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"Firefox to be free and open source. " And die. And spending >$6.000.000.000 to do it. As a 30 years user, it's just so sad to see Firefox going down down do

"Firefox to be free and open source. " And die. And spending >$6.000.000.000 to do it. As a 30 years user, it's just so sad to see Firefox going down down down. No innovation, no progress since the introduction of tabs. At least the sell-customer-data-for-marketing-experiments phase is done. And at least it's not unusable slow like it was for some years, so the bare minimum works. And it somehow survived the XUL/extension debacle. But it's 2024 and I'm through my 10th vertical tab extension (Tab Center Reborn for now) since using FF. How is FF supposed to work with >20 tabs open? The only reason to use it for me is it's open source and not owned by M$ or Google. Would there be another open source browser with traction, I'd be gone in a second.

datadrivenangel 3y ago
Firefox keeps getting better? Are there any major features or reason that chrome is better these days?
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  "Firefox keeps getting better?" In which way?
  - adolph 3y ago
    Its “appeal has become more selective”
- neltnerb 3y ago
  Firefox definitely gets better, as much as it frustrates me sometimes. It's not hard to come up with examples, I've yet to see any other browser use persistent or temporary containers per tab and per site - just to name the most obvious.
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  It becomes better after it became worse. It's not that hard to make it better after you burned all the bridges who lifted your product into the sky. Though, at this point, there isn't much left anymore outside the core-abilities.
  - genman 3y ago
    Firefox has been always the best browser as it is the only open and free (as free from adversarial incentives). Unfortunately many people (especially here) have advertised Chrome instead, naively believing Chrome to have these important properties. Chrome has always been the controlled frontend for Google business and Google is readily willing to hurt the browser to aid its business and keep its dominance.
    - PurpleRamen 3y ago
      Blink is also open and free enough. The wide usage of it, and the manifold companies pushing successfully against Google, is proof enough. Firefox on the other side is not free from hostile behavior itself. The manifold bullshit that Mozilla did over the years telling. And in general, your requirement is not matching the demand of the majority of users. I don't give a f** if something is open or liberated, I'm a user, I care firstly whether it's doing what I need, and being open&free are just tools to balance the powerplay of the creators. But if not enough people are using the browser, they have no power anyway. And if there is only one developer, then we as the users have not way to balance our power against them. Mozilla has shown over the last decade that the user has no power in their game, which shows that free and open software in itself has little meaning. The multiple blink-browsers are showing better how this is supposed to work, then the one project who always claims this as one of their main goals.
      - genman 3y ago
        Majority of the Blink browser users are Chrome users, followed by Edge users and then somewhere come Opera users, what depending on the polls is on par with Firefox users or far behind it. But none of this matters as I was talking about browsers, not browser engines, that are not the same thing and none of the Blink browsers listed above are open source browsers. Majority of the users are using the browser they are told to use. If everyone is telling them to use Chrome, they use it. And there practically has not been much resistance to Chrome. How many IT people have told over the years to not user Chrome, and use Firefox instead? There was huge resistance to IE, but not to Chrome, and it pays now its dividends. Is Chrome now doing what the users want? How many people are upset about the latest moves by Google. For me it was obvious result for long time, I was actually surprised that it didn't happen earlier. Now based on the reactions, many users didn't expect it.
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  Firefox has yet to top Firefox 57. Bring back multi-row tabs. Actually, while we're at it, bring back XUL. And apologize to all the addon developers and users they straight up lied to.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    > Bring back multi-row tabs. I can't live without multi-row tabs but it's totally doable in current Firefox. It's now possible with just CSS. It still breaks every so often when they make big UI changes but it's manageable. It's the reason that Firefox is my main browser.
    - EasyMark 3y ago
      If that's your main reason have you tried vivaldi?
      - int_19h 3y ago
        Vivaldi is great on paper (if you don't care about it being F/OSS), but it's wildly unstable compared to all other major browsers including Firefox. Every time I try to use it as a primary, I end up running into something blocking within a week, reporting it, and switching back to whatever. Which is a shame, because, stability aside, it really is the best option among Blink-based browsers, at least for the power user. No containers, sadly, but the problem there is Blink itself.
    - FeepingCreature 3y ago
      I played that game for a while, it gets old. Also the UX is not nearly as good as TMP when it comes to moving tabs around.
  - EasyMark 3y ago
    dropping anything goes xul was a large improvement in security. Extensions still have a lot of power.
    - 3y ago
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Are we only allowed to compare to chrome? I miss session manager, tab mix plus, a few others. I really miss having a gesture extension that runs at the GUI level, so it doesn't stop working while pages are loading and lag all the time and not work in certain places. And that one isn't even about XUL, they simply refuse to implement the mouse callback in the new system.
- x0x0 3y ago
  Yes. For a long time, chrome has had significantly better memory use. I really tried firefox again 2 or 3 years ago. If you have to keep jira open all day for work, it was unusable. Regardless, your comment illustrates why Baker should have been fired for cause. Browsers are not really evaluated on technical merits past a minimal quality threshold. Rather, browser marketshare is built on distribution -- like any business. And firefox was incompetent at that. Google has effectively used search; Microsoft effectively uses their OS; Apple effectively uses their OS, etc. And all products work this way: this is the reason Slack sold to Salesforce, ie Microsoft was using Office's distribution to effectively clobber Slack with Teams. The same reason that Google pays billions of dollars to Mozilla and Apple to be the default search engine. What could have been done here? I dunno, but focusing on technical measures is not the right lens. BD is and was the necessary component, and that could have started with companies that don't want to see Chrome be the sole browser in the world. What could you have done to get eg Facebook or other companies with large web properties to ask their users to use Firefox? What partnership could have been forged with Microsoft when they were broadly uninterested in browsers? What could you have done to make Firefox a better browser for technical users specifically? etc.
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    Firefox could have build a niche, e.g. be clearly the best browser for developers - like native autoreload API support. Or the most secure one. Or be the best browser for power users. Or or or. But you need a vision for that. Apple started their comeback with developers who liked the combination of a slick UI, commercial software and a unix shell (Got a G4 Cube around 2002 or so, then a Macbook). Dominating that niche made them hip and then everyone wanted one. The rest is history. Everyone uses Linux, even if MS did everything to push MS on servers. And don't forget Apple spend millions (billions?) on pushing OSX to the server two (I had some XServe and XSans). But Linux dominated, and not because of Red Hat. Many people and perhaps in the future everyone uses Postgres, even if MS and Oracle spend millions (billions?) to prevent this.
    - jononor 3y ago
      Are there other browsers that have successfully built a niche? And how does one use that to bring in enough money to sustain a reasonable sized organization? To me it neither seems easy, nor any guarantee of success.
- plorkyeran 3y ago
  7 years later Firefox still hasn't caught up to 2017 Firefox in functionality. Using ancient versions of Firefox isn't an option, so I switched to Vivaldi.
- mejutoco 3y ago
  I can only think of @scope in css https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:scope https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:scope I have no problem with Firefox staying as it is. But do not push new products via it. Focusing on the things other companies cannot copy (privacy, extensibility for the user) is definitely the angle for Firefox IMHO.
- Jochim 3y ago
  A personal gripe is FF's refusal to implement WebSerial or any form of screencast functionality.
  - zilti 3y ago
    Just use a screencast tool. It's a browser, not an OS.
    - Jochim 3y ago
      I'd rather not use something that's less convenient, less consistent, and generally worse.
- dartharva 3y ago
  Chrome is better for websites that are specifically tweak to run well only on Chrome. Surprisingly, such websites are not trivial in amount and traffic.
rozap 3y ago
Every thread about Firefox there's a comment like this and I truly don't know if we're using the same browsers. Firefox keeps getting better and faster, while chrome is getting more bloated and aggravating.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  "better" What does better mean? What is better in the last 10 years? And I'm not trolling, I'm interested in what 10 things FF got better for you in the last 10 years. Say, I have been buying on Amazon 10 years ago using FF. In which ways has FF made that better or easier for me as a user? Can't think of anything with Amazon. The only things I can think of: More secure when misclicking somewhere and better video on Youtube.
  - saint_fiasco 3y ago
    Firefox's built in password manager is pretty good, ten years ago you had to install a separate extension for that. The synchronization of browser tabs and history across devices is also very good nowadays, so if you look at some product on Amazon with your phone on the way home, you can continue the same browsing session on your regular PC right away. There are also multiple profiles. That helps in case you have multiple Amazon accounts like one for shopping, one to mooch off your cousin's prime video subscription, and one to work with the AWS console for your workplace. I think you couldn't do that out of the box 10 years ago.
    - KingOfCoders 3y ago
      Good points, I concede for some users and perhaps the majority there is progress. (For me - and probably many others - though I use 1password since the beginning, have 50 tabs open so sync is a challenge and never understood to use the profiles, perhaps I'm too stupid or the UI is bad) When it came out I thought profiles was a good idea, eager to use it, but it's often difficult to say what is in what profile. AWS is clear, and banking, but reading some articles? For me to work the UI would need to be smooth so I don't need to switch profiles just because something is in the other. Perhaps I'm not focused enough ;-) It then was too complicated for me to use and switch and I dropped it. Writing this in FF, where would I need to click to switch profiles? I have a drop down on the right (it's not in there), I have a drop down on the left (also no profiles), I have a menu at the top(can't find it there) and a drop down in my sidebar (no profiles in there).
dehrmann 3y ago
> No innovation Except for Rust.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  I thought we were talking about the browser, but yes I like Rust a lot, although I switched to Go because the benefits of the borrow checker were just not worth the effort in my use cases. I would wish more main stream languages would experiment with owner transfer though a = 3 do(a) // can't use a
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    > the benefits of the borrow checker were just not worth the effort in my use cases Hot take: it's usually not, and people are using Rust in a lot of places where it's the wrong choice. It looks a lot more appealing when you're writing an OS or a browser.

datadrivenangel 3y ago

Firefox keeps getting better? Are there any major features or reason that chrome is better these days?

KingOfCoders 3y ago
"Firefox keeps getting better?" In which way?
- adolph 3y ago
  Its “appeal has become more selective”
neltnerb 3y ago
Firefox definitely gets better, as much as it frustrates me sometimes. It's not hard to come up with examples, I've yet to see any other browser use persistent or temporary containers per tab and per site - just to name the most obvious.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
It becomes better after it became worse. It's not that hard to make it better after you burned all the bridges who lifted your product into the sky. Though, at this point, there isn't much left anymore outside the core-abilities.
- genman 3y ago
  Firefox has been always the best browser as it is the only open and free (as free from adversarial incentives). Unfortunately many people (especially here) have advertised Chrome instead, naively believing Chrome to have these important properties. Chrome has always been the controlled frontend for Google business and Google is readily willing to hurt the browser to aid its business and keep its dominance.
  - PurpleRamen 3y ago
    Blink is also open and free enough. The wide usage of it, and the manifold companies pushing successfully against Google, is proof enough. Firefox on the other side is not free from hostile behavior itself. The manifold bullshit that Mozilla did over the years telling. And in general, your requirement is not matching the demand of the majority of users. I don't give a f** if something is open or liberated, I'm a user, I care firstly whether it's doing what I need, and being open&free are just tools to balance the powerplay of the creators. But if not enough people are using the browser, they have no power anyway. And if there is only one developer, then we as the users have not way to balance our power against them. Mozilla has shown over the last decade that the user has no power in their game, which shows that free and open software in itself has little meaning. The multiple blink-browsers are showing better how this is supposed to work, then the one project who always claims this as one of their main goals.
    - genman 3y ago
      Majority of the Blink browser users are Chrome users, followed by Edge users and then somewhere come Opera users, what depending on the polls is on par with Firefox users or far behind it. But none of this matters as I was talking about browsers, not browser engines, that are not the same thing and none of the Blink browsers listed above are open source browsers. Majority of the users are using the browser they are told to use. If everyone is telling them to use Chrome, they use it. And there practically has not been much resistance to Chrome. How many IT people have told over the years to not user Chrome, and use Firefox instead? There was huge resistance to IE, but not to Chrome, and it pays now its dividends. Is Chrome now doing what the users want? How many people are upset about the latest moves by Google. For me it was obvious result for long time, I was actually surprised that it didn't happen earlier. Now based on the reactions, many users didn't expect it.
FeepingCreature 3y ago
Firefox has yet to top Firefox 57. Bring back multi-row tabs. Actually, while we're at it, bring back XUL. And apologize to all the addon developers and users they straight up lied to.
- wvenable 3y ago
  > Bring back multi-row tabs. I can't live without multi-row tabs but it's totally doable in current Firefox. It's now possible with just CSS. It still breaks every so often when they make big UI changes but it's manageable. It's the reason that Firefox is my main browser.
  - EasyMark 3y ago
    If that's your main reason have you tried vivaldi?
    - int_19h 3y ago
      Vivaldi is great on paper (if you don't care about it being F/OSS), but it's wildly unstable compared to all other major browsers including Firefox. Every time I try to use it as a primary, I end up running into something blocking within a week, reporting it, and switching back to whatever. Which is a shame, because, stability aside, it really is the best option among Blink-based browsers, at least for the power user. No containers, sadly, but the problem there is Blink itself.
  - FeepingCreature 3y ago
    I played that game for a while, it gets old. Also the UX is not nearly as good as TMP when it comes to moving tabs around.
- EasyMark 3y ago
  dropping anything goes xul was a large improvement in security. Extensions still have a lot of power.
  - 3y ago
Dylan16807 3y ago
Are we only allowed to compare to chrome? I miss session manager, tab mix plus, a few others. I really miss having a gesture extension that runs at the GUI level, so it doesn't stop working while pages are loading and lag all the time and not work in certain places. And that one isn't even about XUL, they simply refuse to implement the mouse callback in the new system.
x0x0 3y ago
Yes. For a long time, chrome has had significantly better memory use. I really tried firefox again 2 or 3 years ago. If you have to keep jira open all day for work, it was unusable. Regardless, your comment illustrates why Baker should have been fired for cause. Browsers are not really evaluated on technical merits past a minimal quality threshold. Rather, browser marketshare is built on distribution -- like any business. And firefox was incompetent at that. Google has effectively used search; Microsoft effectively uses their OS; Apple effectively uses their OS, etc. And all products work this way: this is the reason Slack sold to Salesforce, ie Microsoft was using Office's distribution to effectively clobber Slack with Teams. The same reason that Google pays billions of dollars to Mozilla and Apple to be the default search engine. What could have been done here? I dunno, but focusing on technical measures is not the right lens. BD is and was the necessary component, and that could have started with companies that don't want to see Chrome be the sole browser in the world. What could you have done to get eg Facebook or other companies with large web properties to ask their users to use Firefox? What partnership could have been forged with Microsoft when they were broadly uninterested in browsers? What could you have done to make Firefox a better browser for technical users specifically? etc.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  Firefox could have build a niche, e.g. be clearly the best browser for developers - like native autoreload API support. Or the most secure one. Or be the best browser for power users. Or or or. But you need a vision for that. Apple started their comeback with developers who liked the combination of a slick UI, commercial software and a unix shell (Got a G4 Cube around 2002 or so, then a Macbook). Dominating that niche made them hip and then everyone wanted one. The rest is history. Everyone uses Linux, even if MS did everything to push MS on servers. And don't forget Apple spend millions (billions?) on pushing OSX to the server two (I had some XServe and XSans). But Linux dominated, and not because of Red Hat. Many people and perhaps in the future everyone uses Postgres, even if MS and Oracle spend millions (billions?) to prevent this.
  - jononor 3y ago
    Are there other browsers that have successfully built a niche? And how does one use that to bring in enough money to sustain a reasonable sized organization? To me it neither seems easy, nor any guarantee of success.
plorkyeran 3y ago
7 years later Firefox still hasn't caught up to 2017 Firefox in functionality. Using ancient versions of Firefox isn't an option, so I switched to Vivaldi.
mejutoco 3y ago
I can only think of @scope in css https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:scope https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:scope I have no problem with Firefox staying as it is. But do not push new products via it. Focusing on the things other companies cannot copy (privacy, extensibility for the user) is definitely the angle for Firefox IMHO.
Jochim 3y ago
A personal gripe is FF's refusal to implement WebSerial or any form of screencast functionality.
- zilti 3y ago
  Just use a screencast tool. It's a browser, not an OS.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    I'd rather not use something that's less convenient, less consistent, and generally worse.
dartharva 3y ago
Chrome is better for websites that are specifically tweak to run well only on Chrome. Surprisingly, such websites are not trivial in amount and traffic.

rozap 3y ago

Every thread about Firefox there's a comment like this and I truly don't know if we're using the same browsers. Firefox keeps getting better and faster, while chrome is getting more bloated and aggravating.

KingOfCoders 3y ago
"better" What does better mean? What is better in the last 10 years? And I'm not trolling, I'm interested in what 10 things FF got better for you in the last 10 years. Say, I have been buying on Amazon 10 years ago using FF. In which ways has FF made that better or easier for me as a user? Can't think of anything with Amazon. The only things I can think of: More secure when misclicking somewhere and better video on Youtube.
- saint_fiasco 3y ago
  Firefox's built in password manager is pretty good, ten years ago you had to install a separate extension for that. The synchronization of browser tabs and history across devices is also very good nowadays, so if you look at some product on Amazon with your phone on the way home, you can continue the same browsing session on your regular PC right away. There are also multiple profiles. That helps in case you have multiple Amazon accounts like one for shopping, one to mooch off your cousin's prime video subscription, and one to work with the AWS console for your workplace. I think you couldn't do that out of the box 10 years ago.
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    Good points, I concede for some users and perhaps the majority there is progress. (For me - and probably many others - though I use 1password since the beginning, have 50 tabs open so sync is a challenge and never understood to use the profiles, perhaps I'm too stupid or the UI is bad) When it came out I thought profiles was a good idea, eager to use it, but it's often difficult to say what is in what profile. AWS is clear, and banking, but reading some articles? For me to work the UI would need to be smooth so I don't need to switch profiles just because something is in the other. Perhaps I'm not focused enough ;-) It then was too complicated for me to use and switch and I dropped it. Writing this in FF, where would I need to click to switch profiles? I have a drop down on the right (it's not in there), I have a drop down on the left (also no profiles), I have a menu at the top(can't find it there) and a drop down in my sidebar (no profiles in there).

dehrmann 3y ago

> No innovation Except for Rust.

KingOfCoders 3y ago
I thought we were talking about the browser, but yes I like Rust a lot, although I switched to Go because the benefits of the borrow checker were just not worth the effort in my use cases. I would wish more main stream languages would experiment with owner transfer though a = 3 do(a) // can't use a
- dehrmann 3y ago
  > the benefits of the borrow checker were just not worth the effort in my use cases Hot take: it's usually not, and people are using Rust in a lot of places where it's the wrong choice. It looks a lot more appealing when you're writing an OS or a browser.