1. Firefox needs to stop with the UI changes.<p>2. Every time functionality works differently in Firefox, more companies drop Firefox support. At a prior job, we used datalist and FF seemingly implemented it differently than Chrome. At that point, we told the user that FF was no longer supported. If FF wants to win, they need to at least keep pace and not be a burden on developers.
I've gone the other direction.<p>Firefox was my main browser 13 years ago. I switched out of curiosity to Opera which was fun for a while. Around 2011, I jumped on the Chrome bandwagon, which switched to Chromium as Linux became my daily driver. This year when Chromium stopped syncing across devices[0] I thought I'd give Firefox another go.<p>I'm personally avoiding Brave like the plague mainly because it's chromium based, but also because I don't trust them, and when I've tried it out, I didn't care for all the crypto/BAT pushing.<p>Since switching back to Firefox, I've been a very happy user - and I'm surprised by all the backlash they've gotten this year (mainly, seemingly from dev communities like HN) for UI changes, performance, "being funded by google". None of these are issues for me - a relative power user - at all.<p>One huge advantage for me is the mobile app just feels miles ahead of competition. Now that phones IMO are oversized, it's so refreshing to have the option to put the address bar at the bottom, AND I can have uBlock and Dark Reader on mobile! Personally I'm a fan of the v89/90 UI changes - I think people have been over-reacting.<p>Even if I started to feel UI or performance issues, I still wouldn't switch back on account of Firefox not being chromium based. I don't trust Google. I'm trying to de-google and would encourage others to do the same.<p>Support competition! Whether it be cloud providers, web rendering engines. Sometimes this comes at a minor personal cost but it can be for the greater good. Think long term!<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/01/chromium-sync-google-api-removed" rel="nofollow">https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/01/chromium-sync-google-api...</a>
Firefox has been dead to me since they got rid of text-reflow. There's an issue about it on Bugzilla dating back 9 years, which has been completely ignored<p><a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=795552" rel="nofollow">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=795552</a><p>Quite simply, I won't use a browser on mobile that doesn't have text-reflow as; with a huge number of websites, a combination of my middle-aged eyesight and developers not designing for mobile, means that text is literally too small for me to read without pinching to enlarge it and I sure as hell ain't going to suffer the inconvenience of having to horizontally scroll back and forward because Firefox's developers are too stubborn to admit they made a mistake and add text-reflow back in.<p>And, since I want to be able to use the same browser across all my devices, so I can share bookmarks / history / etc. that also rules out Firefox on all my desktop machines too.
Since they positioned themselves against free speech and advocate certain ideologies, they have lost me forever. Good riddance.<p>I never worried about the performance of Firefox. It was good enough, and I miss some features like tags for bookmarks. But a betrayal of their original mission is unforgivable. Yes, other browsers belong to evil corporations, but at least they never claimed to be good to begin with.
Instead of firing Rust/Servo-People, the double down on finishing a technically superior browser would probably have done the same thing that Chrome did years ago: slick, lean, ultra fast -> technical folks would not only recommend it in their circles, but also install it on their parents/friends/... computer -> adoption wave.<p>But what do I know, it seems that "adding features and modernizing the UI" wins everytime in upper management.
I wouldnt worry, they seem to have a highly paid ceo<p>$1mil in 2015 <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/11/30/mozillas-money-latest-filings-include-a-few-surprises/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/11/30/mozilla...</a><p>$2.5mil in 2018, and over $3mil in 2020. Someone compensated this well surely knows what they are doing!!
This is extremely bad. I'm doing my part, and will be using FF on all my devices until it stops functioning.<p>Also, Google should probably be broken up, Android/Chrome should be moved to separate companies
It's losing because Firefox is now designers-driven product, not engineers-driven. Everything rots to the end when you give designers power over engineers.
I dropped it because they keep changing it.<p>Extension changes, Pocket integration, UI updates, even the bloody icon keeps getting updated. Just leave it alone for god sake.<p>On Chrome now which seems to change a lot less frequently (in a perceptible manner - I know they add a lot of stuff to Chrome every year, but for the most part its ignorable unlike FireFox changes)
My experience (Linux):
Firefox is slower than Chrome, especially on Linux.
Firefox consume less memory? I don't care, it still slower. It takes longer to startup and load the first web page.
Firefox not supports touch scroll out-of-the-box.
A lot of problems with video tearing if you have Intel graphics. It can be solved, but I don't want to spend time changing settings. I want to navigate right now.
This makes me sad to see. I've been trying to degoogle as much as possible, and Firefox potentially going away eventually seems like another battle lost.<p>I use Firefox as my main browser, but having to jump on a Teams call, or GoToMeeting, or really any Google service requires Chrome to get it to work fully, or even at all. And as I understand it, this is for no good reason at all. At the moment, I find myself opening Chrome just for those tasks alone, but the fact that I have to do that at all says a lot about Chrome's hand in the market.<p>I'm not sure what there's left to do as a Firefox user. One would be to donate [0], but it looks like donations to Mozilla don't make it to Firefox development according to this [1] post from a few years ago.<p>[0]: <a href="https://donate.mozilla.org/" rel="nofollow">https://donate.mozilla.org/</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_foundation_are_not_used_for/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...</a>
Firefox has the best cross-platform user experience i've encountered so far. It supports full sync across Windows / Linux / Mac / FreeBSD / Android.<p>Previously Brave was the one i was using but it doesn't do full sync on iOS & can't be built on FreeBSD.
Firefox lost me for many years because it became unbearably slow. I switched to Chrome solely for it worked much faster (despite using more RAM), especially on my rather old Core 2 computers. Once they upgraded their engine a couple of years ago it became tolerable again but just adding some extensions I find essential slowed it noticeably again.<p>As I have upgraded to modern Ryzen PCs I immdiately switched back to Firefox and am happy although some people still tell me y browser looks very slow once they see me using it.<p>Using Firefox is a privilege many people just can't easily afford. Many people still tell me YouTube is too slow in Firefox but my experience shows a powerful PC solves this.
Dupe from 5 days ago, but still a concerning issue:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28015335" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28015335</a>
I ended up abandoning FireFox years ago because the constant breaking of addons, and hideous UI changes that went from simple & functional to bulky, cluttery, and full of features I will never ever use while the features I do use get pushed into a more complicated method of accessing.<p>I'd love to use FireFox again, but it's just too much garbage and hassle to deal with. Every other version change felt like it broke some quality or function for worse.<p>I used Pale Moon, a fork of Firefox, but it was too much to tinker with to keep it working with modern websites. Now I just use chrome based browser Vivaldi, and for the past five years of using it, they haven't done anything horrendously stupid like overhauling the entire UI. It's not a perfect browser, but it's a huge improvement from dealing with FireFoxes bullshit.
Mozilla did this all by themselves and turned Google into a competitor since they planned on walking away from their millions in the first place to make money without depending on Google.<p>Turns out that 14 years later, nothing has changed and the Chrome ecosystem is stronger than ever..
Mozilla has been committing suicide last 10 years or so. I'm forced to use long outdated version because I'm too horrified by looking at screenshots of each new release, not to mention the obvious API and settings cuts.
To me it looks like the company suffers from poor management, unclarity of goals, and maybe unbalanced staff (e.g. more "UI designers" than there needs to be and fewer actual programmers than desirable).
I think it’s less Mozilla’s fault and more user’s shift to mobile that has eaten away at market share combined with the sync hook between mobile and desktop. People say it’s that they lost their focus on the browser or alienated power users, but really Firefox OS was their best shot at long term survival. There’s a vacuum in the mobile space for true OSS. Google has been effective at cutting them off at the pass with both Chromium and Android, but neither allows the true spirit of free software to flourish.
I wish brave forked from FF when Brendan Eich resigned, now im "stuck" removing crap once every so often that ff adds and recompiling and I have no interest in chromium.<p>Oh well, glad for FOSS!
I left for edge. vertical tabs out of the box - check. ability to remove window title bar without editing css - check. ublock - check. sending tabs between pcs and mobile devices - check. (actually this one thing drove me away from ffx when it stopped working. about a year ago my android firefox(es) stopped syncing reliably. some devices synced, some synced occasionally, some never synced. related to the arbitrary limit on amount of bookmarks and tabs that could be synced, by ffx devs)
Presumably, given the scale of this loss, there are people here who have recently moved away from Firefox: If that's you, I'd be really interested to hear why. It seems silly, but I can't think of any time recently where I've considered moving, what caused you to move away?
I cannot even load my personal homepage from local file for the new tab . Can this stupidity be fixed ? It loads local homepage for the first tab, but doesn't load it for the next ... if that is not stupidity then what is?<p>I mean really, browser that cannot load homepage is not functioning in my opinion, and nobody cares?<p>If they can't fix even such a basic thing what else can we expect from those people? What goes in their heads is beyond me.
I say: let it go. We need to stop saying that it's the only alternative to Chromium and thus we must not lose it, because users would not have a choice. Users have already chosen and Firefox is out.<p>In a post-Firefox future we might have bigger Chromium forks and new choices for the user.
I know it has a userbase that rounds to 0, but Firefox really should look at some of the more innovative up-and-coming browsers like Brave. There are much worse plans than throwing a whole bunch of technologies at the wall and seeing what sticks.<p>Copying Chrome is a safe strategy that just doesn't seem to be working.