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Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

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Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#191

Post by tfigment »

feanaro wrote: post #105
NullInvictus wrote: post #32

I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. They certainly should be addressed to some degree, but the issues I find people are bothered about in Firefox are something that Mozilla has very little control over: Bugs in sites. As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. It's pretty easy to…

> As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. Also a full-time Firefox user. This is fascinating because I quite literally cannot remember a website for which I had to switch browser so it would start working. What kind of websites are these? Have you noticed any pattern about them? Perhaps it's a certain type of site…

Also full time Firefox user. Most of my issues are either blocking related so that is on me or apparently sites bugs. At work I use chrome for beyondtrust because I cannot get ff to automatically download and launch rdp sessions. Apparently the content type is wrong in downloaded file so ff will not associate an application with the file so adds several steps to launching rdp sessions. Easier to keep chrome off to the side around for that task.

The other issue is that it does not use Windows ca store for certificates. When company uses internal certificate authority for internal websites this requires users to manually update the browser cert store. Chrome and Edge will use windows ca store on windows. My it dept will not automate this but will manage the windows ca store.

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#192

Post by brushfoot »

> Mozilla needs to [...] move away from Google as their default search engine

I hope they consider Startpage if so. That might be an easier switch for non-technical users if they explain it's still Google under the hood, but without the privacy concerns.

https://www.startpage.com/

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#193

Post by Isinlor »

NullInvictus wrote: post #32

I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. They certainly should be addressed to some degree, but the issues I find people are bothered about in Firefox are something that Mozilla has very little control over: Bugs in sites. As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. It's pretty easy to…

I use Firefox all the time and use it for web development.

But modern frontend stack - with the whole pile of transpilers, uglifiers, and what not - is almost unusable with Firefox, because source maps don't work with Webpack.

https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/1194

This put me in a position where I had to choose between switching to Chrome for development or not using Webpack that comes nicely integrated into the web framework of my choice.

I went with ditching Webpack, but it's hard.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55669725/require-module-...

Developers will not use Firefox if FF dev tools are inferior to Chrome.

Some comments from devs:

> Can we please fix this? I don't want to choose Chrome as the browser only coz of this issue.

Mozzila took notice of the issue after 4 years...

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#194

Post by Vinnl »

idoubtit wrote: post #141
Tistron wrote: post #34

Two things has me almost dropping firefox and going over to chrome: - It still doesn't remember my credit card details, and is generally worse at filling out forms. - On mobile, I regularly experience that the cookie jar gets broken somehow and all my logins are broken which will work again by closing the browser down and starting it again. The only think keeping me on Fx is a sense of ethics, the same reason I don't…

> The only think keeping me on Fx is a sense of ethics So do I. At least I still use Firefox as my secondary browser. My own main recriminations: - The download manager is awful. I sometimes download several times a file because I didn't see it started. And I could describe half a dozen bugs with it. For example, under some conditions, the size of a download is replaced by the sum of the previously downloaded files (…

> - I need an extension to confirm on quit. I sometimes press Ctrl-q when I intended Ctrl-w. The config browser.showQuitWarning and browser.warnOnQuit have no effect. I had to read FF's source code to understand it was intentional: the code had evolved (IMHO, in a bad way), the doc had not.

That's odd; I'm running stable Firefox, and the second option in my Preferences is "Warn you when quitting the browser" - and it does what it says, for me, without an extension.

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#196

Post by hutzlibu »

abraCadabstrax wrote: post #160
privethedge wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally prefer firefox's dev tools to chrome's ones.

Boy, I am with you on this one. Full-time FF user too. The whole CSS grid thing is very well done and useful.

Well, I don't really work with CSS much, but js. Are you consider the debugging tools well done as well? And do you know chrome dev tools? With its elaborate performance tools etc?

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#197

Post by AsyncAwait »

blub wrote: post #154
AsyncAwait wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla doesn't build only a browser either and as a Rust user, am glad they don't.

The Rust community prides itself on being independent from Mozilla, when their relationship is pointed out, but now Rust is suddenly a major beneficiary of those 500 million? They do build only a browser.

> The Rust community prides itself on being independent from Mozilla, when their relationship is pointed out

In terms of decision making, Rust is definitely a community oriented project, but there's not denying reality and at present practically all of Rust core devs who work on it full-time are paid by Mozilla.

Were Mozilla to pull out support, development would likely continue, but at a much, much reduced pace.

> a major beneficiary of those 500 million

I agree with you that the vast majority of it is not going to Rust and I do wish they'd increase the share of their revenue that goes to engineering from 45% to something closer to 85%.

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#198

Post by lucb1e »

mamon wrote: post #173
joelthelion wrote: post #87

> This raises some questions: why is Firefox usage going down, and what does Mozilla need to do to bring it back up? > How does an average user get started with Firefox? This misses the elephant in the room : the main reason Chrome is eating other browsers is that Google is putting its advertising might behind it. You know that little "want a better browser" pop-up displayed on Google's search engine? That's an absol…

>> that little "want a better browser" pop-up displayed on Google's search engine? I actually do not know what you're talking about. Been using Firefox for the last few years and haven't seen this pop-up once.

As another Firefox user, I know the pop up very well. Not even the results page where people at distracted, it's on the actual Google homepage (as well as other places). Abusing monopoly in one market to monopolize another.

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#199

Post by AsyncAwait »

siddiqnx wrote: post #44

I'm a Firefox user. But recently, thinking about switching to Chrome. It's because some website don't work as they are supposed to on Firefox (Ex. Google analytics, Codesandbox etc.). And as the number of add-ons increases, the animations and transitions get increasingly janky and slow. In Firefox mobile it's worse – complex (but sometimes simple) animations stutter. I have tested it using some other 4 or 5 popular o…

> thinking about switching to Chrome. It's because some website don't work as they are supposed to on Firefox (Ex. Google analytics, Codesandbox etc.).

At least on Google's part, that's likely intentional, switching is sending them a signal that being an abusive bully works.

Re: Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome

#200

Post by goatinaboat »

userbinator wrote: post #42
NullInvictus wrote: post #32

I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. They certainly should be addressed to some degree, but the issues I find people are bothered about in Firefox are something that Mozilla has very little control over: Bugs in sites. As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. It's pretty easy to…

If developers are genuinely concerned with browser diversity and not handing the Web over to Google and whatever they deem to be the next IE6, it starts with having a test plan for other browsers. I'd say it starts with dialing back the "new feature/change fetish" that a lot of web developers have. Yes, I know some things simply can't be done without a JS webapp, but not all and probably not even a majority, so if HT…

Webdevs don’t seem to have much of a user-centric view of the sites they develop. The vast majority of use cases on the web are “I want to see a list of options then fill in a form”. All the tech needed to shop online or bank or pay bills or book travel or whatever existed 20 years ago (SSL being the last piece of the puzzle, all the rest is just plain HTML).
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