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Comment by owenmarshall | Hacker News Reader

Really? The last time I've thought to myself "gee, my browser is missing a feature I'd really like" or "all my browser needs to get better is (some improvement)" was... 2008? 2009? I'm not sure, I just know it's been a while.

And it doesn't really matter what browser I was using at the time. Chrome, Firefox, even Safari.

What do you want to make your browser better?

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I agree, I think the sentiment for better browsers resonates with web developers. I'm personally more excited by Firefox OS.

My favorite browser features are ones that combat user-hostile website features. For example: popup blockers, cookie blockers, Safari Reader.

I would love to see more features along those lines, such as de-pagination and blocking popover psuedo-windows. However as Firefox is funded indirectly through advertising, Mozilla's loyalties are necessarily mixed.

Try FF on windows 8. It's an abysmal experience. Try to remove Google vom FF Android. Not possible.

I could go on and on.

You can change the search engine in menu -> Settings -> Customise -> Search settings. Is there some other form of unremovable Google integration?

Seems like you can't delete the built-in search providers since the new home screen landed.

Goes off to file a bug...

This bug has existed for a while. It' being worked on, and quite actively this last week.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=910189

css grid support, flex-wrap support

flex-wrap is in Nightly, CSS Grids don’t have a stable spec yet.

That's awesome about flex-wrap! I have been waiting a long time.

> stable spec

I'd really like to see more vendor prefixes for support. I mean, basic flexbox support was rolled out quickly, and the spec changed like three times. Mozilla has a new 'avoid vendor prefixes' thing, which I think is the wrong approach. I'd rather just use a tool like autoprefixer to generate all of the browser-incompatible CSS until we can all agree.

I can't believe I am praising IE for being forward thinking! (they have full CSS grid support, per the draft)

Experimental support ala prefixes is still happening, they just stick it behind prefs now, so devs can turn them on to experiment with, but they can't be used in production sites. This was done in response to webkit becoming the new IE6, especially in mobile land, where countless (shitty) devs were using prefixed properties as essential parts of their stylesheets, thus breaking sites for other perfectly good browsers like Firefox and Opera.

Also grid isn't really a case of IE being forward thinking, Microsoft just happened to create the grid spec, so it's more a case of pushing their own solution, rather than being fast on implementing a new tech.

I believe MS came up with the grid spec, or at least the original draft editors were three MS employees and glazou: http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-css3-grid-layout-20110407/ . This was published five days before the first platform preview of IE10.

It does seem like a neat spec though, I’d welcome inclusion as another tool in the box.

We (Bloomberg) hired Igalia to help put some resources on implementing CSS Grid. The original MS authors didn't like the initial spec so they've been working on an improved spec w/ others (Google, Igalia) and Igalia is landing code for it in both WebKit and Blink. So it is definitely moving forward..

> Mozilla has a new 'avoid vendor prefixes' thing

FWIW, Google Blink also takes this position: http://www.chromium.org/blink#vendor-prefixes

Correct, but unfortunately, WebKit (and Safari) has not and introduced lately (read: this quarter) new properties with prefixes.

To be complete, if all goes well flex-wrap will be in Firefox 28 (unprefixed). It is in Nightly and Aurora.

CSS Grid implementation will start in 2014. A dev has been assigned to it, but I don't know where it stands in its work pile (quite high though). But plans can be changed, so beware...

I'd welcome support for outline.

Dart

Not sure why this was downvoted, I'd like to see a DartVM as well, once the spec is standardized.

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