
Firefox has lots of room to improve if it wants to beat Chrome - adele11
https://www.snazz.xyz/programming/2019/08/30/firefox.html
======
NullInvictus
I haven't really met anyone who is particularly bothered by these issues. They
certainly should be addressed to some degree, but the issues I find people are
bothered about in Firefox are something that Mozilla has very little control
over: Bugs in sites.

As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when I
boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest. It's pretty
easy to figure out what happened: The developer wrote his code, tested it on
chrome alone, and then called it a day. No one booted it up in another browser
and even smoke-tested to see if basic use-cases work as intended.

If developers are genuinely concerned with browser diversity and not handing
the Web over to Google and whatever they deem to be the next IE6, it starts
with having a test plan for other browsers. Testing on only one platform is
tantamount to having official support for one platform because you only
guarantee your product to work on that platform in so many words. Officially
supporting one platform is pressuring your users into a vendor-lock.

They - even the tech savvy ones - can't even begin to make vendor choices when
the products they use accidentally lock them out left and right.

~~~
feanaro
> As a full-time firefox user, I commonly find that sites have bugs, and when
> I boot it up in Chrome just to check my hunch, they don't manifest.

Also a full-time Firefox user. This is fascinating because I quite literally
cannot remember a website for which I had to switch browser so it would start
working.

What kind of websites are these? Have you noticed any pattern about them?
Perhaps it's a certain type of site that I usually avoid.

~~~
JeanMarcS
Maybe it’s the combination with ad blockers, but there are a lot of times I
get stucked in the payment part.

And then I have to redo all the ordering process on Chromium.

It for long failed on Visa 3D secure (so not website dependant) until I found
why with Badger blocking it.

But often when the payment system is included in the website it fails (and
that’s really annoying)

~~~
ryacko
Blocking fingerprinting can cause anti-fraud to think you’re a bot.

As it turns out in recent news, credit card companies sell weakly anonymized
information about cardholder purchases so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
brianpgordon
> While I understand that they have to make money somehow

I don't. I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees and over
_500 million_ dollars in annual revenue. With that kind of money, Firefox
should be absolutely dominating the browser space. They shouldn't be making
Firefox worse with advertising in order to subsidize their flailing around
trying to find traction in mobile or VR.

It actually reminds me of Wikipedia, especially with the donation links
littered throughout the experience. They're both growing out of control,
spending mountains of cash in order to justify spending previous mountains of
cash on ventures that nobody asked for or wanted. The whole point of Mozilla
is supposed to be Firefox and Thunderbird.

~~~
klingonopera
Those 500 million are easily eclipsed if you compare it to what Google's
revenue is...

EDIT: It was 136 _billion_ in 2018:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-
gl...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-global-
revenue/)

~~~
manojlds
And Google builds only a browser? What's the budget of the Google Chrome team?

~~~
AsyncAwait
Mozilla doesn't build only a browser either and as a Rust user, am glad they
don't.

~~~
blub
The Rust community prides itself on being independent from Mozilla, when their
relationship is pointed out, but now Rust is suddenly a major beneficiary of
those 500 million?

They do build only a browser.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> The Rust community prides itself on being independent from Mozilla, when
> their relationship is pointed out

In terms of decision making, Rust is definitely a community oriented project,
but there's not denying reality and at present practically all of Rust core
devs who work on it full-time are paid by Mozilla.

Were Mozilla to pull out support, development would likely continue, but at a
much, much reduced pace.

> a major beneficiary of those 500 million

I agree with you that the vast majority of it is not going to Rust and I do
wish they'd increase the share of their revenue that goes to engineering from
45% to something closer to 85%.

------
joelthelion
> This raises some questions: why is Firefox usage going down, and what does
> Mozilla need to do to bring it back up?

> How does an average user get started with Firefox?

This misses the elephant in the room : the main reason Chrome is eating other
browsers is that Google is putting its advertising might behind it. You know
that little "want a better browser" pop-up displayed on Google's search
engine? That's an absolute killer for other browsers.

~~~
LoSboccacc
not entirely true. firefox has solved a lot of startup and other performance
issues, but the core rendering engine still lags when confronted with heavy
loads, just a scrollable div of a couple dozen large images is enough to make
it stutter seconds at time while they load and render, sure it's partly a
developer issue for not using thumbnail in the listing, but chrome shows them
all with zero lag.

stating that the only reason chrome is ahead is because advertising is
disingenuous: firefox only started catching up with them only in the last
three-four years performance wise and the gap it's still there.

~~~
Dragory
_just a scrollable div of a couple dozen large images is enough to make it
stutter seconds at time while they load and render_

I might be wrong, but with WebRender, isn't scrolling now done asynchronously
so it doesn't stutter while things are loading? I certainly haven't
experienced any scroll stutter since I turned it on.

~~~
majewsky
WebRender is not really used by Firefox yet. They're currently rolling it out
to some very narrow sets of end users.

------
userbinator
_It’s the non-technical users, who are convinced by their technical relatives
to install it, who need to be convinced._

Ironically, whenever I've complained about those irritating first-run
experiences (not necessarily for Firefox, but for other software), the
response has always been "that's for the non-technical users". Remember that
these users are accustomed to/desensitised to being bombarded with adverts and
such, so perhaps it's not as irritating to them as it is for us. Ideally, I
think the first-run experience for a browser should be to open a blank page
with the address bar focused and ready for you to type a URL into; but maybe
average users are so used to that bombardment of attention and mollycoddling
that it would look "broken" to them.

I'm not sure if those users care much about privacy either, which seems to
leave the only other reasons to use Firefox being more control/customisation
(which is itself slowly disappearing...) and "not controlled by an advertising
company", the latter a not-so-compelling argument for the non-technical user.

Firefox is in an unfortunate position, especially as it tries to become more
Chrome-like; I don't think that's going to make it gain more users at all, and
on the other hand only serves to anger its already-small userbase and threaten
to drive them away.

My ideal browser is one that doesn't require any installation, is a single
tiny executable that starts instantly (to a blank page, as mentioned above),
and is both fast and low on memory usage. I wonder if that "instantness" or
ease of using it for the first time might appeal to non-technical users.

~~~
ferzul
Away to what? Where can an upset long time Firefox user go? hardly to Chrome
or Edge.

There's nowhere better; Firefox may not be optimum, but if you don't want
rebranded Google crap, you have basically no choice.

Maybe there's Safari, Epiphany, Konqueror: but only one of these is serious
and it requires you to be willing to buy a Mac - which is clearly an easier
choice than Google for an anti-Googling estranged Firefox user - but still not
a likely choice if the reason you're leaving Firefox is they took away your
options.

Epiphany took away all its options years ago, and now it's main purpose is to
be replaced with Firefox.

I've barely used Konqi, but it doesn't seem like it's any more viable than
Epiphany. It looks like it fell out of a 1990s office suite.

(Web browsers can be as light on memory as they want, but since they're not
programs but rather runtimes for a specific programming language, they're
always going to put a huge demand on your memory. Unless you change the JS
programming model, they will be your biggest app.)

~~~
kkarakk
you haven't dived into the rabbithole of firefox forks yet huh. every hardcore
firefox user ends up with a litany of these options on hand coz they do one
thing or the other well.

------
kace91
Everyone's talking about what Firefox should do to beat chrome, and meanwhile
here I am still suffering the bug that makes it unusable for many MacBooks
with retina screens set to "more space".

Start Firefox and fans are blaring in seconds, hundreds of reports, years of
waiting and no solution... Maybe making it usable in one of the most common
devices for devs would be a start, I've got a full building of coworkers here
waiting for a fix to try to come back.

~~~
Medicalidiot
Firefox is a dumpster fire on Mac. No pinch to zoom? Whatever. Scrolling
issues? Whatever. Lighting up my CPU to the point it's noticeably warm on
idle? Not cool. Having 60% of the battery life as Chrome and 50% of Safari?
Unacceptable.

Simply idling Firefox on my Mac would use almost the same amount of battery as
actively browsing Safari. I love Firefox on my home Linux desktop, but that's
as far as my love goes at the moment.

~~~
pcwalton
Fixes are starting to land for the power consumption issues.
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522)

~~~
Medicalidiot
I saw that earlier, I'm hoping this resolves my issues, but we'll see.

------
klingonopera
I agree on most points, except for the part of changing the default search
engine from Google. I do support not using Google, but I think that would
definitely be too much change for a non-technical user to take in one go.

If the user thinks and feels "This is just like Chrome" on the surface, that's
actually good, people hate changing habits (especially if they wouldn't
understand why).

Most of the time, we're asking our non-technical relatives and friends to make
the change for us technical users, to simply reduce the market share Chrome
has, so that Google can't forcefully (and silently) change the web to their
suiting.

------
MiroF
The author clearly started with the point they wanted to prove and then went
searching for the evidence.

Sitting each step of the browsing process into things like "They open it.
Whoa! That’s a lot of stuff in my face." and then giving a much thriftier
summary of the Chrome process doesn't automatically show that Chrome is
simpler to get started with

------
apostacy
I don't want Firefox to "beat" Chrome, that is a terrible idea that is killing
Firefox.

Even if Firefox was superior in every way, Google has more leverage, and will
always be able to shift the goalposts to stay ahead of their competition. And
they will also be able to get the vast majority of users who don't know what
Chrome is and just want to go on Facebook.

But what exactly does beating Google at their own game even accomplish? An ego
boost for Mozilla? Focus on making a better browser!

Imagine if it were 2005, and Mozilla was like: Firebird needs to beat IE6!
Only by out Microsofting Microsoft can we "win".

We need to abandon the features that make us unique and attractive to the
smartest people, and focus on Windows support. We need to have better support
for Microsoft's proprietary plugin architecture!

Better Windows Media Player DRM integration!

Javascript should be able to eject the cd tray!

Has anyone considered that Chrome actually has a lot of problems, and maybe
Firefox should be the antidote to those problems? Containers are actually the
first innovative anti-Chrome thing Firefox has done in a long time.

Firefox initially had success because of their integrated popup blocker and
empowering the user to actually control what plugins were added to their
browser. Awhile later, rogue plugins and browser bars were becoming an
epidemic, and Firefox was there, diligently refined, and ready for IE users.

And Firefox will probably still continue to lose users, but so what?? I think
if they seriously focus on being anti-chrome, they will in the long term win
users back. (not that number of users should be a goal itself)

So, Mozilla should shut off the damn analytics, fire the UX and marketing
people, and then roll up their sleeves and make something cool. Success will
follow if they do a good job.

~~~
aembleton
Agreed, and focusing upon the telematics is not a good idea when many Firefox
users might be switching them off.

------
tyingq
I feel there's an opening for mobile experience on Android. Chrome is pretty
terrible in that space. No extensions, no reader mode, no eacape from AMP,
etc.

~~~
superasn
I think kiwi browser(1) is great in this regard. It supports almost all the
chrome extensions including ublock, reader mode, etc.

It also has a mode which automatically redirects to non-AMP version of site
automatically.

(1)
[https://www.google.com/search?q=kiwi+browser+android](https://www.google.com/search?q=kiwi+browser+android)

~~~
zamadatix
I can't bring myself to trust this browser. There is a repo out there but it's
not the whole browser and it's extremely out of date compared to the app. Free
things based on open source code that aren't open source themselves give me
the heebie jeebies without a clear reason why.

Also the browser itself tends to be a version or two behind which isn't
particularly comforting either.

------
Tistron
Two things has me almost dropping firefox and going over to chrome:

\- It still doesn't remember my credit card details, and is generally worse at
filling out forms.

\- On mobile, I regularly experience that the cookie jar gets broken somehow
and all my logins are broken which will work again by closing the browser down
and starting it again.

The only think keeping me on Fx is a sense of ethics, the same reason I don't
eat meat even though I love it.

~~~
idoubtit
> The only think keeping me on Fx is a sense of ethics

So do I. At least I still use Firefox as my secondary browser.

My own main recriminations:

\- The download manager is awful. I sometimes download several times a file
because I didn't see it started. And I could describe half a dozen bugs with
it. For example, under some conditions, the size of a download is replaced by
the sum of the previously downloaded files (4GB/4.1GB instead of 0/100MB + 4GB
old files).

\- about:config is broken. When I open the settings for power users in
Chromium, each option has a short description. With Firefox, the documentation
is not linked to the setting, it's in a wiki or blog posts.

\- I need an extension to confirm on quit. I sometimes press Ctrl-q when I
intended Ctrl-w. The config browser.showQuitWarning and browser.warnOnQuit
have no effect. I had to read FF's source code to understand it was
intentional: the code had evolved (IMHO, in a bad way), the doc had not.

\- Local extensions are removed when FF stops. I heard that this is not the
case with "developer FF", but I don't want to drop the OS packaging of ESR FF.
And that feature is already in Chromium based browsers. I don't even know what
devFF is, though I've heard it's based on a FF beta branch.

These are mostly not problems for the main target of FF. My parents main
problem were that an update once replaced their custom starting page (tailor
made) with the default one (recently visited sites + ads). They also had a few
UI hard times, but these were either fixed by FF (adding a link to the
starting page was impossible without reading a doc) or my parents got used to
them.

~~~
Vinnl
> \- I need an extension to confirm on quit. I sometimes press Ctrl-q when I
> intended Ctrl-w. The config browser.showQuitWarning and browser.warnOnQuit
> have no effect. I had to read FF's source code to understand it was
> intentional: the code had evolved (IMHO, in a bad way), the doc had not.

That's odd; I'm running stable Firefox, and the _second_ option in my
Preferences is "Warn you when quitting the browser" \- and it does what it
says, for me, without an extension.

------
bad_user
Firefox has plenty of room for improvement, but this article doesn't touch on
it.

1\. People don't install their own browser, unless they're on a new computer
and want the browser they've always used — people are conservative when making
technological choices and when they switch browsers, it's often because they
get a friend to install it for them, or they buy a new computer, or install
some app that tricks them into also installing a new browser.

How do you think Chrome became so popular anyway?

2\. The Pocket integration has been good; there was always the issue that it's
a third party proprietary service, however AFAIK it has been bought by Mozilla
and I personally like it a lot — I do wish to see its source code soon, AFAIK
it's not open source yet, but it's much more polished than open source
alternatives (e.g. wallabag).

3\. I've never had issues with Firefox's fonts. Maybe on Linux you have, but
font problems on Linux are to be expected.

4\. Google has the best search engine, especially for local searches. People
want Google, they'll switch to Google anyway — and Mozilla might as well get a
piece of the action.

Saying this as a DuckDuckGo user ... I would never advise my non-technical
friends to use anything else but Google. Mozilla tried switching to
Yahoo/Yandex/etc and failed. I'm pretty sure that they know what they are
doing and random bloggers on the Internet with opinions don't.

Also let's be frank — Google is a big target. When you switch targeted
advertising off, when you switch your app history off in your Google profile,
I'm pretty sure that Google does indeed turn those off. Otherwise they risk
huge fines, especially now post GDPR. I trust smaller companies less than I
trust Google. I trust technology more of course, I trust open source, I trust
encryption, but when we are talking of companies, I'd rather have a big
target, than a smaller one.

Again, saying this as a DDG user — switching off Google for DuckDuckGo due to
privacy issues is a stupid thing to do ;-) And it's not the same thing as with
a Chrome to Firefox switch, because privacy claims for this one can be
verified, instead of being something that's basically non-falsifiable for
consumers.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> I've never had issues with Firefox's fonts. Maybe on Linux you have, but
> font problems on Linux are to be expected.

Not really. On Linux for a decade, fonts have been fine. It's just some
distros perhaps don't ship with the best defaults.

~~~
aibara
I've used Firefox with Ubuntu for over a decade and have never had any issues
with the fonts the OP mentions. Maybe it's a problem with some other distros,
but I thought Firefox followed your system's settings regardless.

Chromium, on the other hand, has never fully obeyed the default font settings.
Even messing with the flags there are plenty of times the font hinting would
be different on certain sites than what I've set it too (e.g. grayscale
instead of RGB). Never got into troubleshooting it too much though, since I
don't use it as my default.

------
flas9sd
Last week, a Brave browser developer documented the first-time startup phase
of the competition through the eyes of a packet analyzer in a "What
Happens.."-Series. Of the ones inspected, "Firefox [was] one of the most
active upon installation." and ".. the only one to immediately collect
telemetry data too"[^1].

Reading through his findings in detail and others responses - and what is read
in this article I do not find much issue in the aggregate: bringing attention
to nitpicks through bugtrackers, an organisation has the opportunity to make a
concerted housekeeping effort to streamline the onboarding again. It is
customary for websites and software to accumulate cruft over time from
different internal teams with different goals. So it is best to turn to the
bugtrackers, gently raising awareness with descriptive and good issue tickets.

[1]:
[https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...](https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480)

------
radicalbyte
It's the best mobile browser bar none thanks to the uBlock / uMatrix. It makes
the web usable again.

~~~
techntoke
But the new Firefox for Android will not support extensions.

~~~
dblohm7
The story for extensions in Fenix has not been finalized yet.

~~~
the_duke
They'd better get their act together.

I bet a sizable fraction of their mobile user base only went with Firefox for
addon support.

I'd (grudgingly) move to one of the Chromium-derived alternatives that still
give me uBlock and uMatrix.

------
metta2uall
Unfortunately for my application (which includes helping doctors create
medical care plans) Firefox still does not support SpeechRecognition. This is
despite Mozilla's DeepSpeech project on GitHub having had its first public
commit in Nov 2016 (judging by its README file). As a result we don't have
much choice but to recommend Chrome for the best experience.

------
askmike
> What privacy has the average Joe user gained by switching to Firefox? None.
> They’re still using Google Search and (most likely) other Google products.

I don't agree with this part. Though the bigger point is that not using Google
as a default engine is very user hostile - as everyone is using Google. Of
course this isn't ideal from a privacy perspective. But setting it to
something else will only frustrate most common users. When I think Microsoft
Edge I think Bing - and I don't like Bing.

~~~
pacavaca
Duckduckgo is fine for like 80-85% of searches I do, but there are areas where
Google is unbeatable (unbeaten?) yet

~~~
askmike
It's not for everyone I talk to he doesn't really value privacy that much (but
still dislikes Chrome for some reason).

------
sandGorgon
Actually what Firefox needs to be doing is doing more community devrel.

It's beyond ridiculous that Google's biggest rival Microsoft has a service
called Skype (that competes with Google's Hangouts) and Skype Web _only_ works
on Chrome.

Seriously ? This is a massive fail for the Firefox devrel team if you can't
get Microsoft on your side. Same case exists with many products.

This is pretty much the only reason I switch back to Chrome. It's far too
inconvenient not to.

------
siddiqnx
I'm a Firefox user. But recently, thinking about switching to Chrome. It's
because some website don't work as they are supposed to on Firefox (Ex. Google
analytics, Codesandbox etc.). And as the number of add-ons increases, the
animations and transitions get increasingly janky and slow.

In Firefox mobile it's worse – complex (but sometimes simple) animations
stutter. I have tested it using some other 4 or 5 popular ones available,
including Chrome – they all produced smooth results. So, Firefox is below
average in terms of animation performance. I hope they improve it.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> thinking about switching to Chrome. It's because some website don't work as
> they are supposed to on Firefox (Ex. Google analytics, Codesandbox etc.).

At least on Google's part, that's likely intentional, switching is sending
them a signal that being an abusive bully works.

------
giancarlostoro
I still wish FirefoxOS had pivoted on to Netbooks. As much as I appreciate the
tech behind a Chromebook I rather buy a Macbook air than be another Chrome
browser footprint.

I would love a Quantumbook (or whatever) to be a thing. It would make for a
nice change especially if they build a Linux Distro that is very secure much
like ChromeOS is (rogue Chrome plugins aside).

~~~
ferzul
I've never seen a Chromebook, not from my friends not in a shop when I'm
trying to buy something. I guess they're not in the market here - lots of
things aren't since it's a physically very large, medium sized country a long
way from the major markets.

Who has them? are they somehow useful?

~~~
fooker
I bought one for my parents two years ago, zero 'tech support' calls since.

------
TimTheTinker
I agree with the author’s criticisms of Firefox. Maybe the new MS Edge is
better positioned to take over where Chrome is leaving off.

But I will say - I’ve been using Firefox as my daily driver for about 2 years,
and I have to say I’m very happy... though I still use Chrome for the dev
tools (but planning to switch to Edge as soon as their production release for
macOS is out).

Safari might be my next stop for a daily driver browser. I hear Apple’s doing
an incredible job with power management and security.

~~~
hairui
I hear this dev tools argument occasionally, but I don't really get it. The
Firefox dev tools seem just as good to me. What am I missing?

~~~
TimTheTinker
Oh man, where do I begin?

\- workspaces. This allows updating live code (JS, CSS, and languages that
compile to them) without refreshing. Also allows editing and saving source
files in place from DevTools, including CSS changes in the element inspector.
It effectively turns DevTools into its own IDE. You can open, edit, and save
any file from the workspace, regardless of whether it’s been requested/loaded
by the web app.

\- breakpoints on much more than just a particular line of JS. Set JS
breakpoints on particular DOM and page events (including pre-navigation),
XHR/fetch requests with a matching URL, and other exotic things. Find out
where in the code a particular action is originating.

\- hover info during debugging: lots of extended info available, like which JS
file this function is defined in, or direct access to variables in the lexical
scope(s) of a function

\- stack traces that span async invocation boundaries, even fetch/XHR call to
response

I’m sure there are others, but those are the big ones for me.

~~~
com2kid
I debug in chrome daily and I didn't know it could do any of that.

I do however know that when working with my SPA compiled with webpack that the
chrome debugger will try to open the giant chunk.js file and freeze chrome
until I close the debugger and that everytime after the source tab is opened
it'll freeze. Only fix is to open the debugger to another tab and then
control-p to open another file.

Rather silly annoyance.

Source being reloaded on change is so-so reliable. Sometimes I have to close
the debugger and reopen, sometimes refresh, and sometimes chrome thinks 2+
filed with the same name exist and starts setting breakpoints in the wrong
version and nothing gets hit.

------
telaelit
I switched to Firefox from Chrome a few months ago, and I love it so far.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I think Firefox is great ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
auslander
> While I understand that they have to make money somehow

Put a paid Firefox app in Mac, iOS and Windows app stores. Make it clean from
integrations and pre-configured for privacy, like no 3rd party cookies, uBlock
Origin installed and so on. I'd buy.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Try IceCat. It's a GNU-approved Firefox clone (tracking Firefox codebase
continuously), clean from integrations and pre-configured for privacy. It's
also free, in both senses!

~~~
auslander
Thanks! But IceCat is on 60.7 while FF is 68.0 ?

~~~
noisem4ker
It tracks the Extended Support Release (ESR) branch of Firefox. That means it
gets new features once a year and then only bugfixes after that. ESR 60 is
last year's, work is probably ongoing to rebase IceCat on ESR 68 which came
out last July.

------
thayne
My biggest complaint with firefox is that the devtools experience still lags
behind chrome.

~~~
philliphaydon
Have you actually tried the dev tools in the last year? I can only use chrome
for web socket support and that’s coming to ff dev tools sooooon.

~~~
thayne
Yes, i primarily use ff dev tools. And it has greatly improved in the last
couple of years. But there are still some shortcomings. For example websocket
frame debugging is just barely on nightly. Load time for a web app with
thousands of unminified sources with devtools open is terrible. Plus a bunch
of small annoyances. It's not so bad i won't use it. But it does make me wish
firefox had the same resources for devtools that google does.

------
Avamander
Having better Linux support than Chrome does would be a nice first step.
Better HW accel. support, better integration with DE's, better themeing
support.

------
jancsika
This isn't a problem with FF. It's a problem with the author's pitch.

"You want to be using Firefox for the foreseeable future" is plenty. If
they're technical tell them FF plus Ublock Origin. If not, install FF plus
Ublock Origin for them.

~~~
neop1x
Firefox addons are awesome! Highly-configurable about:config is awesome!
Developer tools are bit behing Chrome, true... But Firefox is what saves us
from Google monopoly and I am really glad it exists. Thanks to all FF devs! ️

------
privethedge
Can I say please that it's very annoying that Chrome (and everything Blink
based) doesn't let you to open a file in an application you can choose and see
the size of the file before downloading it?

[https://www.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/firefox-
do...](https://www.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/firefox-download-
dialog.png)

------
woranl
If Firefox wants to beat Chrome, it has to lead on the technical front and
focus on the developer communities. Developers won't wait for you to implement
a feature (i.e. Filesystem API, custom scrollbar styling, etc...). Developers
won't care about your political stand. When a critical feature already existed
in Chrome, they will simply move on without you; while at the same time,
bringing their users with them.

------
cronix
FF needs a google sandbox like the facebook one. I'm tired of sites knowing
who I am, showing my picture and name and asking if I want to sign in with my
google profile, when I get to their site that I've never been to before. I
just hit the back button and don't browse those sites, but it's really
annoying google tracking you everywhere and in your face about it.

------
pacavaca
It has to freaking stop crashing first. And stop freezing my computer with
just 20 tabs open (for 32gb of ram). And complete their password manager. And
implement recent standards to make apps work. And... Yeah, I'm still using it
instead of Chrome just because I want to depend less on Google, but dammit
Chrome is better.

~~~
duncanawoods
I can't recall it ever crashing in the past year and I use it all day on
multiple computers including nix, macos and windows.

~~~
pacavaca
I find it crashed every other morning when I wake up my mac

~~~
yoasif_
Probably this bug -
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1201401](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1201401)

I never saw it in High Sierra, but after upgrading to Mojave last week, I see
it once in a while after resuming from sleep.

------
boomboomsubban
>This seems like an extremely difficult but necessary change, considering how
much of their income comes from Google.

In the statement listed, at most ~28% came from Google ad Yahoo paid them $375
million that year. I realize things have since changed, but they aren't as
hopelessly tied to Google as people make them out to be.

------
SimeVidas
> What privacy has the average Joe user gained by switching to Firefox? None.

Firefox blocks trackers by default now.

------
agumonkey
Sounds like an exercise in pedagogy.. a billion full spectrum users exercise.

I agreed that chrome won me because it was at extreme lean points.

\- binary setup to download was 600kB, a smart trick \- UI .. was naked and to
the point, yet it did show some stuff if you needed it (the tiny status bar
that would pop right or left depending on context)

Personally, Firefox only issue is UI lag. Chrome is still ahead and it
matters. But not for the average (non millenial) user.

Most people today, sadly, are on internet because they have to[0]. Taxes,
utilities.. every service is now on internet, and these people are mostly
urged to be able to be able to interact with these in the simplest manners.

The browser is just one more hurdle between them and these.

[0] remember when internet used to be a fun distraction or a gateway to
learning ?..

------
fapjacks
Except... Chrome is a non-starter because it fails on the one axis I care
about as a user -- along many many other users -- which is the axis upon which
Google has every intention of enforcing filter rule limitations in order to
neuter adblock extensions like uBlock Origin, so they can more easily force
users to endure advertising. Whether or not people vehemently complain to
Google will have zero bearing on Google pushing these changes into production.

We are all frogs in boiling water, so to speak. Consider if the you of 2005
would have used Chrome (or Firefox!) knowing about things like WebRTC leaks or
"extension signing" walled gardens or binary blobs with microphone access or
injection of executable to promote TV shows.

------
Razengan
On macOS, I've never used Chrome unless I needed to use some specific addon.
Safari just works better, especially if you also have an iPhone/iPad, and
takes fewer system resources.

Firefox just has to provide the strengths of Safari on Windows and that would
be good enough.

------
techsin101
Ff should just mimic chrome down to last detail but be open source and pro
privacy. Guarantee all features that chrome will have as soon as they will and
faster. Mozilla has shown they don't know UI, probably artifact of user base
and developers being heavy Linux users which is no where near other two os.
Linux has lot of configuration, good, but too many steps / tedious. Mozilla
should have developed mobile os by now as well. They should have built
fuschia.

Pro tip for Mozilla stop focusing on Linux users.

Mozilla could capitalize on its reputation and offer cloud storage and partner
with duck duck.

------
ilrwbwrkhv
The biggest problem for me is, I like to learn by watching videos at 3x
speeds. Chrome's audio pitch correction works great whereas Firefox's pitch
correction makes the audio unintelligible.

~~~
marcani
There is a bug report for this:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1383363](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1383363)

------
ipozgaj
Manifest V3 and killing web.request API were the reasons that finally
convinced me to go back to Firefox. Almost a month later, I didn’t find a
single thing that would make me go back to Chrome.

My main complaint about fresh Firefox installations is that it takes a lot of
time to fine tune everything. Every single time I have spend hours changing
settings in about:config, from disabling telemetry, Pocket, changing
networking/DNS settings, pipelining etc. Vanilla installation is just not well
optimized.

~~~
muizelaar
Do the changes to pipelining settings to have a noticeable effect?

~~~
ipozgaj
Yes, a small but measurable improvement. The biggest perf bump you can get is
probably enabling various prefetching, but most of time you are doing a
performance/privacy tradeoff (e.g. enabling DNS prefetching)

------
avinassh
For me, I have found Firefox to drain my laptop's battery more (Macbook Pro,
2017) compared to Chrome (and Safari). Once it changes, I would gladly go back
to using Firefox.

~~~
fiblye
Firefox has been hilariously bad for Macs for as long as I can remember.

I refused to touch for over 15 years because it was incredibly slow each time
I tried. Now that I'm trying to get out of Google's sphere of influence, I'm
kind of forced back into it (Safari just doesn't feel right to me). Speed
seems much better than it used to be and I can't really tell any difference
between it and Chrome. Memory usage is an absolute disaster though. There are
times where I only have 4 tabs of HN open and Firefox will be consuming over 9
GB of memory.

Right now I'm sitting at 3.6 GB used for just a couple tabs of programming
documentation. Madness.

~~~
novaRom
This is probably OSX issue, my FF works great on Ubuntu. I wish more users
will install Linux on their Macs, it is eons better than OSX Toy.

~~~
CDSlice
Well, since Chrome and Safari both don't have this issue I doubt it is
something intrinsic to MacOS itself.

Also, how is MacOS a toy? It's literally a certified Unix system.

~~~
novaRom
MacOS is complete junk. If you want to get software security, hardware, and
system stability problems then good luck. Latest MBP and Airs are total crap.
Just go to nearest Apple Store and you can even see how it reboots randomly;
or create a text file and chances are you will see different problems as you
type.

------
paulcarroty
Does Firefox really want to beat Chrome? Netmarketshare shows "Firefox -
9.28%, IE - 8.29%" on desktop/laptops, it's not the position to win the race.

Also, Firefox sends analytics/telemetry to Google -
[https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...](https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480)

Very strange decision for competing products, don't you?

~~~
dralley
Mozilla spent a year negotiating a contract with Google that prevents them
from ever viewing or using the analytics data.

------
jokoon
I wish firefox would give money to people who find security flaws in firefox.

I've heard that firefox is not very secure.

Other than that, I've switched back to firefox a looooong time ago.

~~~
ben-schaaf
Mozilla have a bug bounty program: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/security/bug-bounty/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/bug-bounty/)

------
amelius
If they just block all ads (which burn performance), that's already a big
improvement over Chrome, and probably sufficient to make people switch
browsers.

------
brushfoot
> Mozilla needs to [...] move away from Google as their default search engine

I hope they consider Startpage if so. That might be an easier switch for non-
technical users if they explain it's still Google under the hood, but without
the privacy concerns.

[https://www.startpage.com/](https://www.startpage.com/)

------
akulbe
I would _much_ rather use Firefox full time, but many sites (like youtube.com,
for example) just don't render well/speedily/at all on FF.

Open Chrome and everything is fine. I get TFA said some devs don't write/test
for anything but Chrome... but you _have_ to keep Chrome around for some
things.

So much for an open web. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
shrimp_emoji
>you _have_ to keep Chrome around for some things.

You don't though!

I agree; YouTube (and most everything else) is WAY faster on Chrome than on
Firefox. But, on Firefox, I can block JS and soundly defeat YouTube ads.
Trading that for whatever interval of page load time would feel gross to me.

------
modzu
heres a better new tab page for firefox -- yet another speed dial:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/yet-
another-s...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/yet-another-
speed-dial/)

(im the author. and its open source of course!)

------
_gtux
This could be a little off topic here. I would like to contribute to Firefox
but I have no idea where to start with. I dabble with C and x86 assembly. Can
anyone suggest where I should get started?

I have barely contributed to any open source projects except for a few minor
bug fixes.

~~~
heycam
On [https://codetribute.mozilla.org/](https://codetribute.mozilla.org/) you
can find mentored Mozilla project bugs to work on (not just Firefox) indexed
by language.

------
ryan-allen
Since the Manifest v3 debacle, I grudgingly switched to Firefox, and... I
reckon it's really great.

It's fast, it's developer tools are good, after a few customisations I was
very happy.

After that small adjustment I'm right at home. I'm using Developer Edition.

------
duncanawoods
Well, I love Firefox! It's definitely a better browsing experience for me e.g.
most-recently-used alt-tab order, vertical tab extensions, containers and deep
configuration with about:config. Stability is great and my only performance
problems are on Google sites.

The things I would like:

\- default to private mode

\- store bookmarks with choice of container - really weakens the feature when
I can't e.g. bookmark two different gmail accounts

\- built-in vertical tabs - extensions just can't achieve perfect UX e.g.
can't tear out tabs to move to different windows, poor use of space due to
side-panel header, keyboard shortcuts etc.

\- Firefox IOS - lots of rough edges e.g. like always trying to autocomplete
my urls to the worst possible sites that I never willingly visit e.g.
outbrain, guice, oath etc. and no way to remove them

\- better debugger and dev tools - still not a patch on chrome dev tools sadly

\- become the better choice for Electron style apps (smaller, faster, easier)

\- become the better choice for headless testing

~~~
novaRom
Yes, default private mode is absolutely necessary! I always open links in 'New
private tab', while some of them like comments on HN in normal tabs because I
am logged in to HN.

~~~
gcthomas
If I right-click on my launcher icon I get the option to open Firefox in
Private Mode (KDE desktop).

If you want to always default to Private Mode, then set that in the Options.

[https://www.howtogeek.com/137466/how-to-always-start-any-
bro...](https://www.howtogeek.com/137466/how-to-always-start-any-browser-in-
private-browsing-mode/)

------
grobibi
Firefox will make text on some pages tremble and vibrate like jello. It’s
quite a sight.

------
nkkollaw
I am forced to used Firefox for an app, and the popup that prompts you to
update drives me crazy.

Chrome--among other things that make it clearly superior to any other browser
--gets updated in the background and without stopping your work.

------
duckonomy
I just wish they had a restore feature like chrome does. On firefox, once you
close gracefully, there doesn't seem to restore the whole previous session
without using an extension.

~~~
yoasif_
See [https://support.mozilla.org/kb/restore-previous-
session](https://support.mozilla.org/kb/restore-previous-session)

------
noomen
The reason why I stopped using Firefox and switched was their clear and
complete disregard of their users. I had enough during the recent addon
pocalypse. It was clear that they were just simply FORCING their users hands
to follow what THEY want. I started using Firefox BECAUSE of the freedom it
gave me to make my browser the way I want it, whether using addons or CSS
styles. But now, go to the addon page and make a search and most of the
results I find are themes!!!

Call it a conspiracy or whatever you like, but I hope all the money Firefox
leaders are getting from Google is not just to help them kill firefox for the
benefit of Google.

------
muststopmyths
I want to use Firefox more, but every other major update wipes out all my
containers so I have to start over. The biggest reason for me to use Firefox
is unreliable.

------
buboard
firefox could work to create network effects that would "lock" its users to
it, or at least make google unwillign to follow them. E.g. integrated sign-in
like they tried with Persona, or integrates cryptocurrency micropayments. It
doesn't have to be better to win, thats not how it works.

They could also take advantage of the flash deprecation in chrome to steal
some disgruntled users from chrome. Yeah its a competition

------
ianmobbs
Frankly, the usability is what killed my use of Firefox. No pinch-to-zoom
without installing an extension in 2019, really?

~~~
yoasif_
If you don't use extensions, you can set apz.allow_zooming to true.

There is an open bug with extension pop-ups, so it helps if you don't use
them:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1560770](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1560770)

------
meerita
> What privacy has the average Joe user gained by switching to Firefox? None.
> They’re still using Google Search and (most likely) other Google products.
> They’re being subjected to misleading ads on their new tab page. From their
> perspective, installing Firefox was a pointless hassle.

I use DuckDuckGo instead Google in Firefox. I'm a happy user. I will switch to
Safari as soon as I get a new iPhone and ditch my Xiaomi phone to gain more
level of privacy.

~~~
louiz
"The everage joe".

------
dfrankow
Firefox is way slower than chrome to just open a web page on my pixel 3a. Do
others not have this experience?

~~~
yoasif_
You may have a better experience with Firefox Preview:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fe...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix)

------
maehwasu
Nothing will change wrt usage of Google products unless/until Google starts
deplatforming users from Gmail-type services on the basis of their Google
searches or email content.

This is _not_ currently happening, but a) it wouldn't be super out-of-
character for what Google has become b) it's likely a necessary condition for
non-technical users to start caring about Google's threats to privacy.

------
brokencode
The author complains about Pocket, but I actually really like it. The quality
of articles is good, and it isn’t just full of clickbait like a lot of other
news feeds.

The browser does use your browsing history to decide which articles to show
you, but they claim that information does not leave your device. The browser
downloads the full list of articles onto your device and filters them there.

~~~
atombender
I never understood the opposition (at least on HN) to Mozilla's integration of
Pocket into Firefox. Pocket is a superb tool, and it's completely optional.

------
Iv
Firefox has a lot of room to suck more before I switch to a browser designed
to be an optimal tracker.

------
classics2
But our metrics show nobody is using any features except for the ones that are
identical to chrome.

------
aliveupstairs
If you are the author, increase your line height, I have to track the its
start to read the next.

------
johnmarcus
I don't think too many people actually care about all that. People stop using
Firefox because enough sites just plain don't work on it, and it lacks browser
extension parity. Fix the actual browser and users will stay. Continue being
too clever with the rendering engine, and people will continue to abandon it.

------
chousuke
I don't really get most of this stuff about Firefox vs. Chrome. I guess Chrome
might be slightly faster or something, but for me personally I don't have a
reason to switch. It's fast enough.

I originally went to Firefox because of Vimperator. There simply hasn't been a
compelling reason for me to switch away.

------
baby
For me the lack of good support for tree style tab is what made me left
firefox

~~~
wastholm
What? This sounds backwards to me. I use Firefox almost exclusively and Tree
Style Tab is one of the killer features for me. I tried it in Chrome once but
it ran in a separate window and was therefore basically unusable. Has this
changed recently?

------
nailer
I'm voting for Edge. Chromium, but with all the Google shit ripped out, a
massive privacy dashboard, responsive developers, popular rendering engine,
not ad supported. There's telemetry so Microsoft knotter if it works (which
you may not like and I get it) but that's it.

~~~
nailer
'know' not 'knotter'. Odd HN doesn't seem to agree, but:

Firefox relies on Google for revenue. Edge doesn't.

------
rocky1138
Mozilla should just buy DuckDuckGo.

~~~
pessimizer
I'd prefer they didn't, because I fear they'd just start making it
indistinguishable from google.com.

------
erlkonig
As something of power FF user, I do two key things in Firefox that used to
work perfectly, especially with a third thing from Session Manager.

* Multiple profiles simultaneously, one for normal browsing, another for authenticated sites I care about, etc.

* Lots of windows and tabs. My main FF usually had around ~20 windows (spread across a huge virtual desktop) and ~300 tabs.

* The amazing Session Manager addon, which would, when FF imploded, let me restart FF, choose which session to restore, and then do so, perfectly, even restoring windows to their correct positions in sections of the virtual screen several feet to the sides of my monitors.

Like I said, Firefox worked flawlessly for this, while Chrome was a flaming
disaster.

The decline in Firefox since has been like this:

1) Session Manager loses the ability to restore off-screen positions.

2) So I switched to using more topic-oriented FF profiles, so that if topic X
on virtual screen (2, 3) dies, I can just go restart it on the right virtual
screen, without having to move a dozen windows there. Annoying as hell, but
not fatal.

3) Firefox has the Great Addon Debacle - where many addons abruptly stop
working, including Session Manager.

4) The firefox team recognizes that something like SM is required, but the
result has far less time put into it, is buggy, forgets which URL went into
some of the tabs, can only restore the last session (so if you restart twice
without restoring, rank stupidity follows to restore the session you wanted),
and so on.

5) At some point, Firefox starts consuming a LOT more process slots (by
default), greatly increasing its ability to consume far, far more CPU time

6) This doesn't affect me a lot at first, since I've long saved process cycles
- and power - by suspending all Firefox processes when my screen locks. It's
worked perfectly since about a year after JavaScript become a thing (but...)

7) I discover that some aspect of FF, the new, sad, session management, and
contention between all the FF content procs now means that when FF awakens
after its nap when I unlock the screen, they now want to dump some 2 MB/s of
data into my hard drive. After a night of suspension, since FF doesn't realize
it was asleep, it apparently walks through every time point where it would
have saved and does it all at once. My home and work computers (both of which
are pretty meaty) are completely useless for up to 20 minutes after unlocking
the screen, as FF hammers the disk drive continuously, often made even worse
by FF's ongoing tendency to balloon up to 10 to 20 GiB in each content
process.

Obviously I've taken steps to find variables relating to how often it
checkpoints, and reduced the frequency. I've cut the number of content proc
process it runs, but the fundamental issue is:

For power users with lots of profile and windows/tabs, Firefox used to be The
Answer.

Chrome is horrible in the same situations Firefox used to excel in.

I don't want Firefox to become Chrome. Chrome is garbage for us. A browser
only suitable for a handful of tabs (i.e. < 100 or so), which will then eat
your CPU cores (depending on JS content)

The only thing I _wanted_ was for Firefox to be able to tell me WHICH TAB IS
EATING CPU TIME SO I CAN KILL THAT TAB.

Still doesn't do it.

Sigh.

(Arcana: I miss NeWS and "psps" / "pskill" which _did_ address this kind of
problem)

~~~
yoasif_
> The only thing I wanted was for Firefox to be able to tell me WHICH TAB IS
> EATING CPU TIME SO I CAN KILL THAT TAB.

about:performance may help you.

------
potench
You should come work on Startpage.com

------
dvduval
I hope you don't take offense but I feel it's hard on my eyes to read text on
a black background. I tried to read the article but it kind of hurt my eyes
and had to leave.

~~~
devadvance
Out of curiosity, is it this page in particular that was hard on the eyes, or
dark-theme pages in general?

The interesting part is that the body text appears to have a 5.71 contrast
ratio, which meets the WCAG 2.1 Level AA criterion [1] but not Level AAA. I
wonder if folks pursuing dark themes are making sure to give enough
consideration to contrast.

Oddly enough, this is actually one of the reasons I prefer Chrome Dev Tools.
They've been adding a lot of accessibility-focused features [2][3], and as it
relates to my question, it seems much easier get some of these essential
details from Chrome Dev Tools than Firefox.

[1] [https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#contrast-
minimum](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#contrast-minimum)

[2] [https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-
devtools/acce...](https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-
devtools/accessibility/reference)

[3]
[https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2019/01/devtools#i...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2019/01/devtools#inspect)

~~~
ferzul
I can't easily read dark theme apps. Basically if I start one, I have to
closely study the app till I find its options and choose the light theme.
(This was awful when I had to make a new install of the Gimp recently - it
used to be much more user friendly. I was about a minute away from searching
the internet for how to change the config file manually or - shock - asking a
friend.)

------
dzhiurgis
I feel they definitely need to revamp the UI. It’s old and ugly. Perhaps they
should separate into pro and amateur modes/builds...

