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Firefox never had the dominant position that Chrome has now. Chrome can get away with breaking the web because most people wouldn’t even think to switch to Fir

Firefox never had the dominant position that Chrome has now. Chrome can get away with breaking the web because most people wouldn’t even think to switch to Firefox or IE at this point.

starbugs 6y ago
It was important enough around 2010 to have a real impact (30+%). Why wouldn't people switch to FF anymore? I'd say because they prioritize their product development in the wrong way. It's really sad. Competition would be helpful for the market.
- emn13 6y ago
  I don't really think that's it; I think people just don't believe their personal choice of browser is going to make enough of a difference to privacy and competition to actually positively affect them; they just don't care in other words. And... I'm not sure their wrong. Sure, more competition would be good, but it's hard to see that being enough to address the monopolistic issues browsers currently face. And on iOS - you don't even really have a choice, given apples rules.
  - starbugs 6y ago
    I have tried switching from Chrome to FF multiple times in the past 18 months. It just doesn't work. Neither for development nor for general use. It's sadly just not competitive anymore.
    - javagram 6y ago
      That I don’t understand personally since I use Firefox for both my work as a web developer and for personal use. It works perfectly fine and if anything I more frequently encounter compatibility issues with iOS Safari. But there are so many people who have a Chrome-only attitude that I don’t see firefox’s market share going anywhere but down in the next decade.
      - starbugs 6y ago
        I like to use my Bluetooth headset (or to be more specific, the touch bar on my Mac indirectly) to control YouTube video playback. It's 2020 and Firefox still does not support it. It's really a basic feature that any other app on the Mac supports. Don't get me started on its performance in the dev console and in general. It just cannot keep up performance-wise, neither with Safari nor with Chrome. Instead, we now got a Mozilla VPN. I am not at all surprised their market share won't go up. In fact, it's just sad. I would really love to make the switch to support Mozilla as an alternative to the Google Ads monopoly. But not at the expense of giving up basic features that I have gotten used to. Maybe I'll try again once Google has managed to completely screw up on uBlock Origin and other beloved filter extensions.
        emn13 6y ago
        You've got to admit that's a pretty hyper-specific feature there. It shouldn't surprise you that many users haven't run into it. But a quick google finds an add-on for that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-keys/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-keys/ - does that do what you want? Stuff like this is largely a matter of habit. You're used to chrome's details - so they make sense. But examples the other way around exist too - e.g. I'd find it hard to miss the picture-in-picture feature from FF when watching youtube in chrome. 'course, there's an extension for that too ;-).
        starbugs 6y ago
        So the browser as an integrated media playback system is an edge case? Are you serious? Media control keys support for software that claims media playback as one of its main features is hyper-specific? I mean if it's so rare, then why did Google decide to implement it? And why do other FF users not run into this? I'll tell you. Because there are virtually no FF users anymore. They don't even install it. And btw. thanks for the media keys recommendation. From the extension's description page, literally the first thing that comes up when you look at it: 1. The browser window must be active for media keys to be detected due to a Firefox limitation. 2. Only Play/Pause is supported due to a Firefox bug. 3. Pinned tabs get priority over all other tabs when pressing a media key. 4. macOS is not supported due to Firefox bug. It's literally mentioning three FF bugs preventing you from building something useful with it on its front page. Meanwhile, that feature should have been something that doesn't require an extension on any supported platform in the first place. None of these bugs/limitations are present in any Webkit/Chromium based browser I tested so far on macOS. I won't even get into other unrelated "curiosities" here, like the order of DOM mutation events being wrong when debugging, but correct when the debugger is not attached in FF.

Firefox never had the dominant position that Chrome has now. Chrome can get away with breaking the web because most people wouldn’t even think to switch to Firefox or IE at this point.

starbugs 6y ago

It was important enough around 2010 to have a real impact (30+%). Why wouldn't people switch to FF anymore? I'd say because they prioritize their product development in the wrong way. It's really sad. Competition would be helpful for the market.

emn13 6y ago
I don't really think that's it; I think people just don't believe their personal choice of browser is going to make enough of a difference to privacy and competition to actually positively affect them; they just don't care in other words. And... I'm not sure their wrong. Sure, more competition would be good, but it's hard to see that being enough to address the monopolistic issues browsers currently face. And on iOS - you don't even really have a choice, given apples rules.
- starbugs 6y ago
  I have tried switching from Chrome to FF multiple times in the past 18 months. It just doesn't work. Neither for development nor for general use. It's sadly just not competitive anymore.
  - javagram 6y ago
    That I don’t understand personally since I use Firefox for both my work as a web developer and for personal use. It works perfectly fine and if anything I more frequently encounter compatibility issues with iOS Safari. But there are so many people who have a Chrome-only attitude that I don’t see firefox’s market share going anywhere but down in the next decade.
    - starbugs 6y ago
      I like to use my Bluetooth headset (or to be more specific, the touch bar on my Mac indirectly) to control YouTube video playback. It's 2020 and Firefox still does not support it. It's really a basic feature that any other app on the Mac supports. Don't get me started on its performance in the dev console and in general. It just cannot keep up performance-wise, neither with Safari nor with Chrome. Instead, we now got a Mozilla VPN. I am not at all surprised their market share won't go up. In fact, it's just sad. I would really love to make the switch to support Mozilla as an alternative to the Google Ads monopoly. But not at the expense of giving up basic features that I have gotten used to. Maybe I'll try again once Google has managed to completely screw up on uBlock Origin and other beloved filter extensions.
      - emn13 6y ago
        You've got to admit that's a pretty hyper-specific feature there. It shouldn't surprise you that many users haven't run into it. But a quick google finds an add-on for that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-keys/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-keys/ - does that do what you want? Stuff like this is largely a matter of habit. You're used to chrome's details - so they make sense. But examples the other way around exist too - e.g. I'd find it hard to miss the picture-in-picture feature from FF when watching youtube in chrome. 'course, there's an extension for that too ;-).
        starbugs 6y ago
        So the browser as an integrated media playback system is an edge case? Are you serious? Media control keys support for software that claims media playback as one of its main features is hyper-specific? I mean if it's so rare, then why did Google decide to implement it? And why do other FF users not run into this? I'll tell you. Because there are virtually no FF users anymore. They don't even install it. And btw. thanks for the media keys recommendation. From the extension's description page, literally the first thing that comes up when you look at it: 1. The browser window must be active for media keys to be detected due to a Firefox limitation. 2. Only Play/Pause is supported due to a Firefox bug. 3. Pinned tabs get priority over all other tabs when pressing a media key. 4. macOS is not supported due to Firefox bug. It's literally mentioning three FF bugs preventing you from building something useful with it on its front page. Meanwhile, that feature should have been something that doesn't require an extension on any supported platform in the first place. None of these bugs/limitations are present in any Webkit/Chromium based browser I tested so far on macOS. I won't even get into other unrelated "curiosities" here, like the order of DOM mutation events being wrong when debugging, but correct when the debugger is not attached in FF.