[HN Gopher] Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
___________________________________________________________________
Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
Author : freediver
Score : 294 points
Date : 2021-07-31 04:34 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (data.firefox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (data.firefox.com)
| rishikeshs wrote:
| Are you guys aware of Brave? It's the best browser I have ever
| used
| berniemadoff69 wrote:
| personally, i knew things were headed in the wrong direction when
| they added that big orange button in the top left corner. i guess
| that was version 4. i felt like it was the beginning of the end.
| wolpoli wrote:
| Around that time, they also added that Keyhole shaped back and
| forward buttons that looks off on all platforms. That's one of
| the first instance where I felt they prioritized what they want
| - a brand identity, over what the users want - a consistent
| user interface.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120725235602/https://blog.mozi...
| metabagel wrote:
| I still use Firefox on my iPhone and computer. It generally works
| great.
| Tomte wrote:
| I would use it if they implemented the content blocking API on
| iOS.
|
| I can use Firefox Focus as ad blocker with Safari, but not with
| Firefox!
| user3939382 wrote:
| I adblock with this in combination with iOS Firefox:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weblock-adblock-
| proxy/id558818...
| [deleted]
| ladzoppelin wrote:
| Edge is the biggest threat to Chrome and Firefox is still great.
| uBlock Origin does not even work as well in Chrome as it does in
| FF which will always create demand for alt browsers. I can't deal
| with with Chrome but if everything else goes away, Edge is fine.
| Ms is doing exactly what Google did with webkit, what can you do?
| freediver wrote:
| One of the problems with Edge is that it sends 350+ requests
| "home" to Microsoft on startup (in good-old fashioned way
| Windows does). A big no-no from a privacy standpoint.
| TLLtchvL8KZ wrote:
| Surely this would show up in dns? The only thing my DNS shows
| me from edge usage is smartscreen.
| freediver wrote:
| My bad for not linking to the source of information:
|
| https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/
| cube00 wrote:
| Given Edge is based on Chromium, I don't see how it's Chrome's
| biggest threat, there's all sorts of tricks Google can pull to
| cripple Chromium so Edge is also punished.
|
| Look at what they've done with Android and the massive "Google
| Play Services" bolt on. If you try and take away any of its
| permissions you get a warning that "this may cause basic
| functionality to stop working"
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >uBlock Origin does not even work as well in Chrome as it does
| in FF
|
| AFAIK Firefox is the only mobile browser that supports uBlock
| Origin.
| hu3 wrote:
| Kiwi Browser on Android has support for desktop Chrome
| extensions, and it's open-source.
| cs2733 wrote:
| In the last decade, the proliferation of smartphones led to
| billions of newly "connected" people using the default browser,
| not knowing or caring about what a "browser" is. Firefox doesn't
| ship its own hardware so...
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| f32jhnjk33jj wrote:
| I switched to Firefox on Android, because I can use uBlock
| Origin (adblocker) extension with it and stop watching nonsense
| ads. It's also good for battery life and protect against some
| malware. Chrome on Mobile, on the other hand, doesn't allow
| extensions.
| cs2733 wrote:
| In World War 2 the Allies didn't win because they had the best
| tanks and airplanes. They won because they - the US, really -
| could build them much faster than Axis. It's a numbers game.
|
| Edit: One could argue this isn't what the news article is about
| but what's losing 50M in a market of billions? A device,
| specially a smartphone, is a delivery mechanism for services
| and in this day and age when internet access (apps) has become
| massified, having "choice" is irrelevant as far as browser
| marketshare goes. I do hope Firefox continues because I quite
| enjoy using it but if they do fold someday I won't be
| surprised.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| Anyone who's been around /r/firefox this last year or so knows
| that Mozilla systematically ignores users feedback.
|
| Even someone like me that uses Firefox since it's inception just
| gave up. I feel like Mozilla is alienating its userbase to cater
| for new users. It's a failing strategy as it will never be able
| to compete with the hand that feeds (google).
|
| My hope is that Mozilla fully dies and Firefox is able to
| continue as a community project like arch or Debian. It will
| never be popular but the community will have some control.
| wqTJ3jmY8br4RWa wrote:
| Browsers are like "commons" in the Internet space. It is super
| critical to have a neutral provider that adheres to open
| standards to have a substantial market share. We need to
| legislate every device sold (smart phone, PC, mac, iPad etc) to
| be shipped with a Firefox and/or other neutral open source
| browser.
|
| I've been a loyal Firefox user since Day 1. Every time I open an
| Chrome/Edge I get a pop up or notification to change my default
| away from Firefox. This is pure anti-competitive behavior by the
| tech giants and needs to stop.
| beezischillin wrote:
| I'm ashamed to admit that I'm an avid Facebook user, it helps me
| keep in touch with friends and family living abroad, despite it's
| obvious negatives quitting it would mean losing out. I'm saying
| this because to me one of the benchmarks of a browser is how well
| it runs Facebook's awfully-optimized front-end code.
|
| In that regard Safari used to be a disaster and now it works
| alright but Firefox seems to be consistently worse. It's a shame
| because FF is very important to the future of the internet, in my
| opinion, and on macOS their performance is not that great. My
| backup browser for this sole reason is Brave. I wish that wasn't
| the case because the browser is stuffed with... things.. that I
| don't need or want in it so I always have to go and hunt down how
| to turn all of them off when I install it on a new machine.
|
| To me a browser needs a UI that's small, unobtrusive but clean,
| no BS on the "new tab" page (I don't need random wallpapers
| loaded from who knows where or news) - just a list of bookmarks,
| speed and support for the few extensions I use (adguard,
| sponsorblock, bitwarden).
|
| Please fix FF, I wanna use it as my main browser!
| makecheck wrote:
| I see no evidence of poor performance on macOS. Have you used a
| recent Firefox? Could you be blaming the browser for the
| behavior of a particular extension or web site?
| agigao wrote:
| Here comes another sad ex-FF-user.
|
| I've been using Firefox since early days and the latest UI
| bumbling forced me to look elsewhere.
|
| Surely I tried alternatives over the years but my main browser
| has always stayed FF. Now, times has come to actually change the
| main browser, which turned out to be Edge. UI is slick and
| functional out of the box.
| Shorel wrote:
| And Firefox gained me.
|
| I was a Chrome user since I left Opera in 2017, until short ago,
| mainly for performance and ease of use.
|
| I just love container tabs, and to be able to send URLs from one
| computer to the other.
|
| And Pocket integration, great when you have a Kobo reader.
| freediver wrote:
| Fun fact: Under current conditions (200M users) it looks like
| Google is paying $2-2.25 per active user annually to be the
| default search engine in Firefox.
|
| "Mozilla renewed its search deal with Google in 2020 for three
| years. The organization will receive an estimate of $400 to $450
| million per year from the deal alone. "
|
| https://www.ghacks.net/2020/12/10/mozillas-revenue-jumped-to...
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Come 2023, pray that Google doesn't alter the deal further,
| with the remaining FF user base in the low single-digit
| figures. It's a matter of when, not if, Mozilla goes down given
| this trajectory. Or, Mozilla get's actually paid for working
| with Google on "web standards" and producing a browser as a fig
| leaf for the monopoly the WWW has become and counter measure
| against antitrust (with US antitrust a lame duck anyway), in a
| Mafia-esque way. It's not like we haven't been telling this all
| the time, with the HN crowd however cheering Mozilla's erratic
| ventures into Rust, WASM, and whatnot.
|
| (For the record: I'm using FF and actually prefer it over
| Chrome, especially their DevTools for CSS which I find pretty
| meh on Chrome, and of course for ad blocking).
| tpetry wrote:
| That is a very good deal for google. As ads on the search
| results are looking more and more like normal results any user
| without adblocking will click multiple times on these ads in a
| year. And the cpc prices depending on the topic are really
| high.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's also insurance against antitrust intervention.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I was thinking the same. It's a bargain and now I understand
| why Google pays them so much.
| the_biot wrote:
| And yet this gigantic amount of money hasn't resulted in a
| marked increase of users/functionality etc.
|
| It's almost like the Mozilla execs get paid the big bucks no
| matter how badly they do their jobs. Go figure.
| [deleted]
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| Given how they make a minimum $450M a year in revenue, how on
| Earth is Mozilla not swimming in cash?! How high can their
| expenses be?
| bzbarsky wrote:
| How many developers do you think a browser engine needs? How
| much do they cost?
|
| But also, the answer to your question is at
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-
| fdn-201... and https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/m
| ozilla-2019-fo... (the 2020 numbers are not up yet because
| the audit starts when the tax return is filed and lasts for
| several months, so isn't completed yet).
|
| Just for comparison, last I checked Chrome's marketing budget
| was estimated to be in the ballpark of Mozilla's total
| budget.
|
| Disclaimer: used to work for Mozilla.
| freediver wrote:
| > How many developers do you think a browser engine needs?
| How much do they cost?
|
| Browser: ~20
|
| Web rendering engine: ~100
|
| Worldwide average senior C/C++ developer salary: $100k/year
|
| So $12M/year should do it. Let's say $20M to allow for
| management and overhead.
|
| Disclaimer: founder of a browser company
| sciurus wrote:
| There is a year of lag, but you can read Mozilla's financial
| statements and Form 990. The latest ones are linked at
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2019/
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how on Earth is Mozilla not swimming in cash?! How high
| can their expenses be?_
|
| Mozilla launches a new idiot side project like once a month.
| As a Firefox user, it's deeply frustrating to watch bug
| tickets go unfilled while a multimillion-dollar rebranding
| rolls out.
| rmsaksida wrote:
| Mozilla pays millions of dollars per year to their CEO,
| despite the decrease in usage and user base. Could be a
| symptom of a larger problem in the organization.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| Fire the CEO, start paying open source developers for
| quality pull requests. Maybe in another dimension...
| practice9 wrote:
| Reminds me of this comment :
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22058629
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Mozilla also spends its cash on various other bullshit that
| nobody cares about.
| TLLtchvL8KZ wrote:
| Feels like a lifetime ago they were humble-bragging about
| their Paris office with gold leaf ceilings!
| gibba999 wrote:
| In general, I don't donate to non-profits where anyone
| earns more than I do.
|
| I've worked for nonprofits for most of my career, and have
| seen the insides of several. The most effective ones tend
| to have a small team on shoestring salaries and really need
| money. The least effective ones have a CEO making $5M and
| an executive team above $400k.
|
| I've seen a lot of people argue that good people cost
| money, but they don't. I know $5M CEOs, $1M CEOs and $100k
| CEOs. The $100k CEO was by far the most effective.
|
| That said, the Mozilla 990 doesn't look crazy. Many big
| nonprofits are bad. It's not an organization I'd donate to
| myself, but it's not one I'd discourage others from
| donating to either. CEO makes $3M, which isn't really
| reasonable, but the next-highest salary is $286k. That
| said, the whole for-profit Mozilla Corporation bit sketches
| me out. It feels like it might be a way to dodge IRS
| reporting regulations. I'd want to do due diligence before
| donating to a non-profit that has a structure like that (it
| may be innocuous), but I don't have time for due diligence
| when there are transparent nonprofits too.
| aftergibson wrote:
| I use Firefox but I don't donate anymore which is awful but
| I want to donate to Firefox not Mozilla.
|
| If anyone knows a way to only support Firefox and not
| Mozilla at large do let me know!
| todd3834 wrote:
| Meanwhile: Brave Passes 25 Million Monthly Active Users
|
| https://brave.com/25m-mau/
|
| This seems relevant as it was started by the former co-founder of
| Mozilla and creator of JavaScript. Maybe Brendan Eich is good at
| finding out what people want in a browser.
| InTheArena wrote:
| now if it just had multi-account containers.
|
| Still running the monoculture problem....
| Shorel wrote:
| I can assure you that after 20 years using it, I still don't
| want JavaScript in my browsers.
| sirius87 wrote:
| Switched from Chrome to Firefox around 2017 then to closed-source
| Chromium-based Vivaldi and haven't looked back since.
|
| Whatever architectural changes Firefox made around '17-19 broke
| the browser for me. Tabs would randomly go dead, accepting no
| input. Mobile Firefox was worse.
|
| The old Firefox was _perfectly fine_ , save for being noticeably
| but, for me, acceptably slower than Chrome. Then Firefox Aurora
| or whatever happened and things went from stable went to crap.
| I'd try and go back to see if things got better occasionally, but
| then gave up and uninstalled it.
|
| Most aggravating is when you have negative feedback about Firefox
| in forums, including on HN, you immediately get "have to tried"
| suggestions from avid fans. The intent is good, no doubt. I get
| that it works for you. But I'm beyond trying already.
| eingaeKaiy8ujie wrote:
| closed-source == not secure
| rvz wrote:
| All thanks to the Chromium ecosystem that have made it
| 'desirable' for web devs to build on, companies like Microsoft,
| Brave, Opera and Vivaldi all have their browsers depending on
| Chromium and for users to be running almost everything in either
| a browser or an electron desktop app.
|
| This is a two horse race. Chrome vs Safari and Chrome is still
| winning.
|
| Not only that, Chrome is 'the standard' and we happily helped
| them become that after pushing out IE. The control of the web
| standards has just switched hands from one tech giant to another.
|
| Firefox has no chance of catching up. They are already on life
| support by Google.
| freediver wrote:
| Allow me to mention that we are adding another horse to the
| race, a WebKit based browser no less, Orion [1]. There are many
| things we believe Safari could do better and we are set to do
| them.
|
| [1] https://browser.kagi.com
| Kenji wrote:
| This is bullshit. Firefox users simply block analytics.
| hidden-spyder wrote:
| I am a Firefox user on all my devices and will be so until the
| Mozilla Foundation stands, but my gut feeling tells me that
| Firefox won't bounce back from its downfall.
|
| I still wish for it to become the browser with most users.
| pupppet wrote:
| With Google's relentless Chrome dickbars for anyone daring to use
| one of their services without it, I don't see how any other
| browser stands a chance.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They even push Chrome when you dare to use their services with
| another Chrome based browser that isn't theirs like Edge
| Chrome.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| My personal favorite, it complains when it can't update
| itself on my Debian workstation and tries to get me to re-
| install it from the web, on every launch. Yes, I know google,
| it is intentional. That is why I installed it from the repos.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| I have to confess I am the culprit. In 2019 I started to move
| from yahoo to protonmail and from chrome to firefox. I brought
| the bad juju it seems
| toper-centage wrote:
| It's honestly a pity. Firefox is it perfect but the Internet is
| becoming worse because of chrome. Google is able to fast track
| any non standard Web tech and the hordes follow. Soon after, that
| become _the_ standard. I don 't want to cheer for a broken
| browser, but only Safari is able to stop this madness now.
|
| Also, Firefox on the Desktop is really good and still let's you
| do so much more than chrome clones. But it suffers specially when
| using Google websites.
| bdcravens wrote:
| > Safari is able to stop this madness now
|
| Apple stopped developing Safari for Windows nine years ago.
| nsilvestri wrote:
| Chrome is already the standard. Firefox usually works, but more
| and more often nowadays I encounter a glitchy or poorly
| performing page, which I switch to Chrome to use properly.
|
| I use Firefox to not be part of the Chrome monopoly, not
| because it's actually a fundamentally better browser.
| eitland wrote:
| > I use Firefox to not be part of the Chrome monopoly, not
| because it's actually a fundamentally better browser.
|
| For me there is - in addition to not wanting to support
| Chrome - still a few things that Firefox does better.
|
| As for websites that only support Chrome I consider them
| broken which means I don't use them or if I have to I try to
| notify the operator.
| yaomtc wrote:
| > I encounter a glitchy or poorly performing page
|
| When you have the time, you should note it here:
| https://webcompat.com/
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| That's my experience too. Unfortunately I don't think it's
| possible for complex standards to be well specified in human
| language instead of in code so a reference implementation is
| what will always win in the end.
|
| At least chromium is open source. The best we can hope is
| maybe that organizations adopting chromium other than Google
| can wield more influence over it.
|
| As I point out here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27222818 human language
| is not precise enough to write good specifications. Natural
| language words are polysemic and contextual. See the meaning
| of "break" for example: https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/break
|
| Kolmogrov showed that fully specified information distills
| down to computer programs:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_description_length
|
| The ideal language for a specification might be a mix of
| natural language and code with a test suit, something like
| Literate Programming
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming) or its
| descendants along with modern pull request based discussions
| that are tied to version controlled code.
|
| I wish Mozilla or a similar organization adopted the chromium
| core. We really need a well funded non-profit managed release
| of the reference browser.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > complex standards to be well specified in human language
| instead of in code so a reference implementation is what
| will always win in the end.
|
| > At least chromium is open source.
|
| That source code is 12-15 _million_ lines of code. They
| implement literally thousands of specs. Chrome adds 40-70
| new web APIs [1] with each release which happen roughly
| once every 40 days and contain god knows how many code
| changes.
|
| Good luck deducing "precise specs" from that.
|
| > I wish Mozilla or a similar organization adopted the
| chromium core
|
| That would mean cementing Google's monopoly of the web.
|
| [1] https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/confluence
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| >That source code is 12-15 million lines of code.
|
| Exactly, it's impossible to describe that in human
| language which doesn't have precise enough semantics.
| That's why the spec has to be in code, in the form of a
| reference implementation and/or test suit.
|
| The goal should be to move chromium away from being
| controlled too much by Google.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Exactly, it's impossible to describe that in human
| language which doesn't have precise enough semantics.
|
| On the contrary, this implements specs that are defined
| in a human language. For example, the full semantics of
| rendering HTML were standardised with HTML5, and now all
| browsers render HTML the same way.
|
| The problem isn't the human language. The problem is the
| sheer number of these specs. Hundreds, if not thousands.
|
| However, good luck understanding these specs by reading
| code or unit tests (and yes, there's a multitude of tests
| [1]). How do you know what a piece of code encodes? Or a
| test tests? You really propose to reverse engineer
| behaviour from code?
|
| Example: here's a test: https://github.com/web-platform-
| tests/wpt/blob/master/html/s...
|
| What exactly does it test? Why? Is this a correct test
| for this behaviour? Care to pinpoint the exact precise
| location of this spec in Google Chrome's code? [2] It's
| only 12 or so million lines of code, should be easy to
| find.
|
| > The goal should be to move chromium away from being
| controlled too much by Google.
|
| By doing what exactly?
|
| [1] https://web-platform-tests.org
|
| [2] https://github.com/chromium/chromium
| xcambar wrote:
| Chrome is not better because you witness some pages to render
| better in Chrome. It is actually the opposite: pages are more
| and more built for and with Chrome in mind.
|
| And that omnipresence of Chrome allows Google to force their
| own moves as de facto standards, which is dangerous overall.
|
| Firefox is better because it follows standards and it is
| open-source and it is not tied to a behemoth like Google.
|
| The authors of pages you see perform better in Chrome are
| indeed not building for the web but rather building for
| Chrome.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| Especially with the prevalence of sites that "work" in
| browser but really expect you to download yet-another-
| Electron-app (i.e. Slack)
|
| Develop for Chrome first, all other browsers second. Why
| worry if other browsers don't work when the solution is
| "download our desktop Electron application :)"
| nightski wrote:
| I have used Firefox for about a decade now and I can't think
| of a single page that did not work. I'm not saying it's
| impossible, but incredibly rare. I'd be more inclined to just
| give up on the site than install Chrome.
| acomjean wrote:
| I haven't noticed any issues, though I thought there were
| some that forced me to switch to chrome.
|
| But it turns out the difference was the I was running
| ublock-origin in Firefox and sometimes that was causing
| issues for some sites..
| eightails wrote:
| Stuff doesn't always completely break -- e.g. Google
| forcing new Chrome-only web standards on certain sites and
| making other browsers like Firefox resort to alternatives
| which can end up being 5x slower [0], or serving a more
| dated design of google search on FF mobile vs Chrome. I
| suspect this sort of thing might be enough to make some
| people switch.
|
| And I have had a few experiences with sites not loading
| properly in the last few months. Try windy.com for example:
| on FF 90 with no extensions enabled and tracking protection
| on 'balanced' I get blue and yellow banding on the map, and
| the wind gusts graphics fail to load properly. I have
| reported a few of these instances in the past, but a lot of
| the time I'd rather just switch to chromium temporarily and
| continue with what I'm doing.
|
| [0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-
| software/mozilla-exec...
| kiwijamo wrote:
| Just out of interest I looked at Windy.com on
| Firefox/Linux and it looks fine? No blue/yellow banding.
| Wind gusts seem to show up fine. I've also had a look at
| the other stuff (e.g. waves, clouds, etc) which all seem
| to work as expected. This is with Firefox 78 LTS. Unless
| things have regressed in between version 78 to 90, I
| wonder if there is something else causing your issues?
| eightails wrote:
| So it seems like it was caused by FF blocking HTML5
| canvas fingerprinting. Enabling that allowed it all to
| load correctly. I guess I must've hit disallow without
| thinking when I first visited, and that response was
| saved even after clearing cache, so that example at least
| is probably my fault.
|
| I do wonder if every user would be aware that the 'Allow
| site to extract canvas data?' popup can break site
| functionality though -- its not as though there's a
| warning to that effect in browser.
| [deleted]
| rjsw wrote:
| Recently YouTube has started just displaying a blank page
| for me after going through selecting the tracking options.
| eitland wrote:
| The version of Unit 4 installed at work doesn't work in
| Firefox unless I open developer console first and disable
| caching requests.
|
| A hassle but well worth it to avoid touching Chrome ;-)
| Xylakant wrote:
| Apple business manager requires safari or chrome and will
| not work on Firefox at all.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| Sony PlayStation's support pages did not work on Firefox.
| Texas's franchise tax payment pages did not work on
| Firefox. Boy Scout certification pages did not work on
| Firefox. My kids' baseball registration pages did not work
| on Firefox. As a front end dev, it seemed really hard to
| get things to NOT work on Firefox and still work on Chrome.
| soperj wrote:
| >only Safari is able to stop this madness now
|
| Safari is usable on less than 20% of machines, it absolutely
| will not be stopping anything. It's also the bane of my
| existence as a web developer.
| nuker wrote:
| > Safari is usable on less than 20% of machines, it
| absolutely will not be stopping anything
|
| You forgot mobile, iOS users are big chunk of it and websites
| want to work on iOS browsers.
| whatever_dude wrote:
| The US is not the world.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's a big chunk of the world as far as web/software
| revenue is concerned.
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| That's true, but economically speaking, it might have a
| larger-than-life impact where it counts, say, in
| e-commerce.
| williamdclt wrote:
| iOS users are still a big chunk of it in Europe and Asia.
| 20% is a big chunk, and we do indeed often want websites
| want to work on iOS browsers.
| soperj wrote:
| It's not going to stop people from using Chrome on
| machines where it's not available though, obviously.
| tarsinge wrote:
| > It's also the bane of my existence as a web developer.
|
| I would say as a Chrome developer then.
| soperj wrote:
| Thanks for making this personal. I wouldn't have any issue
| with Safari at all if I was just a chrome developer would
| I?
| eitland wrote:
| The problem was people pretending to be web developers
| but only testing in IE.
|
| Being IE only made life a lot easier.
|
| Same today. Some people think it is OK to test only in
| Chrome. That lets one get away with a lot of bad habits.
|
| Dealing with different browsers is part of what makes one
| a competent web developer.
| soperj wrote:
| The problem with their comment is that they're too busy
| dunking on people.
|
| I do deal with different browsers, hence why I get
| headaches from Safari. If I didn't, I wouldn't complain
| about it.
|
| I've been a web developer for a long long time. I know
| what a pain IE was, and I'm just experiencing it all over
| again with Safari, although they've gotten better lately.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Once Safari is gone you're not a web developer you're a
| ChromeOS developer
| tarsinge wrote:
| That's the already the unfortunate state of frontend
| development, a Chrome world from development to end-users.
| soperj wrote:
| Safari doesn't exist for 80% of the world.
| freediver wrote:
| This may change if Apple continues producing great
| hardware like M1 laptops.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| I'm guessing a huge percentage of the lost users switched to
| Brave since it had 25 million as of February and is
| affiliated with Brendan Eich.
|
| https://brave.com/25m-mau/
| DavideNL wrote:
| I'm guessing a huge percentage now spends more time
| browsing on their iPads instead of Desktop/Laptop...
| christophilus wrote:
| Can confirm. Writing this from Brave on my iPhone.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| Does Apple still require using Safari as the engine for
| all browsers on iPhone or has that changed?
| freediver wrote:
| Apple requires WebKit to be web rendering engine for all
| browsers. Safari is one of 100+ browsers on iPhone.
| tgv wrote:
| I'm curious. I'm not "frontend", but I do write code that
| runs in the browser, and write parts of the visualization UI
| for our products. I do get to determine how we build our
| products. I've gone with vue/typescript, and that hasn't
| caused any problem so far. A part of our software has to be
| able to run everywhere, and that unfortunately still includes
| IE11, so there I do take care of using a minimal feature set,
| but I can't remember the last time Safari caused me a
| problem. What problems does Safari cause?
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| The past few years I've been saying "Safari is the new IE" in
| terms of web development. I can't tell you how many bugs I've
| had to fix because Safari was doing something weird with
| JS/CSS.
|
| IE11 is going EOL "soon" and at that point Safari is really
| going to be the odd one out. Chromium and Firefox are at
| least _mostly_ consistent with each other, save for when
| Chromium adds some crazy new feature that's nonstandard (but
| at that point only niche websites are usually using the new
| feature).
| rudian wrote:
| Exactly. They just shipped a UUID implementation to stable
| chrome before it was even finalized. They barely discussed and
| now it's live. But hey they wrote a proposal so it's all good.
| emrah wrote:
| > only Safari is able to stop this madness now
|
| Safari is a hard sell when one can't install an ad-blocker on
| it (work on the street is you can but not easily)
| marcellus23 wrote:
| You've been able to use ad blockers in Safari for years.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The ad-blocking API Safari offers isn't as powerful as
| Firefox's.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Okay... in practice they work fine though. Saying you
| can't use ad blockers in safari is straight up wrong.
| hughcrt wrote:
| You can install plenty of ad-blockers directly from the Mac
| App Store
| pjmlp wrote:
| I keep using Firefox on the desktop as a kind of resistance
| factor,. however the truth is that the war is lost, the Web has
| turned into ChromeOS for all practical purposes.
|
| Specially since Microsoft has always been on the same boat as
| Google, remember that such kind of features go back to Active
| Desktop.
|
| Additionally, everyone pushing Electron apps is basically
| contributing to Chrome market share.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| > it suffers specially when using Google websites
|
| I keep seeing this rhetoric, but I've never experienced this
| myself. I use Firefox as my main driver and use Google Search,
| Docs, Mail, Sheets, Slides, YouTube, and whatever other Google
| products literally every day and everything works just fine.
| I've tried them out in Chrome/Edge/whatever and they all work
| exactly the same.
|
| The only thing that doesn't work 100% is search on Firefox on
| Android, but there's no reason for it and changing the user
| agent fixes all the problems (Google intentionally makes it bad
| to try and drive you to Chrome).
| yann2 wrote:
| I dont worry. I have seen these cycles with IBM and Microsoft.
| And they all blow up eventually because the unintended
| consequences keep increasing.
|
| So Google has got itself locked into that same trajectory for a
| long time now. "Features" are total bullshit. Its all about
| making sure every small thing is in the cloud or eventually
| gets pushed into it.
|
| That vision is as dumb as moving the DNA in every cell in your
| body into a nearby lake and visiting the lake everytime you
| want to read 1 bit. With a Google toll booth at the lake
| entrance. Its doomed to fail.
|
| Just look at the consequences. If you have a webpage on your
| local hard drive and want to use the browsers javascript to
| access it to make it look better, the Google Chrome team will
| come running like well programmed alert robots to call it a
| security violation and disable api access to your own disk.
|
| This is how empires fall.
| beerandt wrote:
| Yeah chrome features stopped being features a long time ago.
| Why else would they force upgrades to be so persistent yet
| secretive? Because that's what you have to do when people
| value the existing feature set over security updates, if
| they're attached to new features like cookieless tracking.
| bdcravens wrote:
| IE was essentially a one-trick pony (the browser)
|
| Chrome is being used on the browser (with a mobile footprint
| Microsoft never had), the desktop (VS Code, Slack, etc), and
| v8 is driving a substantial part of the web's backend (Node).
| Even the smaller use case of web scraping is moving towards
| Puppeteer.
| elktea wrote:
| Does anyone know what the browser usage stats are for HN?
| solarkraft wrote:
| It's close to losing me too. I stuck with it in a major part to
| prevent a monoculture, but It's much slower than Chrome, causes
| major memory issues on my machine (M1 Mac) and with Mozilla on a
| kamikaze mission I don't think it's going to get better any time
| soon.
|
| Literally the only thing keeping me there are Tree Style
| Tabs/Sidebery. Give me a Chrome based browser with that and I'll
| switch (Edge's vertical tabs don't really count, it's still not a
| tree).
|
| I see many reasons for Firefox's demise, but TL;DR I'm just done.
| freediver wrote:
| Orion (WebKit based) has native tree style tabs, plus runs
| Chrome/Firefox extensions. Currently in beta (disclaimer:
| founder)
| jray wrote:
| Why doesn't it have a status bar? All the software I use has
| a status bar, but for years it has become fashionable not to
| have one in browsers.
| freediver wrote:
| It does have a status bar. Or we are talking about
| different things?
| Kye wrote:
| They probably mean a bar at the bottom that shows what's
| going on. All browsers used to have it. Then it dropped
| to just showing which URL was currently loading. I don't
| think they even show that now. Most of what it had is
| accessible in greater detail with developer tools, but it
| was nice to have a little summary down there.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Thanks for the hint, I signed up!
| DJBunnies wrote:
| I try to use it as my daily driver, but it really sucks.
|
| Audio issues, logged out of everything issues, auto fill issues,
| it just doesn't work in Firefox issues.
|
| Containers made me want to like it, but cmon.
| yaomtc wrote:
| If you want to help, report the sites you have issues with
| here: https://webcompat.com/
| effingwewt wrote:
| Why bother the current version hangs constantly forcing a re-
| launch to get it moving again, has been a known issue since
| the new updated version which is quite old now. They removed
| about:config and most addons.
|
| May they burn on the pyre they have built. This is what
| happens when MBAs fire the engineers and chase the bottom
| line.
|
| Obviously us users are using it wrong.
| divarre wrote:
| What do you mean was removed in about:config? The page is
| still available in Firefox 90/91. Just curious!
|
| They even added a new page recently about:third-party
| though only available on Windows:
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/90.0/releasenotes/
|
| You can view all the "about" pages on about:about, e.g.,
| about:performance, about:processes, about:networking,
| about:profiles, about:protections, about:crashes,
| about:support.
|
| Have you tried refreshing Firefox using about:support or
| giving the Troubleshoot Mode a go? It sounds like there may
| be either something wrong with your profile or some
| incompatibility somewhere. Hope that helps!
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Considering that there is no point in using Firefox on iOS due to
| Apple restricting Add-Ons (and thus the crucial uBlock Origin),
| I'd say that Apple is having a similar impact to Google on
| Firefox's user count.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Hrm, so many people dunking on FF, and I've recently swapped back
| as it feels like it's improved a lot. This is within the last
| month. This is on both Mac and Windows. It's snappy, doesn't feel
| heavy, and generally feels faster than Chrome. And on Mac, better
| than Safari.
| amatecha wrote:
| Hmm, conversely, I switched to Firefox (from Chrome) as my main
| web browser this year!
| leodriesch wrote:
| Yeah, me two (coming from Edge).
|
| I would argue that Chrome is better in some aspects, but using
| Firefox is the least thing one can do to stop Googles
| dominance.
|
| I also quite like the UI changes and would say that Firefox now
| has the best looking chrome after Safari (highly subjective).
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I moved back to FF after Quantum but haven't been happy with the
| latest round of UI changes (which also seems to have turned the
| buttery performance of quantum into a stuttery mess on my
| machine)
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Guess firing those people that brought you those improvement
| really paid up for Mozilla execs.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Would you recommend they simply stop paying their engineers
| instead?
| Ygg2 wrote:
| No. Stop paying the execs. They obviously are steering the
| ship into the rocks.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Okay you've paid for ten additional engineers. What would
| you like to do with the remaining 240[1]?
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2020/08/firef...
| relativ575 wrote:
| Let's say they fire all existing execs. Poach some
| talented ones from other tech companies who are capable
| of righting the ship. How much do you suggest to pay
| them? If less than what they currently make, how many do
| you think will be willing to jump?
| dnzkw wrote:
| Eich was competent and happy being paid peanuts. Maybe
| they shouldn't have burnt that bridge ;-)
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Anyone else install ESR to avoid the new interface?
| Proven wrote:
| I did, on both personal and corporate client.
|
| I forgot to backup installed extension names and other stuff
| from the FF version I uninstalled, and ESR corrupted the
| previous profile after I installed it so even after going back
| I wasn't able to recover.
|
| At that point I wiped all traces of FF and started with FF ESR
| "from scratch". It was well worth the trouble - no stupid tabs.
| Who knows for how long.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| Firefox somehow managed to have a prophetic moment and plan their
| recent reskin to look and feel exactly like Windows 11.
|
| So now when you use the newly released Windows 11, the several
| month old Firefox reskin matches the taskbar and controls
| perfectly. That was clever. I wonder if they had any inside help.
| kijin wrote:
| But by the time Windows 11 becomes popular, Firefox will
| already have reskinned itself _again_. Mozilla just can 't seem
| to help it. :(
| tomrod wrote:
| Do any other browsers support containers? That has been the
| killer feature for me.
| christophilus wrote:
| Brave does. They call it profiles, I think.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Assuming we are talking about the same thing, it's absolutely
| not the same as containers. It'd be the same as Chrome
| profiles, or Firefox profiles for that matter. Containers
| allow you to have separate sandboxes within the same instance
| of the browser.
| christophilus wrote:
| Ah. You are right. Well that's a very cool feature that I
| wasn't aware of.
| patrick451 wrote:
| Firefox has also been shooting its own feet. Their insistence on
| automatic updates, especially ones that require a "restart" is
| infuriating. Especially when the restart fails and loses all your
| tabs. They are also destroyed tons of useful plugins several
| years ago. They starting defaulting the home page to Pocket. I'd
| rather use firefox, but they don't seem to want me as a user.
| XorNot wrote:
| In general people really need to stop using Chrome. It's a
| tracking browser for an ad-company. The incentive structure is to
| send data to the mothership, and show you ads.
|
| You can see this, because uBlock Origin works _a lot_ better on
| Firefox.
|
| But worse is also: Chrome just plain isn't fast or memory
| efficient anymore. It gets big speed ups on one or two things,
| but for the life of me it seems to consume a huge amount of
| memory and CPU compared to modern Firefox. That advantage was
| short lived.
| InTheArena wrote:
| I still use Firefox - primarily for the container extension which
| is exactly the awesome type of privacy and internet control we
| need. I simply don't want google that into my ecosystem. When
| they have to be there, I want them in a penalty box.
|
| Firefox lost their way technically, and their focus on users when
| Brenden Eich was forced out. Mozilla's focus seems to be far more
| on the social to the detriment of their technical efforts.
|
| Their fragmentation trying to chase other goals then browser has
| really cost them.
|
| Want mozilla to take a stand on a policy issue? Great.
| Responsive. Respond to user requests? Not so much.
|
| To be clear, I defend anyone's right to have a position and make
| the world a better place. But please improve the product that you
| are actually working on. The number of users you claim to speak
| for is shrinking.
| djanogo wrote:
| FF CPU usage is terrible compared to Safari on OSX, they need to
| put more effort to make it as efficient as Safari. May be
| increased sales of ARM based Macbooks will help them.
|
| Just watch a twitch stream on Firefox vs Safari, there is at
| least 10c CPU temp difference between 2 browsers
| deadalus wrote:
| Mozilla(Firefox's parent) has supported pro-social justice and
| progressive causes that ticked off a lot of users. There were a
| lot of discussions about it in 4chan from 2017-2019. Many people
| vowed to never use Firefox ever again and instead switched to
| alternatives like Waterfox and PaleMoon.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Mozilla is far better at delivering social positions then good
| software.
| csmpltn wrote:
| I've been using Firefox daily for over 15 years now.
|
| My experience with Firefox over the last 2-3 years in particular
| leaves me very disappointed and frustrated.
|
| The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new
| update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption.
| The slowness and slugishness.
|
| I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my
| way and lets me get shit done. A browser built for professionals,
| by professionals. I want a consistent UI that remains stable over
| time. I'm easily willing to pay for such a browser.
|
| Firefox used to be it, but I no longer feel like it is. Any
| suggestions for what to try next?
| kunagi7 wrote:
| If you want to customize your browser (as far as using your own
| CSS) you can try Vivaldi. I've been using it for years and
| after the 3.7 update it feels fast and snappy (at least on my
| computer). It has tons of custom settings around tabs,
| commands, windows, toolbars, etc.
|
| At least on Linux it gets out of my way quite nicely. Things
| like easily accessible Profiles help me quite a lot with my
| workflow.
|
| If you're really strict about privacy there are browsers like
| ungoogled-chromium, Bromite (Android) and Orion Browser (only
| on Mac, iOS) which promise 0 telemetry, connections against
| their services, etc. Brave is nice but has connections against
| their services (internal addon updates, safe browsing,
| updates).
| jarcane wrote:
| If there were someway to sync Vivaldi with an iOS browser,
| I'd have already switched. I've really been quite impressed
| with it, and it seems better every time I check, but I get a
| lot of use about the cross-device features of Firefox/Chrome,
| and while that's possible on Android, Vivaldi still don't
| have an iOS version.
| kunagi7 wrote:
| I have around 1000 bookmarks and sync does really help.
| Since Brave has an iOS version I just use that but I hope
| someday they will release it.
| jolux wrote:
| Vivaldi is Chrome underneath.
| sleavey wrote:
| Just to give a contrasting data point: I always see people
| complaining about resource consumption in Firefox in these
| threads, but I have honestly almost never had trouble like this
| and I use it for hours every day with lots of tabs and lots of
| rich media websites open. It happened more in the past (maybe
| 5+ years ago), but I am sure some of the blame in those cases
| would have been down to Flash. Now that I think more about it,
| that whole time I've also blocked ads, which surely helps too.
| krylon wrote:
| In my experience, Firefox uses a lot more memory on Windows
| than on Linux. It feels faster on Linux, too. The reasons
| might rather complex, though.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| This might not be the fault of Firefox. The problem is that
| Chrome is the most used browser even amongst web-devs, so you
| tend to profile/benchmark your site in that browser and
| optimize for it.
| foepys wrote:
| A friend of mine has over 4,000 tabs open in Firefox at the
| moment - they just never close a tab, ever. Their Firefox'
| memory usage is only a little higher compared to mine with 3
| open tabs.
| moralestapia wrote:
| This is just a blatant lie. Come on, man!
| schwarze_pest wrote:
| 2650 tabs open right now. I'm sure I had more open in the
| past. No major performance impact. If I click on the
| "List all tabs" button it takes a second to render the
| list. The PC is 5 years old, not even close being state
| of the art.
| crateless wrote:
| I can believe it. I have over 2,000 tabs open over the
| last year. Before the last "clean up", I had 4,000 tabs
| open. As GP noted, most of them are unloaded (I would say
| around 3/4). I have 32GB RAM, so firefox issues are a
| distant memory. (pun intended)
| detaro wrote:
| Nope, it's possible, as long as most of the tabs stay
| around inactive. (Sadly it doesn't handle too many tabs
| becoming loaded very well, so if you hit the limit it
| usually ends with something crashing...)
| bombcar wrote:
| I wonder how many of those are actually "open" - disconnect
| the internet and try looking at them. I suspect many just
| are the URL and nothing more and on view it reloads.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| So bookmarks but less organized and more risk of losing
| them all at any given moment. Suddenly I don't feel so
| bad about discovering the ":D" easter egg in mobile
| chrome.
| foepys wrote:
| Yes, Firefox unloads old unused tabs.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I used to have 1200 tabs open but I noticed more lag around
| above 800. That said my computer are far from last gen and
| I wouldn't blame mozilla for not supporting 1000+ tab
| hoarders anyway. But yeah firefox is not bloated even when
| abused.
|
| that said I despised the UI redesigns and the recent FTP
| kill.. I want a broswer, not a fashion magazine
| gfodor wrote:
| can you explain what the value is of having that many
| tabs open? i hear people do this but never understood it.
| what's the point?
| agumonkey wrote:
| There's no point. It's just a blend of laziness /
| hoarding / fomo
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| There is no value to it, this is what happens when you
| don't know what bookmarks are for.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Honestly I simply need an autotagger. I tried doing one a
| few time but never finished.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| The most disappointing part of the redesign to me was
| that they actually REMOVED icons from menu items. It is
| harder to find what I'm looking for.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I used Firefox since it released. I changed to chrome after
| they broke all my extensions for the 2 time in five years.
| Austrailis change is where I dropped. I use edge now and it's
| fine, just fine.
| ckosidows wrote:
| Same boat. Used to be a big Firefox fan back in the day but
| even if it's not bad for me these days it doesn't do anything
| special. Edge works just as well and feels slightly less
| cumbersome.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Aaaah, Firefox users. With friends like these, who needs
| enemies ?
|
| > The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every
| new update.
|
| Firefox's last major UI update was 1 version ago. And that was
| a truly large update. The previous sizeable one was... version
| 50 ? To redesign the tabs ? Stop being a princess, UI changes.
| Unhappy with it ? Apply a theme and leave the rest of us who
| are perfectly happy with it.
|
| > The instability
|
| I have run Firefox Canary/Developer Edition for... 5 years now
| ? I have had _two_ actual crashes.
|
| > and ridiculous resources consumption.
|
| I have, right now, 6 firefox windows open, each with around a
| hundred tabs. My Firefox is currently using 4GB of RAM. And
| that's with a 1080p youtube video playing in the background
| too. What browser do you know of that does better ? Lynx ?
|
| > I want a browser that works
|
| It does. And better than almost every other browser out there.
|
| > respects my privacy
|
| It does. I expect you to answer with "but but mr robot easter
| egg" and great, yeah, that's one fuckup. Do we want to list
| just how much every single other browser out there does much
| worse on a daily basis ?
|
| > Any suggestions for what to try next?
|
| Growing up.
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| Between Firefox and Chrome, the performance is almost
| identical. What is different is the smooth scrolling behaviour:
| it is far smoother in chrome than in Firefox, and that has a
| dramatic impact on how performant the browser "feels." If
| Firefox tinkered with that a bit, it would be game changing.
|
| (The few times I've had perf issues in Firefox were all either
| addons or sites designed to work only in chrome)
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every
| new update._
|
| Ive been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix, and this is
| my biggest complaint. Stop hiding menu options, my monitor is
| bigger and you're suddenly trying to save real estate.
|
| The only reason Firefox got as popular as it did is because
| technical people liked it, and they encouraged their non
| technical friends to use it. If you're going to dumb it down
| then technically inclined users will not feel as pationately
| about it.
|
| I was personally responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands of
| people switching from ie to Firefox when I worked at the help
| desk of a small ISP. I don't think I would do the same now.
| It's still my main browser, but it feels like an abusive
| relationship.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| I'm the complete opposite. I don't have any problem with
| firefox. Everything works perfectly.
| croes wrote:
| Same for me with Chrome on Android. This forced tab grouping is
| totally killing my workflow.
| heurisko wrote:
| I switched from chrome to firefox on Android for this reason.
|
| It is behaviour that has earned many recent one star reviews.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.ch.
| ..
| verdverm wrote:
| You can still disable this via some chrome://flags tweaking
|
| 2 column tabs sadly no more...
|
| Why they think this is better UX is beyond me
| croes wrote:
| Yep, it's still possible but they are disabling these flags
| one by one.
|
| I don't get it, why they force the grouping instead of
| making it optional. Without tweaking it's impossible to
| just open a link in another tab.
| verdverm wrote:
| I'm starting to see the benefit in it, in that I will use
| it less and get life time back
| LordNight wrote:
| >The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every
| new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources
| consumption. The slowness and slugishness.
|
| >I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of
| my way and lets me get shit done. A browser built for
| professionals, by professionals. I want a consistent UI that
| remains stable over time. I'm easily willing to pay for such a
| browser.
|
| >Firefox used to be it, but I no longer feel like it is. Any
| suggestions for what to try next?
|
| That's my experience as well. I was using FF from v 1.0 back in
| 2004. Upgrade to Quantum almost gave me a heart attack because
| it ruined majority of addons and disabled custom themes.
| Upgrade to "megabar" was a final straw for me. I've spent ~ 3
| hours, but finally migrated to Pale Moon ... and it's like I'm
| back in 2004. Even Noia theme is working again.
|
| FF, in my opinion, went full circle: from being the most
| functional and the most customizable browser to being the new
| IE6. There are no redeeming qualities left really.
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| Are you perhaps not using an adblocker and thereby being
| trapped into wrongly believing that the slowness induced by
| ad+tracking Javascripts is the fault of Firefox?
| csmpltn wrote:
| I am using an adblocker.
| tehbeard wrote:
| Let me give you another datapoint.
|
| My old uni laptop, an Intel T4400 with 4gb RAM.
|
| Both chrome and Firefox have adblock.
|
| Never ran in to a problem with Chrome, despite the wider
| internet calling it a memory hog.
|
| Firefox struggled after 4/5 tabs, couldn't even playback
| video on YouTube or Vimeo reliably..
|
| Don't run into these issues on desktop, and the Android
| version seems somewhat competent. But I've lost a lot of
| trust in Mozilla the last few years thanks to middle
| management.
|
| Atleast with Google I know their motives and I'm not locked
| in to their platform relying on any particular proprietary
| thing they have.
| sp332 wrote:
| Poor video playback in one browser might mean that it's not
| configured to use the hardware decoder. I think performance
| there should be basically the same for video playback if
| they're configured the same way.
| abcd_f wrote:
| For what it's worth and based on a non-trivial sample set
| this is _highly_ atypical.
| shaan7 wrote:
| Yep. I rarely see Firefox lagging/unresponsive (~15
| pinned + 3-4 normal tabs open). In the rare chances that
| it does, I get an option "This web page is slowing down
| Firefox" which lets me kill the tab and all is well
| again.
| josefx wrote:
| > The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The
| slowness and slugishness.
|
| Is that firefox or Google pulling a Shadow Dom v0 where they
| use an API only Chrome implements and fall back to software
| emulation on everything else?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I have a theory why people have dissenting views on the
| performance of Firefox. I have a laptop dedicated to doing
| business online. Firefox has no addons on that machine. Some
| websites are painfully slow and my laptop fans kick on. I have
| debugged these issues and in every case it was javascript
| bogging down the CPU's, all 8 cores! _gaming laptop_ I am not a
| web developer, so it is perhaps unfair for me to pick on the
| quality of the javascript.
|
| Disable javascript and well... the site isn't usable any more
| for business transactions, but the slowness and CPU load
| vanishes. The website becomes snappy, highly responsive and
| easy to browse. The fans spin down and memory usage goes way
| down.
|
| I've never used Chrome. Does chrome not ever get bogged down by
| javascript? Do they have a different javascript library/engine?
| I assume they must. Can you change the javascript libraries
| used by Firefox and Chrome? Apologies in advance if this is a
| dumb question.
| bigyikes wrote:
| Chrome uses V8, which is the same JS engine that Node is
| built on top of. As the name implies, it's sort of wicked
| fast.
|
| IIRC Firefox uses their own engine called Spider Monkey. I
| don't know of anything outside of Mozilla which uses it. I
| have a hard time imagining it being faster than V8, but I
| actually have no idea -- will need to go look at some
| benchmarks.
| andai wrote:
| There used to be a big difference (in JS engine speed) but
| it's small recently. Where there is still a difference is
| in the UI code. Not necessarily operations being slower in
| Ff, but ordered in such a way to appear slower.
|
| For example, when you press ctrl+n, chrome instantly
| creates a new window, then spends the next second or so
| (depending how old your computer is) painting the UI. On
| Firefox though it seems like nothing is happening for an
| entire second, and then the window emerges _fully painted._
| So even tho the total time is about the same, FF feels much
| less responsive due to this design choice.
|
| I also noticed Firefox spent a much longer time (a fraction
| of a second, but perceptible, and multiply that by
| thousands of clicks a day) before it would even
| (apparently, again -- not sure whats going on inside)
| _begin_ loading a page, which was frustrating.
|
| I verified this was the case in the web inspector's network
| performance tab (there was an mysterious delay before the
| first network request).
| Sayrus wrote:
| I've been experiencing delays too but only on the first
| request. This was due to uBlock Origin initializing. On
| mobile, this load time adds up really fast as it takes
| around 5 to 10 seconds for uBlock to load. In the mean
| time, requests are configured to be delayed. The
| aggressive Android memory cleaner doesn't help as anytime
| you close your browser, it reloads again.
|
| All this to say, you might have an add-on delaying
| network requests to match them against a blacklist, save
| metadata or whatever the add-on is supposed to be doing.
| missblit wrote:
| > Does chrome not ever get bogged down by javascript?
|
| Yes. This is pretty subjective as a user, but I'd classify
| Chrome as slightly better here. They're close enough that it
| doesn't usually matter unless you're playing JS based games
| or have a potato for a computer.
|
| > Do they have a different javascript library/engine?
|
| Yes, Chrome uses V8, Firefox uses SpiderMonkey
|
| > Can you change the javascript libraries used by Firefox and
| Chrome?
|
| No, not easily. It's all open source so technically you could
| with enough effort. But for example Chrome relies on some
| shared GC code between Blink and V8 [1]; I expect various
| feature needs like this would make swapping for SpiderMonkey
| infeasible.
|
| [1] https://v8.dev/blog/high-performance-cpp-gc
| Hayarotle wrote:
| At least we can override UI redesign changes with
| userChrome.css and userContent.css. I'm sticking with Firefox
| as long as its problems have workarounds, because the only
| options left are Chromium and Safari (or forks like Librewolf),
| and I find its pros still outweigh its cons.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| My understanding of the current browser landscape is that
| you've got Firefox; browsers that build upon Google's browser
| engine (Chrome/Chromium/Edge/Brave/Vivaldi/Opera/etc); and
| Safari.
|
| There are a number of good options, but very few that don't
| further cement Google's control over the world's browser-engine
| code.
|
| (Yes, I know there are some other very minor players that lag
| behind on features and standards support. I don't think that's
| what the parent commenter is looking for.)
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| In terms of "browsers that actually matter", there's just
| Chrome/chromium at a combined 70% and Safari at a little over
| 18%. Everything else is a side mention at best and as a
| browser at least, is basically irrelevant on the world stage.
| Even if the companies behind them aren't (e.g. Mozilla or
| Samsung). [1]
|
| They are of course highly relevant for their user bases, but
| in terms of "browsers that might break the Chrome hegemony
| through normal competition", there are none. You'd need to
| pull a Microsoft IE-on-Windows on Google and enact laws that
| forbid them from loading Chrome as default and only browser
| on all first and third devices associated with their brand. A
| few administrations ago, that might have still been a
| possibility, but it's not going to happen unless the EU does
| it first, and even then, the US might pull one of those
| idiotic "how dare the EU punish a US company for outcompeting
| everyone else" and instead enact reactionary laws that
| _loosen_ the rules for them instead.
|
| [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/
| freediver wrote:
| > You'd need to pull a Microsoft IE-on-Windows on Google
|
| How about actually just making a good, competitive browser
| instead? Firefox is not failing because of Google's
| monopoly; it is failing because as a product it is unable
| to compete and beat Chrome where it matters. If not
| Mozilla, I am pretty sure somebody else will make such
| browser (and search engine, and email... ) eventually.
| butz wrote:
| Slowness could come from several different sources. One quick
| improvement is to use AdBlocker, or even block Javascript if
| your workflow allows it. This makes browsing extremely fast.
| Another one is missing support for upcoming and non-standard
| web technologies, that usually are implemented in Chrome
| (Blink) first, that leaves Firefox (and other browsers) using
| slower performing polyfills. As much as I hate the direction
| Firefox UI is going, there are no decent browser alternatives,
| especially those who support adblockers at such low lever as
| Firefox.
| TomMasz wrote:
| When things don't work in Firefox I try Edge (Canary) and then
| Safari. Right now, Edge is about 10% of my web usage but it's
| growing.
| andi999 wrote:
| I also want a browser that when you start it doesn't let you
| wait for an update. Got too impatient too often with that.
| Sayrus wrote:
| Firefox 90.0 [1] can now update in the background on Windows.
|
| [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/90.0/releasenotes/
| prepend wrote:
| I used Firefox from launch until about two years ago. I stopped
| for reasons similar to what you listed.
|
| I've really enjoyed Brave as it is just a simple browser that
| works (and has lots of privacy features).
| eli wrote:
| Firefox has its own funding issues but I don't trust a
| browser that exists to support a cryptocurrency.
| prepend wrote:
| I trust it because it's an open source project and I can
| see what goes in and comes out.
|
| Of course, maybe it won't work forever, but it works for
| now.
|
| I'm not a crypto person and don't use Brave's crypto
| features, but I think it's a more sustainable future than
| relying on Google's largess.
| eli wrote:
| Relying on google's rendering engine is worse IMHO. And I
| think they are going to end having to pivot on funding.
| freediver wrote:
| > I trust it because it's an open source project and I
| can see what goes in and comes out.
|
| That is just the browser part. The code on their servers
| that actually processes the data the browser collected is
| closed-source. In general, browser being open or closed
| source has no correlation with how privacy respecting it
| is. Chrom{e|ium} and Edge are another examples.
|
| Pragmatically speaking there is only one thing that
| guarantees privacy and that is browser being zero-
| telemetry, regardless of if it is open source or not.
| gorhill wrote:
| > The slowness and slugishness.
|
| Mozilla has a nice tool to help identify sources of "slowness
| and slugishness"[1], you may want to give it a try --
| oftentimes it's found that the issue is not Firefox itself, but
| some extensions, external processes, or undesirable
| modifications in `about:config`.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://profiler.firefox.com/
| mmis1000 wrote:
| That is indeed a powerful tool that gives you the god view of
| everything what could happened.(Which normal web devtools
| definitely can't) However, it is also sometimes really hard
| to interpret the results. There are so many data there, some
| of them comes from Firefox internal, some of them comes from
| 3rd extension. Something in different thread actually chains
| together, but the ui does not show. I think it need some
| improvements to help the user reading the results.
| gorhill wrote:
| If you suspect the issue is with Firefox, you can open an
| issue with the profiling data attached, Firefox devs know
| how to interpret the data.
| chiefofgxbxl wrote:
| I've been a Firefox user for at least 15 years as well, and the
| recent UI updates in v89 is the first instance of me refusing
| to update Firefox.
|
| I updated my user prefs file to permanently disable updates, so
| I'm remaining on pre-ProtonUI v88. Of course, I don't know how
| much longer I could sustain that because I'd also not receive
| security patches, but in the short term it's what I'm doing.
|
| The new Firefox UI is incredibly frustrating, and feels like it
| walks back sensible UI principles. Removing icons in the main
| menu was celebrated as "de-cluttering" [0], when in reality
| icons improve ease of use. The "floating" tabs feel more
| distracting [1], when they claim the opposite. Heck, even user
| prompts no longer colorize the "primary action" button [2].
|
| Also, what's with modern UIs becoming increasingly childish and
| watered down? The word I'd use to describe the new proton UI is
| "blurry".
|
| [0]
| https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-...
| [1]
| https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-...
| [2]
| https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-...
| semiotic1 wrote:
| https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix fixes most of the
| frustrating bits of Proton you describe.
|
| It's arguably not the same as a sensible out-of-the box
| design, but far better than sticking to old versions just
| because of the UI.
| arp242 wrote:
| I didn't care much for these entire UI revamps as I felt
| they were far too complex, so I wrote a much simpler one:
| https://github.com/arp242/MartinFox
|
| 2174 lines of CSS vs. 53 lines :-)
|
| I don't overly care how every pixel looks or what the icon
| is and such; I just want my tabs to have some contrast.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Some people prefer less clutter. You can't satisfy everyone.
| stanziak wrote:
| Funny, I've used it on and off for 12 years, switching to other
| browsers when they started doing rapid release since it was
| noticeably slower than the competition. But since 2017 when the
| Quantum update came out I've completely switched to it because
| it's speed became comparable to the competition. I like it even
| more when they added container tabs so I can switch between
| accounts easily. Reading this thread is really strange based on
| my experience. I do agree that Google makes it hard to use
| their products like Meet or Drive outside of Gmail and Calendar
| (the only Google products I use).
| f32jhnjk33jj wrote:
| Guys, what do you think about switching Firefox to WebKit or
| Blink engine? This will greatly cut the development costs and
| will make Firefox almost 100% compatible to Chrome. FF is the
| only major browser with an engine different from Webkit/Blink.
| ducktective wrote:
| Having a different engine from Chrome _itself_ is a selling
| point for Firefox. I don 't like a world in which every web
| browser is a re-skin of Google's monopolized product.
| tedk-42 wrote:
| Each to their own. I'm a happy Firefox user and will continue to
| be on all my devices (including my phone which I'm writing this
| now with)
| VadimPR wrote:
| Same. The only device I don't use it on is the Chromebook -
| ChromeOS doesn't seem to be Firefox' target market.
| loufe wrote:
| Happily returned to firefox a couple years ago when they jumped
| ahead in speed and have been happy to stick around. I
| experience absolutely no bugs nor compatibility problems on
| desktop and mobile is A-OK as well.
| joelthelion wrote:
| If only. Google's monopoly will make Firefox harder and harder
| to use.
| radmuzom wrote:
| Me too. Firefox on both my Windows and GNU/Linux laptops.
| Firefox Focus in my phone - I use a phone browser only for
| reading and Focus works perfectly for that use case.
| remram wrote:
| I am too, but I have telemetry disabled since their stunt with
| the Mr Robot extension they installed remotely for everyone
| [1]. I also run uBlock on both desktop and mobile. I am one of
| the 50M users counted as lost?
|
| [1]: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozilla-
| back...
| [deleted]
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >Mr Robot extension they installed remotely for everyone
|
| Absolute bullshit. The Looking Glass extensions was installed
| through their SHIELD experiments program, only for people who
| had enabled it, and to a very small proportion of those, too.
| Additionally, it did not capture any data, as creepy as it
| was.
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/retrospective-l.
| ..
| eitland wrote:
| I got it and I absolutely never willingly signed up for it
| and I am (and was at that time too) a very competent user.
| Crespyl wrote:
| It is a ridiculous breach of trust to abuse an engineering
| test platform to push advertising software directly onto a
| users computer without consent.
| remram wrote:
| It's certainly enough to turn off those optional settings,
| don't you think? But fair enough, I didn't phrase this
| right.
|
| I'm wondering how they count users, and whether
| installations with telemetry disabled are counted at all.
| seoseokho wrote:
| switched full time and i'm a hppay camper myself. haven't used
| firefox since chrome 2 came out.
| prashantsengar wrote:
| I have been trying to switch to Firefox since long but have
| never been able to completely switch. There have always been
| some problems that send me away.
|
| On my phone (Android), Firefox is quite good except a few UX
| issues (that I don't mind too much) but the sync with my
| desktop has NEVER worked.
|
| On the desktop, FF has always been slow - in booting, loading
| pages. The same with Edge and Chrome just work.
|
| If I could get it to sync, and if the desktop version worked, I
| would never go back to Chromium.
| shaan7 wrote:
| I can imagine how frustrating it would feel as a Firefox dev
| reading reports like this and wondering wth is going wrong.
| Because I'm "just a user" and I've never seen FF being slow
| to start or loading pages _.
|
| Same with sync, I recently install Firefox on a new laptop.
| Clicked the sync button, logged in with my account and done.
| In 2-3 minutes all history and addons sync'd \o/ UX wise I
| really love that Firefox Android has the address bar on the
| bottom :D
|
| _ Except some Google stuff like the GCP console.
|
| EDIT: formatting
| prashantsengar wrote:
| I can feel that too. But I have tried to sync so many
| times, tried reinstalling, used a different account but it
| never worked.
| tomcooks wrote:
| It's almost as if focusing on ugly UX (which hinder power users
| and do not engage casual users) and useless paid-for services,
| being sponsored by your main competitor, focusing on anything but
| making the browser work, and a plethora of well known annoyances
| was not the best strategy to retain users.
|
| (FF user since Netscape-era)
| abcd_f wrote:
| At the rate they "improve" the UI it'd be a miracle if even most
| staunch users won't jump the ship.
|
| That clown act they pulled in the recent release with tabs and
| decimated context menus was the last drop that forced me, the
| loyal user of 15+ years, to disable Firefox updates on all
| machines under my control. FFS, do they put _any_ thought into
| these pointless disruptive changes that do nothing else but mess
| up existing users experience?
|
| They should stop making changes in a hope of attracting _new_
| users and give a long and hard thought to how to retain what they
| already got. Because they will end up with neither.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| Hmm, I really love the recent UI redesign. I've also been using
| Firefox for at least 15 years and every time they change it,
| it's been enjoyable for me.
| acd wrote:
| I suggest Firefox implements a premium paid variant without
| taking away any features from the free version. This is to
| increase revenue for development.
| gilrain wrote:
| They make $450 million a year. A premium Firefox would barely
| move the needle. Revenue is not the issue, but how it's
| allocated.
| foepys wrote:
| Chrome is free to download. I click a link and get Chrome,
| done.
|
| Why should I go through the hassle to register, give out my CC
| info, and pay?
| vrocmod wrote:
| Will Firefox go extinct like Netscape did?
| yaomtc wrote:
| Firefox was born from the ashes of Netscape.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla#History
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I fear it will. I use it daily because it is the best at
| protecting my privacy, no other browser has containers, but it
| seems too few people care. At least as long as mobile Safari
| exist, Chrome isn't able to swallow everything and resistance
| is not yet futile.
| shaan7 wrote:
| > no other browser has containers
|
| THIS. The first damn thing I do on a new PC/VM. I work with
| multiple clients, they each have their corporate SSO stuff
| and its so damn convenient to keep them all in their own
| containers. Same with Google stuff, containers are so much
| more consistent to switch between Google accounts than their
| own switching thingy (just try switching between accounts in
| AdWords).
| christophilus wrote:
| > no other browser has containers
|
| I'm pretty sure Brave profiles are the equivalent or at least
| an analogue.
| octopoc wrote:
| I switched from Firefox to Brave for two reasons:
|
| 1. Brave is building new tech like IPFS, BAT, and Brave Search
| that are really compelling reasons to use it. Firefox's main
| selling point is that it simply exists as an alternative to
| Chrome. Firefox feels like it's digging its heels in to resist
| Google, while Brave feels like it's going on the offensive.
|
| 2. I disagree with Firefox's politics. They cancelled their CEO
| because he donated to the Wrong Side(TM). They want more
| deplatforming, they want more fact checks [1]. That is radical
| compared to mainstream thought in America just a few years ago.
| This new direction the left is taking is not good for the
| Internet, IMO. After January 8, I took a hint and left Firefox
| for Brave.
|
| [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-
| deplat...
| cbmuser wrote:
| Looking at the version history, support for version 52 ESR ended
| in September 2018.
|
| Since that version was the last supported version with XUL, the
| lack of XUL after that might be one of the reasons.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Chromium - chrome, edge, brave, V8, V8 isolates, node.js,
| electron, etc.
|
| Firefox - Firefox, Torbrowser, spidermonkey.
|
| Chromium project became the cpython of JavaScript and web
| browsers, because you could package it's components and embed
| them in your own applications. Firefox does not have competitive
| equivalents or better features. Therefore it loses users.
|
| This was a big topic years ago when FF started removing XUL and
| any ability to extend the browser. You need a reason for people
| to use your _tech_ , not just your product.
| kasabali wrote:
| > Chromium project became the cpython of JavaScript and web
| browsers, because you could package it's components and embed
| them in your own applications. Firefox does not have
| competitive equivalents or better features. Therefore it loses
| users.
|
| XULRunner was Electron before it was cool. Though they werent
| prevalent there was a small but promising variety of
| applications based on XULRunner [0]
|
| Then of course Mozilla administration axed it in their infinite
| wisdom.
|
| [0]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_...
| natch wrote:
| Those annoying Pocket ads maybe?
|
| And how do you quickly disable JavaScript for the page you're on?
| I can never find that in Firefox.
| legrande wrote:
| You can't with Firefox, but with uBlock Origin you can turn JS
| off globally and whitelist specific pages that require JS (Most
| pages work fine with JS disabled)
| zecg wrote:
| I currently use Fennec on mobile, but it's just sad how they're
| adding stupid bulls*t (pocket, collections) and removing useful
| features. The bloody thing can't save a webpage as PDF anymore
| guilhas wrote:
| Firefox: Lets remove tab groups, no one uses it
|
| Chrome: Lets add tab groups, seems like a good idea
|
| Firefox: why are users leaving?..
|
| The constant addons breakage and UI changes, feature removal. I
| could bare the speed difference, but these inconsistencies are
| just too much
|
| Still Firefox continues to be the best browser in theory
| itvision wrote:
| Let's be honest - since the removal of XUL addons, all my add-
| ons have been working just fine. Let's stop repeating this ...
| thing - it's long lost its relevance and nowadays it's just a
| falsehood.
| guilhas wrote:
| Until version 89 reaches ESR I will continue to use _Waterfox
| classic_ with XUL addons archive. Not only is faster but I
| have more addons
|
| All your addons are not everyone's addons. Some people have
| different, or more, or more specific addons
|
| There are addons that disappeared and are not possible to do
| today. And maybe you can do something similar, even if
| clunkier or slower. But a lot of developers have moved
| anyway, which created holes in the ecosystem
|
| And just having to go and find replacements was difficult
| since it took a lot of time for addons to reach parity. And
| people have a day job to get on with
|
| TreeStyleTab still breaks today, sometimes the side bar
| disappears or is empty
|
| I had an addon that would highlight all bookmark link in all
| pages, including google results, and on mouse over would show
| the tags and description. Can you find a similar now?
| patrick451 wrote:
| In what way is it a falsehood? There is an entire class of
| addons that are simply impossible to create under the new
| paradigm. These used to work, now that don't. Firefox broke
| them intentionally.
| rwmj wrote:
| The recent changes to the address bar and the terrible new
| "Photon" UI are really annoying. Don't annoy your loyal users.
| cabraca wrote:
| Its funny that you mention the not really annoying shit and
| forget about the push for pocket, the constant push for some of
| their free services like firefox sync, send, vpn, etc that, the
| reappearing ebay bookmark i deleted like 12 times by now, the
| removal of live bookmarks, etc... and those are just the things
| they can control.
| elric wrote:
| They've been chasing Google's tail for a while now. They keep
| making decisions that make little sense. Given the drop in user
| count I'd say those decisions aren't even paying off. Every
| time I update FF, I actively dread to see what they ruined this
| time.
|
| Sadly, creating a new browser is impossible these days, unless
| you're sitting on a very considerably sized pile of cash.
| There's over a thousand W3C specs, and you'll need to implement
| most of them in order to have a functional browser.
|
| It's maddening that the steward of the best browser codebase is
| doing such a shitty job. They fired a whole bunch of people
| last year, even though they seem to sitting on plenty of cash,
| they don't seem to give a crap about what their users actually
| want. But, sadly, there is no alternative, and there won't be.
| tgv wrote:
| I'm sort of used to it by now, but I also don't see it as a
| real reason to stop using Firefox. Chrome also changes. So how
| big of a factor would UI changes be in this user loss? I'm
| suspecting there are more trivial and indirect causes too, such
| as people changing machines: Firefox isn't pre-installed, and
| then they just pick whatever that also works.
| roenxi wrote:
| Possibly quite big. It basically drives down the cost of
| switching. If someone has to learn a new interface anyway,
| why not switch to the best supported browser at the same
| time?
|
| And if you add up enough annoyances that don't matter,
| eventually it becomes something. Mozilla still hasn't
| reclaimed the lofty peak when something like ChatZilla was
| feasible. A minor annoyance. One among many.
|
| Firefox is basically in head-to-head competition with Chrome
| and has a very similar vision of what a web browser should be
| - just with less dev hours doing maintenance. That plus this
| user data suggests there isn't any reason to use Firefox.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| The best example of failing to understand your users was
| releasing all these updates on Firefox for Android and
| actually thinking it was a good idea to regress and disable
| access to 'about:config'.
|
| Being able to have that level of control and
| configurability is exactly why I and many users put up with
| all the other downsides of Firefox.
|
| Who ever is in charge of Mozilla the corporation has lost
| their way. They should trim everything back to having
| Mozilla the foundation only.
| thesimp wrote:
| And that is the price they pay for trying to be Chrome clone UI
| wise and not listening to to the "power users". I hate to use the
| words "power user" but it is the small group of very active and
| enthusiastic users that you need to give the appears to every one
| else that they are missing out on something cool.
|
| I still use Firefox because it works reasonably for my usage but
| I stopped promoting it to other people around me. For the average
| user Chrome is good, very good even. And Firefox lost its
| uniqueness and UI differences that made it stand out. And if
| nobody talks anymore about your product then you are done.
| hbt wrote:
| true. their api is now a dumbed down version of chrome.
|
| I still remember the days of vimperator and treetabs in xul.
|
| firefox did this to themselves. they dont deserve support.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Tree Style Tabs exists: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
|
| Vimperator replacements exist:
| https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl
|
| Additionally, XUL was a steaming pile of shit, and there was
| no saving it. Multithreading was only possible by ripping out
| XUL.
| eitland wrote:
| > Additionally, XUL was a steaming pile of shit, and there
| was no saving it. Multithreading was only possible by
| ripping out XUL.
|
| Being hostile to people who ask nicely about getting some
| necessary features into the new API however, that is
| optional.
|
| Same goes for extracting all the money from Firefox and
| sacking important dev teams while continuing less important
| charity work.
| kasabali wrote:
| > Additionally, XUL was a steaming pile of shit, and there
| was no saving it. Multithreading was only possible by
| ripping out XUL.
|
| Nah, multi threading has always been there (because it's
| doing networking and IO _at least_ ) and multi process
| support landed shortly _before_ Quantum release.
| hbt wrote:
| I use and forked SurfingKeys on Chrome
| https://github.com/hbt/Surfingkeys
|
| Calling tridactyl a replacement for vimperator ignores all
| the features and extensive customization available through
| the old Firefox API. I've used vimperator and pentadactyl
| and tridactyl doesn't even come close (because of the awful
| API limitations).
|
| My point is: Firefox API is now a cheap version of Chrome
| API. Why would you develop extensions for Firefox instead
| of Chrome? As a power user, it makes no sense to support
| Firefox. It offers less than chrome.
|
| They had firebug back when Chrome dev tools was crap, an
| amazing API for extensions and customization; they threw it
| all away for this mediocre crap chasing average users and
| are now playing the privacy / save the web card and guilt
| tripping people for not choosing them.
|
| They can offer better APIs, they are not entitled to power
| users.
|
| Power users write extensions, write tools for web
| developers, developers are the most importance resource.
| Who even bothers to test on Firefox now? For what, 7%
| market share?
|
| All that money and support; just all gone. Complete waste.
|
| Anyway, I sunk a lot of time into Firefox over the years
| and it was my browser of choice for years; I'm definitely
| still bitter about it. They literally abandoned power
| users. Fuck them.
| creatonez wrote:
| > Multithreading was only possible by ripping out XUL.
|
| Firefox still uses XUL, it's just not an exposed API
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Oh come on. "Power users" are both negligible in market share
| _and_ do not contribute to spreading the software around.
| Nobody in your family is going to use Firefox because you tell
| them "Look, I can customise my UI to arrange my windows in the
| form of a poop emoji when my custom sideloaded extension
| detects I'm on a Google owned website". "Power users" however
| are very good at yelling loudly when their never-used-by-
| anyone-except-them feature is removed, because they're such
| power users they opt out of usage tracking and never contribute
| to anything except maybe a bug report sometimes.
| truth_ wrote:
| I had to shift all my work and research related stuff to
| Chrome, and I do everything else in Firefox.
|
| After buying my new laptop five years ago, I decided that I
| would do the opposite. But could not keep at it. Before that, I
| used Firefox 100% of the times and now I use it, say, 10-15% of
| my browser usage time.
| agumonkey wrote:
| the irony is that just when I voluntarily stop using chrome to
| help mozilla, they then get into the fads which really dont
| align with my usage :D
| mfer wrote:
| We shouldn't just look at power users. Google and Microsoft,
| for example, constantly advertise to use their browser when you
| visit their properties. I imagine this has an impact.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| But if Firefox was genuinely better it could win via word of
| mouth; whether it's power users recommending it or people
| having it on their work computers (because their IT mandates
| it) and wanting the same great browser at home.
|
| The problem is that Firefox is basically a Chrome clone at
| this point, all the way down to the privacy-invading features
| such as telemetry, so using it nowadays is more down to
| ideology than actual technical merit.
| foepys wrote:
| How could Mozilla ever compete in technical merit nowadays?
|
| Google is siphoning nearly all talent by paying them
| insanely huge amounts of money. Web is part of Google's
| core business and they will pour every little penny into it
| if it means they can be one step ahead and force others to
| follow them. How can Mozilla, a non-profit, compete with
| that? Even freaking Microsoft gave up!
|
| I'm insanely impressed with Mozilla that they can still
| keep up that well.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| UX. Mozilla is being outpaced by all competitors here,
| especially on mobile.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I generally am not a fan of mobile browsers, but for me
| Firefox is the only passable mobile browser because it
| supports uBlock Origin.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I agree with you, since I use it for the same reasons.
| But it will be easier for the general user to switch if
| it has a superior UX. Clearly ad-blocking is not enough
| for everyone else.
| eitland wrote:
| Get back the extension API (not the exact same but a
| modern equivalent).
|
| Keep bugging competition authorities to punish Google
| harshly over the abusive behavior we've seen lately.
|
| I'm using Firefox for now but I admit the moment someone
| forks it and have a good security foundation I'll start
| using it and donating to it.
|
| I'm fed up with Mozilla thinking everything else they
| donis more important than their main income source and
| main contribution to Internet.
|
| (Yes, I keep posting like this against both Mozilla and
| Google in the hope that they will one day improve or more
| realistically to increase the chance that someone else
| steps up. As WhatsApp proved before they were gutted by
| Facebook there is a large market that wants privacy and
| is willing to accept smaller problems and also pay for
| it.)
| dralley wrote:
| > Get back the extension API (not the exact same but a
| modern equivalent).
|
| Another extension API will solve absolutely nothing.
| eitland wrote:
| just extend (heh) the current extension API with the most
| important missing ones like e.g. a hideBuiltinTabBar().
|
| It is actually slightly more complicated since some stuff
| depends on the main tab bar being visible (or so they
| say, my Firefox works nicely even if I disable the main
| tab bar using a CSS hack.)
| mfer wrote:
| Be useful to end users. Differentiate on that.
|
| Useful to people can be understood and is a selling
| point. What is technical merit? Some CS insider form of
| bragging rights?
| ordu wrote:
| _> Be useful to end users. Differentiate on that._
|
| What does it mean today? Most people want a browser that
| is invisible. They use sites, not browser.
| arp242 wrote:
| That companies like Vivaldi and Brave can build
| successful for-profit businesses on top of a browser
| seems to indicate that it's a bit more complex than that.
|
| It's like the old quote about Microsoft Word, which was
| something along the lines of: "it's true that Word is
| bloated and that most people only use 10%, but everyone
| uses a different 10%".
| foepys wrote:
| Brave and Vivaldi outsourced the browser engine of the
| browser part to Google, though. That's the most expensive
| and work intensive part.
|
| They are also not part of any standardisation committee,
| as far as I know.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Security and privacy. I mean real privacy, not Firefox's
| current illusion of privacy.
|
| Advertising is a common vector for malware, telemetry can
| inadvertently expose PII or corporate intel and so can
| their bullshit features such as Pocket that are foisted
| upon unsuspecting users.
|
| Make a browser that addresses these problems _out of the
| box_. The enterprise will be all over it and will be
| paying actual _money_ for it so they no longer have to
| beg Google every year.
|
| At the moment Firefox is probably the most user-hostile
| piece of open-source software that I'm using. After
| installing it I have to disconnect from the network (as
| it loads Google Analytics-infested pages on first run and
| has telemetry enabled out of the box) and spend 10
| minutes configuring it (including using about:config to
| disable Pocket) to defang it.
| andai wrote:
| If Firefox becomes truly private out of the box, most of
| their funding goes away.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >But if Firefox was genuinely better it could win via word
| of mouth
|
| You reach one person every 5 days with your word of mouth.
| Google has a billion searches all advertising "a better
| browser" right in your face if you dare use anything else
| but Chrome.
|
| >people having it on their work computers (because their IT
| mandates it) and wanting the same great browser at home.
|
| When have you ever said "damn, IT actually installed great
| software, I sure want the same at home"? In real life, IT
| installs Internet Explorer 6 because that one ISO standard
| they paid a lot for to have mandates using it for their
| super special test website, and have an 11 year old pirated
| version of Acrobat Reader.
| eitland wrote:
| > But if Firefox was genuinely better it could win via word
| of mouth; whether it's power users recommending it or
| people having it on their work computers (because their IT
| mandates it) and wanting the same great browser at home.
|
| That's how it used to be.
|
| These days it is still better at what I need it for
| (learning, research), but it isn't orders of magnitude
| anymore and certain people tending bugzilla for Mozilla are
| borderline hostile, see for example here
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447#c171
| mfer wrote:
| What is chrome technically better at in a way that's
| impactful to end users?
|
| The idea that the best thing wins just because it's the
| best and people will share that is flawed. It basically
| negates marketing and influence which is what Google's
| money making model is based around. And they have been
| successful at that.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Speed?
|
| Lack of in-browser ads? (Google websites have ads but as
| far as I'm aware Chrome itself doesn't have any, unlike
| Firefox which has sponsored sites and "snippets" on the
| new tab page - enabled by default obviously).
|
| Lack of constant nagging? Firefox in its default
| configuration has always something to nag you about.
| Whether it's Pocket, Firefox Sync or that it's just
| updated and there are potentially new features.
| leppr wrote:
| To be fair the push to connect a Google account and use
| Google services in Chrome _is_ the ad, they don 't need
| more.
|
| But I definitely agree about the Firefox nags, I suppose
| it can be off-putting to new users and project a low-
| quality adware image (usually synonymous with more
| privacy violations, which is ironic).
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Google is the dominant ad provider on the websites
| themselves. Embedding yet more ads (beyond their sign-in
| push) may be counterproductive. And they don't provide a
| simple way to turn those off, unlike Mozilla's sponsored
| sites.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Chrome is fast, the UI is nice, it doesn't nag you, it
| doesn't break the UI all the time, etc
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Chrome doesn't have much UI to speak of, despite the
| irony in its name. Firefox has a much older lineage and a
| symbiotic relationship with add-ons. Before Quantum add-
| ons could radically rearrange its UI.
|
| In my experience, Firefox UI changes since then have been
| largely cosmetic and rearranging of settings.
| gifnamething wrote:
| >telemetry
|
| Maybe they're more likely to cater to users who don't turn
| off the method they use to decide what to cater to.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| They don't need _in-browser_ telemetry to see that uBlock
| Origin is one of the most downloaded add-ons, and it's
| yet to be built-in to the browser despite its license
| allowing it.
|
| They also don't need telemetry to read threads like this
| one and there's been plenty of those on HN (and I'm sure
| elsewhere) and the general consensus is always that
| Mozilla is letting power users down in favour of trying
| to copy Chrome.
|
| Given these facts, I don't think telemetry or lack
| thereof is the problem.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Building in such a powerful ad blocker could negatively
| impact how sites and services are funded.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Google, yes. But Microsoft? I haven't noticed, and I'm on
| Office 365 all day (my client uses that) while running
| Firefox / Linux.
|
| Microsoft does keep asking me to use Edge on my Windows
| gaming machine, although it's the only browser I have
| installed...
|
| But I guess the point is... where is Mozilla going to ask
| people to use Firefox?
| Phemist wrote:
| But Microsoft? I haven't noticed > Try installing firefox
| (or even chrome) on a clean install of an updated windows
| 10.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| But that's a Windows thing, as opposed to "on the web",
| right? And as I've said, Windows bugs me about edge even
| though I've never installed anything else -- the "use the
| recommended edge something or other".
|
| Whereas Google bugs me on all my machines (Mac / Linux /
| Windows, all without Chrome).
|
| My point was that using Firefox on Linux, I've never seen
| anything related to edge on MS sites (but I only use
| Office 365, Azure and, sometimes, the docs site).
| judge2020 wrote:
| Yes, I guess they mean Edge since the new Microsoft Edge
| uses chromium as their base browser. MS must have gotten
| tired of paying a huge team of devs to constantly fix and
| implement new web stuff in EdgeHTML/Chakra.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| It's actually the new, Chromium-based Edge. I've actually
| updated it when it asked, and the current Windows install
| came with it (installed it fresh around November 2020).
| But with every Windows 10 version change, it asks me to
| use the "recommended browser settings", whatever those
| are.
|
| This is a computer on which my most used browser is the
| Steam thing. I really don't care either way what it is,
| so I don't bother installing a specific one.
| jl2718 wrote:
| One small thing: Firefox developer edition can't edit files like
| chrome or their old firebug plugin. Therefore, apps get developed
| on chrome; therefore, they work better on chrome.
| orionblastar wrote:
| Firefox no longer has XP support. There are a lot of XP users
| with older Firefoxes that cannot upgrade. Plus Microsoft Edge
| isn't as bad as Internet Explorer was.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| None of the other current browsers support XP either. Chrome
| stopped supporting XP a few years back. Edge isn't available at
| all on XP. Even IE wasn't backported so XP users are stuck with
| the last version of IE with XP support. If anyone is still on
| XP they should upgrade to an OS (either Windows 10 or even
| Linux) that can run a modern browser.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| According to Microsoft there's about 1.5 billion Windows users,
| about half a percent are still on XP. So that'd be about 7-8
| million XP users. Say a third are potential Firefox users,
| that'd be a drop in the bucket in this statistic. And for the
| sake of the market share on other platforms it's probably a
| good idea that they're not investing resources in XP.
| jaclaz wrote:
| JFYI, there are forks of Firefox adapted to work on XP, that
| are not at all bad.
|
| I am reluctant to provide a link because they are highly
| experimental, but if you wish to try them, knowing that YMMGV,
| here it is what I personally find the best one
| (serpent/basilisk):
|
| http://o.rthost.win/basilisk/
| tiahura wrote:
| Look at their CEO and leadership team. Why would you expect
| anything but failure when a company is run by the HR and D&I
| departments?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| I often hear on this website that "Firefox isn't slow".
|
| Firefox does feel slower than Chromium based browsers. I don't
| know the technicalities but this is the reason why I moved to
| Chromium (Opera).
|
| However, I like the fact that Firefox does allow me to mute audio
| and stop video playback by default, which Chrome does not (Opera
| does though).
|
| Finally I'm not sure I like the all idpol noise coming from the
| Mozilla Foundation...
| bsd44 wrote:
| I switched to Opera because Firefox forces invasive updates that
| require a forced restart. For someone who likes to keep a web
| browser running for a long time and put their laptop to sleep
| rather than shutdown, that is not acceptable.
|
| I use Linux so I could get around that by excluding the package
| from updates but I don't want to run an outdated web browser that
| might have security vulnerabilities.
|
| I raised this a few times on their Reddit page, but it became so
| disturbing to my workflow that I just had to stop using it.
| Chrome is not a sane alternative, so I resorted to Opera. Good
| old Opera.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Just use the official version instead of your distro's version
| if you don't want your distro to control the update timing -
| seems like a self created problem. Official Firefox has a
| setting for "Check for updates but let you choose to install
| them" which will alert you but let you choose when instead of
| forcing it.
| tephra wrote:
| I'm not on desktop ow and can check later. But I'm pretty sure
| you can disable auto updates on the about:config page.
| eingaeKaiy8ujie wrote:
| Opera is closed source which means it is not secure.
| bsd44 wrote:
| So Apple iOS, Microsoft Windows, Amazon FireOS, Cisco IOS,
| Netapp ONTAP... they are all "not secure" because they are
| not OSS?
| eingaeKaiy8ujie wrote:
| Yes.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Potentially not secure and definitely not private, for most
| of them.
| erk__ wrote:
| Does Google browsers not also require a restart to update? So
| are you not just running an outdated version with security
| vulnerabilities until you restart it?
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Opera is based on Chromium now, FYI.
| aftergibson wrote:
| Good old closed-source, Chinese-controlled, chromium-based
| Opera.
| tudorconstantin wrote:
| Well, it won me back in the past year, for work related things
| because, working in the identity space I can be signed in with an
| unlimited number of different accounts in the same site using
| Firefox containers.
| kaydub wrote:
| Been on firefox since it was firebird.
|
| It feels like a no-brainer for me. I'm never going to use chrome
| unless I have to.
|
| I use a lot of google products, but I see no reason to give them
| even _more_ data on my browsing habits by using their browser.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Firefox threads are ways the same: self proclaimed power users
| complain about minor changes to colours and shadows. That's been
| going on since v4, which was what, a decade ago?
|
| So, my takeaway is that Firefox has become a punching bag for
| people to vent on. Sad state of affairs. Especially because it
| would be really hard, if not impossible, for Mozilla to shed this
| image
| slipperlobster wrote:
| Personally, I don't mind the UI changes.
|
| I hate how Firefox _forces_ me to restart my browser when it
| arbitrarily decides to update. Makes webdev a headache.
| remram wrote:
| The mobile version had quite a deep change and lost a number of
| features, including bookmark keywords, the tab queue,
| reordering tabs, and about:config.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| ...And the great add-on purge!
|
| What the hell was that about? Who in their right mind thought
| that was a good idea or acceptable?
| christophilus wrote:
| That is the thing that made me jump ship. The UI changes
| and Pocket and promoted favorites were a nuisance, but
| minor. But add-in's? The web is just broken without ad
| blocking.
| Laarlf wrote:
| Well, even if you ignore that Firefox is inferior compared to
| Chromium, Mozilla is not a respectable company anymore in my
| opinion. So i see 0 reasons to use Firefox.
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
| marto1 wrote:
| had no idea people have that much trouble with the new UI. Looks
| quite alright to me, although I did lose compatibility for 2
| plugins so that was a pain in the butt.
| rwmj wrote:
| When you can't tell which tab is the current tab, that means
| you haven't done any basic hallway usability testing.
| moltar wrote:
| No idea why. Firefox is an amazing browser.
| ahtaarra wrote:
| I think a part of it could be explained by the way things have
| been in recent times.
|
| As of July 2021 (according to the linked metrics), ~25% of the
| displays used are 1366x768px while ~40% of them are 1080p. Yet
| when the "Proton" refresh aimed to promote usability and while
| certain level of cross-platform was reached, the increase of
| padding simply made the experiences of people using displays with
| "less than optimal" resolutions worse. While the proton's hidden
| and "unsupported" compact mode had a decent height for a 14" FHD
| display, the same did not look as good on my 15.6" display with
| the same resolution. When I complained on reddit like many others
| about the increase in whitespace, I don't think it was given what
| I believe to be a proper consideration. Why would the main menu
| be bigger despite having fewer items? And where are the icons? It
| was a concern back when it was in nightly and many of the
| concerns remain now even though it has had a stable release.
|
| Another thing that is problematic is the colour-scheme. The newer
| style incorporates less contrasted colours and does away with
| what made the preceding Photon design better in certain ways:
| look at how the tabs on FF used to have a markedly different
| colour than their backdrop and how there used to be separators
| between tabs. The fact that the newer design is a bad one somehow
| eluded those in charge of it and the fact that the contrast
| between the active tab and its surrounding elements being low
| being an important issue is an afterthought is telling.
|
| Moreover, the dropdown for the megabar suggestions used to have
| full-window width but now it is limited to the megabar width for
| no apparent reason other than looking "cool" (which it does not
| btw; especially when you compare it to Chromium's counterpart).
| They introduced the megabar-expansion-on-focus behaviour, kept a
| config to disable it for a major release or two and then dumped
| the old one. Also, when you selected multiple tabs, upon a right-
| click, it used to tell you the count of selected tabs - which no
| longer seems to be the case. Needless to say, looking at
| userChrome.css to be _the_ solution for undesirable changes would
| not work well for anyone in the long run.
|
| Firefox, unlike Chromium-based browsers, does not support XDG
| base dir spec. It does not bother me very much and neither does
| FF flickering every once in a while on my main system. What
| bothers me is that with each new release I feel like FF is losing
| bits of its magic. Back when FF Quantum was released and was
| stripped of what many considered the level of flexibility which
| appealed to them, I was concerned but ultimately accepted it. But
| this time around the changes feel like marketing speak. Mozilla
| already has a discourse instance but post-Proton-release they
| also have a crowdicity instance...
|
| The way things have been going is genuinely upsetting and many
| users are just reacting to that.
| sir_brickalot wrote:
| My take: Firefox on Android is one reason for their problem.
|
| I tried the new version a year ago and restored my TB backup bcs
| it was so bad. I thought I'd try it again yesterday but man it
| sucks so bad! No search in history, no bookmark tag support as
| far as I see, somehow the synced data from desktop doesn't get
| searched when typing in the address bar, multiple times my entry
| in the addres bar wouldn't load, the amount of supported add-ons
| is abysmal. Thats not all but I stop.
|
| My point: If mobile doesn't work it might be one reason people
| start switching on desktop, too.
|
| I won't. I like to be tortured.
| [deleted]
| ostenning wrote:
| The main thing driving me away from Firefox is the speed. Chrome
| is notably faster for me.
| guilhas wrote:
| The new Firefox 89 is equally faster
| mfer wrote:
| How did you come to the conclusion that chrome was faster?
|
| Personally, I've found all the browsers to be fast enough.I did
| some analysis leg work to come to that conclusion. I look at
| other characteristics such as privacy.
| dnzkw wrote:
| I agree that both browsers are fast enough, and still, Chrome
| is faster.
| hmsshagatsea wrote:
| Librewolf has been a lifesaver, I highly suggest people check it
| out. https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/
| jeromenerf wrote:
| I see no real differences between browsers nowadays feature wise.
| They are all good enough.
|
| However, chrome has better integration with the rest of what
| google offers. And safari with what apple offers. Synchronization
| of profiles, open tabs on other machines, etc.
|
| Firefox is a good product, the others are commoditized services.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| FF has not done anything to push me away yet. I am open to change
| and not always happy with their decisions, but their product
| remains usable and favorable to me.
| dordoka wrote:
| I use Firefox since it was Phoenix and I will keep using and
| recommending it. Chrome was great when it came out, now is
| Google's trojan horse that everyone is happily embracing. It's
| one of the clearest Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategies ever
| pulled off.
| mickotron wrote:
| That includes me. Hard to be a huge advocate for Firefox when
| they continually don't deliver. Brave is my browser for the time
| being.
| eth0up wrote:
| Arbitrarily removing access to about:config (in Android) must
| account for a loss or two. I personally perceive it as a flagrant
| expression of contempt for their users. I keep Nightly around,
| but fully reciprocate perceived contempt and hope such losses
| grow.
| eitland wrote:
| I have contacted local authorities twice about anti competitive
| behavior from Chrome.
|
| If two - three other Norwegians do the same that should start to
| look like an earthquake ;-)
|
| Same if ten - twenty Germans or Brits or French do the same.
|
| I would mention:
|
| 1. that some of their web properties (calendar and YouTube) have
| been intentionally incompatible with Firefox as evidenced by how
| well they work in Firefox if one changes how the browser identify
| itself.
|
| 2. How they have pushed Chrome as a "better browser" on the front
| page of Google (were no one else have been allowed to advertise)
| to Firefox users since way before Chrome was anywere nearly as
| good as Firefox, making it both a lie and - more importantly - a
| massive abuse of dominance in one market to gain monopoly in
| another just like Microsoft did with IE.
|
| As we saw yesterday with AWS authorities are willing to punish
| rampant abuse if they have a good case and this definitely is
| one.
|
| Edit: since this comment is getting a lot of attention the
| relevant authority in Norway is Konkurransetilsynet with web
| address https://konkurransetilsynet.no
|
| (Finding the exact correct form on that site and for this purpose
| seems to be an art and/or science it seems but if you can't find
| any just submit somewhere and explain the situation.)
|
| It would be beautiful if everyone could post underneath with the
| address to the equivalent office in your jurisdiction.
| dontblink wrote:
| How do you know this is because of Chrome in the first place?
| Another explanation is that it could be Edge or even users
| moving to use mobile (browsers) more?
|
| Genuinely curious where the market share and total number of
| users in the market (broken down) has shifted.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| It may also not _exclusively_ be anticompetitive behavior
| from Chrome, but just Mozilla 's stewardship of Firefox. They
| constantly manage to generate shitstorms around updates (how
| does this never happen with Chrome?) and then the plain
| disregard/making fun of user feedback [1] is just a kick in
| the teeth. For me at least, that's in large part why I moved
| to Chrome.
|
| [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200731211652/https://twitt
| er.c...
| dontblink wrote:
| It does happen with Chrome. See the whole ublock origin
| debacle. I guess it doesn't impact end users as greatly or
| maybe Firefox users are more vocal about changes?
|
| Also: yikes on that link. I would feel disillusioned if my
| feedback was responded to in that manner. Sometimes empathy
| can get you so much further.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Whats that debacle about? I'm using latest Chrome and am
| still using uBlock origin.
| Volundr wrote:
| https://www.techradar.com/news/popular-chrome-ad-
| blockers-co...
|
| If I recall correctly they backtracked, but it was a big
| deal for awhile.
| granzymes wrote:
| > _How they have pushed Chrome as a "better browser" on the
| front page of Google (were no one else have been allowed to
| advertise) to Firefox users since way before Chrome was anywere
| nearly as good as Firefox, making it both a lie and - more
| importantly - a massive abuse of dominance in one market to
| gain monopoly in another just like Microsoft did with IE._
|
| Microsoft's primary offense was illegally tying Internet
| Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two products
| separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the bundle.
| Windows was the product everyone wanted, and Microsoft abused
| its dominance in operating systems to increase its share of the
| browser market by refusing to sell you Windows unless you also
| took Internet Explorer.
|
| By contrast, Google does not condition the use of Search on the
| use of Chrome. There's nothing wrong with promoting a product
| to customers who use one of your other products (or we'd have
| to break up pretty much every multi-product company).
| gibba999 wrote:
| No, Microsoft's primary offense was making non-Microsoft
| tools awkward. Windows without IE was awkward. Windows wasn't
| done until it gave odd error messages on DR DOS. Borland
| always seemed to have incomplete documentation, late. Etc.
|
| Google works poorly enough on non-Chrome browsers that it's
| the same thing.
| granzymes wrote:
| You are welcome to read the complaint. I've pulled out some
| choice paragraphs:
|
| 5. To protect its valuable Windows monopoly against such
| potential competitive threats, and to extend its operating
| system monopoly into other software markets, Microsoft has
| engaged in a series of anticompetitive activities.
| Microsoft's conduct includes agreements tying other
| Microsoft software products to Microsoft's Windows
| operating system; exclusionary agreements precluding
| companies from distributing, promoting, buying, or using
| products of Microsoft's software competitors or potential
| competitors; and exclusionary agreements restricting the
| right of companies to provide services or resources to
| Microsoft's software competitors or potential competitors.
|
| 17. But Mr. Gates did not stop at free distribution.
| Rather, Microsoft purposefully set out to do whatever it
| took to make sure significant market participants
| distributed and used Internet Explorer instead of
| Netscape's browser -- including paying some customers to
| take IE and using its unique control over Windows to induce
| others to do so. For example, in seeking the support of
| Intuit, a significant application software developer, Mr.
| Gates was blunt, as he reported in a July 1996 internal
| e-mail:
|
| 18. Second, Microsoft unlawfully required PC manufacturers,
| as a condition of obtaining licenses for the Windows 95
| operating system, to agree to license, preinstall, and
| distribute Internet Explorer on every Windows PC such
| manufacturers shipped. By virtue of the monopoly position
| Windows enjoys, it was a commercial necessity for OEMs to
| preinstall Windows 95 -- and, as a result of Microsoft's
| illegal tie-in, Internet Explorer -- on virtually all of
| the PCs they sold. Microsoft thereby unlawfully tied its
| Internet Explorer software to the Windows 95 version of its
| monopoly operating system and unlawfully leveraged its
| operating system monopoly to require PC manufacturers to
| license and distribute Internet Explorer on every PC those
| OEMs shipped with Windows.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp
| gibba999 wrote:
| Gosh, these sound just like Android, now that you're
| quoting it. My Android phone came with Chrome, gmail,
| Google Maps, uploads my photos to Google, and requires a
| Google account.
|
| But I think that's beside the point. Microsoft did a lot
| of anti-competitive things in a lot of markets. Limiting
| scope to one particular litigation isn't really helpful
| here. The phrasing, "THE compliant," makes it sound like
| there wasn't a mountain of complaints. There was.
| granzymes wrote:
| > Gosh, these sound just like Android, now that you're
| quoting it.
|
| Android is getting in trouble for it in the EU!
|
| >But I think that's beside the point. Microsoft did a lot
| of anti-competitive things in a lot of markets. Limiting
| scope to one particular litigation isn't really helpful
| here. The phrasing, "THE compliant," makes it sound like
| there wasn't a mountain of complaints. There was.
|
| This thread was about their legal issues with IE. People
| complain about a lot of things, but that doesn't make
| them illegal.
| gibba999 wrote:
| > This thread was about their legal issues with IE.
|
| Perhaps. I view threads more like human conversations.
|
| > People complain about a lot of things, but that doesn't
| make them illegal.
|
| Microsoft did a lot of illegal things in the nineties,
| which many people complained about. Some were litigated,
| most were not. Lack of litigation doesn't make it legal.
|
| Google seems to be doing a few illegal things right now,
| although not nearly as many as nineties-era Microsoft.
| criley2 wrote:
| Microsoft's crime was doing it in the 90s. What Apple has
| done with iOS and OSX takes Microsoft's bundling, third-party
| lockout and lack of consumer choice to an exponential level,
| and it's celebrated as a feature now. iOS literally disallows
| any other browser technology from running, requiring them all
| to use less-featured versions of the first party tool.
| Microsoft must be jealous seeing them get away with that.
| loudmax wrote:
| Microsoft's crime was doing this in the 90s when they had
| nearly complete control of the desktop market and there
| were few alternatives for getting on the internet. This was
| a monopoly.
|
| Apple has about half the mobile market share in the US, and
| about a quarter globally. There are plenty of alternative
| ways to get on the internet. This is not a monopoly.
|
| You can't just look at bundling the browser with the OS in
| isolation. The circumstances are significantly different.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| And that's why I regard anti-trust laws as inconsistently
| applied cudgels and not as legal gospel. If tying
| (assuming there's a consistent definition of the word) is
| such a bad idea to begin with why does it matter whether
| it's done by a company at 90% or 10% of market? Equality
| under the law should be the measure.
| granzymes wrote:
| > _If tying (assuming there 's a consistent definition
| the word) is such a bad idea to begin with why does it
| matter whether it's done by a company at 90% or 10% of
| market? Equality under the law should be the measure._
|
| There is nothing inherently wrong with tying, which you
| might also call "bundling." Quoting from the FTC's
| website:
|
| Offering products together as part of a package can
| benefit consumers who like the convenience of buying
| several items at the same time. Offering products
| together can also reduce the manufacturer's costs for
| packaging, shipping, and promoting the products. Of
| course, some consumers might prefer to buy products
| separately, and when they are offered only as part of a
| package, it can be more difficult for consumers to buy
| only what they want.
|
| For competitive purposes, a monopolist may use forced
| buying, or "tie-in" sales, to gain sales in other markets
| where it is not dominant and to make it more difficult
| for rivals in those markets to obtain sales. This may
| limit consumer choice for buyers wanting to purchase one
| ("tying") product by forcing them to also buy a second
| ("tied") product as well. Typically, the "tied" product
| may be a less desirable one that the buyer might not
| purchase unless required to do so, or may prefer to get
| from a different seller. If the seller offering the tied
| products has sufficient market power in the "tying"
| product, these arrangements can violate the antitrust
| laws.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-
| guidance/guide-a...
| granzymes wrote:
| The difference is that Apple is selling hardware with
| software as a single product and has done so consistently,
| while Microsoft attempted to exclude a new competitor by
| colluding with OEMs and imposing exclusionary agreements on
| partners as a condition of buying Windows, a product that
| had a dominant share in its market. If Microsoft had always
| included Internet Explorer in Windows and hadn't tried to
| later tie them together in order to crush Netscape then the
| outcome may have been different. Instead, Microsoft
| basically said "distribute our new product or we won't let
| you distribute Windows" and you just can't do that when
| Windows is dominant.
|
| The Justice Department's complaint is an eye-opening view
| into what Microsoft's misconduct was:
| https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp
| cpleppert wrote:
| Not trying to defend Microsoft's behavior here by any
| means but the justice department clearly lost the case.
| The original favorable ruling splitting up Microsoft was
| conclusively rejected by the court of appeals on almost
| all points. The general consensus of the academic
| commentary on the case I have seen( not universal by any
| means) is that asserting that Windows is itself a
| monopoly is problematic; mainly due to the lack of
| evidence that demand for windows is not influenced by
| pricing.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Microsoft's primary offense was illegally tying Internet
| Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two products
| separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the bundle._
|
| Nope. That's what some people complained about, but it wasn't
| their legal issue (which is why today every OS vendor still
| does it).
|
| The actual complaint, which is pasted below, shows it in much
| greater nuance, as it wasn't that they "required OEMs to buy
| the bundle" (in fact, there wasn't any buying, IE was free
| part of Windows).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > > Microsoft's primary offense was illegally tying
| Internet Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two
| products separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the
| bundle.
|
| > Nope.
|
| Yes, it was.
|
| > That's what some people complained about, but it wasn't
| their legal issue (which is why today every OS vendor still
| does it).
|
| No, every OS vendor _doesn 't_ do _illegal_ tying of a
| browser to the OS, which involves both the _fact_ of a
| preexisting monopoly OS to which the tying occurs (that 's
| essential to the illegality, since its an illegal method of
| leveraging one monopoly to another market), and the kind of
| business methods used to enforce the tying.
| gibba999 wrote:
| My child's school uses Google Classroom. The Google experience
| is unusable in Firefox. Meet doesn't work (e.g. he sees nothing
| when the teacher screenshares). This seems really quite anti-
| competitive.
|
| My child cares about privacy and switches browsers. Chrome for
| Meet, Firefox for most non-Google things.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Meet absolutely works in Firefox, there's nothing anti-
| competitive going on. As do Google products generally (though
| there are occasionally performance issues where Firefox
| simply doesn't provide an API that Chrome does and the
| polyfill is slower, but then Firefox catches up).
|
| But try disabling browser extensions and see if that fixes it
| -- a majority of the time that's the culprit. With
| videoconferencing specifically, it's often an extension or
| setting to block videos from autoplaying.
| remarkEon wrote:
| > But try disabling browser extensions and see if that
| fixes it
|
| Isn't this the problem? Why do I have to disable something
| in Firefox to make it work for a google product.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Huh? Because you installed third-party software that
| interferes with Google's code.
|
| It's not a Firefox problem, it's extensions _you_ chose
| to install that neither Firefox nor Google have anything
| to do with.
| FractalParadigm wrote:
| I was having crazy issues in GDrive and GDocs where I could
| download nothing using FF - no PDFs, no .docx files, none of
| my other backed-up files, you'd click download and _nothing_
| would happen. Do the same in Chrome, Edge, Safari, Opera,
| even changing my user-agent to Chrome, and it works
| flawlessly.
|
| My solution to this problem was move everything off GDrive
| and into self-hosted options. If Google is going to
| intentionally hinder usage on non-Google software when no
| real technical roadblocks exist, I'll gladly use literally
| anything else.
| hackthefender wrote:
| What self-hosted option did you pick just out of curiosity?
| Looking to do the same thing.
| derac wrote:
| FreeNAS is solid.
| FractalParadigm wrote:
| As another commenter mentioned, TrueNAS is my go-to for
| general storage and phone/PC/Mac backups; it's dead
| simple to setup and is extremely capable, not to mention
| it'll run on just about anything (barring the ZFS cache
| RAM requirements...). Personally, I keep a 'master' home
| folder on there that gets auto-mounted in whatever OS I
| boot into; this way I never have to go hunting around the
| NAS for files, for instance I just have a single
| "Documents" folder that effectively 'syncs' across my
| Mac, *nix, and Windows. I use CX File Explorer on Android
| to access the NAS, add a WireGuard VPN (which there's a
| great plugin for on TrueNAS) and you've got access to
| your files anywhere.
|
| GDrive I was able to replace more or less with
| LibreOffice and Collabora, I rarely need to share
| documents outside PDF or print, which makes compatibility
| a non-issue for me (and even when I need to, saving as a
| .doc usually maintains layouts, fonts, etc.).
| abrowne wrote:
| Do you block third-party cookies? It prevents Drive
| downloads in any browser with that setting, Chrom{e,ium}
| included. Recently I saw Drive give a suggestion about
| this, but a year ago when I was testing third-party cookie
| blocking in Chromium it took me a day or two before I
| figured out the connection.
| ahofmann wrote:
| I experience the same. Can't really use YouTube, can't
| download files from gdrive. Google was the best thing that
| could happen to search engines. Chrome was a godsend. Now
| they are what Microsoft was two decades ago (Microsoft is
| still full of shit, but now they are not alone).
| agumonkey wrote:
| Unless Meet and other Google apps are really tailored to
| subperform under firefox I don't think it's a solid case.
|
| If google devs code doesn't run as fast in firefox why should
| google take the blame ?
|
| or maybe google is using non html5 apis to tap into chrome
| for faster perf in which case things are muddy.. since whatwg
| kinda allows unofficial apis
| approxim8ion wrote:
| > If google devs code doesn't run as fast in firefox why
| should google take the blame ?
|
| And yet, I get flak if my code isn't performing well on 5
| different browsers, including IE6.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Obviously, a private company can do what they want and they
| shouldn't be forced to make their code run on other
| platforms.
| dathinab wrote:
| No, IMHO they should be forced to comply with web
| standard and at least try to work with browsers they
| don't support first class. (Microsoft simply doesn't
| allow you to open any of their web apps, weather it's for
| teams or some of their other apps.)
|
| Especially if it involves quasi monopolies.
|
| I.e. the it's a quasi Monopoly of chrome like browsers
| spear headed by Google and Microsoft.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| I agree, I should've made clearer I was being sarcastic.
| The quasi-monopoly thing is often ignored when it comes
| to Big Tech silencing voices.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > No, IMHO they should be forced to comply with web
| standard
|
| The problem is that they ram whatever internal Chrome
| APIs they want through standards bodies and call it a
| standard.
|
| Others just can't keep up: https://web-
| confluence.appspot.com/#!/confluence
| [deleted]
| toiletaccount wrote:
| Microsoft got in trouble for less than this in the EU and
| had to start offering firefox as an option on standard
| installs.
|
| E: Just saw the /s in parent's grandchild.
| dathinab wrote:
| Some of the problems come from codec licensing issues
| (which have a major competition hindering effect since over
| a decade? by now).
|
| But things come also from Google (and Microsoft, they seem
| to use the same logic) implementing some logic but based on
| "how the web standard" works but by "how it happens to work
| on chrome", this leads to frequent issues with selected
| input devices and screen sharing.
|
| _And fixing it is easy, probably way less then 10h of work
| one single time._ (As far as I know.)
|
| Similar the codec issues only matter if certain slow
| devices are involved, e.g. non high end phones, high end
| phones in energy saving mode, old tablets. If no such
| device is involved it's not rare that the conference will
| anyway use different codecs. So they could support FF for
| many conference calls, but instead they decide to reflect
| to even try to work on FF (which is a web no-go btw.).
|
| So there are "reasons", but it's clear that's they intend
| to not support FF at all.
|
| Btw. Microsoft is the worst here as they reject to work
| with FF even for things which do not have any reason to
| have problems on FF.
| driverdan wrote:
| Something is wrong with their system then. I use Meet in
| Firefox and it works. Sometimes it's buggy but I can always
| get it to work.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I had to switch to Chrome because my employer is a Google
| shop. Meet screenshare never worked in Firefox and would
| always get stuck on the first frame.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I frequently have to refresh Meet to get it working on
| Firefox. Not in Chrome.
| khimaros wrote:
| i have frequently needed to do this on Chrome Pixelbook,
| so it might just be that Meet is generally buggy.
| andrepd wrote:
| You can improve the situation somewhat by using
| bromite/ungoogled-chromium instead of chrome, for the
| purposes when Firefox doesn't work.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| They just check against identifier. It even claim google
| chrome is a better solution on the new Edge browser (which
| is basically a ms'styled google chrome).
|
| Doing that is so absurd in my opinion.
| jjice wrote:
| Huh, just an anecdote, but Meet runs perfectly fine on FF for
| me at work. Only issue is I can't blur my background unless
| I'm on Chrome.
| thefounder wrote:
| I believe Chrome also has better support for new
| technologies/APIs thus the reason firefox doesn't work that
| well. But as others said that's not always the case.
| chakhs wrote:
| We use Google Meet at work, and I use Firefox.
|
| The "Change background" feature was not "supported" in Firefox,
| then suddenly I could use it so I thought they finally
| implemented it for Firefox as it was working perfectly.
|
| Two days later the feature disappeared, and I keep getting that
| "your browser doesn't support this feature" popup since.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| That sucks, but take the time to imagine what might be going
| on on the other side.
|
| There's a dev running an experiment to whitelist more
| combinations of the huge space of (Device, CPU, GPU, OS,
| OSVersion, Browser, BrowserVersion) to use that feature. What
| would you do after seeing that the metrics show that most of
| the users on your experiment had a bad experience? In that
| case you'd want to rollback your experiment right away and
| figure out what's wrong. You really expected all, if not most
| of the combinations you selected to actually work well, but
| it's apparently not the case.
| chakhs wrote:
| yeah I'm over fetching indeed :') A/B testing sucks, they
| should've let me know it was an experiment, I had high
| hopes
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Yeah, there's definitely room for improvement there, but
| I feel that it'd only target more advanced users.
|
| I'd like that you could opt-in into being aware of the
| experiments you are running, and be allowed to opt-out
| early of experiments when they don't work, or sign-up to
| run them permanently (as long as they are actually
| running) if they work great.
|
| Although, letting users know about the experiments might
| also ruins some experiments as users could start assuming
| that the experiment really changes things. I imagine you
| can easily run a dummy experiment and have people talk
| about how much faster/slower their browser runs with it.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _If two - three other Norwegians do the same that should
| start to look like an earthquake ;-)_
|
| That 5 people wrote to them?
| eitland wrote:
| Yes. It is my sincere belief that very few people notice &&
| care enough to figure out who to contact, how to contact them
| and actually do it.
| pope_meat wrote:
| Yeah, most people seem to waste their time contacting the
| BBB, instead of their State AG with complaints against
| businesses.
|
| You can get a lot more done complaining to the right
| places.
| coldtea wrote:
| I agree about that.
|
| The fact that "but if 5 (or 10 or 50) people wrote them it
| would have an impact" I'm sceptical about.
|
| 99.9999% it would just be ignored. Campaigns with 100s of
| thousands of people are ignored all the time...
| eitland wrote:
| Thanks for explaining!
|
| As I mentioned avove I think now is a particularly good
| time!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| How can you 'lie' about an opinion like 'better'?
| judge2020 wrote:
| > anti competitive behavior
|
| Have some examples? On Desktop, I don't see any, but I would
| get if you mean Mobile since Chrome is still the default
| browser there for Android.
| grawprog wrote:
| Even if just mobile I'm still not sure how they get away with
| it. They have 71% of the global mobile marketshare, my phone
| came preinstalled with chrome, I cannot remove it, only
| disable it.
|
| How is that any different at all to what Microsoft was doing
| with IE in the 90's?
| dmitriid wrote:
| This thread from a former Mozilla exec:
| https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686?s=20
| freediver wrote:
| Very instructive, thanks for sharing.
| stelonix wrote:
| I remember when gmail outright crippled itself when I used it
| some 5 years ago. I also remember other Google services
| disabling some features only on Firefox.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| Google sheets used to be broken `BASED ON USER AGENT`.
|
| https://support.google.com/docs/thread/18235069/google-
| sheet...
|
| After i found that spoof browser agent fixed it. They locked
| the thread coincidentally and the bug is also fixed
| coincidentally a few days after.
|
| I don't know if it is really a coincident, but I definitely
| have 0 trust of them after it.
| meibo wrote:
| It's common to work around browser bugs like this.
|
| I wouldn't blame some possible hack a tired dev implemented
| on a busy Thursday on a grand scheme to strip you of your
| freedom - in the end it's just people working there.
| Especially seeing that the bug was fixed after someone
| complained/made them aware.
| eitland wrote:
| If you are Google, a multi billion company, pushing your
| own browser with a marketing budget in the hundreds of
| millions range (seriously, this was important to them,
| the only ad important enough to reach the front page of
| Google AFAIK)
|
| - then you better make sure you make it work everwhere
| instead of this constant "ooops"-thing that shows that
| Google doesn't even do the smallest amount of testing in
| Firefox, or they do it deliberately.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Youtube on iOS is deliberately changed in a way that it
| breaks playing video/audio in the background. iOS is capable
| of that by default with HTML5, but Youtube sells background
| play as a paid feature.
| ALotOfBees wrote:
| Google Ads is practically unusable with Firefox
| LightG wrote:
| Feature, not a bug.
| eitland wrote:
| Have you used Firefox with Google Docs Calendar or YouTube
| over the last ten years?
|
| (Multiple more examples exist for those willing to dig: at
| one point the search results page would peg one processor
| core briefly every 30 seconds as long as you stayed on that
| page - and used Firefox)
|
| Edit: and as you mention, the situation with Chrome on mobile
| is basically a 1-1 of IE on Windows.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| Not OP, but I have. I'm currently typing this answer on
| Firefox, have been using google Docs, Calendar and Youtube
| for years, never had major problems.
|
| (Of course this is all anecdotal.)
| arp242 wrote:
| I never have any problems with YouTube; it works well for
| me. What problems are there? I use Google Docs only
| sporadically (mostly to read .doc(x) files sent to me), and
| it's kinda slow, but that's not necessarily Google's fault.
| Slack is (was? Haven't used it in year) unusably slow on
| Firefox too, and don't get me started on the "new" Reddit
| that couldn't even scroll right last time I tried it.
| [deleted]
| ostenning wrote:
| If chrome had a container engine for enhanced privacy I would
| leave FF in a heart beat. The only thing keeping me to FF is the
| privacy aspect.
|
| Pity FF keep eroding that advantage also
| dathinab wrote:
| Many major video conference applications don't even try to
| support Firefox, so I'm not surprised that during this time frame
| a lot of users where forced/coerced to switch.
|
| Offenders include:
|
| - Teams
|
| - Slack
|
| - Zoom
|
| Sure there are codec license issues, but all(most) of them do use
| different codecs depending on the context, so they could totally
| support Firefox as long as no one in the conference is on a of
| Android device or similar.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Not a popular opinion but I'll say it - Firefox was my daily
| driver until the CEO made comments about censoring conservatives
| that went beyond just deplatforming them. I now use ungoogled
| chromium or Edge.
| thro1 wrote:
| I have no problems with Firefox (with hunderds of tabs open and
| best set of extensions), and it didn't lost me.. yet.
|
| The problem is with modern web, sites excepting JavaScript and
| things like canvas fingerprinting etc. for working.
|
| I have JavaScript disabled, for regular browsing I'm stuck with
| Firefox version<57 - so, for me, there is no future.
| omar_kha wrote:
| went downhill after JavaScript creator left and created brave.
| tswiszcz wrote:
| Firefox has been breaking down on me the past few months. This
| inspired me to go back to Chrome.
| LightG wrote:
| Suprised by some of the comments here. Happy firefox user here
| for the last 5 years and don't see it changing.
|
| I moved to firefox aftet Chrome became like swimming in treacle,
| and good to get away from the Google ad bullsh!t. Suprised they
| haven't sunsetted Chrome yet.
|
| Pssst, Google, you've ruined Youtube too. Sunset that too.
| crmrc114 wrote:
| I may be the odd one but I dropped FF after the drama over
| brendin eich and his support of prop 8. I just did not feel the
| same after seeing how he was attacked for his personal
| contributions.
|
| There was just some hateful stuff that came from both sides that
| really uncovered some toxic personalities in the FF legion.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Now you're using Lynx or what? Because something tells me you
| will find people with stupid opinions in every corporation of a
| reasonable size. Moving to Google is a really counter-
| productive move if you value minorities.
| toper-centage wrote:
| When you're a CEO, you're also the face of the company. His
| "personal contributions" were to support banning of same sex
| marriage, and it was just 5 years earlier. That's just
| unacceptable, even in 2014. It really showed how politics work
| inside companies like Mozilla.
|
| But you're not alone. That year lots of users dropped Firefox.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Proposition 8 passed in California 52-47. [1] Slightly more
| than seven million people voted for it. That's a lot of
| people who did something unacceptable.
|
| I wish all disagreements didn't have to be framed in such
| stark terms.
|
| I don't live in or care much for California, so I had no dog
| in the fight, but I also did not like the gang-up on Eich and
| I don't understand the argument that he had to be kicked out
| because of how people might feel - it seems like it's the
| default position to work for someone who thinks you shouldn't
| have some right or another, or some other person should have
| more rights than you. It did not affect my usage of Firefox.
|
| I did eventually download Brave and I use it for maybe a
| quarter of my web browsing, but that happened because a site
| I like stopped working in Firefox. I use Edge for a lot of
| other stuff - known safe sites, basically. I use Firefox
| simply out of inertia and because I like NoScript and the
| exact way NoScript works. A lot of the stuff I like about it
| is gone now, as they keep removing features I use. I don't
| have any affection for Mozilla or Firefox anymore. Metrics-
| based development is always a fool's errand - removing
| feature after feature that 1% of your install base uses is a
| great way to lose half your users when you remove > 50
| features.
|
| In the end, I don't think Mozilla understood where their
| strength came from. They weren't installed by default. They
| didn't have massive marketing campaigns like Google/Chrome.
| They weren't bundled in installers. They had one thing: power
| users, and power users evangelizing to their friends and
| family. They've alienated power users, and now all that's
| left is people running on inertia and people really worried
| about open source. Not a winning combination.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8
| kevhsu wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/business/brave-brendan-ei...
|
| I don't feel bad for this guy - He says and does things
| regularly that are hurtful to society with no signs of becoming
| a better person.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| And what does 'becoming a better person' entails in the US
| exactly? enlighten us, foreigners who aren't 'informed' about
| American identity politics..
|
| Eich is a visionary and a talented engineer, that's all I ask
| of him when it comes to webtechs.
|
| Right now the current "better persons" team at Mozilla is
| certainly running Firefox into the ground...
| wayneftw wrote:
| > In recent months, Mr. Eich's Twitter feed has largely
| alternated between promotion of the privacy-focused Brave
| browser and questions about the policy and science related to
| the coronavirus.
|
| > His posts on Twitter have expressed skepticism about many
| prevailing assumptions around the pandemic, including the
| effectiveness of masks and the honesty of Anthony Fauci.
|
| Oh no! What a bigot for having questions and skepticism about
| many prevailing assumptions around the pandemic!!
|
| Imagine how much better everything would be if everybody
| would just agree all the time without any skepticism?
| christophilus wrote:
| Skepticism is a reasonable default position for most things,
| as is distrust of powerful political entities, as is an
| assumption that incentive-caused bias is at play when big
| pharma is involved.
|
| He may be wrong about all of this, but I don't think we'll be
| able to speak confidently about societal harm until this has
| all played out and can be viewed with the benefit of
| hindsight.
| totony wrote:
| Yeah, that and the other political commentary + dropping most
| of their projects (rust, ffsend) really isn't helping.
|
| Really wish they'd focus on one mission (making the web free)
| and not address anything else.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Instead of reworking the UI they should have just added an ad
| blocker out of the box (preinstall uBlock Origin for
| example).
|
| The main reason Brave is used and recommended is because a
| lot of people don't want to bother installing plugins. At
| least 90% of recommendations for that browser I've seen
| mention this as reason. Meanwhile most people either don't
| like the new Firefox UI or just don't care.
|
| And I agree, FF Send was great. It was really convenient to
| transfer a big file in a pinch without having to setup some
| cloud sync app with registration etc.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| > they should have just added an ad blocker out of the box
| (preinstall uBlock Origin for example).
|
| Yeah, that's not gonna happen. They would antagonize their
| biggest "donor" google.
|
| And god knows they really need that huge yearly money
| influx to whatever the heck they do with that money.
| saurik wrote:
| Is there anything you could imagine he could be doing with
| personal contributions that you _would_ consider worth
| "attacking" him over (at which point I guess we could reverse
| engineer that you consider that activity notably "worse" than
| what Brandon Eich actually did) or do you feel like there is
| nothing that someone could be doing in their "personal" lives
| that should cause them to not be a good public face of a
| project like Firefox?
| crmrc114 wrote:
| The world is a big place - we don't all share a monolith of
| values. There can be some claims made to natural law or
| objective truths. However; Your truth is not mine, Plato's
| cave, etc.
|
| Ask yourself why there is no outrage at every company that
| posts rainbow flags on US brand pages but refuses to do the
| same on their UAE brand pages.
|
| In a nutshell: I am glad that the Christian monks kept the
| work of all those 'evil pagans' through the dark ages. The
| candle of Western Civilization could have gone dark if they
| had religiously burned the works of those they disagreed
| with... I worry this is a direction we are headed as a cyber
| culture.
|
| I want discourse because that is how we learn and bring
| others to enlightenment. I (correctly) saw that move with
| firefox as a broad move in the general us political ecosystem
| to "unperson" those on the right/left who don't feel the same
| as you. I.e. "Trump is Hitler", "Obama is a Terrorist" the
| schoolyard branding in concerning because it does not help
| any of us get better or connect on a human level.
|
| I guess I feel like what happened with Brandon is a good
| example of that fear manifest.
|
| What if, for example, my support of Edward Snowden makes me
| the next Emmanuel Goldstein, target of two minutes hate for
| the altar of some agenda? That scares the shit out of me- I
| don't like it.
| saurik wrote:
| > The world is a big place - we don't all share a monolith
| of values.
|
| I am not asking the world: I am asking you, an individual
| human who assuredly stands for _something_ (and hell: we
| know you at least stand for this, as you decided to stop
| using Firefox over it ;P).
|
| > Ask yourself why there is no outrage at every company
| that posts rainbow flags on US brand pages but refuses to
| do the same on their UAE brand pages.
|
| FWIW, I would presume the answer is "because most people
| don't realize that companies might be doing that"; however,
| I also take issue with the example: not going out of your
| way to display support for something is, in fact, different
| than actively taking action to undermine it... someone who
| doesn't show a flag might still support something, but
| someone who actively donates against something clearly
| doesn't.
|
| > In a nutshell: I am glad that the Christian monks kept
| the work of all those 'evil pagans' through the dark ages.
| The candle of Western Civilization could have gone dark if
| they had religiously burned the works of those they
| disagreed with... I worry this is a direction we are headed
| as a cyber culture.
|
| You do realize that no one has suggested deleting all the
| copies of Firefox, to prevent future generations from
| seeing it--the equivalent of your pretty-ridiculous
| scenario--right? That hasn't even been in question AFAIK
| even in jest, as Brandon Eich didn't even personally make
| Firefox. Nor, FWIW, is this about people deciding to
| abandoning JavaScript or something, unless I missed
| something?
|
| Hell: your framing here is extremely strange when you
| realize that this isn't even about Firefox the product...
| except for you! You are in fact the person who decided to
| "cancel" (as they say) Firefox: you are the person who
| decided to stop using Firefox because it was being made by
| people who refused to actively stand up and support a man
| who donated money towards Prop 8. The people you are upset
| with were _not_ attempting to destroy the work that is
| Firefox, they wanted to not work with the _person_ who is
| Brandon Eich.
|
| And that's solely what this is about: "should Brandon Eich
| have been removed as CTO of Mozilla?". Remember both that
| CTO is a a very public position for an organization like
| that, and that CTO is a position of power over a number of
| people who work on tech at the company... some of whom
| Brandon Eich was actively saying "I don't respect your
| existence" by way of his donating to ban gay marriage. I'm
| not gay, but I know and care deeply about a number of gay
| people... hell, I would be surprised if you didn't also
| (even if you didn't know they were gay).
|
| By saying that you have decided to stop using Firefox
| because the employees of Firefox should not have revolted
| against Brandon Eich, you are thereby not only cancelling
| the work of a number of people you disagree with--which is
| something you claim to have serious moral issues with while
| _not_ being something the people you are seemingly trying
| to punish were doing (so you can 't claim "I'm only doing
| it because they would do it to me" or whatever)--but you
| are seriously saying that you expect that all of those
| people who were at Mozilla should suck it up and keep
| working with and for someone who, in his "personal life",
| worked to undermine their lives.
|
| Truly: all of your fretting over people destroying the work
| of the "evil pagans" is off topic, whether it makes you
| feel better to frame it like that or not.
|
| > I want discourse because that is how we learn and bring
| others to enlightenment. I (correctly) saw that move with
| firefox as a broad move in the general us political
| ecosystem to "unperson" those on the right/left who don't
| feel the same as you. I.e. "Trump is Hitler", "Obama is a
| Terrorist" the schoolyard branding in concerning because it
| does not help any of us get better or connect on a human
| level.
|
| Ummm... are you missing that Brandon Eich made the first
| move here, taking action against gay people by fiscally
| supporting a ban on gay marriage, which I will strongly
| claim is "unpersoning" those whom he disagreed with? I
| haven't seen any kind of mass movement of gay people going
| out of their way to attempt to ban Christianity, or did I
| miss that also? Why should everyone be forced to tolerate
| him?
|
| > I guess I feel like what happened with Brandon is a good
| example of that fear manifest.
|
| Well, Brandon Eich seems to want gay people to fear him,
| so... :/.
|
| > What if, for example, my support of Edward Snowden makes
| me the next Emmanuel Goldstein, target of two minutes hate
| for the altar of some agenda? That scares the shit out of
| me- I don't like it.
|
| This just seems super unrelated, as I'm not sure what group
| of people you would be actively showing disrespect for by
| supporting Edward Snowden. Maybe you could expand on this
| analogy?
| textgel wrote:
| > I am not asking the world: I am asking you, an
| individual human who assuredly stands for something (and
| hell: we know you at least stand for this, as you decided
| to stop using Firefox over it ;P).
|
| How about standing for leaving politics at the door of
| the work environment and freedom of expression?
|
| > FWIW, I would presume the answer is "because most
| people don't realize that companies might be doing that";
| however, I also take issue with the example: not going
| out of your way to display support for something is, in
| fact, different than actively taking action to undermine
| it... someone who doesn't show a flag might still support
| something, but someone who actively donates against
| something clearly doesn't.
|
| Once you've gone out of the way to show it on one
| account, going out of the way to not do it on another is
| essentially the same thing and hasn't drawn ire.
|
| > You do realize that no one has suggested deleting all
| the copies of Firefox,
|
| You're feigning ignorance and creating a strawman. The
| movement that forced Eich out advocates for censorship
| and destruction of ideas and information. You were the
| one who made up the story about deleting all copies of
| Firefox.
|
| > Remember both that CTO is a a very public position for
| an organization like that
|
| Now that is an argument. If the organisation has made
| efforts to climb into bed with a modern religion and the
| CTO commits a sin then yes, removal makes sense but it
| should never have got to this point.
|
| > By saying that you have decided to stop using Firefox
| because the employees of Firefox should not have revolted
| against Brandon Eich, you are thereby not only cancelling
| the work of a number of people you disagree with
|
| No "cancelling" as you put it and most likely as the
| person you are replying to understands it involves mob
| justice forcing people out of careers and forcing the
| removal of ideas from platforms. Deciding not to use
| something is a personal choice.
|
| > Truly: all of your fretting over people destroying the
| work of the "evil pagans" is off topic, whether it makes
| you feel better to frame it like that or not.
|
| When you make a three paragraph strawman argument it can
| seem that way but while "your truth" may be that it is
| unrelated, the reality is different.
|
| > Ummm... are you missing that Brandon Eich made the
| first move here, taking action against gay people by
| fiscally
|
| He expressed his political opinion through excepted
| channels. He didn't incite a mob. Again there's an
| argument he couldn't be at the head of an organisation
| with the religious connections it has but again it should
| never have got to that stage.
| [deleted]
| roenxi wrote:
| The Mozilla corporation has to contend with a substantial
| portion of their community that thinks a $1,000 donation (an
| unrelated donation, no less) weighs similarly on the scales as
| something like 20 years in service vigorously supporting the
| open internet and a long history of technical success.
|
| They're going to struggle to focus on their mission with
| friends like that.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| That's their right as consumers. Just as it's Eich's right to
| be a bigot.
|
| That said, I agree that Moz have failed to find a stable
| business model,which is a pity.
| rvz wrote:
| Which is why they have no choice but to continue to take in
| Google's money which accounts to 80% of their entire
| revenue.
|
| Not only they failed to find a sustainable business model,
| they completely failed in their mission of promoting a
| privacy-focused browser. The users couldn't care less on
| this message or 'advantage' and are dumping them for
| Chrome.
|
| The only message Mozilla has stuck to for years is _' if
| you can't beat them, join them.'_ (and get paid by them).
| saurik wrote:
| So let's say you work for Mozilla and you are gay, or your
| sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay, or hell: you just
| are willing to care about people who aren't that close to you
| and you know that some people somewhere are assuredly gay;
| and so now, you have to come in to the office every day to
| work under a guy who, sure, has made an invaluable
| contribution to the web... but also actively dislikes gay
| people and wants to make their lives harder, donating to a
| political cause that deeply affects gay people. Remember:
| _that 's_ what is at stake here... Mozilla is a tech company,
| and Brandon Eich was their CTO, acting as the public face of
| the company and as a leader internally; asking them to
| continue to support him is not some academic question of
| whether to leave his name on a plaque somewhere... it is a
| very practical daily question of them having to read e-mails
| and take direction from someone who actively--and fairly
| directly... prop 8 wasn't some extremely indirect mechanism
| or one with a ton of tradeoffs--works to undermine the lives
| of either themselves or someone they care about.
| mfer wrote:
| This is where things get complicated.
|
| What's the difference between dislike and disagree with?
| Ginsberg and Scalia were Supreme Court justice's know for
| this. Disagreeing with something, even fundamental, doesn't
| mean people need to dislike each other.
|
| Imagine, for a moment, this idea was placed on religious
| belief. Should people working for someone with a different
| religious affiliation assume their boss dislikes them?
|
| I appreciate this is a hot topic. I just don't like where
| we are going as people when we treat disagree as if it's
| dislike and act on that.
| natch wrote:
| Actions are even more important than disagreements or
| dislikes.
|
| You can disagree with someone who believes in slavery,
| and you are free to still like them if you want, sure.
|
| But if it was me in your place, even if I liked that
| person, I still would not want to work for them based on
| their actions. And I think this is a fair position for
| anyone to take.
|
| Or if you are saying it is conceivably possible that
| Brendan* likes gay people, also I'd say sure. Actually
| it's likely he likes at least one certain closeted
| repressed gay person in particular, I'd guess. Still,
| it's reasonable to not want to work for such a person who
| takes such actions.
| mfer wrote:
| Let's flip this around. Around the world there are many
| people who have belief systems disagree with
| homosexuality. Right or wrong, this is presently the
| case. If some have money in support of the other
| direction on prop 8 should they have tried to get the
| person fired or left themselves?
|
| A core thing at issue here is right and wrong and
| lifestyles. No matter what I think, there are people who
| disagree on this. I've been hard pressed to get folks to
| share a logical reasoned case for their take. It's very
| much about belief and assumptions.
|
| Is it time we divide up based on some issues like this or
| try to destroy "the other side"? It should like that's
| what's being said.
|
| Please note, my take on this here is how we as a society
| deal with these disagreements.
| natch wrote:
| Pretty sure Brendan donating to a cause trying to
| influence law was already a case of society dealing with
| disagreements with action. So if your beef is with taking
| actions based on disagreements, you should start with
| being bothered about Brendan's actions.
|
| As to flipping it around, I get that but didn't really
| follow how that helps. Bigots would be perfectly free to
| not want to work for a non bigot if they want... and they
| can try to get others onboard with joining them to ask
| the leader to step down.. good luck with that though.
| There's a certain evil to being a bigot that goes beyond
| just disagreement and dislike.
| vetinari wrote:
| So just because you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or
| your best friend is gay... then totally unrelated people
| are not allowed to have their opinions, because you don't
| approve them?
| roenxi wrote:
| I'd work for someone who voted to raise my taxes. That is
| years of my life's work redirected to causes I don't agree
| with. Worse than someone being against me getting married.
| If I could swap marriage rights for lower taxes, I wouldn't
| be married. It is more symbolic these days than practical.
|
| I think the gays can cop it.
|
| > you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend
| is gay
|
| At least one of those is true.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I'm alright jack?
| roenxi wrote:
| Possibly this is a case of poor phrase choice. I mean
| "can cop it" in the Australian informal sense of "Accept
| or tolerate a disagreeable situation without complaint."
| as opposed to the surprisingly wide [0] range of other
| interpretations.
|
| [0] https://www.lexico.com/definition/cop
| textgel wrote:
| Some in the world are capable of working without being
| emotionally incapacitated by the thought that those they
| work with don't agree with all that they believe in.
|
| Mozilla is there to build browsers. Politics should have
| been left at the door. Instead it wasn't and so Firefox
| happened and then Brave happened.
| whatever_dude wrote:
| It's not "politics" when the leader of a company is
| fundamentally against your existence.
|
| It's only politics when it's "other people's problems I
| don't care about", it seems.
| Thiez wrote:
| > Mozilla is there to build browsers. Politics should
| have been left at the door.
|
| I think you misunderstand Mozilla. Just have a look at
| their mission statement[0], and their manifesto[1].
| Mozilla's goal is not "build the best browser and get the
| most market share". Their goals are inherently political,
| and building a browser is just part of how they try to
| achieve their goals. To expect that the people working
| for such a political organization with such a strong
| ideology is pretty bizarre to me.
|
| 0. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/
|
| 1. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
| textgel wrote:
| Perhaps it would be better for me to say ostensibly there
| to build browsers (and other software).
|
| In response to the manifesto I'll ask how recent that
| manifesto and mission statement is? Surely they weren't
| always a politics first, software second organisation?
| They must have started out as free software and then
| morphed into what they are now at some point.
|
| Or was it that case that the politics was there but it
| was that that changed?
| Thiez wrote:
| The manifesto exists since 2007, but they describe
| principles that Mozilla has held since it was founded in
| 1998[0]. I wouldn't personally describe them as a
| "politics first, software second" organization, but
| that's mostly because I think the distinction between
| "politics first, software second" and "software first,
| politics second" is pretty vague and useless. Perhaps you
| would describe them as such, and if so, they've probably
| been like that since the start, or at least since before
| the start of their market-share decline.
|
| 0. https://www.protocol.com/mozilla-plan-fix-internet-
| privacy
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Would you say the same about iFixit backing right to
| repair, or the FSF/EFF etc fighting for privacy and
| software freedoms while also developing their core
| products? I feel like "politics" has a very selective
| definition in this forum.
| deploydeploy wrote:
| I don't understand myself, why I choose chrome over firefox.
| Mayba as a web dev, I want to make sure most people will get my
| website right
| timbit42 wrote:
| You should be testing in the top 3 browsers.
| hu3 wrote:
| So Chrome, Safari and Baidu?
| yorwba wrote:
| Baidu used to have their own browser, but almost nobody
| used it, so they discontinued it eventually.
|
| The third most popular browser globally is Edge:
| https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
| svl wrote:
| I'd say ~30M, rather than 50M.
|
| They explicitly call out the summer holidays effect above the
| first graph: "Generally, MAU fluctuates over the course of a
| year, dropping in the summer months and during holidays." So
| comparing the peak of Jan 2019 to the low of Jul 2021 isn't
| giving a good idea of the total loss. Jan 28
| 2019: 253.9M Jan 27 2020: 229.5M Feb 01 2021: 219.7M
| Jul 22 2019: 224.2M Jul 20 2020: 214.1M Jul 19 2021:
| 200.4M
|
| Still, definitely not good; we've seen what happens when web
| developers believe only a single browser (engine) matters, and we
| _need_ an organization like Mozilla, which puts user interests
| above commercial interests, to have a seat at the table.
| codesections wrote:
| > They explicitly call out the summer [and winter] holidays
| effect above the first graph
|
| Given that this is a measure of "Desktop clients active in the
| past 28 days", that means that there are people tech-savy
| enough to be regular users of Firefox on a desktop - but who go
| an entire month without using Firefox because it's Christmas.
| And enough of those people to show up on this graph.
|
| That blows my mind a bit. I don't doubt it, but wow.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Remember FF has been bundled in installers and OEMs have
| preinstalled it. Out of 200,000,000 users there are probably
| more users that simply aren't tech-savvy enough to have
| changed to a different browser than are still on it because
| they are tech-savvy.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| The big issue I see with Firefox is that they lost a lot of power
| user's when the removed XUL extensions and the underlying engine
| doesn't have good third party wrappers like QtWebEngine (that I
| know of) so creating reskined browser's is pain.
|
| I don't pick a browser for the _Firefox_ or _Chromium_ engine
| (unless a site needs it), I pick a browser based on the UI and
| configuration management. So I use Qutebrowser that is keyboard
| based and a declarative configuration. It happens to use
| QtWebEngine but that is not why I picked that browser.
|
| Since I don't use Firefox... I don't really recommend it to
| anyone. Firefox's early success was driven by educated user's
| telling other people to drop IE for the better product. It also
| means a lot fewer developer's are using the Firefox engine when
| developing websites... especially the developer's that would put
| in the effort to submit bug reports & patches.
|
| (At least last I checked, recreating a Qutebrowser like
| experience in Firefox was at best just really annoying and would
| still lack features).
| foepys wrote:
| The end of XUL was necessary to make Firefox faster. Doenload
| an old XUL Firefox version and surf the web. If you don't
| notice a difference in page load speed, startup time, and
| overall responsiveness, you might have a very, very fast
| computer, which most people around the world don't have.
|
| The 3 or 4 thousand power users that needed native interop were
| (and still are) of no interest compared to the then bad
| performance of Firefox in relation to Chrome. Even HN was full
| of people who complained about Firefox' performance. Now it's
| full of people who recommend to give Firefox another shot
| because it's fast again.
|
| Firefox is also currently the only browser where uBlock Origin
| can use all of its features, Chrome is intentionally limiting
| APIs. Are people using Firefox because of it? No. So XUL add-
| ons would not have helped Firefox.
|
| If you still want XUL, there are many forks out there that
| claim to support it.
| TiccyRobby wrote:
| My number one reason to use Firefox is uBlock Origin. It does
| an exceptional job and web is way more annoying without it.
| Kye wrote:
| uBlock Origin is available for Chrome and Chrome-based
| browsers.
| qersist3nce wrote:
| In other news:
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
|
| https://www.ghacks.net/2021/03/14/mozilla-plans-to-remove-th...
|
| https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-fir...
| wusher wrote:
| That about sums up why I switched from Firefox to brave.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| These right there, and all the other issues in the same vein
| are the probably the reason.
|
| Sure, make a simplified browser interface by default. But don't
| forget to give power users an escape hatch to get more control
| over the browser, and make it do what they want. They are the
| ones that recommend the browser to other users.
| 0xy wrote:
| Here's what one of Firefox's Android developers thought of
| users after they raised concerns over the abolition of
| extensions and the rushed, buggy and inferior release:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200731235001/https://twitter.c...
|
| Meanwhile Mozilla's CEO continues to fleece increasing millions
| of dollars while being responsible for a massive collapse in
| market share (she increased her pay 400%, while destroying the
| company).
|
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/09/23/1528219/firefox-usa...
| antman wrote:
| Former Firefix advocate, after the plugins breakage and senseless
| ui changes I had to check out.
|
| Kiwi on mobile from an HN recommendation
| christophilus wrote:
| Same. I was 100% FF until they broke my AD blocker on iOS. The
| internet is unusable without it, so I switched to Brave.
|
| I do align philosophically with OSS, and community
| organization, though, so I may switch back at some point.
|
| I do think Mozilla's executive team needs a real shakeup,
| though.
|
| Edit: haven't heard of Kiwi. Looks interesting. Why'd you land
| on that vs Brave or whatever else?
| antman wrote:
| I am on Android, and Kiwi Android accepts desktop Chrome's
| plugins.
| foepys wrote:
| I was under the impression that Apple doesn't allow ad
| blockers but only request filters that are maintained by the
| OS and have an upper limit. How can one browser be better
| than another if that's true?
| christophilus wrote:
| I don't know, but Brave on iOS works very well. I can watch
| YouTube with no ads (and even a one-click button to
| download for offline viewing/ listening). Websites load
| quickly, with no ads that I can see, except in the rare
| cases where the ads are selfhosted.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > senseless ui changes
|
| This is what annoys me most. And most of all, UI changes that
| they've made to promote features I don't want; Pocket, Sync. I
| shouldn't have to dive into about:config to make a useless UI
| component disappear (after googling to find out what setting I
| need to fix). Sync should not default to storing my data on
| Mozilla servers. The sync icon shouldn't appear unless I've
| configured Sync. There should be a single option in Preferences
| to disable ALL suggestions.
|
| DoH is a rotten idea. Or at least, it's not ready for prime-
| time; it's less secure than plain old DNS (through a local
| recursor).
|
| Dropping support for ALSA output also got my back up; I won't
| have Poetteringware on my system.
|
| I'd pay money for a browser that only connects to the internet
| when I tell it to; doesn't care what I'm interested in; and
| whose devs are responsive to (paying) user demand.
|
| I'll go on using FF until I can no longer crowbar it to meet my
| requirements. Then it will disappear in my rearview mirror.
|
| It's very sad; Mozilla made maybe two good products, FF and
| Thunderbird. They dropped Tbird (which I love), and they're
| trying to wreck FF. I wish I knew what cock-eyed incentives are
| making Mozilla behave this way.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Kiwi is the best android browser, period
| DL302 wrote:
| I would imagine it's partially because of increased adoption of
| Brave and Safari.
| wigado wrote:
| Firefox lost me as a user shortly after the megabar change and
| the massive reworking of the mobile app UI. I still keep up to
| date on what's been going on since then, and I can't say I regret
| my decision in the slightest.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-31 23:02 UTC)