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posted by chromas on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the change dept.

Mozilla is rebranding Firefox. The company is asking for feedback on the new look, which will try to cover the various Firefox offerings. For most people, Firefox refers to a browser, but the company wants the brand to encompass all the various apps and services that the Firefox family of internet products cover, “from easy screenshotting and file sharing to innovative ways to access the internet using voice and virtual reality.” The fox with a flaming tail “doesn’t offer enough design tools to represent this entire product family,” Mozilla believes. Instead of recoloring the logo and dissecting the fox, the company wants to start from scratch. That said, the name “Firefox” is staying, so Mozilla doesn’t have that much wiggle room.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:06PM (28 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:06PM (#715612)

    That's what this is.

    That's why Firefox has a dwindling userbase; Mozilla gave up on technical excellence about 10 years ago, and has just been fucking around with paint colors.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:11PM (#715618)

      Not just fucking with the colours, but also handing the rebranding design work to children....have you looked at the new iconography?

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by b0ru on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:12PM (16 children)

      by b0ru (6054) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:12PM (#715619)

      Couldn't agree more. The needless UI changes, the telemetry stuff, the change in extension API. What a mess. Firefox has become a bloated, convoluted mess.

      Their advocacy for Internet privacy is also ridiculous; the CEO was one of the proponents of the 'Internet Passport', and their aforementioned telemetry gathering, well, shouldn't it be opt-in rather than opt-out?

      Good riddance to their dying brand. I've personally gone over to Pale Moon in the interim until something better comes along. Can't speak very highly of the developers associated with that project, either, however...

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:03PM (10 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:03PM (#715704)

        I use pale moon too, but am reconsidering it since they are no longer intending to continue the fork, but have jumped to a newer version of ff to track. Hell, even Australis is included now. Looking for a new fork to migrate to.

        • (Score: 2) by b0ru on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:14PM (1 child)

          by b0ru (6054) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:14PM (#715720)

          I used to use netscape/MIS, but the continuation, Seamonkey, seems to still be going. I have no idea of its current state of development, or extension compatibility, but it might be worth a look.

          • (Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:16AM

            by anubi (2828) on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:16AM (#716026) Journal

            I also went to SeaMonkey when my Firefox got infected with some malware from a radio/MP3 recorder soundcard driver, which transferred when I plugged a USB cable from my computer to the radio as per instructions. I thought the connection was for the purpose of accessing the radio's SD card for .MP3 like a camera does for images. But that's not what happened. It was an opportunity for the radio manufacturer to shove DRM enforcement software to me labeled as a "driver". The whole purpose of which seemed to make it very difficult to re-encode .MP3 audio of youtube videos. Should have never done that. 3.5mm audio cable only from now on.

            ( this particular one made YouTube audio play at a really low volume...even after I had removed the connection. I am sure it was some sort of behind the scenes DRM handshaking going on.)

            I had been running an older copy of Firefox. When I reinstalled the latest Firefox, I simply no longer had enough CPU or memory to run it. At this point, something was now amiss where I could not go back to the earlier version.

            It would appear to work then hang up all the time.

            I ended up going to SeaMonkey and its been working fine ever since. And, no, I am not about to plug the radio back into the USB port. I guess I needed another lesson taught about the risks of plugging anything into the USB port, even if it was something bought retail. If it needs USB, think twice before tendering money, that's fer sure!

            No matter what they *say*, they always have "hold harmless" on their side. Doing anything a business tells you do do.... its you that's placing your ass on the line should you comply.

            --
            "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:00PM (7 children)

          by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:00PM (#715823) Homepage Journal

          Eh? Got a link about this change? I did a quick search and all I could find is the assurances that they won't use Australis. https://www.palemoon.org/roadmap.shtml [palemoon.org]

          --
          If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by b0ru on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:52PM (6 children)

            by b0ru (6054) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:52PM (#715877)
            The project maintainers are working on Basilisk [basilisk-browser.org], and will likely abandon Pale Moon eventually. Whilst I like Pale Moon, I can't say I much like the attitude [github.com] of the people working on the project. The browser choices around at the moment are pretty awful. I sure hope that something else will come along at some point to replace them.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @08:14PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @08:14PM (#715888)

              I'm hoping otter-browser releases 1.0 soon...

            • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @08:42PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @08:42PM (#715901)

              Seems like real nice people! :)

              I've been reading their boards and think the following themes I have seen there are harmful to the Free Software world in general, not just browsers:
              1) Our free software must work out of the box for any user for any situation.
              2) People do banking with our software, we can't put the manpower in for security like the big boys, so we should just give up and do minimal forks of the oligarchs. Continuing our fork would be a disservice to the users.
              3) We will hassle anybody who independently builds our code and tries to share our work, by beating them with a trademark mallet.

              It's like the Bazaar has shifted their stands around and on top of each other to become the new Cathedral. In classical times, we hacked on Linux to get it to run on a new platform, and shared it on our web pages. If Linux were a modern project, we'd be getting a C&D for not calling it Foolix.

              We professionals need to return to being able to build and understand our complex software, even if we don't become rockstar experts. If grandma can't install the geeks' web browser, that's fine. If a website blocks the geeks' web browser because it isn't on a whitelist, no reason for the devs to become active, give the user the ability to control the user agent.

            • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday August 01 2018, @09:01PM

              by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @09:01PM (#715906) Homepage Journal

              Whilst I like Pale Moon, I can't say I much like the attitude [github.com] of the people working on the project.

              I read that. What a curious way of attempting to communicate with someone.

              The project maintainers are working on Basilisk [basilisk-browser.org], and will likely abandon Pale Moon eventually.

              Ugh, I hope not. Why can't people pick a good project and stick with it? They obviously knew people hate Australis. Maybe it's a path of least resistance thing, code wise.

              I'll keep using Pale Moon for as long as I can because I'm yet to find anything else that fits what I want and need.

              --
              If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
            • (Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Wednesday August 01 2018, @10:30PM (1 child)

              by digitalaudiorock (688) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @10:30PM (#715944) Journal

              The project maintainers are working on Basilisk [basilisk-browser.org], and will likely abandon Pale Moon eventually.

              Holy crap. How the hell do I know nothing about this? I've been using palemoon under Gentoo for quite some time now. I don't even see anything implying this on the palemoon forum. Total news to me.

              • (Score: 2) by Kell on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:30PM

                by Kell (292) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:30PM (#715967)

                Likewise - this is news to me. And concerning.

                --
                Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
            • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday August 03 2018, @02:34PM

              by Arik (4543) on Friday August 03 2018, @02:34PM (#716721) Journal
              Their attitude has sucked from the beginning. Blacklisting ad-nauseum and even noscript along with their general rude behavior and project direction show that.

              The world needs Firefox. The old Firefox, not this fat, bloated, smelly old trainwreck that's wearing the costume today.
              --
              If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:12PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:12PM (#715717)

        "I've personally gone over to Pale Moon in the interim until something better comes along. Can't speak very highly of the developers associated with that project, either, however..."

        Pale Moon also lacks interest in releasing a version for the Mac.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:14PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:14PM (#715859)

          you don't need any non apple software for your slavewareOS.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @08:49PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @08:49PM (#715904)

          It's trivially easy to build on MacOS, get off your ass and do it. It'll be New Moon though.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @03:13PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @03:13PM (#716271)

        Killing the plugins was the last straw for me. Palemoon is my primary browser now.

      • (Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday August 04 2018, @08:09AM

        by driverless (4770) on Saturday August 04 2018, @08:09AM (#717160)

        So they're finally going to admit it's really just Chromefox now, and has been for years?

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:32PM (9 children)

      by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:32PM (#715629)

      Have you used Firefox since release 57 or so last year? The performance is now within 50% of Chrome in almost all cases, even in others, and ahead by a significant amount in a few. Just put Chrome and Firefox side by side and run the benchmarks at browserbench.org to test it our yourself. The reasons for the changes in the extension APIs are publicly documented and reasonable.

      So I don't get all of this hate for them. On top of that, a browser monoculture, especially from the advertising king of the internet, Google, is bad for all of us. We don't need Chrome to dictate the standards of the world. What else is going to compete with Chrome, Microsoft Edge? Really?

      That said, I think the rebranding is a waste of time. Firefox is losing the PR war, and their influence on open web standards dwindles with their shrinking market share. So I can see why they're desperate to get attention. But this rebranding is pointless, nobody will notice. I'm astonished even a tech news site like this one bothered to post an article about it. I don't have any answers there. I am just going to keep using Firefox and recommending it.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:49PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:49PM (#715637)

        Firefox lost the war once it started doing those UI changes. The shills proclaim "it's the new UI just get used to it". They are wrong, however; it's not the new UI, it's just the current UI; they'll be changing it again in a few months.

        Once upon a time, Firefox was a browser that looked and acted like a native desktop application similar to IE, but it was faster, more secure, more extensible, more compatible, etc. Now it's just a waste of life.

        • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday August 02 2018, @12:32AM (1 child)

          by Sulla (5173) on Thursday August 02 2018, @12:32AM (#715989) Journal

          Reminds me of Opera. When they changed their UI and dumped menus I uninstalled.

          --
          Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:42AM

            by anubi (2828) on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:42AM (#716039) Journal

            It seems everyone does the same thing... they start off small, make a really useful thing, attract the attention of the money-boys, who come a calling en masse, hands out for a shake. Put this in! Enforce this for us! Block that for us! We are Money-and the Hand is Extended!

            They do their best to keep the handshakers happy, and make crap. Nothing works right. Bloated malware that spends most of its day making sure all the permissions are in place before it will do anything. Enormous amounts of code and time to execute same.

            Car Analogy: Its like pulling into a FireFox garage to get a tire changed, and the mechanic spends hours calling everyone up to get permission to change the tire. Important things like is the wrench properly licensed to work with that series of patented lug nut. Also he must inform and verify the lug nut and wrench manufacture of the usage of the product and details about the car owner for subsequent marketing database entries. Then spends five minutes changing the tire if everyone said it was ok.

            I worked in a small aerospace company, and we did the exact same thing when we attracted the eye of Wall Street. It took the government about five years before it finally dawned on them that the house was still there but the lights were no longer on.

            The only thing we had left to sell was handshakes with lots of men wearing suits - and empty promises. The guys who did the work were long gone. Retired or laid off.

            --
            "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:51PM (3 children)

        by Arik (4543) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:51PM (#715638) Journal
        "So I don't get all of this hate for them."

        Because they have taken a brand that was built as a light-weight, customizable browser that respected the user and turned it into a bloated crappy Chrome clone that respects the user less with every release. Oh, and that includes any customization you might be foolish enough to try to do. Mozilla was infected by the GNOME disease, only they ape Chrome instead of Apple.

        "On top of that, a browser monoculture, especially from the advertising king of the internet, Google, is bad for all of us."

        Yes, that consequence makes their action even more disappointing.

        "That said, I think the rebranding is a waste of time. Firefox is losing the PR war, and their influence on open web standards dwindles with their shrinking market share. So I can see why they're desperate to get attention."

        Sure, but what they need isn't attention. It's a product that someone wants.

        You're right, rebranding is utterly pointless. This is just one more sign that the organization has been completely hollowed out, and no one competent is left.
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
        • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Friday August 03 2018, @12:55PM (2 children)

          by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Friday August 03 2018, @12:55PM (#716666)

          Before Firefox 56 or so the only way Firefox was "lightweight and fast" in the previous eight years was if you ran NoScript. Otherwise it was agonizingly slow next to Chrome.

          That's fine for all of us nerds that run NoScript, but useless for over 99% of the browser market. Firefox doesn't need fanatic loyalty from a few hundred thousand people, it needs enthusiasm from hundreds of millions.

          And I really, really don't understand the discontent over their UI changes. They moved a bar. Who cares? They changed some menu item ordering. Who cares? They changed the tab styling. Who cares? Notice a theme?

          • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday August 03 2018, @02:19PM

            by Arik (4543) on Friday August 03 2018, @02:19PM (#716704) Journal
            Firefox 56?

            Long after meltdown occurred. Try any Firefox release before version 4.

            Also remember the version numbers are not comparable. It took nearly a decade to get to version 4, after which they started calling each point release a "version" because the company had decided to consciously target their product at morons. So version 56 is probably equivalent to 4.5.6 or thereabouts in terms of an actual version number.
            --
            If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
          • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday August 03 2018, @02:25PM

            by Arik (4543) on Friday August 03 2018, @02:25PM (#716708) Journal
            Sorry, I hit post when I meant to preview.

            "And I really, really don't understand the discontent over their UI changes. They moved a bar. Who cares? They changed some menu item ordering. Who cares? They changed the tab styling. Who cares? Notice a theme?"

            I care.

            Oh, I don't care for my personal use, much. Virtually all of their changes are retarded, but I was used to overriding them as a matter of course anyway, back when I still tried to use it. But I care a lot when we're talking about recommending it for Granny, which let's remember they've identified as their target audience. When they make changes to that default interface that are unnecessary, that improve nothing and help no one, then Granny calls me and wants to know why her Foxfire is broken.

            When this happens nearly every dang point release and they're rolling out new point releases constantly, the end result is that Foxfire gets uninstalled and the icon that says 'Internet Explorer' gets redirected to start Chrome instead.

            --
            If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:38PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:38PM (#715780)

        Have you used Firefox since release 57 or so last year? The performance is now within 50% of Chrome in almost all cases, even in others, and ahead by a significant amount in a few. Just put Chrome and Firefox side by side and run the benchmarks at browserbench.org to test it our yourself.

        Because raw speed isn't the only fucking thing that matters. My Ferrari has bald tires, the doors are falling off, the aux jack doesn't work, and it makes a high-pitched whining sound whenever I drive it over 40mph, BUT AT LEAST IT'S FAST!!!!!111!!

        The reasons for the changes in the extension APIs are publicly documented and reasonable.

        Yes, the reason (i.e. security) was reasonable, but when the extension system is the main reason people use your browser, and then you throw out the extension system, you have no right to be shocked that your users leave.* That the extension system wasn't the best security-wise is what made it good, because you could use it to do many strange and wondrous things you can't do with the secure Chrome version.

        *plus the constant fucking with the interface, tracking, and everything else bad about Chrome, which they did their best to copy to a T

        --
        "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 Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:18PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:18PM (#715799) Journal

        Have you used Firefox since release 57 or so last year?

        My initial reaction was, "Damned silly question!" But, the mental processes answered that - "You haven't been running Firefox, Dummy - you need to check!" Indignantly, I checked, just to prove the mental processes wrong. But, they were right. I am actually running Palemoon and Cyberfox, and occassionally Opera and/or Chromium. Neither of the Firefox derivatives is using a "new" Firefox.

        Hmmmm . . . Firefox is actually installed on my system. Maybe I should fire it up, and run it for awhile, to see whether I'm still in touch with base Firefox.

        Extensions . . . Time to see what the new Firefox offers?

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by MadTinfoilHatter on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:08PM (7 children)

    by MadTinfoilHatter (4635) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:08PM (#715615)

    Mozilla says it will be using these criteria to evaluate the work:
    Do these two systems still feel like Firefox?
    ...

    Rolls eyes. It was a long time ago that Firefox stopped feeling like Firefox, and started to feel like a shoddy clone of Chrome, so I think that boat sailed many years ago...

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Kunasou on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:45PM

      by Kunasou (4148) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:45PM (#715635)

      Currently, I have to use about a dozen extensions and a custom css in the profile folder https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx [github.com] to make firefox usable again. Firefox stopped feeling like it used to be since Firefox 24.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:07PM (5 children)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:07PM (#715796) Journal

      They should rebrand it as “Fuckyou”. Because that properly represents their attitude to their users.

      I'm now a happy user of Waterfox.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by Kell on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:33PM (4 children)

        by Kell (292) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:33PM (#715968)

        Any feedback on how Waterfox compares to Palemoon?

        --
        Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by toddestan on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:50AM (2 children)

          by toddestan (4982) on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:50AM (#716045)

          Waterfox until recently was basically an alternative build of Firefox with some of the questionable stuff pulled out of it and some other tweaks. Waterfox is not going to Quantum so now it's a fork of Firefox 56. A few fixes have been backported but overall it's basically still Firefox 56. There's not a big team behind Waterfox (basically one guy) so while I wish him luck, now that Waterfox is a fork it's going to be hard to keep up with the major browsers. I use Waterfox but I expect at some point Firefox 56 is just going to be too out of date for the modern web.

          Palemoon was the same way for a while - you were basically using a dated version of Firefox and after a while it really started to show. I used it for a while, switched away when it just felt too dated and too much stuff was broken, but the project has picked up some steam and Palemoon managed to catch up enough that I switched back. However, my experience is that there are still a few things that don't work right in Palemoon that do work when I try them in Waterfox, and if neither works I'll try the latest official Firefox, though annoyingly there seems to be more and more websites that don't work right on anything except webkit/blink browsers.

          • (Score: 2) by Kell on Thursday August 02 2018, @05:24AM

            by Kell (292) on Thursday August 02 2018, @05:24AM (#716083)

            Very helpful, thanks! :D

            --
            Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
          • (Score: 2) by KritonK on Friday August 03 2018, @12:18PM

            by KritonK (465) on Friday August 03 2018, @12:18PM (#716645)

            Waterfox is not going to Quantum so now it's a fork of Firefox 56.

            I think that you are referring to Pale Moon, which is indeed a fork, with the version under development being based on version 52, with no hope for a later rebase, as Mozilla have removed/changed too much code in later versions.

            Although Waterfox is still at version56, the plan [waterfoxproject.org] is to follow ESR versions, keeping support for classic addons enabled, instead of disabling it in release builds, like Mozilla does.

        • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:16PM

          by Pino P (4721) on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:16PM (#716225) Journal

          Would it be helpful or wrong to think of Waterfox as a rebrand of "Firefox ESR 56" (if that existed), analogous to the "Firefox ESR 52" in Debian 9 "Stretch"?

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:29PM (4 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:29PM (#715627) Homepage Journal

    Man, the fox became roadkill a long time ago. It just hasn't noticed yet.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 5, Funny) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:33PM (3 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:33PM (#715682) Homepage
      "I'm relevant!", pauses to hear the silence, shouts "I'M RELEVANT", pauses to hear the silence, starts to cry and spits out a final scream of "FUCK YOU, I'M STILL FUCKING RELEVANT GODDAMMIT!".

      Anyway, we can help it on its way, surely? If it is going to have a wide range of disparate features that nobody wants, how about we suggest they call it "Firefox Diversity".
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:34AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:34AM (#716034)

        Mozilla has fucked up a lot, but i sense your anger is coming from somewhere else. Firefox is still one of the better more free brpwsers even with thei collosal fuckups. I prefer the FF forks myself.

        • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday August 02 2018, @04:27AM

          by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Thursday August 02 2018, @04:27AM (#716070) Homepage Journal

          When you see a website that really POPS, it's because of VERY SPECIAL cyber called Javascript. Mozilla, very lucky company. Because they hired the guy that invented Javascript. Brendan, otherwise known as the Einstein of modern cyber. Then they did something foolish, they fired him because he wasn't gay. Which is OK in High Tax, High Crime California. It's not OK. But they got away with it!!!

        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:55AM

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:55AM (#716095) Homepage
          "I prefer the FF forks myself"

          Exactly, me too. FF itself is no longer relevant. Thanks for reinfocing my point, but perhaps you could take a tone that is less ad hominem next time you inadvertantly agree with me.
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Arik on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:40PM (3 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:40PM (#715632) Journal
    Mozilla needs to fire a lot of people. Start with each and every person who thought that this was a good idea, that what you needs is a 'rebranding.'

    You don't need a rebranding, you need to start making a product that someone with a clue would use themselves, and recommend to the clueless. That's what the Firefox brand meant, that's why Firefox became the dominant browser for awhile and that's what made the brand valuable, but for *years* now all you've done is trade that value away for stupid shit nobody wanted! You realized how many of your users were clueless and re-oriented towards that as your 'target' userbase, set about trying to exploit them, without apparently realizing that the reason you had so many clueless users was because the minority of computer literate users were using Firefox and WE were installing it on all those other machines. Because when IE was all about ActiveX and running anything any random server chose to point it at, Firefox was behaving more sanely. But those days are gone, they're now lost to the past.

    When you went full retard in pursuit of that clueless audience is when you started to lose it. Because the rest of us slowly gave up on you in disgust. And the clueless audience rarely installs anything for themselves, or even know the names of the programs they're using frankly. I suspect you could not even imagine how many of those Firefox users you've lost over the past 7 years never even knew they had Firefox, and never knew it was gone. One day they needed a new computer, and the tech that helped them set it up no longer installs Firefox. Because it's disgusting. It's gotten fat and lazy and it needs a bath. A long one.

    My advice? Fire a lot of people, start at the top, work your way down as far as you find rot. Might stop at the janitorial staff.

    Then hire an entirely new team, competent people, and make sure they understand that their job is to enable the *user* not the advertisers.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:32PM (#715869)

      i have to agree. mozilla is obviously mismanaged and infiltrated with moles.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:16PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:16PM (#715961)

      Mozilla needs to die. Plenty of us remember what that sad excuse for a company did to Brendan Eich.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:18PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:18PM (#715963)

        There are better people to cry over than the creator of JavaScript.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday August 01 2018, @01:11PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @01:11PM (#715645)

    Didn't they just spend like a million dollars and months of meetings last year developing "Moz://a"?

    Methinks they should reconsider if branding is really the problem and maybe double down on some actual developers. They used to be able to claim to work better than the alternatives but no longer have that advantage. Maybe they should be talking to devs about what kind of edge they could come up with over the alternatives so they stand out again.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by donkeyhotay on Wednesday August 01 2018, @01:31PM (6 children)

    by donkeyhotay (2540) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @01:31PM (#715651)

    How about "Fox-Off"? That seems to be what they've been saying to their user base for a couple of years now.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:37PM (4 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:37PM (#715685) Homepage
      Don't be so negative, this is the new firefox, *for everyone*. How about "Fox You All"?
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:18PM (2 children)

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:18PM (#715760) Journal

        "What the Fox?"

        • (Score: 2) by Kell on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:35PM (1 child)

          by Kell (292) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:35PM (#715970)

          Clearly they are trying to be more relevant to their user base, in the vein of Microsoft's 'My Computer' or Youtube. Obviously they should call it "FoxYou"

          --
          Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
          • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @04:49AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @04:49AM (#716072)

            FoxNew

      • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:42PM

        by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:42PM (#715785) Journal

        They're trying to get higher. "Fox Up" would be my recommendation.

        --
        This sig for rent.
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:38PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:38PM (#715687) Journal

      How about:

      Web Tastic Firefox!

      or simply: WTF!

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @01:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @01:48PM (#715654)

    How about "Mozilla Memory Leaker"? or "Mozilla Personal Data Aggregator"? or "Developer Ignorer Browser"?

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:06PM

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:06PM (#715665)

    I'd vote for Telemetryweasel. Yeah, that sounds about right.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:12PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:12PM (#715671)

    It's not about icons or waving your hands in the air or talking to your computer. You guys just don't get it... at... f*cking... all.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:40PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:40PM (#715688) Journal

      Product design procedure:
      1. Announce Product
      2. Design Icons
      3. Print T-Shirts
      4. Get some geeks to write the code
      5. Profit!

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 4, Disagree) by ledow on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:10PM

    by ledow (5567) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:10PM (#715712) Homepage

    Firefox feels like Netscape used to.

    Edge is just still IE (use it if you must, otherwise use it to download a real browser).

    Chrome is probably the defacto winner for almost everyone.

    Vivaldi is just a very cheap Chrome clone with nothing to distinguish it (and Opera, too, but the Opera name was sold out long ago and Vivaldi was supposed to be the "new Opera").

    Pretty much there is not much choice any more.

    I really don't care what rendering engine is underneath but whatever is used is never abstracted enough. We really need a way to say "Here's a completely customisable and flexible browser control... use it in your projects" so that knocking up clones that actually can differentiate themselves from others is much easier. As it is, the rendering engines are separate from the UI and it's an all-or-nothing upgrade every time someone builds on one (which is why Vivaldi is just Chrome with nothing else - they are eternally playing catchup with the Chromium library underneath).

    At the moment, you really can't do much. But Firefox was Netscape'd several years ago. I use it if I have to or there's nothing else, pretty much like IE.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:30PM (3 children)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:30PM (#715728)

    My opinion? Dig up Netscape Navigator 3.0 and use that to bring back a proper browser look and feel. Everything after that just fucked things up. Or if you want something more current, take a look at PaleMoon.

    Put the menus back where they belong (and that goes for you to and your office products, Microsoft). The status bar was there for a reason.

    Fuck your bullshit "metrics", and find out what real people want. (Hint, most people did not switch to Google Chrome because of its UI!). Keep in mind that only a tiny fraction of percentage of the masses go out of their way to get what they actually want, and most of those have already jumped ship from Mozilla products. (I'm struggling to even remember how Firefox currently looks because all of my crap runs PaleMoon, or some other obscure browsers)

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Wednesday August 01 2018, @09:33PM (2 children)

      by Arik (4543) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @09:33PM (#715923) Journal
      "My opinion? Dig up Netscape Navigator 3.0 and use that to bring back a proper browser look and feel."

      Why not Firefox 3.x? Nutscrape always had a horrid UI, one of the reason we all flocked to Firefox when it became available. The major retardation started around version 4 IIRC.

      Funny how the same thing happened with Opera. It was arguably the best browser available at the time, even with Firefox for competition, back at version 3.62. But it squandered the advantage with version 4 and slowly became a footnote. Roughly two years later, Firefox hit version 4 and started doing the same darn thing.

      It seems like there might be a pattern here. Software projects often start going off the rails at about version 4.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday August 01 2018, @10:25PM (1 child)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @10:25PM (#715942) Journal

        It seems like there might be a pattern here. Software projects often start going off the rails at about version 4.

        GNOME already went off the rails with version 3.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:34PM

          by Arik (4543) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:34PM (#715969) Journal
          GNOME went off the rails with version 2 if you ask me.

          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:36PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:36PM (#715731)

    I found Mozilla's moves more and more chaotic.
    First, they made v. 4.0, in which they re-designed plug-in API enough to break many add-ons, and add-ons are Firefox main power. If I wanted Firefox without add-ons I would go with Chrome. About 50% of add-ons was totally useless in experimental 4.0, so they started to announce heuristic-based API to fix this problem.
    I told then, that I'll upgrade my FF when I'll see these heuristics. Now the 3.6 still sit somewhere on my hard drive and I'm writing from PaleMoon :).
    But that's not the end. Because slaughtering half of features will make FF instantly loose more than half of users, they decided to use add-on mechanism to do it. They remove a feature giving add-on instead, there are some critic voices but hey, there is an add-on for it. Next, they remove add-on compatibility.
    That's how they removed most useful features for netbook (or other mouse-limited) computers such as advanced buttons customization or some protocol clients.
    But the real circus started when they gave part of their buildfarm to a small open-source project about RISC operating system and started to do purges in executive chairs, in which political decisions were made more frequently than practical.
    Simultaneously FF started to impact the privacy in their announcements more and more. Hey, after you removed half of add-ons users still stick with FF instead of Chrome because privacy, yes?. Well, it's a lie. Contrary to these claims, FF started to phone home getting a text file from some Mozilla's server every start (success.txt, look in your Wireshark capture!), downloading unknown listings from Mozilla's website, or visiting sites from "New tab" window just-like-that. You visited this adult site, closed its tab and then accidentally connected to employer's network - good luck :). And for some unknown reason, every now and then, it just connects to Google's servers just to talk.
    It looks like Mozilla is torn by some internal forces which cannot be exactly investigated now, but the openness of their product seems to be the least concern in this process.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:11PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:11PM (#715756)

      >And for some unknown reason, every now and then, it just connects to Google's servers just to talk.

      That's the update check for Google's "Safe Browsing" database; it's ostensibly a list of malware-slinging domains that Google maintains in collaboration with the security community. Whenever you visit a domain Firefox/Chrome/whatever checks its local copy (or at least it's supposed to check the local copy instead of sending one request per domain to Google's servers) and the domain is on the list it'll turn on all the idiot lights and won't let you continue unless you click the secret "Yes, I'm really, positively sure I know what I'm doing" button hidden in a disused lavatory bearing a sign saying "Beware of the Leopard."

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:58PM (#715821)

        Thanks a lot for explanation! At least one part of this is known somewhere.
        I usually turn these things off, my security solution is NoScript with a whitelist on a subdomain-level, HTML5 filtered in a similar way and (under Linux) a shell script which kills my browser in specific conditions (which guards against crap-designed websites more than a malware). Simple security, but sufficient in most cases. Before, it was some script control add-on, but it allowed to do too many "geeky things" with JS (specifying rules like all scripts from domains except [x] cannot execute code with eval) and got lost during Australis transition. I would use a per-application virtualization if I had enough cores.

    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:13PM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:13PM (#715833) Journal

      I liked Firefox, and still use it, but I have to agree Mozilla has lost their way. Asking the community for opinions on their bikeshedding plans, wow, sad. One of the most annoying things they did was:

      1. Move features to add-ons.
      2. Break add-ons.

      One good thing Mozilla did was their project to reduce memory usage. Firefox 4 was a horrible resource pig. When the http://areweslimyet,com [areweslimyet,com] project started, the memory usage declined rapidly, then kept going down more slowly until Firefox 13. Then it began to creep up again. FF 13 could start with a blank page in 96M of RAM. Current versions of FF need about 256M. What the heck happened? I understand that they've had to keep up with standards-- for instance, I very much like having the Opus audio codec that was added in FF 19. But I wonder how much of the bloat is from crap such as the telemetry?

    • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:38PM

      by Pino P (4721) on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:38PM (#716242) Journal

      Contrary to these claims, FF started to phone home getting a text file from some Mozilla's server every start (success.txt, look in your Wireshark capture!)

      success.txt is captive portal detection. Captive portals work by blocking all HTTPS traffic (usually with a certificate error) and intercepting all cleartext HTTP requests to redirect them to the network's login page. Firefox retrieves success.txt from a known non-HSTS origin to distinguish a known good response from a captive portal's intercepted response. Do you still get success.txt hits if you open about:config and turn off network.captive-portal-service.enabled?

  • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:39PM

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:39PM (#715736) Homepage Journal

    Call the Trump Organization in New York. Ask for Larry Glick -- he's my EVP for Development. He'll make you a VERY FAIR deal!

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by snufu on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:12PM (1 child)

    by snufu (5855) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:12PM (#715832)

    Firefox strikes a reasonable balance between user customizing, accessibility, and remaining current and relevant to average users.

    Quit your bitching and be grateful there is a fast, modern, well supported, widely used FOSS alternative to Big Brother Chrome and Microsoft Ecch.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:38PM (#715873)

      we criticize because we care.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday August 01 2018, @08:32PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 01 2018, @08:32PM (#715900) Homepage Journal

    Because an add on I require for my webmastering work was broken by firefox' dumpster Fire of its add on API revision

    The only way I go anywhere near Firefox in the last few years is when I use Tor Browser to read my gmail and post on Facebook

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Wednesday August 01 2018, @09:40PM (2 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 01 2018, @09:40PM (#715924) Journal

    The story is:

    Mozilla is rebranding Firefox. The company is asking for feedback

    This is true.

    The headline, however, is:

    Mozilla is Rebranding Firefox and Wants Your Opinion

    This is unlikely.

    Sure, the company is asking for feedback, but that does not necessarily mean that they "Want Your Opinion", just that they are giving you a place to vent it before they do what they were going to do anyway.

    Firefox is not known for "responsiveness to userbase", regardless of whether that's a good or bad thing.

    TFA [mozilla.org] stresses that this is an opinion poll, not a vote:

    We are not crowdsourcing the answer. There’ll be no voting.

    Not saying it should be a vote (Fire McFox Face would be a stupid branding), just pointing out that their soliciting opinions doesn't mean they necessarily care a wish in the wind about them.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @10:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @10:20PM (#715939)

      Then they should stop wasting everyone's time.

      They have demostrated over and over that they don't care about opinions, or reasons of why they are going under*. So please, stop wasting time, they are not convincing anyone. Change the colors all you want, or the names, they will not make you more relevant. You didn't learn from, eg, Silicon Graphics going SGI. Need money? Learn from Bootlin and their VPU support for Allwinner chipsets (GPU is a different task, FWIW), ask for money and then deliver the promised technical advances.

      *: See comments in this page, and in many other sites, for years. TL;DR: they are following the fad of the week against well set UI principles, ignoring user privacy, and not providing, in advance, a good migration shim for developers when things need to change, etc. Then add that Chrome is being pushed by Google and third parties constantly (software Foobar installing it, because "why not"). Perfect storm.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @03:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @03:22PM (#716283)

      Shure.
      Browsy McBrowseface.
      Next!

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