Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

news.itsfoss.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 455 posts

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#421

Post by BrendanEich »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #297
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…

Of course Eich becoming a Mozilla higher-up (even before becoming CEO) is why browsers became so complicated and expensive to develop. We would have been better off staying with HTML3 and no javascript.

("throwaway81523", ok; I'll take the bait.)

Check your chronology: I wasn't a Mozilla higher-up when HTML 4.0 replaced 3.2. IE won the first browser war and MS was instrumental along with Dave Raggett in finalizing HTML 4. MS also was all-in on "JScript" by that point, having contributed to the ECMA-262 standard as I describe here:

https://www.pldi21.org/prerecorded_hopl.12.html

I was not a "Mozilla higher-up" during this period, I was not in management. From engineer role doing JS in 1995, I was promoted to Principal Engineer at Netscape by 1997. So your chronology there is bogus.

Also, mozilla.org did not exist until late 1997, and was not launched until April 1, 1998. Once again you are out to lunch on history, out of some bizarre desire to blame me personally for the web standards in full, and consequently browsers that implement them, being so complicated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML#HTML_4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#422

Post by eplanit »

davidebaldini wrote: post #336
eplanit wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would…

Who says anything about crippling or destroying anything?

One approach is to split up the company in to separate entities. Search, YouTube, advertising, technology products and OSs, etc...

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#423

Post by lavabiopsy »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #371
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.

Yeah but it takes way too many steps to modify the CSS and it's not really worth it when they could have just left it alone.

I don't know the details of this specific change, but in my experience its removal probably means it couldn't be left alone. If another piece of code that touches it gets refactored, the developer has to choose between trying to spend time fixing it, or just removing it. If it's an unpopular feature then removing it can be seen as the most reasonable option.

And I know I've said this already but taking those "way too many steps" is exactly what you'd be asking them to do, so it's unclear why it's not worth it for you but it would be for them.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#424

Post by CRConrad »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #308
elcritch wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So core userbase for these products becomes hostile towards the product growth by definition. In this environment, either the product stops growing and simply becomes a niche product for those set of users or it dies. Except FF market percentage has been decreasing not growing. The technical foundation has gotten better, but it’s like Mozilla execs are completely out of sync with the market share they could have. T…

> The technical foundation has gotten better, but it’s like Mozilla execs are completely out of sync with the market share they could have. Execs may have less to do with the decline than a changing market. Google poured resources and new ideas into a mostly greenfield effort, and leveraged its market position to push its browser. Edge and Safari also benefit from their makers' platforms and marketing. It's a hostile…

> It's a hostile world for an independent browser.

Sure, bit it would have been a little less hostile if they hadn't brought quite a lot of that on themselves with their long history of hostile-to-tech-savvy-users decisions.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#425

Post by Yoric »

0xCMP wrote: post #57
Yoric wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the vicious circle: 1. Google basically controls the web. 2. Whenever a new Web API shows up, browser vendors have to decide between implementing the standard and copying the bugs, exotic behaviors and extensions that are implemented in Chromium. 3. Websites are tested on Chromium, so they start to rely on Chromium's bugs, exotic behaviors and extensions. 4. When a website breaks in Firefox (or Safari), people…

On the other hand, how many of these browsers are actually building or inventing any of these new apis to support things like screensharing, video, audio, and etc so they're not hacks except for chrome?

Well, given that WebRTC was mostly invented at Mozilla, at least one.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#426

Post by Yoric »

shartacct wrote: post #267
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…

> 7. During the Brendan Eichgate, Mozilla became a hapless victim of the US culture wars, mostly acccidentally. Mozilla never recovered. Defending Eich is a hot take that you only see here on HN. He is a worthless individual who champions the cause of taking away personal freedoms of groups of people he doesn't like, pushes anti-mask conspiracy and smears public workers like Fauci, and his only technical 'achievement…

Please read my message carefully. I have neither defended nor attacked Brendan Eich, only mentioned an episode in the history of Mozilla.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#427

Post by CRConrad »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #213
Arech wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can. But once you think about it, you'll see that you actually can't. Because once you're making changes to components instead of formalized settings, you are doomed to re-apply them each software update. Not a smart way to customize.

But that's exactly what you're asking Mozilla to do when you ask them to keep that as a formalized setting, it's exactly the same work just it's done by a Mozilla employee and not you. So it really sounds like you're asking them to do something which you acknowledge yourself is not a smart or efficient thing to do.

Yeah, because it's so much more efficient if every user who liked the old interface gets to write and maintain a bunch of CSS for themselves, in stead of a Mozilla employee not doing the work of removing already-present settings...

Sheesh, don't you even notice how you're coming off here?

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#428

Post by CRConrad »

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.

Look at the ultimate feedback: Users switching to or away from the product. It is apparently possible -- for other browser makers -- to make products that more users switch to than from. For Mozilla, it's been the opposite the last dozen years.

But, I bet you'll refuse to understand this too, and continue your bot-like repetition of non-answers. (Hint: Don't bother; nobody is buying.)

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#429

Post by CRConrad »

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…

> I don't mean to be disappointing

Then why do you keep being so?

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#430

Post by CRConrad »

dralley wrote: post #192
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.

> 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.

> > 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.

You're not so much misleading as outright lying. That is exactly what has been happening, over and over again.

Post reply on HN