Why Mozilla Needs To Go Into Survival Mode 464
Crazzaper writes "I have been using Firefox for many years, and the war of the browsers has been around for longer than that. It just so happens that now we have a lot of options out there: IE, FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and others. People are always talking about how one browser is going to take down another, but maybe that's not the issue at all. It seems very possible that one browser, like Firefox, can be taken down by multiple browsers at once, whether or not there was any intention to compete specifically with Firefox. I hadn't seen it this way, but I do now."
Extensions (Score:3, Informative)
Unless, the extensions I use are ported to another browser, I couldn't change from Firefox.
Re:No extensions, no FF killer (Score:5, Informative)
This will certainly interest you then: https://chrome.google.com/extensions [google.com]
Re:No extensions, no FF killer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Serious inquiry re: Adblock (Score:4, Informative)
Adblock blocks ads that NoScript doesn't. I may want Java script to generally run on a specific website. So i would whitelist that site in NoScript. Without Adblock I would then get ads while on that site. With both I can allow scripts while still enjoying an ad-free browsing experience.
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:4, Informative)
IIRC, the project started to give people choice.
Their goal was to save the web from a standards-hurting monopoly, not necessarily be the #1 in user base.
Thanks to Mozilla, we have that now.
Firefox can die in peace, the web was saved.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, the adblockers for chrome still download the ads, they just prevent the ad from displaying
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:3, Informative)
Glimmer blocker [glimmerblocker.org].
It works as a 'proxy' so it works with all browsers.
I can inject javascript into any page (just like GreaseMonkey). Runs in the background. I haven't noticed much RAM or CPU usage.
Only downside is it doesn't do https sites, because the browser decodes those.
Re:Serious inquiry re: Adblock (Score:1, Informative)
You should learn to use NoScript. It's a white list script blocker. It only allows ads that you've approved. Most javascripts that serve ads come from a third party. Don't just allow every domain listed for a site, only allow the domain you are browsing on.
Clean out your allow list, stop being such a user, and start over ;-)
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:3, Informative)
There is an ABP extension [chromeextensions.org] for Chrome too. :)
Actually, the question was silly. Why do you "need" Mozilla to survive? As long as they have something that someone wants, then someone will use it. When they have something that no one wants, then they're just entertaining themselves.
But, the question of if Mozilla is going to die is just academic at this point. They only brought in $78.6 million dollars in 2008 [arstechnica.com]. Ya, only ... well ...
$78,600,000 (Mozilla) .. a whole lot more than I did, and I think I overestimated my income for last year. Damn, it's been a shitty year.
-$ 30,000 (Me)
------------
$78,570,000
But, if Mozilla went away, I'd use a different browser browser. If whoever stops making the OS I like, I'll find another one. If the Internet goes away, I'll find a different job. If the whole world goes away, well, I guess it won't matter much. ;)
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Go get your guns? (Score:5, Informative)
What does "survival mode" means in this case? Race in new features?
Find new money. Before Google pulls the plug.
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:4, Informative)
Tree Style Tab
That takes your tabs, puts them on another side, (left, right, top or bottom, actually) and orders them as a tree, with the page you spawned tabs from as the main branch. Since I have widescreen monitors on everything, I set mine to be on the left. That gives me the maximum vertical space, and to be frank, I like the tree style, now that I've gotten used to it. I find it far more sensible than the default of putting them on top next to each other.
That and NoScript keep me stuck on Firefox. I won't choose another browser until I can get something as powerful and easy to use as NoScript for it. Every time I use a computer without it, it kills me. Life is so much better when you control what your browser does.
Re:Web Developer Toolbar? (Score:2, Informative)
Both Plug-ins are useful, Firebug can be quite cumbersome to load, even GMail detects it and give you a warning.
Re:What they need... (Score:3, Informative)
Hey guys; remember how it was supposed to be a fast browser?
I remember how it was supposed to be, but I don't remember that it ever was. I switched from the Mozilla Suite to Thunderbird and Phoenix, and found that the total RAM footprint went up. Firefox used less memory than the entire suite, but the combination of the two apps used more because they didn't share the core libs (they each came with their own install of all of the XUL/XPCOM stuff). Since then, it got progressively bigger.
I actually have FireFox 3.6 installed at the moment, and it seems quite lightweight in comparison to everything prior to the 3.x series (I didn't try any of them between 2.something and 3.6).
Re:What they need... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:1, Informative)
Hello? Have you seen the 'Net lately? *Every* site has blinking crap on the sides fighting for your attention!
Another use for ABP is to remove the insane background decorations of quite a few sites. Right-click on background, "Block Image" and the internet just got a whole lot better.
Point is, some people tolerate moving neon-colored crap in their peripheral vision. I don't. I yearn for another Internet, one where content is king, not al the gimmicky attention begging money scheming. Lucky for me that is somewhat doable with ABP.
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:5, Informative)
In particular, it's a latency problem for how fast pages render, even if you're not worried about the bandwidth. Slow 3rd-party advertisement and analytics servers still hold up the whole parade with Chrome adblockers: the adblock will run after you've sat around waiting on all that junk to resolve and load. With FF AdBlock's approach, if you block those 3rd-party domains, they get chopped out before the browser even bothers to resolve their DNS.
Re:What they need... (Score:5, Informative)
Hey guys; remember how it was supposed to be a fast browser?
While FF has certainly gained features, it hasn't slowed down while doing so. In fact, it's seen fairly dramatic performance INCREASES. FF hasn't gotten any slower; expectations have sharply risen.
We now expect to be able to program a 3D FPS in Javascript and CSS. The very idea was considered laughable just a few years ago. I've spent the last year building a statistical computation software that's entirely web-based, and entirely written in javascript. This, too, would have been a laughable goal if not for the dramatic performance improvements in FF and Chrome. (We don't currently support IE8 because it's just too slow; hopefully IE9 will be worthy of supporting)
Re:No extensions, no FF killer (Score:3, Informative)
Earlier today, I'd been surfing $otherTechSite in Chrome. The header loaded, but the content of the site wouldn't. Chrome indicated it was waiting on ad.doubleclick.net ...back to Firefox!
Perhaps you're so inured to the garish, Blade Runner-esque adspace that you don't need NoScript, but I enjoy not letting javascript execute as a matter of course.
Re:#1 firefox issue (Score:3, Informative)
Someone's even created ADM templates [sourceforge.net] for you.
Though it's still not as easy as IE is with WSUS, it's not any worse than trying to keep Java, Flash & Acrobat up to date & properly configured.
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:2, Informative)
I'm surprised no one's mentioned Opera. (Maybe the European users went home or to bed?) Where Firefox and Chrome have to use addons, Opera has adblock builtin. That's more efficient (i.e. smaller when running).
I still prefer Firefox as my main browser, but Opera is quickly closing that gap, at least for me.
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:4, Informative)
"Hey dude, my IP address is 192.168.0.100 -- what's yours?"
"Well that's funny, I have the same one!"
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:2, Informative)
Google ads are CPC not CPI, so they do care.
Re:Firefox lite. (Score:3, Informative)
yes. actually it's ludicrous to expect every person on the internet to know any one piece of information. especially something that's intentionally hidden from the user.
Re:HTML5, Web 3.0 (Score:3, Informative)
The solution is simple, and now probably inevitable: use the platforms native media framework (QT, DS, GST) (or perhaps use gst on all platforms). Momentum continues to increase for h.264, and it seems less and less likely that Mozilla, Opera, and Wikimedia can force Theora into widespread use. Mozilla will certainly continue the good fight against h.264 for some time, but soon enough there will be little choice, aside from becoming a bit player. Using the media framework as a backend shouldn't actually be all that hard, and I don't think that they need to be in any hurry to do this (some work has been done already on a gst backend).
As for concentrating more on HTML5 in general, they are doing quite a lot, and currently implement about as much as the other browsers.