Live data from Hacker News

Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

news.itsfoss.com

231–240 of 455 posts

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What do you mean by "it ignores much css"? I am using tree style tab add-on and it shows fine for me.

If you use high contrast it breaks css

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#232

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.

Firefox was/is trying to be a top browser in global market share. The "core userbase" is irrelevant to this mission. You wouldn't really even talk about Chrome's "core userbase" because they aren't trying to make a niche community happy, they are trying to best serve their billions of users, something that the author of this piece clearly knows nothing about - eg, when your userbase is this large, the only meaningful form of feedback is statistical analysis. Telemetry is of course the best option but if you wanted to know what "people were saying" you wouldn't be operating at the level of reading individual posts, you'd be looking for trends on social media platforms.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#233
post #45

Firefox is great and all, but its consistently buggy with its clipboard on Gnome/Wayland for the past year.

> its consistently buggy

At least it's consistent :D

For me it is: I can't copy from the URL-bar to other apps. Inside of firefox works, copying from everywhere else works.

I didn't care to investigate though as I rarely need to do that and I was pretty sure it's my fault for locking it into it's own user namespaces.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#234
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is HarfBuzz heavily dependent on Google? It's been around forever, spawn of FreeType.

It is owned and maintained by Google and Facebook. https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/blob/main/COPYING

HarfBuzz is maintained by Behdad Eafahbod who _used_ to work in Google and Facebook.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#235
post #39

Because they are always super late. It's 2021 and we still don't have form and CB auto completion. It's been in chrome for more than 10 years already. It's such a basic feature, you earn a lot of time at not filling your address every time and even more with your card number you always forgot the number. A few month ago they finally add the tab feature for directly researching in a site except it still a lot worse us…

> we still don't have form and CB auto completion

Yes please save all of your personal and payment information in your browser, I don't see how that could be a bad idea.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#236
post #45

Firefox is great and all, but its consistently buggy with its clipboard on Gnome/Wayland for the past year.

> its consistently buggy At least it's consistent :D For me it is: I can't copy from the URL-bar to other apps. Inside of firefox works, copying from everywhere else works. I didn't care to investigate though as I rarely need to do that and I was pretty sure it's my fault for locking it into it's own user namespaces.

For me, copying into Firefox can lock it up, and trying to paste from Firefox into non-Firefox can also lock it up. I tried looking into this, and it might be related to running X apps side-by-side, but it feels like a weird interaction between Firefox and gnome-shell. Regardless, it seems like other applications are working fine, so I think this is an issue with Firefox.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#237

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.

Exact same thought here... Otter browser seems promising.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#238
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, in my mind, exchanging Chrome's insistence on Google logins is just the same as Firefox's insistence on their proprietary sync and pocket. I'll say no to every one of those things, because I do value my privacy and none of them provide proper self-hosted options.

Sync is optional, and you can use a custom server and self host it.

Last I checked, self-hosted Firefox sync uses Python 2.7, with dead GitHub activity. Not quite the best state for Firefox sync.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#239

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.

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…

Privacy isn't even the main reason I use Firefox, if that was all I cared about, I'd use brave or ungoogled chromium with privacy extensions and settings.

I use it because I like it a little bit more than chrome. And because I don't want google to completely control the browser market. But the more firefox becomes like chrome, the less reason I have to continue using it.

And despite what Mozilla thinks and wants, I don't think most Firefox users care that much about privacy. I suspect most Firefox users use it because their tech saavy friend, relative, or IT administrator installed it for them and/or told them to use it. So losing core users also means using many other users in their sphere of influence.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#240
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any ads when using Brave. What kind of crypto ads are you talking about?

He’s talking about the empty tab screen. You can control what’s on it, but by default it does show ads.

Okey, maybe I changed that a long time ago and forgot about it. Mine just shows my most visited sites.
Post reply on HN