Endangered Firefox: The state of Mozilla

[Corrine]

Personally, I stopped using Firefox when Mozilla started with the "rapid release program".  However, from Endangered Firefox: The state of Mozilla, it appears that Mozilla has more problems than the loss of users.  They will even be moving out of thes Mountain View, CA office when its lease ends in January.
 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

This sad, sad, SAD!

 

If Moz goes belly-up and support for FF and T-Bird goes POOF!, I don't know what I'm going to do. I do NOT use Chrome (Google) nor any other browsers out there in my Linux installations, with the exception of SeaMonkey (also a Moz product). Browsers I can probably work around, but email clients? No. There just are no decent email clients around these days other than T-bird, IMHO.

 

Oh, well... nothing is forever... except Google's greed.

[Bookmem]

1 hour ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

This sad, sad, SAD!

 

If Moz goes belly-up and support for FF and T-Bird goes POOF!, I don't know what I'm going to do. I do NOT use Chrome (Google) nor any other browsers out there in my Linux installations, with the exception of SeaMonkey (also a Moz product). Browsers I can probably work around, but email clients? No. There just are no decent email clients around these days other than T-bird, IMHO.

 

Oh, well... nothing is forever... except Google's greed.

According to the article, the only thing keeping Mozilla afloat is their deal with Google to use Google's search engine as FF's default search engine.  I very much dislike Google search, but none of the other search engines seem to be any better.  And I'm too ****** old to worry about someone "tracking my every move".  Let'm!!

edit: BTW, the word the forum ******** out, was used by Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind, the year I was born. 1939

Edited December 11, 2020 by Bookmem

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Heh... love the forum word filter, huh?!

 

Anyway... you can change your default search engine in FF. I set mine to DuckDuckGo... on my computers and phone.

[Bookmem]

27 minutes ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

Heh... love the forum word filter, huh?!

 

Anyway... you can change your default search engine in FF. I set mine to DuckDuckGo... on my computers and phone.

I've tried Duck and all the rest.  Always go back.  None of then handle tracking numbers as well as Google.  I'd like to see a browser with a search box with multiple search buttons.  One for G, one for DD, one for Y etc.

 

As to the filter, if the word got past the Hays Commission, seems dumb to filter it.  In 2020 you hear toddlers using the f word.

Edited December 11, 2020 by Bookmem

[saturnian]

I'm another who has set my FF search to DuckDuckGo. I memorized a few (but, only a few!) !bang codes. For example, I use !s when I want to search with StartPage, and I've been using !m for Google Maps (I'm liking OpenStreetMaps these days; !osm for that). For a Google search, !g works. The !bang codes can be used instead of multiple search buttons.

[sunrat]

On 12/11/2020 at 12:36 PM, Corrine said:

Personally, I stopped using Firefox when Mozilla started with the "rapid release program".  However, from Endangered Firefox: The state of Mozilla, it appears that Mozilla has more problems than the loss of users.  They will even be moving out of thes Mountain View, CA office when its lease ends in January.
 

 

The rapid release program seemed to me a smokescreen to level the playing field with Chrome which appeared to have faster releases. I'm pretty sure the numbers didn't actually mean development suddenly accelerated.

I would be very sad if Firefox was no more. I've never used any other browser since i started using Linux and used Phoenix (FF's original name, followed by Firebird and then a quick change as Firebird was already a database program) on Windows when it first was released.

I have Chromium installed for that rare site that doesn't render properly in FF (lookin' at you, ABC Best Photos of the Week page) but see no advantage in it, and the elephant-in-the-room disadvantage it's from one of the world's most insidious megacorporations.

Without FF there is virtually no alternative to Chrome. Many other small browsers are based on it as well as MS Edge. The world seems to be inexorably creeping to a state where everything is owned by a handful of entities with any oversight being slowly washed away. It's frightening that the main thing keeping Firefox going is money from it's main competitor. 

[raymac46]

I thought the latest Edge was Chromium based.

 

[sunrat]

54 minutes ago, raymac46 said:

I thought the latest Edge was Chromium based.

 

 

Chrome, Chromium, same same but different. I guess it's more correct to say "based on Chromium" as it's the open source version of Chrome.  Vivaldi, Brave, Opera, Edge; all based on Chromium.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

9 hours ago, sunrat said:

Phoenix (FF's original name, followed by Firebird and then a quick change as Firebird was already a database program) on Windows when it first was released.

 

HA! Yes, I remember all those phases of Moz's FF. I also remember, and miss, the original Netscape browser, which was eventually morphed/absorbed into Mozilla.

 

1 hour ago, sunrat said:

I guess it's more correct to say "based on Chromium" as it's the open source version of Chrome.  Vivaldi, Brave, Opera, Edge; all based on Chromium.

 

The difference is that Chromium is the original opensource project, but Chrome is the Google Frankenbrowser based on it. Unfortunately, Chromium also has some of those Google tentacles wiggling around it.

 

All this talk of FF going south soon made me think of exploring alternatives. I can go with Chromium if I have to, I s'pose. However, I thought I'd try one of the Chromium-based browsers out there right now. I installed Brave Browser. I've heard heaps of good things about it, but am finding that it's... well, it's just NOT Firefox.

 

I've always had complaints about Chromium's rendering of webpage fonts. It SUCKS, to be blunt. In my FF, the pages are clean the fonts are very dark, sharp, contrasting, etc. In Chromium, fonts are faded, narrow, not easily viewed by older eyes.

 

Brave screenie:

 

 

Firefox screenie:

 

 

Not sure if you can see the difference using screenshots, but it's definitely there on my system. By the way, this is same font choice (Serif -> Bitter; Sans -> Montserrat; Monospace -> Monospace) and size settings in both browsers above.

 

This alone is a NO-GO situation for me when choosing a browser. In a bit, I'm going to search through the extensions for Chrome/Chromium/Brave and see if I can find anything that will remedy this. I seem to remember getting Chromium set up quite nicely a few years back in Slackware. I'll just have to experiment a bit, I guess.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Well, update... I've decided to dump Brave. I may consider trying Chromium again, though. I'm thinking about it.

[Cluttermagnet]

Do I remember MS killing Netscape? Seems I do...

 

Whole subject triggers me. I won't go there. But I always

found an alternative to IE. My mentors warned me...

 

Phoenix and FF were way more good than bad...

 

Clutter

[zlim]

Eric, have you tried Vivaldi? I have it on Windows and android. It is Chromium based and I feel I have more control over it. When I close the last tab, I'm presented with 3 choices: Speed Dial, Bookmarks and History. When I click on History, I can see what is stored and select the paintbrush icon to remove what I want.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Yeah... familiar w/ Vivaldi, too. It has the same issues (lack of customization options, ugly UI, poor font rendering, etc.) that Brave did. That's why I figure if I'm going to have to deal with those issues, I may as well just run the parent software (Chromium).

 

Which reminds me... that's today's project: get Chromium up and running so I can start tinkering with it.

[sunrat]

On 12/13/2020 at 2:16 AM, V.T. Eric Layton said:

Not sure if you can see the difference using screenshots, but it's definitely there on my system. By the way, this is same font choice (Serif -> Bitter; Sans -> Montserrat; Monospace -> Monospace) and size settings in both browsers above.

 

I'm not sure that site is a good example. I just tried the same comparison as you did but, despite having font set as Noto Sans 20, it still displayed a serif font for the text but appears to be Noto Sans in the menus. The banner image at the top is blurry in both browsers.

Comparing the 2 on this page shows much less difference although fonts are a bit different, not fuzzy in Chromium though.

 

When it comes to choosing a Chromium based browser the choice is clear for me - Chromium is in the Debian repos whereas none of its offshoots are. I always prefer repo packages where the difference is insignificant. The hardest part of using Chromium is learning how and the differences for me between it and Brave, Vivaldi etc. (yes I've tried most of them) are not worth the trouble of installing non-repo packages.

Hopefully Firefox will be with us for a while yet as I much prefer it, but with its now minuscule market share and primary revenue being Google's search engine subsidy I don't hold out hope for more than a small handful of years.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Well, I've spent most of the day tweaking and customizing Chromium to get it the way I like it. I've almost succeeded. Still having one PITA issue, though. Chromium does NOT have any native means to protect/whitelist login credentials (cookies), so I have to try some of the MANY extensions available in the Chrome Store. I thought I had the one I wanted working, but it's having issues with a few domains and won't protect their login cookies. I'm still tweakin'!

 

I did find a way to have my custom avatar image show in the browser without the need to login to Google to do that. I had to edit a local file and add my image in that directory to get it to work, but it's there now... instead of those silly profile images that Chrome/Chromium provide out-of-the-box.

 

 

 

.

[raymac46]

@sunrat  my bad. I misinterpreted your post and thought you meant that Edge was based on Firefox. Sorry.

[raymac46]

Call me naive but I think the demise of FF will be greatly exaggerated. Someone will fork it and carry on much as FF derived from Netscape Navigator. It's all open sauce.

[abarbarian]

On 12/12/2020 at 6:20 PM, V.T. Eric Layton said:

Well, update... I've decided to dump Brave. I may consider trying Chromium again, though. I'm thinking about it.

 

I dumped Brave and thought I would try chromium, it was a smaller size so that was a plus. However it did not allow playing Disney+ so chromium bit the dust.Tried to install Brave and it downloaded almost 20 Gb of stuff and then errorred and did not install.

So now am using Chrome as it just works perfectly for Disney+. Ah the joys of Agents of Shield and The Mandalorian ,,,,,, sheer bliss for winter viewing. Plus all the Marvel movies too.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

What's so special about Disney+ that a browser wouldn't be able to access that site? I don't have a subscription, so I can't test it. I'm just curious why other Chromium-based browsers would not play it, but Chrome (also Chromium-based) would.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Another Chromium update...

 

I managed to finally get it to save my logins. I had to use and extension and some internal tweaks to get Chromium to NOT dump my login cookies when closing.

 

All's working now. My only complaints are still the ugly UI and the carpy font rendering.

[sunrat]

7 hours ago, raymac46 said:

@sunrat  my bad. I misinterpreted your post and thought you meant that Edge was based on Firefox. Sorry.

 

No worries. I figured that so read back and realised my wording may have been a bit ambiguous. English is hard!

[V.T. Eric Layton]

18 hours ago, sunrat said:

English is hard!

 

No. English is difficult.

 

Rocks are hard.