LWN: Comments on "Firefox 34 released"

OSM (was: Firefox 34 released)

KaiRo — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:42:20 +0000

The issue with OSM (and I'm a paid OSMF member, so I strongly support the project) is that while it's a tremendously good geo database, it's not a good one-stop-servie for all map-related things like what GMaps can provide.

Having routing, really good search for any item, and clickable items on the map that give you more info and links, as well as a satellite/orthophoto view and potentially "StreetView", all that makes GMaps a killer app compared to anything OSM right now. I'd cheer anyone up for the challenge up trying to create a service that does all that with completely FLOSS tools.

Firefox 34 released

KaiRo — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:38:03 +0000

The problem with download is how the web changed. Back then the browser was mostly an online document viewer with a bit of scripting support, nowadays it's required to be a whole virtual application runtime that happens to be able to still display documents as well.

OSM (was: Firefox 34 released)

k8to — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 06:35:28 +0000

The US database for google maps is indeed notably superior to the European comparitor -- at least spottily sampled in the UK, southern Germanany, and Finland.

Firefox 34 released

Fowl — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 03:06:15 +0000

https://timtaubert.de/blog/2012/04/are-we-small-yet/

Someone at Mozilla did even!

Back in 2012 at least, but the domain's gone now.

Firefox 34 released

dfsmith — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 23:47:51 +0000

Would anyone like to spider https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ and plot a chart of (say) the size of the Win32/en-US Firefox installer versus release? It goes from about 4MB to 38MB over its lifetime. It would be fun to speculate on the size of the installer in 2020.

Firefox 34 released

dowdle — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 20:13:50 +0000

Considering the video/audio chat is done with HTML5 and WebRTC... something Firefox already supported... and most of the work is done in Javascript I think... and the tiny bits they added to allow it to generate a URL... I don't think adding the chat feature really did much to bloat it. Given that the vast majority of chat services require an account and don't offer much in the way of privacy and security (so far as I'm concerned) actually offering encrypted P2P chat without the need for (much of) a third-party is a big thing. For many it will probably eliminate the desire for something like Skype.

Anyway, to answer your question... you can probably compile it from source without that... or use any of the other browsers that have a "we want to be smaller" goal. I'm not really familiar with any of that so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Firefox 34 released

dfsmith — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 19:37:54 +0000

Does anyone remember when Firefox was the stripped down version of Netscape Communicator: i.e., without mail, news and something else. When can we get the stripped down version of Firefox, i.e., without chat? B-)

OSM (was: Firefox 34 released)

mstone_ — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 15:14:58 +0000

Well, here in my part of the US my experience is that google is more likely to have roads than OSM. Paths, also. In some places where there's more of a concentration of OSM users it's likely that OSM will have better maps, but in the OPs situation of being out in the boonies in middle america you've got better odds that google sucked up the output of people paid to do mapping than that you've lucked into a place where a volunteer decided to do something.

OSM (was: Firefox 34 released)

giggls — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 15:07:35 +0000

I would rather not _trust_ Google as well, as far as maps are concerned :)

I have been cycling 800km this summer solely navigated by OSM based maps only.

Shure, quality depends on where you live (mathstuf did not tell mention the area he has been talking about). But at least here in Europe OSM is already a better replacement for Google in many places.

OSM (was: Firefox 34 released)

mstone_ — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 14:29:19 +0000

I don't understand how he can fix the problem that he doesn't trust that he won't end up in an unfamiliar place not well mapped in OSM?

OSM (was: Firefox 34 released)

TomH — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 11:34:12 +0000

It sounds like he is talking about an Android device though, so when he says he "has OSM" he probably means some app, not the web site. In turn that means the quality of the search is largely down to the author of that app - there is no "official" app.

OSM (was: Firefox 34 released)

giggls — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 08:54:37 +0000

Ähm we are on lwn here! Did you forget, that OSM is a community project which uses FLOSS (and thus need help) all over the place?

So stop whining about things that you can probably fix yourself :)

Adding missing roads got very easy in the meantime. The latter gets a little bit more complicated. Our search engine is called nominatim and is arguably far from perfect but has gotten way better recently. Source code is at https://github.com/twain47/Nominatim

Sven

Firefox 34 released

mathstuf — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 05:54:40 +0000

Agreed. It feel much more responsive now. I even went through and disabled Chrome just so the Play Store would stop bugging me to update it and give it a bundle of new permissions… Now if only I could do the same with the keyboard and Maps[1] :/ .

[1]I have OSM, but it is still not the greatest for the area; search brings up nothing for places where I know they exist (including roads I can see on the map) and I'd rather not find this out in the boonies without a backup.

Firefox 34 released

b7j0c — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 05:04:19 +0000

nice work! ff on android just keeps getting better

no hellos :(

tterribe — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 02:22:49 +0000

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8683830

Firefox Hello

dowdle — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 01:33:15 +0000

To the best of my knowledge the video and/or audio chat is p2p and encrypted... utilizing the WebRTC API. Even though it is p2p, under certain conditions (NAT for example?) I think it has to use a third-party system to help establish the initial communication between hosts. It would be nice to see a reference for security and privacy since people (like you even) will be asking.

Firefox Hello

flussence — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 00:49:04 +0000

That's a pleasant surprise, seems like the sort of thing I could possibly convince family members to use.

But I'm a bit concerned they're rolling out a messaging service to the entire Firefox userbase with not even a token mention of security or privacy... none that I could find by chasing links from those two pages.

no hellos :(

eean — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 23:01:33 +0000

There's no sign of a Hello button in the Customize Firefox area or elsewhere, using 34.0-1.1 from the openSUSE mozilla repo.