https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/mozilla-market-share/
When Firefox was introduced in 2004, it was designed to be a lean and optimized web browser, based on the bloated code from the Mozilla Suite. Between 2004 and 2009, many considered Firefox to be the best web browser, since it was faster, more secure, offered tabbed browsing and was more customizable through extensions than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. When Chrome was introduced in 2008, it took many of Firefox's best ideas and improved on them. Since 2010, Chrome has eaten away at Firefox's market share, relegating Firefox to a tiny niche of free software enthusiasts and tinkerers who like the customization of its XUL extensions.
According to StatCounter, Firefox's market share of web browsers has fallen from 31.8% in December 2009 to just 6.1% today. Firefox can take comfort in the fact that it is now virtually tied with its former arch-nemesis, Internet Explorer and its variants. All of Microsoft's browsers only account for 6.2% of current web browsing according to StatCounter. Microsoft has largely been replaced by Google, whose web browsers now controls 56.5% of the market. Even worse, is the fact that the WebKit engine used by Google now represents over 83% of web browsing, so web sites are increasingly focusing on compatibility with just one web engine. While Google and Apple are more supportive of W3C and open standards than Microsoft was in the late 90s, the web is increasingly being monopolized by one web engine and two companies, whose business models are not always based on the best interests of users or their rights.
Related Stories
Mozilla "Got Outfoxed" by Google – Former VP Accuses Google for Sabotaging Firefox
Former Mozilla VP, Johnathan Nightingale, has called out on Google for what could only be termed as anti-competitive practices. In a Twitter thread on a somewhat unrelated subject, Nightingale said that during his 8 years at Mozilla, Google was the company's biggest partner. "Our revenue share deal on search drove 90% of Mozilla's income," he tweeted.
However, that doesn't mean Google wasn't involved in some underhand practices. "When I started at Mozilla in 2007 there was no Google Chrome and most folks we spoke with inside were Firefox fans," Nightingale wrote. "When chrome launched things got complicated, but not in the way you might expect. They had a competing product now, but they didn't cut ties, break our search deal – nothing like that. In fact, the story we kept hearing was, 'We're on the same side. We want the same things.'"
"I think our friends inside google genuinely believed that. At the individual level, their engineers cared about most of the same things we did. Their product and design folks made many decisions very similarly and we learned from watching each other. But Google as a whole is very different than individual googlers," Nightingale added.
Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms. gmail & gdocs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as "incompatible."
All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we were still a search partner, so we'd say "hey what gives?"
And every time, they'd say, "oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks."
Previously: After 10 Years with Google, Firefox Switches to Yahoo
Netmarketshare Claims Mozilla Firefox Usage Drops Below Ten Percent
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Is Google Using an "Embrace, Extend..." Strategy?
Google Denies Altering YouTube Code to Break Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Employee Sparks Outrage by Suggesting Firefox Switch Browser Engine to Chromium
Related: Firefox 29 is a Flop; UI Design Trends Only Getting Worse
Mozilla Teases Chromium-Based Firefox, Then Pulls Back
Can the New Firefox Quantum Regain its Web Browser Market Share?
Firefox 64 Will Remove Support for RSS and Atom Feeds
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
(Score: 4, Informative) by idetuxs on Sunday November 26 2017, @04:02AM (12 children)
Firefox clearly improved (probably too late), but they reset all the configurations again! [soylentnews.org] this happened to me when upgrading to Quantum. That's really unexpected. WHY!?
Just wanted to vent that.
Cheers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by arcz on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:38AM (9 children)
Because Mozilla Foundation is the Idiot Foundation. Along with the likes of the Gnome Foundation, Lennart Pottering, and various SJW groups. Why we don't have a decent web browser management still is beyond me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:45AM (8 children)
How did "SJW" get on your list? ...and "RWNJ" not?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Sunday November 26 2017, @06:58AM (7 children)
I suspect due to the Brendan Eich case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:22AM (6 children)
I wonder 50 years from how the SJWs and their detractors will look. And if the media will seem as dated as '70s chic.
It's always hard to say which side of history you'll be on, but my suspicion is that the patronizing of minorities will be seen as proof of continuing prejudice. Not quite what I think they are trying to accomplish.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 26 2017, @01:25PM (4 children)
At least the '70 hippies let some good music alive behind them: Marley, Joplin, Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Baez, Santana (mmm.... Mahavishnu orchestra, Zappa, Jethro Tull, which-one's-Pink Floyd).
I can't say the same about the ones today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday November 26 2017, @02:50PM
Ah, Jethro Tull..... Good times, good songs, fond mammaries! ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @04:47PM
1) Antibiotics still worked fairly well
2) HIV not widespread yet
3) The Pill
4) The Sexual Revolution
There was also stuff like Concorde, the Jumbo Jet, the Man on the Moon. Missions to Mars etc.
And more obscure but still revolutionary stuff like Douglas Engelbart's The Mother of all Demos and Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jimshatt on Sunday November 26 2017, @06:00PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 26 2017, @10:11PM
True, true...
Only, for the life at me, I can't remember Rosy! (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:09AM
In 50 years either the detractors will have won and we will have some vestage of free speech, or the SJWs will have won and the whole episode purged from memory as it threatened people's safe places. Which by then, will of course, not actually have anybody allowed within 50 feet in case they might say or be something offensive.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Sunday November 26 2017, @08:06AM
No. [betteridgeslaw.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @03:46PM
indeed! they should totally make a backup of the original pre-quantum prefs file and then offer a "import" feature, like they do for bookmarls from other browsers :]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday November 26 2017, @04:15AM (22 children)
57 was a definite an immediately obvious improvement.
It loads as fast as most of the Chromium clones, and perhaps uses less memory. Too hard to actually measure.
So the die-hard Foxians will return, but they never really left. The problem is Mozilla will once again fuck it up. Again.
They've let their code for over the years waiting for this engine. It's a big improvement. But you gotta believe the Chromium guys have been keeping their powder dry sitting on a few speed improvements of their own.
And they are starting to run out of other people's money to spend.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 26 2017, @04:41AM
Some headlines I grabbed earlier today for this story:
Firefox Quantum Isn't Just "Copying" Chrome: It's Much More Powerful [howtogeek.com]
If you're worried about being hacked online, it might be time to ditch Google Chrome [express.co.uk]
CIAO, CHROME: FIREFOX QUANTUM IS THE BROWSER BUILT FOR 2017 [wired.com]
They will need a lot of such headlines to claw back that market share.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by arcz on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:35AM (15 children)
Does anyone really pick a browser based on speed? Your pages should load fast enough, otherwise you just need a new computer and/or adblock.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:53AM (1 child)
Firefox will stall right into uncomfortable-wait duration on certain sites. Quantum is a wicked speed improvement. Though I don't run it just yet.
Actually I never understood all the words about "Chrome being faster than Firefox," It behaves in a lot more of a squirreley manner and has its own set of hard-crash problems and Chromium despite being open-source is designed deliberately to rape your privacy, and you have no say in the matter unless you find a gutted alternative.
My big question is, years ago, Chrome announced one of its gimmicks being that "each tab runs in a process," and Firefox then followed-suit, but despite the marketing bullshit spewed by Google and Mozilla, problems with one tab on both browsers did in fact crash the entire browser. Well, then, what was the fucking point, geniuses?
(Score: 5, Funny) by requerdanos on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:11PM
Hth. Peace.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by captain normal on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:53AM
I agree. I want a simple GUI in a Browser. Not one loaded with "tiles" and "Apps". Also One that That doesn't ask to update every couple of hours.
So the question, "Can the New Firefox Quantum Regain its Web Browser Market Share?" can only be answered with NO!
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:46AM (4 children)
Yes, time is valuable to me, and I will pick a browser based on speed.
I have a tendency to compare everything to my five year old laptop, running an obsolete version of Firefox, with NoScript and Download Helper.
Sure, many business sites won't load for me. But the ones I use do. As long as Aliexpress works, for me, good enough.
I know many business sites partner with browser vendors so as to tell people like me they will no longer support my online purchase until I conform to the stated business requirement that I upgrade my browser. When they do, I remove their bookmark and icon. I even had to transfer all of my retirement funds from a financial institution because of something this trivial.
But we all know how businesses get.... when they get too big, they don't give much of a damm about the customer anymore. Investors will not stand up to a multimillionaire CEO and demand him return their money for running the business they paid him to administer into the ground. No, they will pay him his bonus anyway, and golden parachute. Its a given that its a CEO right to flip open his golden parachute and live princely off the 100X salary its customary to pay a CEO. So, why should a CEO give much of a damn if his webmaster is giving the customers crap? Everyone seems of the concept that if its more than five years old, throw it out. And apparently that goes for the customers too. Geez, the local mall should put up one of those "birdie" traffic blockers [shutterstock.com] into their parking lot... car greater then five years old? Not a BMW or Mercedes? Then tell your customer to go somewhere else! You know they actually do this on the web. Its what that fancy high-priced CEO will actually PAY for! Other people make a fine living finding which CEOs who will actually PAY to have his customers run away.
Now that I have a brand new Android smartphone, I find browsing the web with it almost useless. The thing keeps flipping the content up, then down, back and forth, while I try like the dickens to make it stop long enough to read, then they start chewing at the top and bottom of the display area until I have a postage-stamp area with the content that attracted my click in the first place. My local paper is so bad at it that if Google News references them, I won't click. The headline for me has to be good enough until I can get to my NoScript Firefox 5 year old laptop. God forbid I click on something linked to Outbrain or Taboola. I feel like being fed like a baby... as they experiment on just how little content they can feed me to keep me clicking on a series of humongous pagefuls of ads.
Anyone know a good browser I can get from Aptoide that has good javascript blocking? I can easily run through my entire monthly data allotment on my phone over lunch if I run the default Chrome browser, slightly longer if I use Opera. The data use on my phone is way more than on my Firefox NoScript laptop, even though I am on the net far longer with the laptop than with the phone. It just went to show me how lengthy the pageloads are getting on modern websites, with this particular website being the lone exception in my experience, for which I am very grateful, for I spend more time here, and on AliExpress, than all the other sites put together.
Geez, trying to browse a site without javascript blockers is like trying to eat a raw catfish, or watching commercial OTA TV live. They price my time so low that advertisers see a low airtime price, they aren't seeing the eyeballs going elsewhere, as almost anything will beat the tedium of watching the same damned commercial over and over and over again - especially the long ones like those diet pills, funeral insurance, and debit card ads - that seem to go on and on and on....
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @04:15PM
Firefox on Android has uBlock Origin for script-blocking. It's a bit more complex than NoScript if all you're after is Javascript blocking, but it works.
Had to get a smartphone recently myself (my old Nokia was 2G, and that network is pretty spotty now) and that was one of the first things I looked for. I don't understand how anyone can stand browsing the web without Javascript blocking.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @07:37AM (2 children)
I use Brave on my phone. Built in adblock (ublock compatible), anti phish, noscript etc. Just like the desktop version.
Set it up to blacklist everything by default, only takes a few clicks. Minimal set of plugins available, mostly password wallets.
Get the apk from: https://github.com/brave/browser-android-tabs [github.com]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:19AM (1 child)
Thanks for the link to Brave!
Once I knew what to look for, I found it on Aptoide, even though the official Brave links specify Amazon or Google Play Store.
I have it on the phone now. Its working great! My local newspaper was my first test, as it is so fouled up it was about as readable as a paper newspaper found in the toilet. Cleaned it up nice.
I will probably make it my default browser. Quite happy with it.
--
I have not registered for Amazon nor Google, as they require credit card numbers. Its not that I don't have one. Its just I trust neither of the above not to "share".
If there is one thing I really hate to do, its putting my credit card numbers on the internet. Its not my stinginess about paying, rather its my caution about trying my damndest to minimize my "attack surface" for fraud, which could easily amount to thousands of times the amount of the purchase.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:31AM
Brave via Aptoide [aptoide.com] for Android phones....
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:12AM
I'm skeptical that that was a common occurrence except in rare situations where the performance is chasing people away. Such as during the Fx 2.x memory leak debacle.
People go with performance that's good enough and then focus on the other aspects with the UI generally being top of the list. Which is why Fx developers insistence upon stealing design ideas from Chrome makes so little sense. A distant 3rd and 4th are probably security and extensibility.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Wootery on Monday November 27 2017, @10:51AM (3 children)
Never underestimate how bloated web-pages can be.
Megabytes of unnecessary JavaScript aren't unheard of.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:44AM (2 children)
Confirming... I went around the bush a helluva lotta times a couple of years ago. I thought I was infected with malware. I turned my system inside out trying to root it out and found nothing. Turns out it was exactly what you stated.... absolutely HUMONGOUS web pages and a slow ISP.
It was you guys that turned me onto NoScript, which has made the internet usable again.
Earlier up this thread, I asked advice on how to handle it on my phone, as I knew this time what kind of bug I was dealing with. Again, you guys came through for me by suggesting I install the Brave browser.
Turns out the Brave browser is a specific for this codebloat bug.
Sure is a game of cat and mouse. The businesspeople keep putting manure all around their digital storefront. We customers keep trying to find galoshes resistant to the specific manure the businesspeople put out. No one seems to benefit from this but the vendors of manure.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:48PM (1 child)
Not interested, given the ad-substitution thing. There's really no coming back from something that slimy.
Yup. I'm pretty happy on Firefox+UBlock Origin. On mobile, Opera Mini generally works well. (It uses Opera's servers to render+compress webpages, making things far fast on slow connections. Couldn't make this shit up.)
You missed one - the telcos. I remember reading an analysis that showed that AT&T make far more money from boated web ads, than the ad companies themselves. (Annoyingly I couldn't find it with a web search.)
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday November 29 2017, @07:40AM
Until I read your post, I was not aware of the ad-substitution thing. Sure enough, I had to Google around a bit and found this [wsj.com] from the Wall Street Journal.
Wow. I had no idea so much fur was flying over this browser. But yet, I can see how, with the attitude some business webmasters writing terribly annoying advertising code, that people would be trying to work their way around it - just as I have done. Yes, I still saw ads, but the ones I was given weren't the terribly annoying sort that restrict the display area or require interaction.
I especially hated those ads which locked my session up until I interacted with it. That is exactly what a malware programmer would have me do.
Given the state of computer security these days, along with the power given to script programmers to write code that does not behave consistently ( Like, does clicking the X in the upper right hand corner make the ad go away, or did I just give the script permission to install malware, or worse, install then close, leaving me ignorant of the fact I have just been infected.
I realize that some businesses, given a server, will treat their customer just like some people, given a car, treat pedestrians. Computers have given businesses an opportunity to be really rude without having one of their people involved. I have yet to see a person do to another person what a computer server does as a matter of business - literally "hanging up" on the customer on a whim.
So, I guess I have just about the same remorse in running an ad-substituter as a business has in having me agree to "hold harmless" then pelt me with stuff that puts ME at risk if I interact with it.
It's just business.
I see the pesky advertiser types much like I see those guys who have those terribly loud motorcycles. You don't want them around you any longer than you have to. They seem to delight in their power to annoy the hell out of you. Open up a way to let them pass by, and for God's sake, don't mess with one of 'em. They have the power to annoy, and they want everyone else to know it. So, if you have to, use earplugs or find another way of getting where you are going. I can't stop them from being assholes. I will use anything I can find at my disposal to allow me to do what I need to do, and not tell them how to do what they feel they have a need to do. To me its similar to using a VCR to cache programming so I can use the fast-forward function to skip ads. If they want me to see ads, they need to do a lot more work to make the ads palatable.
I won't claim that what Brave is doing is right, but I will claim that for *me*, I have a heckuva hard time turning it down, given how much frustration the people Brave is screening me from was willing to foist on me.
Actually, I get a warm fuzzy feeling over it, like watching that cat that kept pissing in my barbeque, piss on an electric fence.
So, for me, its a worthwhile tradeoff. I am not deliberately trying to avoid all ads, but I am deliberately trying to avoid those ads which insist I interact with them.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @07:20PM
For some pages, older versions of Firefox seemed to load resources and Javascript files sequentially. Heavyweight sites suck, but they're a very common form of suckage. And for those, Firefox 45 might be drawing the first legible form of the page 13 seconds after you clicked the link while Chrome was done in 3 seconds. 13 seconds isn't a terrible time to wait, but 10 seconds longer than Chrome on the same hardware is really annoying. Most of the people I know and work with that are remotely tech-savvy just switched to Chrome.
Now the difference seems to be on the order of 30% at worst, and for some pages Firefox loads more quickly than Chrome.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Monday November 27 2017, @08:56PM
While I've stubbornly staid with Firefox through thick and thin over some particular extension support, I will attest that there were certain types of sites which it had gotten famously bad at handling. There were occasions that due to failing to close and cycle a few more modern style sites resulted in at the very least needing to kill the process, if not actually need to restart the computer (though I'm sure this wasn't Firefox acting alone...between extensions misbehaving and the nVidia blob, it was undoubtedly a group effort). In any case, I was as thrilled as anyone with Quantum, and have been waiting for these improvements ever since they announced the end to Firefox OS and pointing resources back at actually making the browser great.
As for market share, it's worth noting that things get a little weird when you're talking about a non-profit here. The real concern would of course be that allowing Chrome to get too big could lead to a return of content that really requires a particular browser, as we had with the ActiveX days with IE, but Google seems a little less inclined to take things in that direction than MS was. The financial side of things however could see a significant uptick in donations simply because this improvement is big enough to restore faith in (some) people that Mozilla will responsibly make use of the funds, with the user-base growth coming afterward, rather than preceding such an event.
All speculation at this point, but I'd argue that Gecko already was the best option around, lacking efficiency but providing by far the best extensibility. With that efficiency brought back it may be interesting to see how quickly many drop Chromium (and Webkit in general).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @06:51AM (2 children)
>They've let their code for over the years waiting for this engine.
Come again?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:05AM (1 child)
Typing on a tablet. Sorry.
They let their code ROT over the years waiting for this engine...
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 26 2017, @10:12AM
Yeah, you really shouldn't type when on tablet. [wikipedia.org] ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by TGV on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:52AM (1 child)
Speed improvements follow the law of diminishing returns: there's only so much that can be improved in Chrome/Chromium without a really big project. There comes a point when it just becomes too expensive to improve another 2% here and there. Google has deeper pockets than Mozilla, that's for sure, so perhaps they won't rest before Firefox has been beaten into a pulp, but my bet is still that Chrome someday will have some private extensions to HTML/Javascript that allow it to run Google Docs and Gmail better and faster than other browsers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:14AM
In my experience, Google doesn't seem to be getting much for their money. Chrome remains incredibly unstable and they don't seem to mind breaking the web like in the good ole days when MS and Netscape were competing to figure out who could wreck up the net better.
(Score: 1) by terrab0t on Sunday November 26 2017, @04:41AM (12 children)
People only left Firefox because they had a compelling reason to: Chrome was much faster and more responsive. This new version of Firefox may finally be as good as Chrome, but not better. For an average user there is no reason to make the effort to switch back.
Personally, if this new version doesn’t show any big problems I’ll switch back. Firefox has a few basic features I like. I like the bookmarks bar that you can drag things to—choosing a bookmark folder is slow in Chrome. I like that you can move the mouse to the top to see your tabs in full screen mode.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tftp on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:12AM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:58AM (1 child)
FireFox developers kept "refining" FF so it would become the browser of choice for (FF) developers. It is not uncommon for a group of individuals, such as developers, to see the market through their own eyes. Everything looks like a great decision when you are your targeted market.
As an example, it has taken several years for my designer to train me to write documentation, product information, marketing materials, and even blog posts, properly targeted at "humans" instead of other developers. I naturally write the type of content that I look for in a product or service. I also tend to design UI's and functionality in ways that make sense to me, though not necessarily for our clients. My designer and PM make sure the end product is end-user friendly.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 26 2017, @12:45PM
Actually, there is one rule that is more important than any other:
Don't break things that currently work. The best way to lose your users is to break the things they depend on, or the things they just happen to like.
It's mostly this rule that made Wintel remain the dominant desktop computing platform, even after the initial IBM association bonus was gone. And not following it it is IMHO the main reason why Microsoft never really got a foot into the mobile market.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:01AM (6 children)
>For an average user there is no reason to make the effort to switch back.
You're probably right: the average person doesn't care about privacy, and both browsers phone home to the same mothership.
For myself, I learned how to disable that behavior in Firefox. I don't know how to do so in Chrome.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:19AM (2 children)
Get Yee to the church of Inox.
But you have to also be prepared to forgo the best search engine, the best maps, the best street view, the most spam free email, the best online translation engine.
And the thing is, Google already knows everything about you anyway.
I never use Gmail or Google drive for anything important. But I use them a lot.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday November 26 2017, @02:27PM (1 child)
I do not understand what this means. I did already do some rudimentary research, which told me some interesting things that ultimately did not really help:
Go worship stainless steel?
Congregate thyself with others in a theater in Mumbai?
Join a bicycling club?
None of the possible explanations seems to fit.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Sunday November 26 2017, @06:09PM
That, or it is a clever reference to the transformation of Firefox to the Rust programming language. A project called oxidization.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:26AM (2 children)
To stop Chrome from phoning home, get Iron [srware.net]. Its cross platform and what I use as a primary browser.
From their website:
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:59AM (1 child)
Thank you for the suggestion. I looked into SRWare Iron before, but it appeared to be closed-source, which I didn't like.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday November 26 2017, @02:08PM
At this point in time, Iron seems to be nominally BSD licensed, but good luck exercising your rights under that license.
SRWare do not appear to place much faith and emphasis on licensing as do free software activists; on their web site [srware.net] I could only find a nonspecific mention that "Iron is free and OpenSource."
If you install the thing and do something like "Help → About", maybe it will tell you how it's licensed?
Their .deb files don't provide licensing information (or indeed anything at all) under /usr/share/doc/*, but I downloaded the "Iron Portable" and found a license.txt inside the .zip file declaring that "SRWare Iron is based on the Soucecode of Chromium. It is licensed under the BSD-license."
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] confidently agrees that Iron is released under the "BSD license". The problem, stemming from that don't-care attitude towards licensing, wikipedia states as follows:
It seems they have a pretty good grasp of what the BSD license entitles *them* to do with the Chromium source code, but almost no concept of what licensing their *own* work under BSD licensing entails. They also seem to struggle with versioning; their downloadables in particular, despite a bewildering array of download options, don't feature version numbers in the filenames, resulting in things like an "iron.deb" Debian package, "srware_iron.exe" for their Windows installer, and "src.7z" and "src1.7z" for their "Sourcecode (for Coder)". $DIETY alone knows what version of anything any of those would be.
tldr: Iron is BSD licensed free software, but its developers evidently don't understand what that means, and suck at providing source code and licensing information.
(Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:40AM (1 child)
Let's see how long it takes them to remove that, too.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:19AM
I'm still pissed that they got rid of those smart folders. Those were great, you could save a search as a folder and have the tags actually be useful for something.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:18AM
My big box still runs XP SP3. My Linux box is in flux running Devuan.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by arcz on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:32AM (4 children)
I never used firefox because it was "faster". I used it because it was less bullshit than chrome and had better extensions.
Oh wait, firefox broke backwards compatibility with extensions! That was the dumb move that killed them. I knew they were dead when they broke backwards compatibility with the extensions that made firefox the better browser.
Firefox changed APIs and design too fast and didn't do enough work on polishing.
Chrome can get away with it because most chrome users were there because it was lightweight, not for the extensions. Firefox couldn't. hence, firefox dies.
Number one rule: Software that breaks backwards compatibility is ALWAYS doomed to failure. Wonder why Windows is on all computers and not Linux, even though the Linux OS is better? It's because of poor backwards compatibility.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:36AM (1 child)
Most of the extensions that existed were crap and most of the ones that weren't got updated.
Your post is a yawn argument.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:48AM
Before 57 that may have been true; there were a few extensions that I miss, but yes, the majority got updated.
With 57, it's no longer just a matter of updating; for some of the extensions the necessary interfaces are simply not there.
And also note that quite a few extensions I use are just to undo the changes Mozilla tried to force upon me.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:14AM
Being better can be a form of success. So can being popular. Linux has a fair bit of popularity for providing services on the Internet.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday November 26 2017, @02:35PM
I don't think that's the reason. A large number of older windows executables, *especially* the 16- and 32-bit ones, that don't have any hope of running on any modern Windows despite "compatibility options," run fine on any modern, up-to-date GNU/Linux+Wine system.
I am not saying that Firefox isn't run by a bunch of apparent syphilitic monkeys with no concept of providing any service to their users, quite the contrary; I simply don't think that this is the analogy to illustrate it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Sunday November 26 2017, @05:56AM (3 children)
No, it's dead. Just your run of the mill mismanagement. Pile on some weird internal conflicts and some SJW infiltration efforts, along with some quite anti-user, anti-privacy default settings. Oh, and they reset your settings. Wonder why...
messing with the UI, breaking some very basic, fundamental UI design guidelines
anti-privacy defaults
breaking the one differentiator they had - their extensions. Just a clear case of not understanding their customers.
In general though, web browsers are broken. They are trying to be a complete OS, and are allowing 3rd party code execution as default.
In conclusion, javascript was a mistake.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Yaa101 on Sunday November 26 2017, @12:51PM (1 child)
While I agree that javascript was and is a mistake, they very well understand their customers.
They are the ones bringing in the money, you and I are not their customers, since we do not pay for it we are their product.
No comment...
(Score: 1) by mmarujo on Tuesday November 28 2017, @12:46PM
I agree, us users are not who pays Mozilla's bills, however it is only because Thunderbird (remember then?) took the users side that a lock on IE6 began to break.
Mozilla's greatest strength was shown there. When a page (web "designer") told it to open a new window, Firefox gave it the middle finger: "Screw you, I'm doing what my user wants me to do!"
They lost focus on the user and everything else is history.
No, the user doesn't pay the bills, but who will give Mozilla money when they have no users?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday November 27 2017, @06:48PM
Javascript (or something like it) wasn't a mistake; there's no way you'd be able to make a modern, responsive web page without it. Doing everything on the server side incurs huge latency penalties.
The problem is that it was never really sandboxed properly. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to run 3rd-party code safely; that you can't shows a failure of the execution environment.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:15AM (1 child)
No, no it didn't. It was a steaming pile of shit from day one.
What actually happened is the exact opposite of this.
When Chrome was introduced, Firefox started copying Chrome's worst ideas. This boneheaded move guaranteed complete failure, as the users that liked Chrome continued to use Chrome, while the users that liked Firefox got screwed.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:22AM
Precisely, the devs completely ignored their userbase and pretty much destroyed any reason for people to choose their project over chrome. It's things like choosing to change their numbering system to the asinine one that Chrome uses where you get a million major releases without any purpose. Changing the UI to more closely match what Chrome was doing.
Jetpack and e10s were great ideas, but the breaking of the UI regularly for no good reason and the removal of useful features like smart folders and the way that the wowbar was handled did them no favors.
I still use Fx because it's better on FreeBSD than the other options, but it's hard for me to be particularly enthusiastic about it when the developers clearly don't care if anybody uses their software.
(Score: 0, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:43AM
IBM is moving very strongly into the quantum cyber. So is my NSA. Trust me, it's the future. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and I guess it's probably something I could say that I'm very good at. And we are going to bring back the jobs and wealth that have left our country and most people thought left our country for good. #MAGA 🇺🇸
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:46AM
The domination by one or two web engines is at least partly the fault of W3C: They never met a kitchen sink they couldn't toss into their standards.
To take an example: I remember working with CSS as it developed. CSS v1 was trivial, clearly too limited. CSS 2 filled in most of the holes, but was still reasonably small. CSS 3 was argued about over years, and became huge.
By allowing web standards to become overly complex, W3C has made maintaining - much less creating - web engines incredibly expensive. That is the root cause of the lack of options.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Yaa101 on Sunday November 26 2017, @01:04PM (6 children)
I have only one single use case for Firefox and speed in comparison with chrome aint one.
That use case is called NoScript, but since the UUI (Unintuitive User Interface) of NoScript became total crap I reverted to FF ESR52 with an old version of NoScript.
NoScript was intuitive in usage and this was thrown in the bin for what I think is this crappy fashion that is going on in UI world.
Last 5 years I have seen so many intuitive software systems change into a complicated mess.
I start to wonder if Millenials think so much different from my generation that these systems are modeled to their mindset and way of doing things?
No comment...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 26 2017, @03:24PM (5 children)
Use uMatrix c'mon.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 26 2017, @08:41PM (4 children)
You are aware that NoScript does more than just block JavaScript?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:12PM (3 children)
As does uMatrix. Check it out, man. Here's a random screenie [imgur.com] from the internet.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday November 27 2017, @06:51AM (2 children)
But the question is: Is the set of things uMatrix does a superset of what NoScript does? Your screnshot doesn't prove that. Note that I have both installed, so I know what the interface of either looks like. The interesting parts are what you don't find in the interface. Note that even if you chose to allow all scripts, NoScript still provides some protection. And when you block some script, NoScript sometimes allows the page to work anyway, even when just blocking the script would make it fail.
Does uMatrix provide surrogate scripts? Does uMatrix contain XSS protection? Does uMatrix allow you to temporarily enable *just one specific* object from an otherwise blocked site?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday November 30 2017, @12:29PM (1 child)
I'm late to the party, but I read your question and can answer because I've used both. At the very core of both programs, uMatrix and NoScript have the same functionality, BUT I find uMatrix superior for two reasons. The way it lays out the information is easier to read, analyze, and manipulate, and the second reason is that it allows subdomains with one click. For instance, (using Chromas's example), in uMatrix if you allow huffpo.net, it also allows use1.huffpo.net and fiji-production-ws.use1.huffpo.net -- but you can fine tune it so it doesn't run use1.huffpo.net, but allows the other two. You can allow specific sites to load images, but ban frames from those sites. Just because you allow huffpo.net doesn't mean that huffpost.com runs. That's entirely different and you can see that in the thicker white stripes. And maybe a third reason -- it allows scripts to run in the website you're going to by default. The original website visited is huffingtonpost.com. Hence the reason why huffingtonpost.com is in light green.
Speaking of colors and defaults... so what do the colors mean? Light green is allowed by default, light red is denied by default. Dark green is explicitly allowed by the user. Dark red is explicitly banned by the user. (Host names from ad sites are already in dark red because of black listed host names. That is configurable.) You can save your preferences so they load by default next time you visit.
My biggest problem with uMatrix is that the clickable areas are tiny. When you click on the top half of the box for huffpo.net, it allows the script to run / image to load/ frame to pop up, etc. If you click on the bottom half, it denies it.
One last thing. In the example given, if you click on the cell with the text "huffpo.net", it allows everything (cookie, css, image, etc) except for the frame (because frame is in dark red and has been explicitly banned). However, you can also click in the little boxes for more fine tuned control. If you click the top half of number 2 allowing just the scripts to run for o.aoldn.com, the cookies and images will not be allowed. Numbers in the little boxes represent how many items will be loaded / run.
And like NoScript, you'll have to click the refresh button for changes to take effect.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:07PM
Unfortunately your comment didn't answer any of the questions I asked. Note that you can not answer those questions by looking at the user interface.
Indeed, if you read my comment carefully, you'll see that I explicitly wrote that I have both installed, so I know about those interfaces.
BTW, one advantage of NoScript is that it also appears in the context menu. I've not found out how I can enable stuff with uMatrix when in a window without the normal toolbars (some sites open those e.g. to provide a player; exactly the situation where I would like to enable extra stuff, like the site the stream is coming from).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:04AM
Short answer: No.
Long answer: For a long time Firefox and Chrome has filled different niches. Chrome was the ugly, lean fast browser that worked well if all you wanted was the boring default. Firefox was the infinitely configurable browser preferred by anyone who wanted more than the boring default, but had a tendency to get slower over time (especially with any new release that had the word "faster" in the release notes).
A few years ago Mozilla decided to change direction, to beat Chrome on their home turf. A new release scheme that only left room for breaking updates, not for fixing bugs. Removing features, telling people to use extensions instead. Breaking extensions. Removing more features to be replaced by extensions. Breaking extensions. And a couple of interface changes to make it even LOOK like Chrome. And each time, more people left for Chrome.
Then came the update to break all extensions. A final "f*ck you, go away" to the remaining users. Along with yet another UI update, but this time they aren't copying Chrome. They are copying Internet Explorer.
Finally, Firefox has no advantages over Chrome, and Mozilla is now ready for the final battle, the only option they have left to make a difference: Competing on advertising budget.
Imagine that. Mozilla vs Google, competing on advertising budget.
As for me, I've switched my main browsing to Palemoon, but Palemoon lacks to Video Downloadhelper addon, so for browsing video sites (you know what I mean), I tried Vivaldi. Unfortunately, I couldn't get h.264 video to work, so I ended up having to download Firefox 52 ESR for now.