12 ms·

Firefox lost ~16M users since last year

74 points by freediver 4y ago

vivekd 4y ago
I don't know the cause, but I wonder if this could be the result of more people sticking with microsoft's default browser after improvements in edge
KingOfCoders 4y ago
As a (Mosaic/Netscape/)FF user I'm no longer concerned as Ladybird is on the horizon with a clear focus on creating a browser instead of activism on the internet (which is fine of course, it's their money, but not in my interest).
neximo64 4y ago
Would put it down to a non product ceo
radiojasper 4y ago
I hope they never give up, as it's been my favourite browser since its inception. Sure they messed stuff up along the way and not every update has been equally great, but I love using Firefox over any Chromium based browser and been doing so for almost 20 years now.
- dmos62 4y ago
  Same. And I love Android Firefox. Would be horrible not to have Firefox extensions on my phone (or the syncing).
  - stereoradonc 4y ago
    Kiwi Browser on Android supports extensions. Have a look at it.
    - Nandesuka 4y ago
      True. But the browser doesn't receive regular updates.
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    After the Android Firefox rewrite in ~2020 you don't have 99% of Firefox extensions available on Android - only a short list of selected mainstream ones, like Ublock Origin. If you want to install any other not in the blessed list you need to jump through a horrendous sequence of hoops every time: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
    - hilbert42 4y ago
      Killing off extensions has been a pastime of Mozilla programers from the outset decades ago. It's by far the most annoying aspect of Mozilla yet the organization has never taken steps to prevent the practice. Mozilla programmers are a law unto themselves—users bedamned.
  - 344556 4y ago
    Firefox's extensions on Android are why I still use my smartphone to go on Internet.
hdhrufjdi 4y ago
The only mobile browser with proper ad blocking
- haunter 4y ago
  There is proper adblocking on iOS too with AdGuard. I'm literally using the same filters and rules with it as with uBlock Origin on desktop and works flawlessly.
  - fsflover 4y ago
    Except you need an iPhone for that.
    - haunter 4y ago
      OP was already talking about mobile. I just pointed out FF is not the “only” option
  - Avamander 4y ago
    AdGuard is quite limited.
  - arepublicadoceu 4y ago
    Using the same filters =/= having the same capabilities. For instance, AdGuard on iOS doesn’t protect me from “popunders”. Also, no filters protect me from reddit nudges for using their app. Whereas when I had an android(firefox+ublock) I never saw a popunder or reddit nags.
testemailfordg2 4y ago
It gained one today, I installed it after facing same issue with chrome on multiple sites.
u801e 4y ago
I'm curious as to why people just stop using a browser? I currently use Firefox on both my laptop and my android device and unless a website just doesn't work on Firefox, I still use it. Given this, what would cause someone to just stop using it and switch to Chrome?
- uniqueuid 4y ago
  - Aggressive marketing of platform defaults, such as Edge on Windows - Aggressive misuse of incompatibilities, such as video calling for Chrome and Edge (e.g. Teams) - Loss of websites optimizing for standards and instead optimizing for the monopolist (Chrome). Same as with IE.
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    you gotta admit the ads are catchy... "there's no place like Chrome"
    - smcl 4y ago
      I haven't seen this (though I'm not in an anglophone country) - it's def catchy, where have you seen/heard it?
      - calvinmorrison 4y ago
        on the side of a bus stop of all places in Philadelphia.
        smcl 4y ago
        Ah cool thanks, you also read my mind and answered the question I meant to ask - whether it was a physical ad or just a digital one :D That's mad, you'd think Chrome is so ubiquitous, and Google ads themselves so popular, that they wouldn't need to shell out money on this kind of IRL ads.
  - Someone 4y ago
zachlatta 4y ago
I love Firefox, but the default experience is covered with ads. I wouldn't be surprised if that's a major contributor. It feels like the budget browser compared to Chrome.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
vasco 4y ago
Meanwhile Mozilla's CEO salary went from $2.9m to $5.6m from 2020 to 2021.
- touwer 4y ago
  outrageaus
  - christkv 4y ago
    Mansions don’t pay for themselves
    - TomK32 4y ago
      Just inherit them, nothing could go wrong.
      - Grazester 4y ago
        I know. Buying a mansion is so nouveau riche.
      - christkv 4y ago
        Still got to pay that property tax
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        coldtea 4y ago
        Not if you have the money for a mansion (or 10). Then you have the money for lawyers and schemes to legally avoid paying it.
- lbriner 4y ago
  Same with Wikimedia. The association seems to become some kind of cult where it is seen as OK to spend enormous amounts of money on overheads and salaries without really making anything better because "big salaries = good performance", I wish we had put that fallacy to rest already.
james_pm 4y ago
I'm one of them. I switched to Brave first, and have settled on Vivaldi going forward. Why? Because Firefox was increasingly problematic to use. Things like background blur on Google Meet didn't work. Yes, I realize it was probably Google doing Google things to hurt Firefox, but day-to-day, I need a browser that works. So switching to a Chromium-based browser that had things like ad-block and other features I consider important was the best solution.
- floitsch 4y ago
  I have worked at Google (although in a different department). From what I could see there was never intentional hurting of other browsers. However, given a list of (always too long) TODOs, improving a non-critical feature for 10% of users often just doesn't make it to the top. And yes, Google is a huge company with a ton of developers, but teams are not. In my experience, these kind of fixes are sometimes even done by individuals in their "spare" time, to contribute a bit back (even if it's for a competing browser).
nyx_land 4y ago
Seems that their plan to do everything possible to sabotage their browser and waste resources on stupid bullshit that doesn't improve Firefox is working.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  What improvement should they add to Firefox that would pay the bills?
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  I dunno. I wonder how much of this can be explained by people using desktops and laptops less and cell phones more.
  - KingOfCoders 4y ago
    I use FF on my phone, always have.
    - sph 4y ago
      Me too, because of "send tab to device" which no one else seems able to implement cross platform. It's bloody rocket science, according to Brave and Microsoft. That said, Firefox iOS is still mediocre. Tab management is still bad compared to Safari. But at least we got Colorways (and every time it updates it I get the Colorways popup screen)
      - aendruk 4y ago
        Is that what that is? My perception has been that approximately monthly Firefox decides to interrupt me with a full screen “welcome to the internet!” popup. I’ve been using Firefox since it was Phoenix and in 2022 it decides to start doing this. Baffling.
    - ashwagary 4y ago
      One thing that made Firefox mobile stand apart from other browsers was full desktop extension support. Too bad they scrapped it a few years ago.
VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
I'll use Firefox on mobile for no other reason than ad blocking extensions.
- petodo 4y ago
  You can have extensions in Kiwi Browser, actually more of them than bunch of approved by Firefox. It has also pull down to refresh Firefox users begged devs for for the last 10 years.
rvz 4y ago
I guess the Firefox ship is sinking and Chrome's (and the derivatives) dominance is rising. The EU Digital Markets Act will just further increase its dominance and Firefox will be on course to irrelevancy since Mozilla is still unable to make money without Google keeping them on life support. At this point Google should just spin out the Chromium engine as a separate non-profit organization and allowing others to freely make their own browsers based on a standard browser engine like Brave, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi etc to use it but done freely without Google's complete control. Exactly just like what the Linux Kernel has done with 'distros' with the kernel as the central standard for anyone to freely make their own Linux distro, the same can be done for browser engines.
- danuker 4y ago
  > to use it but done freely without Google's complete control. This will never happen. In fact, Google's intention is to sabotage every other browser, and shove ads everywhere. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nerdponx 4y ago
  What effect will the EU Digital Markets Act have?
philliphaydon 4y ago
I don’t know why people use chrome over Firefox. Chrome still uses a crazy amount of ram for me compared to Firefox And I just discovered this week that zooming in chrome affects ALL tabs not just the one you’re on. And they marked the bug as won’t fix so you need a bloody plugin to zoom a single tab.
- epolanski 4y ago
  > And I just discovered this week that zooming in chrome affects ALL tabs not just the one you’re on. I don't have this issue in ALL tabs, but only the tabs sharing the same origin which makes sense if you ask me, doesn't seem a bug.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    Hmmm I’ll retest on Monday. I have an external monitor to my laptop and needed to zoom 1 tab on 1 screen to write a doc on the second screen and when I zoomed the laptop screen cos it was too small I zoomed the external screen. So annoying. Even if is only same origin, the fact they lock the setting for individual tab zooming so it can only be changed by a browser extension is so stupid.
- lbriner 4y ago
  I moved from Firefox to Chrome after using FF for a long time because of the opposite. FF randomnly locked up and used tonnes of RAM, not consistently but occasionally. As someone who uses the browser a lot for work, I cannot have randomn lock ups happening for seconds at a time and not have this treated as a priority 1 bugfix by mozilla.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    I get lock ups in Chrome but not Firefox… i always need to close tabs on my work laptop cos chrome gets laggy. (Other apps are fine when chrome is laggy)
  - timbit42 4y ago
    I think this depends on which OS you are using. Firefox is stable on some and not others, while Chrome uses less RAM on some and more on others.
samwestdev 4y ago
I still use it daily both on my PC and my phone.
zabzonk 4y ago
i really like it, but my worthless bank (lloyds) doesn't work with it anymore, so for their banking web site i have to use chrome. grrr. i still use firefox for everything else.
- freeCandy 4y ago
  You could report this at https://webcompat.com https://webcompat.com
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
snapcaster 4y ago
This sucks, maybe it couldn't have turned out any other way
potamic 4y ago
How do they account for people who have disabled telemetry? I presume as privacy awareness widens, we will see more and more people disabling telemetry.
- j-bos 4y ago
  This is my question too. I'd guess the Venn between privacy conscious and ff user is closer to a circle than an oval.
- fbn79 4y ago
  Good question. I checked [about:telemetry] and I have telemetry disabled. I suppose many people are doing the same.
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  Even with disabled telemetry, there should be ways to get some data. Update-calls for the browser and add-ons should give some valid hints.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  They can count the number of downloads and the number of requests to the update servers. Or they can just not count the people that disable telemetry.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  Even when you have telemetry disabled the browser still regularly checks for updates - unless you have that disabled as well like I do as I prefer my executables to be read-only - so they can still get a good idea of the number of users out there.
josefresco 4y ago
Alternate headline: Firefox added ~1 million users since July 2022.
- pixxel 4y ago
  Or: Firefox has lost ~60 million users since January 2019.
anenefan 4y ago
How many people who used firefox have been migrated to Win 11? From what I hear, (this could be wrong because I don't really care about win 11 and my eyes are usually glazing over when yet another person is complaining what a dog it it,) it could be getting harder for the average user to set firefox as the default browser.
- deliriumchn 4y ago
  I use FF with W11 without any problems
  - anenefan 4y ago
    Functioning as it should is good. The thing to consider here is, do you consider yourself an average user? Most of us here would not care if they didn't have firefox or chrome as their default browser, to myself it's practically meaningless apart from win98 days setting some near useless lump as the default to catch auto activating BS, but to ordinary folk they can get weird ideas they have to use it ... IIRC M$ went to a little bit of trouble to stop people easily making firefox the default browser, and some internal links are edge only without a really good work around. I don't see them going to all that trouble unless there's a slight benefit.
    - deliriumchn 4y ago
      Well, internal documentation (moments when you missclick on ? icon and open it lol) was always IE and then edge as long as I remember, as well as lockscreen image when you click on it. Other than that, windows is respecting my default browser. They do go over-invasive when you try to download another browser while using edge tho, which is shady of course, but once I changed the default browser, I never had any issues
_odey 4y ago
Yes, obviously they did! they keep denying the importance of implementing things like this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1542189 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1542189 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/shortcut-for-different-profiles/idi-p/707 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/shortcut-for-different-... Even if it's a highly requested feature, minimal effort, high impact, and something users expect to Just Work™, just like it does in Chrome; it's still getting ignored. And all they have to do is copy what Chrome does 100% exactly the same, no effort to design something new. They have all the functionality already in place, under about:profiles, it just needs a nice UI on top, and to open new links in the "last active profile". When a user sees this does not work like it does in Chrome, and they have to struggle to achieve the same functionality with a worse workflow and a hideous UI, they will simply claim the functionality does not exist and carry on with their life using Chrome. They will not bother to search and install the extension that does this for them, that's simply not a realistic expectation to have. I can work around this because I appreciate the other things Firefox has more than the effort I put into profile management. But I'm tech, and highly tolerant of things like this. Normal users aren't, the simplest inconvenience will throw them off for good. If something Just Work™ in Chrome then it has to Just Work™ in Firefox as well. This was just one example, probably the most obvious example of them all.
- danuker 4y ago
  This is where the corruption coming from Google money shows through. I'd add that to store the Firefox search engines, they developed a custom file format. This is to make it more difficult to configure search engines (and make you more likely to keep the default ones). https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/searchjson.html https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/searchjson.html
  - KingOfCoders 4y ago
    " This is where the corruption coming from Google money shows through." Never thought of that, perhaps showering Mozilla with money had two goals, getting search users and corrupting Firefox for Chrome to take over.
morog 4y ago
Until chrome like browsers have multi account containers I'm a FF user for life
- freeCandy 4y ago
  The best Firefox feature to come out in the last few years. It's so integrated into my workflow that It's now hard for me to imagine browsing the web without it.
icare_1er 4y ago
Bad, we need to avoid monopoly at all costs on the Internet...
javchz 4y ago
I'm kinda scared by this tendency, as most dev already see front end development as just supporting chrome and safari, instead of a standard. The fact me that most other browsers like edge or brave are WebKit or chromium reskins doesn't help this.
danuker 4y ago
I bet people will crawl back to Firefox when all Chromium based browsers will have much worse ad blockers due to Manifest V3. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338
- haunter 4y ago
  Well that might be me but until then I'm pretty happy with ungoogled-chromium, best browser by far I've used. If adblocking changes dramatically I'll look for alternatives. Honestly if FF wants to win this battle (?) then adblocking is a worthy crusade. Brave is already there, curious what they will do with Manifest v3
- bondant 4y ago
  Isn't firefox also going to move to Manifest v3?
  - danuker 4y ago
    Oh. You are right. Looks like I was not informed. Well, shucks. "We believed then, as we do now, that users would be best served by having useful extensions available for as many browsers as possible." https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-firefox-recap-next-steps/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-fi...
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  This will worsen chrome, not all other chromium-browsers. Most non-google-vendors made it already clear they will not follow this specific change. Even Google moved back for the moment because of the reactions. We have to still see whether they really will go through with this.
petodo 4y ago
Look on the bright side there is still 193M to go, so by this pace they still have about 10 years.
postalrat 4y ago
I hope if I ever do switch of Firefox there is a chromium browser made by a trusted group with all telemetry turned off and focused on ad blocking and privacy.
freediver 4y ago
12 years ago Firefox had 30% browser market share. Today, at this rate, they have about 12 years left to 0 users. Still plenty of time to fix things. Few suggestions to friends at Mozilla: - Make a product person in charge - Drop everything else that isn't Firefox from portfolio; introduce it later when trend reversed - Listen to users, not telemetry - Plan to switch business model to freemium; introduce Firefox Pro
- r9295 4y ago
  I disagree with the second point. Their email relay service and VPN is excellent.
  - PurpleRamen 4y ago
    Might be because it's not theirs. They are just resellers with a bit branding and some integration, at the moment.
- huhtenberg 4y ago
  It will take far less. Once its share sufficiently drops, Google will pull out of their aggreement and Mozilla will collapse on itself. Unless Google is keeping them around for anti-monopoly purposes, in which case Firefox will just continue deteriorating in a zombie-like state.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  > introduce Firefox Pro If people aren't using the full feature browser today, why would they use it when it's not free?
  - freediver 4y ago
    Supposedely proposed changes would make it better and worth paying for.
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    Maybe user/developer support or some services ?
samwillis 4y ago
Talking of open source browsers, I'm super excited by the Ladybird Browser [0] from the SerenityOS [1] project. They have made such incredible progress in such a short time. For those that don't know its a completely new browser + renderer + js engine, everything from scratch. Andreas has hinted that he is considering pushing the browser project to be a bigger thing, and positioning it as a legitimate and viable alternative to browsers with a corporate influence (which Firefox unfortunately is): > Hypothetically, would you consider sponsoring a completely new web browser (no big tech companies involved) that refuses to take money from the advertising industry? https://twitter.com/awesomekling/status/1612856174965129216 https://twitter.com/awesomekling/status/1612856174965129216 This could only be a good thing, and I for one would happily sponsor a browser (and rendering engine) that is independent and only serving users needs. All other open source browsers and engines are backed by corporations with their own agenda. 0: https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform-browser-project/ https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform... 1: https://serenityos.org https://serenityos.org
- freediver 4y ago
  Looks interesting. Is there a macOS ready build avaialble somewhere?
  - samwillis 4y ago
    Not yet, so far they have approached it the same at the rest of the Serenity project - compile it yourself. Which for the motivations of Serenity as a hobbyist OS make sense, but if Ladybird "graduates" from a hobby project I'm sure they will make builds available.
oslac 4y ago
I don't like the Chrome browser for Android. Can't quite tell why. I really like Firefox for Android.
- petodo 4y ago
  Use Kiwi Browser, full extensions support, pull down to refresh, faster than Firefox and more customization.
m4rtink 4y ago
Maybe all the features still missing in the Android Firefox played some role ? Stuff like no print support, no keyboard shortcuts or no tab-bar on tablets ? Not to mention general extensions support being a shit show as well, with basically just a very small curated list of extensions (mainly add blockers) being supported out of the box. All of these features were supported by Firefox on Android until ~2 years ago, when they did a rewrite and then ignored requests to bring this functionality back ever since. A couple links to the Android Firefox open issues: keyboard shortcuts - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3729 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3729 print support - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10217 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10217 tab bar in tablet mode - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2344 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2344 tablet UX improvements - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/4498 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/4498
- dmos62 4y ago
  > no print support Um, somewhat tangential, but I built a statically generated CV in html, presuming that I could effortlessly print that to a PDF using a browser. Not so. Web page printing is extremely broken in every browser, and I tried them all. And, every browser had different defects. Chromium seemed to have the least horrible print functionality, but it was still really really broken. It's probably ok if you want to have a copy of some article content where presentation doesn't matter, but if it's something that you want to have a specific layout or design, tough luck.
  - tehbeard 4y ago
    Silly question, but did you just use the same CSS as for the screen, or also make use of the various `@media print {...}` related CSS properties (for things like page breaks, switching to more traditional print units instead of px and rem etc)
    - dmos62 4y ago
      I didn't switch distance units, but I did try out more or less everything else. Print-specific css properties weren't well supported or well implemented. Dealing with page breaks was particularly annoying.
Sytten 4y ago
Mostly stopped using it when the last few updates started to make my mac CPU crazy everytime I use it. It always been not great on macos but now it is just unusable. Still using it on android but it takes ages to load the first page when the app just started. It really is bad. I stopped donating to firefox too considering the hypocrisy of the for profit business parent business that fired a ton of good engineers to pay its CEO more.
hyperluz 4y ago
During the last two/three COVID years, Firefox did a poor job supporting correctly and reliably WRTC and other features related with in-webbrowser videoconferencing (jitsi, Google Meet, etc). Now, I think, maybe things are fixed and working correctly, but the damage is done. Any, way, I alternate between Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, Brave, etc, acording on the task I need to get done. Web browsers usage scope is huge and beyond reading liquid and/or formated text. And Firefox was behind in some relevant areas.
- bdhcuidbebe 4y ago
  > During the last two/three COVID years, Firefox did a poor job supporting correctly and reliably WRTC and other features related with in-webbrowser videoconferencing (jitsi, Google Meet, etc). I think this is the most probable cause of all the stuff mentioned in this thread.
- Avamander 4y ago
  Similar problems have appeared for me far before COVID. The supposedly freedom-focused option was often significantly slower on Linux than on Windows thanks to lack of hardware acceleration for me. So I was basically forced to switch and now there are other things that I can't stand in FF, like the extra clicks in developer tools or annoying "security" prompts in console and so on.
PurpleRamen 4y ago
More interessting is the lose of ~60M users in the last 4 years. Peak in the data was at ~254M at beginning of 2019. Now it's at ~194M. The Hard lose continues. Another notable point is that roughly 10% of the users have an adblocker, but 35%+ of users are using addons. What is the rest using? It would be interessing to have older data for this, to see how the different stages of the XUL-addon-drama impacted those numbers.
- jeltz 4y ago
  A big part of the loss of users was when they lost the German market due to bad press after the Cliqz scandal in late 2017. They lost a lot of trust in Germany from that and Germany was one of Mozilla's most important markets due to how many privacy focused people there are in Germany
  - PurpleRamen 4y ago
    Not sure how something from 2017 impacts the numbers from 2019? And it seems that scandal was some months before the big switch to quantum, which should had significant more impact on the user numbers.
petodo 4y ago
What happened with Latest version chart in bottom of the page?
epolanski 4y ago
My wild guess is that good part of this derives from many developers not needeing Linux desktop anymore and living happy on their company Windows machine + WSL 2.
JakaJancar 4y ago
I don't use Firefox because instead of a simple OSS software, it seems like something that wants to suck me into their ecosystem. Nearly every tab of Firefox settings has some "cloudy"/cross marketing stuff: - General: Recommend extensions as you browse - Home: Pocket, Sponsored {shortcuts,stories}, Tips and news from Mozilla - Search: nothing - Privacy & Security: Suggestions from Sponsors, Firefox data collection, Dangerous site blocking - Sync: (by it's nature) - More from Mozilla: (by it's nature) - Extensions & Themes: (by it's nature) - Firefox Support: (by it's nature) Meanwhile you check Safari: - General: Nothing - Tabs: Nothing - Autofill: Nothing - Passwords: Nothing - Search: Nothing - Security: Fraudulent site warnings - Privacy: Apple Pay and Apple Card - Websites: Nothing - Extensions: (by it's nature) - advanced: Nothing Maybe it doesn't feel sleazy compared to Chrome, but it does compared to Safari.
- 28304283409234 4y ago
  Safari, that only works in a full and absolute walled garden? The kind you did not want to get sucked into?
- crtasm 4y ago
  Well the OS pushes iCloud, Safari doesn't need to do so itself.
ohCh6zos 4y ago
Mabye it's the expirements that changed my settings until I found the about:config way to opt out, or the whitespace heavy and unclear UI changes.
lawgimenez 4y ago
Using FF for both iOS and macOS and the features are different. For example there is turn on dark mode on the iOS app but not in their mac app. Their iOS app needs some bug fixes and UI polish, But for me Chrome turns on my laptop fans more compared to FF.
shantnutiwari 4y ago
I use Firefox as my primary browser, but find many sites still stumble with it. And not just some obscure ones written 10 years ago. On a backup laptop with Linux and Firefox, BBC iplayer and CBBC games(which my son loves) doesnt work at at all. Even on my Linux/Mac machines, I see weird behaviour sometimes. So sad, but you do need another Chromium based browser. On Windows, I find Edge pretty good. On my Mac and Linux, I use Vivaldi. As other people in the thread have complained: Firefox dont help by pushing their other products and changing the UI
- beej71 4y ago
  I see stumbles, too, but don't forget to reload with ad blocking off. That fixes it for me half the time.
KevinGlass 4y ago
I've been Firefox user for about 10 years. The UI update from last year almost pushed me to another browser, maybe Brave or just giving up and embracing Edge. BUT this UI fix exists [1] and is wonderful. You just paste it into your User profile folder and the custom CSS and user.js fixes the ugly UI. 1. https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
- cwizou 4y ago
  Thanks for the link, just installed and it brings back "tabs" that are connected to the content instead of the disconnected buttons. I do find the contrast slightly low between active and inactive tabs on macOS in dark mode, using the "original" profile, but I'm sure this is easy to tweak. For all its faults, Safari in compact mode/dark mode does get the active/inactive tabs contrast right, although it's obviously fairly subjective.
timw4mail 4y ago
I'm a long time Firefox user, but some things are getting really irritating: - The default toolbar layout looks really dumb with those spacers, especially when you enable the search bar - Wizards in the first visible tab when you install the browser, or even a specific new browser version. - Mozilla the organization in general
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Yizahi 4y ago
What a surprise, when you consciously evolve FF into a Chrome, but never catching it completely, let alone overtaking, then users will probably switch to a better Chrome. Constantly disabling small features definitely can cause pro users to change one basic browser to another. I will use FF till it's dead, but recent actions and attitude of FF team over past years are definitely not a positive factor keeping me using FF.
leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
Maybe they shouldn't have tossed Brendan Eich out
pwpw 4y ago
I really like Firefox. I’ve been using it for years as I find its workflow meshes better with mine than Chrome. However, it’s been a huge pain on Linux for me on my desktop with an NVIDIA graphics card. It was locking up my CPU and causing total system crashes periodically while I was listening to YouTube videos in the background. I finally narrowed the problem down to having hardware acceleration enabled, but it was a frustrating period when those crashes were happening. I’m sure running Firefox on Linux with an NVIDIA graphics card and hardware acceleration enabled is a niche, but it really felt like that shouldn’t ever be happening. Fortunately it just works on my laptop running Fedora. The only thing that kept me on Firefox during that period was that Chrome was blurry out of the box, and I needed to focus on development rather than tinkering. Addressing the loss of users, I’ve never met anyone in the real world that uses Firefox in my circles. It’s entirely Chrome and Safari on iPhones / iPads. I’m curious who besides myself actually uses Firefox. I have recommended it to others, but they always revert back to Chrome. The most I’ve seen with someone who was privacy concerned was switching to Brave. I hope Firefox is able to continue its development long into the future because it’s good to have diversity from Google’s control of the internet in my opinion. It’s unfortunate that Mozilla has to rely on Google’s money to fuel that development however.
KingOfCoders 4y ago
"Q: Why bother? You can’t make a new browser engine without billions of dollars and hundreds of staff. Sure you can. Don’t listen to armchair defeatists who never worked on a browser." -Ladybird FAQ
dzonga 4y ago
firefox is the reason why I use android. I have the benefit of using proper adblock. on desktop i.e linux - firefox keeps leaking memory on many tabs / sites. whereas chromium browsers do it at a slower pace. which means on desktop linux - I have fewer tabs open on firefox than I would with a chromium based browser. my other biggest complaint - firefox forcing me to update itself on desktop by refusing to open a new tab. I still use firefox though but not gonna deny the pain
- beej71 4y ago
  I haven't had problems with FF being leaky on Linux desktop. Some sites were... Years ago Gmail on FF used to leak tons whereas Chrome didn't. Unclear where the fault lay, but I'm sure Google wasn't losing sleep over it. But I don't use Gmail anymore and happily run FF everywhere.
thecleaner 4y ago
Why isn't firefox with uBlock the defacto standard on Android ? I can't use YT / Google without this combination. Although extensions are not supported on iPhone so this could be why it's not more generally used.
lordfrito 4y ago
You know I loved Firefox back in the day. But reading the comments here it just sounds like a lot of you are stuck in a relationship with an abusive partner. Keep making excuses why you're staying, etc. I feel for ya... I hated jumping ship at the time, but honestly looking back all I miss is the dream of what it was supposed to be, not what it actually became.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hilbert42 4y ago
  "it just sounds like a lot of you are stuck in a relationship" As I said in several recent posts about the horrible performance of Mozilla Thunderbird, there has to be a Trojan horse in the Mozilla organization. Why else would such an organization keep constantly shooting itself in the foot? Why else would it seemingly go out of its way to avoid giving its users what they want?
  - lordfrito 4y ago
    It's clearly a leadership problem, gut says it's a problem with the board. I don't know much about the people on their board but something something... follow the money?
    - hilbert42 4y ago
      "follow the money?" Yeah. Money from Google has to be the Trojan. It ought to put a new perspective on how we view antitrust law.
      - lordfrito 4y ago
        Well I mean a rich guy can come in and buy a company and shut it down. Or kill its product line or whatever the heck they want it's their company now Nothing stopping someone else from starting a new company and picking up from where Mozilla left off Yeah it sucks that Mozilla got bought out and now is beholden to Google. I just don't see how it's illegal
tmaly 4y ago
I love using Firefox Focus app. It is nice to have something a bit more privacy focused on mobile.

74 points by freediver 4y ago

I don't know the cause, but I wonder if this could be the result of more people sticking with microsoft's default browser after improvements in edge

KingOfCoders 4y ago

As a (Mosaic/Netscape/)FF user I'm no longer concerned as Ladybird is on the horizon with a clear focus on creating a browser instead of activism on the internet (which is fine of course, it's their money, but not in my interest).

neximo64 4y ago

Would put it down to a non product ceo

radiojasper 4y ago

I hope they never give up, as it's been my favourite browser since its inception. Sure they messed stuff up along the way and not every update has been equally great, but I love using Firefox over any Chromium based browser and been doing so for almost 20 years now.

dmos62 4y ago
Same. And I love Android Firefox. Would be horrible not to have Firefox extensions on my phone (or the syncing).
- stereoradonc 4y ago
  Kiwi Browser on Android supports extensions. Have a look at it.
  - Nandesuka 4y ago
    True. But the browser doesn't receive regular updates.
- m4rtink 4y ago
  After the Android Firefox rewrite in ~2020 you don't have 99% of Firefox extensions available on Android - only a short list of selected mainstream ones, like Ublock Origin. If you want to install any other not in the blessed list you need to jump through a horrendous sequence of hoops every time: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    Killing off extensions has been a pastime of Mozilla programers from the outset decades ago. It's by far the most annoying aspect of Mozilla yet the organization has never taken steps to prevent the practice. Mozilla programmers are a law unto themselves—users bedamned.
- 344556 4y ago
  Firefox's extensions on Android are why I still use my smartphone to go on Internet.

hdhrufjdi 4y ago

The only mobile browser with proper ad blocking

haunter 4y ago
There is proper adblocking on iOS too with AdGuard. I'm literally using the same filters and rules with it as with uBlock Origin on desktop and works flawlessly.
- fsflover 4y ago
  Except you need an iPhone for that.
  - haunter 4y ago
    OP was already talking about mobile. I just pointed out FF is not the “only” option
- Avamander 4y ago
  AdGuard is quite limited.
- arepublicadoceu 4y ago
  Using the same filters =/= having the same capabilities. For instance, AdGuard on iOS doesn’t protect me from “popunders”. Also, no filters protect me from reddit nudges for using their app. Whereas when I had an android(firefox+ublock) I never saw a popunder or reddit nags.

testemailfordg2 4y ago

It gained one today, I installed it after facing same issue with chrome on multiple sites.

u801e 4y ago

I'm curious as to why people just stop using a browser? I currently use Firefox on both my laptop and my android device and unless a website just doesn't work on Firefox, I still use it. Given this, what would cause someone to just stop using it and switch to Chrome?

uniqueuid 4y ago
- Aggressive marketing of platform defaults, such as Edge on Windows - Aggressive misuse of incompatibilities, such as video calling for Chrome and Edge (e.g. Teams) - Loss of websites optimizing for standards and instead optimizing for the monopolist (Chrome). Same as with IE.
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  you gotta admit the ads are catchy... "there's no place like Chrome"
  - smcl 4y ago
    I haven't seen this (though I'm not in an anglophone country) - it's def catchy, where have you seen/heard it?
    - calvinmorrison 4y ago
      on the side of a bus stop of all places in Philadelphia.
      - smcl 4y ago
        Ah cool thanks, you also read my mind and answered the question I meant to ask - whether it was a physical ad or just a digital one :D That's mad, you'd think Chrome is so ubiquitous, and Google ads themselves so popular, that they wouldn't need to shell out money on this kind of IRL ads.
- Someone 4y ago

zachlatta 4y ago

I love Firefox, but the default experience is covered with ads. I wouldn't be surprised if that's a major contributor. It feels like the budget browser compared to Chrome.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

vasco 4y ago

Meanwhile Mozilla's CEO salary went from $2.9m to $5.6m from 2020 to 2021.

touwer 4y ago
outrageaus
- christkv 4y ago
  Mansions don’t pay for themselves
  - TomK32 4y ago
    Just inherit them, nothing could go wrong.
    - Grazester 4y ago
      I know. Buying a mansion is so nouveau riche.
    - christkv 4y ago
      Still got to pay that property tax
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - coldtea 4y ago
        Not if you have the money for a mansion (or 10). Then you have the money for lawyers and schemes to legally avoid paying it.
lbriner 4y ago
Same with Wikimedia. The association seems to become some kind of cult where it is seen as OK to spend enormous amounts of money on overheads and salaries without really making anything better because "big salaries = good performance", I wish we had put that fallacy to rest already.

james_pm 4y ago

I'm one of them. I switched to Brave first, and have settled on Vivaldi going forward. Why? Because Firefox was increasingly problematic to use. Things like background blur on Google Meet didn't work. Yes, I realize it was probably Google doing Google things to hurt Firefox, but day-to-day, I need a browser that works. So switching to a Chromium-based browser that had things like ad-block and other features I consider important was the best solution.

floitsch 4y ago
I have worked at Google (although in a different department). From what I could see there was never intentional hurting of other browsers. However, given a list of (always too long) TODOs, improving a non-critical feature for 10% of users often just doesn't make it to the top. And yes, Google is a huge company with a ton of developers, but teams are not. In my experience, these kind of fixes are sometimes even done by individuals in their "spare" time, to contribute a bit back (even if it's for a competing browser).

nyx_land 4y ago

Seems that their plan to do everything possible to sabotage their browser and waste resources on stupid bullshit that doesn't improve Firefox is working.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
What improvement should they add to Firefox that would pay the bills?
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
I dunno. I wonder how much of this can be explained by people using desktops and laptops less and cell phones more.
- KingOfCoders 4y ago
  I use FF on my phone, always have.
  - sph 4y ago
    Me too, because of "send tab to device" which no one else seems able to implement cross platform. It's bloody rocket science, according to Brave and Microsoft. That said, Firefox iOS is still mediocre. Tab management is still bad compared to Safari. But at least we got Colorways (and every time it updates it I get the Colorways popup screen)
    - aendruk 4y ago
      Is that what that is? My perception has been that approximately monthly Firefox decides to interrupt me with a full screen “welcome to the internet!” popup. I’ve been using Firefox since it was Phoenix and in 2022 it decides to start doing this. Baffling.
  - ashwagary 4y ago
    One thing that made Firefox mobile stand apart from other browsers was full desktop extension support. Too bad they scrapped it a few years ago.

VWWHFSfQ 4y ago

I'll use Firefox on mobile for no other reason than ad blocking extensions.

petodo 4y ago
You can have extensions in Kiwi Browser, actually more of them than bunch of approved by Firefox. It has also pull down to refresh Firefox users begged devs for for the last 10 years.

rvz 4y ago

I guess the Firefox ship is sinking and Chrome's (and the derivatives) dominance is rising. The EU Digital Markets Act will just further increase its dominance and Firefox will be on course to irrelevancy since Mozilla is still unable to make money without Google keeping them on life support. At this point Google should just spin out the Chromium engine as a separate non-profit organization and allowing others to freely make their own browsers based on a standard browser engine like Brave, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi etc to use it but done freely without Google's complete control. Exactly just like what the Linux Kernel has done with 'distros' with the kernel as the central standard for anyone to freely make their own Linux distro, the same can be done for browser engines.

danuker 4y ago
> to use it but done freely without Google's complete control. This will never happen. In fact, Google's intention is to sabotage every other browser, and shove ads everywhere. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nerdponx 4y ago
What effect will the EU Digital Markets Act have?

philliphaydon 4y ago

I don’t know why people use chrome over Firefox. Chrome still uses a crazy amount of ram for me compared to Firefox And I just discovered this week that zooming in chrome affects ALL tabs not just the one you’re on. And they marked the bug as won’t fix so you need a bloody plugin to zoom a single tab.

epolanski 4y ago
> And I just discovered this week that zooming in chrome affects ALL tabs not just the one you’re on. I don't have this issue in ALL tabs, but only the tabs sharing the same origin which makes sense if you ask me, doesn't seem a bug.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Hmmm I’ll retest on Monday. I have an external monitor to my laptop and needed to zoom 1 tab on 1 screen to write a doc on the second screen and when I zoomed the laptop screen cos it was too small I zoomed the external screen. So annoying. Even if is only same origin, the fact they lock the setting for individual tab zooming so it can only be changed by a browser extension is so stupid.
lbriner 4y ago
I moved from Firefox to Chrome after using FF for a long time because of the opposite. FF randomnly locked up and used tonnes of RAM, not consistently but occasionally. As someone who uses the browser a lot for work, I cannot have randomn lock ups happening for seconds at a time and not have this treated as a priority 1 bugfix by mozilla.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  I get lock ups in Chrome but not Firefox… i always need to close tabs on my work laptop cos chrome gets laggy. (Other apps are fine when chrome is laggy)
- timbit42 4y ago
  I think this depends on which OS you are using. Firefox is stable on some and not others, while Chrome uses less RAM on some and more on others.

samwestdev 4y ago

I still use it daily both on my PC and my phone.

zabzonk 4y ago

i really like it, but my worthless bank (lloyds) doesn't work with it anymore, so for their banking web site i have to use chrome. grrr. i still use firefox for everything else.

freeCandy 4y ago
You could report this at https://webcompat.com https://webcompat.com

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

snapcaster 4y ago

This sucks, maybe it couldn't have turned out any other way

potamic 4y ago

How do they account for people who have disabled telemetry? I presume as privacy awareness widens, we will see more and more people disabling telemetry.

j-bos 4y ago
This is my question too. I'd guess the Venn between privacy conscious and ff user is closer to a circle than an oval.
fbn79 4y ago
Good question. I checked [about:telemetry] and I have telemetry disabled. I suppose many people are doing the same.
PurpleRamen 4y ago
Even with disabled telemetry, there should be ways to get some data. Update-calls for the browser and add-ons should give some valid hints.
tinus_hn 4y ago
They can count the number of downloads and the number of requests to the update servers. Or they can just not count the people that disable telemetry.
the_third_wave 4y ago
Even when you have telemetry disabled the browser still regularly checks for updates - unless you have that disabled as well like I do as I prefer my executables to be read-only - so they can still get a good idea of the number of users out there.

josefresco 4y ago

Alternate headline: Firefox added ~1 million users since July 2022.

pixxel 4y ago
Or: Firefox has lost ~60 million users since January 2019.

anenefan 4y ago

How many people who used firefox have been migrated to Win 11? From what I hear, (this could be wrong because I don't really care about win 11 and my eyes are usually glazing over when yet another person is complaining what a dog it it,) it could be getting harder for the average user to set firefox as the default browser.

deliriumchn 4y ago
I use FF with W11 without any problems
- anenefan 4y ago
  Functioning as it should is good. The thing to consider here is, do you consider yourself an average user? Most of us here would not care if they didn't have firefox or chrome as their default browser, to myself it's practically meaningless apart from win98 days setting some near useless lump as the default to catch auto activating BS, but to ordinary folk they can get weird ideas they have to use it ... IIRC M$ went to a little bit of trouble to stop people easily making firefox the default browser, and some internal links are edge only without a really good work around. I don't see them going to all that trouble unless there's a slight benefit.
  - deliriumchn 4y ago
    Well, internal documentation (moments when you missclick on ? icon and open it lol) was always IE and then edge as long as I remember, as well as lockscreen image when you click on it. Other than that, windows is respecting my default browser. They do go over-invasive when you try to download another browser while using edge tho, which is shady of course, but once I changed the default browser, I never had any issues

_odey 4y ago

Yes, obviously they did! they keep denying the importance of implementing things like this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1542189 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1542189 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/shortcut-for-different-profiles/idi-p/707 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/shortcut-for-different-... Even if it's a highly requested feature, minimal effort, high impact, and something users expect to Just Work™, just like it does in Chrome; it's still getting ignored. And all they have to do is copy what Chrome does 100% exactly the same, no effort to design something new. They have all the functionality already in place, under about:profiles, it just needs a nice UI on top, and to open new links in the "last active profile". When a user sees this does not work like it does in Chrome, and they have to struggle to achieve the same functionality with a worse workflow and a hideous UI, they will simply claim the functionality does not exist and carry on with their life using Chrome. They will not bother to search and install the extension that does this for them, that's simply not a realistic expectation to have. I can work around this because I appreciate the other things Firefox has more than the effort I put into profile management. But I'm tech, and highly tolerant of things like this. Normal users aren't, the simplest inconvenience will throw them off for good. If something Just Work™ in Chrome then it has to Just Work™ in Firefox as well. This was just one example, probably the most obvious example of them all.

danuker 4y ago
This is where the corruption coming from Google money shows through. I'd add that to store the Firefox search engines, they developed a custom file format. This is to make it more difficult to configure search engines (and make you more likely to keep the default ones). https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/searchjson.html https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/searchjson.html
- KingOfCoders 4y ago
  " This is where the corruption coming from Google money shows through." Never thought of that, perhaps showering Mozilla with money had two goals, getting search users and corrupting Firefox for Chrome to take over.

morog 4y ago

Until chrome like browsers have multi account containers I'm a FF user for life

freeCandy 4y ago
The best Firefox feature to come out in the last few years. It's so integrated into my workflow that It's now hard for me to imagine browsing the web without it.

icare_1er 4y ago

Bad, we need to avoid monopoly at all costs on the Internet...

javchz 4y ago

I'm kinda scared by this tendency, as most dev already see front end development as just supporting chrome and safari, instead of a standard. The fact me that most other browsers like edge or brave are WebKit or chromium reskins doesn't help this.

danuker 4y ago

I bet people will crawl back to Firefox when all Chromium based browsers will have much worse ad blockers due to Manifest V3. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338

haunter 4y ago
Well that might be me but until then I'm pretty happy with ungoogled-chromium, best browser by far I've used. If adblocking changes dramatically I'll look for alternatives. Honestly if FF wants to win this battle (?) then adblocking is a worthy crusade. Brave is already there, curious what they will do with Manifest v3
bondant 4y ago
Isn't firefox also going to move to Manifest v3?
- danuker 4y ago
  Oh. You are right. Looks like I was not informed. Well, shucks. "We believed then, as we do now, that users would be best served by having useful extensions available for as many browsers as possible." https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-firefox-recap-next-steps/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-fi...
PurpleRamen 4y ago
This will worsen chrome, not all other chromium-browsers. Most non-google-vendors made it already clear they will not follow this specific change. Even Google moved back for the moment because of the reactions. We have to still see whether they really will go through with this.

petodo 4y ago

Look on the bright side there is still 193M to go, so by this pace they still have about 10 years.

postalrat 4y ago

I hope if I ever do switch of Firefox there is a chromium browser made by a trusted group with all telemetry turned off and focused on ad blocking and privacy.

freediver 4y ago

12 years ago Firefox had 30% browser market share. Today, at this rate, they have about 12 years left to 0 users. Still plenty of time to fix things. Few suggestions to friends at Mozilla: - Make a product person in charge - Drop everything else that isn't Firefox from portfolio; introduce it later when trend reversed - Listen to users, not telemetry - Plan to switch business model to freemium; introduce Firefox Pro

r9295 4y ago
I disagree with the second point. Their email relay service and VPN is excellent.
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  Might be because it's not theirs. They are just resellers with a bit branding and some integration, at the moment.
huhtenberg 4y ago
It will take far less. Once its share sufficiently drops, Google will pull out of their aggreement and Mozilla will collapse on itself. Unless Google is keeping them around for anti-monopoly purposes, in which case Firefox will just continue deteriorating in a zombie-like state.
bioemerl 4y ago
> introduce Firefox Pro If people aren't using the full feature browser today, why would they use it when it's not free?
- freediver 4y ago
  Supposedely proposed changes would make it better and worth paying for.
- m4rtink 4y ago
  Maybe user/developer support or some services ?

samwillis 4y ago

Talking of open source browsers, I'm super excited by the Ladybird Browser [0] from the SerenityOS [1] project. They have made such incredible progress in such a short time. For those that don't know its a completely new browser + renderer + js engine, everything from scratch. Andreas has hinted that he is considering pushing the browser project to be a bigger thing, and positioning it as a legitimate and viable alternative to browsers with a corporate influence (which Firefox unfortunately is): > Hypothetically, would you consider sponsoring a completely new web browser (no big tech companies involved) that refuses to take money from the advertising industry? https://twitter.com/awesomekling/status/1612856174965129216 https://twitter.com/awesomekling/status/1612856174965129216 This could only be a good thing, and I for one would happily sponsor a browser (and rendering engine) that is independent and only serving users needs. All other open source browsers and engines are backed by corporations with their own agenda. 0: https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform-browser-project/ https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform... 1: https://serenityos.org https://serenityos.org

freediver 4y ago
Looks interesting. Is there a macOS ready build avaialble somewhere?
- samwillis 4y ago
  Not yet, so far they have approached it the same at the rest of the Serenity project - compile it yourself. Which for the motivations of Serenity as a hobbyist OS make sense, but if Ladybird "graduates" from a hobby project I'm sure they will make builds available.

oslac 4y ago

I don't like the Chrome browser for Android. Can't quite tell why. I really like Firefox for Android.

petodo 4y ago
Use Kiwi Browser, full extensions support, pull down to refresh, faster than Firefox and more customization.

m4rtink 4y ago

Maybe all the features still missing in the Android Firefox played some role ? Stuff like no print support, no keyboard shortcuts or no tab-bar on tablets ? Not to mention general extensions support being a shit show as well, with basically just a very small curated list of extensions (mainly add blockers) being supported out of the box. All of these features were supported by Firefox on Android until ~2 years ago, when they did a rewrite and then ignored requests to bring this functionality back ever since. A couple links to the Android Firefox open issues: keyboard shortcuts - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3729 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3729 print support - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10217 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10217 tab bar in tablet mode - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2344 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2344 tablet UX improvements - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/4498 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/4498

dmos62 4y ago
> no print support Um, somewhat tangential, but I built a statically generated CV in html, presuming that I could effortlessly print that to a PDF using a browser. Not so. Web page printing is extremely broken in every browser, and I tried them all. And, every browser had different defects. Chromium seemed to have the least horrible print functionality, but it was still really really broken. It's probably ok if you want to have a copy of some article content where presentation doesn't matter, but if it's something that you want to have a specific layout or design, tough luck.
- tehbeard 4y ago
  Silly question, but did you just use the same CSS as for the screen, or also make use of the various `@media print {...}` related CSS properties (for things like page breaks, switching to more traditional print units instead of px and rem etc)
  - dmos62 4y ago
    I didn't switch distance units, but I did try out more or less everything else. Print-specific css properties weren't well supported or well implemented. Dealing with page breaks was particularly annoying.

Sytten 4y ago

Mostly stopped using it when the last few updates started to make my mac CPU crazy everytime I use it. It always been not great on macos but now it is just unusable. Still using it on android but it takes ages to load the first page when the app just started. It really is bad. I stopped donating to firefox too considering the hypocrisy of the for profit business parent business that fired a ton of good engineers to pay its CEO more.

hyperluz 4y ago

During the last two/three COVID years, Firefox did a poor job supporting correctly and reliably WRTC and other features related with in-webbrowser videoconferencing (jitsi, Google Meet, etc). Now, I think, maybe things are fixed and working correctly, but the damage is done. Any, way, I alternate between Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, Brave, etc, acording on the task I need to get done. Web browsers usage scope is huge and beyond reading liquid and/or formated text. And Firefox was behind in some relevant areas.

bdhcuidbebe 4y ago
> During the last two/three COVID years, Firefox did a poor job supporting correctly and reliably WRTC and other features related with in-webbrowser videoconferencing (jitsi, Google Meet, etc). I think this is the most probable cause of all the stuff mentioned in this thread.
Avamander 4y ago
Similar problems have appeared for me far before COVID. The supposedly freedom-focused option was often significantly slower on Linux than on Windows thanks to lack of hardware acceleration for me. So I was basically forced to switch and now there are other things that I can't stand in FF, like the extra clicks in developer tools or annoying "security" prompts in console and so on.

PurpleRamen 4y ago

More interessting is the lose of ~60M users in the last 4 years. Peak in the data was at ~254M at beginning of 2019. Now it's at ~194M. The Hard lose continues. Another notable point is that roughly 10% of the users have an adblocker, but 35%+ of users are using addons. What is the rest using? It would be interessing to have older data for this, to see how the different stages of the XUL-addon-drama impacted those numbers.

jeltz 4y ago
A big part of the loss of users was when they lost the German market due to bad press after the Cliqz scandal in late 2017. They lost a lot of trust in Germany from that and Germany was one of Mozilla's most important markets due to how many privacy focused people there are in Germany
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  Not sure how something from 2017 impacts the numbers from 2019? And it seems that scandal was some months before the big switch to quantum, which should had significant more impact on the user numbers.

petodo 4y ago

What happened with Latest version chart in bottom of the page?

epolanski 4y ago

My wild guess is that good part of this derives from many developers not needeing Linux desktop anymore and living happy on their company Windows machine + WSL 2.

JakaJancar 4y ago

I don't use Firefox because instead of a simple OSS software, it seems like something that wants to suck me into their ecosystem. Nearly every tab of Firefox settings has some "cloudy"/cross marketing stuff: - General: Recommend extensions as you browse - Home: Pocket, Sponsored {shortcuts,stories}, Tips and news from Mozilla - Search: nothing - Privacy & Security: Suggestions from Sponsors, Firefox data collection, Dangerous site blocking - Sync: (by it's nature) - More from Mozilla: (by it's nature) - Extensions & Themes: (by it's nature) - Firefox Support: (by it's nature) Meanwhile you check Safari: - General: Nothing - Tabs: Nothing - Autofill: Nothing - Passwords: Nothing - Search: Nothing - Security: Fraudulent site warnings - Privacy: Apple Pay and Apple Card - Websites: Nothing - Extensions: (by it's nature) - advanced: Nothing Maybe it doesn't feel sleazy compared to Chrome, but it does compared to Safari.

28304283409234 4y ago
Safari, that only works in a full and absolute walled garden? The kind you did not want to get sucked into?
crtasm 4y ago
Well the OS pushes iCloud, Safari doesn't need to do so itself.

ohCh6zos 4y ago

Mabye it's the expirements that changed my settings until I found the about:config way to opt out, or the whitespace heavy and unclear UI changes.

lawgimenez 4y ago

Using FF for both iOS and macOS and the features are different. For example there is turn on dark mode on the iOS app but not in their mac app. Their iOS app needs some bug fixes and UI polish, But for me Chrome turns on my laptop fans more compared to FF.

shantnutiwari 4y ago

I use Firefox as my primary browser, but find many sites still stumble with it. And not just some obscure ones written 10 years ago. On a backup laptop with Linux and Firefox, BBC iplayer and CBBC games(which my son loves) doesnt work at at all. Even on my Linux/Mac machines, I see weird behaviour sometimes. So sad, but you do need another Chromium based browser. On Windows, I find Edge pretty good. On my Mac and Linux, I use Vivaldi. As other people in the thread have complained: Firefox dont help by pushing their other products and changing the UI

beej71 4y ago
I see stumbles, too, but don't forget to reload with ad blocking off. That fixes it for me half the time.

KevinGlass 4y ago

I've been Firefox user for about 10 years. The UI update from last year almost pushed me to another browser, maybe Brave or just giving up and embracing Edge. BUT this UI fix exists [1] and is wonderful. You just paste it into your User profile folder and the custom CSS and user.js fixes the ugly UI. 1. https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

cwizou 4y ago
Thanks for the link, just installed and it brings back "tabs" that are connected to the content instead of the disconnected buttons. I do find the contrast slightly low between active and inactive tabs on macOS in dark mode, using the "original" profile, but I'm sure this is easy to tweak. For all its faults, Safari in compact mode/dark mode does get the active/inactive tabs contrast right, although it's obviously fairly subjective.

timw4mail 4y ago

I'm a long time Firefox user, but some things are getting really irritating: - The default toolbar layout looks really dumb with those spacers, especially when you enable the search bar - Wizards in the first visible tab when you install the browser, or even a specific new browser version. - Mozilla the organization in general

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Yizahi 4y ago

What a surprise, when you consciously evolve FF into a Chrome, but never catching it completely, let alone overtaking, then users will probably switch to a better Chrome. Constantly disabling small features definitely can cause pro users to change one basic browser to another. I will use FF till it's dead, but recent actions and attitude of FF team over past years are definitely not a positive factor keeping me using FF.

leeroyjenkins11 4y ago

Maybe they shouldn't have tossed Brendan Eich out

pwpw 4y ago

I really like Firefox. I’ve been using it for years as I find its workflow meshes better with mine than Chrome. However, it’s been a huge pain on Linux for me on my desktop with an NVIDIA graphics card. It was locking up my CPU and causing total system crashes periodically while I was listening to YouTube videos in the background. I finally narrowed the problem down to having hardware acceleration enabled, but it was a frustrating period when those crashes were happening. I’m sure running Firefox on Linux with an NVIDIA graphics card and hardware acceleration enabled is a niche, but it really felt like that shouldn’t ever be happening. Fortunately it just works on my laptop running Fedora. The only thing that kept me on Firefox during that period was that Chrome was blurry out of the box, and I needed to focus on development rather than tinkering. Addressing the loss of users, I’ve never met anyone in the real world that uses Firefox in my circles. It’s entirely Chrome and Safari on iPhones / iPads. I’m curious who besides myself actually uses Firefox. I have recommended it to others, but they always revert back to Chrome. The most I’ve seen with someone who was privacy concerned was switching to Brave. I hope Firefox is able to continue its development long into the future because it’s good to have diversity from Google’s control of the internet in my opinion. It’s unfortunate that Mozilla has to rely on Google’s money to fuel that development however.

KingOfCoders 4y ago

"Q: Why bother? You can’t make a new browser engine without billions of dollars and hundreds of staff. Sure you can. Don’t listen to armchair defeatists who never worked on a browser." -Ladybird FAQ

dzonga 4y ago

firefox is the reason why I use android. I have the benefit of using proper adblock. on desktop i.e linux - firefox keeps leaking memory on many tabs / sites. whereas chromium browsers do it at a slower pace. which means on desktop linux - I have fewer tabs open on firefox than I would with a chromium based browser. my other biggest complaint - firefox forcing me to update itself on desktop by refusing to open a new tab. I still use firefox though but not gonna deny the pain

beej71 4y ago
I haven't had problems with FF being leaky on Linux desktop. Some sites were... Years ago Gmail on FF used to leak tons whereas Chrome didn't. Unclear where the fault lay, but I'm sure Google wasn't losing sleep over it. But I don't use Gmail anymore and happily run FF everywhere.

thecleaner 4y ago

Why isn't firefox with uBlock the defacto standard on Android ? I can't use YT / Google without this combination. Although extensions are not supported on iPhone so this could be why it's not more generally used.

lordfrito 4y ago

You know I loved Firefox back in the day. But reading the comments here it just sounds like a lot of you are stuck in a relationship with an abusive partner. Keep making excuses why you're staying, etc. I feel for ya... I hated jumping ship at the time, but honestly looking back all I miss is the dream of what it was supposed to be, not what it actually became.

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hilbert42 4y ago
"it just sounds like a lot of you are stuck in a relationship" As I said in several recent posts about the horrible performance of Mozilla Thunderbird, there has to be a Trojan horse in the Mozilla organization. Why else would such an organization keep constantly shooting itself in the foot? Why else would it seemingly go out of its way to avoid giving its users what they want?
- lordfrito 4y ago
  It's clearly a leadership problem, gut says it's a problem with the board. I don't know much about the people on their board but something something... follow the money?
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    "follow the money?" Yeah. Money from Google has to be the Trojan. It ought to put a new perspective on how we view antitrust law.
    - lordfrito 4y ago
      Well I mean a rich guy can come in and buy a company and shut it down. Or kill its product line or whatever the heck they want it's their company now Nothing stopping someone else from starting a new company and picking up from where Mozilla left off Yeah it sucks that Mozilla got bought out and now is beholden to Google. I just don't see how it's illegal

tmaly 4y ago

I love using Firefox Focus app. It is nice to have something a bit more privacy focused on mobile.