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Firefox once had problems with performance (and usability a bit) compared to chrome.
They fixed that, i think.
Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?
431–440 of 949 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's a bit too far - for example, Thunderbird is a great web client. I do think they should have found a way to hold onto the Servo team and make that engine more useable and better than the base chromium engine. If they had been able to keep the Rust foundation on board, it would have also made sense. However, I do agree that their leadership has made terrible decisions and they've absolutely focused on th…
Thunderbird was on my mind when I was writing this. I think it ultimately comes down to whether they can afford any missteps or side concerns at all - and if the answer is "no", then Thunderbird must be cut loose no matter its value. It can always be mothballed until the times get better, or it can even be given "on loan" for some fixed duration to another trusted FOSS foundation and re-adopted when the time is up. A…
Thunderbird has always been their opportunity to demonstrate their stack is a general ecosystem, but it's headaches show that their stack isn't a good ecosystem for anything that isn't Firefox.
They shouldn't be trying to build thunderbird for its own sake, they should be demonstrating their equivalent for electron and feel pressured to make it no worse for users than the current Thunderbird, but attractive/stable enough for outside developers to choose over electron/etc.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?
#433The reason I used Firefox daily many years ago was because of the Firebug debugger. The more complicated pages became the more important it was to have an excellent debugger/browser combination. Chrome launched with a solid solution and has kept pushing but it isn't nearly as good as debuggers in other platforms. All the browsers are all pretty bad at debugging the lower level stuff like graphics. What is the GPU doing? Why was rendering this last frame slow? What is happening inside of this WASM blob? Is transferring information in and out of this worker the problem or was it the worker itself?
If Firefox had an amazing debugger I would use it every day. I focus on graphics so this is where my mind is at but there are plenty of things that would benefit everyone like a better memory profiler or maybe being better about explaining to users how to fix issues. Chrome's Lighthouse might focus on how google works but it will also provide solid tips for how to make most websites better. Sure it might be wrong if you really know your stuff but it is also a great place to learn if you don't think you know it all.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only thing I can think of is that the UI is not as nice as chromes for switching? in chrome you can switch the profile from a menu option and there can be more than one profile active at a time with separate everything including extensions and bookmarks. in firefox you don't get that easy switch and I am not sure the gui for the profiles is enabled by default. you have to manually start up firefox with a -P flag…
> And you only get one profile active at a time. This isn't true. As I'm writing this, I have three Firefox windows open, each in a different profile. What makes you think you can only have one profile active at a time?
were there any hoops you had to run to get that to work? afaict that's not possible ootb without adding a flag to the command line. I'll admit that I haven't really tried it since many years ago.
for 90% of the users out there that we need to convince to use firefox: having a command line switch is about the same as not having the feature at all... chrome has a menu item that brings up a brand new window in that profile.
I want firefox to succeed and it's my daily driver.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
headscratch I used profiles with Ff for ages... what is the difference to Chrome's?
In Chrome there's an icon you click to switch. Honestly, if someone would create a FF extension that was just that, it would probably cover 90% of what's considered superior in Chrome.
Its called "Profile Switcher for Firefox": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?
#436[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?
#437They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…
> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). If Mozilla is just Firefox then why to they need a CEO at all? Why does a web browser need an executive team? It doesn't make any sense to me. Linux doesn't have a CEO. Python doesn't have a CEO. Postgres doesn't have a CEO. But all those projects have commerc…
> If Mozilla is just Firefox then why to they need a CEO at all? Why does a web browser need an executive team? It doesn't make any sense to me. Linux doesn't have a CEO. Python doesn't have a CEO. Postgres doesn't have a CEO.
It doesn't matter what the top position is called: CEO, the Grand Warlock of Yendor, or Benevolent Dictator For Life. CEO ≈ whoever is in charge and entrusted with enough authority that they can elevate or kill whatever they are managing, and that was probably the intended meaning.
> Or how about they donate Firefox to Apache?
Apache has a reputation as the graveyard of open source software. If Firefox gets donated to them, it's curtains. Maybe if they went elsewhere it could work.
Or, they could create a Totally-Not-Mozilla Foundation and bring trustworthy old-timers with the right vision on board. Then they could either do a hostile takeover aka LibreOffice, or coax the original Mozilla Foundation into handing over the brand peacefully.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?
#438The amount of people in HN who think they can do a better job at being the CEO of every company; or being the president of any country; or being better than whoever is trying to something, astounds me.
Dudes, if saving Firefox was so easy that could be described in a single comment like that, it would have been saved already.
There are more people at Mozilla than the CEO, she is not responsible for all decisions. She is a quite nice person to be honest, has always been very kind to me while I was volunteering and later while I was working there. She is more into the Mozilla mission than many here.
Also, people need to understand that Firefox is not the reason for Mozilla existence, Firefox is one of the tools that Mozilla has (and depends on) to fullfil its mission. People need to wake up and realise that Firefox is the last remaining independent browser, and that fighting against Microsoft, Google, and Apple is damn hard.
There is a huge intersection between people who are often saying they know how to fix Mozilla and those using non-Firefox browsers. If people here who cares about Mozilla would volunteer, and also use the browser, Mozilla would be in a much better shape.
People who keep saying things like "cut their salaries", "cancel all projects", have absolutely no idea how all this works, or even how Mozilla works. I understand you're all frustrated, but you're going at it from the wrong direction. You need to remember that it was side projects that made Firefox. At that time the workhorse of Mozilla was the Mozilla Suite. It was also non-Firefox projects that brought up Rust and many other cool technologies.
Want to fix Mozilla? Take an active part in it.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
have you used container tabs? those are effectively "different profiles" for what most people consider them. It's still shared extensions and history and bookmarks but you can login with different accounts in different tabs and it keeps that separate.
An important UX difference is that Firefox's default "New Tab" keyboard shortcut doesn't respect the container of the current tab. I've found that it's really easy to accidentally switch back to the main container.
I would think it be trivial to make an extension that respects the current tab container when opening a new tab. Hell if it's not there I'll make one.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?
#440If they fix their memory leak bugs on OSX or at least proactively id what in OSX is broken, I’ll consider it.
But after 4 months of crashing my mac every couple of hours, I’m done.