• Vincent@feddit.nl
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    2 months ago

    Anyone who thinks they know what needs to happen for Firefox to regain market share, needs to consider what would happen if someone forks Firefox and makes that happen.

    There’s no way that CSS theming is it. And in general, “not doing something” isn’t going to be it, either.

    • fixmycode@feddit.cl
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      2 months ago

      they need to offer a better alternative to Electron. once that happens, you’ll have Firefox everywhere. People will code their SPAs to run in Firefox first, recommend it to their users, and accelerate the development of better APIs.

      • Vincent@feddit.nl
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        2 months ago

        Ah, so it should just be better! I wonder why nobody thought of that yet :P

        (Sorry, I’m in a sarcastic mood, but you get my point.)

        • fixmycode@feddit.cl
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          2 months ago

          oh don’t get me wrong if I had a plan for it I’d be doing it. I’ve always found it really weird given the impact that Electron had in app development, why Firefox never tried to ride that train. I know of one short lived effort to take the engine out of the browser.

          • Vincent@feddit.nl
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            2 months ago

            Usually the answer is limited resources with unclear payoff, i.e. even with Electron’s success, it’s not clear that there’s room for an alternative in the market, and it’d be a lot of effort to do.

                • im sorry i broke the code@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 months ago

                  Tauri v2 just got released, it’s very recent and corps move slowly; besides, rewriting a project in a different framework is a major undertaking, it would be a bad idea to rewrite a major project in Tauri, which is still not as widespread. I’m unfortunate enough to have to work with Electron and Tauri greatly improves on everything that is wrong with Electron. I have no doubt that companies will begin adopt it in the following years (or a similar tool, the underlying architecture is solid).

      • threeganzi@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Check out Tauri, a better alternative to Electron. It avoids bundling a browser engine in the binary and relies on the OS browser engine.

  • prototype_g2@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Honestly, I don’t see why CSS theming is important. The customization is nice and all, but that’s not going to make people switch to Firefox. There are many other things that could be improved, like adding tab grouping. I use this extension called Tree Style Tab which I cannot live without. Firefox having something like that by default instead of an extension would be nice.

    However, having said that, OperaGX did find quite a lot of success by simply making it easy to theme the browser, so I can see where they are coming from.

    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Tree Style Tab which I cannot live without. Firefox having something like that by default instead of an extension would be nice.

      Been using TST for a while now, and I whole heartedly agree. Given that it’s essentially just some CSS, I can’t imagine that it would be difficult at all to support natively.

    • FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Vertical Tabs are in the Nightly build, already. It is a very rudimentary implementation, still. Personally, I use Sideberry though.

  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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    2 months ago

    Only reason I use Chromium is PWAs (Web Apps). Which is why I made an extension that opens links from Chromium in Firefox.

    Got Slack running in your work profile on Chromium? Opens links in Firefox work profile.

    I should probably release this.

    • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Same here. I have to trust/use an extension and third party desktop application (Progressive Web Apps for Firefox) to get this feature to work and not have to rely on Chrome/Edge/etc.

      I can easily see less patient or understanding users dropping Firefox if they find out it doesn’t work with Progressive Web Apps.

      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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        2 months ago

        My problem with that extension is the separate profile requirement (so new links can’t open in a specific profile), and some things (like Slack) don’t fully work outside Chromium.

        My solution works like this:

        • Slack open as PWA in Chromium in profile Work
        • Click link to http://that
        • Extension captures the request, cancels the new tab/window, sends the URL and profile name to a small service running on localhost
        • Service opens Firefox with same profile to URL

        The extension is set to skip this process if the base URL is the same as the current site (Slack.com/google.com/etc).

        Note: Why would someone down vote you for a helpful response? Sheash.

  • Taylor@mstdn.social
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    2 months ago

    @RmDebArc_5 @firefox I believe they really need better tab organization (without the need for extensions). just basic tab grouping like chrome is a very important feature.

  • Quintus@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Agreed. This is the only reason (besides the built-in fake VPN) OperaGX is popular. All browsers have pretty much the same feature set. OperaGX’s biggest strength is CSS customization, Firefox’s biggest strength is extensions, Edge’s is being the Windows default and Chrome’s is it’s image of “fast and secure browsing”.

    All Firefox needs to be is a jack of all trades. But still prioritize it’s main distinction.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        Well I’m very unlikely to stray from Foss. The problem with theming is that it allows websites to pick you out in a crowd. That won’t matter much if you don’t clear cookies on close but for people who want to resist fingerprinting that is a deal breaker.

        I would love to theme the browser but that also themes websites are far as I can tell.

  • solrize@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Main thing I want is to override site css. Who cares what the browser itself looks like.

  • ProfessorYakkington@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    I like theming , I am already a Firefox user. I think the sad reality is that for more adoptions , in the order of numbers that chrome puts up , Firefox needs to be a default application ; the common users doesn’t want to customize anything ( my hot take ).

    I don’t think it is important that Firefox gets to those numbers as long as they can generate enough revenue to keep going.

    • FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Not a hot take. Most regular end users are lazy, not tech savvy, or do not care. Not meant as an insult, it is just reality. I used to be a SysAdmin and this was always the case. This is why IE got big, and why Chrome and Google Search got big and to a larger extend why Apple’s offering got big in their ecosystem.

      Google trying to kill adblockers Barbara Streisand Effect them into the spotlight, magnitudes more than their own existence had merited to most average users in the last 15+ years, at least in the USA.

      And even now, I still know tons of end users who do not use adblockers.