5 ms·

Sure, power users can be a pain in the ass, but if everything were up to casual users, we'd all still be on IE 1x, i.e., whatever that wraps the same broken, in

by qzw 6y ago

Sure, power users can be a pain in the ass, but if everything were up to casual users, we'd all still be on IE 1x, i.e., whatever that wraps the same broken, insecure, non-standard-compliant MSHTML engine in the shiny Windows UI toolkit-du-jour. Power users were the first to pick up Firefox when it was split off from the old Mozilla suite, and power users were the ones who began using and recommending Chrome when it was the upstart browser. If Firefox survives and (hopefully) returns to a reasonable market share, it'll probably be thanks to power users who stuck with it or gave it another chance.

floatingatoll 6y ago
Your flawed assumption-by-framing is that all of Firefox's power users are "techie" / "computer-savvy" / "hacker" power users, which is definitely not true for other products, and likely isn't true for Firefox either.
- leoc 6y ago
  But the parent didn't make that assumption.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    Parent indicates that the same power users that hat first adopted Firefox, before it had any market share or was known to regular people around the world, will be the ones who save it. Those are, in industry parlance, "early adopters". Those early adopters would have been adopting Phoenix 0.2^ which was released in September 2002, that was later released as Firefox 1.0^ two years later — at a time when the only power users could have been those same "early adopters". Those early adopters would have been as I describe: technical users with the capability to install and operate an unfamiliar browser for the sake of curiosity. (I was still using MSIE in 2002, so it's not like it was universal among technical users either, yet.) Those early adopters do not represent the total set of power users today. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_early_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_early_version_history
kibwen 6y ago
Absolutely, but the truth of your words is also the tragedy. Having engaged and demanding users might have positive externalities when these users demand things that improve the products in the market as a whole, and thereby improve the experience for casual users as well. But companies don't want to improve their products, or improve society, or improve experiences for users; what they want is to collect rent. An established company becomes more cost-efficient by embracing casual users and ignoring power users. An upstart company might want to leverage power users to compete against a well-funded opponent, but that debt eventually comes due as we see now with Mozilla. At enterprise prices (i.e. thousands of dollars per user per year) it makes sense to accept the cost of dealing with power users. But not for a product that you give away for free. I say this as someone who has been using Firefox for years, and you'll need to pry it from my cold, dead hands. I'm impressed that Mozilla has survived for as long as it has, I was sure they'd be financially kaput by 2016; at this point I think Google only keeps their search deal up as an attempt to avoid antitrust action. I don't know what the future holds for Firfox, but I hope it remains competitive. We need alternative competing implementations for the health of the web.
themacguffinman 6y ago
Except Chrome was significantly better in ways that even casual users could see and be sold on: simplicity and speed, which initially turned away a significant number of power users who heavily rely on and prefer a wide variety of addons and settings to customize Firefox. Power users are certainly valuable for spreading the word but it's only one way, you can also actually advertise and market the thing like Google did. And even though power users can spread the word, you still need a superior product for casuals to actually win them over. How long has HN and other forums been beating the drum for Firefox now? Has it actually made a difference in their declining marketshare (at least for desktop, not sure about mobile)? I don't think it has, and I don't think it ever will. If Firefox survives and resurges in popularity, it will be for a better, more polished, more optimized, slicker product for casuals. And many power users will hate them for it. Well, that's just my prediction.
- tracker1 6y ago
  I'd consider myself generally a power user... I still really preferred chrome's out of the box experience over Firefox really early on. I think a lot of times more technically driven products resist change a bit too much. Some of the best examples are Gimp and Firefox. Gimp's UI is hideous and despite Gimpshop builds offering a better experience to users, they still resist. Similar for Firefox's overall ui/ux when so many preferred chrome (including myself). Not all UI change is for the better, but when the vast majority of users prefer a different experience, it's helpful to listen sooner than later.
  - DragoCubed 6y ago
    Just as an FYI: Apparently the Gimpshop website isn't owned by the developer and hasn't been for years. It's apparently riddled with adware and malware and isn't developed anymore.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  This is a very revisionist explanation of how Chrome succeeded: Simply put they paid to be injected into Adobe Reader and Flash Player installs. When Android came around, every manufacturer was required to include Chrome as default. None of this had to do with product quality.
squarefoot 6y ago
"Sure, power users can be a pain in the ass, but if everything were up to casual users, we'd all still be on IE 1x, i.e." How true. To paraphrase Henry Ford, if HTML5 developers asked instead what casual users wanted, we would now have a faster Flash. It's history repeating itself over and over: developers and power users introduce or ask for something innovative, then casual users notice it, embrace it but also ask for it to be simpler to use ("50 knobs are too many, we want it to be usable with 3!"), therefore many functions are automated, other removed and interfaces are dumbed down to make the product palatable to the lowest denominator; however now the product has lost most of its "cool factor", not to mention some advanced functions, and doesn't attract power users anymore, many of them ending up migrating elsewhere. Rinse, repeat. That is not going to happen to Firefox, since the war for conquering casual users has already been fought and won by Google thanks to their pervasive advertising telling everyone the lie that Chrome is better and safer. Mozilla should instead focus on giving power users the best possible product wrt security and privacy, two aspects where it would win hands down against Google, while at the same time try not to lose those among casual users who happen to be concerned about privacy and security and to whom Chrome would not be an option. As for Mozilla's need to become profitable, why don't they attempt to use their widely known brand to sell personalized Pi-Hole-like boxes, hardware firewalls, VPN bricks that connect together from here to there, etc. Imagine two boxes with network plus audio ports: you connect mic, headphones, optional camera, a network cable, your laptop and the two boxes will establish an authentic E2E encrypted voice + video + data communication from anywhere to anywhere, no other operations required. Mozilla could surely provide the necessary services to get around NATted or filtered connections, and the shiny boxes with their logo would ease the association between the brand and the concept of private communications, security, privacy etc. helping as a consequence the adoption of Firefox as well. I think if they really want to focus on privacy and security they shouldn't ignore the hardware field where their brand can still make a difference.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  > How true. To paraphrase Henry Ford, if HTML5 developers asked instead what casual users wanted, we would now have a faster Flash. Like this? https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpx.html https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpx.html

by qzw 6y ago

floatingatoll 6y ago

Your flawed assumption-by-framing is that all of Firefox's power users are "techie" / "computer-savvy" / "hacker" power users, which is definitely not true for other products, and likely isn't true for Firefox either.

leoc 6y ago
But the parent didn't make that assumption.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  Parent indicates that the same power users that hat first adopted Firefox, before it had any market share or was known to regular people around the world, will be the ones who save it. Those are, in industry parlance, "early adopters". Those early adopters would have been adopting Phoenix 0.2^ which was released in September 2002, that was later released as Firefox 1.0^ two years later — at a time when the only power users could have been those same "early adopters". Those early adopters would have been as I describe: technical users with the capability to install and operate an unfamiliar browser for the sake of curiosity. (I was still using MSIE in 2002, so it's not like it was universal among technical users either, yet.) Those early adopters do not represent the total set of power users today. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_early_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_early_version_history

kibwen 6y ago

Absolutely, but the truth of your words is also the tragedy. Having engaged and demanding users might have positive externalities when these users demand things that improve the products in the market as a whole, and thereby improve the experience for casual users as well. But companies don't want to improve their products, or improve society, or improve experiences for users; what they want is to collect rent. An established company becomes more cost-efficient by embracing casual users and ignoring power users. An upstart company might want to leverage power users to compete against a well-funded opponent, but that debt eventually comes due as we see now with Mozilla. At enterprise prices (i.e. thousands of dollars per user per year) it makes sense to accept the cost of dealing with power users. But not for a product that you give away for free. I say this as someone who has been using Firefox for years, and you'll need to pry it from my cold, dead hands. I'm impressed that Mozilla has survived for as long as it has, I was sure they'd be financially kaput by 2016; at this point I think Google only keeps their search deal up as an attempt to avoid antitrust action. I don't know what the future holds for Firfox, but I hope it remains competitive. We need alternative competing implementations for the health of the web.

themacguffinman 6y ago

Except Chrome was significantly better in ways that even casual users could see and be sold on: simplicity and speed, which initially turned away a significant number of power users who heavily rely on and prefer a wide variety of addons and settings to customize Firefox. Power users are certainly valuable for spreading the word but it's only one way, you can also actually advertise and market the thing like Google did. And even though power users can spread the word, you still need a superior product for casuals to actually win them over. How long has HN and other forums been beating the drum for Firefox now? Has it actually made a difference in their declining marketshare (at least for desktop, not sure about mobile)? I don't think it has, and I don't think it ever will. If Firefox survives and resurges in popularity, it will be for a better, more polished, more optimized, slicker product for casuals. And many power users will hate them for it. Well, that's just my prediction.

tracker1 6y ago
I'd consider myself generally a power user... I still really preferred chrome's out of the box experience over Firefox really early on. I think a lot of times more technically driven products resist change a bit too much. Some of the best examples are Gimp and Firefox. Gimp's UI is hideous and despite Gimpshop builds offering a better experience to users, they still resist. Similar for Firefox's overall ui/ux when so many preferred chrome (including myself). Not all UI change is for the better, but when the vast majority of users prefer a different experience, it's helpful to listen sooner than later.
- DragoCubed 6y ago
  Just as an FYI: Apparently the Gimpshop website isn't owned by the developer and hasn't been for years. It's apparently riddled with adware and malware and isn't developed anymore.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
This is a very revisionist explanation of how Chrome succeeded: Simply put they paid to be injected into Adobe Reader and Flash Player installs. When Android came around, every manufacturer was required to include Chrome as default. None of this had to do with product quality.

squarefoot 6y ago

"Sure, power users can be a pain in the ass, but if everything were up to casual users, we'd all still be on IE 1x, i.e." How true. To paraphrase Henry Ford, if HTML5 developers asked instead what casual users wanted, we would now have a faster Flash. It's history repeating itself over and over: developers and power users introduce or ask for something innovative, then casual users notice it, embrace it but also ask for it to be simpler to use ("50 knobs are too many, we want it to be usable with 3!"), therefore many functions are automated, other removed and interfaces are dumbed down to make the product palatable to the lowest denominator; however now the product has lost most of its "cool factor", not to mention some advanced functions, and doesn't attract power users anymore, many of them ending up migrating elsewhere. Rinse, repeat. That is not going to happen to Firefox, since the war for conquering casual users has already been fought and won by Google thanks to their pervasive advertising telling everyone the lie that Chrome is better and safer. Mozilla should instead focus on giving power users the best possible product wrt security and privacy, two aspects where it would win hands down against Google, while at the same time try not to lose those among casual users who happen to be concerned about privacy and security and to whom Chrome would not be an option. As for Mozilla's need to become profitable, why don't they attempt to use their widely known brand to sell personalized Pi-Hole-like boxes, hardware firewalls, VPN bricks that connect together from here to there, etc. Imagine two boxes with network plus audio ports: you connect mic, headphones, optional camera, a network cable, your laptop and the two boxes will establish an authentic E2E encrypted voice + video + data communication from anywhere to anywhere, no other operations required. Mozilla could surely provide the necessary services to get around NATted or filtered connections, and the shiny boxes with their logo would ease the association between the brand and the concept of private communications, security, privacy etc. helping as a consequence the adoption of Firefox as well. I think if they really want to focus on privacy and security they shouldn't ignore the hardware field where their brand can still make a difference.

pjmlp 6y ago
> How true. To paraphrase Henry Ford, if HTML5 developers asked instead what casual users wanted, we would now have a faster Flash. Like this? https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpx.html https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpx.html