If you haven't used Chrome, no wonder you haven't noticed Firefox sucking. But a side-to-side speed and responsiveness comparison of Chrome and Firefox is unfair even today.
I have used Chrome and Firefox side-by-side, consistently since Chrome's original release. I have used Netscape and Internet Explorer since before both existed. I have performance gaming rigs of all generations, and I develop software. I have multiple generations of Apple machines as well. I run Windows and Linux.
Firefox doesn't suck, and matches Chrome. But there's no accounting for user behavior. I have seen user behavior that is mind-blowingly stupid, and subcultures of user activity and tendencies trace well with product loyalty trends.
Some user subcultures are retardedly dependent on browser extensions, never clear their cache, retain cookies for the lifetime of their laptop battery, and seemingly need hundreds of tabs open. And none of this shit makes sense to me.
These are likely the same people who carry around phones on the brink of overheating while locked, and in their pocket, because they have to have a thousand apps installed, in order to feel like they're getting the $1,000 phone they paid for, I guess. Their emails are constantly peppered with "sent from [app|device|service]" signatures, and they claim microphone permissions are why ads target them.
Honestly, if you've been blaming the browser, it's more likely that you're the one being your own worst enemy.
All the users I forced to use Firefox, decided that Chrome was faster, and they were more than 100s of them.
( And as a user I knew that too. I just wanted to support Firefox. )
So saying Firefox Doesn't suck may be partially right. As we will have to define "suck" first. But saying it is as fast as Chrome during Firefox 4 and early Chrome era is just the same as saying earth is flat.
So...what are you trying to say here?
That if you don't feel comfortable with a browser, you are the issue?
That if you have different use-cases and behavior, you are the issue?
Each browser has different look and feel and is unique in its own way, even if some differences are tiny.
And, yeah, if Mozzila likes dropping numbers, nothing has to change.
Chrome handles PDF and printing (with the preview) better than Firefox in my opinion. I probably like Chrome a bit more for dev work as well but as a user they're pretty similar with the exception of the PDFs that I mentioned.
"Chrome handles..." can be said for a lot of things really.
Just this last month I've had Firefox crash tabs daily that Chrome handled perfectly fine, I've seen it crash the entire browser when Chrome did just fine. Underlying both those issues was a janky Windows install that was partially broken. But still, Chrome carried on like a trooper.
I've even just switched back to Linux and immediately saw Firefox stumble over scrolling frame rates. That was caused by using an Nvidia graphics card and the proprietary drivers on Kubuntu which was a bit janky again to say the least. But Chrome carried on through again with no problem.
Just today I've switch to an AMD graphics card and the opensource drivers on Fedora and only now is Firefox seemingly playing nice.
It's a great browser (though Dev Tools don't seem as good to me) and I love the containers but it does seem it needs a bit more of a particular environment to operate just right whereas Chrome 'just works' more of the time. That is possibly why lots of people say 'fine for me' (it is for me now, yey!) but others say "it's broken" or 'slow' or whatever.
When I notice a difference in responsiveness between Chrome and Firefox, it's usually due to the webpage being Chrome-optimized. I don't know why: maybe it was developed and tested under Chrome, maybe it uses features that work better on Chrome because they were developed and pushed by Google, or maybe the differences between the rendering engines favor Chrome.
Google's own websites are some of the major culprits. The funny thing is that similar webs don't have this issue, and I don't notice any slowdowns that push me to do side-by-side tests.
I've noticed worse performance of firefox on macos compared to windows, to the point where firefox is unusable on many websites on a 2 core macbook pro. Even fucking facebook is slow on firefox, even with recent improvements.
I use Firefox daily, alongside Chrome for a very long time. Firefox manages system resources much better, works way more stable, and behaves the way I want, without any exceptions.
Chrome feels like an untamed animal which does stuff without telling you, and I don't like it.
Edge's rendering engine is good. The only real problem Edge has is that they've built it using the ugly, unresponsive Metro UI. If they build a browser with the Chromium engine and a Metro UI, they can expect nobody to use it as well.
>One of the coolest areas of package management is that you can go back in time and boot up into a previous state of the system, all thanks to the new packaging system. To do this, simply open the boot menu, choose the boot volume, and select Latest state or a nicely time stamped ‘version’. Very cool.
New versions of programs may modify the user config files in a way that old versions may not be able to read those config files anymore and even corrupt them. How is this handled, if at all?
What config file format are you using that applications would corrupt newer ones? The only one I can think of would be raw memory structs written to disk, which is nasty and ridiculously unportable even across 32-bit vs. 64-bit, let alone other architectures.
On Haiku, config files are generally either plaintext (kernel/drivers/a few core apps, so they are easily editable) or archived-BMessage format. The former are almost always read and not written, and the latter are key/value based so at worst the application would just not know about the new keys, and possibly remove them, which isn't the end of the world.
Configuration changes depend on the developers. For example, I used to use Evolution on Linux / Gnome as my email client. Their attitude to compatibility is terrible. As in, they just don't care at all.
If you allowed it to upgrade your Evolution data store there was no going back.
In a BeOS case it would be as if it migrated to different configuration keys in the new version, then the old version would detect corruption, throw a fit and erase ALL the keys.
It's permanently disabled in the normal version because malware would piggyback on the browser to steal passwords and so on. Obviously Mozilla have no problem with people wanting to make their own extensions and so on.
Aurora is no more because it was not necessary for stability (when nightly merges to beta it is already very stable, this improved a lot over time) and incurred a cost on speed of development (one less stop for the train to ride). DevEdition is now based on Beta and extremely stable. I use it alongside the stable version on both of my main computers in an equal way and I have max. 1-2 issues in DevEdition in a year (and those issues do not even prevent me from doing my work).
I wonder to what extent that helps prevent malware from installing a malicious addon to Firefox, because by using the same mechanism as cheating in video games, you can hot-patch a running browser process to disable the functionality to keep it from installing unsigned addons. Technically, in Windows you would just call WriteProcessMemory to modify memory content of another process.
It‘s the injection vector. People used to sideload malicious addons a lot by „accident“ when a rogue website told them to („You must install X player to see this video. Click here …“).
Would it be difficult to set up a list of allowed signatures in Firefox? By making it unintuitive for the average user to modify, you would prevent most bad actors from succeeding but still allow power users to control their own experience.
„This cool trick gives your Firefix super powers“ articles will appear instantly. This happened before with noobs following instructions to copy & paste code into the developer console(!), which pwned quite a few Facebook (and other) accounts. Same for banking websites, intranets, … social engineering works well on the unsuspecting. This is btw why browser vendors implemented measurements to make it harder to copy & paste into the dev console, as well as disallowed pasting „javascript:“ URLs to the address bar.
Weird, I have 63.0.3 as far as I see the normal version and had no problem downloading and with that updating the November version of "bypass-paywalls" which was also affected from the releases page here: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox/releas...
That means it's signed with Mozilla's signature. Actually, I think extensions can maybe be signed by Mozilla even if they're not on addons.mozilla.org.
Their addon tool includes a well documented facility to sign an extension without listing it in the addon store so you can host it somewhere else. This can e.g. be used for company-internal extensions.
I would even say mozilla invited this to happen by assuming sole authority which addons can get installed. They created a single point of failure. Now that SPOF gets exploited.
I'm not convinced this is a worse evil than the previous situation, which was that any and every crapware installer injected browser plugins/toolbars without consent.
Caveat emptor is always better than a petty dictatorship.
And that's what Moz is being these days; emulating the Apple App model, the Windows Phone app model, and other obnoxious "you have to ask us permission to do stuff on your device" rules.
Id rather take toolbar hell. We'd have more functionality overall.
Of course you would rather take the toolbar hell. Because you're not the one who will be installing random toolbars. This is really no different than saying: "I'd prefer that when a company that has to make a decision that affects millions of users they go with the option that's best for me"
What's somehow worse is that you can literally have your cake and eat it too -- just install Dev or Nightly, you're exactly the advanced user those branches are targeting.
Becuase if they're not I can't imagine not being able to side-load them.
And if they are, with the amount of Firefox forks we have, it should be trivial to create one that allows for side-loading unsigned or 3rd party signed extensions. Hopefully without too much source modification, just creating a distribution of Firefox would easiest to manage.
I‘m pretty sure there is an un-branded release version of Fx on the Mozilla website that allows side-loading and allows disabling the signature verification. I don‘t have a link ready and on mobile so I cannot easily check.
Yes, you should definitely switch to Chrome instead, which has a sterling track record of respecting you as a human and not as a revenue source.
Or maybe knock off the hyperbole and start asking whether there are tradeoffs being made in favor of increased security for the average user. Which does require a more nuanced view than Braveheart-style screaming about freedom.
Why would it be wrong for a publisher to only allow subscribers to read articles? If that is the business model that works in the 21st century then publishers should absolutely do it.
The bigger question is whether or not users should only be allowed to run software the neatly aligns with the publishers' business plans (and those of other corporations -- video game companies, business software vendors, etc.). Personally, I think business plans should be based on reality and not based on courts ordering people to pretend that reality is something else. In this case it is not even hard for publishers to enforce their paywalls -- they can simply refuse to serve page content before the payment is made, instead of just asking the browser to not render the content (which is like handing someone a newspaper and then saying, "don't read anything until you pay!").
I don't think current trends indicate hard paywalls as the future. Instead, it looks like news organizations are going to publish exclusively into walled gardens like FB.
Which outside of admitting the complete dependence of news on social distribution platforms is pretty much what journalists actually want -- a low-friction account you can use to enforce free tiers.
>To be frank, it surprises me that I can go around in my car still at all. Burning diesel to move people should be banned by now, especially with the market flooding with EVs.
Do you think everybody can afford to buy a new car, especially an EV?
The reason these bans are in place is because they are necessary, and they are necessary because most cars are old because most people can't afford to switch. It's effectively a tax on the poor.
Everything that increases the cost of doing _anything_ is a "tax on the poor"; that's just a particularly emotional way of describing exactly what it is that poor people don't have (money/power).
In a city like London there is actually no reason to drive around a diesel car in the centre. It's done for convenience only. Non-diesel vehicles exist, electric vehicles exist, very soon there'll be enough to fill the roads (Central London is really quite small), done.
I don't think it should be banned - I think a tax is far more appropriate (that's actually what we're doing) - but ultimately, yes, poor people will be hit harder.
We don't allow burning rubbish to heat homes either. That's a "poor tax" too.
I used to drive past this block fairly often and I'd shudder every time. I can't imagine living there. (It's worse in person than in the photo, really, the building is black).
Poor people are overwhelmingly more likely to live in those sorts of conditions in London - more likely to live near traffic lights, close to busy polluted roads, on major arterial routes, and generally just in the pollution hotspots.
By contrast, the wealthy are more likely to live in luxury apartments with proper AC, or leafy suburbs, or just on side streets that aren't front-line pollution (compare Euston/Marylebone Road to side streets).
(I say more likely, because it's true on a statistical level, but it's also just obviously true. I can afford to not live there so I don't. It's obviously horrible, look at it, there's a massive road on one side and a railway line on the other. You'd better have some bloody good sound insulation if nothing else).
So actually reducing emissions is in some ways an inverse tax on the poor - because poor people inhale more of the shit anyway.
I live in a European city with comparatively bad public transport, and I still don't own a car. Sure, going somewhere by public transport often takes twice as long as going by car, but it's cheaper and I am free to do stuff in that time. In the rare case I need one I could always rent one or use a car pool and still be much cheaper than owning and operating one.
In rural areas it's a different matter, but the poor in the city rarely need cars in Europe. Many want it for the convinience, but taxing luxury goods is accepted practice.
Allowing people to pollute is effectively a subsidy for them, paid for with a tax on everyone’s health. Wealthy people are more able to take advantage of this subsidy and more able to avoid some of the tax, so the old way is also a tax on the poor. Except instead of just taking their money, they’re being slowly killed.
I am not the person you replied, taxes on pollution affect the poor, it is true but I seen people buying a 20 years BMW
rather then a new or newer less cool model car, so the pollution taxes and measures should affect this purchases and push people into buying petrol, smaller engine cars.
Europe is different from the US, we don't need cars here. I'm from Romania and I don't even have a licence. The only reason to have a car here is for work or comfort. I've travelled around the EU quite a lot and could always get around with public transport or taxis.
So no, in the context of the EU, banning cars is not a tax on the poor, it is a comfort tax at best and one which increases the comfort of every other citizen while punishing "poor" people who want cheap comfort at the expense of everyone else around them.
It depends. For city-dwellers, that's true (I'm one myself, 29, living in Germany, no driver's license either). But someone living in a village will find it pretty impossible to run their errands or bring their children to school without a car.
>But someone living in a village will find it pretty impossible to run their errands or bring their children to school without a car.
It is not impossible, I know people that live in villages in Romania and use public transport to go to the city where they work. Usually this people don't own a car because they don't have a driver license, there are enough such people since the common transport is profitable for the companies that offer it.
Is not that true, there are cheaper cars, they may be missing some comfort features, the engine will be smaller (very cool how for example Ford has now peformmant 3 cylinder engines),
the regulation will push people on cheap newer and cleaner cars instead of cool cars but 10-20 years old.
I know what I am talking about since my family is not rich, in my extended family (in Romania) nobody bought a new car.
I think is OK to sacrifice electric windows, parking camera, other non essential comfort features and getting a cleaner car.
Do you have a better idea on how we push things in the right direction , except the vague "free market and deregulation solves everything bullshit"
A 20 year old BMW is a beater car that can be bought easily for less than 5000 EUR. Banning old cars is the way to drive those cars out of the market.
If a poor person needs to replace a broken car, the new laws will limit the valid options to 2006 or newer cars. You can buy a 2006 car for cheap nowadays.
I own car but also take advantage of the transport networks.
What I really dislike with this kind of bans is the complete disregard how people can afford to reach their usual destinations with a fragile transport network, if at all.
One of the customer sites I used to travel to, takes 30m with the car and almost 2h with public transports.
I would not call Madrid's public transportation network fragile. Not at all. For most practical cases, public transport won't take longer than if you need to park a car.
Not if one is lucky enough to live close enough to the city center.
From my experience in Lisbon, it took me 1h to do 30 km during rush hour and 2h outside rush hour.
As the trains/bus/boat connections get drastically reduced outside rush hour.
Ah, and good luck returning back home after mid-night.
Talking with Spanish friends, their view of Madrid network isn't much different from my experience.
In any case I was talking in general, because outside the major European cities, the transports are even worse, like 1 bus connection every two hours until 8pm and such.
I don't know Lisboa, but I can tell you this is not the case in Madrid. Neither it is in Barcelona, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, ...
There can be very particular routes for which 30km can take very long (although I do not see how a 30km trip is relevant when we're talking about the centre of the cities), but this is not common. And 8pm is not late at all, it is quite easy to move at that time. Again, I do not know Lisboa, but your generalization does not fit with my experience at all.
Nice, I talk about the general case, and you list capitals and people living on the city center.
A 30km trip is relevant, because there is a large set of population that works on the city center, yet it can only afford to buy a house 30-100km away from it, and commutes every day.
I lived in middle size cities where after 8pm there are no more buses, only taxis.
You were talking, and I quote you, about "major European cities". You can easily reach most major European cities from 30km away in less than 1 hour using public transport, also after 8pm. Most middle size cities are also quite well covered, depending what you mean by middle size, but 30km away may easily be in the middle of nowhere. If this is the case you are describing, it does not apply to the case of Madrid we are discussing. It is not a generalization, it is a totally different problem.
I guess we have a complete different view what a "major European cities" city is all about.
For me major doesn't necessary mean country/region capital.
Example Coimbra and Porto are major European cities, and good luck getting in less than 1h if you happen to live outside of the happy path of bus/subway lines.
The sensible way to go about this would be making new cars with ICE progressively more expensive, starting some time twenty years ago or so, so that people naturally switch over to clean alternatives. What we get instead of incessant lobbying by car manufactures until perfectly fine, new, cars need to be banned from city centers because the air quality is too bad. Now it is too late for a painless switch to less polluting transportation and the poorest suffer most.
I avoid using my mobile as much as I can. If I'm at home I use my computer, if I'm out I'd do anything other than watch videos on a 4" screen. I wonder if I'm alone in this.
