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Inside Mozilla's Fight To Make Firefox Relevant Again (cnet.com)
News outlet CNET has a big profile on Firefox today, for which it has spoken with several Mozilla executives. Mozilla hopes to fight back Chrome, which owns more than half of the desktop market share, with Firefox 57, a massive overhaul due November 14. From the report: "It's going to add up to be a big bang," Mozilla Chief Executive Chris Beard promises, speaking at the company's Mountain View, California, headquarters. "We're going to win back a lot of people." "Some of the stuff they're doing from a technology perspective is amazing," says Andreas Gal, who became CEO of startup Silk Labs after leaving the Mozilla chief technology officer job in 2015. "I just don't think it makes a difference." [...] You may not care which browser you use, but the popularity of Firefox has helped keep browsers competitive and build the web into a foundation for online innovations over the last decade. Are you a fan of Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube? That's partly thanks to Firefox. Mozilla's mission is to keep the web vibrant enough for the next big innovation even as companies offer mobile apps instead of websites, dump privacy-invading ads on you or try to confine your activity to their own walled gardens. [...] To Mozilla, each tap or click on a webpage in Firefox is more than you browsing the internet. It's a statement that you'd prefer a more open future where online services can start up on their own. The alternative, as Mozilla sees it, is a future where everyone kowtows to Apple's app store, Google's search results, Facebook's news feed or Amazon's Prime video streaming. That's why Mozilla bought billboard ads saying "Browse against the machine" and "Big browser is watching you," a jab at Google. [...] Improvements within a project called Quantum are responsible for much of the difference. One part, Stylo, accelerates formatting operations. Quantum Flow squashes dozens of small slowdown bugs. Quantum Compositor speeds website display. And Firefox 57 also will lay the groundwork for WebRender, which uses a computing device's graphics chip to draw webpages on the screen faster. "You can do user interface and animation and interactive content that you simply can't do in any other browser," says Firefox chief Mayo, speaking from his office in Toronto -- over video chat technology Firefox helped make possible. It all adds up to a very different engine at the core of Firefox. That kind of speedup can really excite web developers -- an influential community key to Firefox's success in taking on IE back in 2004.
Maybe a simple name change and lots of unfulfilled promises of great, great things would suffice.
Remove all the spyware, keyloggers and fucking bullshit from your browser and stop forcing me to rely on random assholes to acomplish anything.
Turns out, fucking with the technicians (breaking https, because *mozilla* feels i dont need to access my devices until they have a mozilla-approved certificate) was the wrong approach. Good luck getting them back. The non-tech-crowd is gone for good anyway ("Hey Chrome is just there on my PC, why would i install that Firefoggs?")...
I ditched it when they pulled a Canonical and decided "F the user, it's our product our way".
Technically true, but that's a great way to render yourself irrelevant and dry up your market share.
Firefox is the Ubuntu of web browsers.
When Firefox kill legacy addons and destroy the best of Firefox forever.
They are trying to hide this. Most of addon community is warning the core developers. Drop the capabilities of legacy addons while they say that webextension will replace it while it has not the same functionality will broke most addons FOREVER.
Turn Firefox webextension into a Chrome clone... Bullshit.
Mozilla isn't great but it has Chrome beat hands down for bookmarking.
Cannot use Chrome because of that.
There's surely some people who can name technical, usability reasons, etc. But I bet the majority use it because:
So, if these are in fact most people's reasons it doesn't matter much what Mozilla do since Google have a much greater advertising power.
Also, that speedup would have to be huge for Joe User to notice and care.
Also 2, Isn't 57 the version where they remove support for classic extensions? The huge number and variety and power of Fx's extensions are one of the main reasons for choosing Firefox. They're gonna remove it and they think they'll gain tons of users. They're just bonkers. I predict lots of people will leave Firefox when 57 is out.
I'd use Firefox all the time if it supported Netflix on Linux and if Signal had some non-Chrome support
Tell me what new features this great version of Firefox will have and I would care. Neither the /. nor the original article wrote anything on that.
I've been sticking with Firefox over Chrome or Chromium because I like what Mozilla stands for.
But I have to use Chrome for work, and no matter how well Firefox did in some Tom's Hardware browser shootouts in 2012 or so, and no matter what numbers they show on arewefastyet.com and so forth, Firefox consistently felt painfully slow next to Chrome. That finally changed for me with 56 nightly. I'm not sure if it's as fast as Chrome, but for the first time ever it feels close enough that the difference is not an annoyance.
The article also mentions Firefox OS. I think in 2025, when WebAssembly is a mature technology, when $25 smart phones have 4GB of RAM, and when Firefox on mobile is substantially more efficient than Firefox 56 or 57 now... then Firefox OS might be practical. In 2013, it was a great idea not ready.
This is needed for Firefox 57 if it is to be successful. Also Mozilla needs to keep supporting Windows XP as it still has 6 percent market share over twice that of Linux.
You know, the browser that focused on rendering web pages fast and securely but left all the fancy schmancy UI and features where they belong: extensions.
Browsers are already gigantic and bloated as it is (all of them). You want to win me back as a customer? Start there. You want to fix the pulseaudio/alsa debacle? Make the sound server an extension so people can write a better one without having to fork all of Firefox. People get pissed off at your stupid UI decisions? Extension. People moved to Firefox because they were starved for choices, stop taking those away and you'll be relevant again. If we wanted a clone of Chrome, we'd use Chrome.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Computing these days is about the ecosystem. That's the reason for the dominance of app stores and Chrome.
Chrome = integrates with everything else that I use, yes including Google slurping my data. That's *why* I use Chrome. To get my data slurped, so that other Google services that I use (say, Google Now and Maps) work better. Shares bookmarks, sessions, and cache data across devices. A bunch of apps that I use can go back and forth between in-browser version and in-window (as a Chrome app) version, with the same interface. Is the native OS on my Chromebook.
Firefox... is just a standalone app. When they release a smartphone OS that integrates with Firefox and competing services to Google Now, Maps, Gmail, etc. that are *better* than Google Now, Maps, Gmail, etc. then I'll consider Firefox again. Until then, it's just another web browser in an age in which the web browsers are obsolete and have been replaced by operating-eco-systems.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
There are many reasons why Mozilla still has a chance to become the dominant browser. Google is nowhere near as security-conscious as Mozilla. They will not allow master passwords to protect saved password databases; Google doesn't allow plugins that support downloading of YouTube videos and a host of other things. If Mozilla can improve their performance issues, they are the best choice for a default browser due to Google's sacrificing of user security and flexibility in order to maintain their corporate control.
So I seriously doubt anything they are doing will change things. To go by their past proclamations, whatever crazy stunts they pull will just make more people leave firefox for chrome. That's the history of it. I don't claim to understand it. In fact, it baffles me. It baffles me that so many people use Chrome and it baffles me that firefox doesn't have more marketshare. I mean don't get me wrong, firefox sucks and keeps getting worse and worse, I understand that part. The part I don't understand is Chrome has always been a piece of shit. A piece of shit written by an evil spyware company. Why on earth would anyone be stupid enough to ever use it? So yeah, firefox sucks, but it's not spyware, it's not a virus, and it's not made by the shady guy driving around a van with a free candy sign.
Make it consume less memory, make it hang less, make it crash less.
There are good reasons to want to be using Firefox as is. You might not want to be tied to Google or Microsoft for example.
But Firefox's shoddiness is driving people away, primarily to Chrome, precisely because it's more stable.
It has to be two things - it has to be perfect, and it has to stay that way. Fickle 1-dimensional noobs are over-happy to jump ship to the big sucking sound that is chrome for a few ms faster loading times, no matter where their data goes after that.
There is room for a mainstream-competing browser to be sure.
Does not permit auto-play videos.
Has per-tab audio muting (and is muted by default).
Does not permit cross-site content by default
Supports ad blocking (esp. pop-ups and -unders), script blocking, tracker blocking, and includes anti-fingerprinting obfuscation.
Does not hide the cache files from me.
Has a download manager that will auto-resume on failure.
And while I have the bandwidth to handle it... I don't want my browser downloading videos and animations until I decide I want them. Don't waste my bits!
Right now, Firefox does most of that 99% of the time for me with a few select add ons installed. The only reason I have Chrome installed is that occasionally I like to use Google Maps 3D, and my kids' school uses Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for homework.
Firefox's unwanted new features aren't due to user demand. They are due to developer demand. Developers are required to add projects to their resumes to get that next job. If they don't, they're going to have a hole in their resumes and they're going to lose out to an H1B. They MUST add these unrequested features, otherwise how on Earth are they going to survive in today's hyper-competitive environment?
To put it another way: insisting that Firefox remain a minimalist web browser is putting these people's careers in danger. What kind of developer would put up with that kind of bullshit? It's one thing to want software, it is entirely another to jeopardize your ability to keep increasing your income just so a bunch of internet nerds can have a fast, zippy browser.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Thunderbird could have been the key to make Mozilla relevant. Browsers we have many. And while I personally still use Firefox for a few options I like, it could disappear tomorrow and I would barely miss a step.
But to this day, secure, *private* communication and messaging remains a challenge. Thunderbird has had the solution for years, and all it would have needed was a bit of clever marketing / positioning for people and organization to take full advantage of it. Mozilla instead wasted all their political capital trying (and failing) to change the standard everyone uses for video, even though the die had already been cast in embedded chips.
I constantly get those Firefox messages that say, "We noticed it took a long time to start. Would you like to speed up Firefox?" or whatever it says.
It turns out that I have to remove all my add-ons to get it a little faster. Even then, it's dogshit slow.
AND some websites have these ridiculous scripts that not only bring Firefox to a crawl but my whole machine.
I suggest that the Firefox developers have Huffington Post or CNN or MSNBC as their home screens. And sometimes, Sslashdot does shit that hoses FF.
I roll around in pig excrement as I remove features from Firefox like tab groups, granular cookie control, status bar, tabs on bottom, full protocol display while breaking extenion support to restore those features.more while adding Pocket and Google Analytics to the addons page.
I am a Firefox Millennial, ruining the Generation X Firefox since version 5.0
Uh oh.
Pretty much every one of the adjectives he used there are red-flag words to me. Particularly "sleek" and "modern". (At least he didn't say "minimalist", although that's implied).
In the past few years, every time I've seen software proclaim those things, the UI for that software has sucked.
I need to re-write mine but they haven't sorted out how plugins like mine will work. I'm still stuck using shims that are going to go away at some point. I'd rather not have to re-write it twice...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
CNN? Is that you?
Trump is waaaay too stupid to be mentioned next to anything related to technology, sorry. Trump makes M$ look like wunderkinds.
Make a stripped-down, fast browser for browsing only. Call it something like "Phoenix" or perhaps "Firebird".
(I remember using Netscape 4.72 on Linux around 1999. Then as the new Mozilla engine was being developed, there were third-party browser projects using that engine for browsing only, such as Galeon. Phoenix was basically Mozilla's implementation of such ideas, and initially worse than the other projects. However, it soon became the only way to stay up-to-date with the Mozilla engine development.)
Between current versions of Firefox and Chromium, I can only think of one thing that FF does better: middle-button pasting of URLs into any "blank" area. Chromium is better in so many other ways.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
the NOSCRIPT addon/plugin.
I do not care if the browser is called Sea Monkey, Firefox or whatever.
If it can run NOSCRIPT I will use it.
Also Mozilla, implement the HTML5 Form Input Tags for date time month etc. That would be useful.
If people want to browse facebook.com and google.com and be logged into their accounts with Firefox, Mozilla should damn well let them. This sounds like some ideological crusade that sounds more like RMS in a suit than a company trying to deliver a good product. I'm more and more convinced that the only reason Firefox beat IE was that it was an ancient piece of crap Microsoft preferred that didn't work well so they'd stall web apps for as long as possible. It's like fighting a beat-up old boxer that's dancing the ropes trying to go all the rounds but not even trying to put up a real fight. Makes me wonder if Google didn't really start Chrome because WTF we give you all this money and this is what you do with it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Most of the comments so far are variations on the same theme... Firefox's product management has not been great. If you want your product to win in the marketplace, it has to serve end-users better than the competing alternatives. Nothing should make it into the product if it doesn't improve the end-user experience. I use Firefox because plugins like NoScript and Adblock Plus work in Firefox. But there are many strange problems that we Firefox users always have to contend with. For example, if I have EVER had a secure connection with a domain (Netflix.com), Firefox will INSIST that I always have a secure connection with that domain, and I can't browse non HTTPS pages on that domain (like the Netflix Tech blog). That's not security. That's just stupid. I'm just trying to browse a static web page... I'm not posting any information, or entering a password or credit card info on that page. Mozilla also gets religious with respect to video codecs. Again... just stupid. Tens of thousands of companies worldwide want to support newer industry standards, like HEVC, but Mozilla in their infinite religious wisdom thinks that HEVC should fail and VP9 should succeed, so even when a website wants to deliver HEVC video, and the consumer has an HEVC capable device, Mozilla believes that Firefox should block the HEVC video from passing through to the device. You can have whatever political beliefs you want, and you can try to influence the discussion, but when the market has spoken, you need to listen. Any browser vendor that thinks they can leverage their installed base and market power to force their worldview on the end-users will ultimately fail. This is why Mozilla succeeded in the first place - because Microsoft was inflexible and not listening to the needs of end users.
Firefox can't come back - this is a battle they cannot win. Let's take a look at why Firefox became a success in the first place. A monopoly (Microsoft) won the first browser war by bundling IE into their OS, and by pushing IE into the corporate setting. IE became the most widely used browser, and business intranets were forced to be IE compatible. IE stagnated and became a festering piece of crap because MS became lazy when they dominated the market. They wanted stuff like ActiveX (which is really just a windows program embedded into a web page) to succeed because it forced web pages to be dependent on the Windows OS. They began to bastardize and cause many issues with HTML in the way IE interpreted things - HTML was defined by the way IE interpreted it.
It was into this environment that Firefox (or Firebird) came to be a success. The technically proficient (aka you and I) began using it, then we began installing it on friends' and relatives' computers. We taught them if a website didn't work in Firefox then to try it in IE, otherwise always use Firefox first. And so it came to be that Firefox became popular due to a grassroots kind of movement begun by people who recognized the technical insufficiency of IE.
So a monopoly was broken up, and healthy competition ensued. HTML once again became a standard that was not defined by a single web browser and how it decided to interpret it. Firefox succeeded in its goal, which in my opinion was to create a healthy browser competition and make HTML browser agnostic.
Now, we still have a healthy (or as healthy as we can hope something like HTML can be) web browser environment, with multiple players backed by huge corporate entities, who not only have the resources to spend on pushing browser technology, but they can literally push millions of people into using their browser - Microsoft (Edge), Google (Chrome / Android / Chromebook), and Apple (Safari / Mobile Safari). These companies produce browser tech as a side process, because they have millions of users that will by default use their browser, so it makes sense to have more control over that environment.
Mozilla really has nothing more than Firefox (specifically, the do not control hardware, operating systems, or markets containing millions of users), so they cannot leverage people into their browser. Chrome, Safari, and yes, even Edge, are now more than "good enough" as web browsers, so the technical of us have no real incentive to push people away from them to Firefox.
So congratulations Firefox, and we thank you profusely for single handedly reshaping the HTML and browser market for the better. You did your job.
Better known as 318230.
Chrome is such a big privacy grab. You have to use add-ons to make it behave and to trust Alphabet/Google at that. Firefox makes privacy easy and I think most of us like that.
Ad-blocker on my default. Robs Google of money and gives your users something that they are aching for. Advocates of ads as a revenue stream for website operators need to get a clue. Allowing a third party to inject shit into your website is an obvious recioe for disaster.
I agree with pretty much everybody else on here that if Mozilla wants Firefox to succeed, they should stop trying to give us more doodads in the browser. Hello! We want LESS. That was the whole reason for the existence of Firefox, if you remember. Strip out all that stuff that nobody uses and concentrate on making it lean and extensible.
I honestly don't see much performance difference between Firefox and Chrome these days. Firefox's lone remaining advantage is that Chrome is butt ugly. As a UI guy, I find the Chrome UI to be jagged, clumsy, and just atrocious. I want a menu bar. I want an app that looks like it was designed and not just thrown together by coders with zero design sensibility.
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
All Mozilla needs to do is to fork the current version of Palemoon, which was originally a fork off an older version of Mozilla but added actual useful code in.
If they decide to not fork, at the very least, remove:
Safebrowsing
Telemetry
Hello
anything related to "social" and "fb" "facebook" that you see in about:config
Ability to block canvas5 detection
Restore a way to easily disable javascript WITHOUT any extension/ going though about:config
Start with these and they might have a small chance
Start by making the javascript engine not freeze while using Facebook.
These days Chrome is coasting on a bit of momentum and heavily pushing itself by bundling itself with adobe
Adobe what? Flash Player? Adobe and Google have jointly announced plans to remove Flash Player at the end of 2020, leaving digital restrictions management for streaming video as the only significant non-free component of Google Chrome.
Maybe they should just have practiced a bit less stupidity over the last few years? Anyways, that battle is over. The code-base may make a comeback in a few years, but not with the people currently in charge at Mozilla.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
... by doing as Netscape did and giving it to a community of passionate developers who are not primarily motivated by reversing decline in corporate revenue.
Mozilla doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell to stay relevant. It's a project that was built around code donated by pioneers of browser development (Netscape), not out of something they created themselves. They stayed innovative by copying features and ideas by a competing browser, Opera, and giving away what Opera was charging money for, at a time when there was no competition. The obscene amounts of money they got from the sponsorship of Google was pissed away on executive salaries and projects they had neither the talent or resources to make successful. They're now backed to a wall facing some of the most successful companies of the past two decades, who have unlimited resources, and they're about to give away the last thing that has kept them propped up until now: the capability to build all kinds of cool plugins which cannot be replicated in any other browser. I think chances are high the plugin community will just walk off once this happens, and their market share will drop like a rock. Not from very high, mind you. There's little space to fall any further from where they are right now.
Best post of the day.
...but how becomes the important part. Everyone just trying to copy Chrome is pointless. I'll just use Chrome, then. However, I don't want to stream everything to Google. They get enough of my data as it. I prefer Firefox, but mostly for reasons that they keep wanting to change: Plug-ins, the more classic menu system, etc. Just make it run fast and smooth, and don't 'modernize' it. (e.g. Make it look like Chrome or just follow the 'flat UI' trend.)
CyberKender
Apparently Appointed Lord Mayor of There
Filtering extensions could be built into a proxy which is really where they should go so any web software can use the functionality, not just Firefox. Also speaking of extensions Firefox doesn't natively support U2F, but have to use an extension.
Mozilla needs to get rid of two things to make Firefox relevant again: - the endless arrogance of the developers - the craptastic copy of the Chrome UI Get the devs some training in how to interact with people (customers) and go back to the old UI, I mean the one from version 2.x before they aped Google in any which way.
And they didn't even mention the first name was Phoenix?
Hmm, and then there was the naming controversy. Phoenix became Firebird, along with Thunderbird and Sunbird. Then, Firefox.
The naming things always kind of embodied the "close, but not quite there"-ness of FireFox. Hmm, and Thunderbird and Sunbird are dead. Just seems like a lot of work but a lot of wasted effort in places.
I use Chrome (and Chromium) because, for me, the performance is better than Firefox. I regularly try Firefox when I hear about improvements, and I will continue to do so, but so far I eventually end up back at Chrome. It's just so much faster for me. Also Chrome's automatic search-in-site feature (type "amazon", hit tab, search for a string and you search using Amazon's site search) is fantastic. Firefox has keyword searches (right click on a search box to see the option) but it requires manual setup which is kind of annoying. But I'll gladly give it up if Firefox performance is relatively close to Chrome. I would LOVE to switch back,. It's been years since I regularly used Firefox.
I got tired of the apparently incessant need to change things. Just when I would get accustomed to the "Reload" button being on the left side some 18 year old at Mozilla decides to move it to the right side. And vice-versa.
Change simply to change something just about drives me crazy. And I'm happy to stick right where I am now, a Chrome (for better or worse) user.
Caution: Contents under pressure
Because Firefox became Chrome Junior with their interface and stopped making the browser better. Every release had some new feature that no one asked for. A paper airplane button for sharing links with friends? Until they make something faster and less bloated I'm staying with Chrome. Apparently no one at Mozilla is old enough to remember the bloat that was IE4.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Wishful Thinking
You got this Mozilla, no really you do...
We'll make great pets
What server is this? And I think ALL the browsers do bookmarks poorly.
It only has it's place on my android mobile devices.. uBlock Origin + Privacy Badger. If chrome would allow for that on mobile I'd only leave it installed to debug the occasional website.
Fuck Ajit Pai
be instantly relevant:
1. don't ruin extensions
2. don't ruin the UI - go back to the old UI which doesn't hide stuff
3. stop shoving crap like pocket into the browser we don't want
Firefox feels fast again and still has lighter footprint than Chrome. I use several browsers daily but mostly Chrome and Firefox. Recently (Since the process & memory changes made it into the main release.) Firefox has become my first choice again.
You want "relevant" again? Don't pull the Java plugin saying it's insecure while keeping the Flash plugin. Some of us have iLo, IPMI, and proprietary management interfaces that rely on Java 6 and 7 and we can't just stop using them without Mozilla forking out several hundred thousand dollars to replace storage servers for us. Don't "protect us from ourselves" or "help us" when we're downloading source files for maker projects. If you have an "idiot mode / expert mode" switch that I don't know about now would be a good time to mention it. Yes, I pretty much know what's going on over in about:config. You want relevant again? Cooperate with MalwareBytes, Adblock Plus, Ghostery, Privacy Badger, and HTTPS Everywhere. Questing after the speed grail is all fine and well but pay attention to the *current* ecosystem that the browser has to work within. I know it's a receding horizon. I know it's an ever changing landscape. That's what relevance is all about. I've been on the edge of changing browsers for some time now. I can't say that I see a reason to re-embrace Firefox yet. Addendum: Don't taunt us with the demise of Thunderbird. Do. Or do not. There is no try. And it affects the reputation of Firefox. Thunderbird is still relevant regardless of its status. You might start acting like it.
If you want to compete, try to be different. Bring in features with tangible usefulness, instead of pretending to look like the latest hot cake. If I want a browser that looks like Chrome, I will use Chrome. Work on things that matters to the user, not to make you feel cool or trendy.
Two things stop me being able to recommend Firefox as the top preference,both trivial, but these are things that work in Chrome, and not Fx:
1. input type=date. Chrome has a native widget, Firefox simply doesn't do anything other than treat it as text - result, we have to embed lots of JS for this alone. Fx has had a huge debate on bugzilla about how to make the datepicker look best, and they got stuck with the debate for ages, and never implemented - I don't really care which widget set it uses, but it just needs to work.
2. the progressive web app on Chrome (Android) will run full-screen. But Firefox won't full-screen it.
Also it would be rather nice if the now 17-year-old bug with several hundred comments on "please don't let a fat-fingered ctrl-Q (when we meant ctrl-W) quit the entire browser without confirmation" could be fixed. Lastly, given that Google is clearly not Mozilla's friend, perhaps Firefox could start auto-blocking mis-features such as google-analytics tracking?
I really want Fx to do well though.
Great sidestep around the fucking stupid n1gger censorship on this site.
Pepperidge Farms remembers!
Why do they keep acting like it's a surprise! And keep asking and asking, the answers are always the same.
First, they need to know their audience! They can't compete with google/MS/Apple with the bundle and ignorant crowed. Who are they targeting? Those that know better or want something different than those.
Those that want something better don't want a clone. What do we want? A stable fast secure Web Browser, where the user is in control.
Only then, do we, the tech savvy, push FF onto our friends and family.
(I still use FF as my primary browser, and push it with some options reverted and plugins)
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
It's just the least evil, the most configurable, the most honest, and the easiest to use without worry. Go Firefox, keep kicking ass!
Mozilla lost the fight when they stopped caring what their users wanted and decided instead to try and become a Google Chrome clone.
For those uncommon features, how often do they prop up that they require you to download yet another browser?
I lack a quantitative answer to that question, but the article "Apple's Refusal To Support Progressive Web Apps is a Detriment To Future of the Web" has a qualitative one.
> Chrome, Safari, and yes, even Edge, are now more than "good enough" as web browsers, so the technical of us have no real incentive to push people away from them to Firefox.
After years on FF and several false starts I finally transitioned to Chrome and stayed there.
Today Chrome is nice. Yes, all browsers are bloated and so is Chrome, but despite that it runs nicely and fastly even on low end PCs. And although most users never see it Chrome's web developer interface is fantasic and far better at finding errors than FF's effort. I've no reason to go back.
What drove me to finally jump was FF's arrogance. You loved them when they used to be the little geek battling MS, but as FF became flush with cash they too started trying to force ads down our throat, sucking up to big business with DRM, the Pocket debacle which strikes me as 'how do I make my friend really rich', and most alienating was their arrogant responses insulting their users with bland and disingenuous corporate-speak when their users criticized them.
At that point, FF was just another browser company, so why not go with Google with a slightly better solution?
Firefox could make it more difficult for sites to know you're using an add blocker. The browser could download the "page they think you see" and render the page that's been filtered by your ad/script blocking plugins. Of course, users with a slow connection would need to be able to disable this feature.
Everytime the FIrefox browser is updated it becomes more and more unuseable. The interface adds suckage at every turn. Useless crap that cannot be turned off is added at every turn.
FIrst thing they should do is rename it correctly: ExtingusherTurtle
As long as the whole browser doesn't freeze up every time I click a link. That's the only thing that really needed fixing. Blockheaded open source programmer obsessed with technical obscurities don't seem to get that.
I loved Firefox, but the massive memory footprint (2GB +) and constantly locking up forced me to move to Chrome.
I loved the plugins on Firefox (Ghostery, uBlock, ForecastFox...) but the browser has become so bloated with "features" no one ever uses... people use a browser for 1 thing, the more bells and whistes turns it into a different monster, how about Mozilla, you make 2 versions, i barebones one, and a fancy one... shall see what the users decide.
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
Citation:
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
It's really annoying when you feel locked into using cloud services why not let the mobile version of Firefox also save and restore it's bookmarks as a HTML file?
"We're going to win back a lot of people." well, if you didn't lose them in the first place, you wouldn't have to win them back which you won't. Morons don't win anything
FF been shit since the intro of the Awful Bar !!!!
The old way of doing extensions does not just have big problems, it is a big problem. Firefox/Gecko is a big, complicated, messy machine with lots of moving parts, relying heavily on some technical trickery (eg., XUL, HTML entities, XBL, faking DCOM in Javascript). Old-style extensions supplant and/or replace and/or modify those parts. That lets hackers-as-in-expert-coders do great things, but also lets black-hat coders do all sorts of Bad Things. (This is why Mozilla enhanced add-ons to use digital signatures in 2015.)
Altering core browser functionality is never going to be easy, but the way Gecko is structured makes it really hard to get right, and updates for Firefox can break such extensions in hard-to-debug, hard-to-fix ways. Mozilla's response has been to avoid changing core parts of Gecko, which is part of the reason it has fallen behind newer browsers. Even extensions which just add simple features required lots of weird boilerplate (eg., "XUL overlays").
In contrast, Web Extensions are much less fragile and much easier to code and much safer in every way.
BTW, Mozilla worked with the developers of popular intrusive extensions like NoScript and Adblock Plus to enable them to port their add-ons to (or, more accurately, rewrite their extensions for) Web Extensions.
I want a browser that performs good and looks the same over many years, like don't move the reload button or move whole menues around. I also want a browser that has long term functioning plugins.
That was Firefox, but no longer is. Using Chromium on bigger machines, Pale Moon on smaller machines.
It's not relevant because Mozilla is INCOMPETENT.
Full STOP.
Thanks for the ideas/requirements. I too have 1000s of bookmarks. I might try to implement some of these ideas here: https://github.com/pdfernhout/...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I still use Firefox, and this site is telling me it's not "relevant".
Mozilla has indeed been a major contributor to technology. What this report fails to account for is the average user. Firefox has become increasingly slow over time (at least, on the Mac). As a part of my regular work, I have multiple browsers to work with -- but because of Firefox being a resource hog, I've gone to Chrome, using Firefox for only things necessary of that browser. My point is, your average user probably doesn't care about the underpinnings, they care about the experience. So if Mozilla delays introducing performance improvements, by the time they do an entire user base has already moved on, with a bad taste in their mouth from poor performance. It's not something that's easy to work with. But they need to step up their release game.
No. As a web developer, the whole default cross-domain restrictions in browsers is absolutely stupid. Over the years, I have had to jump through a zillion hoops just because I want to send data from subdomain1.mydomain.com to subdomain2.mydomain.com on two subdomains I own and control or I want to allow a third-party domain to actually have access through an iframe to the parent. JSONP is a hack for a bug in the browser stack that should not exist. The intro portion to the HTML document itself should be the immutable setup of that particular page's security restrictions and allowances (e.g. a new 'security' tag that appears before the 'head' tag). There shouldn't be HTTP header requirements to implement the setup (e.g. CSP is broken-by-design and therefore a non-solution). And, later on, restrictions could be integrated into immutable Javascript callbacks that handle network requests to limit what areas of the DOM each downloaded script has access to/can affect for extremely refined, real-time adaptive security. Only when this happens will web development stop being terrible on the security front.
Everything I just described is doable but no one wants to implement it because browser developers keep saying that the existing solutions are "good enough". No, they aren't, and we have a giant mess leftover from the mid- to late-90's as a result that drive everyone up the wall who want to accomplish anything useful in web software. Current cross-domain restrictions are also arguably less secure because of the hacks that end up getting implemented to get around them for trusted infrastructure - for example, most developers don't prevent their PHP proxies from being misused as proxies to anywhere.
I cant see instagram embedded pictures on websites, and HTML5 videos wont play. This happened not so long ago. Whats up with FF?
"Some of the stuff they're doing from a technology perspective is amazing,"
So advanced technology can make it even slower and more of a resource hog?
Here's all you need to know about the CEO:
"...has an MBA in International Business from the University of Edinburgh Business School (2002–04)... He previously read economics and biochemistry at the University of Ottawa (1994–96)." (from Wikipedia)
And, that's all you need to know about whether you will like FF in the future.
On my laptop, Firefox was very stable until a few months ago. Now it crashes multiple times a day. I suspect all of the Rust crap is to blame...