
The death of Firefox - AdamFernandez
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/116885-the-death-of-firefox
======
kzrdude
Stay with Firefox everyone. We need an independent, community-governed
browser.

~~~
bergie
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
Do we need web standards if everyone is using webkit?

At least webkit is open source, unlike IE6

~~~
bergie
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...

~~~
jiggy2011
* 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.*

Not necessarily, it would still be possible for them to embed webkit or even
to re-implement it.

Webkit would simply become the reference implementation.

~~~
ootachi
Reimplementing it would not be an option. Making WebKit the reference
implementation would give Google and Apple such an enormous advantage in
development cycles that any browser that didn't use it would be unable to
compete. You'd be expelling everyone but Google and Apple from the W3C.

If WebKit becomes the standard, every user from now until forever will be
using the same pile of C++ to browse. That may be fine to you; I personally
don't think that WebKit is so good as to make it the gold standard for the
Web. Imagine if that had happened with NCSA Mosaic...

~~~
jiggy2011
If it is open source why would google and apple have a huge advantage?

Surely anybody else could even fork webkit if they so desired.

Having one pile of C++ to browse beats having multiple piles of C++ all with
their own bugs an eccentricities.

------
disgruntledphd2
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
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...](http://www.salsitasoft.com/blog/2011/09/23/wonder-how-chrome-is-
growing-market-share-ask-adobe/)

------
acabal
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
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.

~~~
robtoo
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&ans...](http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95440)

~~~
redthrowaway
I've got Aurora installed for Tor and flash-based apps that don't play nicely
with Chrome, but I still use Chrome for my daily surfing and so have not
really noticed any of the changes Mozilla has made. If the address bar really
is reproducing the functionality of the omnibox, why not kill the search box
all together? It seems like duplicated functionality and a waste of screen
real estate.

~~~
robtoo
I think the only use for the search box now is to give people easy access to
multiple (or a secondary) search engine. Sure, it's ugly, but it does give
users a clear and simple way to search wikipedia for "widgets".

Chrome, on the other hand, only exposes non-Google search engines through the
search engine keyword thingy, which means a user has to actually type
"en.wikipedia.org widgets" into the omnibox. Sure, tab-completion will do half
the work, but the user still has to remember to start typing "en." rather
than, say, "wikipedia".

I know that Chrome (and, indeed, Firefox) allow you to edit those search
engine keywords, but that is power-user territory, and power-users can edit
their Firefox UI as well. <http://i.imgur.com/mS5Ot.png>

~~~
Lazare
Minor quibble, but Chrome makes it pretty easy to change your default search
engine to anything you want, including non-Google search engines. It's not
that you need to use a keyword to search a non-Google search engine, it's that
you need to use a keyword to search a non-default search engine. :)

~~~
robtoo
Also, the UI in Firefox for changing the address bar search engine is awful --
about:config, click through the warning, then find and edit keyword.URL (which
is in a different format to everything else)

------
pasbesoin
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".)

------
RandallBrown
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
Where is Chrome's bloat?

~~~
rpearl
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/#!...](https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-
topic/chrome/report-a-problem-and-get-troubleshooting-help/ekoYAU_h32I)

[2] [http://techpp.com/2011/09/28/chrome-14-vs-
firefox-7-memory-f...](http://techpp.com/2011/09/28/chrome-14-vs-
firefox-7-memory-footprint-comparison/)

[3] <https://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/> talks about it frequently

~~~
sek
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
>When a site freezes the rest is unaffected.

Interestingly, however, when Flash crashes on one tab it crashes on all of
them.

~~~
epochwolf
That's because flash is a single process in all tabs. It's more of a problem
with the way flash is designed.

------
csomar
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
I just want to know what is so complicated / confusing about firefox.

[https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6cqbdjZl7gM/T2eqjPeprhI/A...](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6cqbdjZl7gM/T2eqjPeprhI/AAAAAAAAJiI/iWlQFXz8m9c/s1465/Screenshot+at+2012-03-19+17%3A51%3A55.png)

~~~
overcyn
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>

------
melling
Chrome is less than 4 years old. The browser world can change fast. Grab the
Firefox Nightly and help test.

<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.

------
lloeki
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>

[1] <http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-201102-201202>

~~~
dochtman
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.

------
Jach
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).

------
WiseWeasel
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).

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

------
nextparadigms
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
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.

------
mangoman
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
How long ago did you last try it? The Mozilla team has been kicking some ass
over the last few months.

~~~
pavanky
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.

------
dfc
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...

------
sghill
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
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.

------
jlft
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.

------
a3_nm
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).

------
miles_matthias
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.

------
naner
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).

------
smhinsey
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.

------
mrchess
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.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
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.

~~~
kryptiskt
I have to wonder if that isn't actually going to be a problem from now on, not
a technical one but a marketing problem. Major version upgrades used to be a
big deal and brought lots of publicity even outside narrow tech circles. Now
they aren't going to get that for free. Google pushes Chrome a lot in ads,
Firefox don't have that. So what are they going to do to spread the word?

------
webwanderings
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.

------
acuity12
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
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
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
HTML5 isn't a standard yet, so how can you be conformant?

~~~
acuity12
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
Yea, the W3C requires two implementations for a standard to make it to
Proposed Recommendation now.

------
shingen
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
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.

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

