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from the left-hand-doesn't-know-what-the-right-hand-is-doing dept.
Mozilla has sent mixed signals about the future of the Firefox Web browser:
The head of Mozilla's Firefox browser is looking to the future. And, for the moment at least, it seems to lie in rival Chrome. Senior VP Mark Mayo caused a storm by revealing that the Firefox team is working on a next-generation browser that will run on the same technology as Google's Chrome browser.
"Let's jump right in and say yes, the rumors are true, we're working on browser prototypes that look and feel almost nothing like the current Firefox," Mayo wrote in a blog post. "The premise for these experiments couldn't be simpler: what we need a browser to do for us – both on PCs and mobile devices – has changed a lot since Firefox 1.0, and we're long overdue for some fresh approaches."
The biggest surprise, however, was that the project, named Tofino, will not use Firefox's core technology – Gecko – but will instead plumb for Electron, which is built on the technology behind Google's rival Chrome browser, called Chromium.
However, Mayo updated his post to say that "I should have been clearer that Project Tofino is wholly focused on UX explorations and not the technology platform. We are working with the Platform team on technology platform futures too, and we're excited about the Gecko and Servo-based futures being discussed!" Mozilla's CTO also reaffirmed the company's commitment to the Gecko rendering engine:
Just two days after Mayo broke ranks, Mozilla's CTO jumped up and announced another new project – this one called Positron (geddit?) – which will take the Electron API and "wrap it around Gecko." Or, in other words, make it possible to take Mayo's new, better browser and pull it off Chromium and back into the safe hands of Gecko. And so the status quo seeks to reassert itself.
Also at CNET.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Wednesday April 13 2016, @08:20PM
Yep, I just installed Vivaldi as a compromise between not using Firefox and not using Chrome, even if it is Chrome under the hood. That's on Windows; I recently also switched to Chromium on Linux.
I've been using mozilla since Netscape 2 on Solaris, through all the initial open source mozilla milestones on Debian, and then as Firefox and Iceweasel on all platforms. But I've reached the limit of how many regressive UI changes I'm willing to tolerate. If you're going to force the UI to be as Chrome-like as possible, then why would I continue to use it rather than using actual Chrome? I was using firefox because I actually preferred it, both for its stance on freedom and its UI. Now I only have two bad choices, and I might as well choose the one which doesn't continually lock up due to not having per-tab processes/threads, and which doesn't have long-standing serious memory leaks. Seriously, it's been leaking memory since the mozilla milestones and you *never* fixed it. Have you heard of valgrind? C++ smartpointers? Such long-standing serious defects are inexcusable.
The best browsers I've used to date were:
Galeon: Used the Gecko engine, and back in the day integrated very well into a GNOME 1.x/early 2.x desktop, and was faster and more stable than mozilla itself.
Konqueror: Well integrated into the KDE desktop via kparts; though nowadays it's not so usable in the KDE 3 era it was excellent
The thing is, mozilla/firefox has never really integrated well into any environment or platform. It might be skinned to appear like it does, but it's never been as usable or as well integrated as these. When it comes to actually getting work done with these, that integration does provide tangible benefits. Rather than being a monolithic beast, konqueror used the kde wallet system for passwords, the spell checking system, fonts, ui, and more. Firefox and Thunderbird are their own standalone worlds, and have always been this way.