4 ms·

> A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. Exactly. Firefox doesn't include "Firefox Hello"

by jlebar 12y ago

> A web browser should not include X functionality, but should allow a web page to implement X functionality. Exactly. Firefox doesn't include "Firefox Hello" anymore than it includes "Gmail". Instead, Firefox (and other web browsers) include XMLHttpRequest and WebRTC, which can be used to implement whatever you want. I'm getting pretty tired of hearing this trope ("teh bloat!") anytime a browser announces new functionality. Browsers are among the most successful pieces of consumer software in existence, so let's maybe admit they've done something right? But moreover, you have the ability -- really, unprecedented for software so complex and in such wide use -- to fork not one but two excellent open-source browsers, plus an excellent rendering engine. If you think you know better than Mozilla and/or Google, go for it. It's not lost on anyone at Mozilla that this is how Firefox originated. </rant>

mattmanser 12y ago
My parents had an uncanny knack for always buying slightly the wrong thing when I was a kid. Betamax, Amigas, minidiscs. I used to have a cassette player that had a tape recorder on it. It made it bigger and heavier, and probably more expensive and I never used the record feature. Just because part of the product works well, doesn't mean the rest of it is good.
- Tloewald 12y ago
  Most people probably used the record feature on their cassette players and the cost of simply including it in every device may well have been lower than the cost of two production lines. Incidentally, for five years or so the Amiga was a great choice and any PC bought instead of an Amiga would have been horribly obsolete by the time the Amiga ecosystem collapsed. Your parents sound cool ;-)
- TheDong 12y ago
  That's a bad and misleading comparison here though. Your cassette player had to add the bulky recording feature to become a recorder, but did not need it to be a player. Firefox is a webbrowser, not a video conferencing software, but it had to add WebRTC to be a web-browser (the bulky bit), so adding in recording is trivial. A more honest analogy would be saying you had a cassette player that already had all the hardware to record -- necessitated by it being able to play cassettes for some reason -- but didn't have a record button vs one having the button.
  - jsprogrammer 12y ago
    >but it had to add WebRTC to be a web-browser Does this mean that we now get to claim that IE and Safari are not web browsers?
  - mattmanser 12y ago
    Not really at all. They're going to have to add a whole load of features and new UI elements which will increase the cost of updating and progressing the browser. Either it's going to be a half assed Skype tacked in behind a menu somewhere, or a browser cluttered with all the visual UI of a chat program. To say they had to do most of it anyway is compete nonsense. The protocol is like 1/10th of a decent chat program.
  - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
    Random vaguely relevent historical asides: 1. The Walkman was born after a Sony exec had started using a Sony Pressman tape-recorder intended for transcribing meetings/interviews to listen to audio tapes while on planes. They took out the recording functionality and speaker (while adding stereo to the headphones) to make it smaller/cheaper/more portable. 2. Firefox was born after some Mozilla devs took the full featured Mozilla suit and simply hid a lot of the features (email, HTML editor, NNTP newsreader). They later on actually did the work to remove unused code, but at first it was merely cosmetic, though everyone likes to believe there was a mystical time in the past when Firefox was a lean, mean, codebase rather than a minimilist reskin on top of a lot of bloat. Not sure how that relates to WebRTC, just thought the parallel was amusing.
- iamcreasy 12y ago
  Developers shouldn't be afraid to implementing new features just because they don't know if it's the best decision yet. And to drive innovation many times you will have to step into an unknown territory. Moreover for someone who hasn't used anything but IE for his entire life, the video chat feature might be the only reason to sway towards FF.
- libria 12y ago
  > My parents had an uncanny knack for always buying slightly the wrong thing when I was a kid. Betamax, Amigas, minidiscs. Ask them if they're speculating on Bitcoin, so I know if I should get out. =)
- kstenerud 12y ago
  I would not trade my Amiga experience for any other computer of the era. It's what set my high standards for what technology SHOULD be able to do.
- jasonwocky 12y ago
  An Amiga cast as the wrong thing to buy? Heaven forbid.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  My parents had a Betamax too. Massive top-loading device. My dad's still got it in his loft along with his BBC A, B, B+, Master..... Weirdly just the other month my brother bought a stash of minidiscs and players instead of just using a cheap MP3 player. I don't understand why.
cjensen 12y ago
You're confusing Firefox Hello with WebRTC. Let me explain by analogy with a video codec: For video, Firefox contains a video codec. Surfing to YouTube lets the YouTube web page play video. Firefox does not contain a "Youtube Player". That's exactly the opposite of what they have done here. They have added basically added a "Telefonica WebRTC Player". That's wrong. They should have added WebRTC generically so that you go to a web page at Telefonica to use it. Or better yet, use it with a server you trust.
- quadrature 12y ago
  I can't help but think that this has something to do with their decision to drop google as the default search option. This is their monetary avenue going forward.
- windlep 12y ago
  WebRTC was "generically" added to Firefox in 2013, ie: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/06/webrtc-comes-to-firefox/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/06/webrtc-comes-to-firefox/ Of course, with it being added generically, tons of websites immediately started using it..... nope. Ok, well, lets go back before that blog post... https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/hello-chrome-its-firefox-calling/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/hello-chrome-its-firefox-c... Ah ha, isn't that neat. WebRTC in Firefox and Chrome and a demo of it! Wait, still pretty much zero use in the wild of WebRTC... This is why Google/Mozilla are adding features utilizing these new specs to the browser, because they're cool and no one else is. In the case of WebRTC, it's for a good reason, its a PITA to run TURN/STUN servers to ensure that people behind firewalls can establish a connection.
  - ferongr 12y ago
    Facebook uses WebRTC for calls on the release versions of Firefox. That probably counts for something.
    - windlep 12y ago
      Cool, I didn't know that. It definitely counts for something.

by jlebar 12y ago

mattmanser 12y ago

My parents had an uncanny knack for always buying slightly the wrong thing when I was a kid. Betamax, Amigas, minidiscs. I used to have a cassette player that had a tape recorder on it. It made it bigger and heavier, and probably more expensive and I never used the record feature. Just because part of the product works well, doesn't mean the rest of it is good.

Tloewald 12y ago
Most people probably used the record feature on their cassette players and the cost of simply including it in every device may well have been lower than the cost of two production lines. Incidentally, for five years or so the Amiga was a great choice and any PC bought instead of an Amiga would have been horribly obsolete by the time the Amiga ecosystem collapsed. Your parents sound cool ;-)
TheDong 12y ago
That's a bad and misleading comparison here though. Your cassette player had to add the bulky recording feature to become a recorder, but did not need it to be a player. Firefox is a webbrowser, not a video conferencing software, but it had to add WebRTC to be a web-browser (the bulky bit), so adding in recording is trivial. A more honest analogy would be saying you had a cassette player that already had all the hardware to record -- necessitated by it being able to play cassettes for some reason -- but didn't have a record button vs one having the button.
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  >but it had to add WebRTC to be a web-browser Does this mean that we now get to claim that IE and Safari are not web browsers?
- mattmanser 12y ago
  Not really at all. They're going to have to add a whole load of features and new UI elements which will increase the cost of updating and progressing the browser. Either it's going to be a half assed Skype tacked in behind a menu somewhere, or a browser cluttered with all the visual UI of a chat program. To say they had to do most of it anyway is compete nonsense. The protocol is like 1/10th of a decent chat program.
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  Random vaguely relevent historical asides: 1. The Walkman was born after a Sony exec had started using a Sony Pressman tape-recorder intended for transcribing meetings/interviews to listen to audio tapes while on planes. They took out the recording functionality and speaker (while adding stereo to the headphones) to make it smaller/cheaper/more portable. 2. Firefox was born after some Mozilla devs took the full featured Mozilla suit and simply hid a lot of the features (email, HTML editor, NNTP newsreader). They later on actually did the work to remove unused code, but at first it was merely cosmetic, though everyone likes to believe there was a mystical time in the past when Firefox was a lean, mean, codebase rather than a minimilist reskin on top of a lot of bloat. Not sure how that relates to WebRTC, just thought the parallel was amusing.
iamcreasy 12y ago
Developers shouldn't be afraid to implementing new features just because they don't know if it's the best decision yet. And to drive innovation many times you will have to step into an unknown territory. Moreover for someone who hasn't used anything but IE for his entire life, the video chat feature might be the only reason to sway towards FF.
libria 12y ago
> My parents had an uncanny knack for always buying slightly the wrong thing when I was a kid. Betamax, Amigas, minidiscs. Ask them if they're speculating on Bitcoin, so I know if I should get out. =)
kstenerud 12y ago
I would not trade my Amiga experience for any other computer of the era. It's what set my high standards for what technology SHOULD be able to do.
jasonwocky 12y ago
An Amiga cast as the wrong thing to buy? Heaven forbid.
72deluxe 12y ago
My parents had a Betamax too. Massive top-loading device. My dad's still got it in his loft along with his BBC A, B, B+, Master..... Weirdly just the other month my brother bought a stash of minidiscs and players instead of just using a cheap MP3 player. I don't understand why.

cjensen 12y ago

You're confusing Firefox Hello with WebRTC. Let me explain by analogy with a video codec: For video, Firefox contains a video codec. Surfing to YouTube lets the YouTube web page play video. Firefox does not contain a "Youtube Player". That's exactly the opposite of what they have done here. They have added basically added a "Telefonica WebRTC Player". That's wrong. They should have added WebRTC generically so that you go to a web page at Telefonica to use it. Or better yet, use it with a server you trust.

quadrature 12y ago
I can't help but think that this has something to do with their decision to drop google as the default search option. This is their monetary avenue going forward.
windlep 12y ago
WebRTC was "generically" added to Firefox in 2013, ie: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/06/webrtc-comes-to-firefox/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/06/webrtc-comes-to-firefox/ Of course, with it being added generically, tons of websites immediately started using it..... nope. Ok, well, lets go back before that blog post... https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/hello-chrome-its-firefox-calling/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/hello-chrome-its-firefox-c... Ah ha, isn't that neat. WebRTC in Firefox and Chrome and a demo of it! Wait, still pretty much zero use in the wild of WebRTC... This is why Google/Mozilla are adding features utilizing these new specs to the browser, because they're cool and no one else is. In the case of WebRTC, it's for a good reason, its a PITA to run TURN/STUN servers to ensure that people behind firewalls can establish a connection.
- ferongr 12y ago
  Facebook uses WebRTC for calls on the release versions of Firefox. That probably counts for something.
  - windlep 12y ago
    Cool, I didn't know that. It definitely counts for something.