Firefox 47 Arrives With Synced Tabs Sidebar, Better YouTube Playback (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Mozilla today launched Firefox 47 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The browser has gained a sidebar for synced tabs from other devices, improvements to YouTube playback and HTML5 support, and is seeing the end of support for Android Gingerbread. [If you're logged in with your Firefox Account, the sidebar will show all your open tabs from your smartphone and other computers. The sidebar even lets you search for specific tabs. Next, Firefox 47 supports the open source VP9 video codec on machines with powerful multiprocessors. VP9 is the successor to VP8, both of which fall under Google's WebM project of freeing web codecs from royalty constraints.] Firefox 47 is available for download on Firefox.com, and will be slowly released on Google Play. You can view the full Firefox 47 changelog here. If you're a developer, Firefox 47 for developers offers more details for you.

Comments

What about Firefox's declining market share?

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked at the latest browser market share stats after hearing about this new version of Firefox.

Firefox now has only about 6% to 7% of the market. That's across all versions, on desktop and mobile.

To put that into perspective, Firefox is well behind desktop Chrome, which is over 25%, and Chrome for Android, which is at 18%. Even UC Browser for Android is well above Firefox now, at almost 10% of the market.

Firefox is about as popular now as Safari for iOS 9.3 and IE 11. That's right, individual versions of non-Chrome browsers that support pretty much just one platform now have roughly the same number of users as Firefox does across all platforms and devices!

Even Opera Mini nearly has more users than Firefox does!

This decline in Firefox's market share should be sending shockwaves through Mozilla. Firefox is the only product of theirs that sees any significant use. They basically gave up on Thunderbird, the only other product of theirs that saw much use. Seamonkey never had many users to begin with. Persona and Firefox OS were total failures. Bugzilla is a legacy product. Rust and Servo are going nowhere.

Why, despite becoming more and more irrelevant each day, do we see such a complete lack of action on the part of Mozilla? Don't they realize that their existence depends on people using Firefox? Why would any company throw money at Mozilla if there aren't any Firefox users to perform searches or otherwise advertise to?

In any other organization there would be massive changes going on right now. Something is seriously wrong when a product goes from having 30% or more of the market down to 6% within only a few years.

Yet the best we've seen out of Mozilla has been the rather pointless Rust and Servo. Rust doesn't really improve on C++14, while having a lot of drawbacks (like only one implementation, lots of bugs in that implementation, a limited standard library, a steep learning curve, and lots of dead library projects, among others) that C++14 doesn't have. Servo is decades behind today's browsers, with no obvious hope of catching up any time soon.

It's so surreal when I look at this situation. The loss of market share and the response to it are unbelievable. But it's no wonder why it's happening. All of the unwanted changes made to Firefox starting with Firefox 4 explain perfectly why Firefox's market share has dropped. Imagine that, if users are treated like shit then they'll move to a competing product!

Re:What about Firefox's declining market share?

[NotInHere]

Firefox now has only about 6% to 7% of the market.

Considering that this includes mobile, where google thanks to being OS vendor has a head start, and where firefox came far too late to the game, and with a far too bad product, this number is quite high. It means millions of users world wide entrust firefox with their data.

Something is seriously wrong when a product goes from having 30% or more of the market down to 6% within only a few years.

The market has seen a giant growth (mostly caused by android) in the recent years. Before that, the market share was higher. If you look at absolute numbers, firefox didn't lose that much.

Rust and Servo are going nowhere.

I couldn't disagree more. Rust is being adopted by more and more people, although other languages like swift are more popular. And Servo is being improved right this moment, even though its still beta software.

Rust doesn't really improve on C++14

There is one huge improvement C++ never will dare to make: backwards compatibility. Rust is *not* backwards compatible with C, or earlier (and broken) versions of C++. If you don't use modern C++14 consistently, there might be benefits, but the actual potential is unleashed if you use 100% of the modern language. In a language which is backwards compatible to older versions of C++ or C, legacy programs won't likely migrate, or you will accidentially miss some pieces here and there.

a steep learning curve

That's where Rust is much better than C++14 at. C++ is a giant mess of trillions of different programming styles and legacy stuff down to pure C. Rust lacks these things.

only one implementation

I rather have something where there is one but working implementation of, than five different but non working ones. Also, there is much slower progress if multiple implementors have to find the best way to make a feature. Also consider that Rust is a very young language, and stable for since about one year.

Last but not least there is no real reason for somebody to start a second implementation. gcc was started because of proprietary compilers. clang was started because apple hated the GPL. If e.g. apple wants to integrate rustc into xcode, nobody stops them, rustc is MIT licensed.

lots of dead library projects

C++ has even more! Its the living projects that matter, not the dead ones.

Why would any company throw money at Mozilla if there aren't any Firefox users to perform searches or otherwise advertise to?

For now, it has worked out for Mozilla. But I agree, they should really do something about this situation.

Denial of Firefox's problems is destroying it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment is a perfect example of why Firefox is in such dire straights.

The GP listed numerous serious and very real problems that have been affecting Firefox for a long time now.

Yet instead of acknowledging the existence of these problems and the very negative effects that they have on Firefox's few remaining users, you (and others like you in the Mozilla community) totally ignore these problems.

Instead of doing something that would help fix these problems, you blabber on about "rights" and "principles" and nonsense like that.

It's no wonder users are fleeing Firefox and using Chrome instead: they're tired of being treated like shit by the Firefox community!

Instead of attacking and insulting those few Firefox users who are left, what if you and your kind started listening to these users?

When the users say they don't like Australis and the other unwanted UI changes, the correct response is to revert those changes, and not to insult those users.

When the users say they don't want Pocket, Hello, and other unwanted functionality forced on them, the correct response is to remove that functionality, and not to attack those users.

When the users say they want to see the performance improved and the memory usage decreased, the correct response is to improve the performance and decrease the memory usage, and not to belittle those users.

Firefox is on its death bed right now. The only hope it has for survival is if people like you start showing some respect to those Firefox users who still remain. That means offering them the browser that they want and are even begging for, rather than throwing disrespect and animosity at them!

Re:How does the Synced Tabs sidebar work?

[NotInHere]

Firefox encrypts the synced data on the client side, the plaintext content never reaches the mothership. Chrome, coming from google, obviously does not.

Improved Youtube Playback

[mentil]

I did a comparison. A 1080p 60fps youtube video (HTML5) used 28-44% of my quad-core in Firefox 46 (usually around 33%). Upgraded to Firefox 47, and it only used 4-6%. I turned off Firefox's hardware acceleration and it still only used 22-25%. I know my friend with a core 2 duo was having trouble with HD youtube videos on Firefox.

Re:Anyone get that "undisclosed 0-day" figured yet

[donaldm]

"If you're logged in with your Firefox Account, the sidebar will show all your open tabs from your smartphone and other computers"

That seems useful. Get hacked on all your devices at once. If it will speed the luddite uprising, I'm for it.

I hate to burst your bubble but Chrome does this as well and please don't get me started on the Edge Browser. Looks like we are all doomed.