Firefox and the 4-Year Battle To Have Google To Treat It as a First-Class Citizen (zdnet.com) 319
Web monoculture is well and truly alive when Google cannot be bothered to make a full-featured cross-browser mobile search page. From a report: It has been over five years since Firefox really turned a corner and started to morph from its bloated memory-munching ways into the lightning-quick browser it is today. Buried in Mozilla's issue tracker is a bug that kicked off in February 2014, and is yet to be resolved: Have Google treat Firefox for Android as a first-class citizen and serve up comparable content to what the search giant hands Chrome and Safari. After years of requests, meetings, and to and fro, it has hit a point where the developers of Firefox are experimenting by manipulating the user agent string in its nightly development builds to trick Google into thinking that Firefox Mobile is a Chrome browser. Not only does Google's search page degrade for Firefox on Android, but some new properties like Google Flights have occasionally taken to outright blocking of the browser.
Anti-Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a good case for an anti-trust suit.
Re: If you're a loser who needs a government bailo (Score:5, Insightful)
I realise it is a troll, but it is always worth reminding people that capitalism requires a well regulated market. Whatever you may think of it, if people contributing to the market are allowed to lie, cheat, steal or otherwise manipulate the rules of the game what you have is not capitalism. To what extent that already happens is left as an exercise to the reader. Google has been allowed to become a monopoly, which makes abuse far easier for them to abuse the market to the point it is difficult to avoid. Time for some scrutiny.
Re: If you're a loser who needs a government bailo (Score:5, Insightful)
The definition (from Merriam-Webster) of capitalism is:
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
There is no requirement for well regulated or anything.
This is an example of the no true Scotsman fallacy. Concretely, pure capitalism seems to lead to monopolies. Instead of accepting this and thus that pure capitalism is not perfect, people try to change the definition of it.
Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no requirement for well regulated or anything.
There is if you want it to actually work in the real world. Dictionary definitions are pretty much useless here. There is nothing wrong with private ownership and profit motives and they routinely benefit society greatly. That said, we have centuries of evidence that in more than a few cases we have to make and enforce some rules to keep things moving smoothly. Anyone who denies this fact is either clueless or has ulterior motives.
Concretely, pure capitalism seems to lead to monopolies.
Only in some cases. Monopolies are not universally a bad thing - in some contexts they can be quite helpful. Utilities for example actually have the lowest costs when there is a monopoly. In some industries achieving a monopoly would be a good approximation of impossible even with no regulation of any kind. But in all cases any monopoly needs to be examined closely and regulated to some degree. I can think of no case where an unregulated monopoly has been a good thing for society.
Re:Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no problem with the dictionary here, just what people's general understanding of two concepts are.
There are two fundamentally different concepts being talked about here.
The conversation started with boohoo about lack of regulation to defeat a monopoly.
The following post talked about capitalism requiring well regulated markets.
That's where it all went wrong. The dictionary definition is on point. Capitalism has nothing to do with functioning of the market. What a lot of people confuse capitalism with is the concept of a free market. What a lot of people confuse a free market with is a perfect market.
A perfect market needs regulation, as a free market system under capitalism is an inherently unstable system. That's why the GP was right where he said capitalism (combined with the free market) naturally leads to monopolies. Companies fight each other and as soon as one gains an advantage over the other there's the opportunity to buy out. Hence capitalism in a free market tends towards monopolies unless a government attempts to regulate it back to a perfect market (something that can often be seen as against the spirit and definition of capitalism).
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>"Instead of accepting this and thus that pure capitalism is not perfect, people try to change the definition of it."
Pure capitalism *is* perfect, in theory. Unfettered capitalism works great assuming perfect information availability, perfect freedom, and perfectly educated and informed consumers. The problem is that doesn't happen like that in the real world. Hence, the need for some limited regulation to help stop monopolies from taking over and destroying competition.
The tricky part is striking the
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The definition (from Merriam-Webster) of capitalism is:
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
There is no requirement for well regulated or anything.
This is an example of the no true Scotsman fallacy. Concretely, pure capitalism seems to lead to monopolies. Instead of accepting this and thus that pure capitalism is not perfect, people try to change the definition of it.
This, free markets require necessary regulation, capitalism requires no such thing. There has never been a true capitalist economy, unlike communism which has been tried and failed, pure capitalism failed before even getting off the ground. Almost all successful economies are mixed, neither pure capitalist or socialist.
OTOH, free markets can be strangled by too much unnecessary regulation. Its a balancing act.
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In a truly f
Re: If you're a loser who needs a government bailo (Score:4, Insightful)
Concretely, pure capitalism seems to lead to monopolies. Instead of accepting this and thus that pure capitalism is not perfect, people try to change the definition of it.
Um... ok, you "win", let's say that capitalism doesn't by definition require regulation. Now that that epic and meaningful battle is over, can we get on with talking about how regulation is needed EVEN IF IT'S NOT PART OF THE DEFINITION?
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Absent some sort of regulation (even self-regulation works), all of the money ends up on one side of the table; then, you no longer have a market and capitalism has failed.
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if people contributing to the market are allowed to lie, cheat, steal or otherwise manipulate the rules of the game what you have is not capitalism.
Actually, that sounds exactly like capitalism.
Re: If you're a loser who needs a government bailo (Score:4, Insightful)
I am frequently amazed how Americans manage to make things be about the right to be able to kill other people at the squeeze of a trigger.
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I am frequently amazed how Americans manage to make things be about the right to be able to kill other people at the squeeze of a trigger.
You ... literally just defined government. " the right to be able to {officially} kill other people at the squeeze of a trigger"
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You ... literally just defined government. " the right to be able to {officially} kill other people at the squeeze of a trigger"
It is sad how limited view you have of government. Legal execution of people is in no way a requirement of governing said people. In the majority of countries in the world it is illegal for anyone to execute any of its citizen (sans self defence).
Re: If you're a loser who needs a government bail (Score:2)
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Not necessarily with the intent to kill you. In Europe we have hostage negotiators, not hostage executors.
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I am frequently amazed how Americans manage to make things be about the right to be able to kill other people at the squeeze of a trigger.
I think the true problem in the US is the fact that people want to have rights without responsibilities. I have nothing against anyone owning a gun so long as they take responsibility for it and store it, and its ammunition, in a safe manner. The problem is that people often neglect to do so because they're paranoid about home invasions and other such things that, while they do happen, are statistically unlikely to happen to any specific person.
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If guns are readily available, then nutters and dope fiends, and your average maniac can get old of the guns and go on a murder rampage.
If guns are less available then there are less nutters on the rampage with guns. A small number of non-nutters could be mildly i
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So you'd be fine with keeping your gun stored in a central locker at the shooting range?
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Newsflash: The most important aspect of July 4th to me, personally, was my grandmother's birthday. It is not a celebrated holiday in Europe.
And again, this isn't about my perception of the second amendment; it's about how the comment I replied to jumped from talking about regulation of business in a free market to said second amendment without even stopping to take a breath.
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And I'd argue that the referenced definition means "Under control instead of random hillbillies that like to shoot at redcoats", but what do I know.
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Try harder next time, idiot euro-troll.
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If not the government, then who else?
The people. After all, that's who the governemt is supposed to be of and for in this country.
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Capitalism doesn't result in a "realy free market", that's why government controls are needed.
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That sounds like the Windows vs. Linux debate. On both sides.
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Sad how things have changed.
Re:You are civically and historically incompetent (Score:4, Informative)
Because if you knew what you're talking about, you'd know that the progressive era anti-trust campaigns were started by REPUBLICAN Teddy Roosevelt.
#fail
Back to history class for you!
And if YOU actually knew history, you would know:
As Governor of New York, Roosevelt made a lot of waves with his anti-trust campaigns, and it really pissed off the Republicans. So, they came up with a plan to get rid of him.
When William McKinley was running for president in 1900, the Republicans nominated Roosevelt for Vice President because it's a do-nothing job with no real authority to do anything. Making Roosevelt Vice President would put an end to his anti-trust activities.
Unfortunately (for Republicans), McKinley died a month after taking office and Roosevelt became president.
Reigniting the browser wars (Score:5, Interesting)
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Tor Browser (Score:2)
Tor Browser conspicuously features duckduckgo.com as the preferred search engine.
Microsoft provides search services for Duck Duck Go, so much that Bing's results are commonly identical. Firefox can and should promote Bing in all of it's guises.
The startpage.com search engine appears to be based in Europe, and seems to continue to outsource to Google although this branding was recently removed from the home page.
It is Firefox that should demote Google to a second-class citizen, immediately opening an incogni
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"I have plenty of hearsay and supposition, those are kinds of evidence." If the browser isn't displaying properly according to the standards, and they serve up the same results to everyone, then they cannot be held responsible, and are not at fault. Conversely, to intentionally dole out different results to different people makes them involved and therefore legally culpable. The intelligent thing to do would be to not change the results.
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In the real world the regulator will blame Google if the site screws up in a major browser and breaks the law. One of the rules will be "must take reasonable care to prevent errors" and saying "we didn't bother to test" or "we did test but ignored it because it's a Firefox bug" isn't going to cut it.
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Wow, some Firefox fan was triggered by there mere suggestion that Google /isn't/ persecuting them...
I'm kind of a Firefox fan, I'm using Pale Moon. But if Google would just code to the standards, then there would be no excuse for blocking Firefox... Remember when Google was known for their simple, clean interfaces? Pepperidge farms etc.
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Herr is spelt with two 'r's and coffee just makes me worse
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Perhaps but they are different from the consumer rights authorities who care about the airline booking process.
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In the same sense that they're free to fart in the Elevator and piss on the walls in a public restroom.
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What about pissing on the walls of an elevator? [youtube.com]
It needs to remain a choice (Score:2)
It is okay. That's called "freedom of choice." It may or may not be a good business move, but they're free to do that.
The concern is that it ceases to be a choice. We almost had that unfortunate state of affairs with Internet Explorer before Firefox came along and it wasn't good. If Google manages to make Chrome a de-facto standard then they effectively can push all other browers out of the market and start establishing "standards" at will that favor them and them alone. This is not an idle or trivial concern.
I hate Google. That's why I don't use their products. That's my choice. You have the same option.
I have better things to do than to waste my time hating a company. I tried that in the past and it was a waste
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because its the unpopular tool, its not a target for hackers any more, unlike Chrome, which is a #1 target.
Sucks to be #1
Second, we have great anti google tracking shit.
FireFox Developer IS GREAT
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It's not that simple. It's essentially trying to draw a rectangle of negative width and height. Yes it should work the same across browsers, no this is not "simply coloring a DIV tag".
Firefox is best browser (Score:2, Interesting)
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Monocultures are bad (Score:5, Insightful)
It was bad 10 years ago, when pages were “best viewed in Internet Explorer”. The fact that nowadays it’s Google Chrome rather than IE doesn’t make it any less bad.
Code your web pages using web standards, guys. Then, if things are broken in a particular browser - submit a bug report.
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The problem isn't Chrome. The problem is the Google websites that are made to only work well with Chrome.
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I just don't use Google search. (Score:5, Interesting)
And I don't miss anything. Use ixquick, duckduckgo, searx. Don't use Google, period.
It takes some time to get used to (with no tracking, the search engine knows less about you, that means you've got to think a bit more about your search terms), but who wants to degenerate into some kind of jellyfish attached to Google? Remember: their business model depends on this happening, whereas your sanity depends on this not happening. Google and you are not allies!
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whereas your sanity depends on this not happening.
Too late. Google not only owns my soul, but now-a-days actually IS my soul.... and sanity's overrated anyway.
Firefox is getting respect from google... (Score:4, Interesting)
...In the same way Trump is getting 'respect' from Putin. Trying to imitate your competitor absolutely and completely is no way to help either of you. The only thing you're going to get in return is mild amusement from your competition, and an audience confused about what you're even trying to offer them.
Killing plugins/statusbar/etc. was basically sabotaging everything that made Firefox hold an advantage. Trying to compete as a Chrome clone, just makes it useless as a choice.
I'll stick with Firefox 56 until a new browser based on that version takes off.
Ryan Fenton
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Killing plugins/statusbar/etc. was basically sabotaging everything that made Firefox hold an advantage. Trying to compete as a Chrome clone, just makes it useless as a choice.
A chrome clone? Let me know when chrome supports noscript, and then let me know when it supports noscript on mobile.
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I've switched to waterfox, best of both worlds, 1 of about 25 plugins stopped working (image-zoom).
dumbed down & inaccurate search results (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone get respect from Google search? I search for two words, word1 and word2, and right there on page 1 of the results are many that don't include one of the necessary words. Farther down are words that are similar but wrong. And, still on page 1 of the results are finds that include neither word. Some results have oriental characters and no English at all.
Google says there are 52,200 results. I click on the last page and it says "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 300 already displayed.", except that there were less than 200 hits, very few of which matched the criteria.
Google used to inform users of the size of each web page in the results. A search result that was 10K bytes might be a good hit, but a search result page that was 4MB was probably a spam page with a long list of random words.
Much additional information was available about each search result that is now denied us. Those of us who haven't forgotten know that the information is available. Google has simply decided not to give it to us. After all these years is there no competitor that can replicate the original search engine and give Google some competition?
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Google used to inform users of the size of each web page in the results. A search result that was 10K bytes might be a good hit, but a search result page that was 4MB was probably a spam page with a long list of random words.
Sadly, these days it's not too surprising for a page to actually be 4MB.
Re:dumbed down & inaccurate search results (Score:4, Informative)
Google does this because the old search engines that didn't do it were all crap and died off.
Google understands synonyms, acronyms and related concepts. It understands multiple languages and offers translation services so that you can too.
Turns out, that is better than just vomiting out the results of a database query on the search terms in almost every case.
Where it tends to fail is when someone tries to subvert it by using 1998-style search terms, e.g. "WORD1" AND "WORD2". Maybe they need a retro mode. Or try one of the following terrible search engines instead:
http://www.excite.com/ [excite.com]
http://www.aliweb.com/ [aliweb.com]
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No it bloody does not! It has a serious case of Dunning-Kruger when thinking about the subject. Google search mostly returns a pile of utter garbage, unless you want to buy a fashion item on Amazon (I presume - I don't buy fashion items, and don't use Amazon).
A cage full of deranged hamsters could probably return better results using systemd.
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Can you provide an example of a Google search that produces "utter garbage", and ideally another site that gives better results or at least some idea of what you wanted.
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Does anyone get respect from Google search? I search for two words, word1 and word2, and right there on page 1 of the results are many that don't include one of the necessary words. Farther down are words that are similar but wrong. And, still on page 1 of the results are finds that include neither word. Some results have oriental characters and no English at all.
I face the same struggles with Google almost every day. You CAN get better results. Put the terms that you need an exact match for between double quotes. Type allintext: at the beginning of your terms to get hits that contain ALL of your terms. I've noticed lately that Google is starting to ignore these to some extent; but results are still far, far better than if you give them carte blanche to use their thoroughly inept mind-reading algorithms and their laughable thesaurus entries.
Much additional information was available about each search result that is now denied us.
You can get back some of
Re:dumbed down & inaccurate search results (Score:5, Informative)
uhh, just put "quotes" around the mandatory words.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22google... [lmgtfy.com]
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Uhh quotes are broken too.
Re:dumbed down & inaccurate search results (Score:5, Informative)
uhh, just put "quotes" around the mandatory words.
The problem: Google doesn't properly recognize boolean searches anymore. That's "" and/or/not/(), and so on. If you want specialized searches that adhere to boolean use bing, startpage, ddg, and so on. Google gives you the results it thinks you want, not what you're asking for.
Re:dumbed down & inaccurate search results (Score:5, Informative)
Google gives you the results it thinks you want, not what you're asking for.
No, Google gives you the results Google wants you to see, hoping they are close enough to what you were looking for that you do not realize the difference.
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Pretty sure a preceding minus still means NOT so you can do true Boolean.
One or Two -not "and"
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In fact if you look at the search results that don't include the word you wanted, right below them is a little link that says "must include " that you can click on to get only results that include that specific text.
We wouldn't (Score:3, Interesting)
Be going thru this bullshit if Microsoft had been crushed in court like it should have been in the late 90s.
Chrome worse than IE. (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Chrome worse than IE. (Score:5, Insightful)
Realistically I think Firefox lost market share because every time users searched for something with the default search engine they were offered a 'faster' browser. And google also advertises chrome outside of the internet, advertising works. Are there any polls on this that don't just poll techies?
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I never really used Chrome so I don't know if at any point it was much better than Firefox. I think it used to be a lot faster than the fox but I still think that the omnipresent publicity may have helped a great deal in making Chrome the majority browser.
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Realistically I think Firefox lost market share because every time users searched for something with the default search engine they were offered a 'faster' browser. And google also advertises chrome outside of the internet, advertising works. Are there any polls on this that don't just poll techies?
I think it's be very hard to get a representative poll on why the whole Internet went one way or the other, but it's not like Firefox was the vastly superior option that got buried by Google's marketing. It was one huge monolithic process with memory leaks and if you ran a number of extensions - supposedly the big advantage - it could be absolutely terrible. And one bad page causing a lock-up or a bug could kill your entire session. I'd been using Firefox since it was the Phoenix like version 0.6 or somethi
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What you say may be true for some. The only thing pushing me away from Firefox is Firefox itself. The ONLY reason I am using it right now to post this is because noscript still seems to work. If it did not, I would be on the sickeningly invasive Chrome.
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Most Android devices don't ship with Chrome as the default browser, precisely because Microsoft was punished for trying to make it a requirement of shipping Windows with PCs. It's up to the manufacturer, and lots of them do include different browsers.
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Chrome should never have been allowed to gain a dominant market share. But Firefox conceded market share with dropping XUL and its numerous UI “experiments” too. Google should be forced to have a “browser choice” screen on Android to give other browsers a chance.
But ... but ... "Pocket"!!
Re: Chrome worse than IE. (Score:2)
Absolutely it should but we're talking about Google here.
Used to use Firefox (Score:2)
Whined about it on this very site for a solid 5 years. Really really loved a lot of things about it, infact almost everything except performance, it's woeful when you load it up with many many tabs (chrome, is not like this)
Sadly, they fixed the performance issue, by destroying all their plugins and switching plugin types, so I've stopped using it.
As for mobile systems, well that's sad too. Firefox is awful on mobile, just the interactivity with opening a tab. I tend to hold down "open in new backgroun
Re:Used to use Firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, they fixed the performance issue, by destroying all their plugins and switching plugin types, so I've stopped using it.
No they didn't destroy all the extensions and many of the popular ones are long since back up and running. Noscript for example.
As for mobile systems, well that's sad too. Firefox is awful on mobile, just the interactivity with opening a tab.
works for me (tm). and it's the only way of getting Javascript-free browsing on android that I know of.
Re:Used to use Firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
Tab me plus is critical for me, utterly critical, took 3 Chrome plugins to replicate it, but it's behaving as intended now.
Firefox it's unstable and Alpha, for the new plugin framework
Firefox mobile is atrocious, I do not know how you use this at all, as stated the sensitivity and hold down time, click detection for opening the context menu on a url is AWFUL. Chrome leaves it for dead on mobile.
I suspect Firefox is to be gone in the next few years, sad. I loved it very very much and was a die DIE hard supporter for a very long time, but too little, too late.
i love FF on android - dark theme (Score:3)
Thank god for dark mode on FF.
Google and others, WHITE SUCKS
White websites are shit.
Its so yahoo 1999.
Yeah - slashdot too, ugly as fuck as its white - great with plugin making it dark.
White is ass shite ugly.
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Tab me plus is critical for me, utterly critical, took 3 Chrome plugins to replicate it
So you're going to just leave us all hanging?
This is just like the TV series Firefly, except with shiny silver foxes.
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Tab me plus is critical for me, utterly critical, took 3 Chrome plugins to replicate it, but it's behaving as intended now.
Were you able to get multiple rows of tabs on Chrome? That's the feature I miss most after Tab Mix Plus got axed by the new Firefox "improvements".
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The click and hold for context menu has always worked just fine for me, and without any indications of how it's "AWFUL" (Too slow? Too sensitive? Too large a detection area? Too small a detection area?) it'd be hard for someone to fix it.
I do pop into Chrome for some things, particularly things th
Privacy Browser (Score:2)
F-Droid has a browser implemented with the system Webview that disables Javascript by default, and gives you a one-button enable.
Privacy Browser [f-droid.org] does not offer extensions, but it does have a few more useful features, including blocklists and Tor integration.
I hope that you find it useful.
Default to a different search engine. (Score:2)
Re: Default to a different search engine. (Score:2)
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Ads don't need to be clicked to be effective.
A big part of advertisement is brand awareness, they just want you to know that their product exist. That your actually buy stuff through the link is just icing on the cake.
There are also different way advertisers pay for ads: per click or per impression. For the second one, clicking doesn't matter, advertisers just pay just to be visible, and bogus click won't change anything. For the "per click" pricing, bogus clicks may decrease the value of a click to compens
Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
User-Agent headers, and browser fingerprinting in general, are the worst idea ever made for the web.
Seriously, put up standardised content. If it doesn't display, either you code is not-to-standard, or their device is. Guess who suffers? The party who skimped on their implementation (i.e. you because your website doesn't work for your customers, or them because they can't get on standard websites that others can).
The second we said "Okay, so what are you accessing it on, so I can fix my rubbish site to take account of your particular quirks", we lost the point of the web.
History of User-Agent (Score:2, Interesting)
https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
Canvas and Tor (Score:2)
Browser fingerprinting is big business. Tor Browser constantly throws warning dialogs for sites using the canvas element in attempts to uniquely identify your machine.
Tor Browser also warns you not to maximize it, as your monitor size is also useful tracking information.
Not Just Google... (Score:3)
I think this is simply a case of lack of support for HTML5 standards. Well, that and the fact that it also locks out the non-Windows, non-Mac community.
Good to see that all those tax dollars we put towards anti-trust protections for citizens are well spent...
And the cycle continues once again... (Score:2, Insightful)
And once again history repeats itself. Microsoft stole the crown of evil from IBM back in the late 80s-early 90s, now Google has conclusively stolen the mantle for themselves by doing the exact same anticompetitive bullshit.
I wonder who the next one will be, and how long it will take Google to stop being evil (a point which IBM have already reached; Windows 10's slurping shows that MS aren't there yet).
Remember DR-DOS? Same thing - different players. (Score:5, Informative)
Does anyone remember how Microsoft played similar games with DR-DOS by deliberately making their programs crash, complain, or do strange things when said programs noticed that the operating system was DR-DOS rather than MS-DOS? It's the same thing but with different players.
Relevant XKCD (Score:2, Insightful)
F*ck greedy ass Google (Score:2)
Stop being a d*ckhead Google, fix your shit.
Re: Orwellian doublespeak (Score:5, Insightful)
Using your monopoly in one market (search) to tilt the playing field for your product in another (browser) is a textbook example of anticompetitive behaviour. Browser products should be allowed to compete on their own terms.
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And it is still a memory hog. Now with multiple processes, it can suck up all of the RAM on my laptop, and I need to shut down Firefox to run some other application. As a workaround, I had to change the configuration to reduce the number of processes.