3 ms·

Recent developments have been rather less than encouraging. First of all, gradually the whole of the original/long-term developers for the front-end either got

Recent developments have been rather less than encouraging. First of all, gradually the whole of the original/long-term developers for the front-end either got moved to other projects (the iOS browser, other experimental mobile projects, Focus, ...) or left Mozilla, so by the end of 2016 almost nobody was left and most of the front end development was transferred to the Taipei office. There was some initial enthusiasm and activity, but then the same thing happened again - some developers were shifted over to start yet another browser (Firefox Rocket) and after the UI refresh for the 57 update activity started quietening down again. Then of course this January all mainline Firefox development from the Taipei office ceased completely (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16186927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16186927), which has led to the situation that since then, the front-end part of the app hasn't had any active Mozilla developers assigned (!). There's some minimal staffing to continue looking at bug reports and identifying any real critical issues that still require fixing ASAP with whatever development resources can be scraped together or contracted in, but other than that everything is on standby. There are some signs that some sort of rewrite might be on the table (although interestingly the roadmap keeps completely quiet about that), but until more is known about that, I tend to be rather pessimistic and assume lots of opportunities for losing or regressing current functionality and it taking ages until things are sorted out again, if ever.

Vinnl 9y ago
Thanks for the insights, that was exactly what I was hoping for. It's a shame that the situation seems so dire. I guess I can understand it, since Firefox for Android really is not doing well and Focus seems to be doing a lot better, but it's still a really important part of the Firefox ecosystem, so it would be great if they could find a way to make it work well. But ah well. And perhaps they'll try to turn Focus into its replacement later on.
- iggldiggl 9y ago
  > Firefox for Android really is not doing well and Focus seems to be doing a lot better From what public data can be pierced together, Firefox for Android still has more active daily users than Focus's lifetime install count on the Play Store, though.
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    Hmm, interesting. Anyway, I shouldn't pretend I have better insight in what products work well than Mozilla themselves, so thanks for sharing yours :)

Vinnl 9y ago

Thanks for the insights, that was exactly what I was hoping for. It's a shame that the situation seems so dire. I guess I can understand it, since Firefox for Android really is not doing well and Focus seems to be doing a lot better, but it's still a really important part of the Firefox ecosystem, so it would be great if they could find a way to make it work well. But ah well. And perhaps they'll try to turn Focus into its replacement later on.

iggldiggl 9y ago
> Firefox for Android really is not doing well and Focus seems to be doing a lot better From what public data can be pierced together, Firefox for Android still has more active daily users than Focus's lifetime install count on the Play Store, though.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Hmm, interesting. Anyway, I shouldn't pretend I have better insight in what products work well than Mozilla themselves, so thanks for sharing yours :)