7 ms·

The death of Firefox

60 points by AdamFernandez 15y ago

disgruntledphd2 15y ago
I think the author undervalues the power of Google in advertising. Seriously, every time I see the Google homepage, or a google property, there's an ad for Chrome. And, even better, the ad focuses on speed. That's what drove Chrome use up primarily (IMO, of course), though I can't doubt that word of mouth also had a large impact.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  For a while, Chrome was bundled with Adobe's Flash Player installer. Chrome bundled Flash and Flash bundled Chrome. People downloading the Flash installer for Windows would also get Chrome, if they didn't opt out: http://www.salsitasoft.com/blog/2011/09/23/wonder-how-chrome-is-growing-market-share-ask-adobe/ http://www.salsitasoft.com/blog/2011/09/23/wonder-how-chrome...
RandallBrown 15y ago
Now that Chrome seems to be getting a bit more bloated and Firefox seems to be tightening it's belt, things will probably begin to even out.
- wahnfrieden 15y ago
  Where is Chrome's bloat?
  - rpearl 15y ago
    Chrome's memory usage is[1] (and always has been[2]) very high and has been steadily getting worse where Firefox has been getting better and better thanks to the memshrink project[3] [1] https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/chrome/report-a-problem-and-get-troubleshooting-help/ekoYAU_h32I https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!... [2] http://techpp.com/2011/09/28/chrome-14-vs-firefox-7-memory-footprint-comparison/ http://techpp.com/2011/09/28/chrome-14-vs-firefox-7-memory-f... [3] https://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/ https://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/ talks about it frequently
    - sek 15y ago
      I don't care about memory, i have 8GB and i am not somebody who has 500 tabs open. What i care about is independent processes. When a site freezes the rest is unaffected. The same with Icognito Mode, this is a total joke on Firefox. What counts in the end is speed, security and api's.
      - redthrowaway 15y ago
        >When a site freezes the rest is unaffected. Interestingly, however, when Flash crashes on one tab it crashes on all of them.
        epochwolf 15y ago
        That's because flash is a single process in all tabs. It's more of a problem with the way flash is designed.
        cpeterso 15y ago
        Chrome has just one plugin process. All tab processes share the same plugin process, so if one Flash crash will take all Flash.
- tristanperry 15y ago
  I use Chrome as my main browser. I see no bloat at all? In my experience, IE is losing bloat, Chrome started with a bit of bloat but quickly lost it, whilst Firefox has had bloat for a while.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  I don't think Chrome is getting bloated -- I don't care how much space it takes up, it still feels snappy.
- Splines 15y ago
  Anecdotal evidence, but over the last month I've seen Chrome not work on a few websites (broken js) and have seen the crashes due to flash a few times too. Recent changes have not been for the better. I've recently switched back to FF and found that it worked in the places that Chrome didn't.
kzrdude 15y ago
Stay with Firefox everyone. We need an independent, community-governed browser.
- shantanubala 15y ago
  Between Google, Microsoft, Apple, Opera, and Mozilla, I definitely do trust Mozilla the most. They seem to value my privacy and freedom more than their competition. And it helps that Firefox has been a consistently good browser for a very long time (much longer project history than Chrome, and a much higher quality than IE). Mozilla has a track record that demonstrates their intentions of making a more open web. We are still guessing about the future of Google, Microsoft, etc.
  - hackoder 15y ago
    Absolutely. Time and time again they've shown that they'll do the right thing. Like with firefox sync, where data is encrypted on the client. And its not like they're lacking in features or speed. Firefox for Android (while buggy) could view the same bookmarks/history/open tabs as my desktop browser and this is a great feature which only recently came to chrome.
- bergie 15y ago
  Fully agreed. And if Firefox goes, we'll only have WebKit browsers. And so you can forget about web standards and we'll be back at the best viewed with Internet Explorer era. Competing implementations are a good thing for standards, and standards are good for all of us.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    Do we need web standards if everyone is using webkit? At least webkit is open source, unlike IE6
    - bergie 15y ago
      Do we need standards if eveybody is using Microsof Office? ;-) Indeed, open source helps a lot. It is amazing how far KHTML has gotten. But still, no standards would mean no Opera, no Mozilla, no any other entrants to the game. Anyway, this article prompted me to switch from Chrome to Aurora on my Android tablet. Feels good so far...
mrchess 15y ago
Stop versioning Firefox so rapidly and people will come back. Firefox 5 - Firefox 11 in 1 year. Come on Mozilla... switch back to minor version numbers. I don't think they realize how this perception negatively effects the regular consumer.
- rpearl 15y ago
  I don't understand. Why do you care what the version number is?
  - amartya916 15y ago
    Also according to their release schedule, the updates are soon going to be background (silent) updates. So version numbers will matter less and less. Mozilla has upped it's game and I have started to see that memory usage is now quite competitive to Chrome.
    - bsphil 15y ago
      I never understood the memory usage argument. In my experience, Chrome was always more of a memory drain than Firefox.
- Pewpewarrows 15y ago
  Actually, the "regular consumer" has no idea that Firefox even had version numbers to begin with. Iterating quickly with nearly automatic updates was a huge step in the right direction.
  - manish_gill 15y ago
    I disagree. There are plenty of people who actually really pay attention to version numbers. Maybe they aren't in the majority, but I've encountered plenty of people who proudly tell me that they have 'the latest version x' before telling me off for sticking with the older version. I've stopped explaining the memory management and other issues to these kinds of people.
  - 15y ago
acuity12 15y ago
It still disgusts me that Internet Explorer has users at all. Even IE9 is still unbearably bad, especially from the web developer point of view. I wish the rest of the world would have realized this and ousted Microsoft from a business it has no place in.
- technojunkie 15y ago
  IE9 is light years ahead of anything else Microsoft has put out and IE10 will be amazing in comparison as well. That said, a large percentage of IE9 users are corporations which don't want to support non-Microsoft browsers, new end-users who don't have a clue about anything that's not Microsoft, and the millions of foreigners who just use what's provided. Supporting IE9 isn't that bad as it used to be to support older IE browsers.
  - mamp 15y ago
    I don't get IE9. It's not compatible with the legacy IE6 rubbish, and yet not conformant enough with HTML5 etc so it requires much extra work to support compared to FF, Chrome, Safari. Thank goodness for Chrome Frame.
    - Figs 15y ago
      HTML5 isn't a standard yet, so how can you be conformant?
      - acuity12 15y ago
        It's not a standard, but I can tell you that tech innovators do not stand around and wait for some committee to decide "Oh yea, uhh lets make HTML5 the standard now". No matter what the standards say, any respectable web browser should be making their best effort to "conform" to the latest technology.
        yuhong 15y ago
        Yea, the W3C requires two implementations for a standard to make it to Proposed Recommendation now.
csomar 15y ago
The problem with FireFox is that it wasn't fast enough to catch with the innovation in the browsers market. Google Chrome was getting fast and pretty good at rendering. Its minimalistic interface has also helped a lot. By the time FireFox figured that out, it was already a little late. But the problem is that they approached it the wrong way. Instead of focusing on what made Google Chrome successful (simple interface, auto-updates, speed...) they even made it worse (I still find the interface not easy and friendly as chrome, multiple confusing versions, and not that fast)
- pavanky 15y ago
  I just want to know what is so complicated / confusing about firefox. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6cqbdjZl7gM/T2eqjPeprhI/AAAAAAAAJiI/iWlQFXz8m9c/s1465/Screenshot+at+2012-03-19+17%3A51%3A55.png https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6cqbdjZl7gM/T2eqjPeprhI/A...
  - overcyn 15y ago
    its not that firefox is complicated (its much better than it used to be). its that its more complicated / confusing than chrome. http://imgur.com/a/w1Gtq http://imgur.com/a/w1Gtq
lloeki 15y ago
Seeing that Statcounter shot, I was taken aback at the graph, as I recently looked at some regional data myself: the picture in Europe is vastly different. See for yourself, e.g NA[0] vs EU[1] [0] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-na-monthly-201102-201202 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-na-monthly-201102-201202 [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-201102-201202 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-201102-201202
- dochtman 15y ago
  What I actually find interesting is that the Firefox trend already seems to be turning around again... Over the past few months, the decline has been slowed, and the latest data point has Firefox actually gaining share.
- Lazare 15y ago
  Wow, that's radically different. I didn't realize how much less dominant IE was in Europe - or how marginalized Opera was in the US.
jlft 15y ago
I've been using it since Firebird and tried to stick with for as long as I could on my Mac, but after trying Chrome recently, annoyed by performance issues (memory management, flash video, etc.) the difference was so big that it was impossible to justify to keep using FF. Been really happy with Chrome since. Incredibly fast browser in comparison.
acabal 15y ago
Firefox still has a great chance. They've sped up their dev cycle to try to keep pace with Chrome. As soon as they finally end the ridiculous memory usage problems that persist to this day and enable silent auto-updates (auto-updates are coming soon, I think), they'll be back in the game. I only recommend Chrome because it auto-updates. If one of my users starts using Chrome, I always know they'll have the latest and greatest. That's not yet the case with FF, but I'll recommend FF again as soon as the auto-updates land.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  I like firefox. I really do. I've donated to Mozilla, and wear my resulting FF t-shirt with pride. That said, it's not just auto-update that makes Chrome more attractive. The omnibox, polarizing though it may be, sets Chrome apart from every other browser as far as U[I|X] goes. Oddly enough, that one feature alone is enough to make it my default browser. Were FF as fast as Chrome, I'd still use the latter because I just like using it more. Chrome's sandboxing, V8, and other intelligent features are just icing on the cake. This, ultimately, confuses me more than anything about the other browser vendors' reaction to Chrome. They've copied or are copying just about everything about it: short release cycles, better JS engines, sandboxing... but not the one definitive UI feature that has made it so attractive to so many people. This surprises me. I would have though Apple, at least, with its commitment to minimalistic UIs, would have been quick to hop on that train, but no dice.
  - rue 15y ago
    I'm not entirely familiar with what omnibox does, but there're a few search bar addons, and quickly testing on 11, typing "whuh" in the navigation bar goes to a Google search too. Personally, I just use vimperator (the clones of which on Chrome are…abysmal?) so I can o[pen]/t[abopen] and then type a search term (w/ customizable engine) or a URL. … Memorywise, the recent FFs are much better. Usually problems are caused by extensions.
  - robtoo 15y ago
    I've had a look at Google's docs[1], and it's really not clear to me what Chrome's omnibox offers that Firefox's address bar (or whatever they call it) doesn't. http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95440 http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
shingen 15y ago
Google decided to kill Firefox. Not by lack of financial support, but by giving their own browser radically more financial support (the homepage marketing alone is worth an astronomical sum). There was never going to be enough room in the market for four or five major browsers, each with a lot of market share - markets consolidate naturally. Once Chrome gained traction, Firefox was destined to fall down to Opera's levels.
- kristopolous 15y ago
  It's been a bit harder to kill off NCSA Mosaic/MCOM/Netscape/Mozilla Foundation than people had imagined; and people have been imaging killing them off for 16 years or so. The likes of Clark, Andreesen & jwz built an idea in 1995 that will not die. it just wont. they can lose their nsf funding, aol can buy up the remains and then discard it; google can use it as advertising space and then go elsewhere, they can take 5 years between netscape 4.0 and mozilla 1.0, but they will not die.
mangoman 15y ago
Chrome really is orders of magnitude faster than FF. It starts up instantly compared to any other browser I've used (FF, IE, Opera) If FF had the speed of chrome, I'd consider switching back. I really want to try Pentadactyl for FF, but I can't stand how slow FF is sometimes.
- dochtman 15y ago
  How long ago did you last try it? The Mozilla team has been kicking some ass over the last few months.
  - pavanky 15y ago
    I completely agree. The biggest difference I have noticed, ironically, is while loading _google+_ (try it, firefox 10/11 is faster). The only reason I would use chrome over firefox is because of the incognito mode. I like randomly opening a page in incognito mode without losing my current session.
  - mangoman 15y ago
    I do use FF every once in a few days, I just find its start up time irritating (the difference is on the order of seconds). I will say that it definitely has improved though, and I do like the way FF manages tabs over Chrome, but Chrome just feels more pleasant to use
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- cpeterso 15y ago
  orders of magnitude, you say?
a3_nm 15y ago
The article seems to assume that a declining market share means that Firefox is going to "die" and that you should start switching. This might make sense for a company, but not that much for an open source project. Firefox could stay very healthy with a much lower market share as long as the right people are still using it (and developing it).
naner 15y ago
I still use FF for daily browsing. I have Chrome installed and use it for webdev but there are some annoyances (like adblock not working very well) which keep it from being my everyday browser. I anticipate problems in the future, however, when I won't have access to Flash unless I use Chrome (I'm on Linux).
nextparadigms 15y ago
I don't know what it is exactly they need to do, but strategically, Firefox needs to attract browser power-users once again. Firefox is losing because most of them have already switched to Chrome. And when that happens, it's only a matter of time before the mainstream does it, too, under their recommendation.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  What features does Firefox need to retain power users or even win back Chrome switchers? This is a tough problem. Google's money and manpower enabled Chrome to quickly reached feature parity with Firefox. Google undoubtedly spends more developing and advertising Chrome than they pay Mozilla. Short of some Google privacy scare, there may not be enough technical reasons for someone to switch back.
melling 15y ago
Chrome is less than 4 years old. The browser world can change fast. Grab the Firefox Nightly and help test. http://nightly.mozilla.org/ http://nightly.mozilla.org/ In my opinion, there's no reason why you can't run both Firefox and Chrome. They're both free and they're both great.
pasbesoin 15y ago
You can pry it from my cold, dead hands. I continue to insist on experiencing the web the way I want to. Firefox -- together with its extensions -- continues to do the best job of this. (Although I have not been pleased with its GUI "Chromification".)
Jach 15y ago
I use both. (Especially since Google started only allowing you to login to one gmail session at once, but I used both before that.) Currently there are about three things that keep me from using Chrome entirely, because I do think it's a better overall browser but not better for my particular use case. The first is lack of the Tree Style Tabs extension (in general lack of extensions was my biggest problem with Chrome until recently; now they have NoScript and AdBlock and ctrl+shift+j is about as good as FireBug which were the deal-breakers for me before), the second is not eating up huge amounts of memory if I have 593 tabs loaded into it (which is currently what I have on this Firefox), the third is I don't like their URL box. Firefox's AwesomeBar is almost perfect, I just wish it had better coverage of my history+favorites (I'm sure there's an about:config option somewhere that tunes it).
smhinsey 15y ago
I'm at the point where I keep both Chrome and FF open. Chrome for work and FF for browsing, where I find Treestyle Tabs too valuable to lose. I've pretty much given up on there being a true Chrome equivalent at this point, but I would probably switch if there was one.
voodoochilo 15y ago
i'm too paranoid for chrome. stay with da fox.
functionoid 15y ago
Those who are worried about the memory in FF, do you know there is an option that will not load the tabs until you click on it. I have around 700 tabs open but at a time only 10 or less are loaded. Tools/options/General "Don't load tabs until selected"
- talmand 15y ago
  That option seems to be for loading previous tabs on start up. I don't see it doing anything for normal tab use.
miles_matthias 15y ago
Chromium is open source, which Chrome is based on. I don't understand what everyone is complaining about. Chromium will always be around, so if you're paranoid about Google sneaking in some stuff into Chrome to steal your info, then use Chromium. I like Mozilla, but they haven't been able to keep up in my book.
dfc 15y ago
Things might be different but the last time I checked I could not find chrome addons that are equivalent to NoScript, RequestPolicy and AdBlock. These three addons are keeping me firmly in the firefox camp...
WiseWeasel 15y ago
Firefox forced me to learn how SVG works to do clipping and masking, which turned out to be pretty awesome, so I owe that to them. This article was completely without any substance beyond a graph of browser share stats. That's not necessarily evidence of Firefox "dying", rather than of the market simply expanding outside of its target demographic. In any case, as a web developer, Firefox will remain a critical browser to support for the foreseeable future, and as a user, I still haven't found a better overall option to use in Windows or Linux (I've stuck with Safari in OS X mainly due to the increased performance, stability and vastly superior font rendering).
sghill 15y ago
Just about every developer I know has Firefox on their machine, but that's just because our automated tests tend to be written for Firefox. Almost none of the teams I have been a part of use Firefox for development, and even fewer for personal browsing. Chrome's market share grab has been quite impressive. My most recent experience was with a client who was locked into IE for years, made the switch to Google Apps, and subsequently discovered the speed of Chrome. Phrased as "lots of our users skipped Firefox," it sounded like Firefox was in no-man's land.
- kls 15y ago
  I personally still use FF as my main development browser, it may be familiarity but I like the development tools in FF more than the ones offered in Chrome. Chrome may have the slight edge in features as far as development tools go, but I find that FF's tools have a better workflow. As well, the new 3D view of the DOM is in and of itself a big reason to use it as a development browser. As the DOM has become more complicated we have desperately needed such a tool to visualize the layering of elements on the page.
webwanderings 15y ago
I'd switch to Chrome because it is speedier, but Chrome doesn't provide me bookmarks tags for all of my local bookmarks. So Firefox is holding just because of that.

60 points by AdamFernandez 15y ago

I think the author undervalues the power of Google in advertising. Seriously, every time I see the Google homepage, or a google property, there's an ad for Chrome. And, even better, the ad focuses on speed. That's what drove Chrome use up primarily (IMO, of course), though I can't doubt that word of mouth also had a large impact.

cpeterso 15y ago
For a while, Chrome was bundled with Adobe's Flash Player installer. Chrome bundled Flash and Flash bundled Chrome. People downloading the Flash installer for Windows would also get Chrome, if they didn't opt out: http://www.salsitasoft.com/blog/2011/09/23/wonder-how-chrome-is-growing-market-share-ask-adobe/ http://www.salsitasoft.com/blog/2011/09/23/wonder-how-chrome...

RandallBrown 15y ago

Now that Chrome seems to be getting a bit more bloated and Firefox seems to be tightening it's belt, things will probably begin to even out.

wahnfrieden 15y ago
Where is Chrome's bloat?
- rpearl 15y ago
  Chrome's memory usage is[1] (and always has been[2]) very high and has been steadily getting worse where Firefox has been getting better and better thanks to the memshrink project[3] [1] https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/chrome/report-a-problem-and-get-troubleshooting-help/ekoYAU_h32I https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!... [2] http://techpp.com/2011/09/28/chrome-14-vs-firefox-7-memory-footprint-comparison/ http://techpp.com/2011/09/28/chrome-14-vs-firefox-7-memory-f... [3] https://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/ https://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/ talks about it frequently
  - sek 15y ago
    I don't care about memory, i have 8GB and i am not somebody who has 500 tabs open. What i care about is independent processes. When a site freezes the rest is unaffected. The same with Icognito Mode, this is a total joke on Firefox. What counts in the end is speed, security and api's.
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      >When a site freezes the rest is unaffected. Interestingly, however, when Flash crashes on one tab it crashes on all of them.
      - epochwolf 15y ago
        That's because flash is a single process in all tabs. It's more of a problem with the way flash is designed.
      - cpeterso 15y ago
        Chrome has just one plugin process. All tab processes share the same plugin process, so if one Flash crash will take all Flash.
tristanperry 15y ago
I use Chrome as my main browser. I see no bloat at all? In my experience, IE is losing bloat, Chrome started with a bit of bloat but quickly lost it, whilst Firefox has had bloat for a while.
tomjen3 15y ago
I don't think Chrome is getting bloated -- I don't care how much space it takes up, it still feels snappy.
Splines 15y ago
Anecdotal evidence, but over the last month I've seen Chrome not work on a few websites (broken js) and have seen the crashes due to flash a few times too. Recent changes have not been for the better. I've recently switched back to FF and found that it worked in the places that Chrome didn't.

kzrdude 15y ago

Stay with Firefox everyone. We need an independent, community-governed browser.

shantanubala 15y ago
Between Google, Microsoft, Apple, Opera, and Mozilla, I definitely do trust Mozilla the most. They seem to value my privacy and freedom more than their competition. And it helps that Firefox has been a consistently good browser for a very long time (much longer project history than Chrome, and a much higher quality than IE). Mozilla has a track record that demonstrates their intentions of making a more open web. We are still guessing about the future of Google, Microsoft, etc.
- hackoder 15y ago
  Absolutely. Time and time again they've shown that they'll do the right thing. Like with firefox sync, where data is encrypted on the client. And its not like they're lacking in features or speed. Firefox for Android (while buggy) could view the same bookmarks/history/open tabs as my desktop browser and this is a great feature which only recently came to chrome.
bergie 15y ago
Fully agreed. And if Firefox goes, we'll only have WebKit browsers. And so you can forget about web standards and we'll be back at the best viewed with Internet Explorer era. Competing implementations are a good thing for standards, and standards are good for all of us.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Do we need web standards if everyone is using webkit? At least webkit is open source, unlike IE6
  - bergie 15y ago
    Do we need standards if eveybody is using Microsof Office? ;-) Indeed, open source helps a lot. It is amazing how far KHTML has gotten. But still, no standards would mean no Opera, no Mozilla, no any other entrants to the game. Anyway, this article prompted me to switch from Chrome to Aurora on my Android tablet. Feels good so far...

mrchess 15y ago

Stop versioning Firefox so rapidly and people will come back. Firefox 5 - Firefox 11 in 1 year. Come on Mozilla... switch back to minor version numbers. I don't think they realize how this perception negatively effects the regular consumer.

rpearl 15y ago
I don't understand. Why do you care what the version number is?
- amartya916 15y ago
  Also according to their release schedule, the updates are soon going to be background (silent) updates. So version numbers will matter less and less. Mozilla has upped it's game and I have started to see that memory usage is now quite competitive to Chrome.
  - bsphil 15y ago
    I never understood the memory usage argument. In my experience, Chrome was always more of a memory drain than Firefox.
Pewpewarrows 15y ago
Actually, the "regular consumer" has no idea that Firefox even had version numbers to begin with. Iterating quickly with nearly automatic updates was a huge step in the right direction.
- manish_gill 15y ago
  I disagree. There are plenty of people who actually really pay attention to version numbers. Maybe they aren't in the majority, but I've encountered plenty of people who proudly tell me that they have 'the latest version x' before telling me off for sticking with the older version. I've stopped explaining the memory management and other issues to these kinds of people.
- 15y ago

acuity12 15y ago

It still disgusts me that Internet Explorer has users at all. Even IE9 is still unbearably bad, especially from the web developer point of view. I wish the rest of the world would have realized this and ousted Microsoft from a business it has no place in.

technojunkie 15y ago
IE9 is light years ahead of anything else Microsoft has put out and IE10 will be amazing in comparison as well. That said, a large percentage of IE9 users are corporations which don't want to support non-Microsoft browsers, new end-users who don't have a clue about anything that's not Microsoft, and the millions of foreigners who just use what's provided. Supporting IE9 isn't that bad as it used to be to support older IE browsers.
- mamp 15y ago
  I don't get IE9. It's not compatible with the legacy IE6 rubbish, and yet not conformant enough with HTML5 etc so it requires much extra work to support compared to FF, Chrome, Safari. Thank goodness for Chrome Frame.
  - Figs 15y ago
    HTML5 isn't a standard yet, so how can you be conformant?
    - acuity12 15y ago
      It's not a standard, but I can tell you that tech innovators do not stand around and wait for some committee to decide "Oh yea, uhh lets make HTML5 the standard now". No matter what the standards say, any respectable web browser should be making their best effort to "conform" to the latest technology.
      - yuhong 15y ago
        Yea, the W3C requires two implementations for a standard to make it to Proposed Recommendation now.

csomar 15y ago

The problem with FireFox is that it wasn't fast enough to catch with the innovation in the browsers market. Google Chrome was getting fast and pretty good at rendering. Its minimalistic interface has also helped a lot. By the time FireFox figured that out, it was already a little late. But the problem is that they approached it the wrong way. Instead of focusing on what made Google Chrome successful (simple interface, auto-updates, speed...) they even made it worse (I still find the interface not easy and friendly as chrome, multiple confusing versions, and not that fast)

pavanky 15y ago
I just want to know what is so complicated / confusing about firefox. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6cqbdjZl7gM/T2eqjPeprhI/AAAAAAAAJiI/iWlQFXz8m9c/s1465/Screenshot+at+2012-03-19+17%3A51%3A55.png https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6cqbdjZl7gM/T2eqjPeprhI/A...
- overcyn 15y ago
  its not that firefox is complicated (its much better than it used to be). its that its more complicated / confusing than chrome. http://imgur.com/a/w1Gtq http://imgur.com/a/w1Gtq

lloeki 15y ago

Seeing that Statcounter shot, I was taken aback at the graph, as I recently looked at some regional data myself: the picture in Europe is vastly different. See for yourself, e.g NA[0] vs EU[1] [0] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-na-monthly-201102-201202 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-na-monthly-201102-201202 [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-201102-201202 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-201102-201202

dochtman 15y ago
What I actually find interesting is that the Firefox trend already seems to be turning around again... Over the past few months, the decline has been slowed, and the latest data point has Firefox actually gaining share.
Lazare 15y ago
Wow, that's radically different. I didn't realize how much less dominant IE was in Europe - or how marginalized Opera was in the US.

jlft 15y ago

I've been using it since Firebird and tried to stick with for as long as I could on my Mac, but after trying Chrome recently, annoyed by performance issues (memory management, flash video, etc.) the difference was so big that it was impossible to justify to keep using FF. Been really happy with Chrome since. Incredibly fast browser in comparison.

acabal 15y ago

Firefox still has a great chance. They've sped up their dev cycle to try to keep pace with Chrome. As soon as they finally end the ridiculous memory usage problems that persist to this day and enable silent auto-updates (auto-updates are coming soon, I think), they'll be back in the game. I only recommend Chrome because it auto-updates. If one of my users starts using Chrome, I always know they'll have the latest and greatest. That's not yet the case with FF, but I'll recommend FF again as soon as the auto-updates land.

redthrowaway 15y ago
I like firefox. I really do. I've donated to Mozilla, and wear my resulting FF t-shirt with pride. That said, it's not just auto-update that makes Chrome more attractive. The omnibox, polarizing though it may be, sets Chrome apart from every other browser as far as U[I|X] goes. Oddly enough, that one feature alone is enough to make it my default browser. Were FF as fast as Chrome, I'd still use the latter because I just like using it more. Chrome's sandboxing, V8, and other intelligent features are just icing on the cake. This, ultimately, confuses me more than anything about the other browser vendors' reaction to Chrome. They've copied or are copying just about everything about it: short release cycles, better JS engines, sandboxing... but not the one definitive UI feature that has made it so attractive to so many people. This surprises me. I would have though Apple, at least, with its commitment to minimalistic UIs, would have been quick to hop on that train, but no dice.
- rue 15y ago
  I'm not entirely familiar with what omnibox does, but there're a few search bar addons, and quickly testing on 11, typing "whuh" in the navigation bar goes to a Google search too. Personally, I just use vimperator (the clones of which on Chrome are…abysmal?) so I can o[pen]/t[abopen] and then type a search term (w/ customizable engine) or a URL. … Memorywise, the recent FFs are much better. Usually problems are caused by extensions.
- robtoo 15y ago
  I've had a look at Google's docs[1], and it's really not clear to me what Chrome's omnibox offers that Firefox's address bar (or whatever they call it) doesn't. http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95440 http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...

shingen 15y ago

Google decided to kill Firefox. Not by lack of financial support, but by giving their own browser radically more financial support (the homepage marketing alone is worth an astronomical sum). There was never going to be enough room in the market for four or five major browsers, each with a lot of market share - markets consolidate naturally. Once Chrome gained traction, Firefox was destined to fall down to Opera's levels.

kristopolous 15y ago
It's been a bit harder to kill off NCSA Mosaic/MCOM/Netscape/Mozilla Foundation than people had imagined; and people have been imaging killing them off for 16 years or so. The likes of Clark, Andreesen & jwz built an idea in 1995 that will not die. it just wont. they can lose their nsf funding, aol can buy up the remains and then discard it; google can use it as advertising space and then go elsewhere, they can take 5 years between netscape 4.0 and mozilla 1.0, but they will not die.

mangoman 15y ago

Chrome really is orders of magnitude faster than FF. It starts up instantly compared to any other browser I've used (FF, IE, Opera) If FF had the speed of chrome, I'd consider switching back. I really want to try Pentadactyl for FF, but I can't stand how slow FF is sometimes.

dochtman 15y ago
How long ago did you last try it? The Mozilla team has been kicking some ass over the last few months.
- pavanky 15y ago
  I completely agree. The biggest difference I have noticed, ironically, is while loading _google+_ (try it, firefox 10/11 is faster). The only reason I would use chrome over firefox is because of the incognito mode. I like randomly opening a page in incognito mode without losing my current session.
- mangoman 15y ago
  I do use FF every once in a few days, I just find its start up time irritating (the difference is on the order of seconds). I will say that it definitely has improved though, and I do like the way FF manages tabs over Chrome, but Chrome just feels more pleasant to use
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cpeterso 15y ago
orders of magnitude, you say?

a3_nm 15y ago

The article seems to assume that a declining market share means that Firefox is going to "die" and that you should start switching. This might make sense for a company, but not that much for an open source project. Firefox could stay very healthy with a much lower market share as long as the right people are still using it (and developing it).

naner 15y ago

I still use FF for daily browsing. I have Chrome installed and use it for webdev but there are some annoyances (like adblock not working very well) which keep it from being my everyday browser. I anticipate problems in the future, however, when I won't have access to Flash unless I use Chrome (I'm on Linux).

nextparadigms 15y ago

I don't know what it is exactly they need to do, but strategically, Firefox needs to attract browser power-users once again. Firefox is losing because most of them have already switched to Chrome. And when that happens, it's only a matter of time before the mainstream does it, too, under their recommendation.

cpeterso 15y ago
What features does Firefox need to retain power users or even win back Chrome switchers? This is a tough problem. Google's money and manpower enabled Chrome to quickly reached feature parity with Firefox. Google undoubtedly spends more developing and advertising Chrome than they pay Mozilla. Short of some Google privacy scare, there may not be enough technical reasons for someone to switch back.

melling 15y ago

Chrome is less than 4 years old. The browser world can change fast. Grab the Firefox Nightly and help test. http://nightly.mozilla.org/ http://nightly.mozilla.org/ In my opinion, there's no reason why you can't run both Firefox and Chrome. They're both free and they're both great.

pasbesoin 15y ago

You can pry it from my cold, dead hands. I continue to insist on experiencing the web the way I want to. Firefox -- together with its extensions -- continues to do the best job of this. (Although I have not been pleased with its GUI "Chromification".)

Jach 15y ago

I use both. (Especially since Google started only allowing you to login to one gmail session at once, but I used both before that.) Currently there are about three things that keep me from using Chrome entirely, because I do think it's a better overall browser but not better for my particular use case. The first is lack of the Tree Style Tabs extension (in general lack of extensions was my biggest problem with Chrome until recently; now they have NoScript and AdBlock and ctrl+shift+j is about as good as FireBug which were the deal-breakers for me before), the second is not eating up huge amounts of memory if I have 593 tabs loaded into it (which is currently what I have on this Firefox), the third is I don't like their URL box. Firefox's AwesomeBar is almost perfect, I just wish it had better coverage of my history+favorites (I'm sure there's an about:config option somewhere that tunes it).

smhinsey 15y ago

I'm at the point where I keep both Chrome and FF open. Chrome for work and FF for browsing, where I find Treestyle Tabs too valuable to lose. I've pretty much given up on there being a true Chrome equivalent at this point, but I would probably switch if there was one.

voodoochilo 15y ago

i'm too paranoid for chrome. stay with da fox.

functionoid 15y ago

Those who are worried about the memory in FF, do you know there is an option that will not load the tabs until you click on it. I have around 700 tabs open but at a time only 10 or less are loaded. Tools/options/General "Don't load tabs until selected"

talmand 15y ago
That option seems to be for loading previous tabs on start up. I don't see it doing anything for normal tab use.

miles_matthias 15y ago

Chromium is open source, which Chrome is based on. I don't understand what everyone is complaining about. Chromium will always be around, so if you're paranoid about Google sneaking in some stuff into Chrome to steal your info, then use Chromium. I like Mozilla, but they haven't been able to keep up in my book.

dfc 15y ago

Things might be different but the last time I checked I could not find chrome addons that are equivalent to NoScript, RequestPolicy and AdBlock. These three addons are keeping me firmly in the firefox camp...

WiseWeasel 15y ago

Firefox forced me to learn how SVG works to do clipping and masking, which turned out to be pretty awesome, so I owe that to them. This article was completely without any substance beyond a graph of browser share stats. That's not necessarily evidence of Firefox "dying", rather than of the market simply expanding outside of its target demographic. In any case, as a web developer, Firefox will remain a critical browser to support for the foreseeable future, and as a user, I still haven't found a better overall option to use in Windows or Linux (I've stuck with Safari in OS X mainly due to the increased performance, stability and vastly superior font rendering).

sghill 15y ago

Just about every developer I know has Firefox on their machine, but that's just because our automated tests tend to be written for Firefox. Almost none of the teams I have been a part of use Firefox for development, and even fewer for personal browsing. Chrome's market share grab has been quite impressive. My most recent experience was with a client who was locked into IE for years, made the switch to Google Apps, and subsequently discovered the speed of Chrome. Phrased as "lots of our users skipped Firefox," it sounded like Firefox was in no-man's land.

kls 15y ago
I personally still use FF as my main development browser, it may be familiarity but I like the development tools in FF more than the ones offered in Chrome. Chrome may have the slight edge in features as far as development tools go, but I find that FF's tools have a better workflow. As well, the new 3D view of the DOM is in and of itself a big reason to use it as a development browser. As the DOM has become more complicated we have desperately needed such a tool to visualize the layering of elements on the page.

webwanderings 15y ago

I'd switch to Chrome because it is speedier, but Chrome doesn't provide me bookmarks tags for all of my local bookmarks. So Firefox is holding just because of that.