[HN Gopher] What We're Working on in Firefox
___________________________________________________________________
What We're Working on in Firefox
Author : HieronymusBosch
Score : 180 points
Date : 2024-05-30 19:32 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.mozilla.org)
| kome wrote:
| Nice! Firefox is in a good place, because the browser, at this
| stage (version 126), is really good and fast. And this post seems
| to point that the development is going in a good direction.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I still remember the launch of Firefox 3 back in the day. I'm so
| glad it's still around, and they keep working on it.
|
| I don't think there's a single piece of software I've gotten more
| utility out of in all that time. It's definitely not perfect, but
| we'd be in a worse world without it.
| i80and wrote:
| It's funny to think about in retrospect how exciting Firefox 3
| was. Planning began in 2006, and release was 2008. Acid2!
| Cairo! Better Linux theming!
|
| It was just such a different release cadence.
| OtomotO wrote:
| I have fond memories of 3 and 4... Started using it somewhen
| around 2 :)
| sli wrote:
| I have fond memories of discovering Phoenix ~v0.1 during high
| school and mostly never looking back. Had a short stint with
| Chrome until it intermittently stopped even attempting to
| load pages. Switched back and couldn't imagine daily driving
| Chrome.
| dochtman wrote:
| I remember when it was still called Phoenix -- the lean pure-
| browser reborn "from the ashes" of the Mozilla Suite
| (SeaMonkey). Amazing run...
| OtomotO wrote:
| I am looking forward to synced tab groups.
|
| Currently using an addon, but that's not synced among PC and
| Laptop (or phones, but there I don't need it)
| blizdiddy wrote:
| > More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and
| prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important
| things quicker
|
| Oh no, more of this.
|
| What about less used options? How much slower? How much less
| discoverable?
|
| Desktop applications are already for power users almost by
| definition, let's not slow them down for the sake of reducing
| "clutter". Absolutely annoying trend of the last 15 years or so.
| JohnFen wrote:
| The dumbing down of applications, including FF, is incredibly
| annoying and off-putting.
|
| I get it, though. FF probably wants to be friendly and
| approachable to the average non-techie person. I just wish that
| it (and other applications) would at least have an "expert
| mode" that isn't aimed just at the casual user.
| Teever wrote:
| The implication of what you're saying is that it somehow
| isn't friendly and approachable to your average non-techie
| person, which doesn't make sense because the UI paradigm of
| browsers hasn't really changed for 20+ years and Firefox has
| been just fine for technies to switch their
| parents/grandparents over to for years now.
|
| The problem with Firefox isn't the UI, the problem with
| Firefox is mismanagement by the board that has been captured
| by Google and the lack of proper antitrust action against
| Google by the US and EU.
| nindalf wrote:
| First time I've heard Google being blamed for Mozilla's
| self inflicted problems. Google is highly incentivised to
| make sure Mozilla survives with some reasonable market
| share. Without Mozilla antitrust enforcement becomes much
| more likely. That's why Google pays Mozilla for being the
| default search engine provider. That's the main source of
| revenue for Mozilla.
|
| If Mozilla could maintain 10% market share in perpetuity
| and also keep signing search licensing agreements with
| Google that works just fine for Google. Sadly it has a lot
| less than that.
| palata wrote:
| > Google is highly incentivised to make sure Mozilla
| survives with some reasonable market share.
|
| Assuming that "surviving" is good and "reasonable" is...
| what... 3% and dropping?
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| > the UI paradigm of browsers hasn't really changed for 20+
| years
|
| (Checks calendar) ugh, it really has been 15 years since
| they ground up the url box + search box into the big
| mystery meat mash-up that mostly works but is so damn
| obnoxious when it doesn't.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I thought I would miss the search box when it disappeared
| but actually the "awesome bar" is pretty awesome : You
| can disable search suggestions and it will only search
| your keywords in history/bookmarks/opened tabs and then
| you just tab into the list, else if there's nothing of
| interest in the list you can always press enter and it
| will launch a search in your default search engine. All
| that power accessible with just Ctrl + L, Tab and Enter.
| You can also launch @search_engine $keyword directly in
| the bar, search bookmark/history/tabs directly with */^/%
| symbols.
|
| You can't disable search suggestions on Chrome (I wonder
| why...) This is the main reason I am still on Firefox
| despite the weird UI design choices... which can easily
| be fixed with that script :
|
| https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
| JohnFen wrote:
| I dislike the "awesome bar" quite a lot. Fortunately, as
| you say, you can disable a lot of its "awesomeness"
| (enough that I can live with it), but not all of it. You
| do have to do a bit of research to find out the various
| magic "about:config" settings you need to change.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| I would love for applications and even web sites to have an
| expert mode. Maybe when the UX teams aren't looking devs
| could add a mode that puts Everything back in the UI.
| saurik wrote:
| > FF probably wants to be friendly and approachable to the
| average non-techie person.
|
| Yeah... the problem is that these people are frankly never
| going to use Firefox unless driven to by their techie
| friends, and Firefox seems to have given up on the power user
| market that they used to own.
| layer8 wrote:
| I like the approach where it's configurable which items are
| available in menus and toolbars. The application can come
| with a default configuration that is suitable for the average
| and novice user, and power users can change the menus and
| toolbars to their needs. When not all items are shown, the
| respective menu or toolbar can have a "More..." item that
| opens the configuration dialog. That way it's discoverable.
| resource_waste wrote:
| And all the old documentation/forum help to change settings is
| obsolete, but google still has them Indexed.
|
| The only company worse for this is Microsoft. Any google search
| for a setting has been outdated, the location has changed, the
| wording has changed.
|
| I'm completely convinced that there are FAAMG plants in FOSS
| company that have 1 job: Make pointless changes to waste
| engineering hours. Firefox and LibreOffice convinced me of
| this.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| IDK, they're just following what Chrome has been doing forever
| now, and it has worked there. I guess that really is what the
| vast majority of normal people want. And considering how even
| among my most tech-savy friends and colleagues Chrome appears
| to be the browser of choice, it seems even these folks don't
| really care...
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That doesn't necessarily follow; a person could easily argue
| that Chrome won because Google abused its search monopoly to
| push it, then kept winning because of inertia. Unless your
| friends specifically prefer Chrome because of UX reasons, it
| could be unrelated.
| Kye wrote:
| Firefox certainly didn't help by becoming a bloated mess.
| Firefox was _bad_ when Chrome came out. All Chrome did was
| the same thing Firefox did to IE in the same situation:
| take advantage of complacency. Google 's heavy and
| sometimes ethically questionable promotion of Chrome was an
| amplifying force, but not sufficient.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Yeah, that was always funny to me too... Google built a
| browser that was actually faster and more secure, and
| _then_ decided to be anti-competitive instead of just
| letting it win. Of course, they didn 't actually get
| destroyed in court for it, so I suppose being evil works
| in this case.
| palata wrote:
| > and then decided to be anti-competitive instead of just
| letting it win
|
| Or precisely because it was not enough to have the better
| product? Don't tell me you believe that the better
| product usually wins. Marketing wins.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Firefox was doing fine beating IE on merit once MS was
| prevented from behaving anti-competitively.
| dralley wrote:
| The base of internet users was a lot smaller and more
| technically-inclined in 2004 than in 2014
| Kye wrote:
| Was it though? This was well after AOL and the Endless
| September. There were rows of Complete Idiots Guides and
| For Dummies books on using the internet in major book
| stores. You've Got Mail made a quarter billion in the box
| office a half decade _before_.
|
| This was the time of normies. All the @aol addresses
| still in use were minted here.
| palata wrote:
| > There were rows of Complete Idiots Guides and For
| Dummies books
|
| Which says that people were trying to learn how to use
| their computer, right? Nowadays professors need to teach
| their university students what a _file_ is... I can
| definitely accept that the users were more technically-
| inclined in 2004 than in 2014.
| strken wrote:
| This is a great argument for why the average internet
| user in 2004 was less technical than in 1994, but it says
| absolutely nothing about 2014.
| Kye wrote:
| I thought that was just a given. How could the average be
| the same or more technical after going fully mainstream?
| palata wrote:
| Which doesn't prove it would have been the case for
| Chrome. Especially if people had just changed to Firefox
| :-).
| palata wrote:
| > Google's heavy and sometimes ethically questionable
| promotion of Chrome was an amplifying force, but not
| sufficient.
|
| I strongly believe it was sufficient. Which does not mean
| that Chrome was not better when it came out. But most
| people really don't want to try new tech: because you
| were excited by Chrome back then does not mean, by far,
| that everyone on the planet was.
| muxator wrote:
| > Firefox was bad when Chrome came out
|
| Funny how different people's experiences can be. When
| Chrome came out in 2008 I remember trying it just for fun
| (more than once), and it never clicked with me, so I
| stayed with Firefox.
|
| What was harder for me was keeping with all the
| unnecessary redesigns, empty eye candy, dumbing down, the
| Fennec debacle (exensions used to work, then they
| suddenly stopped for a bunch of years; plus, no keyword
| search for no reason).
|
| By that time staying away from Google had become a goal
| in itself, but I understand who migrated to chrome.
|
| Anyway, I am firmly convinced Chrome won because of
| Google's abuse of its web search monopoly. The
| innovations that its team introduced were groundbreaking
| from a technical point of view, but Firefox was a
| perfectly capable browser.
| dagurp wrote:
| Or is it Google deciding for you what you should want?
| squarefoot wrote:
| Before someone flags the above comment as trolling, read
| on:
|
| "One thing Mozilla does have going for it is a lot of money
| --more than $1 billion in cash reserves, according to its
| latest financial statement. The primary source of this
| capital is Google, which pays Mozilla to be the default
| search engine on the Firefox home page. Those payments,
| which started in 2005, have been increasing--up 50% over
| the past decade, to more than $450 million, even as the
| total number of Firefox users has plummeted. In 2021 these
| payments accounted for 83% of Mozilla's revenue."
|
| source:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-
| go...
|
| I read it as: "If Google says _jump_ we jump ".
| lainga wrote:
| Quickly thumbing through my product book for "gaining market
| segment by making yourself indistinguishable from
| competition"
| a0123 wrote:
| Yes, but the current design and direction are very clearly
| not working.
|
| You can hardly blame them for trying to emulate what's
| currently working for everyone else when everything you've
| tried so far has led to your downfall.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Their downfall came when they changed everything that
| they were doing, and subsequently nuked every reason why
| someone would prefer firefox other than that they weren't
| google. They transformed firefox into wonky chrome, even
| copying superficial UI stuff. And then got very hostile
| about any criticism of this project, actively destroying
| all of the goodwill they built up. That alienation of
| their stubborn, fanatical base took _years_ to
| accomplish.
|
| People would move back to firefox if it were still
| anything like firefox.
| palata wrote:
| Not that I disagree with the alienation of their fanbase.
| I personally use Firefox mostly because it is not Google,
| certainly not because it is Mozilla (and to be fair I
| like the Firefox Containers).
|
| But I am not convinced most people see it like this. Most
| of the people I know honestly don't make the difference
| between Firefox and Chrome: they just use what they know.
| I think Chrome won those people because Google managed to
| convince them that "Internet == Chrome", not because they
| consciously chose Chrome as a better alternative.
| bakugo wrote:
| > But I am not convinced most people see it like this.
| Most of the people I know honestly don't make the
| difference between Firefox and Chrome: they just use what
| they know.
|
| And those people are not Firefox's audience. They don't
| care about their browser as long as it loads
| facebook.com, so they're just going to use whatever
| browser is more popular or pushed harder onto them, which
| is Chrome. If Firefox positions itself as just a Chrome
| clone, there's no reason to use it over Chrome.
|
| If Firefox wants to survive, it needs to position itself
| as a niche alternative for people who actually have
| preferences for what their browser is like, and do not
| like Chrome. Of course, it won't ever be as popular as
| Chrome, but that battle was lost a long time ago.
| palata wrote:
| > If Firefox wants to survive, it needs to position
| itself as a niche alternative
|
| Or... I'm still hoping that the EU Digital Markets Act
| may help.
| rurp wrote:
| They have been dumbing down Firefox and making it more
| Chrome-like for years now. I would argue that is the
| strategy which is clearly not working.
| palata wrote:
| IMO the vast majority of users cannot make the difference
| between Chrome and Firefox. They just use whatever they are
| used to and like it because they are used to it.
|
| Over the years, I have converted people to Firefox, Chrome,
| Brave, Safari. The only common denominator is that they all
| _strongly_ prefer the one they use now.
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| I hope they don't put more of the menu items into unremovable
| buttons in the address bar (which already contains four icons:
| tracker protection, certificates, containers, bookmark) or next
| to it (both an overflow menu for extensions and an overflow
| menu for ..other things? and a hamburger for ..other-other
| things? in addition to the buttons I actually do want there).
| On my laptop I can hardly read the domain name of the url
| unless I fullscreen the window.
| rurp wrote:
| The amount of regressions Mozilla has inflicted on Firefox in
| recent years blows my mind. One of their few big advantages
| over Chrome is better user control, but they have been working
| continuously to destroy that.
|
| Getting rid of most extensions and removing about:config are
| two big wtf decisions. All that does is piss off power users,
| which are the main advocates for this browser. Plus so many
| other baffling changes to remove or worsen existing features,
| along with the pointless UI reshuffles.
|
| Edit: I should clarify that about:config has only been removed
| from mobile Firefox, so far at least.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| > and removing about:config
|
| What?
| aquova wrote:
| > removing about:config
|
| about:config is right where it's always been, unless I've
| missed something?
| dralley wrote:
| You've missed nothing, OP is full of it.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| They're talking about the mobile application, where only a
| small subset of extensions was available for a few years.
| Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but
| forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have
| it).
|
| https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/21276
| mrandish wrote:
| Yes! FF PMs and designers seem to HATE user customization,
| add-ons and power user capabilities yet those are the main
| reasons I came to FF and why I still use it. While FF is
| still the best browser for me (barely), it's only achieved
| this by all the alternatives enshittifying and dumb-ifying
| their browsers even faster than FF. As it is I have to spend
| significant effort under the hood customizing UserChrome
| scripts just to maintain minimal usability. (...and thank the
| heavens for Lepton (https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-
| Fix), a regularly maintained, well-curated, all-in-one
| collection of essential Firefox fixes (which can each be
| turned off individually via flags.)
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > Getting rid of most extensions
|
| I am still butthurt
| krapp wrote:
| Welp. Name checks out.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Second-order name checkout
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Third order if improperly prepared crustacean.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Sounds like they hired GNOME devs.
| mrandish wrote:
| My cognitive style in using computer interfaces is to remember
| _where_ things are, so features that move things around (or
| hide them) based on some algorithm are not only annoying but
| slow down my workflow and increase cognitive load.
|
| Hopefully, they'll offer some way to turn this off.
| mwcz wrote:
| If all actions and options were reachable from a fuzzy finder,
| then I'd be very happy with all UI components being hidden to
| reduce clutter.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| For me, the big thing Firefox needs is better power management.
|
| Mac user here, and streaming video or doing a video call just
| kills my battery compared to Chrome or Safari.
|
| Would love to see more focus on energy consumption optimization.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Mac user here, and streaming video or doing a video call just
| kills my battery compared to Chrome or Safari.
|
| Is it not using hardware acceleration or something?
| switch007 wrote:
| Is this a comment from 2018? I thought FF on MacOS was pretty
| good these days.
|
| And are you suggesting Chrome is similar to Safari in terms of
| power usage? That would surprise me
|
| Safari will of course always be better. It's no competition
| dsego wrote:
| My experience as well, it used to be bad, it's okay now.
| e44858 wrote:
| It's the opposite for me on Linux. Firefox can play 4k 60fps
| perfectly, while Chrome drops frames and gets hot. I guess
| hardware-accelerated video is hard to get right.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Mac user here as well. Chrome kills my laptop (though I've
| uninstalled it about a year ago and never looked back). Firefox
| is pretty good. Safari is better, at least in terms of power
| management.
|
| Firefox is my main browser, and it's a beast. Very low
| footprint, snappy and very decent in terms of power
| consumption.
| slobiwan wrote:
| Is anybody currently using Sidebery who could comment on how the
| Firefox "Tab grouping, Vertical tabs, and sidebar" compare?
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Given that they seem to have only prioritised those features, I
| doubt anyone can since there's nothing material to compare to.
| babypuncher wrote:
| They haven't actually shown off their vertical tabs yet, so
| there isn't much to say.
|
| I am a Sideberry user though, and this excites me because a
| native implementation will likely look a lot cleaner, integrate
| better with your chosen theme, and actually allow the removal
| of the regular tab bar (you have to keep it with Sideberry
| because there is some functionality that cannot be replicated
| through an extension).
|
| Theming in particular might be a big one, I had to spend a
| couple hours tweaking the Sideberry CSS to make it look nice
| with the skin I use in Firefox. Not having to do that sure
| would be convenient, especially for the average user who
| doesn't know what a stylesheet is.
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _Intuitive privacy settings that deliver all the power of our
| world-class anti-tracking technologies in a simplified, easy-to-
| understand way._
|
| > _More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and
| prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important
| things quicker._
|
| Stop it. Gnome-ification is incredibly user hostile. Almost every
| time folks "simplify" a UI, they actually make it far more
| complicated instead.
|
| If your users now have to use dconf or userChrome.css to do the
| things they are accustomed to doing, you have not simplified
| anything.
| resource_waste wrote:
| I wonder how much money they get from their ads and spammy home
| menu. (Oh you can turn it off! /apologists)
|
| I boot up a fresh Linux install and everything looks A+ nice,
| then you open up firefox and it feels like I'm on M$ Windows 11 +
| Edge. Chromium doesnt have ads!
|
| I'll be happy when something replaces Firefox, they are a legacy
| company that might only exist due to anti-trust purposes.
| Something that is merit based would be an improvement.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > We've been listening to your feedback, and we're prioritizing
| the features you want most.
|
| > Tab Grouping, Vertical Tabs, and our handy Sidebar will help
| you stay organized no matter how many tabs you have open --
| whether it's 7 or 7,500.
|
| > Plus, our new Profile Management system will help keep your
| school, work, and personal browsing separate but easily
| accessible.
|
| Wow, that ... actually _is_ what users have been asking for, for
| ages. Nice.
|
| > More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and
| prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important
| things quicker.
|
| Oh, there's the other foot dropping. I wonder how SeaMonkey is
| doing...
| tresclow wrote:
| I remember around 2012 Firefox did use to have tab grouping,
| and they dropped the functionality after. I remember a friend
| of mine being annoyed for that, although I myself didn't
| appreciate much the functionality.
| Kye wrote:
| I could never figure out how it worked.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Oh, it's better than that: They had tab grouping as a native
| feature, and it was great, then they factored it out into an
| extension... and then they changed the way extensions worked,
| and didn't bother porting it. Kind of an insulting way to
| kill a feature IMO.
| morsch wrote:
| I'll take the "streamlined" menus if it gets me first party
| vertical tabs and auto segregation of profiles. The latter
| especially, I'm excited about whatever they come up with. The
| former, I think it'll take a long time to reach feature parity
| with existing add-ons, if they ever get there, seeing how they
| tend to keep novice users in mind.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| honestly, container tabs are way more useful to me than
| profiles every were. I can have 3 different Gmail accounts and
| a bunch of AWS accounts open in the same browser, with
| different colours for each so that I can figure out which is
| which.
|
| How about it they continued to iterate on container tabs and
| make it possible to pattern match urls to containers without a
| 3rd party addon.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Oh yes, native matching would be faster and remove plenty of
| glitching opportunities if done right - you can often see the
| tab being reloaded into a proper container and taking twice
| as long to load as it should, and sometimes the tab ends up
| being duplicated. You also lose the tab's history when it
| switches between containers at the moment.
| thwarted wrote:
| I've been using multiple profiles in Chrome for years for
| keeping things separate... right up until my company started
| using Google's centralized browser/device management which
| infects the entire browser not just the single profile that is
| tied to my corporate Google account. Specifically, they forced
| a homepage setting browser-wide that can not be changed on a
| per-profile basis.
|
| So multiple profiles are seemingly difficult to get right/fully
| isolated. I hope Firefox doesn't have similar limitations.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Firefox does have profiles and has had for as long as I've
| needed them. For some reason they've always been hidden away
| and needed different args on start to change the profile
| being started, or the use of an extension to allow profile
| switching. I don't use them anymore but from what I remember
| they worked well and were very isolated. Hopefully they're
| using the current implementation and just making it more user
| friendly?
| worble wrote:
| You can use the url about:profiles to manage profiles too,
| which is still hidden away and not a great UI, but at least
| you don't need to use an extension or the command line.
| akdor1154 wrote:
| As of a recent update, the Profile Manager is available as
| a startup option if you right click the ff icon (on gnome
| at least, i assume this was implemented cross platform)
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Can you still launch chrome manually with the --user-data-
| dir=/custom/path option when MDM is enabled?
| pessimizer wrote:
| If you had 7,500 tabs open, it would take firefox approximately
| three and a half weeks to start.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I regularly have 10 times as much open in Firefox and it
| works just fine. Chromium barely works at a fraction of that
| (or at least used to, haven't felt the need to recheck for a
| few years now).
| chgs wrote:
| You have 75,000 tabs open?
|
| I rarely have more than about 300 to be honest, how do you
| keep track?
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > how do you keep track?
|
| I don't. I usually work with just the latest subset of a
| few dozen or so, the rest just sits there until I decide
| that it's time to close them all (like I did last week,
| so I'm at just 700 right now). I also use vertical tabs,
| see my other comment here for how it looks like.
|
| Keeping tabs open lets me quickly context-switch, which
| is super helpful when you get distracted and don't
| remember what you have worked on an hour ago. No need to
| clean them up, as they get eventually unloaded, but still
| remain quickly accessible if needed (which is much less
| cumbersome than the history view which I never really use
| unless trying to find something I was on months ago).
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Having hit 4-5k tabs in a session, it's really not that bad
| of a perf hit. It's also an _unreasonable_ thing to ask of
| the browser, but it holds up well enough.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I really hope the profile management system keeps tab
| containers working the same. It's incredibly useful to have
| different containers automatically generated for AWS console
| sessions.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I just use Arc, it already has all of this
| yownie wrote:
| Heeyyyy are we actually getting Tab Grouping back? Finally?
| gamepsys wrote:
| As a Firefox daily user, this list makes me better understand why
| Firefox has such a low market share. Reorganizing menus or adding
| alt text to PDFs won't make any impact on user adoption/churn
| because users don't care. The alt text specifically sounds like
| resume engineering for some developers that want "on device
| generative ai" as a bullet point on this LinkedIn. Bullet points
| like this wouldn't be a problem if Firefox had more resources,
| but the list of actually pretty small and doesn't have a lot of
| space for fluff. I think they should pick 2-5 things and focus on
| those, such as multi-device sync, privacy, speed, battery life
| performance, customization, etc.
| em500 wrote:
| How are they stretched for resources? Mozilla's revenue is
| around a half billion USD per year.
| luyu_wu wrote:
| It's important to note here that Mozilla spends the majority
| of that money on non-Firefox projects (something that has
| pissed off people who have wanted to donate to Firefox
| specifically for ages). Firefox itself gets a sliver of that.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| Like many you are likely confused by the Foundation (MoFo)
| vs. Corp (MoCo) finances.
|
| You can only donate to MoFo, and indeed it doesn't spend
| much (if anything) paying Firefox staff. This is because
| Firefox staff is on the MoCo payroll, which gets its
| revenue mostly from their search engine deal with Google.
| MoCo actually pays MoFo to use the trademarks that are
| owned by MoFo.
| dralley wrote:
| >something that has pissed off people who have wanted to
| donate to Firefox specifically for ages
|
| Get pissed at tax law, not Mozilla. Mozilla Foundation
| cannot legally funnel tax-exempt donations into the
| development of products for a for-profit entity (Mozilla
| Corporation). That would be a crime.
| gravescale wrote:
| MoCo could start an OnlyFans for "donations", it's a
| pretty hot fox after all, what with being, y'know, on
| fire.
| strken wrote:
| Wow, if only there was a separate corporate entity which
| could accept donations but which wasn't the Foundation. I
| wonder what Mozilla would call such a Corporation.
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| Are you saying that they should avoid writing about features
| that aren't "core" (privacy, speed, battery life, sync) when
| telling you about the work they've done? I mean, they do say
| that
|
| > You can expect even _faster, smoother browsing_ on Firefox,
| thanks to quicker page loads and startup times - all while
| saving more of your phone's _battery_ life.
|
| and regarding privacy
|
| > we've worked hard to make things like translation and PDF
| editing in Firefox happen locally on your device, so you don't
| have to ship off your personal data to a server farm for a
| company to use it how they see fit
|
| - so they seem to have ticked your boxes, but they've also
| committed the sins of boasting about design and used the "AI"
| buzzword.
|
| Yes, "most people" don't care about "adding alt text to PDFs"
| but then most people don't even know what accessibility means.
| For the people who do need it, it's essential, and I think it
| would be awesome if it happens on-device instead of giving
| google/amazon/microsoft a description of every pdf image a
| blind person might want described.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > I think they should pick 2-5 things and focus on those, such
| as multi-device sync, privacy, speed, battery life performance,
| customization, etc.
|
| They did; they've been pushing on speed and privacy for a long
| time. It mostly turns out that the problem isn't usually
| technical superiority, unfortunately. (The problem is that
| Microsoft shoves Edge in users' faces every chance they get,
| and Google has been giving Chrome an unfair advantage for ages
| (notice that when people complain about Firefox being slow,
| it's usually on Google sites).)
| aquova wrote:
| Without even scrolling down, there's a header describing the
| work they're doing for "Continuous work on speed, performance
| and compatibility", exactly what you asked for.
|
| Anytime Firefox works on UI stuff, people seem to get really
| annoyed they aren't working on something else. You mention that
| "Reorganizing menus or adding alt text to PDFs won't make any
| impact on user adoption", I think it's the exact opposite.
| There is no greater thing the average everyday Joe cares more
| about than the UI, and if they just called it good 10 years
| ago, the project would be in an even worse state.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| > As a Firefox daily user, this list makes me better understand
| why Firefox has such a low market share
|
| As another Firefox active user, I say this has nothing at all
| to do with it. I use Firefox because it lets me control what I
| need to control to be productive, but I recognize this isn't
| why most people used Firefox at its peak. 99% of the reason
| Firefox got so big was that IE was so awful. Edge is
| serviceable, so that takes away the vast majority of Firefox's
| former user base.
|
| Firefox isn't going to grow as big as it was before Edge came
| along unless one of the major consumer OS provides a broken
| default browser on its platform _and_ allows Firefox to run on
| its platform (iOS fulfills only one of the requirements). It
| won 't grow as big as it was before Chrome came along unless
| both of the earlier requirements are met _and_ Firefox renders
| Google sites better than Chrome.
| gamepsys wrote:
| I know we aren't going back to peak popularity. The concern
| is that FF moves to so little marketshare that websites no
| longer build for compatibility.
| glenstein wrote:
| I think this perpetuates the fiction of assuming browser share
| is directly tied to specifics of browser functionality instead
| of more important macro forces like differences in brand
| awareness and ability to leverage market sector domination.
|
| There's been a proliferation of conflicting just-so stories
| purporting to explain the history of Firefox's browser market
| share, and they seem to relate to idiosyncratic preferences for
| customization instead of actual market dynamics.
| strken wrote:
| The alt text thing sounds like someone who thinks disabled
| access to the internet is an Important Thing. I'm not sure it
| will end up being better than an extension or doing the image
| recognition in a screen reader, but it's not necessarily
| cynical resume padding.
| tapper wrote:
| alt text is grate for blind people thanks.
| some_furry wrote:
| I just hope there's an option to _totally disable_ the AI junk.
|
| I'd just like a simple, secure browser that gets the hell out of
| my way and let's me extend it however I want (i.e., with an
| adblocker). I don't need or want AI models involved in the
| process.
| eesmith wrote:
| I like Firefox's built-in language translation feature. Does
| that count as "AI" these days?
| palata wrote:
| I don't think it counts as the modern "AI" buzz: it was there
| before and it is useful.
|
| The modern AI stuff is typically useless crap that was thrown
| there because... I don't know... FOMO?
| meiraleal wrote:
| What about catching up with PWA?
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| I'm still upset that theyve removed the "compact" style.
|
| Granted, between ublock origin and tree style tabs Firefox is
| still my favorite browser, but why are they changing this
| stuff...
|
| Can someone please ELI5 - what does "more streamlined menus"
| mean?
| behnamoh wrote:
| Looking at the comments, I'm not surprised about FF's low market
| share. They chose to target geeks and nerds, and let's face it,
| we tend to be whiny about almost everything and complain about
| any new change.
|
| Meanwhile, Google Chrome doesn't even need to pretend like they
| care about privacy, so they automatically target the other
| "ordinary" people who are not so picky about every new release
| note.
|
| This kinda teaches you something about the importance of product
| positioning.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| No, it's worse than that - they chose to target geeks, _then_
| decided to throw out the geeks in an attempt to target a more
| mainstream audience[0] and then failed to actually get the
| mainstream userbase, leaving them with neither the nerds nor
| the normies.
|
| [0] Firefox has always been at its strongest as a power-user's
| browser, chock-full of extensions and tweaks. Mozilla met this
| advantage with... two extinction events for extensions, and
| removal of customization options.
| rurp wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Google and Microsoft have huge anti-competitive
| advantages that they have been able to use to target casual
| users. As long as that continues Firefox will be facing an
| uphill battle to get casual downloads, but neither of those
| large companies care at all about power users. That gives
| Mozilla a big opening to get a niche of users that will
| heavily evangelize their browser and install it on friend and
| family devices.
|
| Unfortunately Mozilla's leadership does not see it that way
| and have steadily pissed off a huge number of former fans,
| without making inroads with any other groups.
|
| They are in a tough position regardless, but combining that
| with terrible product and organization management has gotten
| them into the state they're in now.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It also does not help that many of the big businesses break
| their website if you do not let them track you.
|
| I use Safari + Wipr Content blocker with iCloud Private Relay,
| and it is just so inconvenient to do anything on many major
| websites. At the least I have to reload the website without a
| content blocker, and at worst, I have to use Chrome, giving up
| my privacy.
|
| If a somewhat computer literate person like me who knows about
| content blockers/iCloud Private Relay/VPN/ublock Origin has to
| relent and use Chrome, then what chance does a layperson have?
| They will just use Chrome and go on about their business. They
| want to spend their life doing other things, not figuring out
| why Target is not letting them order this clothing item they
| spent 10 minutes looking for because they are getting flagged
| as a bot or fraudster or simply not letting themselves be
| tracked.
|
| I especially love when you block location access to a
| retailer's website, and then the retailer breaks their
| functionality for choosing the actual store you want to shop
| at. They have your billing and shipping address from previous
| orders, they have your 2FA login, and yet, every single time,
| they ask for access to your location, and when you decline,
| they set your store to some random store within a few hundred
| miles of you because (I assume) they are trying to use your IP
| address to show you the store.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I am happy it's nothing to do with Pocket, VPN or Colorways.
| Those are examples of visual clutter that I would love to see
| removed entirely.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Somewhere in the last two months Firefox Nightly got a massive
| performance boost on GNU/Linux. Thanks!
|
| Nice that vertical tabs are officially coming back, although I've
| been using them in a DIY manner for years already; sidebar
| extension with a bit of userChrome.css can do wonders:
| https://dosowisko.net/firefox-tabcenter.gif
| privacyking wrote:
| What do you mean coming back? I don't recall it ever having
| vertical tabs. Most people have just used treestyletabs for the
| past decade or two
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| It used to be a part of their Test Pilot program as "Tab
| Center", somewhere around 2016, but got discontinued. What's
| on the GIF above is a WebExtension-based reimplementation of
| that called "Tab Center Reborn" plus a bit of custom CSS that
| reimplements the original auto-hide behavior and makes it
| blend nicer with Plasma.
| gilgamesh3 wrote:
| >Tab Grouping, Vertical Tabs, and our handy Sidebar will help you
| stay organized no matter how many tabs you have open -- whether
| it's 7 or 7,500.
|
| Finally. Chrome has this feature for a while and it's really
| handy when working with lots of tabs, but I use Firefox on my
| main machine so I couldn't take advantage of this feature (and I
| don't like vertical tabs).
| FounderBurr wrote:
| I stopped donating when they declared 'rss is too complex to be
| maintained and is also old and gross and stuff, so we removed
| it'. Oh by the way totally unrelated here is Pocket(tm)!
| yownie wrote:
| Yes I agree that was some straight up bullshit
| kwanbix wrote:
| I really love Firefox. I even organized events for them on my
| home country, so don't get me wrong, wouldn't it be best for the
| web/devs that they switched to chrome's engine? They can still
| implement whatever changes to privacy and their changes just like
| MS does, and devs will only have to target one engine. Or am I
| missing something? Please discuss it if you agree or disagree, do
| not downvote. Thanks.
| Kye wrote:
| Monoculture in software rarely goes well. Right now Safari and
| Firefox exist to push back on Google _completely_ controlling
| the fate of the web. You do _not_ want Google to have the same
| unquestioned power Microsoft did in the IE6 era.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > wouldn't it be best for the web/devs that they switched to
| chrome's engine?
|
| Why would that be best? I don't think the problem with Firefox
| is the engine (anymore), I think it's the design choices
| Mozilla continues to make.
|
| If Firefox switched to the chromium engine, then why would I
| bother to continue to use it? Surely it would be better to
| switch to one of the "privacy-oriented" Chromium-based browsers
| that have been around for a long time now.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Are you bringing back XUL? No? Then please cease operation.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| PaleMoon - http://www.palemoon.org/ - is a hard fork of Firefox
| that still supports XUL.
| neilv wrote:
| Prioritization that I'd like to suggest for Firefox, driven by
| needs of society (from high to low):
|
| 1. Representing the public interest wrt Web -- especially fervent
| respect for privacy in the browser, almost as much emphasis on
| security, fighting commercial excesses around de jure and defacto
| standards, and social equity within the scope of what Mozilla
| does (e.g., software accessibility, encouraging all volunteers).
|
| 2. Competitive browser compliance and performance. To be viable
| as a daily driver, to have impact.
|
| 3. Forward-looking R&D on Internet public interest things not
| currently considered "browser", but potentially big in near term.
|
| 4. Fancy browser features that actually increase uptake and
| retention. (Much lower than the first 3.)
|
| 5. Designer's opinion/portfolio UX changes. (Could be
| improvements, and there's value in an appealing and moving-target
| modern appearance, but misalignment is a risk to be careful of.)
|
| 6. Necessary-evil money-making compromises. (Very, very
| carefully. Many past ones were negatives. And we _still_ see
| arguable dark patterns around some of those, such as as Firefox
| updates sometimes reverting users ' express Search-related
| preferences.)
|
| A marketing challenge of these priorities would be that even most
| techies can't assess how well you're doing #1.
|
| But that mix of things you do can include things understandable
| to your typical user, such as superior blocking of abusive ads.
| (But don't drop the ball on things that your typical user can't
| understand -- they're entrusting you as an expert to act in their
| interests.)
|
| Educational outreaches can also help. And if you get to the point
| that you're generating an order of magnitude fewer security
| vulnerabilities than your competitor, then marketing people can
| run with that. But be careful with positioning, so that
| communications about smart, hard activities don't get conflated
| in people's minds with confusing mission drift and fluffy PR.
| glenstein wrote:
| >4. Fancy browser features that actually increase uptake and
| retention.
|
| Yeah, I would say I think these are actually a good thing as
| long as the cost-benefit ratio is acceptable and it doesn't
| compromise core efforts (people have asserted this kind of
| compromise has been happening, but rarely with any coherence or
| substantiation).
|
| I would consider the example of Opera in its heyday - whether
| it was Turbo, "widgets", extensions, or Unite, which in my
| opinion was a triumph of originality and innovation that went
| unsung. Those are good when done right.
| amluto wrote:
| I have a suggestion for Mozilla: find use cases that benefit your
| users and _are not possible in other browsers_. For example:
|
| Browsers are _terrible_ at accessing devices on a local network.
| Make this work well in Firefox, extending protocols as needed.
|
| Browsers are _terrible_ at configuring IoT devices. It device
| makers are terrible at making apps for this purpose that don't
| suck. Make Firefox (on desktop and mobile!) be the premier way to
| usable and securely configure IoT devices. Get device vendors to
| sign on: someone could (and probably _would_ ) sell a gadget
| where the instructions suggest installing Firefox to set up the
| device.
|
| Leverage the same technology to go after enterprise users. Ever
| seen a piece of high-end, expensive networking gear with a web
| UI? Ever contemplated how pathetically insecure this is? Ever
| contemplated how unpleasant it to provision certificates to make
| it secure? Make this work, easily and securely, on Firefox, using
| new protocols as needed. Make everyone else play catch-up.
|
| Heck, start small. Allow setting domain constraints on imported
| root certificates.
|
| The moral: do something _new_ and _better_.
| palata wrote:
| Please, no.
| speckx wrote:
| I would like Firefox to be able to set extensions to run only on
| click or allow me to provide a list of domains, like Chrome does,
| so every extension is not running on every page. See
| https://support.google.com/chrome?p=enable_extensions and
| https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/option-to-allow-extensi....
| drewg123 wrote:
| One thing I wish they'd work on is making saved credit card
| information work correctly and reliably. I use FF on Macos laptop
| and FreeBSD desktop, with multiple profiles on each. I have
| different profiles where CC saving work fine, and others that
| don't across both OSes. I'm so annoyed at having to pull out my
| CC that I've gone back to chrome a lot of the time when I need to
| buy things...
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| After using FF for the past 7 years, every day at work I switched
| to Arc. It's been __okay__. I'm not a fan of them trying to nix
| the bookmark system and much prefer FF's implementation of just
| good old fashioned, indexable bookmarks.
|
| If FF can manage a good implementation of vertical tabs, I'd
| switch in a heartbeat.
| gsuuon wrote:
| Lack of PWA / installable apps is why I switched back to chrome
| after trying to daily drive firefox for a while. Really wish
| they'd reconsider the decision to drop it.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| Untested, but I think this Firefox fork added support back:
| https://floorp.app/en
| MrAlex94 wrote:
| I believe a lot of the work comes from:
| https://github.com/filips123/PWAsForFirefox
|
| P.S. the project you linked is no longer FOSS.
| worksonmine wrote:
| Great, now please give me back the option to set my new tab page
| without resorting to extensions.
| jimbobthrowawy wrote:
| Does setting it in about:config do it for you? I see what you
| mean though, since the option right above that in the menu lets
| you set custom url(s) for your start page.
| michael9423 wrote:
| The way I see it, there was a time when FF had the chance to not
| accept the google contracts and go 100% independent with their
| own search engine or something similar. This would have resulted
| in FF actually siding with users. It would have resulted in FF
| radically rejecting ads, and this would have changed the entire
| web because people would have flocked to Firefox.
|
| But Mozilla leadership did not have an interest in this, in light
| of endless google money. Google essentially captured Mozilla back
| in the day.
|
| Now people have got used to ads because they only could chose
| between browsers that don't protect them.
|
| Brave is trying to correct the mistake of FF and is attracting a
| small userbase, but not large enough to make a big difference,
| because the times have changed a lot.
|
| Now with the new management at Mozilla and the dim outlook for
| the next 5 years, the realization is kicking in that listening to
| users is actually important. But the elephant in the room is the
| contracts with large ad-based search engines.
| palata wrote:
| > This would have resulted in FF actually siding with users
|
| Sure, but would the users have sided with FF? I'm not
| convinced. The users use whatever BigTech tells them to use,
| that's how I see it.
|
| > Brave is trying to correct the mistake of FF
|
| Brave is Chromium. I don't see how this would even begin
| correcting the mistakes of FF. The one thing FF does right is
| that it is not Chromium.
| squidbeak wrote:
| Is a successful search engine such an easy thing to produce?
| Ciantic wrote:
| I switched to Firefox about 3 weeks ago, what is killing me is
| dragging the tabs. It is so much worse with Firefox. Someone has
| made a video of this if one can't remember how they differ:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRuBDH32hPI
|
| With Chrome I can drag a tab and it moves with me, with Firefox
| the tab being dragged blocks the view. Also since with Chrome,
| the tab moves with the mouse I can with one drag move a tab and
| use Windows' snap-to-edge feature. This is a two-step process
| with Firefox.
|
| Firefox is an underdog, it should focus on making the UI familiar
| and fast, but keep customizability. Another thing I noticed is
| that Firefox doesn't allow to keep unpacked extensions loaded as
| Chrome does, there is no good reason why not, luckily I fixed
| that with some userChrome scripts.
| xchip wrote:
| Not very exciting, to be honest.
|
| I would like certain apps to open always in private browsing.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| I love that Firefox continues to be been focused on performance.
| There was a while where FF perf was looking kind of bleak
| compared to Chrome. These days FF and Chrome have similar
| performance. FF might have the edge now.
| amanzi wrote:
| Mozilla asks people to contribute ideas on "Mozilla Connect", but
| then chooses to ignore most of the top-rated ideas. To be fair,
| better tab management is first and third of the list, so they are
| looking to improve that one. But PWAs is second on the list, and
| there's no mention of this in their announcement. Bringing back
| proper PWA support seems to align perfectly with Mozilla's
| mission, so it blows me away why they aren't actively working on
| it or talking about it.
|
| The other things mentioned are just features that I would expect
| to keep improving over time, but are nothing groundbreaking.
| altairprime wrote:
| PWAs, as in "File > Save Website As... > website.exe" on a PC?
| cpeterso wrote:
| The "PWA support" that people are clamoring for is the option
| to open a web page shortcut in a browser window without an
| address bar.
| benatkin wrote:
| Only 81% of revenue from Google, who has a competing browser that
| they beg you to switch to...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
| qwertox wrote:
| That site needs a dark mode. I'm surprised it hasn't.
|
| Multiple rows of tabs, even more through mouse-wheel scrolling,
| and fixed width tabs for easy closing. Like Tab Mix Plus.
| roesel wrote:
| I still miss the icons for items in the hamburger menu, this was
| one of the worst changes ever for me personally.
|
| > More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter
|
| If this means the same as for Thunderbird, I'm going to have to
| switch after 20 years...
| difosfor wrote:
| I wish they'd finish up their webcodecs implementation. Even
| Safari at least supports VideoDecoder.
| justinclift wrote:
| This is the crowd that "listened to user feedback" then decided
| to add a button (that can't be removed) to the taskbar whose only
| purpose in life is to open the Extensions page.
|
| An action that's used _once_ when setting up a browser, and never
| again. And you 're not allowed to remove it to put something else
| there instead that's actually important.
|
| Fucking Arseholes. :( :( :(
| surfcao wrote:
| As long as I can hide the address bar to have more screen real
| estate and vim extensions work, I am happy..
| aldanor wrote:
| If Firefox natively integrated TreeStyle tab or Sidebery and made
| it lightning fast, searchable and syncable, I would probably
| return to FF on that day.
|
| Definitely not yet another "reduction of visual clutter".
| causality0 wrote:
| How about making it so all those stupid purple pop-up messages on
| mobile that tell me what I already damn know can be swiped away
| instead of sitting on my screen blocking the UI for an eternity
| every time I dismiss a tab or full-screen a video?
| up6w6 wrote:
| Related news: Servo Web Engine Continues Advancing But Seeing
| Just $1.6k In Monthly Donations
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/news/Servo-Engine-May-2024
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