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I'm a long term Firefox user, but I'm losing hope. Google (mis)used its power to push Chrome and Google implements lots of Web APIs while Mozilla polishes Firef

I'm a long term Firefox user, but I'm losing hope. Google (mis)used its power to push Chrome and Google implements lots of Web APIs while Mozilla polishes Firefox UI. You can see a significant difference in supported APIs here: https://caniuse.com/ https://caniuse.com/ I consider Chrome developer tools to be a bit better, and if I remember correctly Mozilla reduced its investment in dev tools. The privacy story is better in Firefox, but then again it is even better in Brave. How sad it migt be, but I think Firefox is doomed to be a niche browser :-(

Anunayj 5y ago
And this makes me very sad, because Firefox is the only browser that uses it's own engines (rendering and JavaScript). The rest are basically just reskinned Chromium. And heavily bloated (Looking at you Brave there, No I don't need a crypto wallet, please keep it away)
j_4 5y ago
My cynical impression has been that Firefox keeps moving stuff around to keep some UX manager occupied (sorry, "for clarity") and dropping power user options bit by bit. I've grown frustrated. If they no longer want to cater to tech savvy power users then frankly there's no one left.
- finchisko 5y ago
  Sure, but what exactly chrome like dev tool are you missing in FF? Recently I was looking for Code Coverage reports, which FF lacks, but still prefer FF over chrome.
  - j_4 5y ago
    I don't mean the dev tools, just regular day-to-day usage browser features. I barely do webdev at all so can't comment there.
circularfoyers 5y ago
I feel as if this situation is akin to Linux and Windows desktop usage. The fact that Linux has a tiny market share on the desktop isn't a reason to not use it, particularly for privacy. You can't match the level of fingerprinting protection brought in by efforts of the Tor uplift project, a significant one being letterboxing among many others. All of which and more can be force enabled in the user.js, that there is no equilivant in Chromium. If Brave can reach this point it would be great, but then they are still at the whim of Google, who has shown little to no interest with privacy in Chromium. To overcome this they would start needing a team as knowledable as Chromium's and Firefox's to maintain a codebase that has diverged so much from Chromium because of their desire to uphold privacy in the face of fundamental changes Google impose. At this point I think they'll almost have come full circle with where Mozilla is at, where they are struggling to make enough money from it's users to stay afloat. I think this is why it's so important to support Firefox, in the same way for Linux desktop. There's no telling how long it will take for Brave to reach this point (if they ever do), whereas Firefox is already there now.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Sad indeed. I think Chromium as an engine will always fail its users at some point just because of the dependence on Google. This dependence is strong even with Firefox and it probably already lead to questionable decisions. Supported APIs are a good metric, but I really ask myself if I want new APIs, since development here is also pushed by Chrome.

Anunayj 5y ago

And this makes me very sad, because Firefox is the only browser that uses it's own engines (rendering and JavaScript). The rest are basically just reskinned Chromium. And heavily bloated (Looking at you Brave there, No I don't need a crypto wallet, please keep it away)

j_4 5y ago

My cynical impression has been that Firefox keeps moving stuff around to keep some UX manager occupied (sorry, "for clarity") and dropping power user options bit by bit. I've grown frustrated. If they no longer want to cater to tech savvy power users then frankly there's no one left.

finchisko 5y ago
Sure, but what exactly chrome like dev tool are you missing in FF? Recently I was looking for Code Coverage reports, which FF lacks, but still prefer FF over chrome.
- j_4 5y ago
  I don't mean the dev tools, just regular day-to-day usage browser features. I barely do webdev at all so can't comment there.

circularfoyers 5y ago

I feel as if this situation is akin to Linux and Windows desktop usage. The fact that Linux has a tiny market share on the desktop isn't a reason to not use it, particularly for privacy. You can't match the level of fingerprinting protection brought in by efforts of the Tor uplift project, a significant one being letterboxing among many others. All of which and more can be force enabled in the user.js, that there is no equilivant in Chromium. If Brave can reach this point it would be great, but then they are still at the whim of Google, who has shown little to no interest with privacy in Chromium. To overcome this they would start needing a team as knowledable as Chromium's and Firefox's to maintain a codebase that has diverged so much from Chromium because of their desire to uphold privacy in the face of fundamental changes Google impose. At this point I think they'll almost have come full circle with where Mozilla is at, where they are struggling to make enough money from it's users to stay afloat. I think this is why it's so important to support Firefox, in the same way for Linux desktop. There's no telling how long it will take for Brave to reach this point (if they ever do), whereas Firefox is already there now.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Sad indeed. I think Chromium as an engine will always fail its users at some point just because of the dependence on Google. This dependence is strong even with Firefox and it probably already lead to questionable decisions. Supported APIs are a good metric, but I really ask myself if I want new APIs, since development here is also pushed by Chrome.