7 ms·

I'm two fences on Firefox doing "too many unrelated things" as the article suggests. Firefox OS has been pretty much unsuccessful, but it sort of made sense? I

I'm two fences on Firefox doing "too many unrelated things" as the article suggests. Firefox OS has been pretty much unsuccessful, but it sort of made sense? It started to be made when Firefox was still on top on desktop, but mobile started eating its lunch; and it was clear that Firefox need to do something about it, or the future will be all Chrome and Safari, on the two locked-down platforms. Which eventually happened, of course, and Firefox share is neglible nowadays on mobile. The identity management with Persona or what was the name also made sense. People at that time started using Google and Facebook for unified identity, and it made sense to make a decentralized identity. None of these project ultimately worked, but they made sense? What never made sense to me was Pocket or Send, or even the teleconferencing they had, but it seems that Firefox doubles down on Pocket now.

londons_explore 6y ago
Firefox OS never made sense unless Mozilla was prepared to pay the backroom bribes and incentives to get it preinstalled on hundreds of millions of phones. And they weren't.
- LordHeini 6y ago
  Or maybe they where just too early. Look at the Chinese Manufacturers having trouble to deploy Android due to tech embargos. If those could just install a free os made by an indendent Organisation...
  - hawski 6y ago
    Or too late. It would not help to overcome embargoes if said independent organization is established in California.
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      If the code is truly opensource, it isn't embargoed. The only issue with Android is that it isn't really opensource - users expect the Google apps, and those are closed source.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      The embargo in question (WeChat) made iOS untenable because it is a closed platform. Location is irrelevant.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I do not imagine that would help improve Mozilla’s image.
- RobertoG 6y ago
  They had Telefónica on board. I think with better planning and execution it could be made to work.
  - Certhas 6y ago
    Maybe maybe not. But it's also good to keep in mind who else failed in that space from many different angles. MS, Nokia, Blackberry, etc... If MS with infinite cash on hand could not get into that market then it is likely that chances of success were always very low. And it still might have been the right thing to try despite the chance being low.
    - RobertoG 6y ago
      You are right that it was a very difficult endeavor. I think the main bottleneck is not the installation by the vendors, but the apps available. I believe, what is missing is an abstraction layer between the apps and the OS. If it was possible to create apps for Android and Apple in a generic way and, it was easy to add a third OS, so all the apps could be made available to the new system, a new OS would be not so limited. I know, I know, that is itself a very difficult endeavor.
      - londons_explore 6y ago
        PWA's are what you're thinking of. They are platform agnostic apps. The thing holding them back is apples deliberate crippling of them to make them hard to install, slow, buggy, and not having basic platform features. I believe Apple is deliberately doing that because if they supported PWA's properly, they'd loose all vendor lock in.
        samoa42 6y ago
        apple literally invented pwa's
        depressedpanda 6y ago
flatfilefan 6y ago
On the contrary I kinda see the point in the pocket and send to bridge the gap between desktop and mobile for the users that own both. But the small brainless degradations of the UI in Firefox make me worry about its future. For example it’s not possible to permanently add exclusions to the privacy shield. Because of it the sites are often broken. And this is a feature that is directly user facing on the main screen!
- baud147258 6y ago
  What does Pocket do? And how is it different from synchronizing favorites/tab between two browsers?
  - antonyh 6y ago
    Formerly known as "Read It Later", it's a reading list service. You save pages for later reference. There's subscriptions to unlock features. I loved RIL but Pocket is but a shadow of what it once was. Similar to Evernote web clips, or Instapaper. I now use OneNote instead with the webclipper plugin, mostly because it puts the clips in a place where I can also add my own notes.
    - foxdev 6y ago
      I switched to Joplin. It's completely seamless once I authenticate with the service I sync with and toggle the web clipper support in the desktop app. You can even clip those pages where the site blocks the Evernote and OneNote crawler since it all happens in your browser and on the local clip server. Best of all, it's all in Markdown. There's a beta rich text editor, but the Markdown editor has a preview and a little button bar for common stuff like lists and formatting.
      - antonyh 6y ago
        I've yet to find any site that blocked either Evernote or OneNote. Interesting to know.
  - 6y ago
IshKebab 6y ago
What about WebXR? That seems to be their current big bet which seems insane to me.
prox 6y ago
We can’t even get developers to use FF, the times I read about it here (and maybe it is a vocal minority idk) that a developer doesn’t like a certain feature. Or they are missing feature X from chrome. I think it would be a valid strategy if you do go after developers and sysadmins. So pour resources in getting parity where devs think they would switch. In general whenever I help installing software for someone, I install FF, and I think I have installed in at least a couple dozen computers now. Aka do a Blender. Blender has gained momentum by getting things right, not adding features nobody wants, or Blender sidegigs. There is also the problem of addon monetization, Chrome has a whole ecosystem of people earning revenue from add ons. That’s a invested network you have to deal with at some point.
- Daub 6y ago
  > Aka do a Blender. Blender has gained momentum by getting things right, not adding features nobody wants, or Blender sidegigs. There is a parsimoniousness about Blender that is really quite incredible. I have rarely used an app that has so successfully resisted feature-creep and bloat. E.g. unlike almost all other 3D apps, it has no radial array tool or feature. Why not? Because you can cook your own using a simple linear array.
  - Double_a_92 6y ago
    Isn't the screw modifier a similar thing? Also it seems quit full fledged to me tbh. And for everything else there are plugins.
    - Daub 6y ago
      Screw modifier is similar, but not the best route for a radial array. I not knocking blender. I love its austere design philosophy. The add-ons are a case in point. Some very important functionality is not loaded by default (e.g. loop tools and copy attributes). But the devs seem to be saying, 'if we can live without something in the default load, then we should'. Huge difference to bloatware like 3DS Max.
- jbverschoor 6y ago
lumberjack 6y ago
The problem seems to me, that Mozilla does not have a platform of users to market to, whereas all their competitors do. It's really the marketing part where Firefox is falling short and I am not sure they can ever do much better on that front. Regarding Send/Teleconferencing, I think that made sense to. In theory you don't need anything as complicated as Skype or Teams or Zoom and lots of people, me including, use VOIP a lot. It would have been nice to have a simple click to call on the browser itself. Same goes for sending files with a click. Utilities that lots of people use and would give the browser a boost. Unfortunately I think these products failed because the sort of person who needs them is the sort of person who does not like learning new things so even if their current method is 8 steps and takes addition software and is not free, they will keep with what is currently working for them. Again this might also be Mozilla's marketing falling short.
rimliu 6y ago
The whole "need to fight native with the web tech" thing is flawed. I am not sure where that idea came from, but it does no good for anyone.
- shp0ngle 6y ago
  Right? Native is by nature faster, which makes sense on the resource sensitive devices. webOS (the Palm thing) did the same mistake, I think. It makes sense on desktop, and even there people keep complaining about Electron performance.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    I have an LG WebOS television and it runs extremely smoothly. VS Code is an electron app and nobody complains about its performance. Ultimately webOS didn't lose because it was web tech. It lost because Android and iOS already captured the market. Windows Phone was a .NET runtime with similar performance to Java, but it failed to capture the market even with billions in Microsoft subsidies.
    - shp0ngle 6y ago
      Can't talk for the WebOS TV People don't complain about VSCode because microsoft tried hard with optimizing performance. But see any discussion about Atom, its "predecessor", or Slack (at least the older version, that was really memory hungry).
    - scarface74 6y ago
      It’s easy for an “OS” to run smoothly when all it does is stream video with specialized dedicated hardware.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      VSC is the only Electron app most people can agree is even just OK. Performance is still the most common complaint.
    - toyg 6y ago
IlIlI 6y ago
The basic idea of Firefox OS was actually great, they just didn't quite get the market right. Kai OS is a very successful fork which runs on feature phones.
- toyg 6y ago
  Kai OS is fundamentally irrelevant though, in the great scheme of things. Mozilla can do billions of irrelevant but self-sustainable projects; that’s not the point. The point of Mozilla is to move the needle in the web ecosystem at large. It was clear from the start that Mozilla did not have enough to move the needle in the mobile market all by itself. FFOS was a massive waste of time, effort, and money, that even resulted in a loss of prestige for the brand. It sucked the air out of more relevant priorities, diverted (and eventually often lost) their best talent, and wasted time and focus at a critical juncture.
  - roca 6y ago
    KaiOS shipped 100M units by May 2019, no idea what the number is now but it's much higher. Not quite "fundamentally irrelevant".
lumberingjack 6y ago
While back Twitter recommended me a tweet from one of Firefox female engineers saying that she was responsible for pocket and updating pocket. many people complain that pocket sucked she claimed them all being misogynists so there's clearly cultural issues at Mozilla.
- RobertKerans 6y ago
  That's a really big leap you're making there, going from a context free anecdote about someone who got wound up on Twitter to that. And she was claiming that everyone complaining about Pocket was misogynistic? I'm not convinced that's completely true
sergeykish 6y ago
Firefox OS kind of make sense, yet could they implemented ecosystem? * There are Firefox browser users shocked by spyware addons, it is a norm on mobile. There are no paid Firefox addons. This does not work in "pay or product" reality. Open source and freeware is a small (and awesome) niche. * There is a Mozilla stance against DRM. There is a lot of paid books, movies, music on Google Play. * DOM is slow. Javascript has good parts. Google decided in favor of Android apps, not Chrome apps. Also Google Fuchsia. * Bluetooth, Contacts, NFC, SMS, Wifi [1] access can be asked from OS. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/B2G_OS/API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/B2G_OS/API ---- Firefox was not default Windows browser, yet it succeeded. The reason I've never tried Firefox on Android is the loss of Firefox reputation on desktop. Memory bloat, falling behind Developer Tools, constant UI changes, not so snappy UI. Firefox was slow on desktop how could one expect it to perform well on mobile?
fcantournet 6y ago
I agree FF OS & Persona were tackling the right problems at the time. I'm not sure about the solutions they proposed, especially for Persona. Maybe to tamed.
mjangle1985 6y ago
As someone who likes sites like reddit for the content sharing but hates the time sink the comments section becomes I love Pocket for delivering me highish quality articles and news that I don't have to worry about gettin sucked into some flame war over.

londons_explore 6y ago

Firefox OS never made sense unless Mozilla was prepared to pay the backroom bribes and incentives to get it preinstalled on hundreds of millions of phones. And they weren't.

LordHeini 6y ago
Or maybe they where just too early. Look at the Chinese Manufacturers having trouble to deploy Android due to tech embargos. If those could just install a free os made by an indendent Organisation...
- hawski 6y ago
  Or too late. It would not help to overcome embargoes if said independent organization is established in California.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    If the code is truly opensource, it isn't embargoed. The only issue with Android is that it isn't really opensource - users expect the Google apps, and those are closed source.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    The embargo in question (WeChat) made iOS untenable because it is a closed platform. Location is irrelevant.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I do not imagine that would help improve Mozilla’s image.
RobertoG 6y ago
They had Telefónica on board. I think with better planning and execution it could be made to work.
- Certhas 6y ago
  Maybe maybe not. But it's also good to keep in mind who else failed in that space from many different angles. MS, Nokia, Blackberry, etc... If MS with infinite cash on hand could not get into that market then it is likely that chances of success were always very low. And it still might have been the right thing to try despite the chance being low.
  - RobertoG 6y ago
    You are right that it was a very difficult endeavor. I think the main bottleneck is not the installation by the vendors, but the apps available. I believe, what is missing is an abstraction layer between the apps and the OS. If it was possible to create apps for Android and Apple in a generic way and, it was easy to add a third OS, so all the apps could be made available to the new system, a new OS would be not so limited. I know, I know, that is itself a very difficult endeavor.
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      PWA's are what you're thinking of. They are platform agnostic apps. The thing holding them back is apples deliberate crippling of them to make them hard to install, slow, buggy, and not having basic platform features. I believe Apple is deliberately doing that because if they supported PWA's properly, they'd loose all vendor lock in.
      - samoa42 6y ago
        apple literally invented pwa's
        depressedpanda 6y ago

flatfilefan 6y ago

On the contrary I kinda see the point in the pocket and send to bridge the gap between desktop and mobile for the users that own both. But the small brainless degradations of the UI in Firefox make me worry about its future. For example it’s not possible to permanently add exclusions to the privacy shield. Because of it the sites are often broken. And this is a feature that is directly user facing on the main screen!

baud147258 6y ago
What does Pocket do? And how is it different from synchronizing favorites/tab between two browsers?
- antonyh 6y ago
  Formerly known as "Read It Later", it's a reading list service. You save pages for later reference. There's subscriptions to unlock features. I loved RIL but Pocket is but a shadow of what it once was. Similar to Evernote web clips, or Instapaper. I now use OneNote instead with the webclipper plugin, mostly because it puts the clips in a place where I can also add my own notes.
  - foxdev 6y ago
    I switched to Joplin. It's completely seamless once I authenticate with the service I sync with and toggle the web clipper support in the desktop app. You can even clip those pages where the site blocks the Evernote and OneNote crawler since it all happens in your browser and on the local clip server. Best of all, it's all in Markdown. There's a beta rich text editor, but the Markdown editor has a preview and a little button bar for common stuff like lists and formatting.
    - antonyh 6y ago
      I've yet to find any site that blocked either Evernote or OneNote. Interesting to know.
- 6y ago

IshKebab 6y ago

What about WebXR? That seems to be their current big bet which seems insane to me.

prox 6y ago

We can’t even get developers to use FF, the times I read about it here (and maybe it is a vocal minority idk) that a developer doesn’t like a certain feature. Or they are missing feature X from chrome. I think it would be a valid strategy if you do go after developers and sysadmins. So pour resources in getting parity where devs think they would switch. In general whenever I help installing software for someone, I install FF, and I think I have installed in at least a couple dozen computers now. Aka do a Blender. Blender has gained momentum by getting things right, not adding features nobody wants, or Blender sidegigs. There is also the problem of addon monetization, Chrome has a whole ecosystem of people earning revenue from add ons. That’s a invested network you have to deal with at some point.

Daub 6y ago
> Aka do a Blender. Blender has gained momentum by getting things right, not adding features nobody wants, or Blender sidegigs. There is a parsimoniousness about Blender that is really quite incredible. I have rarely used an app that has so successfully resisted feature-creep and bloat. E.g. unlike almost all other 3D apps, it has no radial array tool or feature. Why not? Because you can cook your own using a simple linear array.
- Double_a_92 6y ago
  Isn't the screw modifier a similar thing? Also it seems quit full fledged to me tbh. And for everything else there are plugins.
  - Daub 6y ago
    Screw modifier is similar, but not the best route for a radial array. I not knocking blender. I love its austere design philosophy. The add-ons are a case in point. Some very important functionality is not loaded by default (e.g. loop tools and copy attributes). But the devs seem to be saying, 'if we can live without something in the default load, then we should'. Huge difference to bloatware like 3DS Max.
jbverschoor 6y ago

lumberjack 6y ago

The problem seems to me, that Mozilla does not have a platform of users to market to, whereas all their competitors do. It's really the marketing part where Firefox is falling short and I am not sure they can ever do much better on that front. Regarding Send/Teleconferencing, I think that made sense to. In theory you don't need anything as complicated as Skype or Teams or Zoom and lots of people, me including, use VOIP a lot. It would have been nice to have a simple click to call on the browser itself. Same goes for sending files with a click. Utilities that lots of people use and would give the browser a boost. Unfortunately I think these products failed because the sort of person who needs them is the sort of person who does not like learning new things so even if their current method is 8 steps and takes addition software and is not free, they will keep with what is currently working for them. Again this might also be Mozilla's marketing falling short.

rimliu 6y ago

The whole "need to fight native with the web tech" thing is flawed. I am not sure where that idea came from, but it does no good for anyone.

shp0ngle 6y ago
Right? Native is by nature faster, which makes sense on the resource sensitive devices. webOS (the Palm thing) did the same mistake, I think. It makes sense on desktop, and even there people keep complaining about Electron performance.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  I have an LG WebOS television and it runs extremely smoothly. VS Code is an electron app and nobody complains about its performance. Ultimately webOS didn't lose because it was web tech. It lost because Android and iOS already captured the market. Windows Phone was a .NET runtime with similar performance to Java, but it failed to capture the market even with billions in Microsoft subsidies.
  - shp0ngle 6y ago
    Can't talk for the WebOS TV People don't complain about VSCode because microsoft tried hard with optimizing performance. But see any discussion about Atom, its "predecessor", or Slack (at least the older version, that was really memory hungry).
  - scarface74 6y ago
    It’s easy for an “OS” to run smoothly when all it does is stream video with specialized dedicated hardware.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    VSC is the only Electron app most people can agree is even just OK. Performance is still the most common complaint.
  - toyg 6y ago

IlIlI 6y ago

The basic idea of Firefox OS was actually great, they just didn't quite get the market right. Kai OS is a very successful fork which runs on feature phones.

toyg 6y ago
Kai OS is fundamentally irrelevant though, in the great scheme of things. Mozilla can do billions of irrelevant but self-sustainable projects; that’s not the point. The point of Mozilla is to move the needle in the web ecosystem at large. It was clear from the start that Mozilla did not have enough to move the needle in the mobile market all by itself. FFOS was a massive waste of time, effort, and money, that even resulted in a loss of prestige for the brand. It sucked the air out of more relevant priorities, diverted (and eventually often lost) their best talent, and wasted time and focus at a critical juncture.
- roca 6y ago
  KaiOS shipped 100M units by May 2019, no idea what the number is now but it's much higher. Not quite "fundamentally irrelevant".

lumberingjack 6y ago

While back Twitter recommended me a tweet from one of Firefox female engineers saying that she was responsible for pocket and updating pocket. many people complain that pocket sucked she claimed them all being misogynists so there's clearly cultural issues at Mozilla.

RobertKerans 6y ago
That's a really big leap you're making there, going from a context free anecdote about someone who got wound up on Twitter to that. And she was claiming that everyone complaining about Pocket was misogynistic? I'm not convinced that's completely true

sergeykish 6y ago

Firefox OS kind of make sense, yet could they implemented ecosystem? * There are Firefox browser users shocked by spyware addons, it is a norm on mobile. There are no paid Firefox addons. This does not work in "pay or product" reality. Open source and freeware is a small (and awesome) niche. * There is a Mozilla stance against DRM. There is a lot of paid books, movies, music on Google Play. * DOM is slow. Javascript has good parts. Google decided in favor of Android apps, not Chrome apps. Also Google Fuchsia. * Bluetooth, Contacts, NFC, SMS, Wifi [1] access can be asked from OS. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/B2G_OS/API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/B2G_OS/API ---- Firefox was not default Windows browser, yet it succeeded. The reason I've never tried Firefox on Android is the loss of Firefox reputation on desktop. Memory bloat, falling behind Developer Tools, constant UI changes, not so snappy UI. Firefox was slow on desktop how could one expect it to perform well on mobile?

fcantournet 6y ago

I agree FF OS & Persona were tackling the right problems at the time. I'm not sure about the solutions they proposed, especially for Persona. Maybe to tamed.

mjangle1985 6y ago

As someone who likes sites like reddit for the content sharing but hates the time sink the comments section becomes I love Pocket for delivering me highish quality articles and news that I don't have to worry about gettin sucked into some flame war over.