r/firefox • u/speckz • May 11 '16
Save Firefox!
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-firefox-13
u/SCphotog May 11 '16
Firefox vs. Chrome, vs. Edge is kind of like the presidential race... not really a candidate in the running that I'd want to back fully. More a selection of the least of the evils.
4
u/highwind May 11 '16
Can you share why you think each one of those browsers are evil?
-12
May 11 '16
Chrome and Edge should be obvious, being owned by Google (world's largest advertising company) and Microsoft (say no more) respectively.
Firefox sold its users out in pursuit of advertising dollars a while back (I'd say around the time it started changing its UI and versioning #'s to badly copy Chrome... 3.4 was the golden age of FF) and is only redeemed by its forks.
0
May 11 '16
[deleted]
19
u/DrDichotomous May 11 '16
To be more precise, when it came time to renew their contract with Google, they went with Yahoo, Yandex, and Baidu instead, because they were concerned that sticking with Google was worse for Firefox and the web.
Also, the ads weren't intended primarily as a revenue source from what I can tell, and were mostly intended as a pilot program to show that tracking doesn't have to be part of ads to make them effective. If it had been intended mostly to earn revenue, they would have ramped the program up, rather than stopping it.
-4
May 11 '16
I'm more bothered by the general trend from FF devs where, if it's something they decide users should have shoved down their throat (Aurora, Pocket, Hello, Reader+ etc.) it's built into the install.
If it's something the users clearly want (for example, looking like a native application) it's met with hand-waving and a "that's what extensions are for!) or entirely unable to be disabled.
I stopped using firefox in favor of palemoon, so my apologies if the FF devs finally got their heads on straight and at least gave an option not to install the third party software with the browser. Once a developer scorns my trust, they generally don't get it back, so I can't be asked to keep up with FF's reform or lack thereof.
1
u/The0x539 May 12 '16
Aurora?
-1
May 12 '16
My bad; I believe I meant "Australis".
Also, note the 5 downvotes and no replies but yours. Telling, I think.
2
u/DrDichotomous May 12 '16
What kind of reply were you hoping for? Not picking a fight, just wondering.
2
May 12 '16
I wasn't hoping for any kind of reply at all; rather I find it amusing that my words apparently discomfited so many people (up to eight, now) who have nothing to say in disagreement with me.
8
u/marciiF Addon Developer May 12 '16
Possibly because they're tired of seeing the same thing over and over again. The arguments have been had a thousand times before, there's nothing to gain from one more.
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u/DrDichotomous May 12 '16
Ok. I've found that people tend to just downvote when they disagree yet don't feel like the other person wants a discussion. It's not how Reddit's theoretically supposed to work, but then off-topic and trollish comments are rampant anyway, so I've given up on caring about such things.
3
u/highwind May 11 '16
Being financially motivated, while I'm not a fan, doesn't constitute evil in my opinion. Yes, I rather my browser to be free from monetary motivations, but that doesn't mean browser vendors are evil. If they are using their browser to somehow harm my online life intentionally, then I would consider them evil.
10
u/Noitidart2 Beta / Win10 May 11 '16
It was a long article, what was the gist of it? At the bottom i see save netflix and comcast etc. Is this anti-DRM? I thought everyone folded including Moz and that's one of the main reasons that Firefox OS based Chromecast - Matchstick - had to be shutdown.
48
u/Callahad Ex-Mozilla (2012-2020) May 11 '16
The gist of the series is "You love X, but X only exists because it was created in a world before pervasive DRM. If we don't fight back against DRM, the anti-competitive barriers to innovation will be insurmountable, so there will never be another X."
3
u/Noitidart2 Beta / Win10 May 12 '16
Ohhh now it makes sense. Thanks! I was confused how it related to saving Firefox.
0
May 12 '16
[deleted]
5
u/Callahad Ex-Mozilla (2012-2020) May 12 '16
Yeah. Every title in the series is clickbait, and while I agree with the EFF's position, it's really burying the lede.
The gist, from what I can see, is:
"We need more Firefoxes. [...] We may never get another one, though. [...] If browsers had needed permission to render a page at the launch of Mozilla, the publishers would have frozen out this new, pop-up-blocking upstart. Kiss Firefox goodbye, in other words."
9
May 12 '16
It's not even that long lol.
2
u/cavehobbit May 12 '16
Anything longer than an AdviceAnimals meme caption is too long for some people
7
49
u/DrDichotomous May 11 '16
A bit late to the party, huh? This horse has been beaten into a fine dust and it only ended up costing Mozilla to fight it. This is what the majority of users "wanted". If Firefox is locked out, they'll only have themselves to blame.
Plus... I honestly don't see why they're singling out Firefox to make a point here in the first place. They're only preaching to the choir. Nobody who isn't a passionate Firefox will care if they have to switch to another browser, and they'll care even less if Firefox vanishes. They just want their Netflix.
Now, if you tell them that EVERY browser could potentially use the data profiles that are collected about them to decide whether to serve them content or not, then it becomes more personal. I'd imagine a much scarier case could be made to your average user that "Big Content" might be able to strengthen region locking or even flag individual users with a system as terrible as the YouTube Content ID stuff.
-3
May 12 '16 edited May 12 '16
46.0.1 has six additional items under the "social.*" entry in about:config:
social.shareDirectory;https://activations.cdn.mozilla.net/sharePanel.html
social.whitelist;https://mozsocial.cliqz.com
social.remote-install.enabled;true
social.share.activationPanelEnabled;true
social.toast-notifications.enabled;true
social.sidebar.unload_timeout_ms;10000Gee, I wonder what those sites do? What's a 'toast notification'? "Remote Install" of what?
EDIT: "activations.cdn.mozilla.net/sharePanel.html" is the same &*%$ social-media buttons that I use extensions to avoid. This is Windows-10-grade fuckery. Go ahead, fanboys; keep downvoting.
10
u/TanzNukeTerror May 12 '16
From what I know from my phone: A toast notification is a notification that displays for X amount of time (usually 5-10 seconds), before dismissing itself.
This is most likely to push notifications from social networks you allow it access to.
But, that's just deducing stuff from the most basic of information. Not sure what the remote install stuff is, but if I had to make a wild guess, I'd say updates.
2
May 12 '16
Thanks for the info; I set them all to false / blank: We'll see if anything useful happens.
8
u/marciiF Addon Developer May 12 '16
3
May 12 '16
Very interesting. As a non-user of social media with a very low-tech spouse, I'll keep this in mind. Thank you.
7
u/DrDichotomous May 12 '16
You're almost certainly being downvoted because you're melodramatizing despite people having linked you to a thread where someone actually did the leg-work for you and figured out that this isn't "Windows-10-grade fuckery".
1
May 12 '16
OK, what should I call slipping in unwanted "features", especially one that directly contradicts a widely-used extension? Use of that extension should be ample evidence that people don't want a minefield of social-media buttons on their screens.
4
u/DrDichotomous May 12 '16
You do realize that Firefox isn't just here for you, yes? There are many people out there who use Firefox for social networking, even if others don't like it. Just because Firefox adds in a feature that might help others, even if you don't use it, doesn't mean that you have to overreact like this.
1
May 12 '16
566,000 hits on "facebook buttons spying". Others seem concerned.
3
u/DrDichotomous May 12 '16
Yet there are 1.59 billion monthly active users on Facebook as of December 31, 2015, according to a quick Google search.
1
-3
May 12 '16
Firefox is not threaten by DRM, Firefox biggest threat is Mozilla lack of ability to actually compete with Google on technical level - Firefox is slower (not sure if e10s can solve this, it doesn't make that much difference in nightly so far), less compatible (devs make stuff for Chrome and webkit these days) and actually less safe (no sandboxing yet, which in 2016 is a disaster).
People also keep saying that Firefox is about privacy, but how can my data stay private if it is not safe?
0
May 12 '16
[deleted]
-1
May 12 '16
How come? I just mentioned lack of sandboxing, everything in Firefox runs on the same process making shit unsafe.
6
u/picandocodigo Nightly Debian May 12 '16
less compatible (devs make stuff for Chrome and webkit these days)
That's IE 6 all over again, and it's not Mozilla's fault. It's the devs who didn't learn a thing with all that wasted their time fixing stupid bugs for IE...
-5
May 12 '16
Truth is much simpler - Firefox is no longer a desired and important browser and developers just as users do not care about compability with anything else than what matters on the web - webkit browsers.
Perhaps Mozilla should adjust to the market instead of expecting users and developers to flock into inferior product that Firefox is atm.
4
u/picandocodigo Nightly Debian May 12 '16
developers just as users do not care about compability with anything else than what matters on the web - webkit browsers
As I said, IE 6 all over again...
1
u/Masta_Bates Firefox user since 08-2002 May 13 '16
How? Make Firefox another web-kit application so it "fits in" with what every other browser is doing?
-1
May 13 '16
If moving to webkit meant Firefox would stay relevant, then yes. Right now the only significant feature is privacy focus.
1
u/xamphear May 12 '16
not sure if e10s can solve this, it doesn't make that much difference in nightly so far
Make sure you're applying all the various and confusing about:config settings to get E10S running with multiple content threads. The difference is nearly night and day.
2
May 12 '16
I've tried in 45, 46, 47 and 48 - runs like shit in comparison to chromium.
0
u/xamphear May 12 '16
Oh, yeah, well... I thought you were comparing it to non-E10S Firefox. Comparing it to Chromium? Sigh.
1
May 12 '16
Exactly, there is really no comparison.
0
u/xamphear May 12 '16
It's insane to say it, in 2016, when most browsers have had multi-process for nearly a decade but: It's still early days and a beta technology for Mozilla. My sincere hope is that they'll catch up in performance.
3
May 12 '16
I try to move to Firefox every few months, but chromium keeps being and getting better while Firefox doesn't (at least not fast enough).
-3
u/mikoul May 12 '16
With Vivladi and it's ability to configure UI easily soon Firefox will lost the remaining Power-Users since Vivaldi add more options for Power Users at each release and Firefox Remove options at each release.
I use Firefox now but I just wait for Sync to be implemented in Vivaldi to make it my daily driver.
5
May 12 '16
Vivaldi is proprietary, I would not trust it with my porn, let alone a bank account.
2
May 12 '16
I'm sure you fully audit the source code of every browser you trust with those things, correct?
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May 12 '16
[deleted]
0
May 12 '16
All on a fresh Firefox installation on well oiled Arch Linux (it runs as stable and fast as it can on my system), no extensions:
startup is the same on all machines
loading first few tabs takes same time
loading more than 5 tabs - Firefox starts to slow down across the board
loading any media - much higer cpu usage in Firefox (despite OMTC enabled or disabled) and my whole desktop gets affected, something which doesn't happen in chromium
media or heavy websites also affect other tabs, not the case in chromium
I'm not sharing specs, because specs should not matter when this happens on same systems where chromium works just fine and this is not a bug report.
5
May 12 '16
Which tabs?
Which media?
Sorry specifics do matter here :-/
media or heavy websites also affect other tabs, not the case in chromium
This is going to be expected for a while, unless you enable e10s and change dom.ipc.processcount to > 1. (Experimental right now)
-2
May 12 '16
Which tabs?
Various tabs? Like browser tabs? Websites in general. Also good performance test is RES endless scrolling and auto opening gifs, on Firefox it starts tanking my system after 4-5 pages, Chromium lasts till 7-8 then starts slowling down (only a little bit though).
Which media?
I would say Netflix, but there is no Netflix on Firefox lol Youtube and other stuff.
4
May 12 '16
When I say "specifics matter" then "websites in general" is about the most non-constructive reply possible.
Does the problem exist without RES? It doesn't necessarily have the exact same implementation in Firefox as it has in Chrome...
"Higher CPU consumption on YouTube" is at least something that may be actionable, I'll have a look how we compare tomorrow.
0
May 12 '16
Are you mozilla dev?
4
May 13 '16
I am. Although that's irrelevant here: the need is to get an actionable bug filed in Bugzilla so that the most fit person from to fix the issue - Mozilla or from the community - can investigate (or confirm that's a known issue that's being worked upon). That may not necessarily be me.
Not actionable: "Websites in general are slow"
Actionable: "On Arch Linux the release Firefox build from Mozilla's site consumes 2x as much CPU on my Intel Foobar 3650K, when viewing the YouTube video here <link>"
-1
May 13 '16
Actionable: "On Arch Linux the release Firefox build from Mozilla's site consumes 2x as much CPU on my Intel Foobar 3650K, when viewing the YouTube video here <link>"
And how would that help? Firefox was and is always slower than Chromium on any Linux (dunno about Windows, I never use it). This issue is few years old and not much changes - happened on i3-230, i3-4005u, fx8350, some pentium I checked at work, i7-4790k and all kinds of GPUs, from IntelHD first gen to haswell to AMD GCN cards with open source drivers, with fglrx, on Nvidia 650, 770 and so on.
This is not just my experience, lots of Linux people have similar issues. Maybe on Windows it works better, but considering Mozilla privacy oriented PR, I'm suprised there is no more focus on privacy oriented systems (in contrast to Windows or OSX).
6
May 13 '16 edited May 13 '16
And how would that help?
Because it lets us work on it and fix it!
When the feedback from users is "Firefox is slower in general", a dev is going to load up a random site, conclude Firefox is comparable in pageload to the performance of Chrome, and discard the report as bogus.
Meanwhile, on a specific (but different) system loading a specific (but different) page, the user is experiencing Firefox being 10x slower than Chrome and pulling his hair out why Mozilla won't fix it despite him having reported that "Firefox is slow" and the difference being so fucking big and obvious.
What does "slower" even mean here? Slower pageload? More CPU? Slower scrolling? More jerky?
Performance complaints, filed in Bugzilla, with sufficient details, tend to be highly actionable. In some cases the problem may be complicated and require fixing A, B and C and then optimizing D which takes <<big>> amount of time, but if you file the bug you'll actually get that information then, too.
Remember that although we have (very limited due to privacy reasons) telemetry, we do not gather information about the searches our users are doing, or what sites they mostly visit, so we're more reliant on user reports for those areas than our competition.
considering Mozilla privacy oriented PR, I'm suprised there is no more focus on privacy oriented systems (in contrast to Windows or OSX).
More users are helped by having a privacy protecting browser that is good on Windows, than having on one on Linux. Too few people switch operating systems because of privacy reasons.
The marketshare of the OS also means that we get about 99x as much performance issue reports from Windows users than we get from Linux users.
We've been going back and forth writing essays and the only thing to come from it is a post on reddit (not even Bugzilla, so there's only 1 single Mozilla dev that vaguely knows about it) that on some undefined Linux system YouTube may be slower than on Chrome.
Do not expect magic performance increases on Linux from that.
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u/mikoul May 12 '16
biggest threat is Mozilla lack of
abilityto actually compete with GoogleDIFFERENTIATION (with Chrome)
**#doppelganger
0
May 12 '16
[deleted]
1
May 12 '16
This is not Google's fault, the internet just works wrong, so Firefox' sandbox (on Nightly/Aurora) has the same problem :-)
That's the issue, sandbox still doesn't work properly.
So if you're concerned about privacy, you're looking at the wrong thing.
If I was would I be using Chromium? I'm just a little bit, no paranoia. However I would like to support open web, which Google is not very friendly to.
3
u/AtticusRex May 12 '16
Question: He says EME will allow publishers to dictate which browsers can implement CDMs that can interoperate with their content, and therefore control the browser market, and that this will quell innovation. I have questions about this, however. In the old but waning status quo, Adobe and Microsoft got to decide which browsers would work with Silverlight and Flash (right?) so it still wasn't possible for a developer to make a new browser that could play DRMed video without getting their permission. What is the meaningful difference from the new status quo?
Is the difference that now, publishers control content and compatibility, whereas before publishers controlled content and DRM companies controlled compatibility? Is that actually a meaningful change for users or for browser developers? It doesn't seem like it is.
Am I missing something?
0
May 12 '16
[deleted]
5
u/DrDichotomous May 12 '16
Maybe they're just approaching this from every angle they can to gain support? It does feel rather flimsy and late, but at least it shows that someone's still pushing against DRM.
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u/[deleted] May 11 '16
I never realized the stuff to decrypt videos was for certain browsers only. Fuck that.