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Why is it surprising or notable that there are people who have different needs? Sure, there are some people who make very minimal usage of a web browser. They
by Pacabel 13y ago
Why is it surprising or notable that there are people who have different needs?
Sure, there are some people who make very minimal usage of a web browser. They can get by just fine with a dumbed down Chrome-style UI. They might even like that experience.
Not everybody falls into that camp, however. There are a lot of users who push web browsers much harder, and expect a different experience. They need a UI that exposes the functionality they need to constantly use.
Firefox used to be good at giving power users what they needed, while still being relatively lean, easy-to-use and useful for users who pushed it less intensively.
We've seen this change over the past few years, however, as they've stripped out useful UI functionality in their quest to imitate Chrome. Firefox is now a weaker, less-practical browser for many people. These people are burdened with trying to install numerous addons, just to restore Firefox to something reasonably close to its previous state of usability.
Firefox isn't alone, of course. Just look at the whole debacle that Opera has experienced with the new versions of their desktop browser. It's perhaps even worse in that case, given how they're building upon Blink and Chromium directly. The new versions of Opera are horrible compared to Opera 12 and earlier. It's just really unfortunate to see this happening to software products that were once pretty good.