Seriously.
The same way that Mircosoft sucked so badly for so long, Firefox is continuing to suck so badly for so long. Think about it - what we're talking about here, really, is the lesser of two evils. It's Republican (Microsoft) or Democrat (Firefox) - both suck horribly, but we're afraid that Microsoft might get the job done (end human existence) a little bit quicker - so we stick with Firefox. This shit is not right.
I used Firefox forever just to issue a big 'Fuck You' to Bill Gates and Mircosoft. I used it in spite of the fact that it could take minutes to render a page that Internet Explorer could render in two seconds. I used Firefox in spite of the fact that, when I first started using it, you couldn't even click on a 'mailto:' link and have it get to your web-based email account (matter of fuckin fact - it still can't! not without an extension). I wrote my own extension to handle it at first - how many developers can do that, much less regular browser users? 1%? Talk about anti-democratic.
How does Firefox continue to suck so badly after its been around for seemingly ever, now? We gave you a chance, Firefox, and you still suck - after all these years. And we hear that Mircosoft is going to have tabbed browsing eventually - and you know what? We. Can't. Wait. That's right. We can't wait to switch back. If the world is gonna continue to suck, then we just want to go ahead and get this thing moving along - so we choose to enter the death spiral. It's a heck of a lot better than getting dragged kicking and screaming. At least we feel like we have a choice in the manner of how we get fucked.
Yes - we do feel vindicated that Mircosoft is finally about to introduce tabbed browsing ten years after it was obvious it was needed - it's a broken Bud bottle to the eye of all the Mircosoft apologists over the years who continued to scream "but it's free, therefore it's good for the consumer!". We all had no choice but to use shitty Internet Explorer. So listen Mircosoft apologists - and Bill Gates apologists - go fuck yourselves. Corporations are evil and Bill Gates is at least an asshole. Dude is a fuckin gangster. I'm not impressed that he or any other rich gangster is trying to become a philanthropist after they savage regular working people who were only struggling to provide the most basic existence for themselves and their families. That's right Bill Gates - I know what you are.
And I'm gonna use your new browser when it comes out anyways.
Because Firefox sucks. Where's the shortcut key to get to my home page? Where? <Alt>+<Home>? Are you kiddin me with this shit? <Alt>+<Fuckin>+<Home>?? These people think I'm double-jointed or some shit?
<Ctrl>+H gives us History. Seriously. Like I really want to know where the fuck I went yesterday, or ten days ago. Jesus Christmas.
So I download the Keyconfig extension and it totally sucks. It's a brilliant idea - a major attempt at fixing a major Firefox flaw - but the extension itself is near impossible to figure out. It's got this drop down that appears to be completely meaningless. What the fuck? I finally figured it out, but not before I went over to Internet Explorer to find out that it, too, used <Ctrl>+<Fuckin>+<H> to go to its History list instead of Home.
I'd love to use a half-decent, not-overly-shitty browser like Opera. Really. But if I use it, then some other asshole will use it, and before you know it - I'm writing websites that have to comply with three shitty browser implementations. No way. Spare me the browser bukkake party - dealing with two shitty browser implementations is already more than I can handle.
Firefox extensions out the ass. I mean, when I upgrade to Firefox-whatever-the-fuck, I'm gonna need to upgrade my twenty or so shitty extensions. Don't even get me started on the shitty, Nazi-esque versioning/update/upgrade system that Firefox has put in place for extensions (sorry, 'Add-ons'. Now that Microsoft is threatening to get back in the game, the MBAs over at Firefox decided to start speaking fucking normal, down-to-earth English, again.).
What a situation. What are we to do?
How about, tell the MBAs running Firefox to pull their heads out of their aaaaaaaaaaasses and start including some decent core functionality in Firefox. How about, stop adding new, stupid shit like 'Livemarks' until you implement core functionality that should have been in the browser since Day One? How about providing a decent Firefox extension API - one that doesn't require a degree in XUL-onomics and abstract-XPCOM-shinterfaces just to create a simple extension?
Seriously - Firefox may be beyond repair. There really is something to dynasties and such. The consistent failure of Firefox to produce a decent browser over the past how many years? may just mean it's time to abandon ship. Look at the University of South Carolina football program. I don't care if they get Bill mf-OG-gangster Gates to run that shit - it is never going to be a winning program. The loser tradition there just runs too deep - too long. It takes hard work to build up that kind of tradition. Hard work over years. At some point the losing becomes ingrained in the psyche of everyone associated with the program. It's a bit like the Boston Red Sox and the Curse of the Bambino (which was really nothing more than Boston's crazy racism and them not allowing the best players they could get - black players - to be on the team). At some point, the people involved in these losing programs/projects are just waiting for their chance to give up - to fold up like a wet paper napkin. They know instinctively that they are supposed to lose - so they lose.
So, I gave one suggestion for how to fix Firefox - it went something like 'pull head from ass' - something to that effect, but let's just get rid of all pretenses - let's drop the objections for just a minute and be reasonable. How difficult would it be to design and build a new web browser from scratch that would do all of the things you wanted your web browser to do? What if someone semi-competent like Google took up the task? Could they get it done in six months?
I think they could, and I think it would be a much better browser than either Mircosoft or Firefox (who owns them? Mozilla Foundation or something?) has right now - and it would probably be better than either of the next versions from these technology lightweights. Google could open-source the browser and make it so that normal humans could write add-ons for it.
When Google buys their UNIX, I hope they get rid of that X-Windows bullshit that prevents UNIX/Linux/etc. from becoming a serious contender against Mircosoft. Building a browser from scratch would really lend credibility to Google when they finally launch their computer operating system in five years.
I know there are lots of genius-types associated with Firefox - which is part of the reason I'm so pissed-off about its lackluster implementation. Misusing talent like that is a serious crime in my book. We have to allow people the freedom to accomplish, and it's obvious that whoever is running Firefox has been crushing the creativity and genius of many of its team members for far too long. It's time for a change.
That reminds me - having some Apple UI-type influence on Google Browser would be really neato. I could almost get excited about something like that. Who cares that Google is sending my keystrokes directly to the Injustice Deparment, Department of Homeland Hilarity, and the Congress of UnAmerican Activities? Look at the interface!
...fixed many typos.
...and prepended 'In' to 'Justice Department'. (I'm not proselytizing - just tellin the truth. In the spirit of self-criticism. Just plain speech. Frank speech.) And if you know the scholar whose words I'm stealing in this final bit, then you are the shit. Not 'shit' or 'a shit' - 'the shit'. Big difference. One is a complement. The other - not so much. :)
...I checked-out the Firefox 'Add-ons' site recently and it has this slick process for uploading/updating extensions. Don't know when that happened, but it's a massive improvement. I take away everything bad I ever said about Firefox. :) Not really. But this is a huge plus. Maybe I need to contribute an api/library/facade that would actually make Firefox Extension building possible for mere mortals. They do have a couple of other new tools that do a lot of good - including this extension wizard - which seems super-cool, but I haven't actually used it yet.
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2 comments:
Most people usually like firefox for that reason. They hate microsoft. While many people do understand why they hate microsoft, the good computer users. Most people just hate for no good reason, I think simply because they always hate the winner.
But I use firefox because of the tabs. Simple as that. If it were not for the tabs, or if my IE had them (I supposed it will soon enough) I would not use fire fox. Fire fox has been slower, and has had many glitches which are not all gone. To pick a small example, firefox cannot play Yahoo Graffiti without crashing after. It happens every time! Also, I have seen firefox use up 250 megs of ram while doing nothing much at all. And finally, while it supports tabs, it often crashes after about two dozen tabs. My computer could handle 100 tabs, if only the software could.
Firefox COULD be better, but it will take time.
tell ya what, i just downloaded and tried IE7. It's pretty amazing. It's just like Firefox - in fact, the look and feel _is_ Firefox - a complete rip. And IE has tabs now, and it's blazing fast. I mean, fast-fast. Probably not much, if any, faster than old IE, but wow.
I don't use IE unless I absolutely have to. That could be changing soon. Scary thought. Kinda sucks, too. I really never thought it'd come down to a performance-type issue - like, download/render-display performance, but when the difference is so great - it'll be tough to continue using Firefox when I know that blazing-fast IE is waiting for me. It might come down to how much I can customize tab behavior and all that. Shoot - I'd put up with a lot of Mircosoft crap to have that kind of speed.
I've been getting pretty excited about doing extensions/add-ons for Firefox. Not sure even how you'd do that with IE. Maybe VB/C++/etc. Got me.
Not to mention, I also downloaded and tried the new Firefox. I thought it was terrible. One, it just looked a lot worse. Not sure how that happened.
I'm probably the last to figure out IE 7 (beta, I guess) is available, but I'm a slow-poke when it comes to IE.
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