Great to see mainstream media picking this up and giving Firefox some exposure.
With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable (cross platform) alternative. FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is critical for the browser ecosystem in the future.
(Personally I switched back to FF after the first Quantum release, which brought performance back on par with Chrome. On mobile, the ad blocker is even more essential to get somewhat acceptable load times...)
It’s not mainstream media. It’s a contributor site. You can pay some money and get one of your own. You can post whatever you want on there. They offer to do a little bit of editing and proofreading to make it look professional before it goes online. There is no fact checking. These contributor sites are essentially blogs that carry the credibility of Forbes even though they don’t deserve it.
I see contributor sites being linked all over the place - social media, news aggregators, even Apple news. I wish there was more awareness that these articles are written by some regular person with no qualifications as a journalist and that there is no standard for accuracy.
I’ve been asked to be a contributor before. I don’t know what the criteria is. I got a cold call about it one day. I’ve been a panelist at a couple local events, got a mention in a niche news outlet and was nominated for an award once. My guess is that’s why I was targeted as a lead. The pitch was mostly about having a bigger platform for my personal brand if I remember correctly.
I hope to see Firefox eventually providing an embeddable framework, considering that Chromium isn't just monopolising the web browser space... it's spreading into desktop applications through Electron. Left unchecked, Google will manage to poke its fingers into every pie within reach.
It seems like the ideal solution of using the OS's native web toolkit hasn't been successful so far. So the next best offering (aside from building on Qt), is to have an Electron competitor too.
> With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable
I'm not sure I understand your point. Is there a public statement from Microsoft that they are following Google on this? I don't know what Microsoft is going to do, but nothing stops them from keeping the API fully working. And if Firefox was based on Chromium too, nothing would stop Mozilla from keeping the API working either. Although I expect some forks to follow Google on this, namely other ad-tech companies with web browsers, like Yandex.
I just wish they finally fixed the bug that makes it unusable for me and thousands of other users using macbooks with resolution set to "more space"... I can't count how many people in my office I've had to help after their macbook randomly starts heating and turning fans to max power, it's always that they started using firefox.
I've been checking the tickets associated with the issue (mainly [this one](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042) ) and there doesn't seem to be any significant advance, nor it seems the people in charge are aware of how prevalent and deal breaking this bug is :(
> FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is critical for the browser ecosystem in the future.
But firefox has shown no indication of gaining marketshare. I'd reckon that a large amount of firefox's current marketshare are people who had pre-Quantum extentions that were critical to their workflow, and who are now using an outdated browser version. One big vulnerability or generally adopted new feature would probably knock a third off even the 5-10% share they currently have.
Firefox's share is so small that the other two-thirds is probably evenly split between google-haters, a constant turnover of people just trying it out for a month or two before going back to Chrome, and people who use Chrome for most of their browsing and switch to Firefox for porn because they are afraid google is watching them.
When firefox was at 40% of the market and shrinking, they somehow decided that their problem was that they didn't look like a cheap knockoff, drop-in replacement for their competitor. They succeeded in making themselves totally disposable.
IMO, their only hope is and has always been to strip their browser down to a virtually featureless embeddable UI component, implement the rest of the current features as a core curated package of plugins against an API that all developers have equal access to, adopt all community-developed plugins that reach a certain usage level, and add a rating system for plugins that communicates the level of mozilla's involvement, e.g. gold for in-house, green for having employees intimately involved with the code, yellow for periodically reviewed by mozilla, red for never reviewed by mozilla, and flashing red for never reviewed by mozilla, has had complaints, and has not responded or been contacted by mozilla.
Other vendors will end up putting together different core suites, and will offer their own ratings, ultimately spawning 5-10 major concurrent firefox versions and swamping chrome out of existence. Through being able to lay off much of the reviewing work to outside vendors, firefox developers can concentrate all of their efforts on streamlining the core, educational outreach about the internet and the web, and lawsuits against the monopolists for adding anti-features to their sites targeted to ruin the user experience on specific browsers.
Instead, firefox has settled into being the token opposition party in a dictatorship that just exists to make sure that there's another name on the ballot come election time, and the dictator only gets 96% of the vote instead of 100%.
Wow, I never knew/ expected MS to switch to Chromium. Given how much MS boasts about Edge's battery life over Chrome.
Hopefully Google leaves a workaround to enable ad-blocking. Otherwise, I will switch, it will be a bit of hassle, but I'll drop them none the less. No ads & lower power usage would be nice though.
>With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable (cross platform) alternative. FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is critical for the browser ecosystem in the future
Why are multiple rendering and JS engines critical for the browser ecosystem? Everyone would be much better off if we standardized on one.
Google is rapidly becoming persona non-grata in my view. There is something really, for the lack of a better word, scummy about it in the last year or two.
We partnered with them on their DialogueFlow platform (voice recognition) for Google Home integration and voice command intent handling and they totally screwed us over. I won't/can't go into the specifics but it was bizarre; we had no recourse except taking a near trillion dollar company to court. We decided it was not worth it and wrote off the cost and took a hit but never again.
Totally agreed; even my enterprise clients are wary of signing up with Google. Turns out Google’s support sucks even if you pay them for it; so a lot of them are ditching G-Suite to go back into the Microsoft Office 365 world.
They’re an advertising company through-and-through.
I switched 6 months ago to Firefox on all my mobile devices. Put simply I need the ability to block ads. A lot has been written on privacy but the immediate issue I was facing was around malware - a lot of it being delivered via Google's own ad networks. There were certain sites (mostly tech related) that I simply couldn't visit anymore due to frequent browser hijacking. Later versions of Chrome for Android shipped with a setting that would prevent some of it but it was disabled by default and hidden well away from the user. It started to feel like Google was not only well aware of the problem but was choosing to be complicit in all of it. I reported the ads but they clearly didn't want to know about it. I would urge to anyone that cares about their own security to make the move to Firefox, and to urge others to do the same (be it family, friends or colleagues).
Google employees such as Justin Schuh are aggressively defending the move on tech/security principles and denying commercial motivations, while uBlock Origin dev (Raymond Hill) says the change will cripple or kill uBO on Chrome and evil motives are its raison d'être.
It's good that mainstream media articles raise the awareness of the issue, but a good technical discussion by impartial analysts would also help.
Is it possible to fix the security issues of the existing webRequest API without deprecating it? Or by replacing it with something safer but just as powerful? There should be a simple answer to those questions.
(I'm tempted to side against Google because they keep invoking "performance issues", which is a ridiculous argument: nothing helps Chrome's performance more than efficient ad-blocking. But still, I'd like to know more.)
I'd say in practice it doesn't really matter. For the sake of the argument let's assume that gorhill is wrong and the Google engineers really think this is the right technical decision, that's good for them but we still end up with subpar ad-blockers.
Of course these types of compromises crop up all the time when you're designing software, but then the problem is: if in the near future one Google engineer has an idea to improve the ad-blocking interface by, say, redesigning a certain component, would they do it? Would management let them do it?
There's a clear conflict of interest here, I expect ad-blocking to suffer death by a thousand cuts on Google's platform. Not necessarily because there's an evil master plan to kill it, but merely because every time there'll be a technical argument in favor of gimping it they're very likely to go with it while every time there'll be a proposal to improve it I'm sure there won't be a lot of motivation to implement it.
So even if we give Google the benefit of the doubt here I still believe that it's a huge problem and we can't let them effectively control the web. Beyond that in this particular case I'm not even sure I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, the technical justification seems iffy to me (and the burden of proof is clearly in their camp) and there's been a clear pattern lately of Google moving to reduce the impact of ad-blocking (such as them bundling a minimal ad-blocking with chrome, most likely as an effort to dissuade people from looking for better third-party blockers).
> Is it possible to fix the security issues of the existing webRequest API without deprecating it?
The WebRequest API is not being deprecated though, only the ability to block through it is. And I don't think blocking a request has very negative security implications. It's hard to not attribute malice to this move when the status quo was absolutely fine, and google is raising a strawman to try and justify their changes.
My understanding of the current behavior is that an extension like uBlock can programmatically read requests. Extensions will be made to abuse an API and people will install them unwittingly.
The existing webRequest API lets extensions run arbitrary third-party code over all the requests you make, and Chrome won't process the request until it's done. That inevitably means that a badly written extension can hurt page loading performance, and a malicious extension can get a lot of sensitive data about you.
Whatever Google's true motivation is, there's no way to solve those problems without limiting the power available to ad blockers.
Are they removing url-rewriting requests as well? Perhaps adblockers could modify the URL of the ad to go to a different domain (example.com) rather than blocking it entirely.
The article recommends Brave and Pi-Hole, as well.
For folks looking for simplest anti ads and tracking browser (for friends and family, for instance) should consider Firefox Focus [0] instead of Brave. It is light and works like a breeze on lowest of configurations.
And folks using Android not bothered enough to setup Pi-Hole should consider using Intra with nextdns or adguard-dns [1].
I've installed Intra for friends and family on their phones, on their AndroidTVs... It takes a quick one minute setup and another minute to show them how to use it. Esp, nextdns' analytics dashboard is a real eye-opener for them. When they actually see the results, they start taking notice and are bothered enough to figure out how to blacklist additional domains.
Agree completely for Android. I've used Focus since it came out and set as primary browser because it is so light. It works great from Materialistic (HN Reader) and Reddit App or for one time website browsing. It also allows opening in Firefox or chrome if site is too broken though that is usually ad or captcha related.
I setup DNS66 easily and that helped with some ad heavy apps as well. Only issue is it cannot be used with actual VPNs.
I open Firefox manually if I want a heavier browser with tabs and ublock or umatrix but focus is usually first.
As the antitrust investigation of Google progresses, they must find a fine line : get as much control as possible of the web while leaving enough margin for competition to avoid an antitrust ruling. That move to limit adblockers might be strategically required from Google at this point, and the fact that they might lose market share an expected result. They've already reached 70% market share, limiting adblockers will allow them to extract more value from their current users and also avoid becoming too obviously hegemonic.
The original article has an update (5/30) from a google spokesperson: “Chrome supports the use and development of ad blockers. We’re actively working with the developer community to get feedback and iterate on the design of a privacy-preserving content filtering system that limits the amount of sensitive browser data shared with third parties.”
> Another option is using something like Pi-Hole, says Wright. “This works on the DNS level and has blacklists of adverts as well as malicious URLs.”
I think nextdns is fantastic for this purpose and has a barrier of entry that makes it usable for non-tech folks as well.
I created an account recently and linked my WireGuard server's IP (when connected) to a saved nextdns configuration.
Ads/trackers are now blocked on all my devices that use the WG egress when the provided DNS server is set in each peer's conf.
This is obvious given the scale of their blocklists, but let me just say the browsing experience and speed boost is utterly phenomenal. Does a better job at blocking than both my old Pi-Hole server and my localhost AdGuard Home daemon.
I really want to use Firefox because of Quantum and other Rust goodness, but until they catch up on usability I'm happy to stay with Brave. Tab-to-search is sorely missing in Firefox, and the tab creation and switching experience on Android is awful.
Tab management is what keeping me from switching to FF on Android. The option to use extensions and to customize the browser to the desktop level is amazing though. I hope they will look into tabs' UX later when more people are going to use it.
>Another option is using something like Pi-Hole, says Wright. “This works on the DNS level and has blacklists of adverts as well as malicious URLs.”
You can also run a ridiculously simple script from time to time (or create a cron job that does it for you, for example) to update your hosts file periodically, using the same blacklists[0]. No extra hardware needed.
Does anyone know the status of the Chrome native ad blocker, the one that would block just the "obtrusive" ads? I remember hearing about it a while back and if it comes out with this change I think it would solve the use case of most people.
Not that I don't want people to switch to Firefox/other browsers, I just feel like if Google implements their own solution I think most people won't mind...
One thing I haven't seen mentioned: Chrome OS. I have two Chrome OS devices that are useless without adblock. They can't handle the real internet. And who would want to buy a Chrome OS device that could?
My Chromebox is my most used computer in my house (it powers the living room TV) so this'll be a real inconvenience for my family.
Maybe advertisers need to go back to the drawing board and devise a better way to deliver their message. Ad blockers exist because ads are annoying and even crippling.
Google's Adsense (or whatever you call those text ads that appear next to search results) was a reasonable compromise, unobtrusive and often useful, whereas full window timed ads that force you to click the "x", and similar excessively animated distractions and pop-ups, are what motivate people to install add blockers.
The only praise for a browser that I am hearing in this and similar threads is about how a browser is superior for content consumption (browser X is faster, etc.). It’s never about how one browser offers better developer experience than others. And I have not yet found a browser that is nicer to develop in than Chrom(e/ium).
Chrome's dev tools are quite a bit faster, but FF's dev tools give a better overview. IMO. In general, I'd say it's mostly personal preference and inertia.
Probably, but both Firefox and Safari are continuously making improvements to their devtools. Specifically, Firefox has pretty good tools for debugging layout (incl. CSS Grid) and accessibility (an entire panel in devtools that shows the accessibility tree).
i only use firefox for development -- i actually prefer its dev tools to chrome's.
also, since i'm the only one on my team that does it, i often get CSS issues that only appear on firefox because the frontend people are using chrome specific hacks.
I've sort of switched: mobile is FF; desktop is Chrome. The thing that still gets me with both is that memory usage is -insane- and I cannot figure out why it is so high. After a few days of usage I'll close all but one tab and will have a 4+GB process.
Thank you to FF for maintaining AdBlocking but memory usage needs love, too.
Being shown ads is a requirement for many web sites. Responding to them is not. The focus of ad blockers is all wrong; the priority should be to appear to see ads without actually seeing them, and to protect privacy.
A browser of the future will fail to display ads, while giving no hint of this to the ad source; ads need to be downloaded as usual.
A browser of the future will cloak its identity by sandboxing each website, manipulating browser signature and apparent IP address (some variation of VPN services) to destroy tracking.
The issue isn't saving resources, it's winning the privacy wars.
[+] [-] suspectdoubloon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delhanty|6 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056864
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052623
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562
[+] [-] yonkshi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_duke|6 years ago|reply
With Microsoft switching to Chromium, Firefox is now the only viable (cross platform) alternative. FF gaining back a solid amount of market share is critical for the browser ecosystem in the future.
(Personally I switched back to FF after the first Quantum release, which brought performance back on par with Chrome. On mobile, the ad blocker is even more essential to get somewhat acceptable load times...)
[+] [-] jm4|6 years ago|reply
I see contributor sites being linked all over the place - social media, news aggregators, even Apple news. I wish there was more awareness that these articles are written by some regular person with no qualifications as a journalist and that there is no standard for accuracy.
I’ve been asked to be a contributor before. I don’t know what the criteria is. I got a cold call about it one day. I’ve been a panelist at a couple local events, got a mention in a niche news outlet and was nominated for an award once. My guess is that’s why I was targeted as a lead. The pitch was mostly about having a bigger platform for my personal brand if I remember correctly.
[+] [-] ljm|6 years ago|reply
It seems like the ideal solution of using the OS's native web toolkit hasn't been successful so far. So the next best offering (aside from building on Qt), is to have an Electron competitor too.
[+] [-] zzzcpan|6 years ago|reply
I'm not sure I understand your point. Is there a public statement from Microsoft that they are following Google on this? I don't know what Microsoft is going to do, but nothing stops them from keeping the API fully working. And if Firefox was based on Chromium too, nothing would stop Mozilla from keeping the API working either. Although I expect some forks to follow Google on this, namely other ad-tech companies with web browsers, like Yandex.
[+] [-] kace91|6 years ago|reply
I've been checking the tickets associated with the issue (mainly [this one](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042) ) and there doesn't seem to be any significant advance, nor it seems the people in charge are aware of how prevalent and deal breaking this bug is :(
[+] [-] pessimizer|6 years ago|reply
But firefox has shown no indication of gaining marketshare. I'd reckon that a large amount of firefox's current marketshare are people who had pre-Quantum extentions that were critical to their workflow, and who are now using an outdated browser version. One big vulnerability or generally adopted new feature would probably knock a third off even the 5-10% share they currently have.
Firefox's share is so small that the other two-thirds is probably evenly split between google-haters, a constant turnover of people just trying it out for a month or two before going back to Chrome, and people who use Chrome for most of their browsing and switch to Firefox for porn because they are afraid google is watching them.
When firefox was at 40% of the market and shrinking, they somehow decided that their problem was that they didn't look like a cheap knockoff, drop-in replacement for their competitor. They succeeded in making themselves totally disposable.
IMO, their only hope is and has always been to strip their browser down to a virtually featureless embeddable UI component, implement the rest of the current features as a core curated package of plugins against an API that all developers have equal access to, adopt all community-developed plugins that reach a certain usage level, and add a rating system for plugins that communicates the level of mozilla's involvement, e.g. gold for in-house, green for having employees intimately involved with the code, yellow for periodically reviewed by mozilla, red for never reviewed by mozilla, and flashing red for never reviewed by mozilla, has had complaints, and has not responded or been contacted by mozilla.
Other vendors will end up putting together different core suites, and will offer their own ratings, ultimately spawning 5-10 major concurrent firefox versions and swamping chrome out of existence. Through being able to lay off much of the reviewing work to outside vendors, firefox developers can concentrate all of their efforts on streamlining the core, educational outreach about the internet and the web, and lawsuits against the monopolists for adding anti-features to their sites targeted to ruin the user experience on specific browsers.
Instead, firefox has settled into being the token opposition party in a dictatorship that just exists to make sure that there's another name on the ballot come election time, and the dictator only gets 96% of the vote instead of 100%.
[+] [-] ufo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] velox_io|6 years ago|reply
Hopefully Google leaves a workaround to enable ad-blocking. Otherwise, I will switch, it will be a bit of hassle, but I'll drop them none the less. No ads & lower power usage would be nice though.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300077/microsoft-edge-ch...
[+] [-] treis|6 years ago|reply
Why are multiple rendering and JS engines critical for the browser ecosystem? Everyone would be much better off if we standardized on one.
[+] [-] threatofrain|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dijit|6 years ago|reply
EDIT: I have been informed that it's not cross-platform since 2012. My bad.
[+] [-] drevil-v2|6 years ago|reply
We partnered with them on their DialogueFlow platform (voice recognition) for Google Home integration and voice command intent handling and they totally screwed us over. I won't/can't go into the specifics but it was bizarre; we had no recourse except taking a near trillion dollar company to court. We decided it was not worth it and wrote off the cost and took a hit but never again.
[+] [-] wayoutthere|6 years ago|reply
They’re an advertising company through-and-through.
[+] [-] netman21|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjpnz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bambax|6 years ago|reply
Google employees such as Justin Schuh are aggressively defending the move on tech/security principles and denying commercial motivations, while uBlock Origin dev (Raymond Hill) says the change will cripple or kill uBO on Chrome and evil motives are its raison d'être.
It's good that mainstream media articles raise the awareness of the issue, but a good technical discussion by impartial analysts would also help.
Is it possible to fix the security issues of the existing webRequest API without deprecating it? Or by replacing it with something safer but just as powerful? There should be a simple answer to those questions.
(I'm tempted to side against Google because they keep invoking "performance issues", which is a ridiculous argument: nothing helps Chrome's performance more than efficient ad-blocking. But still, I'd like to know more.)
[+] [-] simias|6 years ago|reply
Of course these types of compromises crop up all the time when you're designing software, but then the problem is: if in the near future one Google engineer has an idea to improve the ad-blocking interface by, say, redesigning a certain component, would they do it? Would management let them do it?
There's a clear conflict of interest here, I expect ad-blocking to suffer death by a thousand cuts on Google's platform. Not necessarily because there's an evil master plan to kill it, but merely because every time there'll be a technical argument in favor of gimping it they're very likely to go with it while every time there'll be a proposal to improve it I'm sure there won't be a lot of motivation to implement it.
So even if we give Google the benefit of the doubt here I still believe that it's a huge problem and we can't let them effectively control the web. Beyond that in this particular case I'm not even sure I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, the technical justification seems iffy to me (and the burden of proof is clearly in their camp) and there's been a clear pattern lately of Google moving to reduce the impact of ad-blocking (such as them bundling a minimal ad-blocking with chrome, most likely as an effort to dissuade people from looking for better third-party blockers).
[+] [-] roblabla|6 years ago|reply
The WebRequest API is not being deprecated though, only the ability to block through it is. And I don't think blocking a request has very negative security implications. It's hard to not attribute malice to this move when the status quo was absolutely fine, and google is raising a strawman to try and justify their changes.
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyrra|6 years ago|reply
Example: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-cuts-fake-ad-blockers-f...
My understanding of the current behavior is that an extension like uBlock can programmatically read requests. Extensions will be made to abuse an API and people will install them unwittingly.
[+] [-] SpicyLemonZest|6 years ago|reply
Whatever Google's true motivation is, there's no way to solve those problems without limiting the power available to ad blockers.
[+] [-] gorhill|6 years ago|reply
Nowhere did I ever say "evil motives". I merely pointed out that Google has a duty to its shareholders.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] polygot|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Schnitz|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ignoramous|6 years ago|reply
For folks looking for simplest anti ads and tracking browser (for friends and family, for instance) should consider Firefox Focus [0] instead of Brave. It is light and works like a breeze on lowest of configurations.
And folks using Android not bothered enough to setup Pi-Hole should consider using Intra with nextdns or adguard-dns [1].
I've installed Intra for friends and family on their phones, on their AndroidTVs... It takes a quick one minute setup and another minute to show them how to use it. Esp, nextdns' analytics dashboard is a real eye-opener for them. When they actually see the results, they start taking notice and are bothered enough to figure out how to blacklist additional domains.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15049171
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20051049
[+] [-] tfigment|6 years ago|reply
I setup DNS66 easily and that helped with some ad heavy apps as well. Only issue is it cannot be used with actual VPNs.
I open Firefox manually if I want a heavier browser with tabs and ublock or umatrix but focus is usually first.
[+] [-] ajnin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ebilodeau|6 years ago|reply
https://9to5google.com/2019/05/29/chrome-ad-blocking-enterpr...
[+] [-] oedmarap|6 years ago|reply
I think nextdns is fantastic for this purpose and has a barrier of entry that makes it usable for non-tech folks as well.
I created an account recently and linked my WireGuard server's IP (when connected) to a saved nextdns configuration.
Ads/trackers are now blocked on all my devices that use the WG egress when the provided DNS server is set in each peer's conf.
This is obvious given the scale of their blocklists, but let me just say the browsing experience and speed boost is utterly phenomenal. Does a better job at blocking than both my old Pi-Hole server and my localhost AdGuard Home daemon.
[0] https://nextdns.io
[+] [-] agentofuser|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 713233eb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Funes-|6 years ago|reply
You can also run a ridiculously simple script from time to time (or create a cron job that does it for you, for example) to update your hosts file periodically, using the same blacklists[0]. No extra hardware needed.
[0]: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts.
[+] [-] jpangs88|6 years ago|reply
Not that I don't want people to switch to Firefox/other browsers, I just feel like if Google implements their own solution I think most people won't mind...
[+] [-] sldjfkdsljffkjd|6 years ago|reply
My Chromebox is my most used computer in my house (it powers the living room TV) so this'll be a real inconvenience for my family.
[+] [-] blisterpeanuts|6 years ago|reply
Google's Adsense (or whatever you call those text ads that appear next to search results) was a reasonable compromise, unobtrusive and often useful, whereas full window timed ads that force you to click the "x", and similar excessively animated distractions and pop-ups, are what motivate people to install add blockers.
[+] [-] davidgerard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billysielu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azangru|6 years ago|reply
The only praise for a browser that I am hearing in this and similar threads is about how a browser is superior for content consumption (browser X is faster, etc.). It’s never about how one browser offers better developer experience than others. And I have not yet found a browser that is nicer to develop in than Chrom(e/ium).
[+] [-] Semaphor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SimeVidas|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fernandotakai|6 years ago|reply
also, since i'm the only one on my team that does it, i often get CSS issues that only appear on firefox because the frontend people are using chrome specific hacks.
[+] [-] CoffeeDregs|6 years ago|reply
Thank you to FF for maintaining AdBlocking but memory usage needs love, too.
[+] [-] Syzygies|6 years ago|reply
A browser of the future will fail to display ads, while giving no hint of this to the ad source; ads need to be downloaded as usual.
A browser of the future will cloak its identity by sandboxing each website, manipulating browser signature and apparent IP address (some variation of VPN services) to destroy tracking.
The issue isn't saving resources, it's winning the privacy wars.
[+] [-] Justsignedup|6 years ago|reply
99% of people don't even know that adblockers exist. Those same people are generally scared of computers.
Trust me, this isn't gonna matter. I saw these same arguments during the IE/Firefox war. Didn't matter that much.
[+] [-] majewsky|6 years ago|reply
How can that be when mainstream publishers complain about 20% and more of users using adblockers?