Firefox lost 50M users since 2019 • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#501

Post by Macha » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 2:42 AM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #257

gibba999 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My child's school uses Google Classroom. The Google experience is unusable in Firefox. Meet doesn't work (e.g. he sees nothing when the teacher screenshares). This seems really quite anti-competitive. My child cares about privacy and switches browsers. Chrome for Meet, Firefox for most non-Google things.

Something is wrong with their system then. I use Meet in Firefox and it works. Sometimes it's buggy but I can always get it to work.

> Sometimes it's buggy

For a work tool, this is a problem. I get reports of fuzzy microphones, audio that slowly descends into robotic noise and screenshares that don't in Firefox. So I switch to Chrome for Meet in work, it just looks bad if my meetings don't work like 10% or more of the time.

I'm sure this is a problem with Google more than Firefox, given I have none of the same issues with discord in firefox on my personal devices

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#502

Post by arp242 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

foepys wrote: post #449

arp242 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That companies like Vivaldi and Brave can build successful for-profit businesses on top of a browser seems to indicate that it's a bit more complex than that. It's like the old quote about Microsoft Word, which was something along the lines of: "it's true that Word is bloated and that most people only use 10%, but everyone uses a different 10%".

Brave and Vivaldi outsourced the browser engine of the browser part to Google, though. That's the most expensive and work intensive part. They are also not part of any standardisation committee, as far as I know.

Sure, but I don't see how this relates here? My point was that people do want a browser that works well for them, and that the previous comment that "people want a browser that is invisible. They use sites, not browser." doesn't really fit with Brave and Vivaldi's success (also: Opera, and probably a few other browsers).

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#503

Post by emrah » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

marcellus23 wrote: post #125

emrah wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only Safari is able to stop this madness now Safari is a hard sell when one can't install an ad-blocker on it (work on the street is you can but not easily)

You’ve been able to use ad blockers in Safari for years.

Ya I know I "can". Via app store, I know. Hence my comment: "hard" to install ad-blockers

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#504

Post by emrah » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:16 AM UTC

marcellus23 wrote: post #433

Nextgrid wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ad-blocking API Safari offers isn’t as powerful as Firefox’s.

Okay… in practice they work fine though. Saying you can’t use ad blockers in safari is straight up wrong.

I never said "you can't". Please read carefully before replying

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#505

Post by emrah » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

hughcrt wrote: post #175

emrah wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only Safari is able to stop this madness now Safari is a hard sell when one can't install an ad-blocker on it (work on the street is you can but not easily)

You can install plenty of ad-blockers directly from the Mac App Store

Yes I know. But via app store, not from Safari directly (like every other browser) and for $$$.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#506

Post by kalleboo » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

soperj wrote: post #392

kalleboo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once Safari is gone you're not a web developer you're a ChromeOS developer

Safari doesn't exist for 80% of the world.

That 20% is still a big enough (and more importantly, rich enough) chunk that developers have to support it.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#507

Post by TranquilMarmot » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

freediver wrote: post #469

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Apple still require using Safari as the engine for all browsers on iPhone or has that changed?

Apple requires WebKit to be web rendering engine for all browsers. Safari is one of 100+ browsers on iPhone.

Tomato, tomato

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#508

Post by perfopt » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:51 AM UTC

I dont use Chrome except on some websites that dont work well with Firefox (some bank and government websites).

I am ok with the speed, I dont have too many plugins. I see no reason to every go back to Chrome as my main browser.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#509

Post by mmis1000 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

gorhill wrote: post #417

mmis1000 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is indeed a powerful tool that gives you the god view of everything what could happened.(Which normal web devtools definitely can't) However, it is also sometimes really hard to interpret the results. There are so many data there, some of them comes from Firefox internal, some of them comes from 3rd extension. Something in different thread actually chains together, but the ui does not show. I think it need some…

If you suspect the issue is with Firefox, you can open an issue with the profiling data attached, Firefox devs know how to interpret the data.

This is also way it is powerful. It used to be impossible for Mozilla to inspect the bug if they can't reproduce it themselves and consistently. But with the new profiler, you can screenshot the moments it bugs out either on reporter's computer or dev's. Makes the bug you used to be impossible to debug possible to debug.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#510

Post by xtat » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 4:08 AM UTC

eli wrote: post #204

prepend wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Firefox from launch until about two years ago. I stopped for reasons similar to what you listed. I’ve really enjoyed Brave as it is just a simple browser that works (and has lots of privacy features).

Firefox has its own funding issues but I don’t trust a browser that exists to support a cryptocurrency.

This is so reductive I don't know where to begin, but having worked on Brave I can say that there's a lot more top of mind over there than building a browser to support BAT.