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Firefox on the brink?

brycewray.com

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Re: Firefox on the brink?

#91

Post by flohofwoe »

robin_reala wrote: post #28

It’s not on the brink, it’s that Firefox shims GA[1] with Enhanced Tracking Protection, which is on by default.[2] analytics.usa.gov uses GA. So you really can’t rely on usage figures that don’t represent the truth of your situation. [1] https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/413b88689f3ca2a30b... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-now-ava...

If that's the case there would be a sudden decrease in the market share graph around 2019 (although that graph is from Statscounter which has Firefox currently sitting at around 3.2%).

The decline has already been happening since around 2010 without any drastic ups or downs.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#92

Post by cwales95 »

Something has to change. Firefox is a GREAT browser. I think a lot of these things boil down to poor marketing. Things like these have to appear 'cool' and appeal to people. There has to be a reason for people to go out and actively want to download Firefox. Something akin to Apple's privacy adverts is how I'd go about it.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#93

Post by ChubbyGlasses »

dartos wrote: post #18
nequo wrote: post #3

I want Firefox to not be on the brink. I have had no problems with it on Linux over the last few years since I switched from Chrome. I do not wish to touch Chrome with a ten-foot pole.

Firefox regularly crashes for me on wayland. It slows down my whole system when it tries to load a page in first boot (but librewolf doesn’t for some reason) the HID and webgl/webgpu support is bad… It’s just not a very good browser compared to chrome forks or webkit based ones.

I've had very similar experiences on Windows and Mac. I really wish Moz would fork WebKit or Blink and work on a browser for the modern age.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#94

Post by tiahura »

coconut08 wrote: post #46

Mozilla has been a horrible steward for their project. They receive hundreds of millions of dollars a year and I have no idea where this money goes. It also doesn't help that their organization is full of purity testing and social activism nonsense that has nothing to do with making a good web browser. At this point I'm convinced that the reason that google is paying them so much is because they actually know that fi…

Mozilla is the Washington Generals to Google’s Harlem Globetrotters.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#95

Post by swozey »

BossingAround wrote: post #50
nequo wrote: post #3

I want Firefox to not be on the brink. I have had no problems with it on Linux over the last few years since I switched from Chrome. I do not wish to touch Chrome with a ten-foot pole.

The one thing I miss from Chrome is the `thisisunsafe` feature to ignore whatever misconfiguration the webpage you're trying to access uses. Recently, one of the dev servers that I tried to access misconfigured HSTS, which made it really difficult for Firefox to access the web UI. I fired up chromium, simply typed the magic word, and accessed it no problem. Of course, ideally, there'd be no misconfigurations, but som…

Browsers need some advanced/i'm-a-dev mode. I'm getting sick of things (TLS details, urls, unsafe) getting hidden away/removed.

edit: Well comment below me just mentioned a Firefox developer version, wasn't aware of that.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#96

Post by jeroenhd »

Every time I see these articles, I feel like I have to reiterate this: Firefox contains tracking protection that blocks a lot of analytics websites, like Statcounter. 2% of Statcounter's visitors being Firefox doesn't say much about the actual Firefox visitors on the websites themselves.

If you're deciding to drop Firefox, ignore Statcounter or any other data mining sources. Use passive analytics and your website's actual visitors (GDPR/CCPA restrictions may apply).

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#97

Post by devit »

loganmarchione wrote: post #36

Mozilla also just posted their State of Mozilla 2022 (this includes financial statements). From what I've read, it seems that expenses are up and revenue from search deals is down. https://stateof.mozilla.org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38530382 https://www.ghacks.net/2023/12/05/mozilla-earned-close-to-60... Firefox's market share has been on the decline since 2010. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market…

Presumably they have captured the Mozilla foundation board?

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#98

Post by BossingAround »

elashri wrote: post #83
BossingAround wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing I miss from Chrome is the `thisisunsafe` feature to ignore whatever misconfiguration the webpage you're trying to access uses. Recently, one of the dev servers that I tried to access misconfigured HSTS, which made it really difficult for Firefox to access the web UI. I fired up chromium, simply typed the magic word, and accessed it no problem. Of course, ideally, there'd be no misconfigurations, but som…

While not recommended, and I would run firefox developer edition for that, you can disable (make the value false) `security.ssl.enable_ocsp_stapling` in `about:config`. You will be able to view sites with invalid certs/config. But will still prompt you that that something is invalid, and you have the choice to proceed forward. Again, I would not recommend doing that on vanilla Firefox, they have Firefox developer edi…

That's exactly the problem though. I know it's somehow possible, but the fact that I have to search for what's the internal boolean name for whatever feature I want to disable is simply a bad dev UX.

If there's a Firefox developer edition (I had no idea), they should enable all "I want to continue anyways" buttons by default. I mean, it's a developer edition!

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#100

Post by rumdz »

cwales95 wrote: post #92

Something has to change. Firefox is a GREAT browser. I think a lot of these things boil down to poor marketing. Things like these have to appear 'cool' and appeal to people. There has to be a reason for people to go out and actively want to download Firefox. Something akin to Apple's privacy adverts is how I'd go about it.

I agree. I'm not a Firefox fanboy. It has literally run better for me than Chrome for a few years now.
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