A nail in the coffin for Firefox? Mozilla struggles to redefine browser (cnet.com).
“Mozilla released details about the Tofino project Friday, saying a six-person team at Mozilla will consider how to radically revamp Web browsers. … Instead of using the core tech of Firefox, called Gecko, Tofino uses an outside project called Electron built on Google Chrome’s foundation called Chromium. That would be as surprising as Apple testing new iPhone interface ideas by using the Android software from archrival Google instead of its own iOS.
“Mozilla is still staunchly backing Firefox and its core technology. But the fact that the Tofino team decided it could work faster with Electron shows how hard it is to keep up with Chrome, which is worrisome for Firefox’s future.”
That and that FF does still occassionall corruptly fall over from time to time, but then again, so does Chrome (as with Chrome, FF does have an easy reset though: Firefox’s reset button panacea—Blog 28th Apr. 2013).
Is Chrome a better browser though—which adoption of Chromium, the open-source web browser project from which Google Chrome draws its source code seems to suggest—or just a lesser funded free-software community project no longer getting revenue for having Google set as default search engine realising its limitations to the de facto name or recommendation for browser, no longer really being an “alternative” to prevailing stuffy browser stodge which was responsible for FF’s rise from the ashes of Netscape Navigator on which it’s code has until now been based, which was perhaps former search engine and now kingpin owner of the web Google’s seeming plan, indeed even defining and standardising the “three sticks” customise/config. icon which Moz later adopted in FF (Blog 17th May 2014).
Indeed, it could be a standards or at least “standardising” issue, FF being almost the last browser not using the WebKit rendering engine, currently using using the Gecko layout engine to render web pages Mozilla implemented to promote current and anticipated web standards. I hear there are two versions of those web standards again now though from when the W3C spurned certain browser makers desire to “improve HTML”: HTML5 is done, but two groups still wrestle over Web’s future (Pick of the Week 31st October 2014). Indeed, it may sound to some like a ceasefire of the browser war has been knobbled by “standards” being drawn and aimed beneath a white flag.
So, the end of the road for Firefox? Prehaps even Mozilla? It could be said it’s been a long drawn out demise. But who’s fault?
Amid abandonment and failures, is Firefox the walking dead? (zdnet.com).
“How did Firefox go from being a popular, open-source web browser to the unpopular program it is today? It happened a little something like this. It’s been getting slower and klutzier release after release. I run all the major browsers and Firefox can’t compete. I like Google Chrome the best today, but I think it could stand some improvement and competition. Unfortunately, Firefox is no longer a competitor. … It’s not simply that Firefox is slow and prone to bugs. Mozilla, Firefox’s parent organization, seems to be falling apart at the seams. I date Mozilla’s collapse to Brendan Eich, Mozilla co-founder and creator of JavaScript, being forced out as CEO in June 2014. [Pick of the Week 8th Apr. 2014]”
Personally, I’d perhaps say an ill omen was evident soon after when they opted to call the location bar the “Awesome bar” (support.mozilla.org). But again, perhaps those that are still “competitors” are those with non-open source revenue to throw at making them so, an inditement if ever there was one that the “free internet” many often claim to cherish is as farcical sense of déjà vu of when drunk Microsoft employees from the upstart that was IE took the 10 foot high “e” logo from the IE4 launch party and left it in the fountain in front of Netscape’s Navigator—the open source legacy of which FF’s code is—headquarters at the end of the first browser war.
Recent/related stories
- Google killed its April Fools’ Day joke after it allegedly lost people their jobs (Latest Picks 1st April 2016)
- Microsoft confirmed its new web browser, codenamed Project Spartan, will in fact be called Microsoft Edge (Pick of the Week 2nd May 2015)
- Mozilla tells Google, it’s not you anymore, it’s Yahoo (Pick of the Week, 26th November 2014)
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