Firefox is nice

[homebuilds]

So is Vivaldi

 

[mustang1]

trying to get webpages to display correctly and consistently across all main browsers was a major pain in the arse though... then they brought out 'devices'... so it wasn't just a case of trying to work with IE, FF, Safari, etc... it was all those on PC, tablet, phone... which only tripled the pain-in-the-arsiness of it all.

I'm so happy all I have do is put boxes on shelves these days.

Tetris?

 

[MontyVeda]

Tetris?

pretty much

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Although i have briefly flirted with other browsers i always seemed to go back to Chrome but for the last month i have been using Opera.
Although it's Chromium based it seems to load web pages faster than chrome and at the moment i'm quite happy with it.

 

[mustang1]

I have been a devotee of Firefox since it was Netscape Navigator. Now a product of The Mozilla Foundation it is, as they say themselves: '…a public resource that is open and accessible to us all'. More details here:
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/who-we-are/
Three of its outstanding virtues are:

• It is not a Microsoft product
• It is not a Google product
• It is not an Apple product

In stark contrast to Microsoft, it is overwhelmingly W3C compliant and generally fits in with the Open Source movement which is where healthy computing lives.

If you like Firefox, check out OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/
or, for the Mac, NeoOffice: https://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

Like me, you may well end up with a computer which does not have a single Microsoft program on it. Free the digital spirit.

IIRC, OpenOffice was taken over by Oracle so it was forked and now called LibreOffice. That was some years ago and I haven't kept up-to-date with what's what.

 

[mustang1]

Why doe it have such a daft name? I mean, Firefox. Emberhedgehog. Burningbadger. Smoulderingsheep.

If they'd called it something excitong, like Daggerdeathkill or MIRV then id be all over it.

I rather like firefox (the browser, not the movie you mentioned above - that was truly aweful!). Uhm, Apart from Firefox, I find open source products to have the most craziest names like Chocolatey, YUM. I know companies like Micorosft must spend a lot of money coming up with the "perfect" name, but these oen source names are quite dire. They tell me "we're being playful" (yeah whatever).

Grrr.

 

[Once a Wheeler]

IIRC, OpenOffice was taken over by Oracle so it was forked and now called LibreOffice. That was some years ago and I haven't kept up-to-date with what's what.

• The OpenOffice project is run by The Apache Software Foundation. (https://www.apachecon.com/acah2021/)
• LibreOffice is run by The Document Foundation. (https://www.libreoffice.org/community/community-map/)
• NeoOffice is run by Planamesa Inc. (https://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php)

They all have a common origin and now continue to develop in their own separate ways. They all remain free except for registration fees, often less than £10.00. They are all open source. This means the source code can be downloaded and amended by individuals or by organizations — often not-for-profit or local government authorities — to suit their specific requirements. Some of the custom builds which these organizations have produced may be available commercially but mutual cooperation and development is more the norm.
I find the approach has a positive feel to it: the open market as opposed to the company store.

 

[MontyVeda]

FF has been annoying me today... running a little slow, pausing now and then.

Disabled AdBlockPlus seems to have improved it.

 

[mustang1]

• The OpenOffice project is run by The Apache Software Foundation. (https://www.apachecon.com/acah2021/)
• LibreOffice is run by The Document Foundation. (https://www.libreoffice.org/community/community-map/)
• NeoOffice is run by Planamesa Inc. (https://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php)

They all have a common origin and now continue to develop in their own separate ways. They all remain free except for registration fees, often less than £10.00. They are all open source. This means the source code can be downloaded and amended by individuals or by organizations — often not-for-profit or local government authorities — to suit their specific requirements. Some of the custom builds which these organizations have produced may be available commercially but mutual cooperation and development is more the norm.
I find the approach has a positive feel to it: the open market as opposed to the company store.

Thanks, I did not know about NeoOffice either. Ps: I thought if the company or individual amends the source code then they have to release the new code according to the open source license.

 

[lazybloke]

I'm not keen on the shortcuts on the 'new tab' page. I used to be able to have five of eight pinned shortcuts and nothing more... now it seems to fill up the rest of the space with recently visited websites. I suppose there's a plug-in but I've got my bookmarks bar... so I've turned off the short cuts, and that sodding 'news' milarky.

On the upside... and it's a major upside. FF does support 3D view in Google maps, which Google's Chrome hasn't been doing for ages now. Seems very odd that Googles own browser wont support all it's own mapping features.

The 3D Google maps view works in Chtome for me, what problem do you have? Or what am I missing?

 

[C R]

Thanks, I did not know about NeoOffice either. Ps: I thought if the company or individual amends the source code then they have to release the new code according to the open source license.

Depends under which license the original was under. GPL type licenses require that the source is made available to users who request it, other types like BSD or Apache don't have that requirement.

 

[Once a Wheeler]

Thanks, I did not know about NeoOffice either. Ps: I thought if the company or individual amends the source code then they have to release the new code according to the open source license.

Thanks for bringing this up; you may well be right. In the world of Linux, individual builds can be commercialized and I had assumed this was the case with OpenOffice/NeoOffice. Certainly there are a number of public OpenOffice enthusiasts in the world who subscribe to the free-feedback model. I noticed this from the Danish national parliament:

• Parliament directs the government to ensure that the use of information technology, including software, within public authorities is based upon open standards... No later than January 1st, 2008, the government should introduce and maintain a set of open standards that can serve as inspiration for other public authorities. Hereafter, open standards should be a part of the basis for public authorities' development and purchase of IT software, with the aim to further competition.

In the UK, the Cities of Birmingham and Bristol are large-scale adopters and France and Italy have long had local authorities with open-source policies. Long may it continue as a blast of rationality in a world obsessed with exclusivity.

 

[MontyVeda]

The 3D Google maps view works in Chtome for me, what problem do you have? Or what am I missing?

there's no 2D / 3D option on the RH side in satellite view, and at the bottom of the screen is this...

clicking that, it advises...

If you use Google Chrome, make sure to turn on hardware acceleration by going to More Settings. At the bottom, click Advanced. Under "System," turn on Use hardware acceleration when available.

If your computer meets the requirements but you still aren't seeing the full version of Maps with 3D, check your browser. Some browsers block the WebGL technology used to make 3D images. [...] To see if your web browser can use WebGL, check this website.

Hardware acceleration is turned on and my browser does support WebGL according to the 'check this website', yet still in Chrome i get '3D Earth view is not available'... but it is available in firefox with no faffing.

BUT... Firefox, after a couple of days is going annoyingly slow... such as the three second wait between typing 'annoyingly slow' and it appearing on screen... and again when typing 'appearing on screen'. I've turned off its spellchecker, and ad blockers and its still annoyingly slow... so I think I'll be permanantly heading back to Chrome in a few minutes time anyway

 

[lazybloke]

Never seen that problem. If your drivers are all up to date then it might just be a case of old hardware that Chrome no longer supports. Some old pentium processors just went that way.