'An issue of survival': Why Mozilla welcomes EU attempts to regulate the internet giants Mozilla's head of EU public policy, Raegan MacDonald, reckons effective regulation to protect privacy and enable fair competition is an "issue of survival" for Mozilla and other independent companies. The browser developer approached us in order to comment on the EU's newly announced digital strategy. "We're at the beginning …
I was the person who told them Firebird was already taken (by an Interbase database clone). They weren't too pleased having spent several weeks coming up with that name to replace Phoenix.
When they suggested Firefox I laughed and said "you know there's a Clint Eastwood film..."
That reminds me of when Norwich Union rebranded itself as Aviva, which they thought was a pretty unique/unused name. That is until until someone pointed out that on one of the main pedestrian areas in Norwich there was already a women's clothes shop* called Aviva...
(* it's gone now)
On quite a few of these CSS3 issues, it's that Firefox adheres to the actual CSS spec, but the spec is an ass. Chrome and several others deviate from the spec with proprietary undocumented cludges, that give behaviour that's much more intuitive, and makes FF look "broken" in contrast. Certainly this is the case with a lot of Flexbox oddness, not as certain about grid.
Worked on a site recently where I just relented that it will look different on FF and Chrome... I didn't have the energy to franken-div it.
Long time ago, the existance saved us from Proprietary MS only internet.
And I would have thought it deliciously ironic (and a much better choice for them and us) if Microsoft had based their Edge rewrite on Mozilla/Firefox rather than MSIE6-revisited (AKA Google Chrome).
I wish we had that same Firefox now. Back then, Mozilla's strategy was to unabashedly deliver a better browser than the corporate giant offered. The bit about not being part of the Microsoft hegemony was certainly part of it, but being a better browser was important too. It's doubtful people would have migrated just because of the dislike for what MS was doing to the web!
Now the same outfit that aimed to unseat IE by making a better browser is doing its level best to lop off every feature that makes Firefox better than Chrome, in some kind of foolish hope that it can somehow out-Chrome the actual Chrome. What would have happened if Mozilla of the early 2000s removed Firefox's tabbed browsing feature, removed the toolbar customization, and restricted the addon APIs so that only IE BHOs (browser helper objects) could be used instead of the much more powerful XPCOM addons? Would it have had the impact it did if it tried to compete with IE on who can have the most IE-like feature set?
Mozilla has been obsessed with trying to copy Chrome for more than a decade, and its market share has been in freefall for about the same time. I'm not suggesting causation... only that trying to out-Chrome the actual Chrome has not worked, and yet they still persist, as if there was some kind of critical mass of deleted features that will finally start the exodus away from Chrome.
Chrome's UI is the worst I have ever seen on a desktop browser, and Firefox's used to be the best, until they dumped that to be more like Chrome. It's been a gradual process of dropping important features with each release, but extension authors repeatedly stepped up and provided the means to fix these blunders. Then, of course, Mozilla chopped off the extension API capable of making such changes, in favor of the Chrome extension API (of course). If not for userChrome.css, bringing a Firefox-like UI to Firefox would be impossible... and that's a feature Chrome doesn't have, so I'm terribly suspicious that its days are numbered too.
Mozilla seems to be engaged in a decade-long suicide pact, and it shows no sign of changing direction.
@Updraft102
"Chrome's UI is the worst I have ever seen on a desktop browser, and Firefox's used to be the best, until they dumped that to be more like Chrome."
I am glad its not just me with that problem. I dont care that other people might prefer chromes look over FF but I preferred FF over chrome. That and the version number thing where they seem to be rushing to have the highest number yet for what I am using I see nothing different.
Another damning thing that Google actively discourages use of other browses. How do I know this? The last month Google maps became unusable on Firefox but I have access to other browsers one of which Falkon was able to fool Google that it was Chrome. It promoted Google to sent out a message saying "Chrome needs to be on a new version". Nevertheless Google maps worked perfectly.
Sort-of.
I am not a big Windows user, but IIRC, the Mosaic (via Spyglass Software, an amazingly prescient name) based Internet Explorer has been replaced by the Chromium based Edge browser. I'm pretty sure this "child of Chrome" is at least the default browser for Windows 10.
But, yeah, you _can_ run IE on Win10, much as you _can_ swim in the SF Bay in January. That said, most employers will not require you to do that (the swimming bit, not the "use IE until we can fix some crucial company sites". That's still a thing)
Microsoft still includes some support for IE (HECK IE 11 STILL GETS UPDATES!) because Enterprises for some reason still need it.
And I was referring to the late 90s early 2000s when the Wed was literally made for Internet Explorer and if you tried another Web Browser the webpages didn't work right.
ok it probably doesn't solve much, but set your browser to delete ALL cookies when you exit the browser. And exit it at least once per day, preferably more often.
It will make it a little more difficult for them to track you as you'll get a different cookie the next time you go to their site. Plus use an ad blocker to stop more cookies getting stored, which reduces the footprint of data they have on you from different sites. Then use No Script to stop unnecessary scripts from loading, often in the background. Don't think that's a problem? Then I recommend you put No Script on for a short time and just look at the number of websites that get loaded when you load a page -- try the 'free' news sites, as they seem to be the worst. Every time you go on one you will load sometimes twenty or so other sites; some are needed for the page to function, but many are just parasitic trying to get you to store cookies so they can build a picture of what you view.
As I say none of this is foolproof, but it only adds a little more effort on your side, and will break some of their scripts so they have less complete data about you.
If you think all the above is shit, then be my guest and do nowt. I may be just as exposed as you, but at least I don't see any of those annoying flashing adverts. They drive me mad. And if the website then breaks when you use these tools don't use it and go to a different website. Whose loss is that, yours or theirs?
You have the power!! :-)
Oh, and forget about those fucking glasses. They are not important.
Nowadays they also track you by location and IP so deleting cookies barely does anything to improve your privacy.
My IP address changes every few days (or more often if I want it to), and it comes from a pool of IP addresses that cover an area that includes multiple millions of people in a radius of at least 50 miles. If they can track me with that without some other form of persistent ID (like a cookie), my hat is off to them!
Yeah well, it'll have to get in line.
People have funny ideas about free speech. The awkward truth is that it's always, everywhere, been constrained in many ways - some actively enforced, but most merely assumed and accepted.
The big difference now is that instead of offending random passers-by in the street or a handful of zealots at a public meeting, everything remotely controversial immediately gets broadcast to everyone in the world who is likely to be most upset by it. Because clicks.
Before they worry about what kind of content is on the internet, perhaps they could fix the problem of Firefox taking a long time to start (their solution to this is to 'refresh' the browser, which means losing all your extensions and history). They could also fix the bug which freezes Firefox when they decide to open a new tab to load one of their splash screens advertising whatever the latest product they've thought up this week, forcing a re-start. Also, the runaway memory problem might be worth looking at (8 GB for a single tab) and the problem where live video streaming eventually stops working after 30 to 45 minutes.
Layers and layers of bloated code, advertising, tracking, cookies and piss poor bloated graphics.The web hasn't been optimized for almost a decade. .... ecofeco
Is that what AI is now fixing, ecofeco ..... with AIMaster Pilot Plans to Follow Sublimely for NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive Self Actualisation in Novel Virgin Source Provisions/Programs/Projects ‽ .
And is that a rhetorical question of Future Suppliers of Enlightened Entertainment with Enlightening Engagements?
I'm sure many a Dominic Cummings type weirdo and misfit could relate to practically all of that and relish exercise of the beasts then so easily created and sated/tempted and destroyed.
However, whenever such is just a default norm in Global Operating Devices just doing their Work in IT Thing, what would you have to fear? Would any like to stop it ...... and for what earthly reason, for one is missing around in some seriously sensitive and almightily explosive proprietary Intellectual property space, are always good questions best answered without fear or favour truthfully as recorded and accorded by the sum of one's personal knowledge, for others' truths may vary by a stupendous degree given the sum of their knowledge.
:-) And you don't wonder why Earth is such a Crazy Place in Space with practically nothing known of virtually everyone met and/or interreacted with? Are you mad or into something even stranger on Planet Earth?
Do you want some Just in Time Help/QCOSMIC Assistance?
Methinks the web is pretty much well enough optimised for instant delivery of any and/or all of that, ecofeco.
Every time I complained about sites not following standards and breaking Opera 12, all I heard, especially from the Firefox crowd was, "git gud, no-one cares about a browser with single digit market share". And when Opera complained about it to the EU, it was "sore losers, can't win in the market".
The only thing preventing me from exploding in schadenfreude is that I don't want Firefox to be left for roadkill. Monocultures are bad, even when they're from "cool" Apple or "nerd" Google and not "evil" Microsoft.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
