[HN Gopher] Floorp - A customisable Firefox fork from Japan
___________________________________________________________________
Floorp - A customisable Firefox fork from Japan
Author : microflash
Score : 225 points
Date : 2023-10-02 06:52 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (floorp.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (floorp.app)
| surrTurr wrote:
| Actually a great browser. Just installed it and I think I'll make
| the switch from Firefox, it has so many cool power user features!
| Just wondering: Is there also a shortcut to toggle the right
| sidebar?
| Kuraj wrote:
| It would be great to include more screenshots showcasing the
| features before I decide to download and install this.
| sesm wrote:
| Looks like Floorp in relation to Firefox is the same as Vivaldi
| in relation to Chrome: a fork aimed at power users with a native
| support for vertical tabs. Will keep an eye on it. Meanwhile, I
| spend several minutes trying to create a new workspace and failed
| to do it. It's ok, will definitely give Floorp another try when
| it transitions from Beta to a stable release.
| [deleted]
| elashri wrote:
| For reference, this is not just the only player in town (for
| Firefox forks). There is the following:
|
| - librewolf (Desktop) [1]
|
| - Mull (Android) [2]
|
| - Iceraven (Android) [3]
|
| - Mercury (Desktop) [4]
|
| - Pulse Browser (Desktop) [5]
|
| - Waterfox (Desktop) [6]
|
| - Floorp (Desktop) [7] --> This submission
|
| - Pale Moon (Desktop) [8]
|
| - Mullvad Browser (Desktop) [9]
|
| - Tor browser (Desktop - Android) [10]
|
| This list is not inclusive. It probably contains the famous
| forks.
|
| [1] https://librewolf.net
|
| [2] https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix
|
| [3] https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
|
| [4] https://github.com/Alex313031/Mercury
|
| [5] https://pulsebrowser.app
|
| [6] https://www.waterfox.net
|
| [7] https://floorp.app/en
|
| [8] https://www.palemoon.org
|
| [9] https://mullvad.net/en/browser
|
| [10] https://www.torproject.org/download/
| [deleted]
| acheong08 wrote:
| Been using Librewolf for a while simply because it has good
| defaults
| BirAdam wrote:
| also: basilisk, mypal, k-meleon
| O1111OOO wrote:
| Thanks for this list. I uncovered a couple of Desktop FF Forks
| I didn't know existed : Pulse Browser and Mercury (not
| including Floorp, this submission). A couple of months ago it
| was Mullvad.
|
| I'm really happy to see developers taking an active interest in
| modifying/forking FF. I was beginning to believe that interest
| in FF was dying out and so I'm finding this submission, as well
| as this list - extremely exciting!
| webmobdev wrote:
| Note that out of these, the PaleMoon browser (
| https://www.palemoon.org ) is the only real "hard" fork of
| Firefox. The others are all "soft" forks of Mozilla Firefox in
| that they all just customise some existing settings as defaults
| or customise the UI or integrate their own extensions of
| Firefox and rebrand it.
|
| The PaleMoon team however forked even Mozilla Gecko (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software) ), the browser
| engine that is at the heart of Firefox to create the _Goanna_
| browser engine (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goanna_(software) ) that now
| powers the PaleMoon browser and the Unified XUL Platform (a
| framework that can be used to create multi-platform desktop
| applications with web technologies).
|
| Another "hard" fork of Firefox Gecko is the Servo browsing
| engine ( https://servo.org/ ) though no browser application has
| been built on it yet.
| johnny22 wrote:
| it's hard to call servo a fork. its more like a ground up
| rewrite of a browser
| webmobdev wrote:
| You are right. Perhaps the right word is _port_ - a rewrite
| of Gecko with Rust, instead of C++?
| kiliancs wrote:
| It's just incorrect to call it a fork. That Mozilla started
| it doesn't make it a fork of Firefox.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| It's really unfortunate that the Pale Moon team are also
| totally unlikable, which is probably among the reasons why
| usage has dropped off since it was in vogue in the early-mid
| 2010s. This[0] issue in a WIP repo for OpenBSD always reminds
| me of the line in The Big Lebowski "You're not wrong Walter,
| you're just an asshole". It's fascinatingly hostile for
| little cause and a non-trivial amount of reputational damage.
| All in the name the vitally important cause of er... making
| sure there's not an implementation of Pale Moon that doesn't
| fully fit their license in a WIP repo.
|
| I suspect that they don't attract the best contributors,
| given how hard they seem to be to work with.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86
| O1111OOO wrote:
| > It's really unfortunate that the Pale Moon team are also
| totally unlikable, which is probably among the reasons why
| usage has dropped off since it was in vogue in the early-
| mid 2010s.
|
| I'm not sure that's the reason. Regardless of feelings
| users may have toward developers, they'll still use the
| best tool for the job. I used Pale Moon on an older
| computer because none of the modern browsers performed
| well, including FF. I was well aware of some of the drama.
|
| (Likewise, I raged against Microsoft for years before I
| made the switch to Linux. So many other examples)
|
| When Mozilla went Quantum, it's performance was so good, it
| was able to replace Pale Moon. I wrote a thing about this
| here in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19367536
|
| I'm thinking that over the last 4 years (since 2019), many
| users have upgraded their hardware and the need for Pale
| Moon - as a lighter browser alternative - has simply
| diminished.
| diath wrote:
| Pale Moon is also inherently less secure due to Goanna
| sticking to single process mode.
| superkuh wrote:
| And inherently a far less ram using browser. I do 500 tabs
| in under 3GB. By also not implementing all the useless
| attack surfaces like DRM, Integrated PDF reader, WebRTC,
| and friends it avoids many of the exploits which make
| modern browsers like FF and Chrome insecure. Overall it
| probably balances out. Especially since PM users are likely
| to have JS execution disabled by default (like I do).
| fabrice_d wrote:
| It's pointless to say things like "500 tabs under 3GB"
| without knowing what's loaded in these tabs.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Can you think of any realistic tab set that would result
| in Chrome or Firefox using as little memory?
| fabrice_d wrote:
| I'm not the one that should prove anything here.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Multiprocess would have fewer libwebp bugs?
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| I'm not trying to cause trouble, but it's also worth noting
| the PaleMoon people have stirred a fair amount of controversy
| in their time.
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16318820 (they later
| described this incident as "resistance from the BSD community
| to adhere to normal free software development practices")
|
| - https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/pexate/pale_moon
| _...
|
| - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=16504
| squigz wrote:
| That is just completely opposed to the spirit of FOSS. A
| really sad way to treat contributors like Feodor, but a
| very effective way of ensuring I'll never use that fork
| superkuh wrote:
| Luckily the guy behind nearly all of the drama (Tobin)
| was kicked off the team a year or two ago. It's beeen
| smooth sailing since.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| The maintainer came out swinging and backed the guy that
| opened the issue. Doesn't sound like one person is the
| bad apple
| mminer237 wrote:
| Another hard fork is Basilisk (https://www.basilisk-
| browser.org/), which was originally developed by the folks
| behind Pale Moon but is now independent.
| causi wrote:
| Gotta admit, being able to _actually_ customize the UI /theme
| like the old days is awfully tempting. God I miss "Night
| Launch".
| qalmakka wrote:
| What's the point of stating that "it's made in Japan"? I just
| don't get it. Does it have improved IME or CJK support? It's not
| like Japan is famous for its quality software to be honest.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| just the pride? the same as some swiss businesses put 'made in
| Switzerland', or 'made in Germany', or how even some US
| politicians use Tesla, made in US as a point of pride?
| imp0cat wrote:
| It's supposed to prepare your for the wonderful engrish
| documentation, and I quote: :)
|
| > If you download Floorp you agree to the <h1>Pricacy
| Policy</h1>.
| uno7 wrote:
| That's just a typo, obviously.
| paulrouget wrote:
| It's just that they made it in Japan. No need to overthink it
| :)
| meatjuice wrote:
| That's the point I guess. Japan's not famous for making quality
| opensource softwares, which makes the project look outstanding
| in Japan.
| thefounder wrote:
| Maybe for someone who prefers to buy made in Japan over made in
| China. A made in Europe sticker would definitely appeal to me
| more than a made in China. At least on products that are not
| mass produced from established brands.
| deaddodo wrote:
| I couldn't care less where my item is produced. It just so
| happens that a large variety of high-end products are
| produced at a higher level of quality (and cost, generally)
| in the West (including S Korea and Japan); but if someone
| introduced me to a Nigerian, Mexican, Thai, etc product that
| surpassed my current choice, I would switch in an instant.
|
| I don't understand caring at all about the source, unless
| there is some fundamental moral hangup with it (such as blood
| diamonds, for instance).
| pil0u wrote:
| Some people care about items not travelling twice the globe
| before landing home.
|
| Other people care about work conditions for the produced
| items they buy, namely not manufactured by children, for
| which country origin _could_ be an indicator.
| deaddodo wrote:
| > unless there is some fundamental moral hangup with it
| Xeamek wrote:
| >Some people care about items not travelling twice the
| globe before landing home
|
| Which is pretty dumb thing to care about, since these
| journeys have minimal carbon footprint, compared to
| something like local delivery
| alwyn wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the minimal carbon footprint in this
| context?
| zaphirplane wrote:
| Most people don't buy 500 cars or 390 tv. It's just about
| reputation and isn't branding a reputation.
|
| Cars made in foo are good, tv made is bar have bad QA
| rvnx wrote:
| Privacy laws are different depending on the country of the
| publisher of the software.
|
| Generally European countries provide the best protections
| and the fact it is published in Japan may imply that the US
| laws don't apply there (and be a + or not)
| thefounder wrote:
| How can you evaluate the quality of a product that was not
| built yet?
| userbinator wrote:
| I definitely have a preference for made in America, but that
| really only applies to physical products since there are
| strong associations with reputation and quality; the "country
| of origin" of software is far less well-defined in general,
| especially in the case of OSS.
| rvnx wrote:
| It is only partially true now.
|
| It was very true before, but more like 10 years ago.
|
| For example, Apple, one main reason they chose to produce a
| lot of the phone in China was because of infrastructure and
| skills that people have, and not costs anymore.
|
| China (in particular when you see markets like Yiwu!) has
| an impressive ability to produce all type of quality and
| grade of products.
| OmarAssadi wrote:
| It's sort of strange to me how many Americans seem to share
| the same sentiment when my experience has often been the
| total opposite.
|
| China has some of the best factories, supply chains, and
| collaboration in the world. And while yes, of course, loads
| of intentionally cheap, low-quality goods are churned out
| regularly, many Chinese companies also make really solid
| products, often even the best products until you reach a
| certain ultra-luxury price bracket that they simply aren't
| trying to compete in.
|
| For example, sure, an LG/Samsung/Sony OLED will be way
| nicer in terms of picture quality than any Hisense on the
| market. But the cheapest OLED on BestBuy right now is a
| last-gen, clearance 46" LG that costs almost ~$700; if you
| want a 50"+ model, be prepared to spend $1,000 minimum. On
| the other hand, the 75" U6H I got for $600 was better than
| any comparable non-OLED offering by non-Chinese companies
| until you got into the $1,000-1,200+ price range.
|
| Midea is another good example; sure, Bosch, Miele, and
| Zojirushi often have much nicer luxury products, but if
| you're a middle/working-class person who doesn't want to or
| can't spend $300+ on a rice cooker, it'll be hard to beat--
| unless you get lucky like me and find the one weird guy in
| your town who happened to be moving cities and selling off
| all his appliances, including some perfect-condition JDM
| Zojirushi with an inverter for $100 (and also happen to
| have a Japanese friend you can annoy to help you figure out
| what all the Kanji menus do).
|
| Same can be said for handset manufacturers like Xiaomi,
| etc. And a lot of audio gear as well; $100-200 Russian
| Oktava microphones easily punch several hundred to several
| thousand dollars above their class, Chinese brands dominate
| the mid-range IEM market, and Chinese headphone brands like
| HiFiMan are difficult to beat in any price bracket -- first
| paycheck I got, I spent $1,600 on Sennheiser HD 800 S
| because I wanted the HD 800 as a kid, but realistically,
| $300 HiFiMan Sundaras will get you almost there for over a
| thousand less.
|
| Personally, every "made in America" thing I've bought that
| wasn't manufactured before like 1990 either fell apart
| and/or was ridiculously expensive compared to things made
| elsewhere. My association of made in America is either:
|
| A. Truly craftsman, low-volume, specialized products that
| have an inherently high price tag
|
| B. More commonly, low-quality, over-priced junk that
| survives only because of nationalism or protectionism alone
| RunSet wrote:
| > It's sort of strange to me how many Americans seem to
| share the same sentiment when my experience has often
| been the total opposite.
|
| > China has some of the best factories, supply chains,
| and collaboration in the world. And while yes, of course,
| loads of intentionally cheap, low-quality goods are
| churned out regularly, many Chinese companies also make
| really solid products, often even the best products until
| you reach a certain ultra-luxury price bracket that they
| simply aren't trying to compete in.
|
| Rather like conservatives' reflexive dislike for
| California despite more registered Republicans living in
| California than any other state.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-
| rankings/registered-...
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| I think, two pertinent questions I'd like to ask (that
| would somewhat 'change' my reaction to your post: Are you
| American? Do you live in America?
| OmarAssadi wrote:
| Yeah, Palestinian-American; I was born in Israel with
| Israeli and American citizenship, but grew up mostly in
| Florida, did a government thing in high school that sent
| me to Moscow, stayed in Russia for university, and back
| in the U.S. now.
| gunalx wrote:
| Not to bash on manufactured goods from china, but in a
| lot of product segments there really are a large
| difference in quality even from the upper end of middle
| priced products. I think this in large amount is origin
| agnostic though, and some of the reason china has gotten
| a bad reputation is that they are in a greater way
| willing to sacrifice quality to hit a lower price, and a
| lot of brands not paying the manufacturer above the bare
| minimum. I have had good and bad product origin from both
| China, and of European/American origin.
| developer93 wrote:
| Annecdata, but a Chinese guy in my language class said
| that China was is trying to compete against quality
| rather than price, so maybe both are true at different
| points.
| tmpX7dMeXU wrote:
| This is laughable. There are so many manufacturing
| skillsets that the US couldn't dream to beat China in.
|
| I am from neither country, from the perspective of
| residence, origin, or that of my family. I have absolutely
| no horse in the race. I just can't believe that in 2023
| Americans still believe this. Does anyone else remember Mac
| Pros being built in the US 10 years ago?
| yuppiepuppie wrote:
| Apple does this on every single one of its products, but not
| even from the nation its designed in, but the state!
| circuit10 wrote:
| I think they're asking why it's so prominent (more in the
| title of this submission than the website itself) as if it's
| the main feature of the browser
| rvnx wrote:
| Japanese people are proud of their country. In some
| nations, like France or Bulgaria it's taboo. But in the US
| or Japan it's fine to be proud of where a product is coming
| from.
| tmpX7dMeXU wrote:
| Stop making this about Japan specifically. I very much
| believe that this question would be asked were Japan
| exchanged with the US in the title.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| I get the opposite impression. Most people don't care.
| The remaining few, typically bigots, are active online.
| But you see those kinds of people almost anywhere on the
| globe.
|
| There are, however, perceptions among the Japanese people
| that their own products are generally off higher quality.
| alehander42 wrote:
| Most Bulgarians are actually proud of their country,
| often sharing that the Cyrillic originated there, and
| focusing proudly on the old history and all kinds of
| inventors/achievements, even on stuff like the uniqueness
| of our yoghurt: so I have the opposite impression, as a
| Bulgarian
| Barrin92 wrote:
| believe me the French are very, very proud of their
| country, that doesn't really mean you need to buy into
| rather cringy economic 'patriotism'. Especially when it
| makes zero sense as in the case of software. It's not
| like this browser came out of a 500 year old artisanal
| Japanese crafting shop, where the browser recipes where
| handed down the family tree
|
| With these kinds of things it's basically, I have no way
| to differentiate my product, so I'm gonna slap the
| country flag on it for good measure
| rvnx wrote:
| You were probably fortunate to live in the better part of
| France :)
|
| In many parts of France, simply displaying the French
| flag in front of your house is very dangerous, whereas it
| is perfectly normal for everywhere else.
| yuppiepuppie wrote:
| Neither in Spain. Its quite provocative if you do
| eloisant wrote:
| Not in software.
|
| Most successful French startups move their HQ to US as
| soon as they can and claim they're a US company.
|
| "Made in France" software is a shame and if you're
| targetting the global market (not just the French
| domestic market) no founder wants to advertise that.
|
| Which is a shame because we have a lot of talented
| engineers in France, it's just that the biggest French
| software companies are frauds.
| gwervc wrote:
| > Most successful French startups move their HQ to US as
| soon as they can
|
| I'm pretty sure it is more a question of astonishing
| level of taxation and the difficulty to rise capital than
| national pride.
|
| > "Made in France" software is a shame
|
| Any source to back this? I've never read or heard
| anywhere that a piece of software sucks because it was
| made in France. I'm pretty sure most people don't care,
| and those who do (Frenchmen) take it positively.
| developer93 wrote:
| Because they were accused of having uygar forced labour in
| their supply chains iirc
| elashri wrote:
| I doubt that the accusations were about forcing Uyghurs
| labor in California to do the dirty design and R&D work. It
| was always about manufacturing and assembly, which
| definitely does not happen in California.
| kervantas wrote:
| Same reason as why people append "in Rust" to titles.
| Marketing.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| "In Rust" is a technical detail that influences various
| properties of the result (performance certainly;
| maintainability likely; immaturity possibly for areas like
| GUI). That's quite different from "from Japan" which doesn't
| say anything specific and measurable.
| hruzgar wrote:
| For me at least it helps to know that it's not somehow secretly
| connected to some American intelligency agency
| surrTurr wrote:
| Japan is not "connected to some American intelligency
| agency"??
| rvnx wrote:
| If you receive any email from US agencies and you are a
| Japanese company you can just say "no thank you I'm not
| interested" and it will most likely stop there.
|
| If you are US company you don't have a choice as it is the
| law.
|
| Mozilla, Google, Facebook, Cloudflare, Signal, all _have_
| to respect the local laws.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| the connection is less direct, less direct connections
| imply increased safety.
| uoaei wrote:
| Precisely the reason people obfuscate direct connections
| is so people like you believe this about their products.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| People like me? Why thank you, I've always thought they
| didn't. Good to know.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Japan is part of the Five Eyes Plus alliance that has areed
| to share intelligence with the US (
| https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/fourteen-eyes-countries ).
| Klonoar wrote:
| Japan idolization is a thing in tech circles so it's an
| unfortunate no-brainer to do this.
| [deleted]
| microflash wrote:
| I just copy-pasted the description from their site copy since
| the default title was too short :) They do mention Japan on
| their frontpage for some reason and I'm cool with that.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| This is purely personal opinion and I can only cite a couple of
| examples off the cuff, but I have noticed some Japanese authors
| can have an affinity for avoiding bloat. Whether this is
| intentional I do not know, but they seem comfortable writing
| relatively small, concise software.
|
| (Now, this being HN I'm sure someone will cite some counter
| examples.)
| throwaway290 wrote:
| It means many things, including "not made in PRC" (as much of a
| thing in world of software as world of appliances and
| electronics, similar implications)
| diogenes4 wrote:
| > It's not like Japan is famous for its quality software to be
| honest.
|
| Well they aren't known for software at all, but the japanese
| are notorious about being sticklers for quality.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Things I associate with software from Japan:
|
| - Dense interfaces, flashy colors, the opposite of Apple-style
| minimalism
|
| - Proprietary software
|
| - Lots of customization when its comes to appearance / theming
|
| - Passionate communities
|
| - Traditionalism, resistance to change
|
| - Function over security
|
| It does not all apply to Floorp, but that's what I think when I
| think of "made in Japan" software.
|
| For example, Floorp is open source, which I think is less
| common in Japan than in the west, and hopefully, it is secure.
| But the customization and "dual sidebar" (i.e. more stuff on
| screen) features are typically Japanese.
| aikinai wrote:
| > It's not like Japan is famous for its quality software to be
| honest.
|
| Exactly. The developers are probably proud to have built
| something (presumably) high-quality in Japan and they want to
| promote that fact to help shift the country's image I guess.
| msla wrote:
| I hear their TV sets actually look like a cloudy sky when
| they're tuned to a dead channel.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Context is everything
| O1111OOO wrote:
| > What's the point of stating that "it's made in Japan"? I just
| don't get it.
|
| What I don't get is why this is your main and only takeaway.
| It's such an odd and surprising reaction.
|
| When I hear, for example, that Linux is being used at a gov
| site in Brazil or Germany or France - I get quit excited. I
| like that the FOSS is making inroads in other areas.
|
| With the dominance of Chrome worldwide, I am equally excited
| that a group of developers from another country are helping
| push competition in this space, driving home the message of
| privacy. Mozilla needs it... we all need it for the health of
| the internet.
|
| These guys have been at this for a while (based on their github
| page) and have made installers available for the main three
| OSes. I'm excited to give this a try.
| toxinu wrote:
| People buying and flexing with stuff that have "Designed in
| California" engraved on them and being offended with an Open
| Source software that just want to say is it developed in Japan.
|
| Stop over thinking and just appreciate people work.
|
| And meanwhile, Japan has been the biggest video games actor in
| the industry for the latest 50 years, so I guess there are some
| engineers over there.
| pezezin wrote:
| Nobody can't say that Japan isn't a video game powerhouse,
| that is for sure. But when it comes to any other kind of
| software...
| diogenes4 wrote:
| Well, it's not like california is known for making quality
| products (outside of film, i guess). Japan is.
| MikusR wrote:
| By what metric? Top 3 games by units sold are american. By
| revenue they are in top 4 with games made in 80s and top spot
| is a Korean game.
| toxinu wrote:
| I don't really care and thought about a specific metric.
|
| If you have experience in the video game industry, then I
| think you get my point but I also enjoy arguing about
| metrics.
|
| In this case the "actor" was referring as a role in the
| industry so more about an aggregation of metrics I guess.
| hackideiomat wrote:
| Place 4 is from Japan tho
| tmpX7dMeXU wrote:
| Is there seriously anyone outside of Apple marketing that
| pays attention to "designed in California"? Much less anyone
| that "flexes" this attribute?
|
| And would it not be just as weird to say "designed in
| California" in the title of this webpage?
|
| I don't think anyone is questioning Japan having residents
| that can...fork Firefox. GP was questioning Japan as a mark
| of software quality, in an attempt to determine the intent
| behind the messaging.
|
| It'a valid question. It's a valid critique, even. There
| really is no need to get so defensive.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > People buying and flexing with stuff that have "Designed in
| California" engraved on them
|
| Maybe I'm just in the wrong bubble, but I've never seen that.
|
| > And meanwhile, Japan has been the biggest video games actor
| in the industry for the latest 50 years
|
| Japanese games are often notorious bad on the technical
| details. Their focus is on the gaming part. Though, it has
| become a bit better in the last years, but usually because
| Japanese Companies have diversified into international teams.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _Japanese games are often notorious bad on the technical
| details._
|
| You have to be from a parallel planet or a limited bubble
| to not notice that Japanese games have always generally had
| fewer bugs than Western games, and much less need for
| patches, ever since arcades and the NES.
| skotobaza wrote:
| Look at the PC ports. Games tied to FPS which results in
| poor in-game physics behavior. Inability to change
| settings. It's like they live on some other planet not
| us...
|
| Devil May Cry 3 and Dark Souls 1 jumped to my mind
| immediately as notoriously bad ports. Even DMC4 and DMC5
| have some problems. FromSoft games improved the quality
| of their ports on the other hand.
|
| I do understand that Japanese mostly play on consoles but
| nowadays it's not an excuse anymore.
| Razengan wrote:
| PC in general basically stands for Patch City.
|
| It's a hellish development environment even for Western
| PC-only studios. WHICH PC game has been free of bugs in
| recent times anyway?
|
| While on the other hand pretty much every PS5 game has
| been basically flawless on release day.
| skotobaza wrote:
| It's not even about common bugs, it's about design
| choices. PC players are accustomed to being able to tweak
| their games. But in Japanese games you either can't tweak
| anything or the tweaks just don't work because the
| developers hardcoded settings in the executable (DMC4 SE
| as an example).
|
| >WHICH PC game has been free of bugs in recent times
| anyway? Most indie games that I played. AAA-games are bug
| fests not because of the platform but because of the
| negligence by the developers.
| pezezin wrote:
| The gaming PC market is absolutely booming right now in
| Japan, so I guess they will be forced to adapt.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| If there are fewer features, then there are naturally
| fewer bugs.
| mplewis wrote:
| Tears of the Kingdom is more featureful than the last few
| Assassin's Creed games and worked out of the box, which
| is more than I can say for today's Ubisoft products.
| Razengan wrote:
| Seems like you're going to twist it around to "West is
| Best" chauvinism no matter what.
|
| Elden Ring
|
| Demon's Souls
|
| Death Stranding
|
| Resident Evil 4
|
| Final Fantasy 7
|
| Street Fighter 6
|
| Final Fantasy 16
|
| Armored Core 6...
|
| Every major PS5 game in the last couple years, was
| virtually flawless on release day.
|
| And of course Nintendo is still scoring hits with almost
| everything.
|
| Meanwhile on Reddit everyone is crying about the PC
| versions, of even PC-only games!
|
| Starfield has been a bug ridden joke, typical of
| Bethesda, one of the flagship Western studios, still
| unable to improve their janky physics and cringey NPCs.
|
| Diablo 4 gave me the only crashes I have ever seen on the
| PS5.
|
| Harry Potter, Redfall, Immortals of Aveum... overhyped
| flops. Baldur's Gate 3 has been the only saving grace
| from the Western gaming industry that I can think of.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Most Apple products say "Designed by Apple in California".
| toxinu wrote:
| > Maybe I'm just in the wrong bubble, but I've never seen
| that.
|
| Maybe not everybody is flexing but at least people are not
| complaining about that, like for this web browser.
|
| > Japanese games are often notorious bad on the technical
| details. Their focus is on the gaming part. Though, it has
| become a bit better in the last years, but usually because
| Japanese Companies have diversified into international
| teams.
|
| So when it's technically bad, it's because the company
| doesn't have foreigners, when it's good it's because non-
| Japanese people are working there. Noted.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| There is a significant difference between often and
| always...
| iguana_lawyer wrote:
| I have been using it for months and it's great. It's like Vivaldi
| but with Firefox under the hood instead of Chrome.
| [deleted]
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I was under the impression (although I have never looked at the
| code), that Firefox UI is quite inflexible. It is fully
| functional for me every day and I am not missing anything (at
| least that I know of), but always thought, that it would probably
| be difficult to change the basics of FF UI. Maybe it is more
| flexible than I thought? Or they (Floorp) have put it great
| effort.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Firefox UI is very flexible, it's mainly just
| html+css+javascript at this point. But they have greatly
| removed support for changing through the UI itself over the
| years. So now you need to to change it through add-ons and
| hacks (userstyle/userchrome). Floorp seems to build mostly on
| those hacks and some internal addons of their own.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| anyone know what the automation possibilities with this are?
| acd wrote:
| Happy to see tracking protection in Floorp.
|
| Why you need tracking protection. Try javascript fingerprinting:
|
| * https://amiunique.org/fingerprint
| replete wrote:
| I've been trying out all the firefox forks that come out and end
| up back on master Firefox (on desktop, Mull wins on Android IMO)
| due to the inevitable limits of developer time on the project.
| The value proposition is never quite worth it for the downsides.
| A web browser is not a trivial project to build and upstream
| changes are unrelenting.
|
| Just like I've seen in Linux for 20+ years, we see different
| tribes basically working on the same thing in slightly different
| ways, and I find my self thinking over and over "Why are all
| these people building different sandcastles when they could be
| working together?". Particularly with the Firefox forks where
| projects seem to struggle with the release cadence.
|
| It's a rhetorical question though - effective organization
| appears hard to scale especially when there is no money involved.
| How many cash rich companies have you worked at that have lost
| the plot?
|
| I would really like to see Firefox win again in the browser
| battles. I personally believe that its the UX where
| differentiation from the chromiums is opportune with many
| interesting and desirable new UI paradigms emerging in some the
| recent third-party browser upstarts.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > Why are all these people building different sandcastles when
| they could be working together?
|
| Why are chefs baking bread? There's buildings to construct.
| crabbone wrote:
| Why forks? -- There are a lot of decisions made by the upstream
| that are... let's put it mildly, "opinionated" (but really,
| just idiotic). But you cannot argue with majority or whoever
| leads the project.
|
| So, many times you don't do it as a way to kill time. You do it
| because none of what you have works.
|
| If I had time and enough knowledge of any of the existing
| browsers codebases, I'd definitely try to create my own
| version. Here are things that are desperately needed and some
| even _have been removed_ from browsers for no reason that I
| would like to have back.
|
| 1. Keyboard-driven interface.
|
| 2. Decent access to the browser's internal state for testing
| purposes.
|
| When it comes to (1), there used to be a common pattern where
| pressing Alt would underscore letters in labels necessary to
| press in order to select that element. This is long gone now
| (and, frankly, wasn't _that_ great, but it was something...) To
| clarify: it 's not gone because the feature was removed, it's
| gone because a lot of controls simply don't have any labels,
| which breaks the system. Today, most browser elements have no
| way of activating them with the keyboard. Just a big middle
| finger from browser vendors.
|
| When it comes to (2), the only thing we have is Selenium (and
| sometimes some extra stuff on top of that). But, Selenium has
| no access to anything that happens in the networking side of
| things (that's in the Web browser, which is all about
| networking... right?) So you cannot know if the page is loading
| anything, what it's loading, what's the status of things being
| loaded. It's ridiculous that people write tests with this
| handicap. With Selenium you also don't have access to code
| execution. So, you cannot see if the function was called, a
| variable was set etc. It's ridiculous how poor your access to
| the state of the program running in the browser is.
|
| You used to be able to side-load some JavaScript into the
| browser and get access to browser's chrome, but that was
| removed because it was a "security concern" (but really, power-
| user features being removed is just a plan for cutting down
| functionality that affects the least users, has nothing to do
| with security).
|
| Do I expect Firefox or any other browser to implement any of
| that any time soon or ever? -- Well, let's limit that to my
| lifetime, and the answer is a resounding "no". Hence forking.
| replete wrote:
| Although this wasn't my point - that forks are pointless -, I
| agree.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > Why are all these people building different sandcastles when
| they could be working together?
|
| Could they, though? What if upstream says "thanks, but no
| thanks" to your ideas? What if there are multiple, equally
| valid solutions to a problem, and you want to explore one that
| wasn't chosen?
|
| Progress isn't linear, and not everything can be compromised
| on.
|
| Just having more people work on a project, does not magically
| speed up development. You need leadership, a common goal,
| consensus, and focus.
|
| If all these projects merged their efforts, that would probably
| result in a lot of lengthy discussions and infighting, rather
| than improvements.
| replete wrote:
| "It's a rhetorical question though - effective organization
| appears hard to scale especially when there is no money
| involved."
|
| I agree with you, growing beyond a single small team is
| another game entirely
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Who funded this? Why?
| ldjb wrote:
| According to the developer (Ablaze)'s website [0], development
| of Floorp is entirely funded by sponsors on GitHub [1].
|
| [0] https://support.ablaze.one/articles/floorp/who-build-floorp
|
| [1] https://github.com/sponsors/Ablaze-MIRAI
| rvnx wrote:
| Seems like a person with passion and talent.
| fomine3 wrote:
| and devs seems to younger like high school or undergraduate
| eloisant wrote:
| It's a group of people apparently, but not a company or any
| officially registered group.
| papaver-somnamb wrote:
| Seeing some talk about "built in Japan": This is a huge
| psychological factor in the hearts and minds of Japanese people.
| AFAICT, pride is a main constituent. There is a strong desire for
| Japanese to have accomplishments to be proud of to the world, to
| stand out on a crowded world stage.
|
| Another is this phrase particularly signals to other Japanese:
| Hey, choose this software, because it was made by our kind
| (pride), and its operation might mesh better with your cognitive
| patterns. oh, and the Japanese localization is bound to be 1st
| class (a small rarity).
|
| One more: Japanese like to judge things after getting the thing
| into their hands and evaluating it (Wu dePan Duan suru), and
| word-of-mouth is mighty powerful in Japan. So "built in Japan"
| means it's pre-vetted by Japanese, and that is in turn a powerful
| seal of quality. Oh, and if there are some flaws, we can overlook
| them knowing that someone will eventually get round to dealing
| with them. It's a civil and respectful community-minded approach
| that mirrors Japanese culture in the large.
|
| If you are so inclined, there is a whole multi-faceted Made in
| Japan movement.
|
| Outside of the context of Japan or being of a Japanese mind, the
| value of this statement depends greatly on the context. For
| medicine, semiconductors, industrial equipment? Made in Japan is
| often a solid choice. For software? Japan is an advanced nation,
| plenty of highly-skilled knowledge workers, and has a very long
| history with software development; this software is probably
| competently done. On the other hand, it might mean the software
| is designed a little .. mysterious .. to non-Japanese eyes due to
| those aforementioned cognitive patterns but also a differing
| cultural context. For example using the color blue to signify
| "build successful" in Jenkins instead of green.
| lloeki wrote:
| > Japanese localization
|
| Shift-JIS or whatever 0x5c shenanigans were immediately brought
| back to mind.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20061208222907/http://blogs.msdn...
|
| Still makes ripples to this day:
|
| https://superuser.com/questions/1167662/why-is-windows-10-di...
| pezezin wrote:
| Shift-JIS is still a pain in the ass. I recently encountered
| two applications that only work properly in Japanese Windows,
| and in any other locale will just display mojibake. And these
| are modern applications, made in the last year. How is that
| even possible in 2023?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Because most (esp. Japanese) people don't know how to use
| Unicode properly, or don't care. They just build without
| defining UNICODE and naively assume your local codepage to
| be CP932 because 99% of their target audience is exactly
| this (and hence seemingly unaffected).
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| But is it written in Rust?
| brabel wrote:
| > This is a huge psychological factor in the hearts and minds
| of Japanese people.
|
| I think countries mostly fall into one of two baskets:
|
| * those who normally favor their own country's products.
|
| * those who almost universally loathe their own country's
| products.
|
| I was born in one of the latter types of countries. Where I am
| from, the word "imported" was absolutely synonym with "better
| quality". It didn't even matter where it came from, as long as
| it was not local. This was due to 1970's and 80's
| protectionist/socialist policies which wanted to make the
| national industry protected from foreign competition - which it
| did, but had the side effect of making such industries
| completely non-competitive with the rest of the world.
|
| Then I moved to a country in the more nationalist group:
| Australia. The "Australian Made"[1] logo is proudly used by
| anyone who produces even a tiny bit of their products in
| Australia (I think there's a minimal threshold for that to be
| allowed, but didn't really check it)! The most popular car
| there was the Holden Commodore for decades (recently, Holden
| closed down production in Australia - so now it's all Toyota),
| proudly Australian made - even if the mother company, GM, was
| not Aussie. After traveling around in a few countries, I came
| to the conclusion that most countries that actually have a
| competitive industry tend to be more like that. Japan is of
| course in that category, but so are most developed nations:
| USA, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Italy, even more recent
| "arrivals" to the upper league, like South Korea.
|
| Poorer countries tend to be in a paradoxical position where
| their people will swear they love their nation and will be
| extremely irritated if any foreigner dares to criticize them,
| but in private they consider their own industry a joke, will go
| to great lengths to buy "imported" products, even if they're
| more expensive (given the high tariffs for imports), have
| almost zero trust in their compatriots (specially politicians
| and business people) and totally expect them to be dishonest
| without further evidence to the contrary, and so on... things
| that just lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
|
| Anyway, I just wanted to say that this is not at all particular
| to Japanese people :).
|
| [1] https://australianmade.com.au/
| em-bee wrote:
| it is particular in just how strong this sense in japan is.
|
| the isolation policy in the past didn't come from nothing.
|
| everywhere else it generally also differs by industry more
| than in japan.
| dilawar wrote:
| > those who almost universally loathe their own country's
| products.
|
| In Indian rural side, "desi" (native) is almost always
| synonyms with bad quality, not cheap which is implied, but
| bad quality. I heard that desi in many foreign country means
| Indian?!
|
| Desi or swadesi (home made) had a special emotional appeal to
| urban upper middle class leadership during freedom struggle.
| I don't know how they feel about it.
|
| Chandrayaan from ISRO was a very significant moment in this
| regard. Done by desi engineers educated in desi schools. I am
| one of those.
| finite_depth wrote:
| American here: I've only heard "desi" used as a self-
| descriptor by South Asian people, usually Indian (but I
| think Pakistani sometimes as well?). It doesn't carry a
| negative connotation here that I know of, though I might
| have missed one that does exist.
| Conan_Kudo wrote:
| As an Indian-American, I've heard variations of this to
| describe first-gen American born Indians in a negative
| fashion. Sometimes, the shorthand "ABCD" is used (meaning
| _American Born Confused Desi_ ) to insult American
| Indians. This is principally used by Indians who either
| live in India or emigrated to the US and encounter
| American Indians.
|
| (As an aside, it's rather difficult to accurately
| describe my ethno-national status given the regular
| confusion with people of the First Nations...)
| samatman wrote:
| There's no need to worry about confusion, Indian-American
| always means ancestry or origin in India. Native American
| is the usual term in the US for the indigenous, although
| many of them call themselves Indians and prefer it, a
| generation ago it was American Indian, but it's never
| been the other way around, hyphen or otherwise.
| have_faith wrote:
| The UK these days is a bit of a mixed bag. The love/loathe
| difference depends a lot on the product category.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I was just thinking about the IT Crowd joke where the fire
| extinguisher's flammability is explained because it was
| "Made in Britain".
| rjh29 wrote:
| It's just a country like any other, most of us are proud of the
| things our country has done.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Well I must be part of the exception then. I am not proud of
| anything I have not directly contributed to. Feeling proud
| for other people achievements is very strange to me.
| taeric wrote:
| I mean, you aren't one in a million rare, but it should be
| fairly obvious from the existence of sports fans that pride
| over other's accomplishments is very much a common trait.
|
| My guess is you are taking a narrower view of this than you
| intend? People don't necessarily take personal pride in
| what others have done. But identity is both personal and
| societal. And any accomplishment of identity is something
| that people are likely to feel pride in.
|
| That is, pride is often tied to identity. And identity has
| a pretty wide brush.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| It's tribalism and it's not going to be 100% present in
| every individual, but it's still pretty prevalent in
| humans. It's a neutral concept and I hope has more upside
| than downside, depends on the situation I guess.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I assume you don't feel shame for things your fellow humans
| have done either? Anyway everyone is different, but I'm
| talking about neurotypical people mostly.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| Interesting, I'm surprised that you think the average
| person feels shame over the actions of bad people. I
| would have said sadness in sympathy to the victims and
| disgust for the bad person
| taeric wrote:
| I would be surprised if most people don't feel some shame
| when a sibling or other close relative does something
| bad?
|
| Heck, most of us are effectively different people than we
| were in the past. And we very much feel some shame when
| we find out something bad we did back when.
| smabie wrote:
| You wouldn't feel shame for if your kid murdered someone?
| afavour wrote:
| It's just an extension of society in general. I live in a
| neighbourhood, I am a member of the community. I am proud
| of my neighbourhood even though I am not directly
| responsible for everything positive within it. Same
| principle scales all the way up to countries. It's a way of
| bringing people together (see: national sports teams).
| Nationalism is, uh, not without its downsides. But the
| motivations are pretty clear.
| wink wrote:
| German here. If it's digital, be extra critical, especially
| if the government is involved ;)
| phantomathkg wrote:
| Looking at the 4 team members referenced in the different thread
| [0], we can tell they are a team of 4 people, one of them are
| university student and 3 high school students. Maybe we shouldn't
| bash them too badly and instead encourage them tempering around
| and contribute to open source more in the future?
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37735533
| [deleted]
| onthecanposting wrote:
| I wouldn't be that shocked if four students with no budget
| produced a better product than the Mozilla Corporation.
| [deleted]
| strobe wrote:
| very nice that it has option to move tabs to bottom and hide
| address bar automatically - what other forks has support for
| that?
|
| (bottom tabs - seems previously it was possible to do that for
| vanilla Firefox via userChrome.css but that becoming harder to do
| which each release)
| MrAlex94 wrote:
| > what other forks has support for that
|
| Waterfox has had these features for a few years now.
| whitten wrote:
| I assume Waterfox is a FF clone/fork, What is its advantage?
| whalesalad wrote:
| Phonetically - as a Japanese speaking person - how would this be
| pronounced?
| tmtvl wrote:
| Probably something like "furoaapu".
| goodpoint wrote:
| ...badly.
| matternous wrote:
| This website[1] indicates it is pronounced like "flope"
| (huropu).
|
| [1] https://www.naporitansushi.com/floorp8/
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