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These days FF is just as fast and lighter than most Chromium browsers. With a better curated add-on store (my god google store sucks), a clean UI (which they'll

These days FF is just as fast and lighter than most Chromium browsers. With a better curated add-on store (my god google store sucks), a clean UI (which they'll hopefully stop messing around with), and more importantly, it just works for day to day use, and is customizable enough for most people's needs. While Mozilla have themselves to blame for a lot of the decline. A big part of it is Google's dominance over the web and android, pushing Chrome on everyone's face for years. Bundling Chrome with software, annoying pop-ups on android telling you to use Chrome, pre-installed on android, pushing it on their main page... There's so much of it. Of course there's also Apple's walled garden preventing it from going there, as well as years of MS doing what Google does now.

_Algernon_ 4y ago
Still waiting for the apis to reimplement xul addons, which were promised at least half a decade ago...
- mrandish 4y ago
  To me the best part of Firefox was its unique ability for add-ons to customize the user interface and add significant new functionality. The architectural change in 2017 (version 57) was necessary but the failure to prioritize the re-implementation of the lost API functionality is dooming the browser. Firefox's incredibly vibrant add-on ecosystem was a huge differentiator and competitive advantage over other browsers. I still use FF as my daily driver but I have to apply UX customization with CSS just to make it livable. Fortunately, there is an active community at www.reddit.com/r/firefoxCSS which eases the burden.
- ComodoHacker 4y ago
  You mean APIs to reach into browser internals and escape sandboxing?
  - _Algernon_ 4y ago
    yes
btmiller 4y ago
Yes, which is why the EU’s recent legislation is a terrible, terrible thing. The People’s cry for other rendering engines on iOS is a sham (the free market chose iOS among other, more permissive and equally viable platforms). Real people don’t care, and real people won’t notice because they do not care what rendering engine is powering their browser. They only care that websites work and that browsers provide the features they expect. But thanks to the EU, the death of non-Chromium browsers just accelerated to the benefit of no real person. Mozilla will of course continue to make nice browser features, but the day will come when a blog post details their reasons for ditching Gecko. Real people won’t notice and the industry will have further reduced (read: eliminated) engine diversity - the very thing EU was trying to avoid.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  Amen. I was a complainer about Apple's insistence on WebKit, but when I thought it through I realized that it's the only bulkhead against a total Chrome takeover. I admire a lot of Europe's consumer protections, but this EU legislation is a huge overreach, written by politicians pandering to hype that they are too ignorant to assess.
  - chasil 4y ago
    KHTML from the KDE project was Apple's surprise choice for the Safari browser, in preference to Gecko. Everyone expected Apple to choose Gecko for their rendering engine. Chrome and Safari both ran WebKit for many years until Google forked to the Blink engine. Blink (as a descendent) is far closer to Webkit than either are to Gecko. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML
    - NonNefarious 4y ago
      Thanks for the info.
- mtomweb 4y ago
  Apple's ban on third-party browsers on iOS has caused enormous damage to the web ecosystem. We explain this in great detail including browser diversity arguments here: https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Competition%20to%20Walled%20Gardens%20-%20v1.2.pdf https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Com...

_Algernon_ 4y ago

Still waiting for the apis to reimplement xul addons, which were promised at least half a decade ago...

mrandish 4y ago
To me the best part of Firefox was its unique ability for add-ons to customize the user interface and add significant new functionality. The architectural change in 2017 (version 57) was necessary but the failure to prioritize the re-implementation of the lost API functionality is dooming the browser. Firefox's incredibly vibrant add-on ecosystem was a huge differentiator and competitive advantage over other browsers. I still use FF as my daily driver but I have to apply UX customization with CSS just to make it livable. Fortunately, there is an active community at www.reddit.com/r/firefoxCSS which eases the burden.
ComodoHacker 4y ago
You mean APIs to reach into browser internals and escape sandboxing?
- _Algernon_ 4y ago
  yes

btmiller 4y ago

Yes, which is why the EU’s recent legislation is a terrible, terrible thing. The People’s cry for other rendering engines on iOS is a sham (the free market chose iOS among other, more permissive and equally viable platforms). Real people don’t care, and real people won’t notice because they do not care what rendering engine is powering their browser. They only care that websites work and that browsers provide the features they expect. But thanks to the EU, the death of non-Chromium browsers just accelerated to the benefit of no real person. Mozilla will of course continue to make nice browser features, but the day will come when a blog post details their reasons for ditching Gecko. Real people won’t notice and the industry will have further reduced (read: eliminated) engine diversity - the very thing EU was trying to avoid.

NonNefarious 4y ago
Amen. I was a complainer about Apple's insistence on WebKit, but when I thought it through I realized that it's the only bulkhead against a total Chrome takeover. I admire a lot of Europe's consumer protections, but this EU legislation is a huge overreach, written by politicians pandering to hype that they are too ignorant to assess.
- chasil 4y ago
  KHTML from the KDE project was Apple's surprise choice for the Safari browser, in preference to Gecko. Everyone expected Apple to choose Gecko for their rendering engine. Chrome and Safari both ran WebKit for many years until Google forked to the Blink engine. Blink (as a descendent) is far closer to Webkit than either are to Gecko. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML
  - NonNefarious 4y ago
    Thanks for the info.
mtomweb 4y ago
Apple's ban on third-party browsers on iOS has caused enormous damage to the web ecosystem. We explain this in great detail including browser diversity arguments here: https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Competition%20to%20Walled%20Gardens%20-%20v1.2.pdf https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Com...