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No, Firefox Won’t Become A Chrome Clone


vissha

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No, Firefox Won’t Become A Chrome Clone

 

The last couple of days have been filled with widely speculative articles suggesting that Firefox's future is Google Chrome and not the company's own Gecko or Servo engines.

 

Read the Register piece for instance which was very blunt in its assumptions but has been updated since then as Mozilla's been in full PR recovery mode ever since one of the organization's engineers posted about Project Tofino on a non-company blog.

 

Quote

Senior VP Mark Mayo caused a storm by revealing that the Firefox team is working on a next-generation browser that will run on the same technology as Google's Chrome browser.

 

Other sites covering technology, like Cnet, have been more reserved in their reporting but all either seem to suggest that Mozilla plans to move to a Chromium-base for Firefox, or that the company is struggling and looking for ways out to regain market share and relevance in the market.

 

What Project Tofino is

 

project-tofino.png

 

Project Tofino is a side-project that six Mozilla employees have been assigned to. The core idea behind the project is to find out if the core web browser layout that is being used today gives the best user experience.

 

Quote

What’s probably not surprising is that the team that builds our browser has a lot of great insights and ideas about how people actually use browsers and the kinds of problems people have that aren’t currently solved by anybody’s browser product.

 

Mark Mayo clarified this further with an update posted on April 8th in which he stated clearly that "Project Tofino is wholly focused on UX explorations and not the technology platform".

Tofino project member Philipp Sackl added the following information on the same day in another blog post.


 

Quote

 

When you think of a browser today, you’re probably thinking of tabs, a location bar and perhaps a bookmarking system. But are those still the best tools for the jobs we are aiming to accomplish on the web? Maybe they are. Maybe they are not. We want to find out.

 

That’s why we are starting Project Tofino. It is our name for a series of experiments and explorations on what a browser could look like when its fundamental paradigms are invented in 2016 instead of 1996.

 

 

What caused the confusion

 

The team behind Project Tofino uses Electron and React to do the prototyping, testing and experimenting, and not Firefox core technologies such as Gecko, Servo or XUL.

 

Electron on the other hand is using Chromium, and that's the reason why reporters assumed that Mozilla was considering moving to a Chromium base just like Opera Software did years ago.

 

The main reason for using Electron was that it is better suited for the task ahead and the team size, and the reason that it is not associated with Mozilla at all may have played a reason as well in the decision making process.

 

Interestingly enough, Mozilla Vice President of Platform Engineering announced a couple days later Project Positron, which wraps the Electron API around Gecko.

 

The main issue

 

Mozilla could have avoided the confusion and, what many would call, bad press, by making it clearer what Project Tofino is, what it aims to do, and what it is not.

 

Timing may have played a role here and Mayo seems to have been criticized internally for posting about the project before Mozilla had the chance to "tell the story" to avoid making it look like a no-confidence vote in Firefox or Gecko.

 

Source

 

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Mozilla reinventing a wheel. Instead of wasting years of development and telemetry monitoring to see what interface arrangement people prefer, why not KEEP THE INTERFACE BLOODY MODULAR !?!?!

 

In past years you could literally move, add or remove ANY Firefox element from/in the interface. As the time progresses, more and more stuff is becoming static and locked on the interface. Like for example forward/backward buttons, refresh button, that 3 horizontal lines menu button etc. All this used to be 100% modular. It isn't anymore and you need stupid extensions to get rid or to add such elements. It's idiotic. You're adding ballast and make everything slower because you have to add tons of low quality crap addons/extensions to change things the way you could change them out of the box before.

 

So, Mozilla, stop selling me bullshit how Firefox is not becoming a Chrome clone if you basically copied Chrome's interface with entire icons design, started locking down buttons and elements just like Chrome, that you're not making it "not a Chrome clone". Because that's absolute BS.

 

Opera went the exact same stupid path. It used to be the most modular browser in the world and they turned it into this locked down static mess that yet again mimics Chrome. Fuck you all browser developers. If I wanted Chrome I'd be using it already. I was using Opera and Firefox because they were modular and I could adjust them based on my needs and browsing preferences.

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  • Administrator

@RejZoR: Your comment is so proper, I have sent it's link to guys at Firefox through this. :P

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7 hours ago, Lestat said:

A bit off-topic... But it fits a bit into Mozilla's ridiculous actions and ideas lately:

 

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&p=83218&sid=31ea014780e5bfa175c0e74a34f6eed9#p83218

They claim to be open source  and trying control other forums members because there becoming Opera and the power users  at Palemoon  are making of fun them , It looks like there just looking for a excuse to stop working with Palemoon . Firefox  feels threatened because everyone  is going to head over to Palemoon   soon  that are power users because there user base that use Chrome  left them years ago already .  :)

 

The great thing about  Chromium is its a completely open-source project that anyone can fork off of even Google did . Firefox stared  out as Netscape it was 1st  re branded as Phoenix and then re branded as Firebird then Firefox because they used others names and got in trouble . They started out as a proprietary software  and you really cant  condenser  them open-source  anymore because there packing DRM  and telemetry  in there browsers  The should be forced to change Licenses as proprietary and now there trying to control  what little forks they have  shows they dont deserve  to be called open-source anymore !

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While an admin will never go public unless they think it's really required to do so, I'm wondering what led guys at Mozilla to believe or think like this.

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20 hours ago, Lestat said:

A bit off-topic... But it fits a bit into Mozilla's ridiculous actions and ideas lately:

 

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&p=83218&sid=31ea014780e5bfa175c0e74a34f6eed9#p83218

 

Empathy sometimes overshadows the insight and leads us to take the third-party pain as ours ... What's wrong with that?! Well, I could post: "NSF is abusive"... Based on what?! One or another member here is abusive. The point is I'd not tarnish the forum's image because a few members have little mind. Similarly, the post in that forum should not be taken as an inherent Mozilla posture, but "someone's"...
I do not agree with much of what Mozilla has done with Firefox, but not because of that I will buy someone's discontent, much less from a competitor...
Every now and then I find myself saying that caution is needed...

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21 hours ago, WALLONN7 said:

 

Empathy sometimes overshadows the insight and leads us to take the third-party pain as ours ... What's wrong with that?! Well, I could post: "NSF is abusive"... Based on what?! One or another member here is abusive. The point is I'd not tarnish the forum's image because a few members have little mind. Similarly, the post in that forum should not be taken as an inherent Mozilla posture, but "someone's"...
I do not agree with much of what Mozilla has done with Firefox, but not because of that I will buy someone's discontent, much less from a competitor...
Every now and then I find myself saying that caution is needed...

Mozilla dont have a right  to tell some other browsers forum that the owner  needs to police it just because they use there source code they dont own Palemoon  . it's up to each owner who owns sites to make there own rules and to enforce them .. if they are doing something illegal it would still not be Mozilla's call to make it would be up to the proper channels to warn the owner .  Ubuntu draws its source and updates off Debian and many Distros draws there source from  Ubuntu and Debian. As far as there forums go they can't tell each other what to do and always  there  hating on each other . If you go after some place and its members done wrong but the project didn't do no wrong its nothing you can really do if its truly open source .  Many Chrome forks are made based on the fact that Google dont have very good privacy .

 

Caution is just a word people use to ban freedom of speech . and it dont make a shit  what one site does they will still go to one the 100s  of sites  that still have freedom of speech and bash Firefox anyways. And possibly lose users to chrome for being pushovers. Every action causes a reaction . That;s why trough 2011 -2014 i took a break from most forums and just went to blogs were they ask for nothing   .  I worked for free for them and they threaten to ban me before because i said something to someone  who posted the same thing i did under me and they done it to make money off warez    and  try to boss  me around and 90% didn't  even contribute to the site other than thank you post   I left and no matter  how much they asked  me i never would go back, now its closed down . I dont need people who i dont know in real life bossing me around  i dont let people  in real life boss  me around unless  they pay me. But i try to respect any sites rules to the best of my ability i bite my tongue  all the time lol . But  if they  got  too many  rules  i just leave and and never sign back in if they treat me badly  .

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1 hour ago, steven36 said:

( ... ) Caution is just a word people use to ban freedom of speech. ( .... )

 

Well, steven36, I believe you did not catch my point... The use of the term "caution" does not imply sanctions anyway, at least not when I make use of it. You mentioned in another topic your cautious about the reports in the mainstream media, and I fully agree with you. Just as I, you seek something closer to what you consider to be the truth. And here's my point:
You told us of your bad experiences with forums in the past and I believe in you. I do believe because I see your soul in your posts. Otherwise, I would tend to question how far your story is true or not. In other words, I would act with caution.
By default, I believe in nothing. Thus, the suggestion of what was being Mozilla's stance could not be taken for true just because someone says it's true.

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3 minutes ago, WALLONN7 said:

By default, I believe in nothing. Thus, the suggestion of what was being Mozilla's stance could not be taken for true just because someone says it's true.

If  it would came from some other source besides the Horse's mouth  I would never believed  it . But it come from Moonchild himself the founder of Palemoon that i knew of since there was a Palemoon .  :)

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1 minute ago, steven36 said:

If  it would came from some other source besides the Horse's mouth  I would never believed  it . But it come from Moonchild himself the founder of Palemoon that i knew of since there was a Palemoon .  :)

 

Aaaaaaaaand that's the point!!! :cheers:

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2 minutes ago, WALLONN7 said:

 

Aaaaaaaaand that's the point!!! :cheers:

I was never really a big Palemoon user because of haveing to use older versions of addons with it , but with the changes Firefox is making  i been keeping it around and updated for a longtime  I used Cyberfox  but any Firefox browser based on v43 or higher i dont really want to use  .  So i switched to Firefox 38 ESR  once that updates I guess Ill just use Palemoon . I want update my Firefox browsers  at all before i let  security overtake its usefulness .

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