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Firefox 90

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Re: Firefox 90

#211

Post by aembleton »

fleddr wrote: post #160

I noticed in the comments below how somebody mentioning Firefox's limited market share was heavily downvoted. I'm a Firefox user since forever, and will keep using it. I also want Mozilla to win, and strongly empathize with their engineers whom are trying to make the best of it. That said, I think the reality check should not be avoided. There is no good in do-good software without reach. Based on statcounter, Firefo…

> In our dashboards, Firefox does not even exist.

Where are your dashboards getting the data from?

I use Firefox, but like many Firefox users I use uBlockOrigin so I block requests to trackers like Google Analytics and StatCounter.

Re: Firefox 90

#212

Post by no_wizard »

vbezhenar wrote: post #28
ducktective wrote: post #2

> FTP support has been removed sigh

IMO browser should focus on HTTP/HTML support. There are plenty of protocols and there are plenty of programs with proper support for those protocols. I don't see nothing wrong with using transmission for torrents, WinSCP for FTP, etc.

Turns out though, they're coming up with a way to support basically any TCP based protocol via WebTransport:

https://github.com/w3c/webtransport/blob/main/explainer.md

Re: Firefox 90

#213

Post by fleddr »

yborg wrote: post #197
fleddr wrote: post #160

I noticed in the comments below how somebody mentioning Firefox's limited market share was heavily downvoted. I'm a Firefox user since forever, and will keep using it. I also want Mozilla to win, and strongly empathize with their engineers whom are trying to make the best of it. That said, I think the reality check should not be avoided. There is no good in do-good software without reach. Based on statcounter, Firefo…

FF market share isn't a technical or ideological issue - it's marketing and platform capture. Chrome is the new IE and has the entire Google ecosystem tied in with it to make it a compelling platform. They were also smart to push the Chromebook into schools so a couple of generations of kids grew up with The Web = Google Chrome. Microsoft installs Edge by default on Windows. These two companies alone have hundreds of…

Agree with most of what you said, but want to add some nuance to some statements.

The IE comparison in dominance would be accurate, but it's worthwhile to point out that Google aggressively pushes web tech forward, whilst IE largely stagnated it. I think that's a meaningful difference, at least to developers.

And it's not just a passing note either. Firefox' once strong position was made possible by the gap left behind by IE. There is no gap now. The dominant party is speeding ahead.

Edge is an interesting case, as it shows the vast power of Google. Edge's market share is an embarrassing 3.4% in total, and on mobile about zero.

This shows that even with a desktop monopoly, they can't push it effectively. Supposedly, desktop users still keep using Chrome. Why wouldn't they? Edge is Chromium. Further, Microsoft does not have a single mass consumer service (like gmail, youtube, etc) to push it either. On mobile, Edge has no meaningful presence, and if mobile is some 70% of traffic these days, one can only conclude that all powerful Microsoft is completely unable to push a browser.

If they can't, how can Mozilla?

Re: Firefox 90

#214

Post by SonnyTark »

411111111111111 wrote: post #129
bergheim wrote: post #122

I think Firefox news is what I comment most on here. I don't know why. Well I guess I do. Web browsers, javascript etc is front and center here - which somewhat means the digital world. All my friends use Chrome, and think I'm weird. I think _they_ are. They care about human rights, at least I think they do. But, having Google, an ad company, dictate how our window to the digital world looks like, is now _way worse_…

Just remember that Mozilla gets over 90% of its revenue from Google.

So if I was a dominating business, and you're an opensource more ethical solution, all I need to do is make a generous donation to you and publicize that I did, then people like you will say what you just said in every public comparative discussion to try to lower the value of my competitor for me. Investment well spent I say.

Re: Firefox 90

#215

Post by 0xdeadb00f »

sambe wrote: post #115
dopu wrote: post #32

Excited that there's more progress being done in implementing proper site isolation. Would be great to not feel like I'm losing something in sticking with FF over Chromium-based browsers.

Does Chrome have better site isolation?

Yes. But I believe FF is slowly catching up in this update. There was a post about it here a while ago

Re: Firefox 90

#216

Post by fleddr »

zarzavat wrote: post #210
fleddr wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a crude way to put it, but yes, I can't see how this can go on. With limited resources, trying to keep up with giants speeding away from you, whilst market share keeps shrinking. I'm trying to think of a good exit plan, but I don't see any. Switching to Chromium, which would be a humiliating defeat, solves nothing. Chromium + privacy is Brave. Donating the entire project to the larger open source community won…

Firefox needs to become the default browser for web developers. They need to go all-in on developer tooling. The manifest v3 issue may help by poaching technical users from chrome. They also need to stop being so "principled" about features such as WebMidi. If I have to keep another browser around certain websites that Firefox is too principled to support then why bother using Firefox at all.

They can't out engineer Google on dev tooling, or the dev ecosystem. They just don't have the resources.

Chrome dev tools is vast and very rapidly evolving. Google has large evangelists teams dedicated to explaining dev tools or web tech in general. They are everywhere, on Twitter, Youtube, blogs, conferences, in web standards proposals.

It's Google all the way down. If I'm not mistaken, Mozilla doesn't even have any evangelists anymore.

Re: Firefox 90

#217

Post by ryantgtg »

fleddr wrote: post #160

I noticed in the comments below how somebody mentioning Firefox's limited market share was heavily downvoted. I'm a Firefox user since forever, and will keep using it. I also want Mozilla to win, and strongly empathize with their engineers whom are trying to make the best of it. That said, I think the reality check should not be avoided. There is no good in do-good software without reach. Based on statcounter, Firefo…

How much do these market share numbers change when filtering for desktop users? My assumptions: 1) most users are on their phones, and 2) most phone users just use the default browser (safari and chrome). Whilst desktop users are more likely to install a browser of choice.

Re: Firefox 90

#218

Post by fleddr »

aembleton wrote: post #211
fleddr wrote: post #160

I noticed in the comments below how somebody mentioning Firefox's limited market share was heavily downvoted. I'm a Firefox user since forever, and will keep using it. I also want Mozilla to win, and strongly empathize with their engineers whom are trying to make the best of it. That said, I think the reality check should not be avoided. There is no good in do-good software without reach. Based on statcounter, Firefo…

> In our dashboards, Firefox does not even exist. Where are your dashboards getting the data from? I use Firefox, but like many Firefox users I use uBlockOrigin so I block requests to trackers like Google Analytics and StatCounter.

From Adobe analytics and sometimes Google analytics.

You're right that ad blockers are on the rise, but that's also true for Chrome.

Note that the points I made regarding market share seem to be consistent across the board. Whether you check Statcounter, an alternative to that, or the analytics of large websites. The story is the same: Firefox is tiny, lost in a see of dozens of equally tiny browsers.

Re: Firefox 90

#219

Post by sharps1 »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #189
tapoxi wrote: post #5

I think Firefox has ~5% of our user base. It's hard to justify running separate tests for it anymore. I wish they'd just become a privacy-focused Chromium fork because I don't see them crawling back to a meaningful marketshare at this rate. (Yeah I know multiple implementations and all that, but we don't have many people running FreeBSD just to give Linux some competition.)

I would be very sad if Firefox switched to Chromium. Not just for standards-reasons, but because Firefox, with some userstyles tweaking, supports multiple rows of tabs, which Chromium-based browsers cannot do. Also keyboard-based navigation shortcuts are much better, unclear to how much that has to do with Chromium or not. Also I'm not sure if Chromium-based browsers support the full extent of uBlock Origin.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

uBO works best on Firefox. There is no CNAME uncloaking on chromium browsers, except for Brave which does this as part of their shields.

https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/

Vivaldi also have a built ad / tracker blocker where lists can be chosen.

Re: Firefox 90

#220

Post by fleddr »

ryantgtg wrote: post #217
fleddr wrote: post #160

I noticed in the comments below how somebody mentioning Firefox's limited market share was heavily downvoted. I'm a Firefox user since forever, and will keep using it. I also want Mozilla to win, and strongly empathize with their engineers whom are trying to make the best of it. That said, I think the reality check should not be avoided. There is no good in do-good software without reach. Based on statcounter, Firefo…

How much do these market share numbers change when filtering for desktop users? My assumptions: 1) most users are on their phones, and 2) most phone users just use the default browser (safari and chrome). Whilst desktop users are more likely to install a browser of choice.

Have a look yourself:

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...

Firefox seems to be at 7% desktop market share. Chrome on desktop has almost 10 times more market share. So I guess that's the browser of choice.

OSX, an operating system with a market share of only 15%, delivers desktop Safari, which still has a larger market share than Firefox across ALL desktops.

So also on desktops Firefox is losing, and keeps losing: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...

The trend is down, and down only.

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