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

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#341

Post by jonathansampson » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 2:33 AM UTC

junon wrote: post #285

fistynuts wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It replaces the millions of ads and trackers on the web with exactly one ad, which is as you say on the new tab screen, that you can turn off in the settings. There is also Brave Rewards, something that pays you for viewing ads but is disabled by default and can be totally hidden through another setting. This straightforward set-up isn't something I feel deserves the number of negative comments I see on here. The ben…

Because it took lots of fights to get the Brave team to 1) allow disabling ads and 2) allow disabling Brave Rewards, neither of which anyone wanted and went against the whole concept of "Brave, the ad-free browser" to begin with.

There was no fighting—Brave's Ads were (and are) off by default. The New Tab Page's Sponsored Images (a later addition) is on by default, but only appears on every 4th new tab, and can be turned off with 2 clicks.

This type of advertising doesn't go against any of Brave's principles. The user is in control. Trackers and their ads are blocked by default as these harvest user data and more.

Brave's alternative, privacy-preserving advertising model is based on user-control and consent. The user decides whether or not they will participate, and to what degree. And, the user's data is never sent off-device; users are rewarded (with 70% of the associated ad revenue) for their attention rather than their data or actions.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#342

Post by nsonha » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

BeefWellington wrote: post #180

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most logical tab position is on the left or right, on desktop, because most of the space on a wide screen display is on the horrizontal axis, and you want to reserve as much vertical space as possible for scrolling websites (which happens vertically, and pretty much cannot be changed at this point, as it is baked into the web). There's an addon for that, but you no longer can hide the default tab bar! So now it j…

> The most logical tab position is on the left or right, on desktop, because most of the space on a wide screen display is on the horrizontal axis, and you want to reserve as much vertical space as possible for scrolling websites (which happens vertically, and pretty much cannot be changed at this point, as it is baked into the web). This assumes a landscape-oriented monitor. I would suggest trying this out on a port…

> portrait oriented monitor. It's quite useful for coding, reading, etc.

Tried, didn't work, chances are you need a browser or a terminal running test/grep or another code file/document side by side. There are very few intances when you only look at one file and whether you see 150 lines or 100 lines doesn't really matter much, when the file is longer than that anyway and a function is often shorter.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#343

Post by lavabiopsy » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 2:42 AM UTC

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #334

lavabiopsy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, why wouldn't it be? Editing that is exactly what you would be asking Mozilla to do. If you think it's hard to work on, well, maybe you can sympathize with Mozilla for trying to cut down on the number of settings that complicate it further.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#344

Post by lavabiopsy » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

thayne wrote: post #337

lavabiopsy wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

I don't mean to be disappointing, but usually out-of-context internet commenters saying that they use something doesn't carry much weight. The reason why they have telemetry data is so they can so say for certain what people are using, with actual numbers. If the telemetry shows that a feature isn't being used, and another feature is being used, then the one being used is what they will put resources towards. Think of this from an organizational perspective -- employees have to use this information in meetings with their boss to justify what they are working on to earn the paycheck, so with that considered they will always go with what the numbers show. Some disappointed comments on internet forums from a small vocal minority are expected, but dealing with that is just a cost of doing business.

Now after this you may want to refer back to the article. I have seen various pieces and rants like this article that complain about this but none of them offer any more reliable sources of information. The article makes an unverifiable claim of "Almost everyone hated the changes" and unfortunately those type of claims seem to be extremely common instead of presenting some data. That's not enough to change anyone's course.

But in the end, I don't know what you mean by "systematically removed" in that way, frequent addition and removal of various features is completely normal for a large project. And technically only the setting was removed -- you can still customize all that but you'll have to modify the browser itself. No they probably won't add back in the setting but as I explained above, those have a cost, and when the cost-benefit analysis doesn't play out the right way, it doesn't make sense to blame an organization for cutting it.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#345

Post by nsonha » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 2:51 AM UTC

jwond wrote: post #283

cco wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now my tab names are...? Written vertically? I don't think that's the best UI choice.

Take a look at Tree Style Tabs [1] or Sidebery [2]. After using tree style tabs it’s very frustrating for me to go back to using other tab styles in other browsers. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/

I used them back in my student days but then I realized I needed to stop opening so many tabs and focus on my productivity.

These days you have chromium based choices too: Edge and Vivaldi, which has just become Cinamon's default browser. On Edge you can turn off title bar, for Vivaldi it's the address bar. They look quite neat that way.

They're both simple vertical tabs and not automatically organized as a tree, but to me that trikes the right ballance because I don't want to feel too confortable opening tons of tabs.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#346

Post by lavabiopsy » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

thayne wrote: post #333

lavabiopsy wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my personal experience, typical users (i.e. non-developers) don't really spend time tweaking their browser. The defaults are good enough for most, and the job of the developer is usually to just find good defaults to optimize for that. For the power user who knows XML/CSS/JS/C++/Rust/etc and wants to have total control, then yes, I would expect them to either create extensions or edit the source directly. Same thing goes for Chrome users of that type. Am I off base here?

It's true the build process is slow, but that's different from being difficult. I don't know what you mean by difficult. Maybe it was difficult in the past but it's entirely automated at this point. You can just start the build and come back some hours later, and that's only if you're starting from a clean repo and modifying the C++/Rust. For the CSS and Javascript, that doesn't need a rebuild at all.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#347

Post by happyjack » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 3:09 AM UTC

I'll get a lot of flack for this, but I'll speak my mind as to what I think Mozilla needs to do going forward.. I think Mozilla needs to have a rock solid mission statement ("Our mission is to keep the web open blah blah no one controls it blah blah make technologies that make the world better blah blah open blah blah do no harm") and within that, get large corporate clients that foot the bill for legitimate development / tech transfer and solve real problems within the corporate world. The corporate world has protocol issues, privacy issues, ad nausea. Get business clients to pay for that. Within that framework, they can have working groups or community groups whatever that package the browser for Linux distros / Windowz / Mac and push it out. They can even have specialty versions that focus on privacy, media, vanilla versions, add-ons, whatever. When you go to firefox.com as a consumer you get the "corporate" or "vanilla" version. If you're a HN or tech crowd, you'll know where to find your version; whether that's privacy focused, add-on focused, or a specific build for specific operating system or mission.

I think core "user base" is a misnomer in Firefox.

My 2 cents. I know there's a ton to the browser world and my view is just a tiny part of the big picture.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#348

Post by mmis1000 » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 3:27 AM UTC

I though I agree most of the points in this article except `Auto-updates you can’t switch off`. Well, It never should, at least not done easily. The windows xp told us a serious lesson about that. Countless of systems compromised due update disabled. Although I also think push feature removal updates forcefully is silly. The only thing should be forcefuly updated is bug fix.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#349

Post by lavabiopsy » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

freediver wrote: post #275

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can anyone call firefox privacy focused when they use telemetry so fucking heavily? Per default telemetry is active, disable it and you still got telemetry/pings whatever. You have to opt out of everything. It's not even limited to the user side look at this https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1460678#c20

Correct. An easy win for Firefox is to become a zero telemetry browser by default. All that telemetry is giving them wrong data anyway as users they should be most interested in disable telemetry and are not represented in usage data.

I'm very confused by this comment. If you think of telemetry like a vote, disabling it is essentially forfeiting your vote, so it doesn't really make sense to me to complain that you are then not represented. If you've ever been to a big catered event, this is like a person who refuses to speak up when asked if they want the vegetarian option and then gets mad when only meat is served. You can't expect the organizers to order two of every meal and then throw out the ones people didn't want.

Turning off telemetry by default is also not an option, because then they would have no data, and would just be making decisions at random -- I really doubt that would please you either.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#350

Post by thayne » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

lavabiopsy wrote: post #344

thayne wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

I don't mean to be disappointing, but usually out-of-context internet commenters saying that they use something doesn't carry much weight. The reason why they have telemetry data is so they can so say for certain what people are using, with actual numbers. If the telemetry shows that a feature isn't being used, and another feature is being used, then the one being used is what they will put resources towards. Think o…

> And technically only the setting was removed -- you can still customize all that but you'll have to modify the browser itself

You are suggesting that I replace a simple configuration change with familiarizing myself with a very complicated code base, creating a patch, and running a build that on my machine takes multiple hours, then repeat the process for every update? Yeah, I have no idea why more people don't do that.

> I don't know what you mean by "systematically removed" in that way, frequent addition and removal of various features is completely normal for a large project.

Sure. But from my perspective at least, the customisability is decreasing, more features are being removed than added. It used to be that Firefox was a browser built for power users, but it is becoming less so. That was one of it's major advantages over chrome.

I understand the cost of maintaining features, and the tradeoffs involved. The Firefox teams priorities are different than mine, and I understand that. For example, there are many features I would have rather seen worked on rather than redesigning the UI (and I do actually like a lot of the proton design). But I can accept that they have different priorities. But they are also bleeding users, so something is clearly not working for them. And maybe, as the OP suggests it is because of changes that anger a minority of their users. At some point, the union of many minorities becomes a majority.