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There's a lot of reasons why Firefox is still the best browser. I never did move to Chrome all these years, and Edge is incredibly impressive on Windows. I'll
by BuckRogers 6y ago
There's a lot of reasons why Firefox is still the best browser. I never did move to Chrome all these years, and Edge is incredibly impressive on Windows.
I'll detail my opinion on the path forward for Mozilla and Firefox in particular.
Surprisingly it's been Firefox on iOS that's the biggest pull to keep me on FF overall. I think that's the real way forward for them. There's just too many Google nags to switch to Chrome on the desktop. This is limited on mobile, and putting all resources into mobile features is paramount. Then desktop version usage increases due to sync features.
I'm a Windows and iOS user, and on the desktop, zippiness is feature #1. I think they should move to Chromium, as unpopular as that is. It'll save on maintenance and an un-Googled Chromium like Edge is a very good thing. Leave FF exactly as it is, all features intact with Chromium underpinnings, borrow a few features from Vivaldi (horizontal tab support), and you easily have the best browser on the market.
On iOS, it needs support for the URL bar to move to the bottom as on Android. It needs uBlock Origin integrated by default, to borrow from iOS Edge having adblock. Improving dark mode is key. I just can't get it to work properly with DuckDuckGo's homepage. Images are sometimes reversed. I've had to turn it off to get pages to display a their native black background. I'd like to see it work out of the box with Facebook's messenger feature, it tries to redirect to the app, while in Safari this can be set to open in desktop mode and just works. Otherwise, general stability improvements and performance. It used to be very unstable, but its come a long way now. It's my favorite mobile browser.
Would those changes be enough? I'm not sure, but I do know iOS and Android browser support is the only possible way forward other than services like their VPN.
I'm the type of user though that doesn't mind the ads in the URL bar, pretty small ask on Mozilla's part. I also leave telemetry enabled because I want my usage scenario to be in Mozilla's data. As you can guess, I'm not the typical user that thinks Blink vs Gecko is somehow a mighty crusade to save the web. Even if it were where the real battle is, Mozilla is not the entity that's properly armed to take up that fight. Apple or Microsoft would be.
I have other ideas on how to move Mozilla forward and make it a very big player in the tech space. The biggest problem confronting Mozilla today is probably Mozilla. If I had to guess. Trying to convey these ideas to leadership and get a path forward set in the bureaucracy is probably pretty tough.