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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.
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'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.
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
Revamping the plugin system is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. There are big problems with it that could stand improving.
The issue is if the new plugin system is less powerful and featureful than the old (which appears to be the case).
A plugin that does the same thing as NoScript is mandatory for me, and I can't stand using any browser that doesn't (which, currently, means any browser that isn't FireFox) -- the web is simply too risky and unpleasant to use without it.
If, as appears to be the case, the new plugin system does not allow something like NoScript, then I'll be using Pale Moon. I literally cannot think of a single thing that Mozilla could do with FireFox that would change that equation.