Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#191

Post by Arech » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #139

eitland wrote: post #125

Earlier 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.

I actually had changed some about:newtab styles. They even outlived one or two updates after that, until full reset.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#192

Post by dralley » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #150

dralley wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can remove the spacers with 3 clicks.

Until you can't, because Mozilla deems that only X% of users use that feature and maintaining its configurability consumes too much organizational resources. First the GUI to edit the GUI disappears, then the about:config option follows later. That's what's been steadily happening. Less and less customizability for power users, more and more streamlining for new users.

> First the GUI to edit the GUI disappears, then the about:config option follows later.

> That's what's been steadily happening.

You wrote this in a way that is (probably deliberately) misleading. Neither of those things have happened nor is there any indication that they will.

Especially about:config which (probably) provides an enormous amount of benefit for early testing of features.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#193

Post by gbil » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

wellthisishn wrote: post #167

Xevi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

UI is fine but 1. Battery consumption is at least twice the one of Brave 2. There is no option to always get the desktop site which makes it useless for tablets

Main reasons I also moved to Brave on all my devices. If these are fixed and Mac battery consumption is fixed I'd go back asap

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#194

Post by webmobdev » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #6

I 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.

> It's almost like they've been deliberately trying to sabotage themselves for years.

I believe it to be corporate sabotage by Google ... due to the 100's of millions of dollars that Google gives to the Mozilla Foundation, they have a lot of influence over Firefox.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#195

Post by c0npr » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

clement_b wrote: post #26

I use both Chrome (for work) and Firefox (personal) on Windows. Beyond a few specifics, I often can't remember which I am using. There might be many differences under the hood, but in a regular usage Firefox is really damn good. Even on Google's properties. I also use Firefox exclusively on mobile, and same. At the end of the day, they are two very mature, slightly different executions of the same concept. I get the…

Similar experience here, except I used brave cuz I don't really like the Google service stuff. I am pretty okay with most of the existing browsers on the market (but not edge, again the force you to use ms service, and useless default news etc.) And I don't care about the gui that much cuz I am not storing bookmarks in the browsers, it's quite hard to search through and sync

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#196

Post by perryizgr8 » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #71

corty wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if you do not like the UI of unity, maybe you'll like Gnome, KDE, LXDE, fluxbox, i3 or ratpoison or .... With most Linux distros, you can have both privacy and your favourite UI paradigm. You usually do not need to suffer in the usability department (or at least not too much). But with Firefox, all the UI choices are gone now, intentionally sacrificed on the altair of rewrites, UI changes, branding and…

Huh? Happy Tree Style Tabs user here, and another addon (Sidebery) seems to be growing in popularity as well. You can disable the built-in tabs with userChrome.css. What am I missing?

If you're happy with the current tree style tabs, I'll wager you never used the original. The current one is a bad rip off, with 90% of the actual features missing.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#197

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

BeefWellington wrote: post #178

bm3719 wrote: post #48

There's a theory in the Free Software community that BigTech sponsorship of Mozilla was intended to bring about the current state of affairs. The idea is that MS, Google, and others really have no reason to donate to a direct competitor. Perhaps they did so because they knew it would give them control. That control was exercised over the years and now Mozilla is more a social justice advocacy organization than a foun…

> The sorry state of FF was the inevitable result. What sorry state? The thing I don't get about this narrative is that Firefox works and works very well for me and so when I see people saying things like this it doesn't jive with reality.

I’ve used Firefox since it replaced Netscape. I agree, I think “sorry state” is an exaggeration. They’ve made some choices I don’t love, but my browser isn’t part of me, I open a tab, I get some info, I get back to work. My job isn’t to play Firefox. I don’t get the “UI sucks, they made it like Chrome… so instead I use Chrome”.

However…

> That control was exercised over the years and now Mozilla is more a social justice advocacy organization than a foundation that develops a web browser.

I do think they’re happy to spend too much time/money on their pet projects. Given the layoffs and poor market performance, this has come at the cost of their product. I’m allowed to dislike that despite still using it.

Sorry state of Firefox, I disagree. Sorry state of Mozilla, yes. So I look at M and do expect FF to get worse.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#198

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #50

lousken wrote: post #12

Idk about 12 years but I know about last two years - many companies and workers had to switch to WFH. So that means using some sort of chat&video&audio software/website. What did Firefox do to fix the compatibility e.g. with Teams? That should've been the highest priority. Instead, it took them years to get at least the GPOs right, autoupdate is the same story... so many things in corprote env were or still are PITA…

> What did Firefox do to fix the compatibility e.g. with Teams? I think that's the wrong way around. Why would Firefox need to change their browser for a specific web application? Microsoft chose not to support Firefox, not the other way around. It's still choosing not to support smaller platforms (the Linux application is simply garbage, lacking basic features that have been available on other platforms for months).…

When you're a platform trying to gain market share, and a big application doesn't work because of the developer's bug, you don't throw your hands up and say "well it's the developer's fault." You work around that bug in your platform. Reminds me of the stories[1] about early days Microsoft putting all sorts of hacks in their OS to work around 3rd party app bugs, just to keep backward compatibility going. When you're focused on growth, you can't adhere to some sense of purity and demand 3p apps fix themselves to work on your platform. You need to make the platform work with their app.

1: (original Raymond Chen link busted, but quoted here:) https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#199

Post by wilkystyle » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

lavabiopsy wrote: post #189

wilkystyle wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you just answered exactly how that's a problem...

I'm sorry I don't understand. Is the problem that modifying computer code takes effort? If so then sure, that's true, but Firefox (or any other browser) can't be blamed for that.

No problem, let me clarify: You suggested that the answer to a constant stream of changes was to either "just modify the CSS" or (if it's too much work for too little gain) then you essentially just accept Mozilla's decision.

If those are indeed the only other options besides users finding another product, I'd say you answered exactly why Firefox is in decline.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#200

Post by lavabiopsy » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

wilkystyle wrote: post #199

lavabiopsy wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry I don't understand. Is the problem that modifying computer code takes effort? If so then sure, that's true, but Firefox (or any other browser) can't be blamed for that.

No problem, let me clarify: You suggested that the answer to a constant stream of changes was to either "just modify the CSS" or (if it's too much work for too little gain) then you essentially just accept Mozilla's decision. If those are indeed the only other options besides users finding another product, I'd say you answered exactly why Firefox is in decline.

I'm sorry, I still don't understand. This is exactly the way it is with any other browser. If you don't like changes in Chrome for example, you can either modify them, accept their decision, or find another product. And Chrome is not in decline.