- I feel more passion from the author.
- I value the pride they show in their work.
- I know many people actually care about beauty. In fact, with the same amount of bugs, the users of the most beautiful software will actually report it's less buggy.
The problem is when someone makes appearances more important than being useful.
But I want to give this project the benefit of the doubt.
We need more browser diversity.
Ladybird does, but it’s not really ready for prime time yet
Right now FF shares are so low devs are ignoring it.
If more browsers use this engine, more devs will test with it.
Also, if it reaches success, it make FF future more robust, which also helps with future diversity.
If google decides that they don’t want to fund Mozilla anymore, then these Firefox derivatives fall as well. I don’t really see the zen team (or other ff forks) hiring the FF devs that are making 6 figures at Mozilla.
If Firefox decides to deeply ingrain some DRM standard, there’s a high likelihood that it’ll be included in downstream browsers like this one, unless they are privacy nuts like librewolf.
We need entirely new browsers that are more than window dressing on top of existing ones.
It says it still is on their site.
I guess the answer is yes.
And Mozilla Corp is something different altogether.
But then I am a native speaker and a Brit and these are abbreviations of familiar expressions.
T'bird is owned and run by a for-profit company called MZLA.
That company is owned by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation but Mozilla does not own, run, operate, or control Thunderbird.
Comparison: Pret a Manger, the fancy sandwich chain, is part-owned by Mcdonald's. But you can't buy a Big Mac in Pret, and you can't buy a Pret fancy noodle salad in McDonald's.
But... this is literally form over function.
Browsers should be like car tyres. Only after you have selected for your functional use case and requirements, do you filter for visual aesthetics.
For browsers in particular, that is a major reason why I don't use any of the existing Firefox forks: they are all very utilitarian. But I look at a browser window pretty much all day long, so I prefer a visual design that brings me joy.
This sounds like a marketing-speak. Joy is not an experience gained by staring at the visual design of a browser. You are confusing joy and another experience, perhaps appeal or attraction.
If you genuinely experience joy from browser visual design, you are probably that same guy who experiences “delight” when a customer support representative treats you well on a phone call.
If you go to a gallery or museum and read what a professional artist says about their own work (usually found on little cards next to paintings/scriptures/etc.) their descriptions tend to be about much more focused on what they were trying to convey and how they used that medium to do it.
This is also what I've seen from professional architects.
That doesn't mean you would be any more swayed by the professional artist, but it's at least more apples to apples.
If only an amateur would use the word beautiful, then was it an amateur who wrote the content for this site?
The core of my comment was that different professions use different language. In your example, I may find a similar level of skillful description of their work, but that's not going to cross over into different domains. The architect would likely write a more compelling pitch for a building design concept than an artist who is a painter. The artist may not use the word "beautiful" but still may use other language which is a similar miss in domain language used for a successful pitch.
In my field, I have to sell software development services to customers who may not be technical. I have to be careful to limit the depth of my technical explanations. But I'm still going to use just enough domain language that the customer will intuitively understand that I have a better grasp of the work to be done than the newly hired sales guy who is doing a pitch for the company he represents.
Here's a snippet from "above the fold."
> Beautifully designed, privacy-focused, and packed with features.
Packed with features? That's like creating a menu item in your site nav entitled "Stuff" or "Misc."
Maybe they were just in a hurry.
They may be both of those things! But I can't help that my first conceit is always to think "that's not yours to decide here".
Contrary to modern misconception, beauty is objective. Taste is subjective. What makes good taste is alignment of the subjective with the objective.
So, in this case, we can ask "what makes a browser beautiful?". Well, since it is a tool, then its usefulness is intrinsic to the kind of thing it is. So, how useful it is as browser is constitutive of its beauty, as beauty has to do with the perfection with which something realizes the kind of thing it is.
If they state in the readme that it's a web browser and I can compile it using GNU make then I'll believe them. If they say it's whizzy fast and easy to learn then I'll consider that's probably somewhat true. If I read "beautiful" and "paradigm-changing" and "redefines the browsing experience" then I imagine they're just trying to puff themselves up without having anything concrete to back it up.
It's true that things can be beautiful, and there are some universal (enough) beauty standards. The signal of being beautiful is not saying "look how beautiful I am" though. It's easy to claim something like that and hard to refute, so it's not a very good signal. The beauty should speak for itself, or at least be attested to be a third-party like with a quote from a review.
All the same, I find it useful to know that the authors of the software consider "beauty" one of their goals. And beauty does not preclude utility.
> Beautifully designed, privacy-focused, and packed with features.
If I'm going to put in the effort to create something like this. There is ONE powerful reason which compels me to do this. If I'm pitching this to an investor, then I need to craft a message to convince the investor to hand over money. The above line is wasting space.
I get a sense that the message is either crafted by developers who are horrible at doing so, or by copy people who know nothing about the product. And in neither case does anyone spend significant time finding and interacting with passionate potential users to find what sorts of messaging resonates with them. As with writing, you need to find your voice, and let that voice drive the messaging.
Personally, I wouldn't even bother starting such a project if I didn't get to the "find your voice" part. Maybe the developers have some hand-wavy plan to sell options and accessories rather than having a strong starting point to solving a problem.
>is cringe at best and disingenuous at worst.
Groan. Can we stop with the hyperbole and be a little more constructive? You're saying it's "cringe" and "disingenuous" because they used a professional looking template and their marketing copy needs work? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, shall we?
But is it really the most important thing you have to say about a new browser?
It's just marketing language after all. A lot of great products are marketed using this repulsive language. I couldn't care less.