I use FF for all financial/banks website stuff as I don't run any sort of blocker with it. Everything else is done in Vivaldi. Got to isolate the former.
Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years
161–170 of 455 posts
Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years
#162I have an alternative set of explanations regarding why Firefox is seeing a continuous decline for the last 12 years. 1. Mozilla is competing against Google. Numbers are not public but I would be surprised if Google didn't have 10x more people working on Chrome vs. the number of people working on Firefox. 2. Mozilla is competing against Google. Numbers are again not public but I remember reading estimates that the eq…
> Google owns countless properties besides Chrome, from Google Docs to Google Translate to Android, and leverages all of these (great products) to lead users towards Chrome I always wonder why Google do this. Sure, they could always have more Chrome users, but at the same time they're going to have to support Firefox forever whatever happens, and Firefox is a nice hedge for Google against being accused of having a br…
> but at the same time they're going to have to support Firefox forever whatever happens, and Firefox is a nice hedge for Google against being accused of having a browser monopoly
They merely need to wait for a time when the regulatory environment is more favorable. It's just a roll of the dice every 4 years, sooner or later their number will come up and they can cut all support then and there.
But it's not really necessary. By making Chrome the preferred and optimal way to use any site, and making chrome intrinsics the expected behavior of a web browser, they are creating an environment where all the incentives are towards making your browser more like chrome. Eventually there won't be much difference in the surface between Firefox and Chrome and Mozilla will finally make the decision we all eventually expect, and just change Firefox into a true chromium fork.
Though that may happen sooner anyways. It feels pretty clear that there are parts of the greater Mozilla org that don't benefit at all from all the effort going into Gecko (or a web browser in general) and wouldn't be disappointed in the money going towards other initiatives instead.
Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you disable the top tabs these days? I activated browser debugging, pressed ctrl + alt + shift + i and then hunted down the offending tab bar and put in "display: none" for it. It gets harder and harder year by year though and on the tabstrip issue in Bugzilla there's at least one person who was annoyed and told me to not question peoples motives after I asked a simple question about it. Anyone here working fo…
The CSS "hack" is the official way. That's sort of the point of using CSS to display the UI. It's editable.
Pretty sure the point of using the rendering engine to display the UI was to make it easier to write cross-platform UI; granted, though, the point of then having the feature to use CSS to modify the UI was to do that (and it was relatively easy once the UI was already written in the rendering engine).
Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years
#164Longtime Firefox user here. Oddly I have no problem with Tabs on top (I prefer that UI design), low contrast between tabs (there are favicons and text which clearly indicate the tabs, I am not lacking anything to make out where a tab is), removing XUL (only using few add-ons and those transitioned), performance (is fine for me on a macbook pro). Sometimes it feels to me as if there is a trend to bash on weaker projec…
The last version messed up macos dark mode completely. It ignores much css including including add-ons like tree style tabs which is the main reason I use firefox. So I am stuck on v90 The bug says fixed but the nightlies show it hasn't
The last version messed up macos dark mode completely. It ignores much css including including add-ons like tree style tabs which is the main reason I use firefox. So I am stuck on v90
The bug says fixed but the nightlies show it hasn't
Oh and I had to switch to Safari to edit this comment.
Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years
#165I agree with this opinion piece. Firefox is a product strangely hostile to its core userbase. It's almost like they've been deliberately trying to sabotage themselves for years. I don't use it because I approve of all their stupid pigheaded UI choices, I use it because it has been the least bad option despite those choices. That might not go on for much longer, though.
I'd say other way around is true. HN crowd won't like this but it's very hard to continuously update a product for the core userbase that Firefox has. (small sample size but I maintain a small privacy focused app and from my experience, most of the reviews I get are how it's missing features which competitors have or how it's unusable because it can't handle stuff without jeopardizing privacy focused nature of the ap…
But reviews about missing feature, or reviews in general... that might not give you a good idea of why people are using it, if they don't leave a review at all
Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years
#166Unpopular opinion: Personally, I'd love to see Mozilla take on Apple in court. Firefox, Gecko rendering engine and all, should be on iOS. Not allowing competing browsers is more anti-competitive than not allowing third party payments for in-app purchases, and would lead to incredible amounts of innovation.
That would then lead to Chrome being allowed on iOS too, undoing any potential gain in a day.
There's (IMO) nothing anti-competitive about not allowing other browsers. They all serve the same web pages.
Cynical take: if Mozilla were to start such a law suit, it would be to avoid Google having to disclose how much money they make from Chrome users.
Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
i use ffox on android because (for some reason) it's the only one I'm aware of that has ublock origin addon...( happy to be proven wrong :) I also used to use reader mode once in a while...
I switched from Firefox on Android to Brave. Not because I like Brave, but because I disliked the new UI in Firefox. Brave also had much better performance for JavaScript and CSS animations.
I think the UI on FF mobile is more than fine.. what did you not like about it?
Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox on Android is pretty fantastic. I feel like it's the one thing Mozilla did really right. As someone who has their laundry list of issues with regular Firefox, I have no serious complaint against their Android port.
I believe most of the complaints stem from the fact that a year or two ago, Mozilla removed most of the features (including the ability to install almost all addons). This mass feature removal is just one more data point in line with what is discussed on the article.
Most importantly, they did so as a plain update to the existing app sku rather than as a new app (despite it being trialed as a new sky).
Thus if you had auto updates, which developers and security folks were so keen on recommending, you suddenly lost a massive amount of functionality and possibly could not do many of the things you need to do on your phone.
With no recommended way back. Oh, and many users lost their history, passwords and bookmarks with that as well. It's hard for users to see that approach from a software company as anything other than a statement of "We're smarter than you, we know better than you, get f**ed"; a big thumb in the eye from some product manager somewhere.
Get that experience enough times with Mozilla updates and you start to view all of their design decisions through that lens.
Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I were an LGBT employee at Mozilla, I would be pretty pissed and demoralized that my "leader" was actively trying to remove my rights. Because that's what Proposition 8 was, an attempt to constitutionally remove marriage rights from gay people after the California courts ruled that it was allowed. I think I'd be pretty uncomfortable making money for a person who would turn around and it to take away my / my family…
What did "marriage rights" actually change? I know taxes changed, and I assume there were some property implications beyond just sticking it to bigoted Christians, but that last part seemed to be the major feature.
This is weird. Why would one class of people need to justify having the same rights as another class of people? You’ve got it wrong: there needs to be a reason for them not to have that right.
Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me too. Bit I also haven't updated it in over a year in order to avoid the awful rewrite.
The new updated Firefox on Android is better than the old one
Totally agree. It's not intrusive, gives lots of options organized well, it's fast... great browser. I assume it's still safer than Chrome as well, seems like the best option for now