6 ms·

A large reason why I have not moved on from Firefox is that Gecko remains the only independent full-featured browser-engine. If Firefox were to be discontinued

by ajxs 5y ago

A large reason why I have not moved on from Firefox is that Gecko remains the only independent full-featured browser-engine. If Firefox were to be discontinued by Mozilla, Google would gain even more control over web standards than it already has. I'm aware that there are other independent, open-source browser-engines available, I'm not aware of any others that are equally usable as an everyday browser for ordinary users though. This fact alone has remained enough for me to continue using it in the face of a continually declining quality, and Mozilla's totally misguided corporate leadership.

cxr 5y ago
> I'm aware that there are other independent, open-source browser-engines available, I'm not aware of any others that are equally usable as an everyday browser for ordinary users though. Safari is both usable for everyday users and is used every day by more than those that use Firefox, which means WebKit is a viable alternative to Blink.
- lmedinas 5y ago
  except that Safari doesnt have a decent adblocker like ublock is for me a big issue. Plus Safari 15 must have some kind of a bug or something it drains my battery just like Brave.
  - cxr 5y ago
    That's beside the point. I didn't recommend Safari. Safari is a Web browser. The discussion is about alternatives to Blink and Gecko—browser engines, not browsers. The fact that WebKit is in Safari and Safari is used by millions of ordinary people means that Webkit meets the commenter's criteria and is a viable option as the basis for building a (perhaps yet-to-be conceived) Web browser.
- deadbunny 5y ago
  Only on Apple hardware though.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - boogies 5y ago
    No, in fact Mozilla’s hostility to embeddability makes the world’s largest megacorp look positively selfless as a contributor to the FLOSS community: the WebKit devs actually give 2¢ about it and webkit2gtk, and it enables a whole range of cross platform (GNU/* and *BSD) browsers from GNOME Web to suckless surf to luakit.
    - brnt 5y ago
      In terms of non-Apple WebKit browsers, that's about it though. And they're all quite niche in terms of intended audience. I wish there was a more Firefoxy WebKit browser out there, I'm not going back to a web without Ublock.
      - boogies 5y ago
        > they're all quite niche in terms of intended audience I wouldn’t say that of GNOME Web. > I'm not going back to a web without Ublock I do every day (switching between luakit on a laptop and firefox-mobile-config on a smartphone), and IMO a good /etc/hosts is good enough (edit: luakit can also read the same blocklist format as µBlock, though it ignores cosmetic filters).
    - ksec 5y ago
      > hostility I wouldn't say it was really hostility. But Gecko just wasn't designed to be embeddable in the first place. And they have millions of things to catch up at the time they ultimately decided they could only focus on a few things like Quantum and other things in Project Snappy. May be in the future. Compared to Webkit the whole engine was designed as an embeddable engine from Day one.
      - cxr 5y ago
        > Gecko just wasn't designed to be embeddable in the first place. This is untrue in the starkest sense. Please don't make stuff up and then present it as fact. Embeddability was a major goal for Gecko at the outset. It's the reason for many of the architectural decisions that exist today (past the point where that goal has been abandoned).
- mananaysiempre 5y ago
  WebKit hardly qualifies as independent from an ecosystem health standpoint, though... GP was probably referring more to efforts like WebSurf.
  - cxr 5y ago
    > efforts like WebSurf I guess this is a reference to the browser that's actually called NetSurf? Or maybe not? It's not clear, either, what the statement that "WebKit hardly qualifies as independent from an ecosystem health standpoint, though" means. Overall, this comment is very confusing.
    - mananaysiempre 5y ago
      > this is a reference to the browser that's actually called NetSurf Yes, sorry, I meant http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ http://www.netsurf-browser.org/. (I knew I should look up and put in the link, but it was late... Turns out I even misremembered the name.) > what the statement that "WebKit hardly qualifies as independent from an ecosystem health standpoint, though" means. That the Blink layout engine is a fork of the WebKit codebase, so if the issue is keeping the standard healthy by ensuring multiple people can implement it independently, having WebKit and Blink be the only implementations is less than ideal, even if not a complete failure.
technobabbler 5y ago
But what's the point of Gecko now? It's not like the 2000s where Firefox was still able to affect the browser landscape and drive development. Google has become the web standards body, and Webkit/Blink are the only renderers that matter anymore. Mozilla doesn't have enough influence to change anything anymore, it just dies a little more every year as browser support for it decreases even further. It's already down to <5% marketshare, what's left for it but to die?
- dangus 5y ago
  The only reason it "dies" is because people aren't using it. By using it, you help it to not "die." By using Firefox you show web developers that they need to support you as a user, or risk losing your business. That in turn makes Mozilla influential.
  - technobabbler 5y ago
    People flocked from Netscape to IE because it was better. People flocked from IE to Phoenix/early Firefox because it was better. People flocked from Firefox to Chrome because it was better. People aren't flocking from Chrome back to Firefox because Firefox has gotten worse while Chrome has gotten better. Why would I use something that most of the web doesn't support, is full of crapvertising, doesn't work seamlessly with my other Google services and Android, and on top of that, gets worse every year? I opened it just now, just for kicks, and it's begging me to pin itself to my taskbar (even though I'm on a Mac). And the tab right behind the modal popup is a bigass advertising for some Mozilla VPN product. The New Tab below that is a grid of six more ads from something called Pocket. How the hell did it get so bad? At this point I'd rather just see Firefox die entirely, or be made into another Chromium reskin. It's just malware these days.
    - newscracker 5y ago
      > People flocked from Firefox to Chrome because it was better. This part isn’t entirely true. One large and influential reason why people switched to Chrome was because every Google search result page and many other pages on Google properties heavily and prominently advertised Chrome. Chrome was also bundled with some other third party software. Chrome may have been better in its initial years than Firefox, but that wasn’t the main trigger for people to switch. For most people, the default browser installed with their OS is what they’d use unless they’re sold another browser or they know that another browser is what works for them.
prohobo 5y ago
This argument I can understand, and I'm torn between Firefox and Brave because of it. Maybe the best option for people like me is to use both. Or create a Brave-like browser with Gecko?

by ajxs 5y ago

cxr 5y ago

> I'm aware that there are other independent, open-source browser-engines available, I'm not aware of any others that are equally usable as an everyday browser for ordinary users though. Safari is both usable for everyday users and is used every day by more than those that use Firefox, which means WebKit is a viable alternative to Blink.

lmedinas 5y ago
except that Safari doesnt have a decent adblocker like ublock is for me a big issue. Plus Safari 15 must have some kind of a bug or something it drains my battery just like Brave.
- cxr 5y ago
  That's beside the point. I didn't recommend Safari. Safari is a Web browser. The discussion is about alternatives to Blink and Gecko—browser engines, not browsers. The fact that WebKit is in Safari and Safari is used by millions of ordinary people means that Webkit meets the commenter's criteria and is a viable option as the basis for building a (perhaps yet-to-be conceived) Web browser.
deadbunny 5y ago
Only on Apple hardware though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- boogies 5y ago
  No, in fact Mozilla’s hostility to embeddability makes the world’s largest megacorp look positively selfless as a contributor to the FLOSS community: the WebKit devs actually give 2¢ about it and webkit2gtk, and it enables a whole range of cross platform (GNU/* and *BSD) browsers from GNOME Web to suckless surf to luakit.
  - brnt 5y ago
    In terms of non-Apple WebKit browsers, that's about it though. And they're all quite niche in terms of intended audience. I wish there was a more Firefoxy WebKit browser out there, I'm not going back to a web without Ublock.
    - boogies 5y ago
      > they're all quite niche in terms of intended audience I wouldn’t say that of GNOME Web. > I'm not going back to a web without Ublock I do every day (switching between luakit on a laptop and firefox-mobile-config on a smartphone), and IMO a good /etc/hosts is good enough (edit: luakit can also read the same blocklist format as µBlock, though it ignores cosmetic filters).
  - ksec 5y ago
    > hostility I wouldn't say it was really hostility. But Gecko just wasn't designed to be embeddable in the first place. And they have millions of things to catch up at the time they ultimately decided they could only focus on a few things like Quantum and other things in Project Snappy. May be in the future. Compared to Webkit the whole engine was designed as an embeddable engine from Day one.
    - cxr 5y ago
      > Gecko just wasn't designed to be embeddable in the first place. This is untrue in the starkest sense. Please don't make stuff up and then present it as fact. Embeddability was a major goal for Gecko at the outset. It's the reason for many of the architectural decisions that exist today (past the point where that goal has been abandoned).
mananaysiempre 5y ago
WebKit hardly qualifies as independent from an ecosystem health standpoint, though... GP was probably referring more to efforts like WebSurf.
- cxr 5y ago
  > efforts like WebSurf I guess this is a reference to the browser that's actually called NetSurf? Or maybe not? It's not clear, either, what the statement that "WebKit hardly qualifies as independent from an ecosystem health standpoint, though" means. Overall, this comment is very confusing.
  - mananaysiempre 5y ago
    > this is a reference to the browser that's actually called NetSurf Yes, sorry, I meant http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ http://www.netsurf-browser.org/. (I knew I should look up and put in the link, but it was late... Turns out I even misremembered the name.) > what the statement that "WebKit hardly qualifies as independent from an ecosystem health standpoint, though" means. That the Blink layout engine is a fork of the WebKit codebase, so if the issue is keeping the standard healthy by ensuring multiple people can implement it independently, having WebKit and Blink be the only implementations is less than ideal, even if not a complete failure.

technobabbler 5y ago

But what's the point of Gecko now? It's not like the 2000s where Firefox was still able to affect the browser landscape and drive development. Google has become the web standards body, and Webkit/Blink are the only renderers that matter anymore. Mozilla doesn't have enough influence to change anything anymore, it just dies a little more every year as browser support for it decreases even further. It's already down to <5% marketshare, what's left for it but to die?

dangus 5y ago
The only reason it "dies" is because people aren't using it. By using it, you help it to not "die." By using Firefox you show web developers that they need to support you as a user, or risk losing your business. That in turn makes Mozilla influential.
- technobabbler 5y ago
  People flocked from Netscape to IE because it was better. People flocked from IE to Phoenix/early Firefox because it was better. People flocked from Firefox to Chrome because it was better. People aren't flocking from Chrome back to Firefox because Firefox has gotten worse while Chrome has gotten better. Why would I use something that most of the web doesn't support, is full of crapvertising, doesn't work seamlessly with my other Google services and Android, and on top of that, gets worse every year? I opened it just now, just for kicks, and it's begging me to pin itself to my taskbar (even though I'm on a Mac). And the tab right behind the modal popup is a bigass advertising for some Mozilla VPN product. The New Tab below that is a grid of six more ads from something called Pocket. How the hell did it get so bad? At this point I'd rather just see Firefox die entirely, or be made into another Chromium reskin. It's just malware these days.
  - newscracker 5y ago
    > People flocked from Firefox to Chrome because it was better. This part isn’t entirely true. One large and influential reason why people switched to Chrome was because every Google search result page and many other pages on Google properties heavily and prominently advertised Chrome. Chrome was also bundled with some other third party software. Chrome may have been better in its initial years than Firefox, but that wasn’t the main trigger for people to switch. For most people, the default browser installed with their OS is what they’d use unless they’re sold another browser or they know that another browser is what works for them.

prohobo 5y ago

This argument I can understand, and I'm torn between Firefox and Brave because of it. Maybe the best option for people like me is to use both. Or create a Brave-like browser with Gecko?