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Firefox on the brink?

brycewray.com

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Re: Firefox on the brink?

#791

Post by NoGravitas »

mozTA wrote: post #660
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...

Mozilla employee here. Truth of the situation is probably worse. We are losing users faster than anticipated.

Sure, brand new account with only one comment! I'm grateful for your trustworthy insider insights.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#792

Post by troyvit »

iteratethis wrote: post #589

Firefox was already statistically irrelevant 5 years ago. On our dashboard, a global e-commerce site with billions of views per year, it's not even in the top 10. Even regional browsers sometimes surpass it. Firefox is also no longer a developer-default browser. This too has been true for years now. There's very little Mozilla can do about it. Chrome and Safari are big because they're shipped as a default to platform…

Late to the party, but these are the things people were saying about Apple in 1999/2000. Apple was sitting with a < 4% marketshare and also (luckily) $5 billion. They turned it around. There are massive differences between Apple and Mozilla clearly, but it does indicate that there's hope for Mozilla.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#793

Post by flagrant_taco »

insanitybit wrote: post #788
riversflow wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government shouldn’t work based on data, but on virtue. That’s the whole point of a constitution, common law, etc.

Easier said than done. That introduces the chance for bias and nepotism. The data driven approach is intended to avoid that.

The data should be accurate though. Any data-driven decisions can easily miss the original intentions if they're made with bogus information.

Looking at browser usage data from GA when Firefox specifically blocks it quite often is useless.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#794

Post by fabrice_d »

fsflover wrote: post #694
fabrice_d wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FirefoxOS was not stopped by Mozilla leadership due to a lack of hardware partners. The distribution model - mostly through carriers - failed because a key app was not available (WhatsApp) which caused a chicken and egg situation: no sales because no app, no official app because not enough users.

Somehow this chicken-egg problem isn't stopping GNU/Linux phones. Sent from my Librem 5.

Indeed, but the go to market strategy was not the same. Librem 5 is still far from being a usable daily driver for most people.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#795

Post by fabrice_d »

geoelectric wrote: post #640
fabrice_d wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FirefoxOS was not stopped by Mozilla leadership due to a lack of hardware partners. The distribution model - mostly through carriers - failed because a key app was not available (WhatsApp) which caused a chicken and egg situation: no sales because no app, no official app because not enough users.

That's pretty interesting. I was around back then and hadn't recalled that there was such a lynchpin issue, but that makes a lot of sense as to why it suddenly hit such a hard stop. Were you able to support WhatsApp with KaiOS, or did the feature-phone target make it moot?

Yes KaiOS has an official WhatsApp app. This was possible thanks to the market size of Jio in India, with > 120M devices shipped.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#796

Post by hammyhavoc »

riversflow wrote: post #621
beanjuiceII wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What does a government site need that you can't do on firefox? Honestly this is disenfranchising, you should consider the ethics of what you are proscribing for the populace. I should have a right to choose a browser that respects my privacy from a PC.

... there's plenty of privacy-respecting Chromium-derivative browsers...

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#797

Post by insanitybit »

flagrant_taco wrote: post #793
insanitybit wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier said than done. That introduces the chance for bias and nepotism. The data driven approach is intended to avoid that.

The data should be accurate though. Any data-driven decisions can easily miss the original intentions if they're made with bogus information. Looking at browser usage data from GA when Firefox specifically blocks it quite often is useless.

What's your proposal? Because taking an approach that isn't data driven means it needs to be a replacement, and you need to convince people that it's worth the risk of nepotism and bias.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#798

Post by punyearthling »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #600

Are web standards that bleak that specific browsers need attention still?

no. web interoperability is a thing that's happening and the major players (including ff) mostly all behave/look the same. a project officially dropping ff support should have no impact on ppl using ff.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#799

Post by luuurker »

whakim wrote: post #475
jdlyga wrote: post #90

Firefox needs to focus all their effort on making a good web browser first . If the browser is slow, has a clunky interface, or lags behind on features, then people won't use it. Mozilla focus way too much of their attention on privacy and non-browser related projects. Look at how much attention that The Browser Company has gotten for their Arc browser on Mac. Their primary focus is great UI and making an excellent b…

I always see comments like this on HN, and I struggle to understand why. Firefox is plenty fast. Its interface is extremely similar to most of its competitors. It works well. What special sauce do you expect Mozilla to implement that'll suddenly change their fortunes? It's a browser, after all. And why do you think that such features aren't being implemented due to lack of resources or muddled priorities - surely Moz…

I'm typing this on Firefox. It works, I'm not going to stop using it, but it's not as polished as other browsers.

I'll give you an example that annoys me because I look at it every day: the bookmarks bar still uses the same margins as it did in Firefox 3, even after 2 major UI redesigns. Then we have things like windows from Firefox 3 for some stuff with pages that open on tabs and have a different UI. Like, pick one and stick with it.

CTRL/CMD+Click on a bookmark has a different behaviour than CTRL/CMD+Click on a link. No other browser does this.

Profiles are there, but there's no user friendly UI... and no, containers can't do the same things as profiles.

Then you have things like battery use on platforms like macOS, which is still worse for me than Chrome or Safari.

So yeah... it works, but it's not the best browser. I tolerate it mostly because of extensions like uBlock Origin.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#800

Post by luuurker »

nottorp wrote: post #626
jay_kyburz wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always see comments like this on HN, and I struggle to understand why. I think its OSX and Windows people talking past each other. On a Mac, Firefox is pale in comparison to Safari.

> On a Mac, Firefox is pale in comparison to Safari. How does that help when you can't run uBlock Origin on Safari?

Put yourself in the shoes of someone that wants a more polished experience and a longer battery life and you'd be asking "How does that help when the UI is a mix of old and new UIs and it drains battery twice as fast as Safari?"

I don't use Safari because of the extensions and overall it's too basic for me, but not everyone is like you or me.

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