
What’s up with Firefox? - cpeterso
http://www.recode.net/2017/1/25/14378610/mossberg-whats-up-with-firefox-the-browser-that-time-forgot
======
cylinder714
Regarding FirefoxOS, Mozilla erred in focusing their efforts on cheap, crappy
phones¹ that were only available in places like Spain or India, and not
getting first-tier phones into the hands of as many hackers as possible, as
quickly as possible.

By focusing on low-end phones and not Nexus- or Galaxy-class handsets, they
lost sight of the fact that smartphones are aspirational devices. People want
the best phones they can get, with high performance and high-resolution
screens. They don't care about libre software or the Open Web if the devices
on which it runs are perceived as inferior. (Everyone I know uses either an
iPhone or a reasonably performant Android phone, and I don't run in wealthy or
tech circles much these days.)

Look at the runaway success of the iPhone. It wasn't cheap, but because it was
clearly a quality device, both regular people and developers clamored for
them. (Remember the hue and cry when Apple initially said they wouldn't
provide a market for third-party apps?)

If Mozilla really wanted to spur interest in FirefoxOS among developers, they
should have set up kiosks at every Fry's Electronics in the greater S.F. Bay
area (on the doorsteps of Apple, Google, Facebook) to sell decent, unlocked
phones directly. People would have lined up to buy them just to hack on them.
I would have seriously considered buying one as an alternative to a Nexus
phone, if one had been available.

1: Ars Technical eviscerates a $35 FirefoxOS phone:
[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-3](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-3)

~~~
komali2
With respect, this seems very Bay Area short-sighted. Mozilla was open about
targeting cheap, crappy phones, which my understanding makes up a _very_
significant portion of the Android phone ecosystem. They were looking at those
Spain, India, China markets, yes, and nailing those markets didn't really
depend upon the opinions of comparatively _extraordinarily_ rich Bay Area
denizens or hackers. If you can afford a Galaxy s5 right now, even if you have
to budget a bit, you are not the market that that OS was for (my
understanding). Similar to that Facebook Internet thing - it wasn't for us, it
was for people who can (and do) live two years off one of our paychecks.

EDIT: I just read that review you linked and it suffers the same problem - a
total lack of perspective. The only _critical_ error I can see is the lack of
internal battery to keep time synced, which will be a major setback for
browsing because of authentication and whatnot. Other than that, the sorts of
people spending 35$ on a phone _do not care_ about the three different
materials, the thickness, the shitty camera, etc. I've seen the most
horrifying, hackneyed together internet connectivity solutions in China that
to mock a 35$ phone for being "too thick" is to be just... out of touch.

~~~
criddell
So if their strategy was a good one, why did it fail?

~~~
GCA10
The Firefox team assumed that Android would be an expensive, bulky OS that
wouldn't fit into sub-$120 phones -- leaving lots of room for spartan little
Firefox OS to own the low end.

Not so. Android decided to do cheap and lean, too. I did some price
comparisons in emerging markets back in 2015, and everywhere that Firefox OS
tried to play, there was an Android alternative available at a comparable
price. More details are here:

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/537661/firefox-maker-
batt...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/537661/firefox-maker-battles-to-
save-the-internet-and-itself/)

------
UweSchmidt
It is very important to use Firefox: For Microsoft, Apple or Google their
"free" browser MUST eventually be a pawn in their corporate strategy. It's one
thing to use a service from a company, but conceding this crucial puzzle piece
to any one company? I don't know about that. Mozilla takes money from Google
and others, but ultimately depends 100% on a free internet.

One could argue which browser is a little ahead in any area, and which one
needs "revitalization", to use a word from the article, but Firefox would have
to _seriously_ fall behind before I would switch browsers. Do you think ad-
blockers would be a thing if it was between Chrome, Safari and IE? A _lot_
depends on a single number: Firefox' market share.

~~~
tagrun
Firefox has also been a pawn in Mozilla's corporate strategies many times.

They changed Firefox users' default search engine to Yahoo, not only in new
installations but overriding existing settings, after Mozilla cut a deal with
Yahoo.

Mozilla also backed EME, eventually, a big threat to free internet as we knew
it, among many other things.

If you take this history into account, portraying Firefox as being unblemished
by Mozilla Corporation's monetization schemes and guardian of the free
internet is just romantic fiction.

~~~
azrazalea
> They also backed EME,

No they didn't. They argued and fought against EME until it was clear that
there was no way they would win. At that point they implemented it so that
they could stay relevant, without it their market share would be even lower
and they'd have zero chance of getting market share again.

And market share isn't a "corporate" concern, it is vital to their non-profit
mission.

All that being said, that doesn't mean I'm happy with everything they do. Just
arguing on that one point.

~~~
tagrun
You just gave details on how and why they flipped their stance on EME. And
you're essentially saying they traded market share for their principles about
free internet. You're basically agreeing with me.

> At that point they implemented it so that they could stay relevant,

...instead of fighting it without giving up.

> And market share isn't a "corporate" concern

This literally makes 0 sense to me. Do you actually believe this? Market share
share _is_ vital to Mozilla _Corporation_ 's business, which they have been
using to cut million dollar deals with Yahoo, Google, etc. I don't wanna go
all the want and say "you're the product", but they basically monetize their
collective user base. So regardless of how they/you spin it, I don't buy that
it's not a corporate concern.

~~~
azrazalea
To be clear, I meant market share isn't solely a corporate concern. Certainly
it is in the corporation's best interest, but it is also a very big interest
from a non-profit/altruistic perspective.

------
sambe
This all seems a bit sensationalist. Mozilla tried a few other things, mostly
didn't work out, maybe a bit distracted from Firefox. The decline from 2010
was about Chrome, not neglect (& maybe mobile, where they lacked a device).

I wouldn't say Firefox was leading the way or the biggest innovator in the
last few years, but for me it's kept up-to-date enough not to feel at all
neglected.

~~~
myowncrapulence
I've been using Firefox for years without any problems and find it much better
(just as fast, more privacy-minded) than chrome.

I honestly don't understand (from a consumer standpoint) why people complain
about Firefox. I can understand devs having browser preferences, but to say
that "time forgot" firefox is ridiculous as a general user.

~~~
CaptSpify
As a dedicated FF user: It feels significantly slower than chrome, it's hard
to figure out what tab is killing things, and they keep making choices that I
consider highly questionable.

I do love FF, and it is the browser I use everyday. But it's not without it's
own warts, which Chrome is much better at hiding.

~~~
pimeys
After version 50.0 I switched back from Opera. The deal is to get the e10s
multiprocess windows on. It might be disabled because some of the addons. You
can try to enforce it or like in my case with only uBlock Origin and Privacy
Badger installed, it was on by default.

This browser is seriously fast now on Linux. I couldn't be happier with it.
I've used it for weeks already, browsing a lot and it's still as snappy as
when I installed it.

Good job. And soon we'll start getting the Servo stuff...

~~~
CaptSpify
I've tried turning it on via
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Force_Enable](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Force_Enable),
but it still doens't seem to be on per about:support unfortunately.

If you have any other suggestions for getting it going, I'd appreciate it.

One additional complaint I have about FF: It's hard to find out where to
change the setting that I want. I constantly have to ddg for "How do I change
$x" and I end up with 3 different answers for 3 different revisions. If anyone
knows of a good resource for me to find this out, I would appreciate it.

~~~
pimeys
Elsewhere in the comments section there were tips about an addon that tells if
one of your addons is blocking e10s. Another useful tip was the
dom.ipc.processCount setting. Before I cancelled my LastPass account I was
using the 3.x version from them, which doesn't support e10s and crashed the
browser when I forced it on. But still I was able to turn it on even though
the browser was unusable.

I run this on Arch and Wayland, which might also add to the snappyness. What I
kind of observed from all the comments was, that the OSX users were
complaining the most about the slowness. Might be that the Linux version is
faster then.

------
shmerl
_> And it has been paying more attention to mobile browsing. In late 2015, it
finally brought out Firefox for iOS, after years of refusing to do so because
Apple requires all iPhone and iPad browsers to use its own Safari engine under
the hood._

Apple should be legally stopped from doing this monopolistic garbage.

 _> In my experience, Firefox today is still only a meh product._

I wouldn't say that, but I do admit that Firefox on Linux is moving pretty
slowly. Since it's not the highest priority for Mozilla in general I assume,
it feels like it lags behind development wise.

~~~
chrisan
> Apple should be legally stopped from doing this monopolistic garbage.

IANAL but couldn't the MS case be relevant/provide precedent?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp).

~~~
jahnu
From a legal standpoint Apple don't have a monopoly in the phone market
comparable to what Ms had on the desktop.

~~~
gnicholas
It's true that Apple does not have — even in the US — the amount of market
share necessary to be deemed a monopolist and subject to anti-tying laws for
its browser. Android is a strong alternative, and as long as it remains so
Apple will be effectively immune from challenge. The reason Microsoft was
vulnerable to this is that its market share was much higher.

There is one thing that Apple does that Microsoft did not do: it prevents the
user from designating a non-Safari default browser. Every link you open will
open in Safari, unless you copy it and open paste it into another browser.
Microsoft let users install other browsers and designate them as the default
(I don't know if this was always the case, but it has been for a very long
time.) I'm not sure if Apple has a technical argument for why this is
necessary, but it probably won't ever need it because of the market share
threshold.

FWIW, I am a recovering lawyer, and I spent a summer in antitrust law. So I'm
not an expert, but I do know how to calculate a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index for
the purpose of determining market concentration...

~~~
shmerl
_> It's true that Apple does not have — even in the US — the amount of market
share necessary to be deemed a monopolist and subject to anti-tying laws for
its browser. Android is a strong alternative, and as long as it remains so
Apple will be effectively immune from challenge._

How does a strong alternative help solving the following problem. Let's say
you are a video service provider, and want to offer MPEG-DASH[1] based service
which relies on browsers supporting Media Source Extensions[2].

Soon enough, you discover, that iOS users can't use your service, not only
because iOS default browser doesn't support MSE, but because they can't even
install any alternative that does (Apple doesn't let them).

You are literally forced to implement something[3] in addition to MPEG-DASH to
address a substantial amount of Apple users and in the process potentially pay
Apple and Co. for implementing it because they own related patents, or you
need to agree to ignore them (which means a loss of money for you).

TL;DR: Apple stifled adoption of MPEG-DASH, and forced you to do double work
and in theory can force you to pay them money too. This is just one example,
there can be many like that, another big one is video codecs and etc., but you
get the idea. All that bottlenecks on the same restriction - ban on competing
browsers.

Shouldn't this be a subject of anti-trust regulation? If they managed to do
it, they have enough control over the market. But again, may be anti-trust law
simply isn't equipped to address this? I see it as a major problem.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions)

3\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming)

~~~
gnicholas
It's just a threshold issue — if they don't have enough market share, then
they can't be sued for tying/bundling. The questions about video standards may
be legit, but the assumption of antitrust law is that if there are strong
enough competitors in the market, then competitive forces will pressure things
in a consumer-favorable direction.

This doesn't hold true always, and certainly not in the short-run, but it's
better than having every company with moderate market share being sued by any
other company that wishes they had different features in their products.

I don't mean for this to sound harsh, and I wish iOS were more open in various
ways that would make things easier for my startup, but I recognize that
companies need to have autonomy to build products as they wish — except in
rare cases.

~~~
shmerl
I don't think anyone stops Apple from building products. But it's about
banning competition, not about their products. And their influence on the
industry is way too big to ignore it. So I'm pretty convinced, that what they
are doing with excluding competition, shouldn't be happening. It's not about
demanding features from them - let them produce bad browsers that are behind
modern ones. It's about allowing better ones to be actually used by their
users. I.e. choice.

~~~
freehunter
The competition isn't another browser, it's Android. If you don't like Safari,
use Android. As long as iPhones are a minority device in the market,
regulators won't care what they do.

~~~
shmerl
I already explained above, how Android doesn't solve the problem. The damage
Apple are causing is real.

------
apatters
Great to see Mozilla backing off from quixotic tasks like building a phone OS
but I still feel like they don't understand what we need them for. They are
the organization that we need to keep the client side of the Internet free and
open.

Here's what that will take:

\- Make Firefox the best browser in the world at the fundamentals: speed,
stability, standards support.

\- Become the free, open, OS agnostic app platform of choice: don't cede this
frontier to Chrome and Electron. Make the open web platform the best platform
for more and more apps. (MAYBE take a shot at a phone OS after the Firefox App
ecosystem rivals Android and iOS.)

\- Following from the previous bullet, quit wasting resources on browser UX
experiments - browser UX matters less every year as web apps get freed from
the browser.

\- Be the absolute gold standard in user privacy and freedom - the stuff Brave
is doing is the trail Mozilla was supposed to blaze.

\- Invest in Thunderbird again and fix the client side of email - because
messaging is just as important as the web and we are losing to closed
competitors hard and fast there.

Mozilla's supposed to be our champion of an open web client platform. For too
long they've just been a browser in decline and a bunch of random side
projects. Cleaning up the browser is a good start but we need more.

From a passionate Firefox user (even though Chrome runs faster on Linux).

~~~
kbd
> Invest in Thunderbird again and fix the client side of email - because
> messaging is just as important as the web and we are losing to closed
> competitors hard and fast there.

I was right with you until Thunderbird. I look at Thunderbird as one of
Mozilla's many distractions. We don't need another open source desktop email
client at the expense of the browser.

So long as we have a secure browser, there are others who can provide secure
email services with a web client.

~~~
cpeterso
Plus Thunderbird is a huge C++ project. It seems like a modern desktop mail
client could be built more quickly using Electron. There are already
JavaScript libraries for IMAP. Thunderbird could be innovating on new client
features instead of trying to keep up with the treadmill of Gecko C++ changes.

~~~
krzyk
Not again, why would anyone prefer a bloated javascript based email client
pretending to be a standalone one instead of a fast native one?

If I want a javascript one I can run a browser to access it.

------
chrissnell
I'm calling it today: 2017 will be the year of the Firefox come-back. I
recently started using it again after switching to Chrome when Chrome was
initially released in beta. I'm more of a second-wave of adopters--not among
the very first but before the masses jump on board. I predict that tech-savvy
business users will start jumping back later this year and that by 2018, we'll
start to see non-technical people (like my parents and in-laws) start to use
it as family and friends begin to recommend it.

Why? Battery life and speed. Chrome is just a mess these days. Absolutely
terrible on laptops.

~~~
sergiotapia
Firefox is the only browser that has microstutters in the UI for me. That's a
dealbreaker, I can't deal with it constantly pestering me throughout the day.

This has been happening on Mac OS for about three years now for me, multiple
devices: two macbook airs, and a 2016 5k imac.

I wish I could use Opera but it's been bought by a chinese company.

~~~
neurostimulant
They're working on a new renderer (quantum) to replace gecko and it is said to
address this performance issue that has been plaguing Firefox for too long.
ETA is late 2017.

------
brandon272
I have used Chrome since it's inception. Before that I used Firefox. After
feeling some nostalgia recently and having some romantic feelings about using
and supporting OSS, I decided to install Firefox (on MacOS) and give it a try
as my primary browser again.

I had three primary complaints that caused me to go back to Chrome after a
couple days:

\- The UI feels old and clunky compared to Chrome, although this is likely
just a personal preference issue for me.

\- Performance felt lacking. Pages seemed to take longer to render. The
browser UI itself felt slower.

\- Stability. On a few occasions within a couple day period, it seemed like
one tab would lock up the entire browser. Firefox would pop up a vague message
telling me that "one of your tabs" is causing an issue (not telling me which
one) and then I would need to randomly close tabs to try and get things
working properly again. This seems insane and archaic and is not something I
ever deal with on Chrome.

~~~
djsumdog
Are you using the Firefox with e10 enabled (go to about:support and look for
"Multi-Processor Windows"). That makes a substantial difference in
performance!

~~~
brandon272
Yes, e10 is enabled. :)

------
m3rc
With the state of internet privacy today it's more important than ever to
evangelize about Firefox and Mozilla's efforts.

~~~
allemagne
That Firefox can remain a modern and relevant browser while at least paying
attention to those principles and not being owned by a tech giant is amazing
to me. No one entity should provide my phone OS, phone hardware, browser,
search history, and internet service. It's very worrying that Google is
becoming the best, default, or even a competitive option for all of those
things.

Hopefully, the dev/privacy niche that Firefox seems to compete well in today
will incentivize good decisions on that front in the future. I also hope that
the allure of Yahoo/Verizon money and a single-minded fixation on increasing
market share won't corrupt Mozilla too much.

------
no_gravity
My Firefox wishlist:

1) Make background tabs completely frozen by default. No intelligent guessing.
Simply assign zero CPU time to them. But give the user an easy to use switch
to toggle the activity of a tab. So I can activate background tabs and freeze
foreground tabs just as I like.

2) One process per tab. Even with e10s, all javascript in all tabs runs on a
single core. So at the moment, using Firefox on an 8 core computer is like
using Chromium on a single core machine.

3) Make the url bar functional immediately on startup. Right now, every time I
start Firefox, it takes several seconds until I can start typing the url I
want to go to. In Chromium, I can start typing right away.

4) Don't set a bookmark every time I press CTRL+d. Only set it after I clicked
"done" in the bookmark dialog that pops up on CTRL+d.

~~~
fabrice_d
For 2), go to about:config and search for the "dom.ipc.processCount"
preferences. Set it to the number of cores you wish and enjoy.

~~~
no_gravity
Interesting. I am trying it out right now.

------
sli
I've been a die hard Firefox user since Phoenix was released, and after a
(relatively) brief stint with Chrome, I switched back after a series of Chrome
releases would randomly up and refuse to load websites while Firefox worked
fine (tested frequently, using all three Chrome release channels).

I see a lot of people around the internet (not here, HN users are much better
about this kinda thing) say things like "Firefox just keeps getting worse" but
not once is that statement ever qualified.

It almost seems like Firefox's slow decline in use is tied in some small way
to this memetic catchphrase. "Firefox just keeps getting worse." I simply
don't believe that most folks are even capable of qualifying that statement,
and a good bit likely don't have the technical qualifications to even gather
supporting arguments for it. If that sounds a bit familiar...

It's almost identical to what is said by people that clearly believe that Java
and the JVM are the same thing, and will rag on the JVM _as Java_ , the former
or which is definitely not the problem. There's even at least one troll
account on Reddit that is heavily dedicated to screaming about non-Java JVM
languages, both on Reddit and on Medium, including posting their own Medium
articles in JVM language subreddits (usually /r/scala). It's a bit surreal,
honestly.

I assume there's at least one similar account, but for Firefox. I don't visit
browser-centric discussion boards or subreddits, though, so I can't say for
sure, and won't.

I suppose I don't have much of value to contribute to this thread, I apologize
for that. I just felt like sharing some casual observations of mine.

------
guelo
On Android Firefox is much faster than Chrome because of uBlock. I don't
understand why it's not more popular there. On the other hand, Mozilla has
always been reluctant to fully embrace ad blocking, there's no reason they
couldn't have a built-in ad blocker and tout that loudly in their marketing.
Which is probably part of the raison d'etre for Brave.

~~~
DanCarvajal
I was curious and installed Firefox on android with adblockers and everything
on my Pixel XL. I was decidedly underwhelmed. It's performance was far below
my expectations.

~~~
mintplant
Maybe try Firefox Beta, I find it faster than the current release version of
Firefox for Android and just as stable.

------
ProfessorLayton
Firefox really needs to get it together. I use Chrome for work, Firefox for my
personal gmail, and Safari for battery-conscious use.

Firefox is the browser I have to restart the most frequently, because
otherwise it slows to a crawl, or hogs so much memory (Despite only having 1-2
open tabs) that I'm constantly paging on my MBP with 16GB of ram.

There's also little UI quirks, such as not being able to natively look up a
word in OSX dictionary, that make browsing less pleasant.

~~~
nachtigall
Did you try to "refresh"? See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13227658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13227658)

~~~
Delfofthebla
Long time Firefox user here. I use a metric shit-ton of addons, and customize
everything drastically. "Refreshing" is a massive pain in the ass, as re-
configuring everything while also maintaining the "clean settings" is just a
difficult combination.

Despite this, I've completely wiped out both my settings and firefox install
on several occasions in an attempt to keep things stable.

It doesn't help.

I'm aware that my addons are likely a big contributor to the memory-hogging
and eventual crashes, but if I didn't want to use these addons, I'd just use
fucking chrome. The ENTIRE point of Firefox is for the customizability.
Dropping addons to improve stability just isn't an option for me.

~~~
nachtigall
about:performance gives no insights? It could be just one add-on that spoils
it all, unfortunately.

~~~
Delfofthebla
Didn't know about this, neat. Regardless, my problem will stay, as I have no
intention of removing anything.

I'll keep an eye on it to see if there's a specific addon triggering my
issues, but it will likely stick around.

------
jwtadvice
Firefox remains one of the browsers I use.

I sideload Chrome, Safari and Firefox on my work machine because we work with
mTLS with smartcards and honestly none of the browsers work reliably (it's not
a very high use case).

The biggest difference I notice to my browsing experience is when I switch
over to Safari (Webkit). It's not that it's slow - it just renders pages
slightly differently, whereas Firefox and Chrome seem to have aligned over the
years very well on how to interpret stylesheets.

I'm never doing anything intense enough in the browser (besides maybe
streaming a single video?) to notice significant performance differences.

------
hannob
So someone managed to write an article about the state and future of Firefox -
and didn't mention rust a single time? That's quite something.

~~~
steveklabnik
They did in passing; that's what Quantum is about.

------
pmontra
A suggestion for FF Android (no idea of what they can do on ios)

Go to this page [http://pastebin.com/FFSQUML9](http://pastebin.com/FFSQUML9)
(on HN now) with FF. Zoom. See what happens to the text. Go there with Opera.
Much much better. Tldr: text reflow.

And it's not even that useful there. Go to
[http://darkf.github.io/posts/problems-i-have-with-
python.htm...](http://darkf.github.io/posts/problems-i-have-with-python.html)
also on HN now and repeat. You can't read it with any browser but Opera.

My suggestion: implement text reflow and some people will start using it and
tell to friends.

~~~
moosingin3space
FF Mobile has text reflow in Reader Mode, which I think is an acceptable
tradeoff. Next step: make Reader Mode's content detection better.

~~~
pmontra
I never thought about reader mode, maybe because I don't use it on the
desktop. I checked it and it works on the second link. For some reason its
icon doesn't show on the pastebin page. I'll give it a try systematically.
Thanks!

Next suggestion: save for offline, another feature from Opera.

~~~
funnyfacts365
On pages where the reader mode ícone doesn't show you can try prefixing the
URL in the address bar with about:reader?url= and it will probably work ;)

~~~
pmontra
No way, at least not on
about:reader?url=[http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=13083](http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=13083)
Failed to load (or something). And the Url field displays an Android icon
instead of reader mode. I tap the icon and it just reloads the page. I wonder
what it's for?

I wish I'd be able to write an Open with Opera extension.

~~~
funnyfacts365
It couldn't parse the page to find the content. Maybe because there is no
content to parse. This is what I see on that page without reader mode: "The
requested topic does not exist." It seems to break on the & before the topic
ID.

It will not work everywhere, of course. It worked on the pastebin link posted
above, for example.

------
KingMob
After disabling a couple old add-ons that were blocking Firefox's multiprocess
architecture (Electrolysis), Firefox now feels as fast as Chrome for me.

~~~
offa
What add-ons were those? Just curious, since Firefox feels sort of slow on
MacOS for me.

~~~
rhelmer
I find it's easiest to restart with add-ons disabled (under Help) and confirm
that add-ons are the problem first.

To narrow it down to the add-on(s) causing the problem, disabling all of them
under about:addons then re-enabling one at a time is a good approach, although
can be time-consuming if you have a lot of add-ons installed.

Also - about:performance might give you some clues.

------
gdulli
When Firefox started to forbid unsigned extensions it was a dealbreaker and I
switched to Pale Moon. I've been happier with it.

I think there's a pattern where products first get into a great state for
power users/hackers but then pivot to evolve to be the lowest common
denominator for mass adoption.

~~~
cpeterso
What are the unsigned extensions that you would like to use? Developers can
automate the signing of the extensions, using a Mozilla service, that doesn't
require the extensions be public on addons.mozilla.org.

~~~
acemarke
My personal daily workflow is heavily dependent on the old Pocket addon. That
addon was deprecated a long time ago, I think even before Mozilla tried to
integrate Pocket into FF.

I think what I'm actually using now is a tweaked version of the addon that
bumped some of the compat flag and signed it (per
[http://hemenkapadia.blogspot.com/2015/12/get-old-pocket-
expe...](http://hemenkapadia.blogspot.com/2015/12/get-old-pocket-experience-
on-firefox.html) ). Because of that, I'm actually way behind on the FF update
curve, and holding out as long as I can.

(If anyone has a pointer to an equivalent modern addon, I'd be interested.)

For that matter, I'm also a die-hard TreeStyleTabs user, and I'm still not
clear on whether that's going to work properly as things go forward.

~~~
hendersoon
I use a simple bookmarklet to add to pocket in Firefox. No extension needed at
all!

[https://pastebin.mozilla.org/8969368](https://pastebin.mozilla.org/8969368)

~~~
cpeterso
A limitation of bookmarklets is that it can't run on sites that use CSP to
block external JavaScript. For example, I use a bookmarklet for Pinboard and I
can't pin pages on github.com. Here are the Firefox and Chrome bug reports
requesting that bookmarklets bypass CSP:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522)

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=233903](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=233903)

------
edgarvaldes
Maybe the direction taken is not what some users wanted, but Firefox
development is not stagnant. In general, it feels that there is little more to
offer in the browser space, but that is not only Firefox. ¿What are the big
new features (from all vendors) in the last few years?

------
webkike
Firefox is still great, and I actually appreciate their focus on a single
useful product.

------
hbt
Firefox is trying to be chrome where as chrome is leading the way.

Chrome dev tools are superior to firefox where I remember a time nothing could
compete with firebug.

The chrome extension API is now better than the upcoming "Web extensions"
which removes extensions access to XUL and dumbs down the API to make it
compatible with chrome extensions.

They've been trying to replicate the chrome sandbox for years and it still
hasn't made it to production.

It goes on and on. They are catching up and doing it poorly, not leading nor
innovating.

~~~
lucb1e
> Firefox is trying to be chrome where as chrome is leading the way.

Firefox also does stuff that Chrome doesn't. I like having about:config, I
like having some things from Test Drive, and a bunch of other things. But
let's not make this a "which is better" thread.

Let's assume that Chrome is indeed leading the way. I'm quite okay with that.
Firefox is still very clearly ahead of MSIE and Safari -- and even if it
wasn't! Even if it was the worst popular browser. Someone has to be last,
right? If it is being maintained and kept current (and it definitely is), I'd
still use Firefox for not being tied to some big corp. That's what it's really
about for me: independence, open source, free (as in freedom).

~~~
hbt
chromium is open source and you can create a google account and add each API
you want.

There are no ties to big corp unless you want to. You don't get features from
giant cluster of computers for free.

When firefox implements voice recognition, translation etc., I will look
forward to how they decide to monetize it.

Regarding "about:config", that's a great feature. Let's see if it still exists
in the future versions. After all, wouldn't it confuse the mainstream masses
they are so desperate to appeal to?

When they start caring about power users again, I will switch. Until then,
they can keep dumbing it down til it's garbage.

~~~
lucb1e
> You don't get features from giant cluster of computers for free.

I don't want that anyway: I'd prefer everything to run on my own laptop. And
even if I didn't, that are examples of big projects that are open source and
owned by a non-profit like Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, etc.

------
simula67
I used to use Firefox, but now I use Chrome.

This means I can't use DownThemAll.

I can't use Tab Wheel Scroll. On Windows I use an AutoHotkey script to
simulate Tab Wheel Scroll. On Linux, it seems to work somehow. On Mac I have
learned to live without it.

On my phone, I get bombarded with useless ads all the time on Chrome since it
has no uBlock. I have learned to live without it.

Firefox seems to be better than Chrome at recognizing password fields for
'Save Password' feature. I have learned to live without it in Chrome.

Why ? Firefox still feels slower in loading and showing web pages. It seems to
freeze up occasionally. The new tab opening and scrolls have occasional
jitters, sometimes sufficient to bring me out of my "flow".

Firefox mobile is a disaster. It sometimes loads desktop versions on some
sites. Once it failed to load a favorite site of mine completely, due to
uBlock ( that has never happened on the desktop, on any browser )

I want to use Firefox, I do. But, I spend an extra-ordinary amount of my time
on my browser. Only the best browser is 'good enough' for me

~~~
akjainaj
>Why ? Firefox still feels slower in loading and showing web pages. It seems
to freeze up occasionally. The new tab opening and scrolls have occasional
jitters, sometimes sufficient to bring me out of my "flow".

And what's even better if you point that out here they'll come with their
completely artificial benchmarks to show you how Firefox is x1337 faster than
the rest of browsers.

Only that it isn't.

And what really worries me is that they actually believe what they say, which
would mean they are refusing to work on making Firefox faster, because they
think Firefox is fast already.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
Yes, because things like Electrolysis and Servo and Project Quantum are all
imaginary...

~~~
akjainaj
The day I see Firefox shipping Servo I'll believe it.

Knowing Mozilla, the project could be dropped at any time.

------
janwillemb
I'm on Firefox for Android, it works fine in most cases.

------
nachtigall
I think the concept of "Context Graph" in the sense of crowd-sourced indexing
and recommendation system might the best approach to taggle Google search - in
the long run. We all parse (our browser) the web all time, this could be a
basis for site recommendation (and search).

------
twblalock
I understand that Mozilla changed focus in 2013, but the problems started
before then.

According to all of the browser usage share data I've seen, Firefox's share
began to decline around the end of 2010 or the beginning of 2011, about two
years before Mozilla shifted focus to Firefox OS.

So, what went wrong between 2011 and 2013, when Mozilla was still focused on
the Firefox product but its market share declined from more than 30% of the
market to less than 20%? That's what really went wrong. The change of focus
made a bad situation worse.

~~~
pizzapill
I remember that Google started to push Chrome on people with massive amounts
of money. The paid for downloads, ads etc. I think thats what brought most
people over from Firefox and/or Internet Explorer.

------
lossolo
I've issues with firefox on linux, a lot of them, it gets dark and
unresponsive sometimes without any reason and then just get back 15 sec later
to normal state. On one of the sites where there is a lot of text content when
I close the tab whole browser gets unresponsive for seconds, on youtube most
of the time video get looped in couple of frames while sound is playing
normally. I use chrome on linux also, no problems there..

~~~
chillingeffect
probably memory swapping. on one of my inherited PCs, I recently realized I
had been running with only 2 GB for over a year! I get the same black out from
the OS (Ubuntu) with massive amounts of swaps seen from vmstat 1.

~~~
lossolo
Machine that I have this issues on have 8 GB of ram, it's not that.

------
lstroud
They allowed politics to interfere with progress and ran off Brendan Eich.

------
beezischillin
Reading this makes me so happy. I abandoned FF shortly after Chrome became
popular due to severe performance issues, haven't looked back since. I've
gotten into web development professionally since and Firefox always seemed to
be that block IE used to be, it just always rendered random stuff differently
than every other browser...

I switched from Chrome to Safari when I switched to macOS and I'm relatively
happy with it, even though it is not as fast, but recent trends have me so
worried about the future. With all the BS going on at Google, I have kinda
began not to trust companies who develop browsers with closed source to keep
their customers' interests in line with their own goals. Now I appreciate
Firefox a lot more, I have great respect for it. If these improvements turn
out to be completely accurate and FF can at least approximate Chrome on
performance, I would happily switch back and stay with Mozilla.

------
vegabook
It's difficult for browser makers to differentiate themselves due to web
standards. Thus it becomes a money-takes-all game where the diminishing
returns on performance investment can be afforded only by the richest
(Chrome). Maybe Mozilla should differentiate itself in another way -
politically? It already fired Eich on progressive grounds. Why not go all in
and become the explicitly-progressive browser? See women's march/trump
protests for market share potential. Nurture add-ins that do stuff that stock-
price obsessed corporations are too scared to do. Skate to where the puck is
going....the anti-capitalist browser.... supporting things that corpos can't.

As an aside, as a Linux-all-day dev I use Firefox almost exclusively. I can do
Chrome, but something stops me. One of those things is the idea that we need
browser diversity. Also chrome just isn't "better enough" than Firefox for me
- in fact I find the difference very marginal now.

------
DigitalJack
On my mac I avoid chrome and firefox, mainly because the the zoomable
interface in safari is so nice. Maybe if I had better eye sight it wouldn't be
a big deal, but I find I miss it immediately when I'm using an alternative
browser.

~~~
DavideNL
I assume you are talking about "pinch to zoom" ? Chromium has smooth pinch to
zoom also just like Safari. Firefox however, does not.

It's basically the 1 reason i stopped using Firefox, zooming (pinch to zoom)
absolutely _sucks_ as opposed to Safari/Chromium. Pinch to zoom in Firefox
feels like going 20 years back in time...

~~~
DigitalJack
Is chromium different than chrome?

~~~
DavideNL
uhh yes, [sarcastic] for one, Chromium has a little less spyware as opposed to
Google Chrome :-) [/sarcastic]

just google "chrome vs chromium", here's the first hit:
[http://www.howtogeek.com/202825/what%E2%80%99s-the-
differenc...](http://www.howtogeek.com/202825/what%E2%80%99s-the-difference-
between-chromium-and-chrome/)

------
Corrado
I think one thing they could focus on is adding new security features (like
FIDO U2F) or making TLS client certs usable by normal humans. This would be a
great step forward and could drive adoption by security conscious users.

~~~
hellcow
I begrudgingly left Firefox for Chrome because Chrome supports U2F and Firefox
doesn't. It's just too much of a pain to log into my U2F-protected accounts on
Firefox.

I even tried the U2F Firefox extension, but that doesn't work on all websites
(some of which I need).

------
b1gtuna
There were days when Firefox was my go-to browser. It was years ago. Right now
Chrome is my #1 choice for daily driver. Opera seems to be doing pretty
interesting stuff with Neon, so I keep an eye out for it and actually use it
from time to time. Heck, I even don't mind using the Edge browser at work just
because I actually really like the Microsoft Windows 10.

Now, Mozilla/Firefox has faltered in too many product deliveries in the past 5
years (I am mostly disappointed in their Firefox OS effort) while neglecting
the browser. So the brand name no longer inspires me, whether or not the
browser itself is good.

------
spraak
I've been a user of Firefox for mobile since I first got a 'smartphone'. Just
last night I reluctantly installed Chrome as Firefox kept crashing on my new
favorite note taking app (dynalist.io if you're curious). While I know that
the app should fix their code, so many modern apps seem to be almost entirely
focused on developing for Chrome and don't care about Firefox, so it was the
'last straw' so to speak. I'd love to keep using Firefox, but it was just
getting in the way of my day to day too much.

------
homulilly
Firefox still suffers from a lot of minor quality of life issues compared to
other browsers, I don't know if it's neglect or weird internal politics but
they add up to making firefox less attractive than the competition.

A few off the top of my head:

* Firefox doesn't respect Windows 10's titlebar accent colors

* No option to set a default zoom level for web pages

* Firefox for android ignores intent filters

The first two have addon or userstyle workarounds which makes it even more
baffling that they have remain unsolved issues for years.

~~~
klez
I know it sound condescending and all, but have you tried opening a bug about
these issues? They seem very clear cut and actionable.

~~~
homulilly
They all already have bug reports that have either been open for multiple
years or were closed without actually fixing the issue which is why I suspect
this may be a problem with internal politics or misguided design philosophy.

------
timcederman
I've stuck with Firefox because it works the way I want it to work and is
extremely customizable. I've been doing more front-end development lately
though and Chrome and Safari have been a lot nicer, and given the incredible
slowness of Firefox, I've been thinking of making the switch. However, the new
multithreading engine (Electrolysis) has given it a new lease on life for me.

------
jay_kyburz
I would be interested to know, of those people that love Firefox, how many are
on Windows and how many on OSX.

I love firefox on Windows, and really don't like the font rendering of Chrome
on standard DPI screen. Firefox feels snappy and responsive.

On my Mac the opposite is true. Firefox feels significantly slower, and the
font rendering is horrible, especially light text on dark backgrounds.

------
emodendroket
I wish the Mozilla Foundation would lavish attention to Thunderbird, which
remains a best-in-class product despite the reduced attention.

------
bryanlarsen
Pretty much everybody I know using Android has switched to Firefox so that
they can use plugins, primarily ad blockers.

~~~
hendersoon
I use Adaway [1] on rooted Android, and set my DNS to Adguard's servers [2]
without root. This takes cares of all the ads. Adblocking aside, Chrome is far
superior to Firefox on Android.

You do unfortunately lose the ability to whitelist sites you want to support
with Adguard DNS, and addons like uBlock offer much more granular control. But
they both work well enough.

[1] [https://adaway.org/](https://adaway.org/)

[2] [https://adguard.com/en/adguard-
dns/overview.html](https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html)

~~~
bryanlarsen
"Chrome is far superior to Firefox on Android."

Not my experience. I'm happy I switched, I find Firefox to be faster and it
has several features I like, like the ability to stay in your current app when
clicking on links.

------
007lva
As a web developer I find Firefox(Developer Edition) more useful, I mean
sometimes I see Chrome/Chromium fix some HTML/CSS "bugs" automatically, but
Firefox seems stricter and force me to catch bugs earlier. Also is easy to
install on Linux unlike Chrome Canary that still doesn't support it.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Using Firefox since the beginning, with year long deviations to Chrome and
Opera, I'm a hostage now. Firefox is slow, memory consuming to the point I
hate to use it. But it has addons for good vertical tree tabs and the Chrome
plugins are all way inferior. And I just can't go back to horizontal tabs.

------
hubert123
I have known on day 1 of using Chrome that it was superior and I switched
completely the next day without ever looking back. I assumed that Firefox
would do everything in its power to catch up as soon as possible, both GUI
wise and in general feel. 9 years later still nothing. Quite a surprise.

------
c0ffe
Firefox OS development as an alternative to Android AOSP would not be good for
the community?

I mean, in the desktop world, we have many Linux distributions, BSD derivates,
many desktop environments, etc. May Firefox OS fit some use case that Android
could not?

------
scholia
What’s up with Mossberg, the pundit that time forgot?

Until about four years ago, he used to get all these exclusives based on his
position at the Wall Street Journal. But those days seem long ago. Mossberg is
hardly discussed today, and his page views have cratered...

;-)

------
soVeryTired
I honestly don't notice the difference between chrome and firefox. What do I
want my browser to do? Block ads and stay out of my way. Both browsers do that
just fine.

------
jhoechtl
Many seem not to be aware of
[https://testpilot.firefox.com/](https://testpilot.firefox.com/)

------
tbrock
I'm glad we are finally coming to terms with the fact that Firefox has been a
second tier browser since Chrome was released.

Everyone has love and good will for Mozilla and Firefox because Firefox showed
the world what a browser and the web could be if designed correctly to some
open standard.

However, the developer tools, JS performance, and overall browser tech have
languished. So while we all are cheering for them to catch up, we do it sadly
from a Chrome. Debugging a modern SPA on Firefox is painful.

What should have been an "oh crap, we need to up our game" moment for them was
a whoosh just like the iPhone reveal was for Balmer.

~~~
ZenoArrow
>"overall browser tech have languished"

Au contraire...

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u0hYIRQRiws](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u0hYIRQRiws)

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum)

------
hendersoon
I never switched from Firefox to Chrome, even though Chrome was (and is) very
clearly superior in _almost_ every way-- more secure, faster, and a superior
UI.

Unfortunately, Chrome mouse gesture addons are all terrible, none work
perfectly, all have inconsistent performance, and most are spyware to boot!
Firefox has Firegestures, the gold standard. With 20 years of muscle memory
mouse gestures are non-negotiable for me. So, I stuck with Firefox.

------
woranl
Firefox failed to innovate and alienate developers. Refusing to implement File
System API is a perfect example.

------
ReganKoopmans
I'm personally extremely excited for Servo, the new Mozilla browser
experiment/project.

------
niftich
Despite failing at execution (let's run gobs of JS on barebones, circa
~2008-equivalent hardware), the Firefox OS project brought light to the
problem that a mobile OS increasingly a portal to the Web and a parallel set
of proprietary services. Both the Free Software Foundation [1] and the EFF [2]
consider mobile OS as a crucial frontier.

It's little comfort for desktop-users to be able to dodge Google's browser
logged into Google's services and serving Google ads, or Microsoft's browser
on Microsoft's OS-and-apps-as-a-Service which surfaces Microsoft ads, when one
can only meaningfully avoid it on mobile by switching to the _premium_ devices
offered by Apple, who runs an equivalent walled ecosystem, with the sole
exception of not monetizing your browsing habits and content.

That being said, it's a hard problem, and if Firefox the Desktop Browser sinks
into irrelevance the battle will be completely lost.

On the desktop, Firefox faces mounting challenges from having to appeal to
distinct demographics [3][4] who have conflicting needs and wants, and having
to simultaneously compete and cooperate [5][6][7][8] with Google, an entity
that uses its position in controlling both the client and the server to
rapidly further its goals and advance the Web in a way that promotes their
interest [9][10][11][12][13].

[1] [http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-
projects/](http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/) [2]
[https://www.eff.org/mobile-devices](https://www.eff.org/mobile-devices) [3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13425956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13425956)
[4] [https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2013/08/firefox-user-types-in-
no...](https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2013/08/firefox-user-types-in-north-
america/) [5]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12338170#12338445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12338170#12338445)
[6]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12042767#12044962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12042767#12044962)
[7]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13390846#13392833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13390846#13392833)
[8]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12129691#12131403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12129691#12131403)
[9]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12296616#12299230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12296616#12299230)
[10]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12453646#12454524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12453646#12454524)
[11]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13383006#13386719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13383006#13386719)
[12]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12174503#12175561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12174503#12175561)
[13]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12863565#12867493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12863565#12867493)

------
kdamken
It's awfulllllllllll. Doing web dev work for it is a nightmare. There are
always weird issues that pop up for it that don't occur on other browsers.

~~~
pawelk
Firefox is my main development browser on personal laptop (Ubuntu) and Chrome
on the PC (Win10) at work.

When I develop (HTML, CSS, ES6+babel) on Chrome, then test in Firefox there
are some inconsistencies that require minor fixing. The same is true the other
way around: develop with Firefox, then some fixes are needed for Chrome. These
fixes are usually quite easy, make sense in retrospect and make thigs work in
the second browser without breaking the first one. What I find strange, after
years of hacking around IE bugs, is that everything usually just works in MS
Edge.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Just like Wikimedia they have been kidnapped by political activist (e.g. for a
free web etc.) I'm not saying this isn't important, but they confused this to
be their core mission and forgot where the money really is coming from. Go to
[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/) now and see
where the browser ranks on that page.

Political activism (free internet) is first.

"Introducing Our New Mozilla Identity." takes the second most screen estate.

Scrolling two pages down there is Firefox.

If it's like many companies, then the people who made these decisions and are
responsible for the sad state have already moved on.

(I'm currently a Firefox user and have been a user since the Netscape/Mosaic
days with some Chrome usage over the years)

~~~
kbrosnan
Mozilla is a non-profit. Mozilla has been publicly committed to an open and
free internet since 2007 when the Mozilla Manifesto was introduced. Here is
the earliest version captured by Archive.org
[https://web.archive.org/web/20080812000547/http://www.mozill...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080812000547/http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto)

There is a download button on the upper right corner of the page.

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
1\. The download button takes about a 1/50th of the screen estate on the page.

2\. In which way does focusing on Firefox not support an 'open and free
internet manifesto' or is at odds with such an manifesto?

------
Touche
I'm not sure it's true that Mozilla has rebounded. Only a few years ago it
used to be a neck and neck race between Chrome and Firefox to see how quickly
new browser features get developed.

Now it seems that Chrome has pulled far ahead, and Firefox is often in 3rd
place. I can't think of too many recent features that FF has been a leader on.
SW kinda, I guess, but that's it.

Often either Edge or Safari is also faster to adopt (Safari with web
components, for example), depending on the feature.

~~~
scholia
Chrome gets free advertising on the world's most valuable website where you
can't buy advertising for any price: the Google Search home page.

Google also spends tons of money paying companies to stealth-install Chrome
when users think they're installing something else from, for example, Adobe.

I'm not saying Chrome is a bad browser but it sure as heck ain't a level
playing field....

~~~
Touche
Very true, and it was just as true a few years ago when Firefox was able to
keep pace. So I think it's fair to say they are slipping.

~~~
scholia
Firefox was out four or five years before Chrome appeared. When it started, it
was competing against an aging IE6.

I don't think it has never kept pace with Chrome. Or if so, not for very long.
Even if the products had been equally good, which they weren't, Google just
has far more market power.

~~~
Touche
It kept pace with Chrome up until a few years ago, probably around the time
that Eich left. Not saying that's causal, I don't know if it is.

------
imaginenore
I know why I personally stopped using FF, and switched to Chrome.

Because FF has been ridiculously slow compared to Chrome.

Because FF crashed when one tab crashed.

Because I didn't care about higher RAM usage - RAM is cheap.

Because I used so many Google services, and Chrome is (obviously) better
integrated.

Because Google's update cycle has been faster.

So even if FF fixed all these issues (it didn't), the only argument that
remains is privacy. And I don't care. I just don't give out the information
that I want private.

------
taf2
The value of a diverse browser rendering engine market only existed when we
had dominate closed source browser IE6. Those days are behind us. Focusing on
a common shared browser platform would benefit the internet and every business
on the web platform.

Google is an excellent leader in this space because their revenue and expense
is directly tied to the quality of the browser platform. Firefox, as well as
Microsoft would help everyone if we all got behind a single open source
browser engine. I believe blink is the best and the architecture underlying
Chrome is the best. Opera has shown you can innovate on the browser UI while
still providing excellent content rendering.

I get there is value in competition, I just don't see a lot of value in
creating competing engines. Even within Mozilla they are innovating on the
rendering engine and that is great news - why shouldn't Google and MS consider
this engine as the next engine to power the web... I believe Mozilla's
resources would be better served if they focused on UX as Opera has done. I
also believe the same is true of Microsoft. Why compete on browser engines
when we can make the same engine better. It's in Google interest as well as
many others. It's the same model that works for Linux and why so many
companies contribute to Linux is to improve their own capabilities and bottom
lines.

(awaiting the downvotes - but would love to have a discussion ;))

