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That's a convenient excuse on iOS, but Firefox is doing poorly on macOS, too, where no such restriction exists. According to the first statistics I found, Fire

by ken 7y ago

That's a convenient excuse on iOS, but Firefox is doing poorly on macOS, too, where no such restriction exists. According to the first statistics I found, Firefox is only about half as popular on the Mac as it in on Windows -- and it's still under 10% there, too. Privacy-compromising systems aren't winning today because people seek out systems that compromise their privacy. They're winning because these companies focused on making the user interface good. Firefox will win big again when they stop talking about privacy and start making a UI that isn't lousy. True, Apple is talking about privacy a lot these days, but they've been focusing on UX first for decades. You can't start with "here is an abstract principle that's good for you, and you should use our systems because of it". The Free Software Foundation tried that for years. It doesn't work. Privacy is important, but it's a feature, not a product. You still need to have a great product.

ragequitta 7y ago
I'm trying to think of a UI difference in chrome or safari that is meaningful, can't come up with one. Can you elaborate?
- ImprovedSilence 7y ago
  i have way too many tabs open at all times, and chrome makes it way way easier to see what I have open and get to the tab I want quickly.(it just shows more tabs than Firefox, this is my main complaint) The top bar uses less vertical real estate and is just much cleaner overall. I can see more if not all of the url. Chromes next tab left, next tab right, and close tab, automatically map to the keyboard shortcut I set in macOS, and I still haven’t even found the menu option for next and previous tab in Firefox. (I’m sure it’s there and I just haven’t found it yet, but if it’s not there, that’s a deal breaker for me) I very badly want to use Firefox as my main browser, and I have it installed and give it a go every now and then, but it’s just not all the way there yet for me.
  - kilburn 7y ago
    The vertical space you can easily fix by opening the hamburguer menu > customize > density (bottom left) > compact. It then uses less space than chrome. You can also add/remove items from the top bar there, making your address bar larger if you want to. The default hotkeys for next/prev tab are cmd+option+left/right arrow. I don't know how to change those...
    - clairity 7y ago
      i use ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab for tabbing. easier 1-handed operation and closer to other "change context" shortcuts like next/prev window (cmd-~, cmd-shift-~) and select desktop/space (ctrl-1, ctrl-2, etc).
    - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
      yeah, I'm muscle-memoried into cmd-' and cmd-; for tabbing right and left, I like using those keys, and this is across pretty much everything I use (I suppose chrome and terminals, mostly..). It's firefox, there's probably an extension for it, but that takes work to find and feels kludgy. good to know about the density, thanks.
      - chappi42 7y ago
        In the mac settings about keyboard/shortcuts, you can define program specific shortcuts; e.g. take the exact name from the firefox menu for the 'next tab' action and give the shortcut you want.
        ImprovedSilence 7y ago
        Right, so that's part of my gripe. in keyboad shortcuts, i've got global (all applications) shortcuts for select/show next/previous tab. Those dont map to firefox. Fine, but Firefox doesn't have a menu title for next tab, so setting a shortcut for a non-named function doesn't work. I've tried the documentation(https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-tasks-quickly#w_windows-tabs https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perf...), using "go one tab to the left" doesn't work. It's just way more effort to figure out than it needs to be for a browser in 2019.....
  - SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
    Interesting, my complaint about Chrome's UI is that it doesn't support Tree Style Tabs (or an equivalent) so I can't have that many tabs open at once.
- ken 7y ago
  You mean UI issues with Firefox, compared to Safari? Gosh, where to start? - Standard keyboard shortcuts for text editing still don't work. That alone is a dealbreaker for me. - The toolbar(s) don't look or work like standard toolbars. The standard toolbar editor is missing, too. - Tabs don't look or act right, either. They're actually styled like Windows XP tabs. - The scroll bars look good, but scrolling doesn't work the same as any other app. It hits a solid wall at either end. - The preferences dialog is not a dialog, but a web browser tab (!), and its controls all look strange. They're not like standard OS controls or standard web controls. They're mostly just words floating on empty space, and some of them happen to be clickable. (It doesn't even have the advantage of being a webpage: the back button is enabled, but don't take me back to the last thing I was looking at here.) Some settings open a (custom, of course) dialog-in-a-tab, which is resizable, but if you resize it, the main scrollbar disappears, so you can't see the bottom of the dialog with the Cancel/OK buttons. - It doesn't use the standard localization setting. It has its own, but half of Firefox doesn't even seem to use that, because even though my System Preferences is English, and my Firefox language preference is English, and even my Firefox content preference is English, it's showing half the UI in Japanese still. The context menu is half English and half Japanese! - It's got a whole second menu (!) in the toolbar, with no way to hide it (see above: non-standard toolbars). The font, text alignment, highlight color, icons, and animation are all non-standard. Of course, it doesn't obey the system accessibility settings, either. - Tree controls (e.g., in the History window) are non-standard, and standard keyboard shortcuts don't work here, either. - It uses a (custom, of course) pop-over as an upgrade notification, which can't be dismissed by clicking outside them. Or dismissed permanently, like normal notifications. The whole reason I use a Mac is for consistency. That's been its primary benefit since 1984. Instead of learning 10 completely different different programs, I just have to learn the common parts once. (Remember those keyboard overlays for the IBM PC we used so we didn't have to memorize which F-key meant "Save" in each different program?) In Firefox, everything is custom, and works differently than other apps. The keyboard, mouse, display, menus, windows, and controls are all weird. If I were OK with that, I'd switch back to Linux.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Yeah, it’s kind of depressing how much better it could be with just a touch of Cocoa; these shortcomings are readily apparent so it wouldn’t even take that much to improve it. I wonder if Mozilla could solve this by just hiring someone who’d focus on improving platform UI to the point where it was competitive with Chrome…
MaxBarraclough 7y ago
> Privacy is important, but it's a feature, not a product. You still need to have a great product. Do you consider Firefox to be a less-than-great product? I use it as my main browser, from Windows 10. No complaints. I don't experience performance issues or UI issues. Chrome and Firefox are both solid browsers, on Windows at least. Perhaps Firefox for Mac is a weaker product, and loses to Safari 'fair and square' on quality grounds?
- alwillis 7y ago
  >Perhaps Firefox for Mac is a weaker product, and loses to Safari 'fair and square' on quality grounds? The current version of Firefox on macOS is a vast improvement over what Mozilla was shipping 6-12 months ago. However, it still requires more RAM, doesn’t render as quickly and consumes more power than Safari, so there’s that. Also, Safari implemented anti-tracking features before Firefox did.
- ripa 7y ago
  Firefox for Mac has been more or less unusable up until the most recent release where they actually started using the Core Animation libraries in macOS. Now it won’t drain all the battery in no time, and it’s actually quite snappy. I’ve tried to run Firefox so many times in the past, but eventually always go back to Safari because it’s more native, fast and unobtrusive.
  - Royalaid 7y ago
    I will say that the latest changes on nightly really feel like it is close enough to other browser to be a decent replacement
  - catalogia 7y ago
    > Firefox for Mac has been more or less unusable up until the most recent release This is a gross exaggeration. I've been using firefox on MacOS for 3 years and it's worked fine the entire time.
    - wtetzner 7y ago
Krasnol 7y ago
> According to the first statistics I found, Firefox is only about half as popular on the Mac as it in on Windows Wich is not much of a surprise. If you educate your customer base to use one browser, many won't switch. See the lawsuits against Microsoft because of IE.
- ken 7y ago
  But Chrome is still #1 on the Mac, too. Most Mac users do download a third-party browser and use that rather than the built-in one. Just not Firefox.
alwillis 7y ago
Actually, Apple is giving privacy the product treatment: https://www.apple.com/privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/
- throwGuardian 7y ago
  Why allow competition when they can simply claim to productize.
  - alwillis 7y ago
    There are literally hundreds of apps on the App Store that compete with Apple’s own offerings, especially email clients, calendaring, productivity, etc. So clearly it’s not about competition. Disney+ is being heavily promoted on the App Store, which is direct competitor to Apple’s TV+. We’ve seen 3rd parties like Google and Facebook subvert iOS security before; if Mozilla gets low-level access, then so does Google and they can’t be trusted.
    - throwGuardian 7y ago
      There are literally zero browser engines allowed on iOS, other than Safari/webkit, with a purposefully depleted feature set, to force developers and users to the app store. It is astounding that overzealous Apple employees and fan boys will employ circuitous mental gymnastics to substantiate Apple policies, instead of simply allowing an open-market to thrive on iOS. It's as if open markets where consumers are allowed to choose works against Apple
      - millstone 7y ago
        What is this hope for a "thriving open market?" On Android, Chrome/Chromium engine has more than 99.5% marketshare. Consumer choice is a red herring. So for that matter is Firefox, which Google has stomped out on Android. Apple's policy is 100% aimed at preventing Google from controlling the future of iOS.
        7y ago

by ken 7y ago

ragequitta 7y ago

I'm trying to think of a UI difference in chrome or safari that is meaningful, can't come up with one. Can you elaborate?

ImprovedSilence 7y ago
i have way too many tabs open at all times, and chrome makes it way way easier to see what I have open and get to the tab I want quickly.(it just shows more tabs than Firefox, this is my main complaint) The top bar uses less vertical real estate and is just much cleaner overall. I can see more if not all of the url. Chromes next tab left, next tab right, and close tab, automatically map to the keyboard shortcut I set in macOS, and I still haven’t even found the menu option for next and previous tab in Firefox. (I’m sure it’s there and I just haven’t found it yet, but if it’s not there, that’s a deal breaker for me) I very badly want to use Firefox as my main browser, and I have it installed and give it a go every now and then, but it’s just not all the way there yet for me.
- kilburn 7y ago
  The vertical space you can easily fix by opening the hamburguer menu > customize > density (bottom left) > compact. It then uses less space than chrome. You can also add/remove items from the top bar there, making your address bar larger if you want to. The default hotkeys for next/prev tab are cmd+option+left/right arrow. I don't know how to change those...
  - clairity 7y ago
    i use ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab for tabbing. easier 1-handed operation and closer to other "change context" shortcuts like next/prev window (cmd-~, cmd-shift-~) and select desktop/space (ctrl-1, ctrl-2, etc).
  - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
    yeah, I'm muscle-memoried into cmd-' and cmd-; for tabbing right and left, I like using those keys, and this is across pretty much everything I use (I suppose chrome and terminals, mostly..). It's firefox, there's probably an extension for it, but that takes work to find and feels kludgy. good to know about the density, thanks.
    - chappi42 7y ago
      In the mac settings about keyboard/shortcuts, you can define program specific shortcuts; e.g. take the exact name from the firefox menu for the 'next tab' action and give the shortcut you want.
      - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
        Right, so that's part of my gripe. in keyboad shortcuts, i've got global (all applications) shortcuts for select/show next/previous tab. Those dont map to firefox. Fine, but Firefox doesn't have a menu title for next tab, so setting a shortcut for a non-named function doesn't work. I've tried the documentation(https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-tasks-quickly#w_windows-tabs https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perf...), using "go one tab to the left" doesn't work. It's just way more effort to figure out than it needs to be for a browser in 2019.....
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
  Interesting, my complaint about Chrome's UI is that it doesn't support Tree Style Tabs (or an equivalent) so I can't have that many tabs open at once.
ken 7y ago
You mean UI issues with Firefox, compared to Safari? Gosh, where to start? - Standard keyboard shortcuts for text editing still don't work. That alone is a dealbreaker for me. - The toolbar(s) don't look or work like standard toolbars. The standard toolbar editor is missing, too. - Tabs don't look or act right, either. They're actually styled like Windows XP tabs. - The scroll bars look good, but scrolling doesn't work the same as any other app. It hits a solid wall at either end. - The preferences dialog is not a dialog, but a web browser tab (!), and its controls all look strange. They're not like standard OS controls or standard web controls. They're mostly just words floating on empty space, and some of them happen to be clickable. (It doesn't even have the advantage of being a webpage: the back button is enabled, but don't take me back to the last thing I was looking at here.) Some settings open a (custom, of course) dialog-in-a-tab, which is resizable, but if you resize it, the main scrollbar disappears, so you can't see the bottom of the dialog with the Cancel/OK buttons. - It doesn't use the standard localization setting. It has its own, but half of Firefox doesn't even seem to use that, because even though my System Preferences is English, and my Firefox language preference is English, and even my Firefox content preference is English, it's showing half the UI in Japanese still. The context menu is half English and half Japanese! - It's got a whole second menu (!) in the toolbar, with no way to hide it (see above: non-standard toolbars). The font, text alignment, highlight color, icons, and animation are all non-standard. Of course, it doesn't obey the system accessibility settings, either. - Tree controls (e.g., in the History window) are non-standard, and standard keyboard shortcuts don't work here, either. - It uses a (custom, of course) pop-over as an upgrade notification, which can't be dismissed by clicking outside them. Or dismissed permanently, like normal notifications. The whole reason I use a Mac is for consistency. That's been its primary benefit since 1984. Instead of learning 10 completely different different programs, I just have to learn the common parts once. (Remember those keyboard overlays for the IBM PC we used so we didn't have to memorize which F-key meant "Save" in each different program?) In Firefox, everything is custom, and works differently than other apps. The keyboard, mouse, display, menus, windows, and controls are all weird. If I were OK with that, I'd switch back to Linux.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Yeah, it’s kind of depressing how much better it could be with just a touch of Cocoa; these shortcomings are readily apparent so it wouldn’t even take that much to improve it. I wonder if Mozilla could solve this by just hiring someone who’d focus on improving platform UI to the point where it was competitive with Chrome…

MaxBarraclough 7y ago

> Privacy is important, but it's a feature, not a product. You still need to have a great product. Do you consider Firefox to be a less-than-great product? I use it as my main browser, from Windows 10. No complaints. I don't experience performance issues or UI issues. Chrome and Firefox are both solid browsers, on Windows at least. Perhaps Firefox for Mac is a weaker product, and loses to Safari 'fair and square' on quality grounds?

alwillis 7y ago
>Perhaps Firefox for Mac is a weaker product, and loses to Safari 'fair and square' on quality grounds? The current version of Firefox on macOS is a vast improvement over what Mozilla was shipping 6-12 months ago. However, it still requires more RAM, doesn’t render as quickly and consumes more power than Safari, so there’s that. Also, Safari implemented anti-tracking features before Firefox did.
ripa 7y ago
Firefox for Mac has been more or less unusable up until the most recent release where they actually started using the Core Animation libraries in macOS. Now it won’t drain all the battery in no time, and it’s actually quite snappy. I’ve tried to run Firefox so many times in the past, but eventually always go back to Safari because it’s more native, fast and unobtrusive.
- Royalaid 7y ago
  I will say that the latest changes on nightly really feel like it is close enough to other browser to be a decent replacement
- catalogia 7y ago
  > Firefox for Mac has been more or less unusable up until the most recent release This is a gross exaggeration. I've been using firefox on MacOS for 3 years and it's worked fine the entire time.
  - wtetzner 7y ago

Krasnol 7y ago

> According to the first statistics I found, Firefox is only about half as popular on the Mac as it in on Windows Wich is not much of a surprise. If you educate your customer base to use one browser, many won't switch. See the lawsuits against Microsoft because of IE.

ken 7y ago
But Chrome is still #1 on the Mac, too. Most Mac users do download a third-party browser and use that rather than the built-in one. Just not Firefox.

alwillis 7y ago

Actually, Apple is giving privacy the product treatment: https://www.apple.com/privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/

throwGuardian 7y ago
Why allow competition when they can simply claim to productize.
- alwillis 7y ago
  There are literally hundreds of apps on the App Store that compete with Apple’s own offerings, especially email clients, calendaring, productivity, etc. So clearly it’s not about competition. Disney+ is being heavily promoted on the App Store, which is direct competitor to Apple’s TV+. We’ve seen 3rd parties like Google and Facebook subvert iOS security before; if Mozilla gets low-level access, then so does Google and they can’t be trusted.
  - throwGuardian 7y ago
    There are literally zero browser engines allowed on iOS, other than Safari/webkit, with a purposefully depleted feature set, to force developers and users to the app store. It is astounding that overzealous Apple employees and fan boys will employ circuitous mental gymnastics to substantiate Apple policies, instead of simply allowing an open-market to thrive on iOS. It's as if open markets where consumers are allowed to choose works against Apple
    - millstone 7y ago
      What is this hope for a "thriving open market?" On Android, Chrome/Chromium engine has more than 99.5% marketshare. Consumer choice is a red herring. So for that matter is Firefox, which Google has stomped out on Android. Apple's policy is 100% aimed at preventing Google from controlling the future of iOS.
      - 7y ago