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from the approved-using-a-Pale-Moon-browser dept.
Netmarketshare reports that Mozilla Firefox's share of the desktop and notebook computer web browser market has fallen below ten percent.
Firefox had a market share of 12.63% in June 2017 according to Netmarketshare and even managed to rise above the 13% mark in 2017 before its share fell to 9.92% in May 2018.
Google Chrome, Firefox's biggest rival in the browser world, managed to increase its massive lead from 60.08% in June 2017 to 62.85% in May 2018.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer dropped a percent point to 11.82% in May 2018 and Microsoft's Edge browser gained less than 0.50% to 4.26% over the year.
[...] Netmarketshare collects usage stats and does not get "real" numbers from companies like Mozilla, Google or Microsoft. The company monitors the use of browsers on a subset of Internet sites and creates the market share reports using the data it collects.
While that is certainly good enough for trends if the number of monitored user interactions is high enough, it is not completely accurate and real-world values can be different based on a number of factors. While it is unlikely that they differ a lot, it is certainly possible that the share is different to the one reported by the company.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Subsentient on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:59PM (26 children)
I don't trust google, (even chromium sends telemetry) I hate the lack of a menu bar, I hate the lack of customizability, and generally, I'm happy with firefox.
I used Pale Moon until they released Firefox 58. It's a massive boost in performance. It's truly impressive.
The UI isn't good, just a chrome ripoff, but the speed is jaw dropping compared to old versions of Firefox.
The dropping of support for old extensions was sad, but I get why. Not good to have a lot of old cruft lying around.
Give it a try. I'm certainly pleased with it.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:17PM (12 children)
58? Too many extensions broken/gone/impossible there. I'll hang on at 52 as long as I can, then I'll see which browser I find the least evil at that point.
The modern browser, the spiritual successor to Java - write once, run everywhere (mostly), debug everywhere (at least twice), and in a language that wasn't fully thought out.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:33PM (11 children)
I definitely agree that web apps are generally terrible.
I prefer a desktop app whenever I can get it. Preferably written in C or C++ and not Java or C# or some other bloated JVMed language.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:27PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:30PM (1 child)
Only proprietary crap is fucking you. Stop letting them. There are alternatives.
Hardly like top but you do know about about:performance in Firefox?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:46AM
Interesting, but it doesn't exist in my copy of New Moon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:50PM
Since nothing has actually improved in regards to the actual software you can stick to old versions.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:22PM (6 children)
How should a desktop application be developed so that it will work on Windows, macOS, or X11/Linux with zero changes? Or should everyone buy a Mac so that they can triple-boot in order to run all three flavors of desktop application?
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:15PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:42PM (2 children)
If I compile an executable using Qt for Windows and distribute it to the public, will people who have installed Qt for macOS or Qt for X11/Linux be able to run that application? Or if I compile using using Qt for macOS, could users of Windows or X11/Linux run it? Or if I compile using Qt for X11/Linux, could users of macOS or Windows run it? Or if I ship solely a source code archive, could users of macOS, Windows, or X11/Linux who aren't programmers figure out how to compile and build it?
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:30PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:44PM
Which requires you to have a business first, or at least some way to recover the cost of setting up environments with which to test an executable for each of five major client platforms (Windows, X11/Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android). A 1- or 2-man ISV might not have the personpower to support all five as first-class citizens.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:15PM (1 child)
I write a lot of C and C++, and I have no trouble getting my code to run under all three major operating systems, even some like Haiku and OpenBSD.
Windows is the most painful there as it lacks a lot of POSIX APIs, but it's nothing some "#ifdef WIN32" can't handle.
Mac OS X runs in virtual machines, though it takes some fiddling. No need to buy a mac. Writing cross platform code in C/C++ is nowhere near as hard as some people think it is. An exception is Windows' terrible and butchered networking stack, which has given me a few headaches.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:27PM
But the developer has to have each of those systems on which to test first.
Since when did Apple change its Software License Agreement to allow running macOS on a virtual machine whose host is not a Mac? Or since when has it become practical to rent a Mac on which to test?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:43PM (4 children)
Almost all of the extensions I use don't work on newer Firefox. That is because almost all installed extensions improve the interface.
Switching to a newer Firefox would be like switching to a completely different browser. An inferior one, interface-wise.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:04PM (1 child)
Consider giving Waterfox a shot. It has a ways to go yet, but they eliminated the initial big no-no of using Firefox's profile and now have their own, and they support the old Firefox extensions.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:12AM
Thanks you, that looks interesting. I'll definitely try it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:15AM (1 child)
You can still get a lot of what the old extensions like classic theme restorer gave you. Now, the only way to get these UI changes is to modify userchrome.css. I have an acceptable (to me) ui on ffox with this method. And, I recently stumbled upon a github page by the author of classic theme restorer where he puts up snippets to add to userchrome.css to get equivalent features that used to be available via his extension (might borrow some of his stuff if I ever have to re-visit my setup).
There is also a js file available, but stuff I tried made things too laggy on my netbook, so I only use the css file. But, you can do a bit more with the .js (not user.js, but the one under chrome-- I think it was userchrome.js, but it has been a while, so I could be mis-remembering the name).
e.g.,
/* remove the hamburger menu button */
#PanelUI-button {
display: none !important;
}
/* don't display click-to-play notification for disabled hidden plugins */
notification[value="plugin-hidden"] {
display: none !important;
}
I change the toolbars, buttons, tab appearance/location/colors, and shrink everything vertically to get more useful screen real estate among other things. My userchrome.css is currently 310 lines to restore most of my familiar UI.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:35PM
Can you replace All-in-One Sidebar that way? Or can you get an advanced session manager that way (the Session Manager extension)? What about a replacement of Extended Statusbar? Or a replacement for Dictionary Switcher? I would miss any single of those. And that is not even the complete list.
It's nice if you can emulate (some of) Classic Theme Restorer, but it's not really enough for me.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by darkfeline on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:12PM (7 children)
> even chromium sends telemetry
Do you have a source for that, and is it significantly different from Firefox's telemetry? https://wiki.mozilla.org/Telemetry [mozilla.org]
Also, I wish Soylentils would stop writing Chrome, Chrome all the time. The bulk of the code is Chromium, Chrome is just Google's branded version, there are a ton of other branded versions of Chromium too.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:30PM (5 children)
First, web searches for articles about Google Chrome aren't guaranteed to turn up articles that mention only Chromium.
Second, last I checked, Chromium binaries tended to be well hidden, with Google burying them in favor of Google Chrome binaries. The Chromium project's download page [chromium.org] links to a page whose text has nigh-unusably low contrast [appspot.com]. The only easy way for a non-technical desktop computer user to get Chromium and keep it updated is by using the package manager within an X11/Linux distribution.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:07AM (3 children)
Are you offering to host a website and possibly build machines to make Chromium binaries more accessible? It's FOSS and anyone can freely build and distribute binaries. Or are you just complaining? Not that I blame you, it's much easier to complain on the Internet than to actually try to improve the situation, that's why we're here on SN, isn't it?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:31PM (2 children)
Are you offering to provide a step-by-step guide so that even non-technical users can install a toolchain with which to build Chromium?
Yes. I'm complaining about what appears to be intentional lack of attention paid by Google to the accessibility of the Chromium download process to people with low vision, as a measure to drive people with low vision away from Chromium and toward Google Chrome.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:36PM (1 child)
>Are you offering to provide a step-by-step guide so that even non-technical users can install a toolchain with which to build Chromium?
https://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-code [chromium.org]
One of the tenets of FOSS is that there is no obligation to hold your hand. You're expected to spend some minimum amount of effort, not just shout "Help me".
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday June 07 2018, @11:16AM
I doubt that non-technical users are willing "to spend some minimum amount of effort" when the convenience of the walled garden is so enticing. That's why game consoles continue to exist, for instance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:28AM
A while back I posted logs of surreptitious communication from within Chromium back to the Mothership. Don't think Google doesn't track you, just because you chose to run Chromium instead of Chrome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:43AM
Here's a source. I've been trying to search the archives on my previous post where I documented the opaque queries to google. I couldn't find it, but I think this is the file I pasted before. To view, pipe this into base64 -d|zcat.
It is a log based on instrumentation of the ResourceRequest module of Chromium. Chromium was compiled from source (with modifications, we were doing a deep browser research project), and I started it up and loaded SoylentNews. You can see queries going off to google on startup, with opaque parameters. Also, code originating from google has access to internal javascript apis in the browser.
I personally am happy to stay with a firefox based browser (which I take pleasure in editing! :) ).
Anyway, here's the log. One of the extensions mentioned is from our project. Others are baked into Chromium by google.
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