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Is Firefox Doomed?

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Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#71

Post by bad_user »

mattmanser wrote: post #68
gkoberger wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a problem with you recommending Chrome (and I work at Mozilla). However, it's not fair to say Firefox is sluggish. With a new profile, it's just as fast as Chrome. Try it. Chrome has an advantage because it's relatively new. It doesn't have to deal with over a decade of add-ons and browser history and cookies. Much like how a computer gets slow and needs to be reformatted, people who are browser power us…

Yeah, you're right, I didn't realise they'd improved it so. Start up was really suffering at one point, it's nippy, I'm wrong. I think the major reason this myth has stayed in my mind is doing upgrades on startup, testing FF v Chrome just now, on a computer that FF has never been the primary browser, they're very similar in terms of responsiveness (FF still a little slower if I'm honest, but trivially and I think it'…

When I boot my computer, it's a little slow at first when opening applications, so differences are very noticeable.

On this computer I'm using, Firefox 9 starts faster.

Also, this version on my computer upgrades in the background. I just get a "restart" notice when it finishes, then after I restart it checks for addons updates, in case some of them are invalid, but that's pretty fast too. And these upgrades don't happen so ofter.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#72

Post by tchol »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #42
eropple wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, it's much worse because of all the tracking functionality Google's included. [citation needed], because as far as I'm aware of there's no such "tracking functionality" anywhere in Chrome. "In fact," claims like this without proof are pretty shitty.

Everything you type into the address bar is sent to Google's servers as a search query.

Everything you type into Firefox's search bar is also sent to Google's servers as a search query.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#73

Post by azakai »

> So far, Bott's inquries to Mozilla about whether or not the Google deal has been renewed haven't yielded a straight answer. It's entirely possible that Google won't renew the deal, which would put about $100 million of Firefox's revenue at stake. [..] Google doesn't need Firefox anywhere near as much as Firefox needs Google.

This is completely mistaken.

What Google mainly cares about is search market share. Even 0.1% there is crucial, and worth a lot of money. Google would be willing to throw almost any amount of money at anything that would increase its share in search or keep it at its current height. The same is true of Microsoft with Bing.

Consider what happens if Google drops the deal with Firefox. Google will no longer be the default search engine in Firefox, and a lot of goodwill towards Google from Firefox users will be lost. Those two factors can easily account for far more than %0.1 of search. Worse, it is very likely that Microsoft would step in and pay the same amount to Firefox, so Google would be helping its main competitor in search.

$100M in that context is a laughably tiny amount.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#74

Post by bad_user »

rjd wrote: post #70
bad_user wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically you don't know what you're talking about and you're providing Slashdot as a reference? Also, if such discussions are possible is because Mozilla's development model is in the open, which means all of their dirty underwear is washed in public, although ultimately this is for the greater good. The same thing happens inside companies like Google or Apple, you just never hear about it.

No I don't have time to get drawn into what is essentially a nit picking argument and will probably end up circular in nature. I'm sure what would take me 30 minutes to dredge up and to get valid points to back me up can all be found in that link.

I don't know what's your interest in this, however it looks to me like you have some kind of axe to grind.

Since you're not interested in "nit picking arguments", this makes me assume you have no interest in making Firefox better, so the other possibility is that Firefox may have caused physical or psychical damage to you or your acquaintances.

I'm sure the devs from Mozilla are sorry about it. It's time to let go.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#75

Post by theshadow »

smudgy wrote: post #38

It's not doomed but it's not doing to well. The last versions have not been different enough to warrant new version numbers and Firefox 8, while being decidedly quicker for some tasks, has been incredibly slow for my mundane tasks. I'm a hardcore Firefox guy, I've been using it and Mozilla since M6 but I changed to Chrome yesterday and, while it's not flexible and customizable as Firefox, it's Good Enough. I hope it…

There is something incredibly funny about a post incriminating Firefox for not having enough new features to justify a new version number at the same time declaring Chrome as awesome at the end of the post

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#76

Post by jshen »

bad_user wrote: post #61

I'm a developer that switched back to Firefox, after I gave up on it during the 3.5 days. Firefox almost died in its transition to version 4, however now it is back on track. I prefer it over Chrome because Firefox is a platform, not a product that treats me like a dumb user. I use it on my Android too. It's a little sluggish and still uses too much memory, however it has a killer feature - it syncs everything with m…

the mobile version has better features than the android browser, but it would lock up my droid x2 all the time so I had to stop using it :/

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#77

Post by grimlck »

gkoberger wrote: post #47
smudgy wrote: post #38

It's not doomed but it's not doing to well. The last versions have not been different enough to warrant new version numbers and Firefox 8, while being decidedly quicker for some tasks, has been incredibly slow for my mundane tasks. I'm a hardcore Firefox guy, I've been using it and Mozilla since M6 but I changed to Chrome yesterday and, while it's not flexible and customizable as Firefox, it's Good Enough. I hope it…

Don't worry about the version number -- a higher number doesn't mean there's a ton of new features; it merely means 6 weeks has passed. Pretty soon, upgrade dialogs will be completely suppressed and it won't matter what version you're on (much like Chrome). I like the rapid release; it means as a developer I can play with new features much sooner. Firefox is as fast or faster than any other browser (assuming you don'…

Version number does matter because they can't seem to create a stable add-on API, and therefore version increment == add-on breakage.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#78

Post by rjd »

bad_user wrote: post #74
rjd wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I don't have time to get drawn into what is essentially a nit picking argument and will probably end up circular in nature. I'm sure what would take me 30 minutes to dredge up and to get valid points to back me up can all be found in that link.

I don't know what's your interest in this, however it looks to me like you have some kind of axe to grind. Since you're not interested in " nit picking arguments ", this makes me assume you have no interest in making Firefox better, so the other possibility is that Firefox may have caused physical or psychical damage to you or your acquaintances. I'm sure the devs from Mozilla are sorry about it. It's time to let go.

I made a casual comment mostly based around what I had noticed and people kept demanding more granular definitions which I tried to oblige. TBH I struggled with that, but since people kept demanding answers I tried to oblige, failed, and tried to bow out.

My original point was Firefox has lost the recommendation status it has previously had. I also noted several technical things people had been complaining about, many of which annoyed me previously as well.

I don' really care if I get down voted, the fact is no amount of technical features is going to solve emotional issues, and Mozilla is loosing its emotional advantage. If you wanna save FF stop being technical and start thinking emotionally.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#79

Post by Turing_Machine »

gkoberger wrote: post #56
mattmanser wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not addressing his key point, I'm recommending Chrome to anyone I speak to, many other developers I know are too. Firefox is slow, sluggish to use and confusing compared to Chrome. The edge it had over IE was that it was a better user experience. It's not compared to Chrome anymore. Even IE is better than FF apart from the weird crash like blank screen glitch when opening a new tab that IE has.

I don't have a problem with you recommending Chrome (and I work at Mozilla). However, it's not fair to say Firefox is sluggish. With a new profile, it's just as fast as Chrome. Try it. Chrome has an advantage because it's relatively new. It doesn't have to deal with over a decade of add-ons and browser history and cookies. Much like how a computer gets slow and needs to be reformatted, people who are browser power us…

"Chrome has an advantage because it's relatively new. It doesn't have to deal with over a decade of add-ons"

You'd have a point here if Firefox hadn't started blithely breaking everyone's add-ons by bumping the version number about 5 times per week. Okay, that's hyperbole -- I know it wasn't that often, but the point is that a "rapid release schedule" comes with real costs.

If you have 500MM users, and the mean user time to adapt to a trivial new release is 5 minutes (a gross underestimate if add-ons have broken), you've just wasted 16 million hours of user time. Just because that cost doesn't appear as a line item in the Mozilla Foundation's budget doesn't mean it isn't real.

I used Firefox for years because of the rich add-on community. When it started being more trouble than it was worth to update the add-ons (or find/write new ones, if the old one hadn't been updated), I switched to Chrome. It's unlikely that I'll be back.

Re: Is Firefox Doomed?

#80

Post by ch0wn »

azakai wrote: post #73

> So far, Bott's inquries to Mozilla about whether or not the Google deal has been renewed haven't yielded a straight answer. It's entirely possible that Google won't renew the deal, which would put about $100 million of Firefox's revenue at stake. [..] Google doesn't need Firefox anywhere near as much as Firefox needs Google. This is completely mistaken. What Google mainly cares about is search market share. Even 0.…

> $100M in that context is a laughably tiny amount.

Considering that Google spent $2.11B on traffic acquisition last quarter[0] it seems even less.

[0] http://investor.google.com/earnings/2011/Q2_google_earnings....

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