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

Firefox on the brink?

brycewray.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 840 posts

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#661

Post by parineum »

matteoraso wrote: post #635
hs86 wrote: post #117

I switched over after the Manifest v3 debacle, and after a couple of months, I wonder if the implications of using a browser with a lower market share are overblown. I haven't encountered any site that misbehaves, and the only missing feature so far is within the Google Drive web app because it uses a Chrome-only extension [1]. Maybe the ongoing standardization of the web shows its effects here, and using a standard-…

Agreed. Even if Firefox makes up a small part of the market share, any website that serves millions of people will want to support it. Imagine if you have a website with 1,000,000 monthly visitors, and 2% of them use Firefox. Dropping support will mean 20,000 less monthly visitors. This gives us an idea of how much you should spend on support. If you make an average of $0.10 a month per user, you should be okay with…

> Imagine if you have a website with 1,000,000 monthly visitors, and 2% of them use Firefox. Dropping support will mean 20,000 less monthly visitors.

It will always be 2% which will always be, at maximum, 2% more revenue. That's probably negligible if you have to support them and there's an opportunity cost to that money. You'd probably be better off spending that money on advertising than Firefox support, especially since Firefox users typically know when a page isn't working, it's probably them and they have a backup solution available.

I used Firefox for a long time but switched because I just got tired of switching all the time and I started regularly using a site that didn't work in Firefox (I don't remember now but I think it was my credit card).

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#662

Post by itronitron »

beanjuiceII wrote: post #613
Chabsff wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the article, this is irrelevant. The case being made is that the figure seen by the government falling under 2%, which it is getting close to, will trigger a chain-reaction of consequences that will dramatically hurt Firefox, and it's not clear if Mozilla, the organization, could weather that. It doesn't particularly matter whether or not the figure is accurate in that context. Maybe that can be fixed easily by h…

I work in govt tech, we already internally do not care about FF support at all and only really look to chrome based browsers (chrome edge mostly) and safari. Many people don't even know what it is anymore, seems like time killed this browser too. Mozilla spending too much time/money and other crap over the years

Last I checked gov tech is larger than just one person commenting on HN.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#663

Post by zizee »

Ikatza wrote: post #653
hs86 wrote: post #117

I switched over after the Manifest v3 debacle, and after a couple of months, I wonder if the implications of using a browser with a lower market share are overblown. I haven't encountered any site that misbehaves, and the only missing feature so far is within the Google Drive web app because it uses a Chrome-only extension [1]. Maybe the ongoing standardization of the web shows its effects here, and using a standard-…

For one, HN misbehaves pretty badly on mobile.

It does? In what way? I have used Firefox mobile for years on HN without noticing issues. What am I missing?

Edit: I used Firefox on Android, the issues you describe might be Firefox on iOS, which is a different beast.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#664

Post by simbolit »

conradfr wrote: post #306
NelsonMinar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for a more accurate picture of Firefox' market share? Every single report I've seen shows the same thing: long downward trend and a tiny fraction of the usage of Chrome and Safari.

I have a modest (non-technical) side project (a few thousands visitors per day) that is used worldwide. GoAccess puts Firefox at 7.8% and Google Analytics at 3.3%. GoAccess puts Chrome at 57% and Google Analytics at 73%.

Non-technical as in "the average user isn't a nerd" ?

For non-nerd populations, these numbers seem high.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#665

Post by gafage »

riversflow wrote: post #659
Chabsff wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There are a plethora of browsers out there, and no one can be expected to test against all of them. As long as we go for a "government conforming to industry" mentality, then the cutoff has to be somewhere, and if Firefox doesn't make that cutoff, then that's all there is to it. No browser deserves special treatment here. And this is as true for Firefox as it is for Lynx.

> No browser deserves special treatment here. Completely disagree. Privacy is a 4th ammendment right, so the government has a duty to support privacy first browsers. How am I "secure in my ... papers and effects" if I must use a privacy destroying browser to interact with the Government? If anything, chrome support is what should be questionable.

That's the mother of all reaches.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#666

Post by merotiskonel »

People who should know better keep on using chrome just as people who should know better keep on using vscode. I guess that's the zeitgeist, accepting the corporate trojan gift. Let's just hope alternatives like Firefox don't completely vanish.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#667

Post by usr1106 »

asdff wrote: post #561
aboodman wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a library developer, Firefox is expensive for us to support in https://replicache.dev and https://reflect.net due to lots of long-open bugs, particularly in the storage system. Firefox also generally has the slowest performance which affects us. I'm not bagging on the team, it's frankly amazing they've been able to mostly keep up, it's just a fact that maintaining a competitive web browser is a gargantuan…

When people say firefox is more performant than other browsers, they mean to say you can use actual powerful adblockers like ublock origin that then make it a totally rigged race against other browsers in terms of real world performance.

Which is a good thing. Running ads is triple pollution. On the servers, on the browser, and by the manipulated comsumers buying crap they don't need in the first place.

(Yes, I do pay for content I care about.)

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#668

Post by eecc »

Chabsff wrote: post #639
insanitybit wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clearly not about what is needed, it's about what is tested . And spending resources on a browser that appears to have 2% of the market is not going to be a high priority.

Exactly. There are a plethora of browsers out there, and no one can be expected to test against all of them. As long as we go for a "government conforming to industry" mentality, then the cutoff has to be somewhere, and if Firefox doesn't make that cutoff, then that's all there is to it. No browser deserves special treatment here. And this is as true for Firefox as it is for Lynx.

Well, that’s what you get when you’re a Public Service. There’s an idiot living on the top of a mountain that needs some basic infrastructure? You got to get your truck out and build that supply line. You won’t do it? Then the government that granted you that Public Service status has renounced sovereignty on that part of the country

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#669

Post by ImaCake »

mtVessel wrote: post #644
hs86 wrote: post #117

I switched over after the Manifest v3 debacle, and after a couple of months, I wonder if the implications of using a browser with a lower market share are overblown. I haven't encountered any site that misbehaves, and the only missing feature so far is within the Google Drive web app because it uses a Chrome-only extension [1]. Maybe the ongoing standardization of the web shows its effects here, and using a standard-…

Not sure how so many in the thread are using FF problem-free? In the past few years I've encountered more and more sites that don't work properly with FF. Most of the issues are around modals that won't dismiss or even display at all. Other issues I can't identify, but the site becomes unresponsive or some content won't load. I think the Ticketmaster ticket selection page was the last one I couldn't use at all with F…

I had some issues with several sites around 2-3 years ago but I haven’t been experiencing them recently.

I guess FF has issues on a fairly small set of sites which some users use a fair bit while most users don’t see those sites at all.

The only site I use regularly which has issues is google earth and the reason why is obvious.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#670

Post by riversflow »

parineum wrote: post #661
matteoraso wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Even if Firefox makes up a small part of the market share, any website that serves millions of people will want to support it. Imagine if you have a website with 1,000,000 monthly visitors, and 2% of them use Firefox. Dropping support will mean 20,000 less monthly visitors. This gives us an idea of how much you should spend on support. If you make an average of $0.10 a month per user, you should be okay with…

> Imagine if you have a website with 1,000,000 monthly visitors, and 2% of them use Firefox. Dropping support will mean 20,000 less monthly visitors. It will always be 2% which will always be, at maximum, 2% more revenue. That's probably negligible if you have to support them and there's an opportunity cost to that money. You'd probably be better off spending that money on advertising than Firefox support, especially…

> they have a backup solution available.

Im a decade+ daily driver of Firefox. If a website doesnt support it, I make a mental note that I hate this company now, close the tab, and move on. I don't open it in a V8 browser, i look for an alternative.

Post reply on HN