Ubuntu Will Stick With Firefox Over Chromium For Now

[GreatEmerald]

Pheonix? I remember when it was still part of the Mozilla browser, back when the logo was still a fire breathing version of Godzilla. Stragely every new major version made it more and more cartoony.

Yea, I remember Mozilla the browser. I also remember that after I switched to Firefox, my biggest regret was that the theming of Firefox wasn't nearly as advanced as it was for Mozilla.

[Awesomeness]

Firefox on mobile is quite good... can't that be used?

If Mozilla still maintained a proper XUL-based version, it could. However it was axed after Firefox 12 to concentrate on a native Android version.

[Kivada]

Indeed. As a very very old timer from the phoenix days, I've tried to switch to chrome/chromium -- I love the speed and the integrated translation system for pages -- but all the configs and settings and habits I've piled up on firefox over the years are not available, or are only extensions that leave a lot to be desired.

Although for normal users, I'm a bit torn on which is better.

Pheonix? I remember when it was still part of the Mozilla browser, back when the logo was still a fire breathing version of Godzilla. Stragely every new major version made it more and more cartoony.

Firefox is still better, especially on mobile, most people I know can't afford an unlimited data plan, Yeah, I live in the US in a not a major city, so telling them to switch to Firefox with adblocking saves them precious megabytes that they can use for useful tasks without having to pay out for overages as often.

This often also leads to them using it on their desktop system as well.

[Kivada]

As a dedicated firefox user who finds chromium just a limited uncustomizable browser can only salute this decision, at least some are still sticking to good old firefox.

This. I've also always found Webkit based browsers to do a far worse job of rendering the page, things often end up where they clearly shouldn't be.

[varikonniemi]

Both browsers are good. MY choice comes down to firefox having better add-ons (i have not found a proper replacement for tree-style tabs).

Mozilla is also a more neutral entity than google, so i think it suits better as the default browser.

[Ferdinand]

Mozilla is working hard on webapps that work across OS's and browsers. Canonical could just contact Mozilla and work together so that apps for Firefox work in Ubuntu.

[Awesomeness]

That is not the case. QtWebkit is difficult to maintain. They are always a bit behind upstream Webkit. Also, it seems Chromium/Blink makes integration easier or at least what Digia devs think. We should be able to learn a lot more after the upcoming Qt Dev Days.

Relevant:

https://devdays.kdab.com/?page_id=225#67

https://devdays.kdab.com/?page_id=225#61

QtWebKit is difficult to maintain because Digia branches WebKit trunk every half century or so instead of building on top of Apple's stable branch.

You second link says what I wrote: They'll bundle practically the whole Chromium.
Get exited about 100MB of dependencies for web rendering part of Qt alone ? pretty hefty for phones without swap?

[Chaz]

To make sure that web apps behave the same (or at least not totally different) on Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Desktop. App authors could inadvertently just test their apps under one engine and the apps may be totally broken under the other.

By web apps do you mean programs that are written in HTML (which would use Canonical's Blink fork/wrapper either way) or just shortcuts that open websites in the default browser? They'd be tested for whatever the default is presumably.

But it is true that the mobile versions of a lot of sites are only tested in Webkit because Apple and Google are so dominant in phones, so if Canonical is making a phone OS then they probably want to use a Webkit browser. And if their phone OS uses Webkit then their desktop OS does too because they're the same. So now that I think about it, yes of course they should switch to Chromium (even though I would say Firefox is much, much better), and they'd better hurry up about it, or they'll have a bunch of users complaining that Ubuntu "doesn't load websites right".

[jayrulez]

I didn't know that they now actually do that. I've read in a blog post about that as an experiment. Too bad we'll be required to swallow 100MB for Chromium dependencies because the Blink fork removed all those low level abstraction layers that makes integrating WebKit into various toolkits so easy.

Simply basing QtWebKit on Apple's stable WebKit branch probably was just too pragmatic…


The rendering engines would be closer nonetheless than Gecko and Blink.

That is not the case. QtWebkit is difficult to maintain. They are always a bit behind upstream Webkit. Also, it seems Chromium/Blink makes integration easier or at least what Digia devs think. We should be able to learn a lot more after the upcoming Qt Dev Days.

Relevant:

https://devdays.kdab.com/?page_id=225#67

https://devdays.kdab.com/?page_id=225#61

[intellivision]

The Firefox *browser* is good, but the rendering engine isn't very convenient as a component for other apps (which is why there are a lot more small WebKit-based browsers than Gecko-based ones, even ignoring mobile). And from what others are saying, Canonical want to use the same rendering engine everywhere, not just in the actual web browser...

I would have thought that the framework Mozilla is using for their Firefox OS applications would have been a better choice than using Chromium.