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Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

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Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#251

Post by thayne »

> We have hundreds of millions of users. 5000 people complaining doesn’t represent the majority of users”

That's incredibly naive. Only a tiny fraction of people who don't like it will complain. Others will just switch to another browser. And most will probably put up with it. And if that happens once, it might not hurt you too much. But when you do something like that over and over, you are going to bleed users, including the ones who initially put up with it as the list of things they don't like piles up.

> People don’t use Firefox because of add-ons. Our telemetry shows 80% of users never install any add-ons

Uh huh. You know why I started using Firefox over a decade ago? Because of addons. And as has been mentioned before, a lot of users disable telemetry, especially power users who are likely to install addons. So how reliable is that telemetry? And how many Firefox users are only using it on the recommendation of a friend relative or IT specialist that does use plugins.

I'm not optimistic for the future of browsers. I still prefer Firefox to chrome, but I'm not happy with the direction things are headed.

One final thought. Here's an idea for getting some funding independent of search engines: a Kickstarter like program for users to pay to get some of these features back. Though on second thought, maybe that would give Mozilla even more incentives to rip stuff out...

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#252

Post by mbg721 »

kergonath wrote: post #169
mbg721 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Societies for millennia have had intuition about what men and women are, and have always defined marriage to reflect that. If we're suddenly enlightened because we've unshackled reproduction from sex and anyone can have a married relationship with anyone else, that is new, that's not some ancient natural right.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#254

Post by mbg721 »

dralley wrote: post #142
mbg721 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. If your "partner" is dying in the hospital, you don't have a legal right to be allowed to see them. If your "spouse" is dying in the hospital, you do. That's one example.

Okay, that's a good concrete example.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#255

Post by the_duke »

charles-m-knox wrote: post #238
the_duke wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe they have shifted to a Rust implementation.

https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#257

Post by krapp »

mbg721 wrote: post #252
kergonath wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Societies for millennia have had intuition about what men and women are, and have always defined marriage to reflect that. If we're suddenly enlightened because we've unshackled reproduction from sex and anyone can have a married relationship with anyone else, that is new, that's not some ancient natural right.

Sex has been unshackled from reproduction for far, far longer than marriage has even been a concept, and in many ancient cultures same sex relationships were perfectly normal[0].

The axis of "heterosexuality" and "homosexuality" itself is no older than the 20th century, and even the concept of monogamy is relatively new as far as Abrahamic religious tradition goes.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#258

Post by terracatta »

> You succeed by giving users what they want, not telling them what they should want

This closing statement is missing so much context that it's misleading.

When you have more than a handful of users, their wants will eventually conflict, often directly. (Ex: Tabs on top vs Tabs on Bottom). Other times a majority of users will ask for things that provide fleeting short-term benefit but in the long-term could kill your product (ex: We need Flash support on Firefox Mobile). Telemetry and research helps you consider the needs of a silent majority, but it can alienate the vocal minority that proselytize your product. To appease both, you need to come up with a clear vision, validate it's right, and then ruthlessly steer your product toward it.

If there is a vision for Firefox, I don't know what it is. So why, as a user, should accept Firefox's many faults today when Mozilla has failed to paint a clear picture of tomorrow?

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#259

Post by NelsonMinar »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #158
NelsonMinar wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? I use Firefox exclusively and there's definitely not a Mozilla ad every new tab or every restart. There is one once a major release (including a couple of days ago), and those always annoy me, but it's only once a month or two. Are you exaggerating or does yours work differently?

Actually I think there is... I distinctly remember being extremely annoyed at the text ad on the new tab page. Turned it off a long time ago. It's called "Snippets" in settings/home. It's like a Twitter feed from Mozilla.

Oh huh you're right, I must have turned it off and forgotten. I turned it back on again and don't see anything new but maybe it's not all the time.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#260

Post by mbg721 »

krapp wrote: post #257
mbg721 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Societies for millennia have had intuition about what men and women are, and have always defined marriage to reflect that. If we're suddenly enlightened because we've unshackled reproduction from sex and anyone can have a married relationship with anyone else, that is new, that's not some ancient natural right.

Sex has been unshackled from reproduction for far, far longer than marriage has even been a concept, and in many ancient cultures same sex relationships were perfectly normal[0]. The axis of "heterosexuality" and "homosexuality" itself is no older than the 20th century, and even the concept of monogamy is relatively new as far as Abrahamic religious tradition goes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-se…

Non-conventional sex isn't new, but making sure marriage is defined in such a way to include it is new, or at least wasn't universal.
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