I think I reached something around 90 tabs before I couldn't long-tap on links any more. Closing tabs makes the problem go away. I'd say "go ahead and report it", but I too have uBlock installed, so I can't say if it's unrelated. uBlock was the very reason I switched to Firefox on Android anyway.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  > I also seem to have an annoying bug in mobile where after a while long tap on link no longer opens the contextual menu I thought I was the only one. I don't have uBlock installed, but also don't really bother reporting bugs because mobile Firefox doesn't appear like a supported project to me at all (where can I find ANY documentation?). It happens to me occasionally, but I can't say anything about my number of open tabs because it just displays "∞" (wtf man?).
- PrototypeNM1 8y ago
  Maybe temporarily disabled Ublock next time you notice the behavior and test? My experience has been positive when submitting bug reports for Firefox.

kome 8y ago

I never ever used chrome: I used Opera, and after Opera 12 I am using Firefox. What am I missing?

superkuh 8y ago

You gotta be the change you want to see. Stop using Chrome/Chromium/Opera/Brave/etc/etc. Stop using Firefox. Start using forks.

tln 8y ago

What's the best way to port a puppeteer-based suite to one that uses Firefox? Is there an npm package that will include up-to-date versions of all components without further environment setup or use of external services? Ideally, with great support for taking snapshots and running headless or headed in simple fashion?

zakember 8y ago
https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer/tree/master/experimental/puppeteer-firefox https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer/tree/master/experi...
- tln 8y ago
  I use this now, and love the ease of installation and api. If it's up to developers to use Firefox it'd be great to port our test suites.

g45y45 8y ago

Stop using Google Spyware Browser. Google has abused its market position for a long time now, and we are seeing the impact. Forced browser logins, and now proposed deprecation of Ad Blocking API's are the two that bother me the most. The Fox is cool again, Mozilla has your back.

denniskane 8y ago
>Mozilla has your back That's kinda funny when you consider where Mozilla came from... the ashes of a thing called Netscape... who tried to rule the world while a couple grad students were busy plugging away at Stanford, doing it the right way.
- ohithereyou 8y ago
  Okay, please state the supposed crimes of the ashes of Netscape because I think a lot of people here aren't following your line of reasoning.
YetAnotherNick 8y ago
I don't think Chrome is a spyware for me, but I am still trying to get to Firefox, if only because I don't want chrome to be the only browser remaining in next 10 year and then turn to spyware. Firefox is much more open on the moral issues and on most instance has better track record than Google.

dehrmann 8y ago

If you insist on using Chrome but back this cause, set your user agent to Firefox.

Karupan 8y ago

This rings true with me. I want to use Firefox and ditch chrome, but until it gets less laggy on macOS, I don’t think I have a choice. I do use safari for day to day browsing and move to chrome only for development. Multiple successful browsers is a good thing for the web. I hope that doesn’t just die away.

mastrsushi 8y ago

You guys can do whatever you want to "diversify" internet browsers, but the writings on the wall. Not only is the majority using Chrome, but all minorities other than Firefox are now derivatives of Chromium. The average tech illiterate consumer isn't going to say "You know what, this isn't right! We can't let Google take control as the dominant layout engine!". They want something relevant that performs well, and Firefox hasn't been relevant in years. Stop wasting your time and drop it. You're ancient browser will crumble just like Netscape, IE, and Mosaic.

paulryanrogers 8y ago
This critique amounts to "it's not working so give up". Thankfully minorities in the past haven't always been so hopeless. Every vote counts.
- mastrsushi 8y ago
  Yes but this isn't an election, it's a choice of software. Regular people do not care enough about internet browser dominance. Software projects like these are largely supported by the size of their user space and corporate backing. Your voice will never be heard.
  - paulryanrogers 8y ago
    Much like voting in politics our usage does add up. If a significant portion of users abandon a browser then the producers will notice. It's only hopeless if we all agree to do nothing.
chriswarbo 8y ago
> You're ancient browser will crumble just like Netscape, IE, and Mosaic. The exact same argument could be made about IE around 2000, yet now you list IE as ancient and crumbled, which completely undermines your argument.
tomjen3 8y ago
I am unsure how a .exe file "crumbles". Most websites are already broken, due to anti-adblocking, newsletter signups, GDPR consent, etc. I don't really care if most websites requires Chrome, most websites are broken anyway. Plus this is Firefox. It has been down this patch before, heck it was born in it.

chriswarbo 8y ago

I've been a happy Conkeror user for years. Recent changes to Firefox seem to have broken it, so I'm sticking with the older version for now. Chrome/IE/Edge/Safari/etc. aren't FOSS so I don't touch them. Firefox and Chromium are getting increasingly slow and bloated, plus their chrome takes up a bunch of screen space, doesn't follow the system theme particularly well, and they rely far too much on the mouse (there are extensions which help, but they're still not particularly good). Out of the two I would still recommend Firefox over Chromium, since Mozilla seem more ethical than Google, contribute less bloat and churn to Web APIs, etc.