Microsoft As The Firefox Savior?
parislemon.com
parislemon.com
Ex. Opera has about 1/10th the usage of Firefox and it has a lucrative deal with Google (and Bing and others) that put about $50M in its coffers every year. Search traffic is valuable, both at small scales like Opera and at large scales like Firefox.
I was just suggesting that you can install it once and set to disable checking compatibility for once and all. Your relatives can ignore any warnings after that.
Chrome does a better job with lots of tabs. Firefox definitely slows down with each tab. I absolutely love the way each tab in Chrome is its own separate process. Why doesn't Firefox follow their lead?
Make a "pro" or "developer" edition with the extra tools and features to keep the likes of us happy.
I'd also add that a developer edition sounds good but I'm not sure if actually is a good idea. While its true the addons are what bogs down speed, having separate editions makes Mozilla's job harder and it will make the temptation to continually add new developer pet features greater which can only hurt in the long run. A better option might be to simply have one, stripped down edition with optional extensions just like how things pretty much are.
Many people report the opposite, that Chrome does poorly with hundreds of tabs. The reason is that there is a tradeoff: Running tabs in separate processes as Chrome does takes more memory, but it does help with responsiveness. So whether Firefox or Chrome ends up 'faster' really depends on the number of tabs (and which web pages they are on), and how much memory you have. There is no perfect approach that is fast on everything.
Firefox has also gotten considerably faster. The javascript performance has improved and it is as fast if not faster than Chrome. In fact when I last heard, IE had the fastest JS engine with Chakra.
Firefox opens equally faster (cold start) with 0 or 10 tabs. This is really not a factor for me though, as I don't cold start a browser for weeks.
I love Firefox Awesomebar. I don't remember selecting a bookmark or opening history menu on FF. Also, I still don't find some equally good addons/extensions for Chromium e.g. mouse gestures. Addons are better integrated with FF compared to Chromium.
Then there's some claims that Firefox and Chrome are bloated, to which I can only say: you are aware that current webpages are more complex than those of 5 years ago, are you? I strongly suspect both browsers have gotten significantly faster over the years in relevant benchmarks.
If the author had done some basic research, he could have avoided this:
But Marco is right, the real key going forward is mobile. And Mozilla is going to have a very hard time competing there simply because they do not control their own platform. Firefox Phone, anyone?
This effort already exists for some months: https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G
This quote made me laugh, because Firefox was forked from Mozilla because Mozilla was too bloated. It just seems like a perpetual cycle.
That's a genuine question, the only thing I can think of is the 'Apps' dashboard with a link to the Chrome Web Store, apart from that Chrome seems to consist of just the essential elements of a browser.
Some of the newer WebKit features are getting bloated as well, and are built-in even if you don't need them - e.g. the new Javascript de-obsfucation feature in the developer tools.
Helen: Think of the parents!
The word 'bloated' can be overused, but let's ignore the choice of word the GP used. The fact is, Chrome downloads have been getting bigger and bigger (there was an article here on HN a while back with some numbers), which isn't surprising because a lot more is being included. For example,
* Flash
* PDF viewer
* Developer tools suite
* Chrome-specific technologies like NaCl
* Chrome Store support
* Proposed web standards like Web Audio API and WebSQL (which are significantly more complex and large in comparison to alternative proposed standards to them) and SPDY
Now, the significant increase in size might be justified in some people's opinion, it's debatable of course.
But now that Bing is equally good (kind of), I think they can really consider it if need be and still manage to not seen as selling out its users.
I believe that there is still huge scope for a better browser. Chrome is Google's browser - and open community cant trust Big G. Chromium has a big minus point: no auto-update. You need to download and install newer versions manually.
I want a fast browser (may be WebKit + V8) developed by any non-profit and reputed organization like Mozilla.
But we can't expect an end-user to use such things.
I find Chromium an uncomplete product. :( Also, it is not developed by the open-community.
Also, Chrome does definitely auto-update. It does it better than Firefox does (and I'm saying that as a Mozilla employee).
Give Firefox 8 (or 9 or 10 or 11, if you're into betas or nightlies) another chance, with a clean profile. I think you'll find it to be incredibly fast.
I agree that add-ons are slowing down Firefox. I expect Jetpacks to overcome this problem, but it seems that add-on devs are not much happy with jetpacks/addon sdk.
>> Also, Chrome does definitely auto-update
I am talking about Chromium here
As far as bloat goes, well addons account for a lot of bad performance and we have to remember that Firefox is old and there are people who have been using it for ages. Those people are carrying a lot of baggage in the form of old browser profiles, the user database, maybe even years worth of cookies and history. Setting up a totally fresh Firefox install would speed things up for many.
But I can't be a Mozilla apologist. I switched to Chrome but use FF for testing. I've found that FF is what I wouldn't exactly call "slow" but just "less fast" than Chrome.
It seems most software ends up bloated. Anyone who codes knows that code is never finished. There's always that temptation to add more and more to a project. Security updates and under the hood stuff is boring. New features are sexy! Sex sells. I recently created my own little web dev boilerplate and the first version was a nice starting point. Then I had this urge to add stuff until it was no longer a boilerplate but pretty much an entire website minus content. Ridiculous. It sucks but it's reality and we need to control that impulse to constantly add where no additions are needed.
Edit: spelling.
Technically Google is in the business of advertising. They don't really care how you see the ads, so long as advertisers remain happy. Search just happens to be a good way to present those ads.
You say you don't use Firefox on mobile, which is fine, but then you seem to claim their product isn't on the devices you're using, when it is.
The business desktop will be around for a long time, I agree, as its interfaces are much more practical for all-day use.
Nope. The desktop computer is dead. Home users will go tablet.
Enterprise users don't use Firefox today, and they probaby won't tomrrow unless something drastic happens.
People will still need to do word processing at home. Yes, tablets do an awesome job, you can get wireless keyboards etc. but there will still be users who feel more comfortable with the desktop. That's an edge case so I'll go on.
Movie editing. I don't think the iPad can replace iMovie and won't for some time. I'm sure they can come close but then people still want to burn to DVD. Same with photo editing.
And there's a lot more I think we're overlooking. There's no doubt that desktops are on the decline but their not going the way of the mainframe. They'll find their place and that place won't be as prominent as it is but I really doubt it'll be obsolete for home users at least not in the next 5 years.