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posted by martyb on Tuesday June 05 2018, @08:50AM   Printer-friendly
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.


Original Submission

Related Stories

Project Fusion: Tor Integration With Firefox May Finally be Happening 11 comments

After years of talk, Tor may finally be integrated with the main Firefox browser soon:

The Tor Project announced that it's working with Mozilla to integrate Tor into Firefox. Eventually, this should completely eliminate the need for the Tor Browser, as most of its features would be merged into Firefox's new "super-private mode."

The Tor Browser is based on the Extended Support Release (ESR) version of Firefox, because it's a more stable development cycle that only patches bugs and doesn't add new features for 11 months or so. This means it doesn't disrupt how the Tor Browser works too much, and the Tor Project developers don't have to integrate many new features into their browser every few weeks.

Despite this, the Tor Project developers said that it takes a lot of time to rebase Tor Browser patches to new versions of Firefox. This is why Mozilla has started integrating Tor's patches into Firefox on its own through the "Tor Uplift Project."

Firefox has also adopted new security features from the Tor Browser such as first party isolation (which prevents cookies from tracking you across domains) and fingerprint resistance (which blocks user tracking through canvas elements). However, first party isolation is off by default in Firefox and fingerprint resistance can break some websites. You can enable first party isolation in about:config or by installing this add-on for it.

[...] The developers said all these features would enable a "real" private mode in Firefox, which could completely replace the need for the Tor Browser to exist. This "super-private mode" could be used by hundreds of millions of users eventually, which is why Mozilla first needs to ensure that the Tor network can scale with such usage. That means more people will need to run Tor relays. Mozilla may be able to help here by donating money to nonprofits that can run Tor relays.

Could this be the way to get Firefox above 10% market share (except that if it's done correctly, nobody will be able to measure it)?

Fusion Project overview


Original Submission

Mozilla Was "Outfoxed" by Google 53 comments

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."

Usage share of web browsers.

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


Original Submission

Firefox Browser Use Drops as Mozilla's Worst Microsoft Edge Fears Come True 133 comments

Firefox Browser Use Drops As Mozilla's Worst Microsoft Edge Fears Come True

Back in April, we reported that the Edge browser is quickly gaining market share now that Microsoft has transitioned from the EdgeHTML engine to the more widely used Chromium engine (which also underpins Google's Chrome browser). At the time, Edge slipped into the second-place slot for desktop web browsers, with a 7.59 percent share of the market. This dropped Mozilla's Firefox – which has long been the second-place browser behind Chrome – into third place.

Now, at the start of August, we're getting some fresh numbers in for the desktop browser market, and things aren't looking good for Mozilla. Microsoft increased its share of the browser market from 8.07 percent in June to 8.46 percent in July. Likewise, Firefox fell from 7.58 percent to 7.27 percent according to NetMarketShare.

[...] As for Mozilla, the company wasn't too happy when Microsoft first announced that it was going to use Chromium for Edge way back in December 2018. Mozilla's Chris Beard at the time accused Microsoft of "giving up" by abandoning EdgeHTML in favor of Chromium. "Microsoft's decision gives Google more ability to single-handedly decide what possibilities are available to each one of us," said Beard at the time. "We compete with Google because the health of the internet and online life depend on competition and choice."

[...] Microsoft developer Kenneth Auchenberg fought back the following January, writing, "Thought: It's time for Mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really *cared* about the web they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5 percent."

Is the browser monoculture inevitable or will Firefox hang in there?

Previously:


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:09AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:09AM (#688790)

    All that mozule has done over the past couple of years was imitate chrome, there's no competition or rivalry there to speak of, just a cargo cult.

    • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday June 05 2018, @11:53AM (3 children)

      by looorg (578) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @11:53AM (#688803)

      That was what I found most fascinating about this news, how someone below 10% could consider someone else at almost 63% their biggest rival. They are not rivals, they are not even in the same ballpark. They are not in competition with each other when one of them is borderline insignificant and at risk of becoming totally irrelevant.

      That said I'm unsure about their data gathering, I know something like Palemoon might not be the most popular browser around but I would like to think it has more then a 0% user base, or at least be mentioned in the data -- or is it considered to be Firefox? There seems to be a lot of totally unknown browsers at about 0% that I never even heard off. If EDGE is only just above 4% doesn't shipping of Windows 10 suck since it comes pre-installed? Sure they might install and run something else but still, like most people would even bother or know how to.

      Also it might have been interesting to see actual frequency numbers instead of just percentage, after all they might also be holding their ground as far as user-base is going in actual numbers but still becoming smaller due to the Google Chrome juggernaut just gaining more and more installations.

      If one looks at other "markets"

      Handheld; Safari has 95.55%, Chrome has 2.99%
      Mobile; Chrome 62,65%, Safari, 27,29%
      Tablet; Safari 50,66%, Chrome 40,55%

      Is Chrome a rival to Safari on the handheld market? By their definitions, whatever they might be, they should be. But in this case it would be as silly as in the desktop case. I guess the tablet market is still up for grabs and at least somewhat even.

      Moving on and having a look at their methodology page, and also their page where they talk about invalid traffic.

      "We collect data from the browsers of site visitors to our exclusive on-demand network of analytics and social bookmarking products."

      Might their data be completely skewed from reality? Who in their right mind doesn't block that and also spoof their user-agent? So what they get is then 100 million valid sessions per month -- note the word sessions, not actual users.

      Spoofing makes your data invalid, a proxy server does the same thing. Good to know.

      "We have implemented country-level weighting in our reports. This means that we adjust our reports proportionally based on how much traffic we record from a country vs. how many internet users that country has."

      "This means the mobile device must be able to render HTML pages and javascript."

      Can one assume here that this is also true for desktop users? If you block javascript then you don't count?

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Tuesday June 05 2018, @12:13PM (1 child)

        by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @12:13PM (#688811) Journal

        Which is better and why?

        A. Allowing documents in domains on your whitelist [mozilla.org] to run JavaScript in Firefox
        B. Blocking JavaScript in Firefox, and instead of running web applications, running each site's native application that was made with Microsoft Electron (a copy of Chromium hardcoded to one website)

        • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday June 06 2018, @09:56PM

          by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @09:56PM (#689578) Homepage Journal

          There was a story on SoylentNews last month about how Electron is bad cyber. How the cyber security is bad in that one. And in the Electron apps too!

      • (Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:03PM

        by driverless (4770) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:03PM (#688825)

        I was also surprised at how high they rated Chromefox, I thought it had been sub-5% market share for some time now. I guess you'd need to publish all browser usage figures with error bars so you can see the variance based on who's reporting it.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:43PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:43PM (#688840)

      That's not true.

      The current square tabs are copied from Edge.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:03PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:03PM (#688852)

        Edge is another chrome facsimile. This only makes mozule's output an imitation of an imitation.

      • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:31AM

        by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:31AM (#689087)

        What's a square tab?

    • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:07PM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:07PM (#689032)

      All that Mozilla has done over the last decade is imitate Yahoo. Take an industry leading product, become concerned when a rival starts to make inroads on their market share, then start making a continuing series of bad and worse decisions every step of the way until market share is gone.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:12AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:12AM (#688791)

    It creates opaque "Web Content" processes. They grow to over 100 gigabytes. (have 8 gigabytes of RAM, plus swap on an SSD) They munch CPU time. My system load got to 33, but I only have 2 cores.

    Chromium is pretty opaque too, but at least it has a task manager that is OKish for killing things.

    This is absurd. Only the foreground tab should use my CPU unless I specifically choose otherwise.

    Tabs should default to a memory limit of about 10 bytes per pixel. Going past that should freeze the tab until I authorize more RAM. Permission for each doubling would make sense.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Tuesday June 05 2018, @12:07PM (2 children)

      by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @12:07PM (#688809) Journal

      This is absurd. Only the foreground tab should use my CPU unless I specifically choose otherwise.

      Say you want to open three web applications in new tabs and have their respective loading scripts run in the background. (For example, these might be Skype, Slack, and Discord, for which the alternative is opening a native application that is literally a separate copy of Chrome hardcoded to view one website.) What interface would you expect Firefox to offer you to allow those tabs to use the CPU once the foreground tab has finished loading?

      Tabs should default to a memory limit of about 10 bytes per pixel.

      How many "pixels" make up an HTML document that uses the infinite vertical scrolling paradigm, such as the timeline view of Twitter or the scrollback buffer of a chat client?

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:37PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:37PM (#688942)

        What interface would you expect Firefox to offer you to allow those tabs to use the CPU once the foreground tab has finished loading?

        It's the same one for sound: right-click on the tab, then choose the menu item to enable it... not that I ever would. Having every page chew up my CPU in the background is like having every page play audio ads in the background. It is undesirable.

        How many "pixels" make up an HTML document that uses the infinite vertical scrolling paradigm

        It doesn't get to grab free extra pixels that way. The answer is obviously "tough shit".

        The point here is that you need an adjustable hard limit. It is reasonable to scale this with screen size. To avoid leaking info about the physical hardware, interpret "screen size" as the viewport as measured in CSS/DOM/whatever units.

        The infinite memory consumption paradigm should not be encouraged.

        • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:38PM

          by Pino P (4721) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:38PM (#689281) Journal

          It's the same one for sound: right-click on the tab, then choose the menu item to enable it

          Would you have to "right-click on the tab, then choose the menu item to enable it" again every single time you use that web application again? If not, you'd need to specify under what conditions the browser would remember your choice. For example, for what granularity would the browser remember your choice? One specific document? An entire origin (scheme-host-port tuplet)? An entire domain?

          And how would non-technical users even discover that it's possible for a user to "right-click on the tab, then choose the menu item to enable it"? If the answer is "they don't; tough shit", then non-technical users who perceive that a web application loads "slowly" (because its loading was in fact paused in the background) are more likely to abandon a browser that isn't so slow at running web applications.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday June 05 2018, @12:17PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 05 2018, @12:17PM (#688812)

      Only the foreground tab should use my CPU unless I specifically choose otherwise.

      On one hand, especially on battery powered devices, you don't want "cryptocurrency mining in javascript" to be happening. On the other hand I play music in other tabs and would like that to continue.

      There are odd things. My ad blocker on FF shows a little count of blocks and if I leave gmail up it counts upward about 4000 per day, roughly. So, thats weird, something crazy going on. gmail must be trying to push ads, I suppose.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:22PM (1 child)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:22PM (#688888)

      It creates opaque "Web Content" processes. They grow to over 100 gigabytes. (have 8 gigabytes of RAM, plus swap on an SSD)

      You have 92 GB of swap space? This smells like bullshit.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:40PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:40PM (#688947)

        It smells like "slow as fuck", which is why I am unhappy.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:25AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:25AM (#688795) Journal

    It is official; Netcraft now confirms: Mozilla is dying

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:33AM (16 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:33AM (#688796)

    and now the users are ignoring Mozilla.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:00PM (5 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:00PM (#688823) Journal

      https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=25942&cid=688712 [soylentnews.org]

      Firefox does a few things a lot better than Chrome, and closed some gaps in recent major releases like Quantum. Too little, too late though.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 5, Informative) by The Shire on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:50PM (1 child)

        by The Shire (5824) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:50PM (#688845)

        Firefox offers the one thing Chrome users dont seem to care about - privacy. Chrome literally reports your every move back to google, Firefox, not so much. It may even account for the market share discrepency, not only because they're only sampling a few sites for their data (perhaps more heavily used by Chrome users), but Firefox may simply not be divulging it's user data to these 3rd party harvesters. What they can't see, they can't count.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:29PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:29PM (#688915)

          exactly. chrome popularity just shows how many people are too stupid and whorish to care about their privacy. they are also easier to datamine for bs stats.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:51PM (#688846)

        Now that you've found something that Firefox does better than Chrome, those things are going to be removed.

        Firefox used to do a lot better than Chrome. There was an extension for everything.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:51PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:51PM (#688953)

        Quantum alienated a large percentage of the old guard by breaking support for XUL extensions.

        Yes, Mozilla keep promising to put more APIs in place so that "webextensions" can replace XUL. But release after release said APIs are nowhere to be seen.

        At this point one can just as well jump over to Vivaldi or Brave.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:03PM (9 children)

      by SomeGuy (5632) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:03PM (#688824)

      This. Due to many of Mozilla's boneheaded decisions I could not even use vanilla Firefox even if I wanted to. I use the New Moon port of Palemoon instead.

      So what have they fucked up?

      - Speed. Mozilla's speed and responsiveness sucked donkey balls since day one. For a long time they made up for that with better standards and features, but did little to improve speed. Once Chrome came out, many people switched just because it was faster. There has been some recent improvement but it is too little too late.

      - Changing the UI around. People including myself got damn tired of Firefox constantly changing the UI around. When one has to re-learn an application they are more likely to try an alternative, especially one that appears more stable.

      - Desupporting existing extensions. While I think there was a very valid point for re-doing the extensions APIs, the new stuff should have been phased in over a longer period of time.

      - Rapid release. They essentially turned the browsing public in to beta testers. It really sucks having an application that will break and change crap around every couple of months. *I* know about the LTS builds, but most people won't go looking in the locked filing cabinet in the disused lavatory behind the sign "beware of the leopard". And now that is two different versions web developers have to support.

      - Dropping older CPU support and XP. One of Mozilla's strong points originally had been how many systems it ran on. Now it is just another big 3 "Windows, Mac, Linux" application. Sure, one has to draw a line somewhere, but they should have gone out kicking and screaming. The New Moon browser works excellently on older Pentium/Athlons with XP, and TenFour Fox browser is still going strong for PPC Mac MacOS 10.4/10.5.

      - The entire "mobile" scene is seriously fucked up. One is forbidden to just plop a third party browser on to most mobile devices. Going back to speed, if they had worked harder to make Mozilla fast and efficient then perhaps they could have gotten bundled as some more device's core browser.

      Eh, and there is more, but enough for now.

      Unfortunately, there are pinhead web developers out there who seriously believe that "less than 10% = not supported!". I've seen it before back in the IE 6 days, so I fully expect some web sites to stop supporting Firefox. Somehow these people would be happy denying 10% access to a brick and mortar store.

      • (Score: 3, Disagree) by SunTzuWarmaster on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:14PM (2 children)

        by SunTzuWarmaster (3971) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:14PM (#688830)

        Unfortunately, there are pinhead web developers out there who seriously believe that "less than 10% = not supported!". I've seen it before back in the IE 6 days, so I fully expect some web sites to stop supporting Firefox. Somehow these people would be happy denying 10% access to a brick and mortar store.

        Sure, I get that. But imagine that you have a sign that says "No Hawaiian shirts!" and your typical customer walks either a) with a non-Hawaiian, or b) physically carrying multiple shirts. Its not like there are people out there with only Firefox. The people that use Firefox either a) use Windows and have IE, Edge, or both, b) use Apple, and have Safari, c) use Linux and have a variety of custom environments and are used to being kinda screwed in general, or d) use mobile which means Safari/Chrome.

        You have to support Safari and Chrome (mobile) and IE (XP, Win10) and probably Edge. You don't really have to support anything else (Dolphin, Firefox), as the people that have those other things also have something from the first categories.

        • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:49PM

          by SomeGuy (5632) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:49PM (#688844)

          You have to support Safari and Chrome (mobile) and IE (XP, Win10) and probably Edge. You don't really have to support anything else (Dolphin, Firefox), as the people that have those other things also have something from the first categories.

          And like most web developers, you miss the point that switching to a different web browser is not as trivial as it may seem to YOU. Some people chose to use a specific browser for a reason. You are essentially telling these people "fuck you". Others don't even know what a web browser is, and switching may mean re-learning a lot of crap. And then there still may still be some who truly can not even if they wanted to due policies or configuration on their computer.

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:55PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:55PM (#688849)

          Deh, blacks should simply paint themselves white cuz they have access to the tools to do so.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:47PM (2 children)

        by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:47PM (#688874)

        The speed improvements may be too late, but they're not too little. Firefox seriously holds its own against Chrome now for speed across the board, and wins big in a few benchmarks.

        I never cared what either browser did to the UI. I'll start complaining when they ditch the address bar and tabs.

        The rapid release was never a problem for me. Chrome releases just as quickly, it's just transparent to users.

        I don't see how Mozilla could support XP after Microsoft stopped supporting it. That's an unreasonable expectation.

        I do encounter websites that don't work properly for Firefox. Not often, but it happens. Fandango.com ( a movie ticket site ) is one, some Ajax portions of their web pages hang indefinitely on Firefox but pop right up in Chrome.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:54AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:54AM (#689102)

          The speed improvements may be too late, but they're not too little. Firefox seriously holds its own against Chrome now for speed across the board, and wins big in a few benchmarks.

          It's easy to speed things up when you never release any RAM and don't do garbage collection.

          • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday June 06 2018, @06:45PM

            by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @06:45PM (#689471)

            My computer is eight years old with an AMD processor, so by modern standards it's dog slow. But it's got 12GB of RAM, so Firefox memory use doesn't bother me.

            Chrome is pretty memory hungry too.

      • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:32PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:32PM (#688916)

        noone running xp should have the computer connected to the internet so lack of browser support is irrelevant.

      • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday June 05 2018, @08:58PM

        by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @08:58PM (#689029)

        Once Chrome came out, many people switched just because it was faster. There has been some recent improvement but it is too little too late.

        I would bet the real reason so many people switched is because it was so easy to install Chrome. Every Google page had an invitation to try Chrome. I remember visiting my cousin and seeing on his daughter's PC three separate installations of Chrome. The same people who give no concern to privacy when browsing are likely the same people who were not using extensions, so there was no reason for them to miss Firefox.

      • (Score: 2) by corey on Tuesday June 05 2018, @11:47PM

        by corey (2202) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @11:47PM (#689078)

        I like Firefox on my android phone. I can have extensions such as Cookie Autodelete, uMatrix but can't with Chrome. It seems fast enough and I have 50 tabs open on my S5. I can go also install apks directly without using Googles Play shit:

        https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms/Android [mozilla.org]

        (I use LineageOS so I don't even have any GApps such as Play installed).

        Plus I feel like Google aren't spying on my every move with this.

        I think people who dislike Firefox seem to be either politically motivated of nitpicking. It's has some flaws but its a decent browser and I think the Quantum UI is modern and keeps out of your way.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by pTamok on Tuesday June 05 2018, @11:03AM (2 children)

    by pTamok (3042) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @11:03AM (#688801)

    There are two things that keep me on Mozilla Firefox:

    1) The Extensions, which add very useful functionality

    2) The lack of reasonable alternatives that include a thriving extension ecosystem.

    The same thing applies for me regarding Thunderbird with its Add-ons.

    For me, the 'Unix philosophy' of doing a defined function well, with a stable 'api' counts for a lot, and I always hate it when packages grow to encompass more and more functionality and complexity, so they get to a point where they 'try to be all things to all people' and thereby fail to please anybody. Einstein's (attributed [quoteinvestigator.com]) views on the complexity of theories is worth applying here:Everything should be a simple as possible, but no simpler.

    Perhaps Mozilla should get out of the User Interface space altogether and simply produce the best HTML rendering engine they can, with the necessary (stable) hooks to allow 3rd parties to provide UIs or skins configured to the preferences of different groups of users.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:17PM (1 child)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:17PM (#688885)

      There are two things that keep me on Mozilla Firefox:

      1) The Extensions, which add very useful functionality

      After they jettisoned the classic extension system? Have you actually checked that your remaining extensions aren't also available on Chrome?

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:15PM

        by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:15PM (#688974) Journal

        Last I checked, Chrome allowed installing extensions only from Chrome Web Store, and Google has in the past removed extensions that enhance Google properties in order to keep Chrome users from using them. Firefox allows installing WebExtensions outside AMO so long as the developer owns the source code, used free offline tools to package it [mozilla.org], and used AMO to robosign it [mozilla.org], and it doesn't remove the robosigning-only AMO entry for an extension distributed off AMO. In addition, Chrome Web Store charges each developer $5, unlike AMO, which requires each developer to first obtain a bank account.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by The Shire on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:29PM (3 children)

    by The Shire (5824) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:29PM (#688835)

    What this actually is saying is that Chrome is far more likely to divulge your browser info to 3rd parties than Firefox. I refuse to use Chrome on account of the privacy implications and have been perfectly happy with Firefox for years. Firefox can be configured to not report itself to these 3rd party data harvesters, Chrome cannot. So I think the stats are almost certainly wrong - Firefox users are simply better at protecting their data.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:54PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:54PM (#688847)

      With Chrome I know that Google is watching.
      With Firefox, I know that Google AND Mozilla is watching.

      Also, I have yet to get malware installed through Chrome. Where as Firefox users recently found malware related to some TV show installed without their knowledge.

      Nobody got fired for the Google incident, and nobody got fired for the malware incident.

      Mozilla keeps answering "trust us". We did. We trusted you to do none of the above, and that trust is now broken. Where as we trust Google to monitor everything, and so far they have been living up to expectations.

      When the choice is between a known enemy, and an unknown enemy, the known one is always the best choice.

      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:35PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:35PM (#688919)

        "Where as Firefox users recently found malware related to some TV show installed without their knowledge."

        opinions of stupid windows slaves don't count for shit.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:55PM (#688848)

      Firefox can be configured to not report itself to these 3rd party data harvesters, Chrome cannot. So I think the stats are almost certainly wrong - Firefox users are simply better at protecting their data.

      This is true, but practially every bloody firefox release adds another handful of options buried in about:config that you need to toggle to protect your privacy.

      I recently learned that even with telemetry "turned off" in the preferences, and "never save history" enabled, Firefox continuously saves megabytes of data logs to the disk. This is like, the total opposite of what was intended by those settings. Who the fuck knows what kind of personal information is in there? You have to drill into about:config to find the "toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled" option...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:35PM (#688836)

    They don't say whether they've uniquely identified users or are just counting the web traffic. And if they're using Google analytics, well, Chrome makes attempts to contact alternate analytics servers in case you've blackholed the primary hostname.

    Beyond that, if it *is* web traffic, I use Firefox *specifically* because it has better options for limiting undesired web traffic to 3rd party servers. Most web connections are just that: undesired.

    Not that I expect to hear people are in love with Firefox all of a sudden. I kind of hate it, the only good thing they've added lately is Quantum, and that at the cost of the ease-of-use extensions that made the experience tolerable.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Subsentient on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:59PM (26 children)

    by Subsentient (1111) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:59PM (#688850) Homepage Journal

    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)

      by coolgopher (1157) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:17PM (#688884)

      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)

        by Subsentient (1111) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:33PM (#688892) Homepage Journal

        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)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:27PM (#688914)
          Unfortunately desktop apps today are practically guaranteed to be stuffed full with tracking, telemetry and analytics. With a proper browser, you at least have a choice of what javascript to run or not. I don't get what people are bitching about wrt to the speed of the older firefox, my new moon is quite responsive. I am concerned about memory usage which explodes at times; probably is some dumb javascript, but I wish there were something like a per tab top.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:30PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:30PM (#688939)

            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

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:46AM (#689171)

              Interesting, but it doesn't exist in my copy of New Moon.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:50PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:50PM (#689043)

            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)

          by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:22PM (#688979) Journal

          I prefer a desktop app whenever I can get it. Preferably written in C or C++

          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)

            by tftp (806) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:15PM (#689034) Homepage
            You can use Qt.
            • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:42PM (2 children)

              by Pino P (4721) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:42PM (#689283) Journal

              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)

                by tftp (806) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:30PM (#689339) Homepage
                You distribute an executable (installer) compiled for each of those environments. This can be automated in a business. If you want to run the same executable, then you lose performance. JS is a good example.
                • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:44PM

                  by Pino P (4721) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:44PM (#689378) Journal

                  You distribute an executable (installer) compiled for each of those environments. This can be automated in a business.

                  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)

            by Subsentient (1111) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:15PM (#689035) Homepage Journal

            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

              by Pino P (4721) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:27PM (#689275) Journal

              I write a lot of C and C++, and I have no trouble getting my code to run under all three major operating systems

              But the developer has to have each of those systems on which to test first.

              Mac OS X runs in virtual machines, though it takes some fiddling. No need to buy a mac.

              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)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:43PM (#688949) Journal

      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)

        by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:04PM (#689030)

        Almost all of the extensions I use don't work on newer Firefox.

        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

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:12AM (#689186) Journal

          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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:15AM (#689188)

        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

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:35PM (#689496) Journal

          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)

      by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:12PM (#688971) Homepage

      > 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)

        by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:30PM (#688984) Journal

        Also, I wish Soylentils would stop writing Chrome, Chrome all the time. The bulk of the code is Chromium

        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)

          by darkfeline (1030) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:07AM (#689081) Homepage

          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)

            by Pino P (4721) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:31PM (#689277) Journal

            It's FOSS and anyone can freely build and distribute binaries.

            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?

            Or are you just complaining?

            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)

              by darkfeline (1030) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:36PM (#689412) Homepage

              >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

                by Pino P (4721) on Thursday June 07 2018, @11:16AM (#689810) Journal

                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".

                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

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:28AM (#689160)

          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

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:43AM (#689168)

        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.
        H4sIAMVkF1sCA+1a227bNhi+31P4JkYL0DrZjmMDQuYesmQpkCxxmrU3AkXSFG2KVEjKhz79KMnG
        kjTFgtZSsjaAIB5E8T9/pH5qIRluxZyJ+Wh0QbTMFSIX5CYn2oxGmpiriw+vkBTabAed2p5W+3Ur
        V3zUQomSKemQlSFCMylGrkspTTGPp2mSSJGlFMI54pzROaNCECLdiBJBFDQERzFEc6pkLnCUQUqc
        xKT8t8WuOcrgdB5TitMZz+gcz1E8S5N0inAmEMQ0qZmjxJhMWzaWy6VDpaScOEimbuRWrLqCLA2M
        D4nOFmHQZiS8mhx1DnavhhfD7N4w7yTKUyLMBwkxUaORFS1X5FoxQ9SG8vXkaDQaG5kydGkUE7TV
        Bq1GDdeSC6IUw5b2qNU8+z9q5bvsx1Lyb7GfwnVMisb7NDPrV69bWvCKrZql/raGm4lcJBVxZvoJ
        IjQ3jDOzfhriCCqs75PevXUfhxMdTdSCIbKUak6U5apmp/hP7fwbSz9une9UwbMwzH0A36Vdthxo
        zR2qDTQMlSxsGLDVTAors3axlJiTjpCGTRlRHS+ocQljqQVP7cYKikJMt3rEJZVusLrVipDkUkXB
        IFgNA5w5maD1MLSaaWsWe5uHtuoIkzlERFeXznh1/jFZnaerNyfOmZuGMw2BfQowQJq5yoQzF4e+
        a8IvKNWu0uH47WToyT9mX8YX13p1Ek0+nZ7g48/Xx4MJ7TIYnT+1BDpDyZZx7xkw/mhfsAtKYhrz
        CLvmR4HXO1yE3bYOq0htQ7POQmv4NmFhMoYnHztk/K4Hc3J+fbzo0eM2xEnYtvoPmWDGCYZ9p1ua
        Ihj2LNxAx3fiGDteOwt1W2Qi9NtWfHu39siUcXpBfwDs61w7ve6BDyR3evtDr+gi2ul7/V5ZJU6/
        1xsW1aoCp/ZV/2AfLLWd5MDv9a13GscDWJSFurGFHwyA0plxumXbOP39oQ9yYTv6/YPihU0Ns2Jw
        Pxj8MnsZTaBCifWBVGrTWTBtucOuthR4tcU7VCS1ZCdWH4Zl4Tsp9oKB2Qs8ncilLYq2ZxKmbVHs
        C+txSajXAm0XjbIRrhge+SCapmY001J80y83S8za3l7Cpa5weVFsA4qt7ZNw5yBQxz7uf4QIL2j1
        M6PVY4IGad0Albq+HZ+V/97/fqPxdt+88KPB/uCgSwLv2W2GkWFShHmGoSEPRcUqUU5v4Fc+7nd7
        XuXjfn/gD152sN8VISbJ09gtzLix4lTK0oS10Alcf8fzTuGC2dE2uL8Q19//3V81IMwDRHcv2VeW
        0XLNrV/ZaNKOVLQuCwWNWqhmoR60VFCbpQoohAhJizH6Nh5eVnnED5IycbhJKoblNCxPi6WiraHK
        LMhZooaJnITlbHvd8V5wZK+78Go7mDDcFkR0ri5tWXFkKzGHYl7uPve6R5Vce913fk2u0m3GVX4R
        rT7oq926UeWWPjdJ3kILLhHuknDbu8uz0q8cqNco1jyJqA9atVcrAlVPb4u7JLE2UpHDhIdE1GTM
        fnNo0LCED9qwv8ut862tuqTbvLykjr2qrPzqaPg2oTeLfPrJOavS8WnIMaAcMA0YBiIGYgl0DDQG
        GVhgAJcYaAO4xIDYgSwDOAMowy5ZpWFsQAw1AbEAcW577RA70r7OgGBAT0FuhxdzAGavKaAMLBjI
        GCA3IEflEQYpbsU5wDj4pCaL8XrwFvorPE0ns+EJ5jf0jHv8xluJ8cs3xrNN+z0vbfyUR927OGp+
        cZPdaANmTN81gkbahTHqVAC8RV5qBzrljQhn1lkPbv7483RNvfJAtOiP2FTBlGhQTVbMGyHOrO+C
        jOdaClJhtF5YkLyDlsfZmZQdP46hMR/P1GD95v3fOf58dH7Kj4L4Qv7loriiz4sowJG348WMSwR5
        R5hsmxFCXGoSdaMU6nmZEvrpkyD1fX/WO7N+zNT1guh90rX8fHKPRrFTKZLDh4okUCeRvx95gb1q
        ImeBodCfbpDk7XZzVDfxb2TG0KYon+0uLfwIipqgXBV/3DVKFZNF8f+ITJslm0CFl1CRZqmmxMD6
        KWYWSIxD2bReMrCELSnqp6S0rplQpbLGA778O+r2s8I3/gEUo4rdODEAAA==

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:44PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:44PM (#688898)

    If you have the CPU for it, try Brave. No more fiddling with NoScript or ad blockers, just raise the Shields and the Internet is survivable. But you do need some serious CPU grunt, got a laptop with an old dual core Intel that chugs too much so it still runs Firefox LTS + NoScript + Ghostery, etc. but on a fast desktop Brave is now primary browser material. Still have Chrome and Firefox installed, just in case, but haven't needed them for months now.

    There was a time when my loyalty to Mozilla was unshakable. No more. Between the vile politics and the technical incompetence it is simply impossible to defend them, support them or do anything but cheer their impending well deserved demise. Hopefully more capable hands pick up the code base and lead to a renewal because having all browsers derive from a single code base is dangerous.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:07PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:07PM (#688934)

    Mozilla generates 500M / year in income but it certainly does not show. They finally closed the MSI bug with a middle finger "won't fix" after 13 years. They kicked their internal corporate supporters to the curb years ago. Why is Chrome supported in business line applications? Because Google convinced internal IT departments to deploy it by providing a dead simple MSI package that any idiot admin can deploy and native Group Policies that makes the it so internal support can configure it easily.

    Mozilla does not seem to care about user feedback. Nobody was asking for an UI change but we got it because FU that's why. This mentality started around the time of 2.2 or so; then it was the "Awesome Bar" where they combined search, history, and the URL bar into one monstrosity. Nobody was asking for it and all of their feedback was negative but it was shipped anyway and you were a luddite for disagreeing. With this way of thinking, I just do not see the future for the browser. Maybe it is just a jobs program for a bunch of people and their friends at this point?

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:59PM (#688957)

      Honestly it seems like the 2007-8 period was a "sea change" for FOSS projects.

      This is also around the time that KDE and Gnome shifted to a more "we know best, users are dumb sheep" mentality and basically started producing glossy designer CV padding.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @07:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @07:27PM (#689005)

    A bunch of idiots who:

    Don’t care about their users
    Force features no-one wants, while ignoring features people need
    Zero enterprise functionality, eg MSI
    Break stuff

    It’s only saving grace is that it’s not google chrome.

    In reality, chrome is just another method for google to invade our privacy.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:53AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:53AM (#689218)

    most firefox users apparently know how to install addons to block this sort of garbage, and chrome users either don't know or don't care

  • (Score: 2) by DarkMorph on Wednesday June 06 2018, @11:51PM (1 child)

    by DarkMorph (674) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @11:51PM (#689629)
    I'm aware of stupid shit that Mozilla pulls from time to time. Like Australis. Or ditching pure ALSA for PA. Oh, I used to point out how it's taking forever for HTML5 input element support to show up for the newer types like tel time and date. But it looks like they finally fixed that since Quantum [mozilla.org]. Also not happy that it is now a hard-dependency to have Rust to compile, but I'm surprised it hasn't taken much of a toll on build time.

    There are a handful of (personally) meaningful reasons I stick to FF. I can compile it in roughly half an hour. Chromium is a horrendously monstrous C++ abomination that probably takes longer than every other package on my entire OS install combined. I can't tolerate keeping up with upgrading that fucking thing, not to mention preparing an overlay to build it for patches that strip out the Google bullshit still buried in that OSS project. (Let's not forget the hotwording scandal that amplifies the concerns for privacy in what's really going on there.) The replacement of the extension API caused me to wait before adopting Quantum since browsing the Internet without noscript is a privacy and security sin. As soon as that add-on launched for 57+, I moved. And wow, the performance definitely was improved.

    As for the sound, well, the apulse shim was effortless and works perfectly. I can't even tell that technically the pure ALSA support isn't in the src anymore.

    FF's developer tools are also fantastic. The Firebug project called it quits because it evolved to what it is now, eliminating Firebug's raison d'être. Along with noscript are Ghostery and uBlock Origin, and the 3 key add-ons together prevent me from trying other browsers. I would favour a more lightweight option like Midori but without tight control over content, especially JS, it's insane to use a browser on the web. I can probably use a copy of Midori for testing my own work but that's it, just to make sure things render okay in an engine that's not Quantum('s Gecko).

    Oh, and who can compete with about:config? The level of control is ideal in FF. I can knock out the Referer HTTP header if I want. I can force FF to ban "passive" mixed content for HTTPS sites. Learning what else I can control in FF manually is almost as thrilling as discovering new features in vim by browsing the help manuals for it. FF still represents the modern implementation of the web standards and still obeying freedom (well, there's the EME scandal, but you can compile FF without it!)

    And lastly as others have mentioned, it's not Google which is a positive aspect by itself. It's repulsive that the most common browser has become the one from the most privacy-intrusive vendor. Note that I realise several details I've mentioned are not necessarily exclusive to FF, and that Chromium has feature parity with many of them.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @01:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @01:21AM (#689660)

      To be honest, Firefox is also a C++ abomination.
      Fuck that language, hope it lands on the garbage pile of history soon.

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