5 ms·

that's exactly the case. the rewrite took years, and it is only somewhat functional, but I don't blame the dev. pre-quantum version was a finished product, and

by qwerty2021 5y ago

that's exactly the case. the rewrite took years, and it is only somewhat functional, but I don't blame the dev. pre-quantum version was a finished product, and then suddenly it had to be written from scratch again. I'm surprised he had bothered to do that at all, personally I'd never contribute anything to firefox again after that fucking stunt.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
I was responsible for extension author outreach at Mozilla at the time. The anger was terrible. And justified.
- eitland 5y ago
  You might have knowledge and connections: Do you see any hope for a fork of modern Firefox that start with just the tiniest stuff, maybe adding back a simple tab strip api to let Tree Style Tabs work properly again, that kind of stuff, then go on to put Mozilla out of business as soon as the economy allows it? I'm only halfway joking here, and only about putting Mozilla out of business.
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    Either of these may fit the bill: PaleMoon Waterfox Classic
    - eitland 5y ago
      Both are forks of older versions of Firefox, aren't they. This makes it harder to keep them patched I think.
      - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        Yeah, I don't see how the maintainers can patch security vulns or add support for newer web features (e.g. CSS variables) when the upstream fork is no longer maintained. They would have to write the fixes themselves, which just does not scale for a project that has 1 or 2 developers working on it part-time.
        forgotmypw17 5y ago
        I think we're at a point where there are enough sites out there that we can avoid a good portion of them (i.e. ones written without progressive enhancement in mind) and still be happy. For example, I am quite happy with visiting only sites which do not require JavaScript, do not use cookie banners, paywalls, and registration prompts. For my purposes of browsing Teddit, HN, and my own websites, there are more than 20 beautiful, usable, friendly browsers I can think of just off the top of my head. For everything else, I just close the tab and move on. Past experience leads me to believe I'm not missing much, because sites which break these requirements usually have crap content too. If I really need something, I can open Chromium (with UO and Vimium) for that particular site and then close it afterwards.
        TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        I understand. But I think as the years go by, you may have fewer and fewer sites that meet your criteria. I hope I’m wrong.
        forgotmypw17 5y ago
        It feels to me like "my" Web has already passed the bottom of the valley, and is only improving with time. Only a couple years ago there was no Teddit or Nitter, and now they are here. I'm finding more and more usable sites almost every day, and I'm missing anything less and less frequently. A couple years ago, I was mostly down-voted for pleading for noJS support here on HN, and now it's the opposite. I'm feeling optimistic. The biggest thorn in my side right now is SSL/HSTS, which is a very fast treadmill. I'm praying for an easy-to-use and transparent SSL-stripping proxy I can use in the near future, which will make things even better on machines I control.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    No. Who would use it? The few hundred thousand who want Tree Style Tabs? Separately, keeping a browser up-to-date with new standards and security fixes is a huge undertaking. You would need a lot of engineers invested in such a project. By the way, Nils from DownThemAll is a great guy. He wrote a scathing blog post at the time Mozilla announced dropping support for "legacy" extensions. Wish I could find it.
    - forgotmypw17 5y ago
      I just want to point out that you casually dismissed "a few hundred thousand" users whose lives were impacted as a non-issue. This is exactly the type of attitude which gives software dev such a bad rap. I personally support every single user of my products and never force a new version on them.
      - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        > casually dismissed "a few hundred thousand" users whose lives were impacted as a non-issue. I did not intend that. My intention is this: "the cost of maintaining a browser with up-to-date standards and security is enormous". A few hundred thousand users who are unlikely to pay anything for such a browser is just financially not viable.
        I_AM_A_SMURF 5y ago
        Just to put into perspective, maintaining a full browser (with its own engine etc) costs at minimum $300M/year (judging by the size of Chrome/Firefox/Safari's teams). That means that 300k users would need to pay more than $80 a MONTH to make that sustainable. That's insane.
        eitland 5y ago
        Two things: - that would go from my tool budget paid by work as soon as it is better since my browser is my second most important tool. - as mentioned above I propose starting with a soft fork, as set of patches to be applied to the latest Firefox
  - dblohm7 5y ago
    > Do you see any hope for a fork of modern Firefox that start with just the tiniest stuff, maybe adding back a simple tab strip api Why bother with the overhead of a fork? Perhaps a team of volunteers could put together a good enough proposal to be accepted by the WebExtensions team.
    - eitland 5y ago
      Well, that would actually be a good solution. My feeling as someone who has tried to look into it is that certain people are not only reluctant to doing it but also directly opposed. I might be wrong though and it would be fantastic of someone else could fix it and persuade them to accept it.
      - dblohm7 5y ago
        I used to work at Mozilla and periodically checked the status of the "add API to hide the tab bar" bug. I don't think anybody was directly opposed, but there were a lot of hidden edge cases that needed to be dealt with. Even though full-time devs might not have time allocated to doing this themselves, they are open to accepting solutions as long as the contributions are thorough and follow up on their concerns. Unfortunately IMHO most submissions these days are more like "this looks simple to me, just do it!" instead of a genuine engagement. To some people, that looks like opposition.
  - BurningPenguin 5y ago
    SeaMonkey is still around. Though i'm not sure about the capabilities of its addon api.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

I was responsible for extension author outreach at Mozilla at the time. The anger was terrible. And justified.

eitland 5y ago
You might have knowledge and connections: Do you see any hope for a fork of modern Firefox that start with just the tiniest stuff, maybe adding back a simple tab strip api to let Tree Style Tabs work properly again, that kind of stuff, then go on to put Mozilla out of business as soon as the economy allows it? I'm only halfway joking here, and only about putting Mozilla out of business.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  Either of these may fit the bill: PaleMoon Waterfox Classic
  - eitland 5y ago
    Both are forks of older versions of Firefox, aren't they. This makes it harder to keep them patched I think.
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      Yeah, I don't see how the maintainers can patch security vulns or add support for newer web features (e.g. CSS variables) when the upstream fork is no longer maintained. They would have to write the fixes themselves, which just does not scale for a project that has 1 or 2 developers working on it part-time.
      - forgotmypw17 5y ago
        I think we're at a point where there are enough sites out there that we can avoid a good portion of them (i.e. ones written without progressive enhancement in mind) and still be happy. For example, I am quite happy with visiting only sites which do not require JavaScript, do not use cookie banners, paywalls, and registration prompts. For my purposes of browsing Teddit, HN, and my own websites, there are more than 20 beautiful, usable, friendly browsers I can think of just off the top of my head. For everything else, I just close the tab and move on. Past experience leads me to believe I'm not missing much, because sites which break these requirements usually have crap content too. If I really need something, I can open Chromium (with UO and Vimium) for that particular site and then close it afterwards.
        TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        I understand. But I think as the years go by, you may have fewer and fewer sites that meet your criteria. I hope I’m wrong.
        forgotmypw17 5y ago
        It feels to me like "my" Web has already passed the bottom of the valley, and is only improving with time. Only a couple years ago there was no Teddit or Nitter, and now they are here. I'm finding more and more usable sites almost every day, and I'm missing anything less and less frequently. A couple years ago, I was mostly down-voted for pleading for noJS support here on HN, and now it's the opposite. I'm feeling optimistic. The biggest thorn in my side right now is SSL/HSTS, which is a very fast treadmill. I'm praying for an easy-to-use and transparent SSL-stripping proxy I can use in the near future, which will make things even better on machines I control.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  No. Who would use it? The few hundred thousand who want Tree Style Tabs? Separately, keeping a browser up-to-date with new standards and security fixes is a huge undertaking. You would need a lot of engineers invested in such a project. By the way, Nils from DownThemAll is a great guy. He wrote a scathing blog post at the time Mozilla announced dropping support for "legacy" extensions. Wish I could find it.
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    I just want to point out that you casually dismissed "a few hundred thousand" users whose lives were impacted as a non-issue. This is exactly the type of attitude which gives software dev such a bad rap. I personally support every single user of my products and never force a new version on them.
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      > casually dismissed "a few hundred thousand" users whose lives were impacted as a non-issue. I did not intend that. My intention is this: "the cost of maintaining a browser with up-to-date standards and security is enormous". A few hundred thousand users who are unlikely to pay anything for such a browser is just financially not viable.
      - I_AM_A_SMURF 5y ago
        Just to put into perspective, maintaining a full browser (with its own engine etc) costs at minimum $300M/year (judging by the size of Chrome/Firefox/Safari's teams). That means that 300k users would need to pay more than $80 a MONTH to make that sustainable. That's insane.
        eitland 5y ago
        Two things: - that would go from my tool budget paid by work as soon as it is better since my browser is my second most important tool. - as mentioned above I propose starting with a soft fork, as set of patches to be applied to the latest Firefox
- dblohm7 5y ago
  > Do you see any hope for a fork of modern Firefox that start with just the tiniest stuff, maybe adding back a simple tab strip api Why bother with the overhead of a fork? Perhaps a team of volunteers could put together a good enough proposal to be accepted by the WebExtensions team.
  - eitland 5y ago
    Well, that would actually be a good solution. My feeling as someone who has tried to look into it is that certain people are not only reluctant to doing it but also directly opposed. I might be wrong though and it would be fantastic of someone else could fix it and persuade them to accept it.
    - dblohm7 5y ago
      I used to work at Mozilla and periodically checked the status of the "add API to hide the tab bar" bug. I don't think anybody was directly opposed, but there were a lot of hidden edge cases that needed to be dealt with. Even though full-time devs might not have time allocated to doing this themselves, they are open to accepting solutions as long as the contributions are thorough and follow up on their concerns. Unfortunately IMHO most submissions these days are more like "this looks simple to me, just do it!" instead of a genuine engagement. To some people, that looks like opposition.
- BurningPenguin 5y ago
  SeaMonkey is still around. Though i'm not sure about the capabilities of its addon api.