Why Mozilla Needs To Go Into Survival Mode

[Guest]

The battle of the browsers reaches critical mass.

Why Mozilla Needs To Go Into Survival Mode : Read more

 

[figgus]

IE, in comparison, shows a different picture that is causing lots of headaches for Microsoft: IE6 is stuck in corporate standards

Good. It serves Microsoft right for trying to foist their own standards off as standards instead of being W3C compliant. I'm glad they are going to feel some pain over it.

 

[theholylancer]

as long as customize google (remove ALL google ads, even in gmail, and forces SSH for gmail and other apps), adblock (removes the rest) and noscript exists for fire fox and not chrome or IE, firefox is here to stay for those that wants the cheap web experience with nothing to do with any advertisements.

 

[Guest]

Any reason why this obvious opinion piece doesn't have "opinion" in the title anywhere?

 

[kelemvor4]

The reason for the disparate numbers in EU for ie is that the EU forced MS to give users a choice in browsers up front rather than just delivering IE with each copy of windows. Hopefully someday the DOJ will follow suit.

As for chrome, I'd be willing to give it a try if I could find an addon similar to adblock+. I've looked and found nothing, and until I get one; chrome is off the table for me.

 

[huron]

I just want to make sure I get this right...

Since Firefox isn't growing as much as it has been, it's in survival mode? Yes, I realize the point about revenues from Google, and that ending in 2011, but it feels like most of the article talked about statistics that it claimed can be skewed, then concluded this meant Firefox was dying.

I would hate to see Firefox go away and hope they fight this slow-down in growth, but it feels like the argument is a bit out there.

 

[TunaSoda]

I hope FireFox stays as-is, I'd hate to have to resort to a browser like Chrome

 

[cruiseoveride]

Without real plugins, Chrome is useless to me.

 

[nforce4max]

Well there is Opera mom uses it due to it being less bloated than the rest.

 

[-Fran-]

Give the ballot screen some time to show it's fruition. Although the ballot screen might come as a "free competition break" in the EU, it's making the customers try other options (safari, opera, chrome, firefox) right off the bat without having to inform themselves through other sources. The ballot screen is a great idea (yes, as in "for all OSes") and should be forced/introduced as an OS standard with a comprehensive data about browsers to give customers the right of information about their choice.

Cheers!

 

[jacobdrj]

[citation][nom]figgus[/nom]IE, in comparison, shows a different picture that is causing lots of headaches for Microsoft: IE6 is stuck in corporate standardsGood. It serves Microsoft right for trying to foist their own standards off as standards instead of being W3C compliant. I'm glad they are going to feel some pain over it.[/citation]
However, WE are the ones suffering for it. More viruses, worse compatibility. It isn't about 'serving them right', It is about us being able to use the internet productively.


As an aside, I have switched my main mobile computing to a netbook from a tablet. Because of the slow hard drive, I have decided to do the bulk of my regular browsing in Chrome. However, if I ever stray into abnormal search/research or I go to a link I am unfarmiliar with, I fire up Firefox with all the regular security add ons. HOWEVER, the main reason I shifted away from Firefox, even on my Quad-Core Raptor-RAIDed desktop is the fact that Firefox, with the 3.5 release, had become VERY unstable. My FF would crash/freeze regularly, and I could no longer rely on it for mission critical stuff.

 

[jacobdrj]

[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]Give the ballot screen some time to show it's fruition. Although the ballot screen might come as a "free competition break" in the EU, it's making the customers try other options (safari, opera, chrome, firefox) right off the bat without having to inform themselves through other sources. The ballot screen is a great idea (yes, as in "for all OSes") and should be forced/introduced as an OS standard with a comprehensive data about browsers to give customers the right of information about their choice.Cheers![/citation]
While there may be a few customers who have gotten to know different browsers with the ballot screen, the vast majority of people who haven't switched simply don't know the difference, even if SHOWN. My girlfriend, for example, can't understand why I installed FF and Chrome on her laptop when I was watching a Netflix movie with her...

 

[Onus]

When I buy a car, I don't have to choose who made the spark plugs, or the seat cushions, the battery, or any of its other parts and subsystems. If I don't like one of them, I can replace it; that's on me and I accept it. Why can't people accept that Microsoft has defined "The Product" as Windows including IE? If you don't like it, replace it. Simple. I did, and for the reasons cited by holylancer, expect I will continue to use Firefox. With ad revenue so important to Google, does anyone really think that Chrome will ever provide truly effective, all-inclusive ad blocking? I hear it's fast, and that's nice, but I don't mind a few seconds here and there if it means I don't need to put up with ads.

 

[lipoly]

[citation][nom]Suomynona456[/nom]Any reason why this obvious opinion piece doesn't have "opinion" in the title anywhere?[/citation]

Maybe because its apparently so obvious...

 

[Guest]

On the peacemaker benchmark, I scored 6980 for Chrome v 5.0.371.0 compared to 4537 for the chrome v 5.0.307.1. Incredible performance boost in today's release of the latest Chrome browser.

 

[coldmast]

"Join my Anything but IE" campaign, but don't switch to Safari /jokingly
of course (if you're on Windows)

I find great functionality in Firefox, Chrome, and Opera.
though I do use Firefox the most (because of the wicked plugins).

I always find that Opera never gets enough credit for what they offer, they had many "firsts" (like x's on each individual tabs) for what we consider a modern browser, and continue to fold in new technologies and innovations for what we should expect in a modern internet experience.

 

[skevil]

"Could Mozilla be squeezed out of the market?"

What a melodramatic article--give me a break.

 

[Bolbi]

I agree with the general tone of this article (uh, opinion piece). I think Chrome is rapidly gaining market share because of its amazing speed (which it really does have, for those of you who haven't tried it). I also think IE 9 is going to be at the very least MUCH better than IE 8. (I've tried the IE 9 Platform Preview as well.) I still love Firefox and use it as my main browser because it provides decent speed and a huge selection of addons, but I think Mozilla needs to speed up the development cycle and become more innovative again. IE started failing because MS gained most of the market share and became complacent. I hope success doesn't do the same to Mozilla.

 

[tuannguyen]

[citation][nom]skevil[/nom]"Could Mozilla be squeezed out of the market?"What a melodramatic article--give me a break.[/citation]

[break]

 

[loftie]

For those of you who want Adblock for Chrome, have a look at AdThwart

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb

 

[Guest]

@kelemvor4 Adblock now exists as a Chrome extension. You should try Chrome out, I made the move to Chrome a while back and haven't opened Firefox since. Those extensions made a huge difference.

 

[verun]

I would not change to Google, even if it'd be 10 times faster than Firefox.
Because it's freaking Google.
Opera was good when there was no Firefox. It's good today too, but Firefox is just better, without ads and with a load of possible addons.

IE is just like a default graphics driver: you need the real drivers to get all features and performance.

Yes: Firefox is a bit slow compared to other browsers right now. But it's still the best browser in my opinion.

Ofc. other opinions may differ.
And as long as there will be a Firefox, I just don't care.
People can do with their privacy, features-preference and need for speed what they want after all.

 

[cadder]

The new guys have some flash to attract people, but Mozilla is the real deal and gets the job done. Browser speed doesn't matter. Splash and flash don't matter. What matters is how well the browser protects you when you visit different websites, and Mozilla does that very well.

 

[mitch074]

@TanookiTravis: Adblock for Chrome doesn't work like Mozilla's: in Firefox, Adblock prevents the browser from loading ads. In Chrome, Adblock loads the ad, scripts and all, then hides it.

While Chrome is WICKED fast on normal pages, entering a site with lots of ads is PAINFUL in Chrome compared with Firefox+Adblock.

Another thing which is overlooked, is that Mozilla is already working on improving Firefox. It came as a side note in the latest release, but Firefox 3.6.2 added out of process plugins: plugins run in a different process than the pages, making is o that when a plugin crashes, it doesn't bring down the whole browser. That's called 'a good start'.

Plans for Firefox-next are:
- independent processes for each tab and the UI (in progress)
- hardware acceleration on Direct2D enabled OSes (landed in nightlies, debugging)
- hardware acceleration on OpenGL capable OSes (not yet there, useful for XP, Linux, OS X and mobiles)
- a sleeker UI
- a faster Javascript engine
- process separation for multicore processing.

Just imagine: Chrome with Firefox extensions and IE 9 drawing speed... On your phone.

 

[doomtomb]

Obviously some people using Firefox are switching to Chrome. Chrome is growing so rapidly because it is backed by Google and it is fast and stable. Most people that I've seen using it are people that used to use Firefox or IE previously. Firefox is slow compared to Chrome