4 ms·

What stood out to me was that they didn't break out mobile from PC. The mobile landscape dominates usage these days and extremely few people make an active choi

What stood out to me was that they didn't break out mobile from PC. The mobile landscape dominates usage these days and extremely few people make an active choice in browser there. The presented stats to me reads more like Android vs iPhone than it does Chrome vs everyone else.

culi 3y ago
on iOS all browsers are forced to use WebKit And how could Firefox possibly complete against default browsers? Is it even worth the investment?
- rchaud 3y ago
  They tried with FirefoxOS almost a decade ago but couldn't find any hardware partners.
  - fabrice_d 3y ago
    FirefoxOS was not stopped by Mozilla leadership due to a lack of hardware partners. The distribution model - mostly through carriers - failed because a key app was not available (WhatsApp) which caused a chicken and egg situation: no sales because no app, no official app because not enough users.
    - geoelectric 3y ago
      That's pretty interesting. I was around back then and hadn't recalled that there was such a lynchpin issue, but that makes a lot of sense as to why it suddenly hit such a hard stop. Were you able to support WhatsApp with KaiOS, or did the feature-phone target make it moot?
      - fabrice_d 3y ago
        Yes KaiOS has an official WhatsApp app. This was possible thanks to the market size of Jio in India, with > 120M devices shipped.
    - vetinari 3y ago
      At the time, I had a FirefoxOS device made by ZTE in my hands. It was so slow, it was unusable; even the first Android devices running on underpowered hardware were speed champions in comparison. Looking for an Whatsapp launcher was beyond the patience of even dedicated fans.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      Somehow this chicken-egg problem isn't stopping GNU/Linux phones. Sent from my Librem 5.
      - fabrice_d 3y ago
        Indeed, but the go to market strategy was not the same. Librem 5 is still far from being a usable daily driver for most people.
      - int_19h 3y ago
        And what is the market share of those phones on the mobile device market?
        fsflover 3y ago
        The market share is low for any new technology.
- isodev 3y ago
  The rendering engine doesn't really matter - nothing is stopping Mozilla from implementing a better browser app than Safari. Safari is _really_ good and a very high bar to catchup to, even if you don't have to implement the rendering engine and Mozilla is not exactly known for their friendly and refined UIs. Vivaldi on iOS is much younger by comparison and looks a lot better than Firefox.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    It does, actually. For example, the reason why no other browser has the equivalent of Firefox containers is because they are the only ones with an architecture that allows for such isolation. Users of Vivaldi have been asking for containers for years now, and every time the dev team explains that they'd love to do it, but it can't be done without forking Blink and doing some massive surgery on it - at which point you again end up with your own thing, and have to play catch-up every time Google pushes yet another "standard" onto the web.
  - culi 3y ago
    > The rendering engine doesn't really matter I disagree. For the purposes of this conversation, I feel like it's the only thing that matters. The web doesn't benefit at all from a WebKit-based browser by Mozilla capturing some of the iOS marketshare. Websites will still have to cater to WebKit. Not Gecko or something new > Mozilla is not exactly known for their friendly and refined UIs I actually strongly prefer the Firefox app's UI to safari
    - isodev 3y ago
      > For the purposes of this conversation, I feel like it's the only thing that matters. The web doesn't benefit at all from a WebKit-based browser by Mozilla capturing some of the iOS marketshare. I believe it matters because it shows Mozilla's ability to market their product (Firefox). If they continuously fail to capture user base on any platform, then what powers Firefox is of little consequence. As an experiment, I just installed Firefox on iOS just to see what's up and honestly 4 screens of things to confirm before I even get to the browsing part? As a tech person I understood each of them of course, but no sane person would put 4 screens in a row blocking users from using an app they normally already know how top use. So no, I don't believe Mozilla has the required UI/UX skills.
Lamad1234 3y ago
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culi 3y ago

on iOS all browsers are forced to use WebKit And how could Firefox possibly complete against default browsers? Is it even worth the investment?

rchaud 3y ago
They tried with FirefoxOS almost a decade ago but couldn't find any hardware partners.
- fabrice_d 3y ago
  FirefoxOS was not stopped by Mozilla leadership due to a lack of hardware partners. The distribution model - mostly through carriers - failed because a key app was not available (WhatsApp) which caused a chicken and egg situation: no sales because no app, no official app because not enough users.
  - geoelectric 3y ago
    That's pretty interesting. I was around back then and hadn't recalled that there was such a lynchpin issue, but that makes a lot of sense as to why it suddenly hit such a hard stop. Were you able to support WhatsApp with KaiOS, or did the feature-phone target make it moot?
    - fabrice_d 3y ago
      Yes KaiOS has an official WhatsApp app. This was possible thanks to the market size of Jio in India, with > 120M devices shipped.
  - vetinari 3y ago
    At the time, I had a FirefoxOS device made by ZTE in my hands. It was so slow, it was unusable; even the first Android devices running on underpowered hardware were speed champions in comparison. Looking for an Whatsapp launcher was beyond the patience of even dedicated fans.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    Somehow this chicken-egg problem isn't stopping GNU/Linux phones. Sent from my Librem 5.
    - fabrice_d 3y ago
      Indeed, but the go to market strategy was not the same. Librem 5 is still far from being a usable daily driver for most people.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      And what is the market share of those phones on the mobile device market?
      - fsflover 3y ago
        The market share is low for any new technology.
isodev 3y ago
The rendering engine doesn't really matter - nothing is stopping Mozilla from implementing a better browser app than Safari. Safari is _really_ good and a very high bar to catchup to, even if you don't have to implement the rendering engine and Mozilla is not exactly known for their friendly and refined UIs. Vivaldi on iOS is much younger by comparison and looks a lot better than Firefox.
- int_19h 3y ago
  It does, actually. For example, the reason why no other browser has the equivalent of Firefox containers is because they are the only ones with an architecture that allows for such isolation. Users of Vivaldi have been asking for containers for years now, and every time the dev team explains that they'd love to do it, but it can't be done without forking Blink and doing some massive surgery on it - at which point you again end up with your own thing, and have to play catch-up every time Google pushes yet another "standard" onto the web.
- culi 3y ago
  > The rendering engine doesn't really matter I disagree. For the purposes of this conversation, I feel like it's the only thing that matters. The web doesn't benefit at all from a WebKit-based browser by Mozilla capturing some of the iOS marketshare. Websites will still have to cater to WebKit. Not Gecko or something new > Mozilla is not exactly known for their friendly and refined UIs I actually strongly prefer the Firefox app's UI to safari
  - isodev 3y ago
    > For the purposes of this conversation, I feel like it's the only thing that matters. The web doesn't benefit at all from a WebKit-based browser by Mozilla capturing some of the iOS marketshare. I believe it matters because it shows Mozilla's ability to market their product (Firefox). If they continuously fail to capture user base on any platform, then what powers Firefox is of little consequence. As an experiment, I just installed Firefox on iOS just to see what's up and honestly 4 screens of things to confirm before I even get to the browsing part? As a tech person I understood each of them of course, but no sane person would put 4 screens in a row blocking users from using an app they normally already know how top use. So no, I don't believe Mozilla has the required UI/UX skills.

Lamad1234 3y ago

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