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Firefox is the web browser equivalent a dying language. It will be a tragic loss for the culture of the web for Firefox to fade away. But, there are powerful ma

by cdata 3y ago

Firefox is the web browser equivalent a dying language. It will be a tragic loss for the culture of the web for Firefox to fade away. But, there are powerful macro forces pushing us to that outcome. "Switch, please," calls to action are a noble but insufficient countermeasure.

ethanwillis 3y ago
Is that a common belief on the Google Chrome team?
- cdata 3y ago
  You'll have to ask them. I left Chrome in an exasperated huff several years ago. The browser ecosystem as we know it is in a tenuous state. It is unhealthy for the web that Chromium has become so dominant. It is a symptom of this imbalance that users line up to defend Apple's choice to lock out other browser engines from iOS. This kind of popular user sentiment would have been unthinkable to me in the era when Firefox first rose up to fight back against the IE singularity. Yet, here we are.
Simran-B 3y ago
Maybe not dying (yet) but it is technologically behind with a lot of things by now. This is annoying if you want to try out new web platform features. Sometimes, there isn't even a signal from Mozilla while Google marks a feature as stable. Average people probably don't care about the latest features but Google pushes Chrome very aggressively, so they end up using it anyway. What annoys me the most, however, is that several things simply don't work in Firefox and the associated report is over a decade old, so with close to zero chances of ever getting addressed. Copying the content of a canvas element as an image to the clipboard is one of these things. In Chrome, this takes a right and a left click. Firefox didn't have such a basic feature last time I checked. There used to be a workaround, opening a blob URL in a new tab and then copy that, but this got broken later, I believe by a stricter security policy. Firefox is essentially the browser equivalent of Fairphone. It's the most ethical option but it inconveniences you left, right, and center.
- Tajnymag 3y ago
  Is Fairphone 5 such an inconvenience you describe it? On paper, it seems pretty usable
  - Simran-B 3y ago
    I can't comment on the Fairphone 5 specifically but some of the issues reported by the community sound similar to the two predecessors. My personal experience with two Fairphone 4 phones running Android 13 isn't great. Apps sporadically stop reacting to taps and auto-rotate in combination with standby somehow locks up the phone, usually with a black screen. The picture quality isn't good, the stock camera app misses half of the button presses and there's a 2-4 second delay until it actually takes a picture.
- ls612 3y ago
  Case in point, Nvidia video super resolution is buggy in Firefox, it will randomly stop working until you restart the whole browser.
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  > This is annoying if you want to try out new web platform features. You meant Blink platform?
jjeaff 3y ago
I feel like Google breaking ad blockers on chrome will ensure survival of browsers like Firefox.

by cdata 3y ago

ethanwillis 3y ago

Is that a common belief on the Google Chrome team?

cdata 3y ago
You'll have to ask them. I left Chrome in an exasperated huff several years ago. The browser ecosystem as we know it is in a tenuous state. It is unhealthy for the web that Chromium has become so dominant. It is a symptom of this imbalance that users line up to defend Apple's choice to lock out other browser engines from iOS. This kind of popular user sentiment would have been unthinkable to me in the era when Firefox first rose up to fight back against the IE singularity. Yet, here we are.

Simran-B 3y ago

Maybe not dying (yet) but it is technologically behind with a lot of things by now. This is annoying if you want to try out new web platform features. Sometimes, there isn't even a signal from Mozilla while Google marks a feature as stable. Average people probably don't care about the latest features but Google pushes Chrome very aggressively, so they end up using it anyway. What annoys me the most, however, is that several things simply don't work in Firefox and the associated report is over a decade old, so with close to zero chances of ever getting addressed. Copying the content of a canvas element as an image to the clipboard is one of these things. In Chrome, this takes a right and a left click. Firefox didn't have such a basic feature last time I checked. There used to be a workaround, opening a blob URL in a new tab and then copy that, but this got broken later, I believe by a stricter security policy. Firefox is essentially the browser equivalent of Fairphone. It's the most ethical option but it inconveniences you left, right, and center.

Tajnymag 3y ago
Is Fairphone 5 such an inconvenience you describe it? On paper, it seems pretty usable
- Simran-B 3y ago
  I can't comment on the Fairphone 5 specifically but some of the issues reported by the community sound similar to the two predecessors. My personal experience with two Fairphone 4 phones running Android 13 isn't great. Apps sporadically stop reacting to taps and auto-rotate in combination with standby somehow locks up the phone, usually with a black screen. The picture quality isn't good, the stock camera app misses half of the button presses and there's a 2-4 second delay until it actually takes a picture.
ls612 3y ago
Case in point, Nvidia video super resolution is buggy in Firefox, it will randomly stop working until you restart the whole browser.
pseudalopex 3y ago
> This is annoying if you want to try out new web platform features. You meant Blink platform?

jjeaff 3y ago

I feel like Google breaking ad blockers on chrome will ensure survival of browsers like Firefox.