Firefox Hello
mozilla.org
mozilla.org
A bunch of the hypothetical questions here on HN could be answered easily by skimming over this page and some of the pages linked in.
Edit: I'm not suggesting its bad or good to get a project to a more polished state before open-sourcing it, mainly just pointing out that for good/bad, Mozilla does happen to keep the entirety of the process very open.
If a company periodically dumps a large project tree online but continues the development and management behind closed doors, it makes it very difficult anyone else to make use of or build upon the source without forking it completely (and forking has its own risks).
This is why windlep is pointing out that Mozilla "develops in the open", as opposed to being merely open source.
I also don't think it's unfair to do code dumps, if the code is available then job done. Other projects provide additional hand holding, but in my opinion that's a feature that the original authors have the freedom to choose to not implement.
I'm really pleased that Mozilla have chosen an open development model.
For example, v8 - a very important part of Chromium - is not developed fully openly: major features are developed secretly and land as surprises, like CrankShaft and TurboFan, and also daily development consists of patches landing with little or no public discussion behind them.
Beyond JS engines, you must appreciate that dependencies and business relationships can get very odd when shipping something as big and complicated as a browser. Chrome/Chromium absolutely experiences this, but so does Mozilla. Take HTML EME, where Adobe's technical requirements have pretty much forced Mozilla to break Andreas' and Brendan's original promises on how much the closed-source CDM will be sandboxed. Then there's the h.264 situation, which is an odd multi-step dance to deliver binaries from Cisco, and is significantly more convoluted than Chrome's use of ffmpeg.
Regardless, I don't believe you're really trying to make the argument that Chromium is not a publicly developed open source project with a huge pool of non-Google contributors. Because you know that to simply be an indisputable fact, even if there is additional complexity around certain dependencies and platforms.
But I strongly disagree on two things you mention:
Regarding asm.js, that is not how it was developed. It was from day 1 done on an open github repo,
https://github.com/dherman/asm.js/
There was never anything secret about it. (What would we have even gained by being secretive about it? Nothing.)
Also, in v8 the issue is not just CrankShaft and TurboFan, but as I mentioned, daily development. I file bugs when I find v8 failing on an emscripten output, and so I follow v8 commits. There is almost no public discussion on them - just patches, plus perhaps a review comment or two. No public bug with background, explanations, motivation, etc. The code is open, but development is clearly not.
I think it's obvious v8 is a major part of chromium, and it's completely unnecessarily developed in a non-open manner. So I think it's fair to say the chromium browser as a whole - as opposed to the chromium project itself - is not developed fully openly.
Another example is Dart. Dart is not yet part of chromium, but the plans to integrate it are public. Dart was developed secretly for a while, and in fact only became known unintentionally in a leaked email. It's not clear when it would have become public if not for that leaked email. Again, like with v8, this is unnecessarily closed development - there are no legal issues or partners that must be compromised with. It was just decided that v8 and Dart would be developed non-openly (for reasons I can't understand).
To your argument that Chromium is not developed fully openly, you must understand that Blink and Chromium contributors dwarf the v8 team by orders of magnitude, right (even the security team is a bigger)? And you understand that the difference in code size is even larger, right? I get that you're focused on JS because it's your area, but in the grand scheme it's only one of many, many important pieces. And if we're going to dig into it like this, do you really believe every part of Firefox would hold up to the same level of scrutiny? after all, Richard Stallman has made similar arguments about Firefox not being truly free.
Now for Dart. I just don't see Chromium approaching Dart the same way Mozilla approached asm.js. On the contrary, I strongly expect that dart.js will need to prove the viability and popularity of the language before Chromium includes any specific optimizations or support for it. As for the "leaks," I suggest you read the doc people are referencing and consider the timelines involved. Because, the content paints a very different picture, and the timelines don't at all align with what you're claiming.
As for why the Dart team follows their particular development practice, I don't know. They spun out of the original v8 team and aren't a part of Chrome team. However, I do know both Dart and v8 have some non-negligible testing and workflows tied to Google infrastructure. So, it may just be hard for them to switch, or maybe no one has ever made the case to do so. Honestly, have you tried just asking nicely rather than making accusations? I mean, you say you can't understand it, but your behavior seems to assume and voice the worst motivations for anything related to Google.
What are you saying we should have done differently during the early research period of asm.js? (Honest question, this situation happens all the time with new research projects - I'd love to do better next time.)
And how exactly was the non-prominence "taken advantage of"? What benefit did we get from it?
I completely agree with you about chromium (the project) being open, and yes, clearly it is far larger than v8. Also, very likely I consider v8 to be more important than the average person, since JS is my area, that is a fair point.
Still, I don't want to go all the way to saying something like "v8 is negligible". It's not. JS is the only standardized programming language available for web pages. The JS writing community is huge. People writing websites use HTML, JS and CSS, with JS being pivotal. So JS does matter quite a lot, even if v8's size is small in comparison to the rest of chromium.
Hence, v8 not being developed openly is a black mark against the openness of the chromium browser. That seems an unavoidable conclusion. But it is open to debate on the amount - is v8 more or less important - of course.
I'm not sure what you think I'm claiming about Dart, if you think the timeline in the Dart document doesn't align with anything I said?
I apologize if it seems like I'm assuming the worst about Google's motivations regarding anything. I think I was pretty careful in not talking about motivations, because I don't know them. The facts are that v8 development is not fully open. And, it is a fact that I don't understand that. Not sure how that shows I think Google is being evil or anything like that? Not is anything I said an "accusation" about Google's motivations, as again, I tried to focus on the observable facts. (Or, did you make that statement referring to something else I said - if so, what?)
I have talked to v8 people, and I have asked questions about openness and development procedures and so forth. I also file bugs regularly and interact with them on the tracker. I admire the v8 developers - they are doing an amazing job! So I'm not someone from afar that is assuming the worst. I'm someone that likes the v8 project, tries to help out, and interacts with it, while at the same time is kind of puzzled and disappointed that it isn't developed openly. And I feel that reflects poorly on chromium. That's all.
I hope a UX person can have a good look at this sometime.
I always thought the system for displaying the bookmarks bar was a bit daft because you could only see about 10 bookmarks before running out of horizontal room. On OSX at least we have a dedicated "Bookmarks" menu but using it under Linux and Windows was always painful due to this strange (IMHO) design.
* Open source contributors have to approach the codebase from a much more advanced, and often more burdened or rigid, state
* The mainline developers, who worked on the code before release, aren't necessarily used to, or open to, accepting contributions as if the project had been developed in the open from a much more primitive state.
* Sometimes the dump literally just means "here's the code", and isn't an indication that the project is looking for significant or lasting contributions at all.
* Sometimes when companies open source their stuff what they're really doing is putting it out to pasture... but this isn't always apparent upon release.
* Often the project isn't hosted on a neutral platform, like Github or the company still works on v2 in a private fork.
For example, look at projects like the original Netscape/Mozilla or Libreoffice open source projects and how long they took to build communities (with the former, they really didn't exist with non-AOL communities until AFTER a complete rewrite - Firefox - was launched; same was true with StarOffice/OpenOffice/Libreoffice). Then look at the similarly sized projects of Linux distributions, KDE, GNOME, and many others.
Being able to get involved with a project early on, before it's too big to really jump into quickly and make a meaningful contribution, really helps build that initial core of developers who believe in and want/need the project.
despite your edit - I'm felling you are suggestiong it's worse model.
All of this means you can't get away with shady stuff, or cool stuff that doesn't align with the project. But products need to evolve to stay competitive, and the downside is that the added friction from having to respond to people who are not in the payroll about what to develop and what to release means Firefox doesn't have the capacity to move as fast as Chrome does, for example.
Firefox hello is a website that implements webRTC based video conferencing in a browser agnostic way.
The "firefox hello" button that has shown up in recent versions of the browser is a bit of UI magic over an API to this website. The video conferencing code is not implemented in the browser.
If you send a firefox hello link to a chrome user, it opens the webpage when they click on it instead of the UI element.
I actually think it's really neat, and have replaced skype with it since it works so widely and doesn't require everyone to have an account to use it.
It's very misleading. The page is full of quotes like these:
"All you need is Firefox"
"Get Firefox to get started"
"Want to start using Hello? All you need is Firefox"
"Get Firefox and start your first conversation"
Then the link you get can be used on any browser.
If I'm wrong, I'd love to know how to start a conversation from a different browser.
I moved abroad and I have a chat with my parents using Skype from time to time. After the Microsoft acquisition Skype had to be upgraded and the old version stopped working. My parents aren't tech-savvy really and I failed to diagnose their problem remotely, so I tried https://talky.io/ (just because I watched Sam Dutton talk about WebRTC and he used that web for a demo).
It worked (to be completely fair, slightly worse than an average Skype session), and it kind of blew my mind. My parents weren't impressed though, when I explained them how amazing was that we were video conferencing using a website and open standards.
EDIT: typos
For the record, my experience has been that firefox hello is superior in quality to skype.
Seriously, I've lived in more than half of the European countries for a while, and never ever EVER saw such a shitty internet service as in Spain over their network. Lack of service for hours every day, substandard speeds... It made me anticipate a move to Portugal by one year because of their shitty service.
in Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKHUA3bs1iY
translated: Published on Jan 15, 2015
The Mayor of Manilva, Urieta Diego and director of the South Territory of Telefónica Spain, María Jesús Almazor, held a meeting to present the expansion plans the company has planned for the town. Thus, they have confirmed that it has begun the deployment of Fiber to the Home (FTTH) and that citizens already have 4G technology.
According highlighted the mayor, Manilva, later this year will be the first municipality in Andalusia to have installed fiber optic network in the hundred percent of the town.
I'm currently with them because my preferred cable provider (R) didn't have coverage in my building a year ago, but now they do have coverage, so I'm probably saying bye-bye to Telefonica soon. Yes, the service is now technically good, even probably the best (FTTH), but who cares if all their policies (the above is just an example but there are lots more) are set to nickel-and-dime the customers, and to sell more and more and more. You can't even do a technical service call without them spamming you and trying to sell you stuff. R doesn't have FTTH but has a much, much better customer service (including automatic improvements in the bandwidth for time to time, without even asking).
I mean, they do deliver decent internet, but their customer service is awful.
So? You have to send written notice to cancel any contract in Germany. This is totally standard.
Actually from my experience that was pretty good compared to uh... Telefonica in Argentina.
And then people complain about Comcast!
Telefonica was providing services in villages and small towns with very difficult geography (mountains, roads, ...). Now there is a big competition in Spain, for example Jazztel is offering 200Gigabit/s up-down for 36 euros/moth and phone tax included. Our country is getting better in the IT sector and telefonica was the pioneer. It is easy to critique but in the old times there was no other option, and for many to have the opportunity to be connected is much better than to be out of the web.
Yes, it's clear from the post that it is from personal experience. Why would you think otherwise?
Telefonica was providing services in villages and small towns with very difficult geography
Yes, back when it was a public company; that was just their responsibility.
It is easy to critique but in the old times there was no other option
Yes, but neither BSousa nor I were talking about dial-up times. Nor was the EU when they fined Telefonica for anti-trust violations, multiple times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefónica#Monopoly
There is a headline: Peter Thiel: Google Is A Monopoly - Business Insider
There is a headline: Peter Thiel: Google Is A Monopoly - Business Insider
Being a monopoly isn't illegal, abusing that position is, and that's what Telefonica was fined for.
There is a headline: Peter Thiel: Google Is A Monopoly - Business Insider
I live in Barcelona, is it likely that bigger cities get better service than other places?
When I hear the company's president mumbling [1] about how Google owes them money because Telefónica provides the networks, but Google makes the money thanks to their networks, I wonder how has the company grown so large, and how can a director be so incapable of coherent expression.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTOAyZxOTy0
Edit: I leave this comment because I like Mozilla and enjoy Firefox, but I was dismayed to discover a few weeks ago that Telefónica was involved with Hello.
In the past we could hope that Mozilla and Google had the best interest of their users in mind but now having such super-obvious product placement? This raises a lot of questions for me and will do even more so for the average user.
Actually, quite a few non-profits are sponsored by commercial interests and while sometimes this is a problem, often it is not.
Also: How would you like to fund development of Firefox?
For example, by funding Mozilla, Google helped to remove Microsoft's browser monopoly. Since Google's business relies on the Web, that made perfect sense. Now they have their own browser too, which makes things complicated :)
Likewise, Microsoft currently has a dominant influence in video chat, thanks to Skype. It makes sense for Telefonica to erode that dominance, since they have more business opportunities in an open, many <-> many ecosystem compared to a Skype-only one.
Too many companies base their business model on becoming a monopoly in their field ("the next Microsoft", "the next Google", "the next Facebook", "the next Twitter", etc.), rather than allowing interoperability and having to succeed on merit. When this inevitably fails, they leave behind nothing except useless, incompatible APIs. Hopefully this is different :)
Telefónica bought pretty much every South American national phone monopoly when the country privatized it. I dealt with them while living in Chile and let me tell you: Comcast's customer service is top notch compared to them.
By putting that logo in there, Mozilla is pretty much shutting down any chance of adoption in South America. In my case, even Microsoft's logo would be easier to swallow.
When you send a FF Hello invite to a Chrome user, it works fine.
I.o.w.: why is this not just a website?
Firefox Hello also is a website, it's just running inside the browser. http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/compon...
> Hello is super easy to use and your friends and family don’t even need Firefox to join your conversation. As long as they have a compatible browser, they’re good to go.
as far as i've read this is basically appear.in but with some native buttons in firefox, and optional firefox account integration.
A secure and easy to use solution for web chat is really needed. If it's easy to use but insecure, that simply raises the bar for competing secure solutions to meet, which is a shame.
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/82/slides/rtcweb-13.pdf
The peer-to-peer WebRTC connection uses DTLS+SRTP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Secur...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Pro...
When I say screen share, I mean not just the browser's screen but the whole computer screen?
To add insult to injury, there is no simple way of disabling the functionality[1]. Firefox Hello is ludicrous.
[1] about:config is not a valid value of simple
I'll agree if you amend "allow a web page to implement X" to "allow a web page or an extension to implement X."
Anyone doing WebRTC seriously will need to run a fallback centralized pairing service to get around the wacky real world network topology and setup a successful p2p connection. In some cases, you need a dumb centralized pipe to connect the peers.
http://www.tokbox.com/blog/firefox-hello-mozilla-enhances-op...
But taking it a bit deeper, this is all part of Telefonica's strategic partnership with Mozilla to market phones running Firefox OS.
That is what Telefonica might be doing -- providing a default registration service.
Also because of funky routers and NAT rules, even after the initial session is set up data/audio might not be going through, so then you need STUN or TURN servers so Telefonica might be providing those as well.
Chrome is automatically updated to be jam-packed full of browser-specific APIs and functionality.
Like when Chrome automatically updated and registered itself as a background service without permission.
Or when Chrome automatically installed a microphone listening service for always on "OK Google" hotword detection.
Or the fact that Chrome Apps are less and less "webpages" and more and more "applications that only support the Chrome API".
"To add insult to injury, there is no simple way of disabling the functionality"
I wish I got paid my hourly rate for the sheer amount of time I spend combing through Google Product Forums reading about what arcane chrome://flags or commandline ---arg is required to disable their new functions.
It's a shame what's happening to the web.
A thread about Firefox is also a thread to discuss web browsers in general, the web, html, etc.
This is a very valid discussion. Software engineers would naturally have concerns when a browser built to render web pages gets turned into a pseudo operating system. The risk here is that without focus it won't be a good browser nor a good OS.
[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2015-0...
It's possible your argument could be against adding WebRTC itself, instead of Hello, but the topic here is Hello.
This time we don't have an all powerful Microsoft fighting the web, but Google seems very wiling to take their place. Last browser wars stopped the web evolution for about a decade, just because of a single party that didn't want to be nice.
We've apparently decided that we should use "the web" for everything, whether or not it's a good fit. So yeah, browsers are unavoidably going to accumulate features that used to be the responsibility of apps or the OS. And there will be lots of browser-specific functionality unless you're willing to wait 5 years for W3C or WHATWG or whoever to finalize a standard.
There used to be a time when most of the posts here on HN were "something native IMPLEMENTED IN JavaScript in a BROWSER" but thankfully those times have passed to the most part.
The Internet was heralded as solving cross-platform problems (hurray for XML?) but it seems that writing a native app actually involves less testing. You now have to test in 3 or 4 browsers per platform, not including mobile devices and changes between different versions. The relentless shoving of features into browsers is no different to what they've been doing for years but I can see why people would not enjoy it, particularly with the repeat of "only works in IE" that you see ("only works in Chrome").
Exactly. Firefox doesn't include "Firefox Hello" anymore than it includes "Gmail". Instead, Firefox (and other web browsers) include XMLHttpRequest and WebRTC, which can be used to implement whatever you want.
I'm getting pretty tired of hearing this trope ("teh bloat!") anytime a browser announces new functionality. Browsers are among the most successful pieces of consumer software in existence, so let's maybe admit they've done something right? But moreover, you have the ability -- really, unprecedented for software so complex and in such wide use -- to fork not one but two excellent open-source browsers, plus an excellent rendering engine. If you think you know better than Mozilla and/or Google, go for it. It's not lost on anyone at Mozilla that this is how Firefox originated.
</rant>
I used to have a cassette player that had a tape recorder on it. It made it bigger and heavier, and probably more expensive and I never used the record feature.
Just because part of the product works well, doesn't mean the rest of it is good.
Your parents sound cool ;-)
Firefox is a webbrowser, not a video conferencing software, but it had to add WebRTC to be a web-browser (the bulky bit), so adding in recording is trivial.
A more honest analogy would be saying you had a cassette player that already had all the hardware to record -- necessitated by it being able to play cassettes for some reason -- but didn't have a record button vs one having the button.
Does this mean that we now get to claim that IE and Safari are not web browsers?
They're going to have to add a whole load of features and new UI elements which will increase the cost of updating and progressing the browser.
Either it's going to be a half assed Skype tacked in behind a menu somewhere, or a browser cluttered with all the visual UI of a chat program.
To say they had to do most of it anyway is compete nonsense. The protocol is like 1/10th of a decent chat program.
1. The Walkman was born after a Sony exec had started using a Sony Pressman tape-recorder intended for transcribing meetings/interviews to listen to audio tapes while on planes. They took out the recording functionality and speaker (while adding stereo to the headphones) to make it smaller/cheaper/more portable.
2. Firefox was born after some Mozilla devs took the full featured Mozilla suit and simply hid a lot of the features (email, HTML editor, NNTP newsreader). They later on actually did the work to remove unused code, but at first it was merely cosmetic, though everyone likes to believe there was a mystical time in the past when Firefox was a lean, mean, codebase rather than a minimilist reskin on top of a lot of bloat.
Not sure how that relates to WebRTC, just thought the parallel was amusing.
Moreover for someone who hasn't used anything but IE for his entire life, the video chat feature might be the only reason to sway towards FF.
Ask them if they're speculating on Bitcoin, so I know if I should get out. =)
Weirdly just the other month my brother bought a stash of minidiscs and players instead of just using a cheap MP3 player. I don't understand why.
For video, Firefox contains a video codec. Surfing to YouTube lets the YouTube web page play video. Firefox does not contain a "Youtube Player".
That's exactly the opposite of what they have done here. They have added basically added a "Telefonica WebRTC Player". That's wrong. They should have added WebRTC generically so that you go to a web page at Telefonica to use it. Or better yet, use it with a server you trust.
Of course, with it being added generically, tons of websites immediately started using it..... nope. Ok, well, lets go back before that blog post... https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/hello-chrome-its-firefox-c...
Ah ha, isn't that neat. WebRTC in Firefox and Chrome and a demo of it! Wait, still pretty much zero use in the wild of WebRTC...
This is why Google/Mozilla are adding features utilizing these new specs to the browser, because they're cool and no one else is. In the case of WebRTC, it's for a good reason, its a PITA to run TURN/STUN servers to ensure that people behind firewalls can establish a connection.
I think the biggest problem is the lack of accounts, chat, logging, and persistence in webrtc. Thats what keeps it from being a p2p communication protocol in general whereas now its just a toy for video calls.
I mean, when you cannot share links during your video call easily, somethings wrong.
Sharing links, accounts, chat, logging and persistence are all irrelevant for my use, and they in any case don't belong in webrtc - webrtc is a component for people to use to build services like what you appear to want.
WebRTC is not a messaging technology, it is a raw data communication technology. It is just here to move bytes from one client to another. The features you are talking about are managed by said clients, meaning that it has to be handled by Firefox/Chrome itself.
Check out: - https://appear.in/ - https://talky.io/ - https://screenhero.com/ - https://github.com/feross/webtorrent - https://peercdn.com/ - https://sharefest.me/ - ...and lots, lots more. Sorry to the ones I forgot to mention/don't know about.
For some pure WebRTC experiences. http://simplewebrtc.com/ if you want to build something yourself.
The thing is, you don't know that the service you're using uses WebRTC, quite frankly because the technology doesn't matter, the user experience does. Also, the sheer fact that we seem to have standardised a very good (and very secure) way of doing peer to peer transfers, and that's getting implemented in browsers, with client libraries for iOS and Android is HUGE.
And in other people's view, it is nonsense, and they liked their Mozilla with built-in mailer, Opera, etc.
And of course there's the huge ecosystem of browsers add-ons and plugins, that do exactly that: implement X functionalities outside of web pages.
>Firefox Hello is ludicrous.
Haven't seen any argument about it. Not being able to disable it and not wanting browsers to include X functionality doesn't translate to "ludicrous".
I don't really do lots of video, so... ::meh:: ... but I am fine with rebuilding the old Netscape system. :)
Because Hello is built right into Firefox, you can rest easy knowing that your conversations and information will remain private and secure.
I'm not sure exactly why this is though.
Also, out of curiosity more than anything else, what's a decent web-site that implements the same functionality (i.e. set up a VOIP session, let people join by sending a link, ideally anonymously)? I could've sworn AOL had a service like this, but Google results return nothing.
All I have to do is right-click on the icon and click "Remove from toolbar", or "Customize" and remove it.
But wait, you say, it's not actually removed... well, for the sort of person that "about:config" is not a valid answer, it is removed.
If your actual complaint is about the functionality / bloat, well, it turns out WebRTC is required for firefox to be a browser and the delta from that to this is essentially nothing.
Presumably offering routing servers and transit. Plus Telefonica bought TokBox[1], whose tech powers the backend
In other words, can Telefonica make it easy to spy on all Firefox Hello talks, or only on the browser-to-phone ones? (which is to be expected, I guess).
WebRTC by itsself is not MITM resistant
In general, it's peer-to-peer, but for clients that can't communicate peer-to-peer for whatever reason (usually due to certain NATs), a relay server is used as an intermediary. To the user it's transparent, so they can't easily tell if it's peer-to-peer or not.
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/compon...
I think the point of pre-bundling it is to get more attention and in that way to promote WebRTC, which is a good goal.
Size-wise, I didn't look at the code but this is likely a tiny extension, it's just a little UI over WebRTC.
Presumably though instead of FF dev team making a Moz sponsored extension Telefonica came to them and said "we'll give you this barrel of cash if we can put our name on a new part of FF that gets default installed".
Indeed Moz could have just had Telefonica named as devs on an extension and shipped it as default - which would seem more natural. The way it is makes it more like a marketing move to hijack FF as a place to put an advert.
Appear.in seems to work fine and without messing with my browser chrome.
What's the essential feature that Telefonica brings to the table that makes it worth Mozilla compromising their brand across 500 million installs [using Wikipedia figures there] - that's essentially saying that what Telefonica bought to the table is worth, what, > $5 million [assuming 10¢ per install for the brand placement]. Can you expand on the "win/win" part on the Mozilla, and their supporters, side?
I don't think this is such a great idea, at least in my case, if I'm sending someone link for them to open instantly then I'm probably already using a platform that supports video conversations - for example Skype, which also has IM and some other stuff that FF Hello doesn't.
I can totally imagine this for the video conferences we have with external partners in our group. These are usually scheduled ahead of time, so we could just arrange that people check their inbox for the link. Email is what most people use in these projects, while IM'ing is very exotic and practically not used.
Next issue, I'm using a docked laptop and it defaulted to the cam in the folded laptop instead of the cam pointed at me..
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/where-firefox-hello-but...
But if it comes as a Firefox only extension I am fine with it.
Btw, I tried hello a couple of weeks ago and it felt like voice/video over the net 5 or 6 years ago, no proper echo cancelation, similar to the old video plugin in pidgin. Also, there is no text IM.
I still miss Mozilla Composer and Microsoft Frontpage for writing abysmal HTML with <strong> everywhere.
Google Hangouts-like screen sharing without the need for an account would be awesome.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1127178
Not sure this is necessarily enough info to go on, but it's reproducible on my end for sure - it wasn't a one-off.
thanks.
Anyone got a way to disable it yet?
Mozilla is working on some pretty neat stuff; and is paying attention to the rest of the world, not just the American/European/Japanese market.
Also since they are a foundation owned corporation with a public benefit mission https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ they can take a longer-term view than some of the other big players.
Having played with one of the flame dev phones for FirefoxOS I wouldn't be too surprised if within the decade they are dominant in areas of the world that don't have an installed base ( rural india, sub-saharan africa outside of SA, etc. ).
Remember that more people are going to acquire mobile internet devices in the next 5 years than were on the internet in 1998.
The problem is simple to describe, but nearly impossible to solve.
On the one hand, ask anyone whenever they want to have video conferencing without having to download additional software and based on open standards blah blah — and you're likely to hear "yeah, that's cool, where do I get it?" before you finish the questions. Because, without going in much detail this all sounds awfully good.
On the other hand, a few engineers have issues with this. Questions like "why this is bundled in giant monolithic browser blob" are perfectly valid. Especially those who value classic UNIXes' approach to do things, may be well dissatisfied with this kind of stuff being done in the name "public benefit", considering this as yet another case of "dancing bunnies" problem, with masses being ignorant of the issues.
I'm very against the style of discussion about these topics, it's very "you agree with this feature 100% or any criticism is seen as an attack" rather than an attempt to debate the merits of features / implementations.
That we're even discussing this goes to show the tragic decline of critical thinking and basic reading comprehension on this board.
And then everything depends on how one views things. Firefox is a monolithic blob, and WebRTC is a fairly tightly integrated part of it. This is valid point to discuss.
For one, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have WebRTC as a part of the browser and not as an fairly autonomous plugin/extension (bundled with browser default packaging, no problems here). Tight vs loose coupling.
You know, one thing I absolutely love about Flash is that I can completely remove or selectively disable it as I see fit. ;)
Maybe I'm a bit too old-school in this regard, but I view the WWW as an interactive document repository (sites/forums/rich-apps), whereas the Internet is the network that the WWW operates on. So for me, a browser is used to explore/use the WWW whereas individual applications and tools are used to explore/use the Internet.
I feel this is an important distinction because I would like at least one modern/popular web browser to retain this philosophy, which is difficult when each browser (and parent umbrella org) decide to push more desktop-app-like functionality to the browser.
10 years ago the internet was quite different (and 10 years prior to that too), I'm curious / worried / cautious how it'll be in another decade. At least it'll be an interesting ride :-P
Lately I'd been bothered by poor quality experience and sometimes even spam requests on Skype. Hangouts was never my thing and Firefox Hello seems like a breath of fresh air just at the right time. Keep it up!
I want my browser to ring when there is an incoming call.
Firefox should have an open socket connection to Mozilla servers and deliver services thru that, just like android cloud messaging, like alerts, notifications, push apis, etc.
Funding such services is a big decision for them -- they're the ones that have to support it, keep it up, and pay for it (for the life of the service). As they make money in a distinctly different way from Google, they don't have the same positive feedback loop -- Google is happy to provide you free web services because you are the product.
Since Hello currently doesn't have a Friends list or a way to utilize existing social networks, passing a link to a friend is how you give them permission to ring your browser.
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Dear Mozilla,
Firefox is a browser. Can you please stop with the feature creep? That'd be lovely. Remember, you're a browser, not an operating system. Oh, you'd like to be an operating system? Cool, then make an OS (o hai there Firefox OS) and keep that functionality there. Stop adding extra features that are not needed to browse the internet.
It seems only Lynx cares about an authentic node-to-node / client-to-server relationship without all the privacy concerns :-(
Firefox, like Chrome, is going overboard with non-web-browsing features. Some less technical users surely will appreciate that, but at some point it becomes less of a browser and more of a pseudo-OS.
If people don't voice their opinion against this direction, then Mozilla will continue down this path. I don't think it's too much to ask a web browser to be a web browser and nothing more.