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Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

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Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#91
post #23

I have switched to Firefox on mobile as well. There are some occasional hiccups (rare), but the speedup and battery life you gain from ad-blocking makes it totally worth it. For those who are evaluating, please install AdBlock before you take a call - and do try it for a few days.

* install ublock origin[0], it is far superior to ad block.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#92
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, that crown goes to Firefox. Its 2004 1.0 release was also publicized in the New York Times. Way before Chrome came out.

To be fair, FF shot themselves in the foot. They didn't keep pace with Chrome. I use FF and think it is better NOW, but that wasn't always the case. I think that's where they lost their market share. I'm glad they put the work into Quantum. But it is going to be hard to regain that market share.

The classic problem of being first to market in software, is that your competition can learn from your design and move forward with a fresh code. Firefox is still trying to shed off code from a decade ago.

The history of browsers is littered with legacy code being defeated by new code.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#93

Being visually nearly indistinguishable from chrome hasn't really worked in its favor. (quick, which is which: http://9ol.es/double-browser.png ). Probably north of 95% don't know about or understand licensing differences or differences in rendering engines or core architecture. Interfaces and obvious features with compelling narratives are what matter because that's how the user engages with the product. Asking user…

> Transforming itself to be visually nearly indistinguishable from chrome hasn't really worked in its favor. Chrome changed its style more recently and ended up being more similar to Firefox.

Is that the timeline here? In that case it was Chrome using its market position cleverly and Firefox not responding adequately. I can only speak for linux interfaces btw.

Small "bullshit" interface changes can have dramatic user and marketshare impact. We can all sit around and wish the world didn't work this way but it's not going to change.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a heavy Firefox+addon user, but I just don't use phone browser enough to even bother using addons. (And Firefox for Android is pretty bad otherwise, unfortunately.)

Since I refuse to install apps on my phone for services I use that have websites, I'm a fairly heavy phone browser user.. so being able to adblock, block arbitrary JS (noscript), and kill tracking cookies is wonderful. > And Firefox for Android is pretty bad otherwise, unfortunately I disagree. Why do you think it is "pretty bad"?

Sync, bookmark handling, performance.

Sync is the worst by a mile. You can NEVER expect a tab you opened (or history) on computer to show up reliably on mobile device in timely fashion.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#95
post #9

Been really enjoying Firefox, especially after Quantum. More devs should support and use it, lest we be beholden to Chrome for the rest of time.

DevTools are lacking and they broke a ton of add ons with the API update (with no simple way to side load.) I can't use it. I tried again about five months ago and, one two machines, pages would stutter as I scrolled. Not worth my time to mess around with.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#96
post #48
post #9

Been really enjoying Firefox, especially after Quantum. More devs should support and use it, lest we be beholden to Chrome for the rest of time.

I would love to use Firefox more for dev, but until it has a first class way to disable CORS, I can't. "CORS Everywhere" is not sufficient (it alters responses, but does not actually disable CORS, which doesn't cover all needs). Chrome I can at least disable CORS via the command line, and Safari does it best by putting it in a Developer menu that I can easily toggle. Firefox's dev tools also seem to still be behind —…

I love using Firefox as my daily driver, and I can always pop open chrome if I really have to. What kind of life do you lead where your browser needs to have CORS constantly disabled?

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a heavy Firefox+addon user, but I just don't use phone browser enough to even bother using addons. (And Firefox for Android is pretty bad otherwise, unfortunately.)

Since I refuse to install apps on my phone for services I use that have websites, I'm a fairly heavy phone browser user.. so being able to adblock, block arbitrary JS (noscript), and kill tracking cookies is wonderful. > And Firefox for Android is pretty bad otherwise, unfortunately I disagree. Why do you think it is "pretty bad"?

It was working really slow for me 6 months ago but it seems to be totally solved in recent versions.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#98

We just shipped a chrome extension for Polar... I did a big analysis of the distribution of extensions on Firefox vs Chrome. You could expect Firefox to be maybe 1/3rd that of Chrome. Nope... it's 1/40th.... So 40x more people use the same extension on Chrome vs Firefox. I'm not sure why this is... it might be that Chrome users adopt extensions more readily than Firefox users? I think there's a lesson here on long te…

Perhaps because Chrome is the new IE?

Google has consistently pushed Chrome and profits from it.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#99

I'd like to use Firefox. I've tried it out several times the last year. It's okay. Unfortunately, I always end up going back to Safari. Despite the performance improvements, Safari still feels like a faster, smoother browser. Firefox is still pretty ugly, too. On macOS, it feels chunkier and less natively integrated. Safari's "omnibar" is superior to Firefox's. Safari actually suggests web sites, which I use all the…

I agree about the performance on OS X. I still find myself trying to figure out which tab is pegging the CPU and about:performance is not helpful.

Another nice feature Safari has that I rely on is "show all tabs". Yes there are various "works in progress" trying to replicate the old tab groups / panorama functionality but I find them lacking or incomplete. Mozilla really hasn't done anything to improve the many tabs UX. Even Chrome might get something like tab groups:

https://www.chromestory.com/2018/11/how-to-enable-tab-groups...

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#100
post #48
post #9

Been really enjoying Firefox, especially after Quantum. More devs should support and use it, lest we be beholden to Chrome for the rest of time.

I would love to use Firefox more for dev, but until it has a first class way to disable CORS, I can't. "CORS Everywhere" is not sufficient (it alters responses, but does not actually disable CORS, which doesn't cover all needs). Chrome I can at least disable CORS via the command line, and Safari does it best by putting it in a Developer menu that I can easily toggle. Firefox's dev tools also seem to still be behind —…

Curious what use cases you have for disabling CORS?

Is it for 3rd party domains and APIs or response that you control? Either way, controlling it in browser doesn't sound like the right way.

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