Contrary to some other advice here, I switched to a new window manager first (xmonad, FWIW), but kept running a bunch of GNOME stuff too. Gradually, I have phased out most of GNOME and my computing life is simpler and more stable as a result.
I haven't seen anyone from Open Whisper Systems speak out about this.
One of the things they like best about the current/deprecated Chrome app is the distribution and update model. I'm not sure how much that will affect their decisions about what direction to take.
I retry GoToMeeting wtih Chromium from time to time, using Debian/Testing just to be sure it isn't too old. Still, no luck. Most parts of the page do work, but there is no audio.
As I have only just learned higher up on this page, FF has an Android button in the URL bar to switch from, for example, a Youtube page to the Youtube native application. I was missing this too!
Unfortunately, that button doesn't appear until the site is fully loaded, so if you really want to load YouTube in the app, you sit there staring at your screen for two or three seconds, angry at FF for not just doing what you want and opening the site in the native app. For those of us in rural areas with crap connections, it can be five or ten seconds for Firefox to get to a state that it decides the site is fully loaded and let you leave the app.
I tried using FF on Android for a while. If I saw a page with a link to a YouTube video, the fastest way for me to watch the video was 1) Copy the link to the clipboard. 2) Open Chrome and paste it in 3) Click the link.
Lots of apps are bad actors like this - Facebook, Twitter, etc. In those cases, when you click a link in a post or tweet, you go there in their own built-in browser, trying to keep you in their app. But, they give you the ability to turn it off. It's in the app settings if you look.
Firefox doesn't have this. You have to wait until the page is fully loaded, and then decide if it's worth your trouble to open it in the native app now. Most of the time it isn't, it would have been faster in the native app, but you're there now, so eh. For YouTube, it usually is. But it's just so hair-pullingly frustrating.
I disagree that most people know this. I imagine most reasonably technical people do, but I'd be amazed if most people on the street understand any of this.
I used to think the same sort of thing regarding the Scots language, but a while ago I came across this website that disagrees: http://www.ayecan.com/faq.html#answer1
"If you are able to understand the local Scottish dialect of the area where you were brought up, or the area where you have chosen to live, or both, this means that you can understand Scots."
The way I understand "Scots" is the dialect Robert Burns writes in, and I have a really hard time understanding that without a dictionary.
It seems like a useful distinction to me, rather than lumping "Colloquial, contemporary Scottish English" and "the way Scottish farmers spoke a hundred years ago" under the same name.
