Firefox Lost Almost 50 Million Users In 3 Years (itsfoss.com) 247
An anonymous reader quotes a report from It's FOSS, written by Ankush Das: Mozilla's Firefox is the only popular alternative to Chromium-based browsers. It has been the default choice for Linux users and privacy-conscious users across every platform. However, even with all benefits as one of the best web browsers around, it is losing its grip for the past few years. I came across a Reddit thread by u/nixcraft, which highlighted more details on the decline in the userbase of Firefox since 2018. And surprisingly, the original source for this information is Firefox's Public Data Report.
As per the official stats, the reported number of active (monthly) users was about 244 million at the end of 2018. And, it seems to have declined to 198 million at the end of Q2 2021. So, that makes it a whopping ~46 million decline in the userbase. Considering 2021 is the year when privacy-focused tools saw a big boost in their userbase, Mozilla's Firefox is looking at a constant decline. Especially when Firefox manages to introduce some industry-first privacy practices. Quite the irony, eh? Just for fun, here's a timeline of our stories reporting on Firefox's download milestones from the mid-2000s:
September 19, 2004: 1 Million Firefoxes in 4 Days
December 12, 2004: Firefox Reaches 10 Million Downloads
February 17, 2005: Firefox Breaks 25 Million Downloads
April 26, 2005: Firefox nears 50 Million Downloads
July 29, 2005: Firefox Downloads Reach 75 Million
October 19, 2005: Firefox Tops 100 Million Downloads
September 11, 2007: Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads
July 3, 2008: Firefox Breaks 8 Million, Gets Into Guinness
As per the official stats, the reported number of active (monthly) users was about 244 million at the end of 2018. And, it seems to have declined to 198 million at the end of Q2 2021. So, that makes it a whopping ~46 million decline in the userbase. Considering 2021 is the year when privacy-focused tools saw a big boost in their userbase, Mozilla's Firefox is looking at a constant decline. Especially when Firefox manages to introduce some industry-first privacy practices. Quite the irony, eh? Just for fun, here's a timeline of our stories reporting on Firefox's download milestones from the mid-2000s:
September 19, 2004: 1 Million Firefoxes in 4 Days
December 12, 2004: Firefox Reaches 10 Million Downloads
February 17, 2005: Firefox Breaks 25 Million Downloads
April 26, 2005: Firefox nears 50 Million Downloads
July 29, 2005: Firefox Downloads Reach 75 Million
October 19, 2005: Firefox Tops 100 Million Downloads
September 11, 2007: Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads
July 3, 2008: Firefox Breaks 8 Million, Gets Into Guinness
What do you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Well one could always depend upon MS Edge or Google Chromium. No imposition there.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does it really matter to you who the people who make your browser are like?
Millions of people drove Ford cars and watched Disney movies, despite Ford and Disney being raging Nazis when they were in charge. I would argue that if you ditched Firefox to protest internal politics and sexism at Mozilla, you're a minority.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is when your hateful wacky views lead you to fire talented people out of your company until it turns into a really bad company, which kinda happened with disney a few times.
It needed several "renaissances" to stay afloat.
Re: (Score:3)
Fair enough. I hadn't considered that angle.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed.
Disney had some really wacky weird views, wanting to create a whole "city of the future", where he would control the life of everyone living there, including doing absolutely authoritarian things such as being able to replace your devices by newer ones without your consent.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:4, Interesting)
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Eich ardently denied the effectiveness of face masks and lockdowns in combating the transmission of COVID-19 and stated that United States' top immunologist Anthony Fauci "lies a lot", sparking calls for his removal from Brave on social media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: What do you expect? (Score:3)
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Informative)
Does it really matter to you who the people who make your browser are like?
Yeah, it does.
I need those people to be, like, UI designers. People who know something about human factors and GUI design. The people designing the FireFox UI manifestly do not.
Separating the tabs from the pages is major lossage. I never used to think about tabs. I just clicked on them when I needed them. Now I have to go searching for them, and there is this nagging insecurity as to whether I've got the right one (especially when I'm closing a tab, which is my most common use case). They've taken something that used to be handled by unthinking eye-hand coordination and pushed it up to the cognitive levels of my brain, where it competes for my attention with what I'm actually trying to do (read content on the web).
I'm also aware that they've hollowed out the home icon to the point where it is difficult to target with the mouse, because it doesn't look like a solid object. Again, I didn't used to be "aware" of the home icon at all. It just sat there at the top of my screen and I clicked on it when I needed to. Now it's a problem. The forward and back arrows have the same problem, but I don't use them as much, so I don't care about them as much.
It seems like the designers have this idea that the browser should fade into the background so that the user can focus on web content. That's fine as a guiding principle, but they are sacrificing actual usability for an illusion of simplicity. By making the GUI actually, visually fade, they make the browser harder to use.
I'm about ready to start looking for another browser.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Informative)
For everything that we can see in Firefox is bad, it seems that some of the things they have done “under the hood” are worse.
I’ve used Firefox since “Day 1” (still do) and among my favourite early add-ins was “AdBlock Plus”. With the first version of this utility, I could very easily any object on a rendered page, see the full URL that pulled it in, then quickly and easily write a custom block rule, say with the inclusion of wildcard symbols to help improve the effectiveness of the filter.
Then Firefox introduced a major revamp of the API that they expose to PlugIn developers, breaking that version of AdBlock Plus. What we have with the latest version is a pale shadow of its former self and is nowhere near as powerful or as easy to use. That “knee-capping” of the best Ad-Block technology available, coupled with Firefox’s introduction of “allow reasonable ads” or whatever it is called (translation: allow ads from ad companies that pay us money) was a decision made by management at the Mozilla Foundation, not by the grass roots developers.
I will still use Firefox because I believe that it is the least-worst browser out there. But I worry that their management have sold their company soul out from under employees and users alike.
I don’t know what it will take to reverse the trend, but I do know that more GUI re-designs will make things worse.
If they were willing to listen, I’d ask them to stop all development except working to increase the privacy and security of users. Here’s just one example of a feature that I’d like to see them develop: the ability for my browser to intentionally “mis-represent” itself to different web sites during a browsing session. For example, to randomly alter the window resolution by 1 pixel, or by changing the OS details, or the screen colour depth, or some other random little thing that would defeat server-side tracking I’d like to see major work on the API to allow plug-in developers to restore the functionality lost from things like AdBlck Plus.
And notwithstanding the corrections to address the issues you point out (which I agree with), they can absolutely leave the UI alone
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Informative)
AdBlock Plus is garbage and the "allow reasonable ads" thing was AdBlock's decision, not Firefox. Firefox has never had such an option.
If you use UBlock Origin you will not only find it's faster and not controlled by an evil corporation, but it also allows you to select any object with the mouse and easily create a block rule. Alternatively in Firefox you can right click on anything and select "inspect", which will show you it in the HTML and gives you metadata like the CSS selectors and so forth, ideal for creating your own blocking rules.
AdBlock Plus is a commercial product (given away for free) which is why support is crap. Don't blame Firefox for that company's asshattery.
Re:Firing a CEO for his political views (Score:2)
I would have thought that the only justification would be religious.
Re: (Score:3)
You're pretty disconnected from the world if you didn't know "I hate everybody not exactly like me, and don't want them to have rights" was a popular political position.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
* Firing a CEO for his political views
* Actively promoting censorship
* The crazy intolerant political attitudes of Mozilla staff including radical feminism
* The Rust language (a Mozilla product) with its crazy Code of Conduct...
Nobody gives half a fuck about any of those. They have ZERO effect on me or my use of Firefox. The only legitimate complaint on your list is:
* Multiple *awful* UI redesigns like their target audience are children - getting worse and worse each time
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
So, how much software do you not use? Have you done a poll to see who is rightwing and who is leftwing?
Personally, I don't give a rats ass about political views when it comes to software. Is it useful and do what I need to be done. That's it. I'm sure you're one of those fools who makes Youtube videos burning perfectly good merch you paid for so folks can see how much of a *believer* you really are.
Use FF or don't. Use Edge or don't. Use whatever or don't. Who cares.
Re: (Score:3)
How many artists do we all enjoy that have behavior and beliefs that we don't agree with? Quite a few famous names out there.
Re: (Score:2)
I think there's a strong argument to be made for being an ethical consumer. There are long term consequences to certain players succeeding in the marketplace that we, as consumers, should be cognizant of.
When CentOS announced that they were effectively becoming another Fedora, the easiest thing I could have done would have been to switch over to Oracle Linux. Or when Red Hat shortly after announced that they would release a free tier, I could have used that. Instead, I examined the options on the market and
Re: (Score:2)
While I would normally agree with you, it shouldn't matter what you use. It sure doesn't matter or bother me one bit.
There is the thing about leaning too much on one product. For a lot of people the IE debacle was too long ago. Not for me, having first hand experience when you have to use websites that are not created with your favorite browser in mind. That didn't end well for web users, web developers and Microsoft.
It is my impression that everyone and their grandmother now has a Chromium-based web browse
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
* Multiple *awful* UI redesigns like their target audience are children - getting worse and worse each time
Oh no! My tabs look slightly different!
Firefox has tabs, a menu bar, a bookmark bar that can be hidden, a hamburger menu, back/forward/reload buttons, and some space where extensions show up. In other words, the UI is exactly the same as every other browser. I have no idea what people are talking about when they complain about the Firefox UI on desktop.
On mobile Safari provides quicker access to my bookmarks, so I use that. Firefox could definitely improve on mobile. But on the desktop Firefox is just a gre
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Informative)
On mobile Safari provides quicker access to my bookmarks, so I use that. Firefox could definitely improve on mobile
Probably not. I'm not sure if you're aware, but Apple won't allow Mozilla to implement its own web engine on iOS, so Firefox for iOS is just a wrapper around WebKit. It exists mostly to allow you to sync your data with your other Firefox installations through Mozilla Sync.
Mozilla's ability to improve on mobile (iOS) is artificially limited by Apple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
A web browser's UI is best when it stays out of the way as much as possible. In daily use you are focused on the web site itself. That said, it has jumped on a few annoying trends from the competition: Config windows that look like web pages, ads on the default new tab screen (Pocket).
I think the bigger factor in the decline is that people don't browse the web like they used to. People are moving to phones and tablets, and the Android version of Firefox is complete ass. They might not be using a browser at
Re: (Score:3)
The only thing that keeps me Tethered to Firefox at this point is the mobile browser and the fact I can install Ublock Origin on it. If Edge or Chrome ever support true extension on their mobile browsers, I'd switch to them immediately.
As for the crappy color scheme. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
That will return it to the pre proton colors. Unfortunately I had to make two because the Context menu colors are set based on the bar color and if I make the inactive tab text brighter it makes all of the co
Re: "Chromium hellscape" (Score:3)
If Firefox keeps losing market share THAT contributes far more to the hellscape than a few Slashdot complaints Mozilla will ignore anyway.
If Firefox want users they should listen to the techies who made them great by promoting their browser.
Firefox got market share because of US, not their own promotional efforts. Firefox lost market share because users tired of it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The one thing that I hate about Firefox is their tendency to force you to close your browser when they need an update. You open a new tab and bam! You just get a button telling you there's something you should do first. It's only a few seconds, but it *always* happen when I want to do something else. It's infuriating.
Chrome will shut up until you close the browser yourself.
Re: (Score:3)
I have to admit the new tabs do look shit and I miss the dividing lines between them, but it's not so bad that I'm going to throw my toys out the pram and install Edge.
Re: (Score:3)
* Multiple *awful* UI redesigns like their target audience are children - getting worse and worse each time
Indeed. This thing is getting more and more fucked up, because of one bad decision after the other.
Re: (Score:3)
When they broke themes so badly there is no visible division between tabs, or with the toolbar and initially just blending in with my desktop that's what I found when I searched for help.
Then too, the plugins are (well, were) the reason to use FF. How many are gone for good now?
Re: (Score:3)
They move to it because if they are going to have shit UI, they may as well have shit UI on a browser that is best supported on modern web.
In case of firefox, worse web page support was easily mitigated by extra features. But those features are now all cut out, and bloatware like pocket is forced on users. So when choice is between Chromium and shitty Chromium clone with worse web support and bloatware, people choose the former.
Re: What do you expect? (Score:2, Insightful)
If he had been fired for supporting a leftwing cause, and his people were mysteriously "all" rightwingers (and your position is a dire exaggeration), your take would be 100% opposite. You would instead be cheering the time your hero CEO fired all the rightwing people. Which is normally what happens when a bunch of employees don't like their CEO.
Re: What do you expect? (Score:5, Informative)
> If he had been fired for supporting a leftwing cause, and his people were mysteriously "all" rightwingers (and your position is a dire exaggeration), your take would be 100% opposite.
Oh, please. He donated to an anti-gay-marriage campaign that ran ads implying that kids should never see gay people married. The 'political' angle came up because THAT is easier to defend than being up front and honest about the self-inflicted damage he caused his career. Notice nobody says: "he was fired for putting money behind his disapproval of some of his employees' orientation', instead they say " He WuZ FiReD CuZ LeFtiEss!!" It's dishonest and intentional.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You should look up both what Prop 8 was about and what it was he actually did. There's a LOT more to that story than his personal beliefs got him in trouble.
It's sad that all people seem to remember is "He was fired because of his personal beliefs". Mozilla didn't screw up by firing him, they screwed up by promoting in the first place. I mean, if you're a CEO and your own people don't want to work for you....
Re: What do you expect? (Score:3)
Re: What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: What do you expect? (Score:4, Funny)
No need to imagine. Every single person on the planet is in that exact situation, because everyone wants to restrict freedoms of others in some way.
For example, I'm completely certain that your boss wants to restrict your right to be lazy at work and is completely open about donating massive amount of paid work toward ensuring that you actually do your job.
Re: (Score:2)
...supporting terrorist is EXACTLY why I quit Mozilla...
I didn't realize they supported the Capitol insurrection, well I'm quitting Mozilla too!!
Any confirmation from Netcraft? (Score:4, Funny)
Is there any confirmation from Netcraft? Because if BSD^h^h^h Firefox is dying, surely Netcraft must confirm?
List of possible reasons (not exhaustive) (Score:5, Insightful)
- Mozilla reinvents the wheel all the time, insists on messing about with things that just work
- Mozilla concentrates on features nobody cares about and does not address the main issue, which is...
- Firefox is slower than Chromium-based browsers
Re:List of possible reasons (not exhaustive) (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm posting from my phone and it's Chrome because well that's kind of the default. But I use Firefox on my desktop and it's just as fast if not faster than Chrome.
So, Firefox on your desktop is faster than (a) Chrome on your desktop or (b) Chrome on your phone?
Re: List of possible reasons (not exhaustive) (Score:4, Insightful)
Quit using it on my home computer a while back when they jacked up all the extensions, have tried it a few times since and the UI was crap so I removed it. It's like they took all the features and control away or hid them, in a bid to more Chrome-like.
Quit using it at work because they broke a bunch of stuff I need to manage (shitty, old) systems that I can't get rid of yet. Not going to manage multiple browsers, and I got used to Chrome. So for me, and many others, it's a combination of them driving me away and having no real need to go back.
Re: (Score:3)
I installed FF on my phone a few generations back and it sucked... hard. Started using Chrome and they at least understood how to deal with a touchscreen and a small display. Haven't bithered going back.
You're right, Firefox Mobile used to be REALLY, REALLY bad. It's gotten much better lately. It's not quite as good as Chrome, but you get ad-blocking. I think the tradeoff is fair.
Re: (Score:2)
- Firefox is slower than Chromium-based browsers
Honest question: by what metric?
Years ago, I could name specific web apps that were faster in Chrome than in Firefox. Today, I can't.
Re:List of possible reasons (not exhaustive) (Score:5, Insightful)
>"- Mozilla reinvents the wheel all the time, insists on messing about with things that just work"
So does Chrom*, but true.
>"- Mozilla concentrates on features nobody cares about and does not address the main issue, which is..."
So does Chrom*, but true.
>"- Firefox is slower than Chromium-based browsers"
Nope, that is not true. Overall, they perform substantially the same on desktops. It *was* true for quite a long time, but not once Quantum came on the scene some 4 years ago.
On Android, Chrom* has advantages that Firefox can't ever obtain (through no fault of their own) but also some of Mozilla's own blunders. Hopefully they will come to their senses.
The major reason Firefox is losing desktop share is because Google has remarkable power to push their will on people and companies. It is not based primarily on technical merits at this point. Firefox is still far better from privacy, user-control, and openness standpoints. But that is not enough to battle a Goliath.
Re: (Score:3)
- Firefox was known for being the extensible browser and then Mozilla killed huge numbers of useful extensions, some of which can't be replaced because of limitations in the new system
I get that there were reasons for wanting to do this, but the fact is, they broke a major area of functionality for users that was arguably their best USP.
The only other big thing Firefox has going for it is the privacy angle, but they haven't handled that particularly well in recent times either. Meanwhile, the built-in priva
Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps these "privacy-conscious" users are learning to turn off telemetry?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually turned it back ON so they'd know I turned off that ugly/space-wasting new tab bar design. The seemingly endless drive to make the UI worse is really irritating.
Surprising? (Score:3)
Why is it surprising that you can find this information in Mozillas own reports? They do not have a good reputation in regards to listening to their users, but I havn’t heard any suggestion that they are dishonest — still a Firefox user
Firefox Mobile (Score:5, Insightful)
I was using Firefox on my phone for years and years, and then came an update that changed literally everything about the UI. I couldn't find the most simple functions. Where the hell are tabs now? Where did my bookmarks go? What happened to all of my add ons? I went to Firefox forums, and the very first sticky post was "I don't like the new version, can I go back?" with an answer from Firefox central saying, no, the old version is no longer available, and you're going to love all of these changes you didn't ask for. I uninstalled Firefox that day and have never looked back.
Re: Firefox Mobile (Score:2)
Yeah, agreed. They ruined FF mobile for Android, but their response to criticism was basically " we worked really hard on it and _we_ like it, so just keep trying it until you like it."
It's never grown on me and I'm using Chrome for more and more things every week. Nothing kills a product faster than a bad UI, and believing something is good because "you worked really hard on it" stops being valid after grade school.
Re: (Score:2)
This 100%.
I now use Kiwi on Android. It allows full desktop chrome plugins. It's not perfect. There's no about:config like on old firefox android. It's just the best we have. Bonus: plugins think it's a desktop so laspass works on the phone.
As fore Firefox desktop, I fire it up sometimes when a website doesn't work right in Chrome, usually because of plugins I've installed or messed up cookies. That's a few times a year.
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely. Firefox Android also slowed WAY down when they did the whole UI dosido. I keep it around because it still runs all the adblocking addons I like, and makes the internet bearable from that aspect.
Big surprise (Score:2)
The browser is slow, the UI is terrible (wasn't it just within the last year or so that Firefox finally made it possible to rearrange tabs within a window without requiring an additional extension?), and the memory footprint is no better than Chrome.
The only instance where I'd consider using Firefox is on an ancient computer running XP, where the last-supported-version of Firefox easily outperforms the last-supported-version of Chrome on everything other than Gmail/Docs/Maps.
Re:Big surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell when someone hasn't used Firefox in quite some time, at least since the Quantum update. Since then, it's pretty much as fast as Chrome, as far as I've been able to tell. And you've been able to drag tabs around for a long time. A more recent update lets you drag them between windows, or create a new window, etc, which was introduced seven or eight years ago, I think?
Anyhow, I'd argue that the the UI isn't bad. They just keep fucking around with it, which is really annoying and jarring each time they do it. I'm not saying you can't update or refresh your UI, but it had better be a *substantial* improvement to justify the annoyance to your users of relearning how to interact with your software.
Like a tiny little thing in a recent update: they changed "delete bookmark" to "remove bookmark" and moved its position, and now, since I've literally spent nearly two decades looking for "delete bookmark" in a specific place, it takes me just a fraction of a second more each time I use that function to remember that the name and location has changed, grumble, and look for the new menu item.
Why?! Why the in the name of all that's holy did someone take the time to rename and move that menu item from where it sat for the last eighteen years, unobtrusively doing it's job perfectly well? This sort of thing is pointless deck-chair re-arranging that does nothing to enhance the browsing experience, but instead just causes needless irritation for users. Why? Perhaps because someone got a bug up their butt and perhaps thought that "remove" sounded less hostile than "delete", or whatever.
Re: (Score:2)
>"The browser is slow, the UI is terrible [], and the memory footprint is no better than Chrome."
That is just not correct on desktop Firefox and has not been correct for almost 4 years now.
They DO keep making some irritating changes to the UI and restricting settings, which is infuriating, but Chrom* has been doing that all along.
Re: (Score:3)
> They DO keep making some irritating changes to the UI and restricting settings, which is infuriating, but Chrom* has been doing that all along.
"I'm going to rape your dog, but that's OK, because your neighbour has been doing it too."
Still Using It, Just Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Even get positive comments from random people who see me using my set up... Mostly focusing on plug-ins I am using, but hey that's all part of the Firefox ecosystem that is great at what it does.
Re: (Score:3)
Just wait until Mozilla re-engineers everything and all your plug-ins stop working.
Interface issues (Score:4, Informative)
The other kind of non-compete clause. (Score:2)
Whenever you have a product or a political party spending all its time trying to imitate the 'leading brand' with no effort at innovation, while also noticing a large percent ownership by that same owners as the leading brand - it's a good indication that the company/party only exists to provide the illusion of competition.
That's sort of been the feeling about Firefox for a long while, since they started cutting large distinguishing features that gave them advantage over Chrome.
I suppose that lack of innova
Do you want to know why? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
And they never did get the Amiga port working right.
Still use it, love it (Score:5, Insightful)
What I care about is being able to use adblock on my phone, fantastic, and keeping the internet from being dominated by google, awesome. Apparently that's not good enough for 50 million people, which is a shame, but whatever.
Re: (Score:2)
I've also never understood the UI complaints. To hear some people, you'd think it displays webpages inverted and rotated 97 degrees as well as requiring you to tap out URLs in Morse code.
Re: (Score:3)
Do you want your livingroom furniture to be rearranged every six weeks in ways that make no sense, provide no benefit, and reduce comfort and familiarity for no other reason than 'it's what everyone else is doing"? On top of that the furniture gets nailed down to the floor so you are unable to change it without putting in some work and effort? :)
Now that rant begins. :)
Maybe I am crazy, perhaps slightly mad, but I detest and find incredibly irritating UI changes that provide no increase to the UX and mos
Still using Firefox but ... (Score:2)
- Annoying GUI changes to make-it look more like Crome. If i liked Chrome, I would have used Chrome;
- Breaking plugin compatibility;
- Architectural changes "just because", causing Firefox forks for platforms they dropped to no longer be build-able and their devs to give up: ( see TenFourFox & ClassZilla - the last maintained browsers for PowerPC macs )
Re: (Score:2)
>"- Breaking plugin compatibility"
That was necessary for Quantum. However, they restricted UI API for plugins far more than necessary and have been slow to improve that situation. But, at least it is no WORSE than Chrom* in that regard.
Frequent API changes (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
They're trying to make a product and they're always going to be out-coded and out-budgeted on that front. Chrome/edge have teams and teams of people deciding "this or that decision is going to work" with god knows how much market research to back it up. They can and are much more successful at imposing their vision of what a web browser should be.
Mozilla is foolishly trying to do the same thing when they simply do not have the skills, or market clout to do so. They should be giving their users the tools t
Re:Frequent API changes (Score:4, Informative)
Yet the frequent changes of the API
There are no "frequent" changes to the API. There were changes in the past thanks to dealing with 20 years of Netscape plugin legacy which was actively causing stability, security and scalability issues in the underlying browser. They dropped support for that entire plugin architecture several years ago and the API has been largely unchanged since.
I haven't seen a plugin break in 5 years now, much less the 3 years covered by TFA. Stop repeating talking points from 2016.
Diversity is healthy (Score:5, Insightful)
It felt really satisfying being way ahead of the propriety and doing a better job of it too. Firefox was also way more than a browser, with XML/XSLT. In combination with Dreamweaver one could create real magic.
Now, I feel the importance of Firefox is grossly underestimated. I see it as an independent implementation that challenges the standard. In other words, does it render and respond the same as others.
Diversity keeps the population of browsers healthy. Losing Firefox will introduce blindness and weakness.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Now, I feel the importance of Firefox is grossly underestimated. [...] Diversity keeps the population of browsers healthy. Losing Firefox will introduce blindness and weakness."
+1000
There are essentially only TWO open-source, multiplatform browsers left: Chrom* and Firefox. This is an alarming situation and is really horrible for the future of privacy, security, openness, standards development, choice, and innovation. If Firefox disappears or becomes completely irrelevant, we are totally screwed in w
Hardly a Surprise (Score:5, Informative)
Not only are Google products dog-slow in Firefox, but a lot of the time, particularly with Drive, one finds that many features are completely broken. One basically needs to have Chrome running in parallel for the exclusive purpose of accessing Google web applications.
On the surface, it might appear that Google doesn't bother to test their products in Firefox, but it's actually a bit more sinister:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]
Microsoft hasn't been helping either. Firefox users on Windows 7 who took advantage of the free upgrade to Windows 10 found Firefox disabled, despite the W10 upgrade tool promising that W7 users would retain access to all of their installed applications. This took a huge chunk of Mozilla's market share almost overnight. Lately Microsoft has been engaged in this kind of crap:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.c... [bleepingcomputer.com]
I will readily admit that Firefox used to be slow, and that the transition to WebExtensions wasn't initially easy, but Mozilla has been an innovation leader in recent years, and I personally prefer to use a FOSS browser that isn't controlled by a major web property or proprietary OS vendor. In my view, the FTC & DoJ have been asleep when it comes to the anti-competitive and deceptive tactics employed by Google and Microsoft.
What's better? (Score:2)
GOOD and this is why: (Score:2)
Firefox needs to die like Netscape before it so it can be reborn.
Some ancients here remember Phoenix, light and fast which preceded Firefox. That can happen again.
Firefox leadership do not care about users and their market share deserves to tank. I've even changed my user agent to Chrome when I do use Firefox (I use multiple browsers for compartmentation) to deny them my usage stats and turned off all feedback.
I discourage users from installing Firefox and direct them the Chrome as Firefox, who want to be C
Re: (Score:3)
>"Firefox needs to die like Netscape before it so it can be reborn."
You seem to think that is inevitable. I propose it is not. If Firefox is completely destroyed, it is more likely that NOTHING will take its place, and the transition to the new "IE-only" world will be complete, and far more locked-in than anything we have ever seen.
So be careful what you wish for.
Going exactly as planned then (Score:4, Insightful)
The level of dishonesty at Mozilla is just insane, and it's hard to argue that they don't "deserve" this. But the person most at fault is the one pocketing all the money, and she's never going anywhere: the gravy train is too good not to keep riding it to the end, and she's politicized Mozilla so that she's personally untouchable - while firing half the actual developers but keeping an army of UI novices. At this point, nobody sane can even pretend that this isn't deliberate sabotage of the project.
A Chromium monoculture is still even worse though - but that's where we're headed, because the Firefox bus is *intentionally* being driven off a cliff.
Many annoying GUI changes and it still feels .. (Score:2)
.. like it's GUI is off or and even years behind and not really made for power users.
Ohh yeah the recent GUI "changes" doesn't bring anything "new" or "good" except annoyance.
My advice: Give it up to attract to masses, attract your current users and keep them.
When I use the bookmark "organizer", I can sum up what has changed over nearly all the years .. nearly nothing except adding a bookmark quick strip, additional bookmarks folder,
all of which are exceptionally useless
And for some months a feature, that w
Re: (Score:2)
It turns out that the annoying GUI changes were things the other browsers had already done, though, so we can cry and whine as loud as we want but the changes don't really affect the decision of which browser to use.
Less every day (Score:2)
I still use SeaMonkey (Score:2)
Because they don't keep screwing with the UI on that
DNS over HTTPS (DoH) (Score:2, Informative)
The decision to default DNS over HTTPS on when installed on a corporate computer killed it throughout our entire organization. This setting single handedly allowed folks to bypass our filtering. The network group wasn't amused with the reasoning given for this, nor did they appreciate having to make specific changes to disable it -- so they decided to ban Firefox completely until they respect corporate preferences first (by default).
I lost several days myself trying to figure out why specific users couldn't
Re: (Score:2)
Why would a default be that big a problem? If you're not in control of the user's software... those users were already bypassing your filtering.
This is just when your "network group" found out about it, or when they strategically chose to tell management about their lack of control.
Re: (Score:2)
Fuck off, they did the right thing. Chrome is doing it too btw, so why didn't you see that?
Re:DNS over HTTPS (DoH) (Score:5, Interesting)
The decision to default DNS over HTTPS on when installed on a corporate computer killed it throughout our entire organization. This setting single handedly allowed folks to bypass our filtering. The network group wasn't amused with the reasoning given for this, nor did they appreciate having to make specific changes to disable it -- so they decided to ban Firefox completely until they respect corporate preferences first (by default).
The problem with your network group is that they incompetent and frankly don't know their shit. Firefox does need to cater to the less knowledgable but it chooses to do so for normal users, not useless, unprofessional network admins.
1. People could bypass your filtering anyway, you just didn't realise it. This is by far the biggest problem.
2. Why didn't the group policy turn off DoH
3. Why is it too hard to put the well documented canary domain in the local DNS
4. Chrome also uses DoH.
5. Edge has DoH now and MS are planning on making it the default
Re: (Score:3)
What you're advocating is that a team spends time to go and work out any and all issues with a product that they don't support, when there are other products that they do support that work just fine.
No. He advocates exactly the right thing. Network teams need to coordinate with software teams which touch networks and understand if there's something which needs to be configured.
1) Firefox provides Group Policy templates for organisations for this reason.
2) Firefox provides an ESR release which is settings stable and does *not* enable DoH by default.
Stop excusing the OP's company's sheer incompetence. He said the entire organisation stopped using it, so claiming this was an "unsupported app" is just plai
Re: (Score:3)
You mean your IT guys were too dumb to figure out how to turn DoH off at the network level?
Your organization seems to have some serious issues.
and... (Score:2)
I'm not sure why they feign surprise.
After changing keystrokes to reset zoom
pocket
stories
so many setting that have no UI button
too many UI redesigns
I could go on, but there's no point since I'm uninstalling it from the machines I manage this month...
But at least we got Pocket (Score:2)
(sneer)
Not that they spend the profits on the browser...
On a downhill slide since 2009 (Score:2)
Mozilla has been incapable of making a good decision since Mitchell Baker resigned as CEO in 2009.
Firefox is no longer the browser for power users. Its only advantage i
Firefox faded away from me (Score:2)
Good ol' Firefox just became too quirky, politically motivated, and confusing with its ethereal UI for my poor little brain.
Anecdotal ... (Score:3)
As a long time firefox user, from a work perspective, I finally ditched it as a primary browser. Sad times.
I'm a developer and use a variety of plugins to get metrics on the work I'm doing.
Firefox tended to be slower and less reliable than chromium - I held back for years, but eventually, for sake of speed and sanity, I moved on.
Sure, the plugins I use may have been poorly written or poorly ported over, but I still need them.
Where's the tradeoff between supporting pretty much the only competitor to Chromium based browsers and poor performance (for whatever reasons)? - at what point do you throw in the towel and move away from Firefox? - never?
I'm still on the fence and I do switch back to firefox for things it just does better without requiring more plugins.
I love the way it 'pretty prints' JSON data, I love the easy ability to copy objects in the console - there's so many things it just does well.
Sadly, it underperforms with some of the work related services I use - the almighty clusterfuck that is confluence and Jira cloud.
In my experience, confluence/jira performs poorly on all browsers, but Firefox seems to really struggle with it.
So, totally anecdotal, but my reasons are valid enough in terms of switching - it's all about performance for specific tasks and whether these are artificially weighted in favour of chromium, is neither here nor there.
For personal use, it really doesn't matter - I use firefox.
Techies spread Firefox, users tired of the changes (Score:2)
If Firefox want users they should listen to the techies who made them great by promoting their browser. We spread the word, not them. We advised users to install Firefox and showed them why it (was) good.
Firefox got market share because of US, not their own promotional efforts. Firefox lost market share because users tired of it.
Users abandoned Firefox because it failed to serve THEIR use case. FOSS is written for the pleasure of the developers, but used or abandoned at the pleasure of the users. I predict
Seems like declaring war on your users... (Score:2)
...was perhaps not the best strategy. Well maybe firing more of their development staff and buying some new companies nobody cares about will fix it this time.
I mean seriously, look at how much money they got. If they would have taken their first year of money and just refused taking more money, they'd still have more than enough for developing a browser for decades.
The power of the default (Score:2)
So Firefox has two hurdles to clear before anyone will find it. They'd have to know what it is, and that it is better in some way, e.g. privacy, to be motivated to use it. Personally I still think it is the best brow
Of course they have (Score:3)
This used to be the browser that power-users would both use and recommend to their friends and family. Now it's effectively the same user experience as Edge or Chrome, with slightly more checkboxes to customize the parts of the browser that Mozilla have decided you are allowed to customize.
They dug their own grave, let them rot
Re: (Score:2)
ignoring my networks policies and settings and requiring the every client be configured to not share my DNS queries with cloudfare was why i not only stopped using it, but stopped allownig it on my corporate network, its downloads are now filtered by network level antiviruses its domains are blocked and it can go fuck itself
You are a legend in your own mind.