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from the I-use-Lynx,-you-insensitive-clod! dept.
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:
Mozilla Teases Chromium-Based Firefox, Then Pulls Back
Firefox Tops Microsoft Browser Market Share for First Time
Netmarketshare Claims Mozilla Firefox Usage Drops Below Ten Percent
Microsoft Intercepting Firefox, Chrome Installation on Windows 10 Insider Build
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Microsoft Employee Sparks Outrage by Suggesting Firefox Switch Browser Engine to Chromium
Mozilla Was "Outfoxed" by Google
Microsoft Edge Shares Privacy-Busting Telemetry, Research Alleges
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday August 04 2020, @02:53AM (9 children)
Found an overlay for Gentoo and am emerging from source as we speak. I notice it has a gtk2 USE flag, meaning "build against GTK2 instead of GTK3/4" and this has me sold instantly. GTK3 has always, always felt clunky and slow and misfeatured. If adblockers and such work right I may stay on Pale Moon for good...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @03:29AM (2 children)
This is what killed Pale Moon for me: "NoScript is too complicated for users to understand, and it breaks websites that are trying to use javascript to use and abuse them." Give me the extensions I want, or I will go elsewhere. And never second-guess your users, unless they are chromas, Runaway, or martyb. Oh, or janrinok, but he is currently on the do-not abuse list. Godspeed, janrinok!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @04:18AM
What stops you from using NoScript? Oh wait, nothing. It's just a warning message using Mozilla-provided default text. Unless the scawwy scawwy text scawwed you shitless or something.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 04 2020, @11:08AM
Discussion and explanation - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=17294 [palemoon.org]
https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive [github.com]
It's nothing more than an archive of old Firefox extensions, that mostly work with Pale Moon. No guarantees, no promises, no nothing. If you like Pale Moon, and you want extensions not provided by Pale Moon's addons page - play with this.
Likewise, if you have an old version of Firefox, you can get your addons here.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday August 04 2020, @08:26AM
I've been using it full-time for several years, and can attest that uBlock Origins and uMatrix (or the updated PM fork, eMatrix) both work just about perfectly.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday August 04 2020, @08:08PM (4 children)
If it's the one you get in layman I'm using that on my ancient 32 bit system. It's been great so far and yes, Adblock Latitude works well. I'm currently running 28.9.3. Unfortunately, changes they made in 28.10.0 require more RAM to complile than I have, so I may end having to use palemoon-bin from that same overlay at some point.
No way was I using the newer Firefox under Gentoo requiring that Godless piece of shit Rust. The Mozilla devs can't even code a decent browser these days and I'm supposed to trust them with a programming language?...what an over-engineered clusterfuck. It's even more unfortunate that they screwed up Thunderbird with all that same bullshit...just sad.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 05 2020, @02:36AM (3 children)
For me Palemoon is acting odd and slow on many sites. I've actually just unmerged it (and the thought occurs, i *really* should have quickpkg'd it first..arrrrgh). Am giving NetSurf a try, though it seems even *less* well-equipped to handle the modern WWW, though it's at least speedy as hell.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Wednesday August 05 2020, @01:04PM (2 children)
This older machine is sometimes quite hopeless on the modern WWW no matter what I use, which I'm sure is primarily the javascript engine and the fact that most sites these days pull in JS from 50 to 100 sites and literally never finish loading...don't even get me started with that. Ironically I have no issues on this machine doing LAMP development, heavy database stuff, you name it.
I used NoScript for a while but all that did was to totally break 99.9% of the cluster fuck we call the web now so I cut bait...just plain sad. Sometimes I think the only shit that's actually improved since the late 90s are connection speeds.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 07 2020, @03:40AM (1 child)
I'm using Falkon now and it works very well for most things, though I notice it chokes on Reddit (can't scroll more stories in) and its adblocker doesn't work anywhere near as well as uBlock Origin. Still, it's head and shoulders above the competition.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Saturday August 08 2020, @12:10PM
Thanks! May have to give that a try!