Why you SHOULD be using Firefox

Lifted and shifted from here:

The problem is, Google now controls an even larger share of the market than it did before. Firefox is the only independent browser company left standing, and it’s down to a slim share of the market. Historically, allowing a single company to dominate an industry doesn’t produce optimal results for users. Inevitably, changes and improvements begin to be suggested that ultimately favor the incumbent rather than benefiting the end-user. Whether Google has already reached that point is a matter of personal opinion, but the company has taken considerable fire in various controversies in the past few years. Firefox has been making a major push to brand itself as the only browser developer that actually takes privacy seriously. Whether that will boost the company’s user base isn’t clear yet.
 
Another +1 here for Firefox.

I was originally a Netscape kid, 2002 was the year that it got open-sourced as Mozilla, so that was a side step for me there, and I'm still using it now 18 years later. It even runs on my Raspberry Pi :D

Opera used to be my 2nd browser of choice for testing and compatibility but it has gone down the drain after it got bought out, so Brave is my 2nd browser now.
 
opethdisciple said:
Lifted and shifted from here:

The problem is, Google now controls an even larger share of the market than it did before. Firefox is the only independent browser company left standing, and it’s down to a slim share of the market. Historically, allowing a single company to dominate an industry doesn’t produce optimal results for users. Inevitably, changes and improvements begin to be suggested that ultimately favor the incumbent rather than benefiting the end-user. Whether Google has already reached that point is a matter of personal opinion, but the company has taken considerable fire in various controversies in the past few years. Firefox has been making a major push to brand itself as the only browser developer that actually takes privacy seriously. Whether that will boost the company’s user base isn’t clear yet.
Click to expand...


Other browsers even Chromium based take privacy seriously, ie Vivaldi , you can disable Google ones if you are that paranoid. Also on most browsers you can change the default search engine ie Google to Yahoo for example.

Privacy-Settings.png



https://help.vivaldi.com/article/privacy-settings/



Knowledge will also empower you to tweak and take control should you feel the need for this. Yes, in Vivaldi, you can turn on and off all privacy settings.

  • In Vivaldi you get a multitude of options to keep your data safe – our settings are pretty comprehensive.
  • We keep our privacy settings grouped together for easy access – most settings are listed under Privacy with the exception of Search-related privacy settings which are listed under Search.
  • Opt-in / opt-out of Google services – although Vivaldi doesn’t track or store any of your data, we use third-party services for some features and it’s important that you understand what these settings mean.
Click to expand...
.
 
Firefox’s fight for the future of the web

This is a really difficult one. Because I think we all have a responsibility to protect our own freedoms, privacy etc... but that entails supporting projects like Duck Duck go, Firefox and open source software in general.

But at the same time with the new Edge having gone chromium, Mozilla are laying off staff, I think the end has already started to happen.

This is a bad news for us all. And you know the worst of it? People don't care! Until something in the future happens and we have a whistle blower like Edward Snowden come forward and tell us all the things they are doing with our data.
 
Last edited:
opethdisciple said:
Firefox’s fight for the future of the web

This is a really difficult one. Because I think we all gave a responsibility to protect our own freedoms, privacy etc... but that entails supporting projects like duck Duck go, Firefox and open source software in general.

But at the same time with new that Edge has gone chromium, Mozilla are laying off staff, I think the end has already started to happen.

This is a bad news for us all. And yo know the worst of it? People don't care! Until something in the future happens and we have a whistle blower like Edward Snowden come forward and tell us all the things they are doing with our data.
Click to expand...


In a way it's Firefox's fault, pre-Quantum Firefox had better support with regards to add-ons etc, sure Quantum release made it faster, but that is when I moved to Vivaldi due to restrictions on third party add-ons etc, choice is one thing but when you take away add-ons that I did use, well that's why I jumped over to Vivaldi, anyway Vivaldi is solid Chromium based browser that fills all my needs. :)
 
opethdisciple said:
This article is from 2018 ... Chrome is turning into the new Internet Explorer 6
Click to expand...

This doesn't help. Chrome is the new IE6? Yes, lets compare a browser built on an open source platform to IE6, a browser built by MS when they were at their most monopolistic, when they built proprietary technologies (silverlight!) to lock web devs in and when they didnt give a damn about standards. Most of the comments on that article do a good enough job of destroying it.

Because it isn’t as big of an issue as TheVerge is making it out to be. Chromium is open source so all rendering done on it isn’t some sort of mystery. And insuring compatibility is not an issue. This is why when I develop websites on FireFox, they tend to work on chrome 99% of the time with no modification. And when I do changes in chrome in that 1% there is little issue for FF.

Now this thing changes for Edge and IE. Despite Edge/IE officially supporting the standards, their method of implementation tends to differ from others. So 80% of the time, I need to make Edge/IE workarounds. If you go to caniuse website and start lookign things up, Edge/IE always have caviets next to features that you have to work around.

This is the reason why a lot of people are having issues using edge, MS simply just does their own thing. It would help if they open source Edge*, then people can contribute and fix these issues, but nope.
Click to expand...

* and now edge is chromium based...

Indeed. Also the article cites that’s one of the most common issues is that Google as a contributor to the standards is often quicker to implement the standard in their browser which others in turn use. That’s a far cry from what was happening in the IE6 days and having developers quickly implement standards hardly seems like an issue to me. If anything it’s great that standards are being adopted rather than being left uninplemented for years at a time, again a case of what was happening in the IE6 day where MSs web browser development stagnated for years.

There may be some cases where a site renders in Chrome and not elsewhere, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that it’s anywhere near as common as it was at the turn of the century. And if it’s largely a case of one developer implementing standards more rapidly than another then it’s a completely different issue too but at least the other browsers are likely to catch up sooner rather than later. I can’t inagine Blink and WebKit being open source hurts either.
Click to expand...

etc. etc.

This very much feels like Mozilla crying because they no longer have the funding. Maybe they should adapt and contribute to an new internet driven by a team of contributors (google, microsoft, samsung and many others) on an open source project. OR they can fade away in to obscurity whilst moaning about having the only independent engine left in the game...for now.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom