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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

#331

Post by GekkePrutser »

JohnFen wrote: post #282
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? That should've been the highest priority. Why use a browser for Teams at all?

The electron version is horrible too and even more wasteful on resources :)

Also this way you can use add-ons with it.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#332

Post by GekkePrutser »

alex_smart wrote: post #27
capableweb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, the performance of browsers are highly dependent on their host. Firefox performs best on Linux (and beats the other browsers for Linux too), so the default on my Linux machine is Firefox. For Windows, it's Chrome and for Mac is Safari. Wish there was some syncing utility between the three of them, as switching between them has always been a bit of a hassle.

> Firefox performs best on Linux I find that hard to believe considering no hardware accelerated video playback (although other linux browsers also have the same problem). At the very least, I think that statement needs to be qualified with a "under certain use cases".

It even has hardware accelerated video on FreeBSD with X11. My old NUC wouldn't be able to play video without it.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#333

Post by thayne »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #313
thayne wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to change a setting in about:config to enable custom css. Unless you mean making a custom build of Firefox, which is even more difficult to do.

I don't see what difference it makes for somebody else implementing it as about:config setting versus you doing that yourself in a custom build. Firefox is not really any more difficult to build than any other large open source project.

Is that something you would expect a typical user to do? Especially users that aren't developers?

> Firefox is not really any more difficult to build than any other large open source project.

That has not been my experience. Granted, chromium also has a very difficult and slow build, and browsers are big complicated things. But my point is it isn't easy.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#334

Post by hypertele-Xii »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #171
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see how that's a problem, you can just modify the CSS. If you too decide that's too much work and consumes too much of your resources for not enough gain, well then now you know why Mozilla made the decision.

You think editing this [1] is acceptable configuration??

[1] view-source:chrome://browser/content/browser.xhtml

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#335

Post by betwixthewires »

BrendanEich wrote: post #326
betwixthewires wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to use brave search as an alternative to google, since it is an actual search engine that does indexing as opposed to DDG, and I don't want to use bing either. What upsets me is that there's no way to add it as default search in a browser, on purpose, because they want you to have to install brave browser to do that. Nothing upsets me more than when someone deliberately makes their product less useful. I d…

We do not prevent you from adding Brave as default search to other browsers. I'm not sure why you think we would, so please tell me more. Thanks. To make Brave Search default in another browser, please load https://search.brave.com/help/default . In Safari, there's no way we know of to add an alternative default. Apple controls the dropdown list's contents. But try this link in Firefox or Chrome.

When brave search was first released there was no way to add it, I haven't tried since, and there was some material saying get brave browser to make it your default search engine.

I will try to do it again, thanks.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#336

Post by davidebaldini »

eplanit wrote: post #105
Yoric wrote: post #60

I 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…

As a US citizen, I really wish I lived in a country with effective (i.e. actually used/enforced) antitrust laws, that would see the dominance in browsers (chrome and android), combined with dominance in search -- which promotes its ads (another industry it dominates), the alteration of how the web is experienced to favor itself (hiding site identity the browser and in search results, combined with showing scraped con…

How do you wish the outcomes of these legal enforcements to be like?

An authority with the effective power to cripple the finances and business practices of Google for the purpose of reducing its market share to an arbitrarily lower percentage would be immediately detrimental to furthering the development of Google's products, and consequently detrimental to the utility of its users, while in the longer term it wouldn't be obvious that conceding the lesser competitors to scramble for this stolen market slice would yield better alternative products, nor that users would ultimately benefit from having more lesser competitors.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#337

Post by thayne »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #312
thayne wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't any single one decision. It is a pattern of making changes that cause users don't like and ignoring negative feedback.

I don't understand what that has to do with Firefox specifically, if you do a search you can find various amounts of negative feedback about any product in existence. It's impossible to make a product that will please everyone, so you'll have to be more specific about which changes and which users you mean if we want to discuss this meaningfully.

For me at least, it seems like ways of customizing the browser are being systematically removed without being replaced with new ways to customize it.

User css and js, which were once first class are now very hidden and require messing with about:config. There's no way to prevent tabs from being on top. Many extensions are no longer possible Post-Quantum. And I do think switching to WevExtensions was the right move, but they've been slow in adding capabilities to make some extensions work as well as they did before. Removing compact mode (they added it back but behind an about:config flag). They removed SSB with no plans to ever add it back. True SSB didn't fully work, but I had high hopes that it could let me run web apps in a way that felt more native.

And part of my frustration is with the response. The reason for removing things is often "no one is using it." But then when people who show up saying they use it, and it is important to them, Mozilla generally either outright ignores them, or dismisses those opinions as invalid.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#338

Post by timw4mail »

recursive wrote: post #208
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is just the new IE. I've been saying this for over a decade, and facts like just continue to make this clear.

I've been hearing this for the last decade also. I wonder if those saying it were around for the dominance of IE. Chrome is like the opposite of IE. IE didn't ship an update for like 6 years. Chrome ships updates every ~6 weeks.

It updates too often, introducing yet more APIs that will be "deprecated" and re-implemented, forcing yet more incompatabilites.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#340

Post by nsonha »

alserio wrote: post #113
aero-glide2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In desktop, there is barely any difference now (Chrome's save as pdf feature is more accurate with tables). In mobile however, Chrome seems noticeably faster.

Counter point: install ublock origin on firefox mobile (which you cannot do on chrome) and the web is very noticeably faster on firefox.

this and "Video on background fix" which allows you to "listen" to youtube and multitask. I don't use the youtube app to avoid all the addictive features and tracking, and even it doesn't play in the background.
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