Firefox 37 Coming Today With Heartbeat, HTTPS Bing

[erendorn]

The functional goals are not a waste of time, the fact that you cannot use it to coordinate chats with other well known chat services makes it useless.

If you think people are going to build a Mozilla Chat Account service where millions of people Facetime then you really are not grasping how come having Video Chat inside the OS [ala OS X for instance or Skype] is an OS level service, not a Web Browser service.

I've got 700 million iOS users and > 100 million OS X users all with FaceTime ready services and built in front cameras.

No one on OS X is going to fire this up. People on Windows will use Skype.

So if this is targeted for the other 2.5% of the world then it should be coordinated to work natively with GNOME and KDE for starters, but not via a Browser.

The thing with chats is that it is at least a 2 persons thing, so what your OS provide is not sufficient. You need to consider what your OS AND your contact's OS provide. Which is really the pain with these closed and locked solutions (skype/facetime).

[Lennie]

As if I'd ever use such :P If I absolutely had to, I would put all traffic over a SSH tunnel.

Most users don't use SSH-tunnels.

So you see that is why they use HTTPS.

[Luke_Wolf]

2. it is still is more write-one, run everywhere than anything else for GUI-applications

For example: does the GUI-application you build run on iOS, Android, Windows XP, Windows 8.1, Mac OS X, Linux desktops, your TV ? Or deprecated platforms like: Mac OS X on PowerPC ?

If I use Qt.... then yeah it will, better question... Will your Web app? nope. How's IE6 for those Windows XP users working out for running that website or ancient safari from the powerpc days?

But you forget the other 2 advantages that go with it:

- There is nothing to install for users. All they need is a browser, every OS has a browser by default, lots of people have multiple browsers.

Installing things has never been a problem for users, preventing them from doing so is (malware, toolbars, etc...). Also if they can install multiple programs then you damn well know that they don't have a problem with installing software.

- it's very easy/fast to update a website to fix problems.

Ah... Someone who likes to live dangerously modifying -PRODUCTION... as opposed to doing that in -DEVELOPMENT, and if you're not... well deployment is about just as fast really. As most of the time is spent on the release engineering process.

- there are many, many times more webdevelopers than native application developers. They are cheaper too. A large portion of them are also designers or UI-experts, which means they might actually make something usable for normal people without getting others involved (although there is a trend of putting less and less features in applications, making a good enough UI gets easier in that case).

Here's something you need to learn: It's very easy to learn to code, it's difficult to learn to code well. You can take a graphics designer and force them through a course and they'll learn to code, but a good coder is dedicated to their craft and very few among them are going to be good at graphics design if for nothing else than that it requires similar levels of dedication.

- it is easier to do A/B-testing

Tell that to Microsoft or any other company that's done that through their automatic update systems, for years.

- finally better offline support is coming (service workers), the original offline support wasn't all that great (HTML5 offline with a manifest file).

which means that people can abuse a Domain Specific Language for writing dynamic user interfaces to implement program logic even worse than they already do. Sounds like a great idea... right?

- most native toolkits suck at automatically scaling from mobile screens to large screens. Web technologies do this by design.

Quite frankly bullshit. Were you born yesterday? Because that's the only way you could possibly believe that because otherwise you should know from experience that that's simply not true.

There's a reason mobile sites were and continue to be a thing, and plenty of sites today still don't work well with mobile devices. The only reason that it might appear to you that it works this way is because the people who develop things like bootstrap and jquery have put the time in to create libraries that handle doing that for most cases. If you're not using those you have to spend time in CSS hell writing up form factor specific stylesheets, and at that point you're really not winning versus native in terms of effort.

The ultimate reality is that there's no golden bullet solution for the desire of a developer to be lazy and write once and have it just run everywhere, and the web is really the furthest thing from a paragon of good design, it's a shit sandwich and unfortunately we all have to take a bite.

[Luke]

This is why I've never had ANY chat accounts

The thing with chats is that it is at least a 2 persons thing, so what your OS provide is not sufficient. You need to consider what your OS AND your contact's OS provide. Which is really the pain with these closed and locked solutions (skype/facetime).

That sort of thing excludes those like myself who won't touch proprietary applications. I had to bow out of a project once because everyone else wanted to set it up to use remote administration by a closed source, proprietary app which is cross platform but no way was I going to trust it running over one of my encrypted machines.

With VOIP and chat services being app and sometimes OS specific except for paid accounts that connect to landline phones, I have simply ignored them.

[Luke]

Local ISP's one more untrusted link

How about your WiFi Access point at the local coffee shop ?

I do not use Bing nor Google as I consider their owners malicious. I also consider all ISPs malicious until proven otherwise, therefore I would never use a non-HTTPS search even on a search engine that claims not to log IP addresses like DuckDuckGo or Startpage. Keep in mind Verizon has been caught injecting tracking headers into mobile traffic but has yet to find a way to add them to https traffic without using a Superfish style man in the middle certificate replacement attack. If they did certificate replacement on Verizon provided smartphones someone would probably notice and blow the whistle. The best defense it to boycott Verizon for their known tracking, boycott T-Mobile for their known "web-guard" censorship server, and distrust all the others.

[Paul-L]

I just want to add 2 things:
1) FirefoxOS is actually quite popular in so-called "3rd-world countries" where smartphones are just becoming a thing. This built-in chat that let's them chat with people on Androids and normal PCs from their phone is definitely a big thing. In fact, it's what it was made for (if you notice, in the desktop version of "Hello", it gives you the option of integrating with your FirefoxOS contacts)

I live in a third-world country, and this is certainly, not true, and that is simply because Android has existed longer, carriers prefer Android -because of carrier branding, and...bloatware sadly- over any OS (except for Symbian probably) and simply because of the popularity of it elsewere, and the convenience of it's ecosystem; in short, because there are way more apps, and also because of having more localizations given the wide user-base.

(Heck, I am writing this from a Moto G 2013, on Android 5.0.2)

[energyman]

Mozilla should integrate ffmpeg plugin so all HTML5 playback functions will work on every platform and do not have rely on system codecs.

no, that would be stupid shit. Only idiots or microsoft abusers think that this a good idea. And those who love to use bugs to take over systems and steal data.

[liam]

If I use Qt.... then yeah it will, better question... Will your Web app? nope. How's IE6 for those Windows XP users working out for running that website or ancient safari from the powerpc days?


Installing things has never been a problem for users, preventing them from doing so is (malware, toolbars, etc...). Also if they can install multiple programs then you damn well know that they don't have a problem with installing software.


Ah... Someone who likes to live dangerously modifying -PRODUCTION... as opposed to doing that in -DEVELOPMENT, and if you're not... well deployment is about just as fast really. As most of the time is spent on the release engineering process.

Here's something you need to learn: It's very easy to learn to code, it's difficult to learn to code well. You can take a graphics designer and force them through a course and they'll learn to code, but a good coder is dedicated to their craft and very few among them are going to be good at graphics design if for nothing else than that it requires similar levels of dedication.

Tell that to Microsoft or any other company that's done that through their automatic update systems, for years.

which means that people can abuse a Domain Specific Language for writing dynamic user interfaces to implement program logic even worse than they already do. Sounds like a great idea... right?

Quite frankly bullshit. Were you born yesterday? Because that's the only way you could possibly believe that because otherwise you should know from experience that that's simply not true.

There's a reason mobile sites were and continue to be a thing, and plenty of sites today still don't work well with mobile devices. The only reason that it might appear to you that it works this way is because the people who develop things like bootstrap and jquery have put the time in to create libraries that handle doing that for most cases. If you're not using those you have to spend time in CSS hell writing up form factor specific stylesheets, and at that point you're really not winning versus native in terms of effort.

The ultimate reality is that there's no golden bullet solution for the desire of a developer to be lazy and write once and have it just run everywhere, and the web is really the furthest thing from a paragon of good design, it's a shit sandwich and unfortunately we all have to take a bite.

.... I'm going on a limb and guess you make your money with qt and not the web...

[Lennie]

If I use Qt.... then yeah it will, better question... Will your Web app? nope. How's IE6 for those Windows XP users working out for running that website or ancient safari from the powerpc days?


Installing things has never been a problem for users, preventing them from doing so is (malware, toolbars, etc...). Also if they can install multiple programs then you damn well know that they don't have a problem with installing software.


Ah... Someone who likes to live dangerously modifying -PRODUCTION... as opposed to doing that in -DEVELOPMENT, and if you're not... well deployment is about just as fast really. As most of the time is spent on the release engineering process.

Here's something you need to learn: It's very easy to learn to code, it's difficult to learn to code well. You can take a graphics designer and force them through a course and they'll learn to code, but a good coder is dedicated to their craft and very few among them are going to be good at graphics design if for nothing else than that it requires similar levels of dedication.

Tell that to Microsoft or any other company that's done that through their automatic update systems, for years.

which means that people can abuse a Domain Specific Language for writing dynamic user interfaces to implement program logic even worse than they already do. Sounds like a great idea... right?

Quite frankly bullshit. Were you born yesterday? Because that's the only way you could possibly believe that because otherwise you should know from experience that that's simply not true.

There's a reason mobile sites were and continue to be a thing, and plenty of sites today still don't work well with mobile devices. The only reason that it might appear to you that it works this way is because the people who develop things like bootstrap and jquery have put the time in to create libraries that handle doing that for most cases. If you're not using those you have to spend time in CSS hell writing up form factor specific stylesheets, and at that point you're really not winning versus native in terms of effort.

The ultimate reality is that there's no golden bullet solution for the desire of a developer to be lazy and write once and have it just run everywhere, and the web is really the furthest thing from a paragon of good design, it's a shit sandwich and unfortunately we all have to take a bite.

Sorry, I over did it a bit, didn't I ? ;-)

Yes, I'm a bit biased. I've been working in programming, networking and some what large systems administration and even dabbled with storage systems at web companies and business (web)hosting providers.

But large web companies do really do multiple updates per dag per group of people in production these days.

The trick is to not create monolithic applications, but microservices.

The same goes for A/B testing, many times they really do only last hours, they gather a lot of statistics and make choices based on that.

And obviously you can't have a designer go in their blank making decisions which turn out to be architectural in nature.

You'll have to give them an environment which has been created so they can do what they do best and not much else.

The first few times you'll have to collaborate with the designer to create the basic HTML/CSS so it will really end up can be a 'responsive design' and so it can 'degrade gracefully' and works in old IE with less fancy design or features.

Designers with web experience can do this.

Yes, there is a lot of legacy websites out there which don't have these properties or can't easily move to that place.

I'm just saying, when done right, there are a lot of advantages to web technologies.

[Luke_Wolf]

Sorry, I over did it a bit, didn't I ? ;-)

Yes, I'm a bit biased. I've been working in programming, networking and some what large systems administration and even dabbled with storage systems at web companies and business (web)hosting providers.

But large web companies do really do multiple updates per dag per group of people in production these days.

The trick is to not create monolithic applications, but microservices.

The same goes for A/B testing, many times they really do only last hours, they gather a lot of statistics and make choices based on that.

And obviously you can't have a designer go in their blank making decisions which turn out to be architectural in nature.

You'll have to give them an environment which has been created so they can do what they do best and not much else.

The first few times you'll have to collaborate with the designer to create the basic HTML/CSS so it will really end up can be a 'responsive design' and so it can 'degrade gracefully' and works in old IE with less fancy design or features.

Designers with web experience can do this.

Yes, there is a lot of legacy websites out there which don't have these properties or can't easily move to that place.

I'm just saying, when done right, there are a lot of advantages to web technologies.

Yeah, you overdid it. I won't deny that there are a lot of advantages to web technologies, but many of those same advantages are held by various native technologies as well (Which usually have additional features which quite overshadow the advantages of web technologies, hence all the moves to create mobile applications that handle things that websites do).

Frankly though I think that the idea that let's force one app everywhere is one of the stupidest and laziest decisions a developer can make. Yes your application should be responsive (something native toolkits have had for a really long time in the form of layouts which these JS/CSS libraries are effectively copying) however your application should also be designed specifically for each platform type (Desktop, TV, Phone, Phablet, Tablet (you have some leeway on these last three for running one design, but you really should design around all three), etc) that it will be running on. Otherwise at best the UI will work okay but not wonderfully for these platforms.