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> Out of all the big browsers, Mozilla Firefox comes closest to being a web browser for the sake of web browsing. There's a flip side to this coin; Firefox exi

> Out of all the big browsers, Mozilla Firefox comes closest to being a web browser for the sake of web browsing. There's a flip side to this coin; Firefox exists to support Mozilla's main business, which is the web. This also means that Mozilla staunchly and without fail opposes any technological shift that could unseat the entrenched market position of the existing web technology stack, even if it would improve things for end users. Google developed SPDY, NaCL, Dart, all in an effort to improve the underlying constraints of delivering code/information -- in any form -- to users. If we only had Mozilla, we'd be locked into HTTP/HTML/CSS/DOM/JS forever. Technology has to evolve to move forward, but Mozilla has very little reason to want the web to evolve.

scribu 14y ago
> Mozilla has very little reason to want the web to evolve. What? Mozilla very much has a reason to want the web to evolve, in order to stay competitive with the various non-web mobile app ecosystems.
- pifflesnort 14y ago
  That requires evolving to embrace the strengths of the non-web mobile app ecosystem -- which means evolving away from the web as Mozilla sees it: dom/js/css/html. If you accept 'the web' as more of a conceptual ideal of openness, then there's a lot more room for innovation. The problem is, at its core, that the people who are best suited to change the way the web works, are the developers that stuck it out through learning JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and browser quirks, and then spent the years required on top of that to begin working on the browsers themselves. Of that self-selecting group, how many of them are likely to want to voluntarily rework and/or abandon core web technologies? On the other hand, Chrome, existing to further Google's interests, has every reason to employ whatever creative technology solutions are necessary to improve the user experience, even if that means changing or abandoning the legacy web technology stack in the process.
pcwalton 14y ago
Mozilla has implemented SPDY. Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft will not implement NaCl and Dart because they feel that they are technically worse than alternatives (asm.js and either ES6 or compiling other languages to JS). The technical problems will ultimately provide a worse experience to end users. For example, NaCl is not portable, meaning that users' apps will not work on all the users' devices like they expect, and PNaCl is not backwards compatible, so the apps won't work on all browsers. Dart threatens to make garbage collection slower because of cross-language cycle collection, which results in a worse experience to end users. Mozilla has every reason to want the Web to evolve. If the Web doesn't evolve and loses to native platforms, Mozilla becomes irrelevant and dies. How is that not incentive?
- pifflesnort 14y ago
  > Mozilla has implemented SPDY. After Google designed it, developed it, and then deployed it to their properties. And even then Mozilla was still questioning whether it should be implemented, because "would anyone use it?". > Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft will not implement NaCl and Dart because they feel that they are technically worse than alternatives (asm.js and either ES6 or compiling other languages to JS). We fundamentally disagree on that. I see NaCL as a route to the future of haardware-supported sandboxing, in the same way that virtualization was. NaCL is a way to fundamentally re-invision how we implement sandboxing of process, and move beyond the legacy ring-0 design. asm.js is just another application-level hack on top of a huge pile of application-level hacks. It's time to coalesce the stack of these hacky abstractions, and clean up shop. > For example, NaCl is not portable, meaning that users' apps will not work on all the users' devices like they expect, and PNaCl is not backwards compatible, so the apps won't work on all browsers. So what? You know what happens when I fire up a PPC Mac from 1998 and try to use Netscape 4 on the modern web? Nothing works. At least something like PNaCL has a MUCH smaller surface area than something like the full HTML/DOM/CSS/JS stack, which makes supporting it in a backwards compatible manner indefinitely far, far easier. > Mozilla has every reason to want the Web to evolve. If the Web doesn't evolve and loses to native platforms, Mozilla becomes irrelevant and dies. How is that not incentive? Because the web needs to evolve away from what it currently is, and that's the one thing Mozilla ideologically doesn't want and won't do.
sergiosgc 14y ago
How would replacing HTTP with SPDY offset Mozilla? It's not a threat. NaCL? NaCL is a different applet sandboxing, again not a threat to the browser or Mozilla. Dart? Dart is an alternative webpage scripting language (an alternative to Javascript). Each of these does not threaten the importance of the browser. On the contrary, they both widen the use cases of the browser and raise the entry barrier for competing browsers. These effects protect Mozilla, instead of threatening Mozilla. On the other hand, Google pushes OAuth single sign-on against Google accounts, whereas Mozilla is pushing Mozilla Persona, a distributed, no-central-authority SSO for the web. I conclude the exact opposite of what you state. If we use Chrome, we're locked into technologies that serve Google, if we use Firefox we're pushing open technologies.
evilpie 14y ago
Not to mention the dozens of WebAPIs that Mozilla invented and are on the path to standardization.
icebraining 14y ago
Mozilla has had XUL before Chrome was even a blueprint.

scribu 14y ago

> Mozilla has very little reason to want the web to evolve. What? Mozilla very much has a reason to want the web to evolve, in order to stay competitive with the various non-web mobile app ecosystems.

pifflesnort 14y ago
That requires evolving to embrace the strengths of the non-web mobile app ecosystem -- which means evolving away from the web as Mozilla sees it: dom/js/css/html. If you accept 'the web' as more of a conceptual ideal of openness, then there's a lot more room for innovation. The problem is, at its core, that the people who are best suited to change the way the web works, are the developers that stuck it out through learning JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and browser quirks, and then spent the years required on top of that to begin working on the browsers themselves. Of that self-selecting group, how many of them are likely to want to voluntarily rework and/or abandon core web technologies? On the other hand, Chrome, existing to further Google's interests, has every reason to employ whatever creative technology solutions are necessary to improve the user experience, even if that means changing or abandoning the legacy web technology stack in the process.

pcwalton 14y ago

Mozilla has implemented SPDY. Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft will not implement NaCl and Dart because they feel that they are technically worse than alternatives (asm.js and either ES6 or compiling other languages to JS). The technical problems will ultimately provide a worse experience to end users. For example, NaCl is not portable, meaning that users' apps will not work on all the users' devices like they expect, and PNaCl is not backwards compatible, so the apps won't work on all browsers. Dart threatens to make garbage collection slower because of cross-language cycle collection, which results in a worse experience to end users. Mozilla has every reason to want the Web to evolve. If the Web doesn't evolve and loses to native platforms, Mozilla becomes irrelevant and dies. How is that not incentive?

pifflesnort 14y ago
> Mozilla has implemented SPDY. After Google designed it, developed it, and then deployed it to their properties. And even then Mozilla was still questioning whether it should be implemented, because "would anyone use it?". > Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft will not implement NaCl and Dart because they feel that they are technically worse than alternatives (asm.js and either ES6 or compiling other languages to JS). We fundamentally disagree on that. I see NaCL as a route to the future of haardware-supported sandboxing, in the same way that virtualization was. NaCL is a way to fundamentally re-invision how we implement sandboxing of process, and move beyond the legacy ring-0 design. asm.js is just another application-level hack on top of a huge pile of application-level hacks. It's time to coalesce the stack of these hacky abstractions, and clean up shop. > For example, NaCl is not portable, meaning that users' apps will not work on all the users' devices like they expect, and PNaCl is not backwards compatible, so the apps won't work on all browsers. So what? You know what happens when I fire up a PPC Mac from 1998 and try to use Netscape 4 on the modern web? Nothing works. At least something like PNaCL has a MUCH smaller surface area than something like the full HTML/DOM/CSS/JS stack, which makes supporting it in a backwards compatible manner indefinitely far, far easier. > Mozilla has every reason to want the Web to evolve. If the Web doesn't evolve and loses to native platforms, Mozilla becomes irrelevant and dies. How is that not incentive? Because the web needs to evolve away from what it currently is, and that's the one thing Mozilla ideologically doesn't want and won't do.

sergiosgc 14y ago

How would replacing HTTP with SPDY offset Mozilla? It's not a threat. NaCL? NaCL is a different applet sandboxing, again not a threat to the browser or Mozilla. Dart? Dart is an alternative webpage scripting language (an alternative to Javascript). Each of these does not threaten the importance of the browser. On the contrary, they both widen the use cases of the browser and raise the entry barrier for competing browsers. These effects protect Mozilla, instead of threatening Mozilla. On the other hand, Google pushes OAuth single sign-on against Google accounts, whereas Mozilla is pushing Mozilla Persona, a distributed, no-central-authority SSO for the web. I conclude the exact opposite of what you state. If we use Chrome, we're locked into technologies that serve Google, if we use Firefox we're pushing open technologies.

evilpie 14y ago

Not to mention the dozens of WebAPIs that Mozilla invented and are on the path to standardization.

icebraining 14y ago

Mozilla has had XUL before Chrome was even a blueprint.