Using Firefox for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58

1. When Mozilla has forced us to use WebRTC, it kowtowed to this line out of fright of the likes of Google et al. Well tough, by Mozilla nuking important differences that differentiate Firefox from other browsers I may as well use Chrome (its user-base is bigger anyway and most of Firefox's users have already deserted to Chrome for probably this reason). Moreover, Mozilla's inclusion of WebRTC in Firefox broke everything (it's a case of damn the user—which is something Mozilla is truly expert at).

2. Use Firefox and one's plugins have a functional lifetime similar to that of free neutron (for those not in the know, that ain't very long)! I cannot think of another software product on the planet whose developers have managed to nuke so much supporting code (add-ons etc.) as Mozilla done with Firefox. Over the years, add-on after add on—literally many thousands of them have been made redundant and obsolete by Mozilla changing the code base so as to break compatibility. 'Compatibility' is a word totally unknown to Mozilla's developers. The lack of version compatibility in Firefox can only be described as truly monumental; with Mozilla, it’s a case of damn both users as well as the independent developers who develop plug-ins/add-ons—clearly all the valuable time they've wasted chasing Mozilla's headless, ever-fickle development methods doesn't mean a thing to Mozilla.

3. Programmers are and have always been notorious for developing programs the way they want them rather than what the users want or need. However, at Mozilla this waywardness has reached new heights, there it seems Mozilla's programmers can do what they damn well want without question or impunity (or without referral to the Firefox user base despite Mozilla's many pretensions to the contrary). For example, in Firefox the move to the Australis interface without a fallback option to use the old interface showed a blatant disregard for its many users. With actions like that, it's no wonder that Firefox's user base is in free-fall!

4. Many other deliberately introduced annoyances only back up my previous point. For example, the deliberate removal of the JavaScript on/off toggle from Firefox was nothing other than an act of authoritarian programming vandalism. Just because Mozilla's programmers believe JavaScript is the orgasmic nirvana of the programming language world, they shouldn't straitjacket those of us who live a freer, better and much, much faster web existence without it. As this JavaScript on/off switch only affects those of us who do not use JavaScript, then its removal can only be considered as authoritarian bastardry. It's bad enough that we've already lost the internet to the corporate giants—likes of Google, Facebook and Microsoft, et al without the so-called independents like Mozilla also slavishly towing the party line.

5. The same goes for the embedded DRM code within Firefox. Yes, let those users who believe in a proprietary internet use it but do so by way of a downloadable plugin/add-on. The proprietary DRM code should not be embedded within the primary open source Firefox code base for a very good reason becasue it demonstrates to those who wish to make the web their very own proprietary domain—Google, Netflix, et al—that they have actually won/succeeded.

6. The longstanding failure of Mozilla to provide many important features in Firefox default code—features that many users want and consider essential—has meant that users have to resort to many plugins/add-ons to try and rectify Firefox's many limitations and shortcomings. For example, let's start way back [this isn't a new problem, Mozilla has 'form' going back decades]: Internet Explorer always had several ways of saving a web page: normal HTML 'save page complete' and the MHTML (mime) format which saved the web page to a single file (.MHT extension). Not only did Mozilla never introduce a feature that would allow a web page to be saved to a single 'zipped'/concatenated file (as in Internet Explorer) but also it never bothered to embed the Mozilla Archive Format (.MAFF/MAF extension) in Firefox either, thus users of that very useful format had to rely on plugins written by others. For many, myself included, this nobbled Firefox was operationally inferior to even horrible Internet Explorer! Talk about shooting oneself in the foot. It's yet another example of Mozilla programmers doing what they want/telling users to go take a jump. [If you don't realize why a single file web page archive is better than the multi-file HTML approach and or why the single-file save should be embedded in the base code then I'm sorry, that explanation will just have to wait.]

What's more, to add insult to injury, Mozilla blatant pushing of WebRTC and WebExtensions into Firefox killed the ability of the Mozilla Archive Format to work in its latest versions so MAF's developers have now abandoned its development altogether. To put it bluntly, Mozilla has a damn hide to treat us users just like shit. Clearly, Mozilla doesn't give an iota about how this disrupts users (for example, I've thousands of MAF files that I view regularly but which I now cannot view in the latest versions of Firefox).

[Please don't send me feedback on this. I know the MAF format is essentially a ZIP file and thus said files can be converted. This is not the main issue, which is that Mozilla's careless actions have likely resulted in many thousands of people around the world having to expend millions of tedious hours resolving an 'unnecessary' problem—it's wasted human effort that should never have been expended. As I see it, Mozilla is far from being alone here; Microsoft and many others are also past masters at it. When considered globally, the huge collective loss of human time and effort because programmers program for themselves first with users' considerations coming in a poor second is a serious problem across the software industry and that's why I and many others consider it unacceptable for the industry to define itself as "software engineering". The term "engineering" used in this context is an affront to true engineers/true engineering. As a person who programs myself—even with my blinkered and biased eyes—comparing the maturity of other engineering endeavors (say chemical engineering for instance) to that of the software industry is akin to comparing a mature adult to that of an undisciplined child that's still running around helter-skelter in short pants. The gross examples I've already mentioned here are proof enough (look around you and you'll easily find thousands more). QED!]

Just from my own experience, I've found that there are literally dozens of other essential features still missing from Firefox some 20 years on after its initial development. That's why I don't believe Firefox is a serious product, nor do I believe its developers take the product sufficiently seriously to ever make it a great product.

7. Moving on: let's for a moment look at the unfinished and ragged edges in Firefox. There are many but I've only time to mention two. First is the decade-plus long and quirky bug where a CTRL-C on some highlighted web page text will not take, that's to say when one attempts to paste the text into another program there's nothing there. It's not as if Mozilla is unaware of this bug as it's been mentioned dozens of times over many years. Right, it's a damn annoying bug for users but Mozilla considers it too trivial to fix (it's another example of Mozilla's 'damn the user' attitude). Yet another is the truly primitive/archaic state of Firefox's web page printing routine. I could just about write a thesis on this issues but I'll make only two points (a) it's been in this dysfunctional state for going on two decades and Mozilla has still done nothing about it; and, (b) the problems are large and many (for example the way Firefox fails to properly handle an image that spans over a page break—it prints half on one page and half on the other).

For me, the people at Mozilla, despite all their beat-up rhetoric about Firefox's glossy features, just haven't delivered the necessary (utilitarian) goods let alone any enticing gloss. Just because these issues are harder to spot or live under the surface doesn't make them any less important. The fact that Firefox has so many unresolved issues that still remain on Mozilla's books (or more likely have never even made it here), are key reasons why Firefox's ratings are free-fall.

Therefore, you may well ask what to I do for a browser if Firefox is so bad. The answer is that I use the Pale Moon browser. Pale Moon is far from perfect but unlike Mozilla, its developers and users alike think similarly to me—that is users needs come before programmers' egos.