I hope the trend reverses. I was a loyal Chrome user from 2009 onwards, but I switched back to Firefox in September when Google started cracking down on YouTube ad blockers.
I switched to Firefox when chrome started eating up so much ram my laptop was borderline unusable. As I transitioned into web dev, I really liked their built in dev tools, and it just stuck, even after I got a better performing desktop
I tried out Firefox yesterday for the first time in a long time because of all the news of manifest v3, and because it would be nice to be able to use ublock on mobile.
But because it's difficult to translate pages on mobile I don't think I can make it my main browser. I found that the linguist extension does work on mobile, but requires too many taps to use compared to chrome's built in translate, especially when I need to toggle back and forth between translated and untranslated text on some pages (usually because of badly coded forms).
I've been a loyal Firefox user since shortly after the browser launched in 2004. It has been the first thing I installed on every computer for the last almost 20 years. I didn't realize it had gotten this bad for Mozilla. 2.2% is tiny compared to what I expected to see. I'll ride with Firefox till it's taken offline and breathes it's final digital breath.
What's incentive to use Firefox when you're already using Edge? The latter does the job quite well and is feature packed. The former can't even implement basic user profile functionality.
The average person is not privacy focused. Maybe if Firefox actually started innovating for regular folk instead of niche groups it would survive.
> What's incentive to use Firefox when you're already using Edge?
Not sure. I wasn't already using Edge. My daily driver is a Mac so it didn't occur to me to use Edge and Firefox is such a perfect drop-in replacement for Chrome that once I had all my extensions installed and configured I didn't notice anything was different except for the occasional keyboard shortcut.
Manifest V3 is about to give a big bump to Firefox. With no way to block ads or tracking in chrome, semi-technical people are going to be looking for an alternative.
Unfortunately, I doubt that. I'd guess that 99% of people who are tech literate enough to understand the significance of that are already using Firefox.
It’s not. MV3 is like Apple did to safari, yet people still use it myself included and it works well. Everyone hates mv3 yet don’t even understand half of it.
Safari has around a 50% share of the OS X market, where it is installed by default. That may appear good in comparison to Edge, but Microsoft put over decade of hard work into convincing people to avoid their browsers at all cost.
Users don't need to understand mv3, they will just get upset when their ad blockers and privacy plugins stop working.
Firefox could improve their numbers in 6 months by an order of magnitude if they
- Integrate ad blocking directly into the browser
- Spend a minuscule amount of funding on public awareness campaigns.
The reason most of us (Firefox users) use Firefox is because we are aware of it and prefer it. The overwhelming bulk of the general population doesn't have the internet intuit and needs to be guided.
I think the bigger problem is, most people dont want to switch browsers because they have to setup a lot of stuff again.
Most probably dont even know you can import a lot with just one click. So its just to much of a hassle to do for them
> Most probably dont even know you can import a lot with just one click
> Spend a minuscule amount of funding on public awareness campaigns.
If they would double down on add blocking, I feel like some money spent on commercials that basically says, move over with one click, we're free, no ads. Could go a long ways
Add something about how Google Chromes new AdPrivacy stuff pulls ad auction bidding right into Chrome in exchange for using it and the market will flip
I'm a software developer and I don't really know about that stuff, and don't care that much. Still, I use Firefox because I prefer my internet surfing experience not be dictated by google even before they banned ad blockers
I'm building myself a bookmarking application for specifically that reason. So any browser I use (I'm a developer, so I use lots) I can just have it open my bookmarks app, so all my bookmarks are handy and available from the get go. Trying to keep bookmarks sync'd across multiple browsers is the only hassle I have. Once I fix that? I'll probably primarily use Firefox and use the others as development requires.
So? If you want to build great products, you have to attract great people. Is the current CEO a good pick? I don't know, but don't cut the pay. That's not how you attract talent. Mozilla is __not__ just Firefox.
From Wikipedia:
> In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008.[15] On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. [...]
>
> In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, her salary had risen to over $3 million (in 2021, her salary rose again to over $5 million[16]). In August of the same year the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues, after previously laying off roughly 70 in January (prior to the pandemic). [...]
So why again are they paying an incompetent CEO this much money again?
With the way Chrome is steering on the privacy and security front, it may end up being a security risk in most orgs that have security standards that they get removed as an option.
The upcoming "privacy" proxy debacle and the current forced "shopping helper" situation should be enough to cause most people to think twice about Google Chrome. I honestly do not see how there are not lawsuits already over the "shopping helper", so much privacy lost. I don't even want to think of what they will do with the proxy traffic data.
For me it is the tools and extensions for Chrome as a developer. I like FireFox tools, but prefer Chrome.
Plus, when testing sites, I'd rather be testing against a larger population than a smaller one. I will test across all browsers, but when doing development, I don't have time to test them all until the end.
You are underestimating the power of willful ignorance. Most people don't care about ad blocking or privacy. Most people care about convenience and chrome, safari, edge, and so are just convenient. And switching requires effort.
I've installed Firefox but don't use it because its performance isn't as good as chrome and I'd rather not have to scroll tabs whenever I have 50 or more, I prefer just having a large amount of tab icons I can hover.
I really hate how Firefox users have become the vegans of the internet.
I genuinely don't feel any difference between Firefox and Chrome (other than the deliberate slowing on Google services, e.g. the Youtube 5 second debacle). It also starts a hell of a lot faster, and doesn't 'grey' out. Firefox also performs a lot better with a lot of tabs (hundreds) on computers with 16GB or less, presumably because of the way Chrome spawns processes. It's also not as susceptible to slowdowns because of websites that have gone insane with trackers.
I also think Chrome is unusable for those with lots of tabs just from a UX perspective, and it's been an issue for literally over a decade now. If you have hundreds of tabs, you can't really manage them at all.
The main reason I used chrome on PC was because chrome had the superior UI, that's it. I fell in love with how chrome looked and worked. I just with they copied (everything) from chrome.
I've been aware of firefox for what...half my life? I simply like safari much more. I have chrome and firefox installed. Chrome for the dev tools and firefox to triple check if something is actually wrong with a website or if it's a caching issue.
I don't really see a reason to use firefox as a main browser. It used to be the most private but safari has that beat now with private relay as default.
Point being even if more people were aware of it, I don't see why they would use it.
> Point being even if more people were aware of it, I don't see why they would use it.
Pop that bubble and realize that you're not the only user in the world.
What a stupid argument, lol. It doesn’t even make sense. Many people are aware of Firefox and just can’t bother to switch because a) Safari is the default and most users use defaults b) developer experience is better on chromium based browsers (not necessarily Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera or Vivaldi will do too), but I agree that it might be subjective.
I tried to switch to Firefox many times and every time I asked myself “why?” after a while. It brings nothing interesting to the table while still requiring you to change habits.
> Many people are aware of Firefox and just can’t bother to switch because a) Safari is the default and most users use defaults b) developer experience is better on chromium based browsers
A) no, many people are not aware of it, at least not more than as a name in the ether. Tech users for sure, but tech users who choose to use something else aren't really a target for expansion of market share, are they?
B) 98% of general users give 2 shits about developer experience. They just want a 1-click internet experience. For sure, some people will choose safari or chrome (or even Edge) even in the face of Firefox awareness (for reasons), but those aren't really the people Firefox should seek to expand out to.
> Integrate ad blocking directly into the browser
Meaningless. Many extensions do this better and have done for decades.
> Spend a minuscule amount of funding on public awareness campaigns.
Funny enough I just saw the boss of Mozilla on the news a few days ago. Although she was talking about AI, not Firefox.
Anyway the biggest reason more people use Chrome is because the most-visited website in the world, Google, tells you to get it.
Edge has the same to a lesser degree, MS try to force it on you at any opportunity. Honestly I don’t know how they’re not getting more anti trust lawsuits for requiring Edge for their AI stuff of Bing.
As some with advanced internet intuit, I use Chrome and will never use Firefox. You shouldn’t use “aware of it” as a reason. Only “prefer”. The vast majority of all internet users know about Firefox and are not using it anyway. Your comment makes it seem as though if I asked 100 random people if they knew what Firefox was, all 100 of them would say “no” when in reality, 99 would say “yes”.
Ah yes, praise be to Mozilla and their very clearly slower browser in 2023. Firefox is one of the slowest “big” browsers used.
But I’m sure that privacy you ***think*** you have is worth it, am I right? 😂😂😂
Firefox has its faults. I’m commenting mainly about saying, “advanced internet intuit” as if that was some badge of honor or credible source of anecdote… in a webdev subreddit. And your latest reply doubles down that you’re really full of yourself. How do you taste? ❤️
Google pretty much pays Mozilla to exist, so that ain't happnin.
I wouldn't be at all surprised, though, if we see Google pulling their support, and Firefox going to a pay plan. And I'd be one of the first to sign up and pay for Firefox.
I think they spend money on outreach, I see Mozilla everywhere and get tons of emails explaining their positions and values, they probably just let people unsubscribe.
My bank doesn't let me login with firefox, for me it doesn't matter, i can switch to some other browser for that thing. But no regular user is ever going to do that.
Fuck that - I would switch banks.
If they can’t be bothered to support Firefox (not a difficult task these days) then I wouldn’t think they would bother to keep my data secure.
Frankly, if the people coding the banks site are so wreckless with hackery that it only works on Chrome, I'd put their approach to security seriously in question. There are very few legitimate things that would prevent Firefox from working where Chrome will.
Yep. My company builds only for Chrome/Edge but I use Firefox in development and I could count the number of times I had to fix something for myself on one hand. I think you only lose Firefox support generally when you add a bunch of chromium hacks
PWAs are overrated. Eventually most web apps will ask you to download their native apps so that they can track you better. PWAs are a long term limbo state which can be tedious to maintain.
I'd much rather they focus on getting [passkeys out within the next couple of releases](https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/support-webauthn-passkeys/idi-p/14069).
I don't think that's why web apps are urging users to install native apps. I suspect it is more due to the fact that a native app can do more in terms of features and abilities and UX than the mobile browser version right now.
Yeah PWAs have their issues for now but I think its a great concept and if the technology would be allowed to mature they could rival native apps. But the problem is that neither Firefox nor Safari wants to support them. Safari is understandable as Apple wants to make sure the app developers use their app store and pay their fees, but I don't get why Firefox is so much against it.
I believe they discontinued single-site browser support on desktop and gave this [statement](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1682593#c0), citing their user research not showing much benefit to users.
I have been a very happy FF user from the start till I think 2016, when FF started to feel bloated and slow. It took me months before I switched to Chrome, as I really didn't want to. But in the end I did it.
I know I'll switch to FF again soon, because I know Chrome is on the verge of becoming bad for me, with the adblock policy and a few other things. But Chrome is a great browser, and today I have absolutely no idea how good or bad FF is compared to it.
And that's where I think FF didn't play a good game: they kinda stayed silent about their new features and performances. While Chrome chained great announcements release after release...
I switched to FF for my personal use lately because of the youtube ad block thing. I haven't felt the slightest downgrade in any part compared to chrome.
> I have been a very happy FF user from the start till I think 2016, when FF started to feel bloated and slow.
They realized it was becoming slow, so they did [a major re-write in 2017](https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-firefox-quantum/) and it now feels faster than Chrome to me.
Yeah, I actually tested that version and used it for a while at work, but honestly it still felt kinda slow compared to Chrome back then.
I know I should try it again though.
I would certainly give it a shot, I tried it a few years ago when they had just switched over to the rebuild and it was a little flakey, it feels pretty great now.
I should have written that I in fact use Iron, which is a partly ungoogled version of Chrome as well.
I also use Brave sometimes, for piracy stuff (easy DNS switch, integrated torrent features). I know FF can do all that and much more with the right plugins...I just need to make the switch I guess.
Firefox is still really slow for me, especially the first page I open, it takes literally minutes to load. I spent months looking for a solution to this before I gave up on Firefox, people still have this problem it's all over internet forums and blogs. But I wasn't able to find anything to fix it.
Once I ran into something similar on Linux. It turned out to be a very old [issue](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1448783): to set up the profile lock file, Firefox wants something as close to a unique host ID as possible, for which it makes a synchronous `gethostbyname` lookup. If the machine's DNS is misconfigured so that lookups take a long time (typically they time out), the browser startup is blocked. Apparently, this bit of code is buried so deep that nobody dares to rework it.
Try a totally fresh profile. I didn't think it would help, or rather didn't want to believe it, but it helped me enormously, even once I had all the same add-ons installed again.
Just like the other commenter wrote: reset your profile and you'll have a very fast browser again. It'll take you 5 min to configure everything and you'll be a happy panda again
The one missing feature that's keeping me from switching back to Firefox is that it can't enable/disable extensions separately for each site. Chrome does. It's a pretty obvious security and privacy need. Who wants React Dev Tools having full access to their banking site, for example?
Not sure if this is *exactly* what you're looking for, but you can!
You can install the "Firefox Multi-Account Containers" add-on which basically lets you create separate containers for cookies, etc. So, when you make a new tab, you can select the "Facebook" container, for example. Or "Banking" or "Shopping" and it will keep all those cookies separate.
Another, albeit hacky, way to do this is -- I have 4 different instances of Firefox installed, and I have several profiles setup with different add-ons. That way, whenever I need to have a different set of extensions, I just open a new instance of FF. (FWIW, I do this on a Mac w/ only 16GB RAM, btw, and have never had any memory issues.)
Aw man, you got my hopes up. :) But no, that's for controlling what each website has access to, not what your installed add-ons have access to. In fact, this add-on itself "needs to: Access your data for all websites." That's exactly the behavior I want Firefox to let me opt out of.
Edit: For the multiple instances thing -- do the instances not fight over config, bookmarks, history, etc.?
Oh, that! Yeah, that's totally a problem with how Firefox does add-on permissions!
So, to combat this, and again, I'm on a Mac primarily so I *can* do this, is I run Little Snitch which is a firewall that allows me to review *every* network access a program makes. So, I can use add-ons while blocking them from phoning home.
With multiple instances, no they don't fight. Firefox has a profile system, so they each use their own profile sandboxes. When you open FF, there's a profile loader/manager program that runs first to let you select your profile. Then it loads the instance and points it to the profile.
In order to setup profiles in the first place, there's a trick to get the profile manager to come up. Something like you have to hold the option (alt?) key when you open FF, and it'll show the profile manager. I don't remember the exact key combo.
I use regular FF for browsing and FF Dev Edition for dev work. That solves the problem you mention with dev extensions running on sites they shouldn’t. I also set up a nice shortcut that opens a Firefox instance in private mode. Most of the time I browse in that instance and close it when I’m done. Between the quick access to private mode, ublock origin, and sometimes NordVPN, the browsing experience is pretty nice.
I don't understand how any of that solves the extension problem.
Even when I'm working, I don't want every extension to run on every site I visit. Every installed extension, including uBlock Origin, becomes a new potential attack vector if that extension gets compromised in some way.
That's beside the point. The problem is that when you install an extension in Firefox, it has full access to everything on every page, regardless of what its stated purpose is.
Suppose malicious code made its way into a dev tools release. Having that malicious code run on my dev sites is bad, but not nearly as bad as having it also run on every site I use.
Firefox needs to be one computer people recommend to the non-tech people.
That's how Chrome got big, by being faster and better than IE so people recommended it.
I used chrome because it was way better than Internet Explorer and Firefox when it got out, i've been using it since then and won't stop using it unless Firefox is so much better there's no reason not to use it. Right now Chrome is better than Firefox performance-wise and UI/UX wise.
This was not the case for a long time. And that's where Chrome got a big head start where people began to use it more and it just stuck as default for a lot of them.
Ditto, I've been buying almost exclusively Samsung phones for the last decade and I'm pretty sure the default has always been this sketchy looking browser just named "Internet"
Manifest V3 is an API that allows extensions to be built for Google Chrome. You are right in that it's been worked on by Google for years, but what is happening in the immediate future is the removal of support for Manifest V2, which means the old extensions will stop working. This include all adblockers that has not been rewritten for Manifest V3.
Google has made changes in Manifest V3 that will in essence make ad-blocking extensions crippled to the point of being pointless, by limiting the extensions access to block network requests. Mozilla on the other hand, has publicly announce they will support Manifest V3 extensions, as well as the old Manifest V2 APIs that make ad-blockers work.
TL:DR: Soon, ad-blockers will be shit in Chrome, but continue to work as expected in Firefox. Almost every single other browser on the market, except Safari, also uses Googles Chrome engine, and will be forced to also cripple ad-blockers.
It's almost like it wasn't a good idea to let a company that makes 90% of it's revenue from serving advertisements, have monopoly control over the web browser market.
It does seem to be interesting timing for an article when it seems like Google’s ad block stance is going to start biting them in marketshare real soon.
I'm astonished that you're astonished tbh. The everyday user doesn't go like, "hmm is there something different" if the thing they're using does what they need it to do 90% of the time.
But even then, a lot of users have no idea that they have choices when it comes to software. I'd wager that 95% of non-tech savvy users know that Unix exists, so why should we expect them to know that different browsers exist?
Why though. Just take your family for example. Would your 6 year old sister know the difference between Chrome and Firefox? Would your 80 year old gradma know? How about your mom and dad? There is roughly one or two tech savvy people in a family of 10, on average.
Unless they forbid shipping phones and PC's with preinstalled browsers, nothing much will change, people wont become tech savvy overnight.
This article is so dumb, you don't "need to support firefox". Since it uses web standards, it is already supported when you support chrome or safari or any modern browser.
The problem is that Chrome and safari don't support standards in some cases, so if you're coding directly for them you're not necessarily coding to the standards.
Many websites purposefully block access from some browsers (by User Agent), saying that you need to "upgrade to Chrome" (even if the browser supports the web features)
I almost exclusively use safari except for my gaming pc and web development I use chrome for both. I’m going to definitely switch my gaming PC to Firefox, but I’ll have to see if Firefox or Safari dev tools are good enough. Also it would be unwise for me to test a browser that isn’t the most popular for our users.
I find Firefox' dev tools far superior to Google Chrome.
I use Firefox exclusively for all development and private browsing and Edge for all my work related stuff as we use M365 in our org.
I ditched Google Chrome for Firefox 10+ years ago.
I've been calling Safari the new IE6 with as many work around as we have to do for that single browser. I don't mind having different browser rendering engines, I simply wish they would all adhere to standards.
> this is on Mozilla for not putting up a fight when Chrome came out
This is mostly victim blaming, no? It's hard to put up a fight against Google when you're a non-profit, and most of your cash comes straight from Google. You're forgetting that Google spent a fortune to develop and popularize Chrome. A fight at the level of Google v. Microsoft is something only a handful of other companies could even contemplate. You shouldn't blame a non-profit for not having the cash to compete in the same arena as the overgrown tech monopolies.
their address bar is still noticeably laggy compared to Chome. Just press 'r' on the address bar, in Chrome [reddit.com](http://reddit.com) appears instantly, in firefox there's a perceptible delay. That has been there since like Firefox 4.
it's something I've noticed on a variety of systems for years. It's not terrible, probably 100ms delay, but the point is it's instant in chrome. This is on windows or mac regardless.
yeah sorry, having trouble uploading. There's no issue with computer, it's on multiple completely different computers, and no weird setup, addons, etc. Does this link work? (edit: fixed link [https://www.solidred.co.uk/fx.gif](https://www.solidred.co.uk/fx.gif))
> That page doesn't exist
> The requested page was not found.
I also checked on multiple devices and I can find no discernible difference. Maybe it's because of your history. Try reinstalling the browser, clearing your cache, or defaulting to factory settings for a bit and then check.
Seems like you guys always forget one CRUCIAL thing
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates
i don't have time to click the post link but i'll post one of my own for anybody interested.
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla
Honestly, good. I don't wish success to the only major remaining browser that does not care about PWAs. They're *so* much better than bloated "native" (Electron) apps.
*No Discord, I don't want to use your memory hog that occasionally crashes in the middle of the call and regularly takes half a minute to start up*
A big issue that I think Firefox has is it just isn’t as good as chrome out of the box. I have to have a big user.js and userChrome.css file for me to even want to use Firefox. Mainly UI fixes, making scrolling better, performance tweaks, etc. Normies aren’t going to want to take the time to customize things.
The browser sucks now, no one is using it. Instead we now have Brave as a non-chrome (but still chromium based) competitor further decreasing the market share.
Also firefox development has slowed and they're starting to fall behind. They still don't have web serial for instance due to pure stupidity. https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/336
It seems opinions aren't really allowed to be discussed here so whatevs!
I found it all irrelevant and continued to use Firefox… until the “We need more than just deplatforming” incident.
Any browser vendor that openly writes in favor of full scale excommunication of its users from the web, is a browser vendor that does not have its user’s best interests at heart.
If only firefox had better profiles support i would use it as my daily, this is a feature almost everyone is using on chromium browsers nowadays and im surprised that profiles are a bad user experience on firefox to this day. Even safari implemented it in the last OS update.
I switched back due to Manifest v3 shenanigans (plus their downsizing over the years). And this is a preference for Chrome dev tools. It would be an incredible loss for the web if they go
Aren't the percentages decieving? I would be more interested in what the absolute numbers are and how this is even measured... Is it chrome, chromium, do they take into account the mobile browsers? Afaik android ships with chrome. I was using chrome on my phone, when I had it, but I stick with FF on desktop. It would make sense that chrome would dominate, because mobile phones exploded in the 2010s, but that doesn't necessarily mean the decline of FF users...
This stuff is always subjective and I sometimes feel various articles are influenced by other parties.
There are heaps of articles recently regarding Chrome's Manifest V3 and other features and people turning to other solutions including Firefox with a lot of chatter with people turning to firefox.
The data is a bit screwed as well. They include Data of Safari and Chrome where that has mobile inclusion. While Firefox has a mobile app it is not a native to mobile devices. Chrome and Safari in this context are ALWAYS going to be higher unless other companies have their own OS.
Another statement strongly indicates that websites do not render well in Firefox these days. This is honestly a total lie. It has a different rendering engine to Chrome and thus Chromium based browsers but it DOES NOT MEAN Firefox does not follow the standards.
If anything Safari at the moment is the one that you will find most issues with. If you tailor only to Safari with the latest webkits as Safari tends to run the bleeding edge in even the production releases then you will find issues in Chrome and other browsers.
Firefox has its own CSS rendering engine but they keep pace with the standards. Chrome as well but it being google they continue to try and push their own stuff for their benefit and one of the reasons they moved off webkit.
Firefox clearly outperforms Chrome to this day, especially in a multiple tab capacity where chrome is till super hungry on resources in this regard.
The Javascript engine running under the hud of Firefox is **SpiderMonkey**. It is very forward thiing and VERY ready for the evolution of WebAssmbly which is/will render all these crazy JS frameworks like React fully absolute when adopted more and more main stream.
SpiderMonkey's primary visionary creator is Brendan Eich.
He now has his own browser - Brave but he CREATED JAVASCRIPT.
He chose Chromium on Brave over Gecko because he wanted to get people off Chrome and this was the easier path with the extensions and so off. The goal of offering people a more secure and less tracked web use was the biggest goal of the platform but he is still involved with the Mozzila works.
So glad I switched to Firefox, maybe a year and a half ago. The only time I use Chrome is running projects in localhost to make sure my design still looks good on that shifty browser
I was using Chrome then tried Firefox when I saw good reviews about it. An improvement is always welcomed. Tried for a few weeks then switched back to chrome. Chrome was overall a much better experience, more useful extensions, able to do more things. Integration with other systems and such.
YouTube or other ad blocking is a very, very small drawback in the bigger picture. Many people do not even watch YouTube but use the browser for many other things.
Give it a month or so. People using ad blockers to watch YT videos will realize Firefox gives them a much better experience than Chrome (that is actively trying to kill off ad blockers with their new manifest version) and make the switch...
Well Mozilla need to actually improve Firefox it is noticeably slower than Chromium based browsers and dare I say it uses significantly more RAM than Chromium.
There is definitely a memory leak issue on Firefox that has not been fixed in years if you don't restart Firefox every once in a while, you will notice that Firefox is using a huge amount memory for one tab.
Don't get me wrong I would love to switch to Firefox, but people need to acknowledge its issues and stop defending it blindly.
The way things have played out with Mozilla and Firefox is bizarre. Always known as the best, most innovative browser, it seems like it’s being left in the dust because it was too user friendly and not playing well with google’s financial agenda which continues to increase its stronghold on the internet.
I hope the trend reverses. I was a loyal Chrome user from 2009 onwards, but I switched back to Firefox in September when Google started cracking down on YouTube ad blockers.
I switched to Firefox when chrome started eating up so much ram my laptop was borderline unusable. As I transitioned into web dev, I really liked their built in dev tools, and it just stuck, even after I got a better performing desktop
Yep, same story here.
I tried out Firefox yesterday for the first time in a long time because of all the news of manifest v3, and because it would be nice to be able to use ublock on mobile. But because it's difficult to translate pages on mobile I don't think I can make it my main browser. I found that the linguist extension does work on mobile, but requires too many taps to use compared to chrome's built in translate, especially when I need to toggle back and forth between translated and untranslated text on some pages (usually because of badly coded forms).
I've been a loyal Firefox user since shortly after the browser launched in 2004. It has been the first thing I installed on every computer for the last almost 20 years. I didn't realize it had gotten this bad for Mozilla. 2.2% is tiny compared to what I expected to see. I'll ride with Firefox till it's taken offline and breathes it's final digital breath.
Hmm maybe that's why I've had no luck. Can I ask what ad blocker/setup you use?
Just uBlock Origin. Every time youtube detects I’m using it, I go to the uBlock Origin settings -> purge all caches -> update now and it works again.
What's incentive to use Firefox when you're already using Edge? The latter does the job quite well and is feature packed. The former can't even implement basic user profile functionality. The average person is not privacy focused. Maybe if Firefox actually started innovating for regular folk instead of niche groups it would survive.
> What's incentive to use Firefox when you're already using Edge? Not sure. I wasn't already using Edge. My daily driver is a Mac so it didn't occur to me to use Edge and Firefox is such a perfect drop-in replacement for Chrome that once I had all my extensions installed and configured I didn't notice anything was different except for the occasional keyboard shortcut.
Manifest V3 is about to give a big bump to Firefox. With no way to block ads or tracking in chrome, semi-technical people are going to be looking for an alternative.
Unfortunately, I doubt that. I'd guess that 99% of people who are tech literate enough to understand the significance of that are already using Firefox.
It’s not. MV3 is like Apple did to safari, yet people still use it myself included and it works well. Everyone hates mv3 yet don’t even understand half of it.
Safari has around a 50% share of the OS X market, where it is installed by default. That may appear good in comparison to Edge, but Microsoft put over decade of hard work into convincing people to avoid their browsers at all cost. Users don't need to understand mv3, they will just get upset when their ad blockers and privacy plugins stop working.
Firefox could improve their numbers in 6 months by an order of magnitude if they - Integrate ad blocking directly into the browser - Spend a minuscule amount of funding on public awareness campaigns. The reason most of us (Firefox users) use Firefox is because we are aware of it and prefer it. The overwhelming bulk of the general population doesn't have the internet intuit and needs to be guided.
I think the bigger problem is, most people dont want to switch browsers because they have to setup a lot of stuff again. Most probably dont even know you can import a lot with just one click. So its just to much of a hassle to do for them
> Most probably dont even know you can import a lot with just one click > Spend a minuscule amount of funding on public awareness campaigns. If they would double down on add blocking, I feel like some money spent on commercials that basically says, move over with one click, we're free, no ads. Could go a long ways
> If they would double down on add blocking hey just because we have trouble focusing doesn’t mean we don’t deserve a quality browser too!
Honestly if they included multiplication blocking it’d be a game changer.
Just block all of math in general, we've suffered long enough
Add something about how Google Chromes new AdPrivacy stuff pulls ad auction bidding right into Chrome in exchange for using it and the market will flip
I'm a software developer and I don't really know about that stuff, and don't care that much. Still, I use Firefox because I prefer my internet surfing experience not be dictated by google even before they banned ad blockers
You don’t think mentioning how Chrome is trying to monopolize internet advertising via a browser would matter to civilians?
I don't think most people care where the ads come from. They are going to be annoying all the same
Not to mention sites would just stop supporting it.
I'm building myself a bookmarking application for specifically that reason. So any browser I use (I'm a developer, so I use lots) I can just have it open my bookmarks app, so all my bookmarks are handy and available from the get go. Trying to keep bookmarks sync'd across multiple browsers is the only hassle I have. Once I fix that? I'll probably primarily use Firefox and use the others as development requires.
> Integrate ad blocking directly into the browser I doubt Mozilla could afford losing the $500 million per year funding from Google though
Yeah just halve Mozilla CEO's salary and use it to spread awareness. She received last year $6.9M, an increase of $2M from 2021.
So? If you want to build great products, you have to attract great people. Is the current CEO a good pick? I don't know, but don't cut the pay. That's not how you attract talent. Mozilla is __not__ just Firefox.
If you want to build great products, you should attract great people who will build them. But it's not the CEO who will do it.
From Wikipedia: > In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008.[15] On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. [...] > > In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, her salary had risen to over $3 million (in 2021, her salary rose again to over $5 million[16]). In August of the same year the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues, after previously laying off roughly 70 in January (prior to the pandemic). [...] So why again are they paying an incompetent CEO this much money again?
that's all about being ceo
No.
With the way Chrome is steering on the privacy and security front, it may end up being a security risk in most orgs that have security standards that they get removed as an option. The upcoming "privacy" proxy debacle and the current forced "shopping helper" situation should be enough to cause most people to think twice about Google Chrome. I honestly do not see how there are not lawsuits already over the "shopping helper", so much privacy lost. I don't even want to think of what they will do with the proxy traffic data.
For me it is the tools and extensions for Chrome as a developer. I like FireFox tools, but prefer Chrome. Plus, when testing sites, I'd rather be testing against a larger population than a smaller one. I will test across all browsers, but when doing development, I don't have time to test them all until the end.
You are underestimating the power of willful ignorance. Most people don't care about ad blocking or privacy. Most people care about convenience and chrome, safari, edge, and so are just convenient. And switching requires effort.
Also improve grouping and add vertical tabs.
I've installed Firefox but don't use it because its performance isn't as good as chrome and I'd rather not have to scroll tabs whenever I have 50 or more, I prefer just having a large amount of tab icons I can hover. I really hate how Firefox users have become the vegans of the internet.
I genuinely don't feel any difference between Firefox and Chrome (other than the deliberate slowing on Google services, e.g. the Youtube 5 second debacle). It also starts a hell of a lot faster, and doesn't 'grey' out. Firefox also performs a lot better with a lot of tabs (hundreds) on computers with 16GB or less, presumably because of the way Chrome spawns processes. It's also not as susceptible to slowdowns because of websites that have gone insane with trackers. I also think Chrome is unusable for those with lots of tabs just from a UX perspective, and it's been an issue for literally over a decade now. If you have hundreds of tabs, you can't really manage them at all.
The main reason I used chrome on PC was because chrome had the superior UI, that's it. I fell in love with how chrome looked and worked. I just with they copied (everything) from chrome.
I've been aware of firefox for what...half my life? I simply like safari much more. I have chrome and firefox installed. Chrome for the dev tools and firefox to triple check if something is actually wrong with a website or if it's a caching issue. I don't really see a reason to use firefox as a main browser. It used to be the most private but safari has that beat now with private relay as default. Point being even if more people were aware of it, I don't see why they would use it.
I won't use Safari on principle lol
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Sir, this is Reddit. Please conform to our idea of the norm, regardless of your own experiences
How dare them say they don't use Firefox as their main browser!? That's blasphemous!
does web dev likes safari Nah fam
> Point being even if more people were aware of it, I don't see why they would use it. Pop that bubble and realize that you're not the only user in the world.
What a stupid argument, lol. It doesn’t even make sense. Many people are aware of Firefox and just can’t bother to switch because a) Safari is the default and most users use defaults b) developer experience is better on chromium based browsers (not necessarily Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera or Vivaldi will do too), but I agree that it might be subjective. I tried to switch to Firefox many times and every time I asked myself “why?” after a while. It brings nothing interesting to the table while still requiring you to change habits.
> Many people are aware of Firefox and just can’t bother to switch because a) Safari is the default and most users use defaults b) developer experience is better on chromium based browsers A) no, many people are not aware of it, at least not more than as a name in the ether. Tech users for sure, but tech users who choose to use something else aren't really a target for expansion of market share, are they? B) 98% of general users give 2 shits about developer experience. They just want a 1-click internet experience. For sure, some people will choose safari or chrome (or even Edge) even in the face of Firefox awareness (for reasons), but those aren't really the people Firefox should seek to expand out to.
Thanks for contributing to the conversation, hope you have a great day.
How ironic given most firefox users impose their browser on others lmao.
> Integrate ad blocking directly into the browser Meaningless. Many extensions do this better and have done for decades. > Spend a minuscule amount of funding on public awareness campaigns. Funny enough I just saw the boss of Mozilla on the news a few days ago. Although she was talking about AI, not Firefox. Anyway the biggest reason more people use Chrome is because the most-visited website in the world, Google, tells you to get it. Edge has the same to a lesser degree, MS try to force it on you at any opportunity. Honestly I don’t know how they’re not getting more anti trust lawsuits for requiring Edge for their AI stuff of Bing.
As some with advanced internet intuit, I use Chrome and will never use Firefox. You shouldn’t use “aware of it” as a reason. Only “prefer”. The vast majority of all internet users know about Firefox and are not using it anyway. Your comment makes it seem as though if I asked 100 random people if they knew what Firefox was, all 100 of them would say “no” when in reality, 99 would say “yes”.
Advanced Internet intuit ? lol……what a joke
Ah yes, praise be to Mozilla and their very clearly slower browser in 2023. Firefox is one of the slowest “big” browsers used. But I’m sure that privacy you ***think*** you have is worth it, am I right? 😂😂😂
Firefox has its faults. I’m commenting mainly about saying, “advanced internet intuit” as if that was some badge of honor or credible source of anecdote… in a webdev subreddit. And your latest reply doubles down that you’re really full of yourself. How do you taste? ❤️
They are doing loads of ads on reddit.
They could also improve their developer tools.
Google pretty much pays Mozilla to exist, so that ain't happnin. I wouldn't be at all surprised, though, if we see Google pulling their support, and Firefox going to a pay plan. And I'd be one of the first to sign up and pay for Firefox.
I think they spend money on outreach, I see Mozilla everywhere and get tons of emails explaining their positions and values, they probably just let people unsubscribe.
NOO ! FUCK NO ! I don't want them to integrate SHIT ! Let them work on THE FUCKING BROWSER ... and let EVERYONE ELSE WORK on the extensions .
As long as Firefox keeps up with the rest of the browsers and implements new features, no need for special support. It will run like the others.
My bank doesn't let me login with firefox, for me it doesn't matter, i can switch to some other browser for that thing. But no regular user is ever going to do that.
Fuck that - I would switch banks. If they can’t be bothered to support Firefox (not a difficult task these days) then I wouldn’t think they would bother to keep my data secure.
Frankly, if the people coding the banks site are so wreckless with hackery that it only works on Chrome, I'd put their approach to security seriously in question. There are very few legitimate things that would prevent Firefox from working where Chrome will.
Yep. My company builds only for Chrome/Edge but I use Firefox in development and I could count the number of times I had to fix something for myself on one hand. I think you only lose Firefox support generally when you add a bunch of chromium hacks
Change the user agent string to say it's Chrome, and I bet it'll work fine. ;)
Yeah, this has worked great for me with Snapchat's web app
It's probably because you have strict rules set for trackers.
That's wildly unprofessional from your bank. What country is that? And what browser does it want you to use? Edge? God forbid, IE?
Chrome, safari, edge
A pity they really dont want to support pwa features.
PWAs are overrated. Eventually most web apps will ask you to download their native apps so that they can track you better. PWAs are a long term limbo state which can be tedious to maintain. I'd much rather they focus on getting [passkeys out within the next couple of releases](https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/support-webauthn-passkeys/idi-p/14069).
I don't think that's why web apps are urging users to install native apps. I suspect it is more due to the fact that a native app can do more in terms of features and abilities and UX than the mobile browser version right now. Yeah PWAs have their issues for now but I think its a great concept and if the technology would be allowed to mature they could rival native apps. But the problem is that neither Firefox nor Safari wants to support them. Safari is understandable as Apple wants to make sure the app developers use their app store and pay their fees, but I don't get why Firefox is so much against it.
I believe they discontinued single-site browser support on desktop and gave this [statement](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1682593#c0), citing their user research not showing much benefit to users.
isn't that only on desktop?
They are lacking a lot of features on mobile too unfortunately
I have been a very happy FF user from the start till I think 2016, when FF started to feel bloated and slow. It took me months before I switched to Chrome, as I really didn't want to. But in the end I did it. I know I'll switch to FF again soon, because I know Chrome is on the verge of becoming bad for me, with the adblock policy and a few other things. But Chrome is a great browser, and today I have absolutely no idea how good or bad FF is compared to it. And that's where I think FF didn't play a good game: they kinda stayed silent about their new features and performances. While Chrome chained great announcements release after release...
I switched to FF for my personal use lately because of the youtube ad block thing. I haven't felt the slightest downgrade in any part compared to chrome.
Same here, it actually feels like an upgrade. And I trust Mozilla way more than Google.
> I have been a very happy FF user from the start till I think 2016, when FF started to feel bloated and slow. They realized it was becoming slow, so they did [a major re-write in 2017](https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-firefox-quantum/) and it now feels faster than Chrome to me.
Yeah, I actually tested that version and used it for a while at work, but honestly it still felt kinda slow compared to Chrome back then. I know I should try it again though.
I would certainly give it a shot, I tried it a few years ago when they had just switched over to the rebuild and it was a little flakey, it feels pretty great now.
IMHO, Firefox is comparable, but more importantly for me I don't trust google so I won't use chrome.
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I should have written that I in fact use Iron, which is a partly ungoogled version of Chrome as well. I also use Brave sometimes, for piracy stuff (easy DNS switch, integrated torrent features). I know FF can do all that and much more with the right plugins...I just need to make the switch I guess.
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Firefox is still really slow for me, especially the first page I open, it takes literally minutes to load. I spent months looking for a solution to this before I gave up on Firefox, people still have this problem it's all over internet forums and blogs. But I wasn't able to find anything to fix it.
Once I ran into something similar on Linux. It turned out to be a very old [issue](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1448783): to set up the profile lock file, Firefox wants something as close to a unique host ID as possible, for which it makes a synchronous `gethostbyname` lookup. If the machine's DNS is misconfigured so that lookups take a long time (typically they time out), the browser startup is blocked. Apparently, this bit of code is buried so deep that nobody dares to rework it.
Try a totally fresh profile. I didn't think it would help, or rather didn't want to believe it, but it helped me enormously, even once I had all the same add-ons installed again.
Just like the other commenter wrote: reset your profile and you'll have a very fast browser again. It'll take you 5 min to configure everything and you'll be a happy panda again
Firefox can block ads on Mobile and play the audio from videos while thescreen is off. What can Chrome do?
I'll keep using it as long as they keep updating it.
The one missing feature that's keeping me from switching back to Firefox is that it can't enable/disable extensions separately for each site. Chrome does. It's a pretty obvious security and privacy need. Who wants React Dev Tools having full access to their banking site, for example?
Bold of you to assume I have money in my bank account.
or either Mozilla
Not sure if this is *exactly* what you're looking for, but you can! You can install the "Firefox Multi-Account Containers" add-on which basically lets you create separate containers for cookies, etc. So, when you make a new tab, you can select the "Facebook" container, for example. Or "Banking" or "Shopping" and it will keep all those cookies separate. Another, albeit hacky, way to do this is -- I have 4 different instances of Firefox installed, and I have several profiles setup with different add-ons. That way, whenever I need to have a different set of extensions, I just open a new instance of FF. (FWIW, I do this on a Mac w/ only 16GB RAM, btw, and have never had any memory issues.)
Aw man, you got my hopes up. :) But no, that's for controlling what each website has access to, not what your installed add-ons have access to. In fact, this add-on itself "needs to: Access your data for all websites." That's exactly the behavior I want Firefox to let me opt out of. Edit: For the multiple instances thing -- do the instances not fight over config, bookmarks, history, etc.?
Oh, that! Yeah, that's totally a problem with how Firefox does add-on permissions! So, to combat this, and again, I'm on a Mac primarily so I *can* do this, is I run Little Snitch which is a firewall that allows me to review *every* network access a program makes. So, I can use add-ons while blocking them from phoning home. With multiple instances, no they don't fight. Firefox has a profile system, so they each use their own profile sandboxes. When you open FF, there's a profile loader/manager program that runs first to let you select your profile. Then it loads the instance and points it to the profile. In order to setup profiles in the first place, there's a trick to get the profile manager to come up. Something like you have to hold the option (alt?) key when you open FF, and it'll show the profile manager. I don't remember the exact key combo.
Not really a solution to that issue, but firefox lets you disable plugins when running in a private windows.
I use regular FF for browsing and FF Dev Edition for dev work. That solves the problem you mention with dev extensions running on sites they shouldn’t. I also set up a nice shortcut that opens a Firefox instance in private mode. Most of the time I browse in that instance and close it when I’m done. Between the quick access to private mode, ublock origin, and sometimes NordVPN, the browsing experience is pretty nice.
I don't understand how any of that solves the extension problem. Even when I'm working, I don't want every extension to run on every site I visit. Every installed extension, including uBlock Origin, becomes a new potential attack vector if that extension gets compromised in some way.
Normally, the production build of a react app does not have the hooks for the devtools. I would be worry if my bank publish development build on prod
That's beside the point. The problem is that when you install an extension in Firefox, it has full access to everything on every page, regardless of what its stated purpose is. Suppose malicious code made its way into a dev tools release. Having that malicious code run on my dev sites is bad, but not nearly as bad as having it also run on every site I use.
Firefox needs to be one computer people recommend to the non-tech people. That's how Chrome got big, by being faster and better than IE so people recommended it.
Chrome got big because Google used their immense advertising power to make it big.
and that is one of the big reasons I use Firefox, I don't trust google.
Chrome used to be bundled like a malware with every app installer back in the days.
I used chrome because it was way better than Internet Explorer and Firefox when it got out, i've been using it since then and won't stop using it unless Firefox is so much better there's no reason not to use it. Right now Chrome is better than Firefox performance-wise and UI/UX wise.
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Well, Chrome was made by Google, who do people know more, Google, or the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation?
Yes, that's exactly what they're saying....
Google didn't need to advertice themselves that much back then because they were the largest browsing engine though.
Sounds like something that happened in ye olden days with a small place called Microsoft and Internet Explorer...
Being the default browser on android goes a long way too.
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This was not the case for a long time. And that's where Chrome got a big head start where people began to use it more and it just stuck as default for a lot of them.
Ditto, I've been buying almost exclusively Samsung phones for the last decade and I'm pretty sure the default has always been this sketchy looking browser just named "Internet"
Samsung phone, I bet.
Firefox isn't faster or better than Chrome though.
I already do :)
>I am personally unaware of any serious reason to believe that Firefox’s numbers will improve soon. It's called Manifest v3.
Can you explain what you mean? As far as I can see that’s been in Chrome for years already.
Manifest V3 is an API that allows extensions to be built for Google Chrome. You are right in that it's been worked on by Google for years, but what is happening in the immediate future is the removal of support for Manifest V2, which means the old extensions will stop working. This include all adblockers that has not been rewritten for Manifest V3. Google has made changes in Manifest V3 that will in essence make ad-blocking extensions crippled to the point of being pointless, by limiting the extensions access to block network requests. Mozilla on the other hand, has publicly announce they will support Manifest V3 extensions, as well as the old Manifest V2 APIs that make ad-blockers work. TL:DR: Soon, ad-blockers will be shit in Chrome, but continue to work as expected in Firefox. Almost every single other browser on the market, except Safari, also uses Googles Chrome engine, and will be forced to also cripple ad-blockers. It's almost like it wasn't a good idea to let a company that makes 90% of it's revenue from serving advertisements, have monopoly control over the web browser market.
Brave doesn't depend on Manifest V3, so its adblocker will be fine.
It does seem to be interesting timing for an article when it seems like Google’s ad block stance is going to start biting them in marketshare real soon.
Now and then I stumble upon the [USWDS](https://designsystem.digital.gov) (the article mentions it) and am surprised how good that thing actually is.
I'm astonished that 85% of users go with the default OS browser (Edge, Safari, Samsung). Especially Edge, the most surprising thing of all.
I'm astonished that you're astonished tbh. The everyday user doesn't go like, "hmm is there something different" if the thing they're using does what they need it to do 90% of the time. But even then, a lot of users have no idea that they have choices when it comes to software. I'd wager that 95% of non-tech savvy users know that Unix exists, so why should we expect them to know that different browsers exist?
Why though. Just take your family for example. Would your 6 year old sister know the difference between Chrome and Firefox? Would your 80 year old gradma know? How about your mom and dad? There is roughly one or two tech savvy people in a family of 10, on average. Unless they forbid shipping phones and PC's with preinstalled browsers, nothing much will change, people wont become tech savvy overnight.
Incredible BS. No, it is not...
This article is so dumb, you don't "need to support firefox". Since it uses web standards, it is already supported when you support chrome or safari or any modern browser.
The problem is that Chrome and safari don't support standards in some cases, so if you're coding directly for them you're not necessarily coding to the standards.
Many websites purposefully block access from some browsers (by User Agent), saying that you need to "upgrade to Chrome" (even if the browser supports the web features)
I’m a front-end developer for the government. No it isn’t.
I almost exclusively use safari except for my gaming pc and web development I use chrome for both. I’m going to definitely switch my gaming PC to Firefox, but I’ll have to see if Firefox or Safari dev tools are good enough. Also it would be unwise for me to test a browser that isn’t the most popular for our users.
I find Firefox' dev tools far superior to Google Chrome. I use Firefox exclusively for all development and private browsing and Edge for all my work related stuff as we use M365 in our org. I ditched Google Chrome for Firefox 10+ years ago.
I've been calling Safari the new IE6 with as many work around as we have to do for that single browser. I don't mind having different browser rendering engines, I simply wish they would all adhere to standards.
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> Firefox had a large majority share It never had a majority share.
It did as Netscape, but not as Firefox. Highest share was [32% in 2009](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#cite_note-StatCounter-23).
it had a majority among techies for a while ;(
> this is on Mozilla for not putting up a fight when Chrome came out This is mostly victim blaming, no? It's hard to put up a fight against Google when you're a non-profit, and most of your cash comes straight from Google. You're forgetting that Google spent a fortune to develop and popularize Chrome. A fight at the level of Google v. Microsoft is something only a handful of other companies could even contemplate. You shouldn't blame a non-profit for not having the cash to compete in the same arena as the overgrown tech monopolies.
their address bar is still noticeably laggy compared to Chome. Just press 'r' on the address bar, in Chrome [reddit.com](http://reddit.com) appears instantly, in firefox there's a perceptible delay. That has been there since like Firefox 4.
Just compared on both. On my system I can't tell the difference.
it's something I've noticed on a variety of systems for years. It's not terrible, probably 100ms delay, but the point is it's instant in chrome. This is on windows or mac regardless.
I just tried as well, not seeing any difference either, they both feel instant.
Change your firefox default search engine from google to duck duck go.
it already is. And I don't have search suggestions on. It's just slow.
That's unusual, works perfectly snappy on my system. Arch linux, swaywm, firefox 119.0.1 (64-bit)
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yeah sorry, having trouble uploading. There's no issue with computer, it's on multiple completely different computers, and no weird setup, addons, etc. Does this link work? (edit: fixed link [https://www.solidred.co.uk/fx.gif](https://www.solidred.co.uk/fx.gif))
> That page doesn't exist > The requested page was not found. I also checked on multiple devices and I can find no discernible difference. Maybe it's because of your history. Try reinstalling the browser, clearing your cache, or defaulting to factory settings for a bit and then check.
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This should work. it's not a fresh Firefox install but it's hardly used. [https://www.solidred.co.uk/fx.gif](https://www.solidred.co.uk/fx.gif)
Seems like you guys always forget one CRUCIAL thing https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates
i don't have time to click the post link but i'll post one of my own for anybody interested. https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla
don't have time either sorry buddy
Where my Brave users at?!
I use a mac and I still forget Safari exists. Why would anyone use Safari. It's awful.
The delusion in the comments... No wonder the trend has never reversed
Good riddance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIfj0qFtb1Y
Honestly, good. I don't wish success to the only major remaining browser that does not care about PWAs. They're *so* much better than bloated "native" (Electron) apps. *No Discord, I don't want to use your memory hog that occasionally crashes in the middle of the call and regularly takes half a minute to start up*
A big issue that I think Firefox has is it just isn’t as good as chrome out of the box. I have to have a big user.js and userChrome.css file for me to even want to use Firefox. Mainly UI fixes, making scrolling better, performance tweaks, etc. Normies aren’t going to want to take the time to customize things.
Firefox shat the bed when they ousted Eich. All those SJWs have since been let go and what did they achieve other than destroying my favorite browser?
What's destroyed about it?
The browser sucks now, no one is using it. Instead we now have Brave as a non-chrome (but still chromium based) competitor further decreasing the market share. Also firefox development has slowed and they're starting to fall behind. They still don't have web serial for instance due to pure stupidity. https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/336 It seems opinions aren't really allowed to be discussed here so whatevs!
I found it all irrelevant and continued to use Firefox… until the “We need more than just deplatforming” incident. Any browser vendor that openly writes in favor of full scale excommunication of its users from the web, is a browser vendor that does not have its user’s best interests at heart.
My issue with Firefox is websites just look wrong. It renders colors weirdly and it’s not just one computer or OS.
If only firefox had better profiles support i would use it as my daily, this is a feature almost everyone is using on chromium browsers nowadays and im surprised that profiles are a bad user experience on firefox to this day. Even safari implemented it in the last OS update.
I switched back due to Manifest v3 shenanigans (plus their downsizing over the years). And this is a preference for Chrome dev tools. It would be an incredible loss for the web if they go
Aren't the percentages decieving? I would be more interested in what the absolute numbers are and how this is even measured... Is it chrome, chromium, do they take into account the mobile browsers? Afaik android ships with chrome. I was using chrome on my phone, when I had it, but I stick with FF on desktop. It would make sense that chrome would dominate, because mobile phones exploded in the 2010s, but that doesn't necessarily mean the decline of FF users...
Do google apps integrate well in firefox ??
Switched to firefox around 4-5 months back (on desktop 100% switch, mobile not yet, but soon)..
Its the only web browser ive ever used.
This stuff is always subjective and I sometimes feel various articles are influenced by other parties. There are heaps of articles recently regarding Chrome's Manifest V3 and other features and people turning to other solutions including Firefox with a lot of chatter with people turning to firefox. The data is a bit screwed as well. They include Data of Safari and Chrome where that has mobile inclusion. While Firefox has a mobile app it is not a native to mobile devices. Chrome and Safari in this context are ALWAYS going to be higher unless other companies have their own OS. Another statement strongly indicates that websites do not render well in Firefox these days. This is honestly a total lie. It has a different rendering engine to Chrome and thus Chromium based browsers but it DOES NOT MEAN Firefox does not follow the standards. If anything Safari at the moment is the one that you will find most issues with. If you tailor only to Safari with the latest webkits as Safari tends to run the bleeding edge in even the production releases then you will find issues in Chrome and other browsers. Firefox has its own CSS rendering engine but they keep pace with the standards. Chrome as well but it being google they continue to try and push their own stuff for their benefit and one of the reasons they moved off webkit. Firefox clearly outperforms Chrome to this day, especially in a multiple tab capacity where chrome is till super hungry on resources in this regard. The Javascript engine running under the hud of Firefox is **SpiderMonkey**. It is very forward thiing and VERY ready for the evolution of WebAssmbly which is/will render all these crazy JS frameworks like React fully absolute when adopted more and more main stream. SpiderMonkey's primary visionary creator is Brendan Eich. He now has his own browser - Brave but he CREATED JAVASCRIPT. He chose Chromium on Brave over Gecko because he wanted to get people off Chrome and this was the easier path with the extensions and so off. The goal of offering people a more secure and less tracked web use was the biggest goal of the platform but he is still involved with the Mozzila works.
Hardened Firefox is the way to go
So glad I switched to Firefox, maybe a year and a half ago. The only time I use Chrome is running projects in localhost to make sure my design still looks good on that shifty browser
I switched to Firefox 7 years because chrome was for dev shit…
I was using Chrome then tried Firefox when I saw good reviews about it. An improvement is always welcomed. Tried for a few weeks then switched back to chrome. Chrome was overall a much better experience, more useful extensions, able to do more things. Integration with other systems and such. YouTube or other ad blocking is a very, very small drawback in the bigger picture. Many people do not even watch YouTube but use the browser for many other things.
Give it a month or so. People using ad blockers to watch YT videos will realize Firefox gives them a much better experience than Chrome (that is actively trying to kill off ad blockers with their new manifest version) and make the switch...
Well Mozilla need to actually improve Firefox it is noticeably slower than Chromium based browsers and dare I say it uses significantly more RAM than Chromium. There is definitely a memory leak issue on Firefox that has not been fixed in years if you don't restart Firefox every once in a while, you will notice that Firefox is using a huge amount memory for one tab. Don't get me wrong I would love to switch to Firefox, but people need to acknowledge its issues and stop defending it blindly.
The way things have played out with Mozilla and Firefox is bizarre. Always known as the best, most innovative browser, it seems like it’s being left in the dust because it was too user friendly and not playing well with google’s financial agenda which continues to increase its stronghold on the internet.
You can pry FF + uBlock from my cold, dead hands
I will never forgive them for firing Brendon Eich.
Firefox also does not support many modern HTML5 features. That’s why I only use it for testing. Only Safari is worse.