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> Form controls, since the very invention of them, are terrible. It has cost the world billions, as worldwide every single developer and project has to reinvent

> Form controls, since the very invention of them, are terrible. It has cost the world billions, as worldwide every single developer and project has to reinvent some of them, often breaking basic accessibility in the process. We're close to being down to two browser engines that matter, one of them with well over half total market share, and they still don't bother to fix forms. You're right about the costs, they're immense. Billions isn't an overestimate for ball-parking the figure, I'd say. Shit, Firefox, you want to do something to stay relevant, be the first to do that right. Go nuts with some (well-considered) non-standard extensions, behaviors, and tags, worst case no-one uses them and no other browsers adopt them, best case you achieve arguably the greatest thing your project ever has (which is saying something—early FF, especially, was awesome). It may be too late (like every other idea I can come up with to save FF, they should have started at least a decade ago) but it's worth a try.

fleddr 5y ago
They actually did do something on forms: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/10/15/form-controls-microsoft-edge-chromium/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/10/15/form-controls... It's a restyle into the timely (cough) flat design. I guess any progress is good progress, but it's meh. Firefox can't do anything regarding relevance. It's not an engineering problem, they can't push their browser, they have no reach.
- handrous 5y ago
  > Firefox can't do anything regarding relevance. It's not an engineering problem, they can't push their browser, they have no reach. I don't think that's true, considering they became popular originally though features and overall program quality. I wasn't using it and recommending it to (and/or installing it for) everyone I knew back in the Phoenix/Firebird/FF1.x days because of advertising or whatever, but because it was excellent and solved a lot of problems for people, and that exact mechanism is how they gained a foothold to begin with—every power-user and nerd was doing exactly what I was, and pushing everyone who'd listen to switch to Firefox. There are other ways to gain relevance, obviously (say, promoting your browser prominently on your search engine) but simply being better than alternatives definitely can work. The proof is that it already did, for Firefox in particular, once.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    I really want to agree with you, but I can't. Firefox has no meaningful presence on mobile, whilst both Google and Apple can push their own browser to billions of users. Google in particular also pushes it from services having billions of users, like Youtube or Gmail. Mozilla has no such thing, it can't push anything. It has no platform. Your historical reading is correct. The lack of progress in IE created a temporary vacuum for a better browser to jump in. That doesn't mean the situation is repeatable, as this vacuum doesn't exist right now. Instead, Chrome is speeding away from Mozilla's budget-cut team.
    - handrous 5y ago
      I agree that they're probably screwed, but disagree that it's not an engineering problem. Way I see it, their only somewhat-realistic hope is to approach it as one. They certainly aren't going to advertise or "message" their way out of this, and their leverage is basically nil. Innovation is their only (admittedly remote) hope. Make native HTML UI elements much better, and add behavior and new tags that should have been added to the spec 10-15 years ago. Bake ad-blocking in (though Brave stole their thunder for that, a bit). Build in federated social networking to the browser itself, to give people a reason to install FF (would it work? I don't know—but it might). Do something more than "we pointlessly redesigned the UI again, and we've almost caught up to 2nd-best on battery life and performance!" each release. They may as well give up, if that's all they're going to do.
- xiphias2 5y ago
  Flat design is not just ,,timely'', but it makes it harder to understand how you can interact with the screen. I preferred Windows until Windows 7, but with Microsoft's hard to use design (and M1 hardware coming out) I switched to Mac, which I wouldn't have done before.

fleddr 5y ago

They actually did do something on forms: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/10/15/form-controls-microsoft-edge-chromium/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/10/15/form-controls... It's a restyle into the timely (cough) flat design. I guess any progress is good progress, but it's meh. Firefox can't do anything regarding relevance. It's not an engineering problem, they can't push their browser, they have no reach.

handrous 5y ago
> Firefox can't do anything regarding relevance. It's not an engineering problem, they can't push their browser, they have no reach. I don't think that's true, considering they became popular originally though features and overall program quality. I wasn't using it and recommending it to (and/or installing it for) everyone I knew back in the Phoenix/Firebird/FF1.x days because of advertising or whatever, but because it was excellent and solved a lot of problems for people, and that exact mechanism is how they gained a foothold to begin with—every power-user and nerd was doing exactly what I was, and pushing everyone who'd listen to switch to Firefox. There are other ways to gain relevance, obviously (say, promoting your browser prominently on your search engine) but simply being better than alternatives definitely can work. The proof is that it already did, for Firefox in particular, once.
- fleddr 5y ago
  I really want to agree with you, but I can't. Firefox has no meaningful presence on mobile, whilst both Google and Apple can push their own browser to billions of users. Google in particular also pushes it from services having billions of users, like Youtube or Gmail. Mozilla has no such thing, it can't push anything. It has no platform. Your historical reading is correct. The lack of progress in IE created a temporary vacuum for a better browser to jump in. That doesn't mean the situation is repeatable, as this vacuum doesn't exist right now. Instead, Chrome is speeding away from Mozilla's budget-cut team.
  - handrous 5y ago
    I agree that they're probably screwed, but disagree that it's not an engineering problem. Way I see it, their only somewhat-realistic hope is to approach it as one. They certainly aren't going to advertise or "message" their way out of this, and their leverage is basically nil. Innovation is their only (admittedly remote) hope. Make native HTML UI elements much better, and add behavior and new tags that should have been added to the spec 10-15 years ago. Bake ad-blocking in (though Brave stole their thunder for that, a bit). Build in federated social networking to the browser itself, to give people a reason to install FF (would it work? I don't know—but it might). Do something more than "we pointlessly redesigned the UI again, and we've almost caught up to 2nd-best on battery life and performance!" each release. They may as well give up, if that's all they're going to do.
xiphias2 5y ago
Flat design is not just ,,timely'', but it makes it harder to understand how you can interact with the screen. I preferred Windows until Windows 7, but with Microsoft's hard to use design (and M1 hardware coming out) I switched to Mac, which I wouldn't have done before.