We may be at a final farewell for me and Firefox

I have long used Firefox as my primary internet browser. It was pretty much the original non-corporatized browser. Today, for PCs, it's definitely "do evil" Chrome by Google, or else Edge by "do evil and also make crap" Microslob.

On Macs, which is what I am normally on, it's those or Apple's own "do a fair degree of evil and turd-polish yourself" Safari.

There are other older browsers, of course, like Opera, and newer ones like Brave.

But, I have generally stayed with Firefox.

Until it has problems from time to time.

Like being a memory hog.

Or slow.

Or now, busting stuff.

A week ago, on my office Mac, I got prompted to update Firefox. Not a problem.

Until the restart, then yes a problem.

Substack is broken.

And, it's worse in various ways.

I commented on Shitter, from the office, tagging both Firefox and parent Mozilla. No response.

I then went to Mozilla's website, to the bug-reporting page.

You can do it anonymously, or through GitHub. No account with it, and don't want to bother. But, the fact that they don't even ask for an email is problematic.

Even more problematic for them as a tech company?

They asked if the problem was on Mac OS X 10.15. (That's the way they wrote it, redundancy and all.)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I'm on Ventura, specifically 13.5, at the office. (I get prompts to update to 14, but I hesitate to play with electronics not my own.)

Anyway, I am NOT NOT NOT on Catalina!

And, if you're getting that wrong, how fucked up are you?

Anyway, at home, I thought I would go on Facebook.

Nope.

Mozilla's account there dead since 2018. Won't even take FB messages.

Firefox's semi-dead since 2022. Takes FB messages, as far as still having a "post" feature, but no response.

Speaking of messages? 

Went back to Shitter.

Thought I would DM them there, rather than tag them.

Nope. Both Mozilla and Firefox have Shitter messaging turned off.

So, at least at work, if I ditch FF, it is likely permanent this time. 

So, I looked up alternatives to FF at home.

LibreWolf got high remarks. The worry is about it being such a tight fork off FF that it might break Substack, too.

Anyway, I downloaded it at home.

Problem?

Wouldn't import a thing from FF. Didn't even show it as "available," only Chrome and Safari. 

==

There's other reasons NOT to like FF 139. If you're a FF user do NOT NOT NOT update to this.

One issue is that it has an AI chatbot option that's embedded in a narrow left-hand rail. The fact that that's the top icon on the rail shows that FuckFox is trying to shove this down our throats. 

How Mozilla screwed the pooch on Firefox, in my opinion

And, everybody knows they DID, but, per Wiki and others, it's fallen off the cliff. 

Let's start with the nice big graphic Wiki has from Stat Counter. It is only through 2020, so no Brave.

 

The biggie is the spike in Chrome, even more than the drop in Firefox. 

What about smartphones? Well, Android is counted separate from Chrome. As for smartphones vs. desktop and laptop computers? They got the majority of browser share in November 2016 and haven't looked back.

I first thought that was the problem, but, Firefox's sagging starting in 2011. That said, not anticipating a Google-based option to an iPhone didn't help.

Given how buggy, and how insecure, an Android phone is, something cheaper than an iPhone, possibly cheaper than an Android, and maybe "locked" like an iPhone with some narrow, specific apps could have taken off like hotcakes. I would have bought one when my last flip phone, or "dumbphone," crapped out and Sprint told me smartphones were all it had available.

A second graph has more food for thought:

As you can see on it, mobile passed both Firefox and IE in 2013.

Had Mozilla put out an APB by the end of 2014, it probably could have had something to market by 2016. Partner with Samsung or someone else that got into Android smartphones early. Maybe try to resurrect a Nokia from the semi-dead by getting it to reverse engineer an Android.

But, after that, it might have been too late. By the end of 2016, Firefox was at 15 percent (and IE dying at 10 percent).

But, nobody sounded the "all hands in deck" in 2014 or even 2015.

Instead, in early 2022, we get Mozilla trying to backdoor paid search on us if we use the nav bar for searching, until it got busted at that.

Mozilla might take consolation in having a steady 10 percent of users. Should it?

The browser is a bigger memory whore than Chrome or Safari. (Never used Edge. Haven't used IE for 15 years. Opera is not as much a whore either. Haven't used Brave; downloaded but didn't install after its early kerfuffles.)

From what I've heard from friends (I haven't used it in years) recent iterations of Mozilla's email client, Thunderbird, are even more craptacular.

All of this should make you wonder how much of a player the Mozilla Foundation will be in the future world of the internet in general.

Eich and Mozilla — SJW overkill or legitimate action?

Brendan Eich/Wikipedia photo

By now, everyone tuned in to gay rights news knows that protests by gay activists and others concerned about civil rights have forced Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich out of his CEO's position, after it was discovered he had given money to the campaign to pass Proposition 8 in California.

Then, even as Eich was stepping down, senior leaders in promoting gay awareness, starting with Andrew Sullivan, cried foul.Contra the likes of Sully and Tod Robberson of the Dallas Morning News, while Eich has his right to his personal views, activists have a right to protest against Mozilla hiring him as CEO.

Besides, as the Guardian has documented, this is part of a pattern of Eich's, who also made donations to Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, and to Buchanan back when he was challenging Poppy Bush in the early 1990s.

Another gay activist, whom I certainly respect more than Sullivan in general, Michelangelo Signorile, tells Sully, at least, to get a clue (and drop some pretenses). Another gay activist, John Aravosis, says, please, don't call this personal choice.

He then brings up the issue of, what if Eich had contributed to the KKK? Well, given that Eich contributed to Ron Paul at the time that racist newsletters were going out from his congressional office under his byline as publisher, that's not just a theoretical question.

(And, apologies for saying in a Facebook thread that Aravosis' stance was the same as Sully's.)

Aravosis, in a later post, was worried somewhat, but didn't go into Sully territory. However, he does worry about the likes of Suey Park and Brittany Cooper of #CancelColbert infamy, steering something like this in the ditch. I think he's probably about right on this issue.

Per people who say that inclusiveness should include being inclusive of the refusing-to-be-inclusive, tosh. That's as nonsensical as "the set of all sets which are not members of this set" or similar.

Per people claiming this isn't free speech? Sure it is. It's certainly more that than money is, contra John Roberts. More than that, banding together to threaten boycotts or other actions is explicitly freedom of assembly, the most forgotten of the four freedoms of the First Amendment.

People who know me know that I am by no means in the corner of the "social justice warrior" movement. But, this was more broadly supported than that. And, no, contra Sully, he wasn't being asked to "repent." Actually, Mozilla was asked to repent.

As for the claim that SJWs should now stop using JavaScript because he invented it? Tosh.

I don't stop reading what Harrison Schmitt said about walking on the moon and doing professional geology work during Apollo 17 because we found out 20-plus years later that he's a climate change denier. Red herring.

As for the idea that right-wingers could do similar boycotts?

Well, we already know that Hobby Lobby, wanting a contraceptive exemption from portions of Obamacare, invests in contraceptive makers, and as of yet, I've heard bupkis about any threatened Religious Right boycott of it. It may happen soon enough, but I'll give you 50-50 odds that, other than the fringes, the real fringest, of the Religious Right, there is no such boycott threat.

Related to that, Brian Beutler nails it on wingnuts getting into a fake tizzy on this issue.

My example, even more than his? If conservatives really care about freedom of speech and freedom of assembly (technically, it's NOT freedom of "association") then they can start working to repeal "right to get fired" laws in red and pale-pink states. (It's my blog, and I'll call said laws what they are.) As every liberal, and every honest conservative, knows, "right to get fired" laws are regularly used to stifle free speech at the workplace.

OTOH (April 8): OKCupid's CEO (remember, that's the company that started this all) lives in a partial glass house. Even if Yagan has rethought some of his politics, per the MoJo story, this may have been a PR stunt as much as anything. And so, would-be gay lovers? You've been used like a $2 tool. How's it feel?

On the third hand (April 8) Jamelle Bouie says not so quick on castigating OK Cupid's Sam Yagan as a hypocrite. And, I'll at least halfway agree, since Yagan's was a contribution to a politician and Eich's Prop 8 was to a special-interest cause. With a Congresscritter like Cannon, he may have been pushing a specific piece of legislation Yagan liked. And Eich's longer list of contributions, to me, as noted above, establish a pattern.

It’s been a while since I bitched about Mac OS X …

Safari, it’s your term.

The sub-website for the local school district’s intermediate school keeps crashing Safari. It has problems with other school district webpages, too.

Internet Explorer 6 has a few better features … coupled with the drawbacks of all its virus susceptibility, etc. (I haven’t downloaded IE7 yet.)

And there’s also Firefox, which has features neither IE nor Safari does.