That'd certainly be a good feature, but it feels to me like it's a fairly niche need. And as per that post, it's also a big technical effort. I can see why there isn't anything in the way of development updates.

That is me being a bit of an apologist for Firefox though. If you consider Firefox unusable because of that, then that's a pretty valid frustration.

Still, I'd encourage you to try and find a way to make it work for you because Chrome is evil.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I don't use Google Chrome, but there are plenty of other chromium-based browsers out there.

This isn't the first time I've run up against technical shortcomings of Firefox, either. I used to frequent a site which made use of the CSS class column-span. Chrome added full support for that class in early 2016. I was probably accessing this site from about late 2016 until about 2018 or so. Firefox didn't support column-span until December 2019. The whole time I used the site, Firefox simply could not render it in a usable way.

I've said for a long time that we'd be better off if Firefox switched to Chromium. They clearly don't have the resources to keep up with the rapid pace of change on the web. 5 years and they still don't support a browser feature that Google got out in a out 1 year and I think Edge got it done in 2 or 3 (and unsurprisingly, Apple has it ready day 1, though that's an unfair comparison for obvious reasons). Three and a half years behind other browsers in getting out a CSS feature that's being used live on the web already.

If they based their browser on Chromium, there would be so much less work for them to do. They'd have to spend some effort maintaining features Google has decided to drop, like Manifest V2, but they wouldn't be alone in that effort, since they can pool resources with the likes of Vivaldi and Brave, and maybe even Microsoft in some cases. So I'm the end a much higher percentage of their resources could be spent developing features that differentiate them and help maintain them as a great privacy-focused browser, instead of merely keeping up on the treadmill of platform change.

[–] JovialSodium@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They can be slow to adopt changes. I think the Mozilla foundation getting more funding, staffing, and refocusing on their browser would be the better solution.

While Chromium is an open source project, it is still developed and maintained by Google. For something as important as a web browser, I think it's imperative that there's an option outside of their control.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

it is still developed and maintained by Google

Sure, but Google has no control over any forks of Chromium. They can't control Edge, or Brave, or Vivaldi, or a hypothetical Mozilla fork. And if those other forks want, they can collaborate together to maintain any features they want to have that Google themselves don't want.

Like, yeah, more funding for Firefox would be the ideal case. But that's not something Mozilla really has the ability to effect. They can choose what engine they're using. And using Chromium would allow them to essentially "steal" the work Google has put in, while not preventing them from changing stuff that they don't like. In fact, in some respects it would help them even with that stuff they don't like from Google, since they can pool resources with other privacy-forward browsers like Vivaldi and Brave. I honestly see it as win-win.

[–] mmus@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago

Sure, but Google has no control over any forks of Chromium. They can’t control Edge, or Brave, or Vivaldi

Sorry but that's not how it goes, Google can exert control on forks by increasing the difficulty of maintaining changes. The forks have a vested interest in staying compatible with upstream to benefit from Chromium changes over time, which unfortunately means they avoid making any deep changes to the code. None of the Chromium forks are hard ones, unlike Chromium itself which was a hardfork of Apple's webkit, which in turn was a hard fork off KDE's KHTML.

Also, Mozilla should DEFINITELY NOT adopt Chromium. We need diversity in web browsers, the idea is that by having different user agents we give the user more bargain power over how they want to browse the web. Remember, Google, Microsoft and Apple are NOT your friends, all they want is to ransack everything and increase their shareholder values. If they can turn the web proprietary and fully locked down, they will.

[–] trollblox_@programming.dev 0 points 5 months ago

Android, switch to it

[–] biribiri11@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago

To be fair, all the FF engineers probably dgaf about a platform where they don’t even have the freedom to use their own browser engine.

[–] Daxtron2@startrek.website 0 points 5 months ago

iOS shooting itself in the foot

[–] sparkle@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Firefox consumes more RAM than chrome on average. Edge uses the least RAM

Also, Floorp is superior to regular Firefox

[–] biribiri11@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Floorp is great. It has so many features that make it better than stock FF.

[–] ChilledPeppers@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

wait, is the page broken or something? LOL

[–] biribiri11@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No. They likely don’t have the manpower to update it. It is run by students, after all.

[–] ChilledPeppers@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

In their landing page there are some cool features, do yall know any reason nota to migrate? I havê been thinking of quitting firefox to another browser for some time now (dont Sant chrommiun tho)

[–] biribiri11@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago

Same as any FF or chromium fork. The further away from the original you are, the longer security and performance updates will take to trickle down.

[–] trollblox_@programming.dev 0 points 5 months ago

librewolf