Re:Remove Firefox Hello from FF49
by niftich on Saturday July 30, 2016 @02:49PM
(#12194161)
On this thread about 'reducing flash usage in Firefox' [1] a few days ago, I articulated a point that I've been witnessing for a while: Mozilla products have three distinct audiences, and their wants and needs are often contradictory.
These audiences are, in increasing order of vocalness:
[a] the impressionable; the next-wave of web user who has recently gotten online
[b] the alternative-seeker; the average web user who is uneasy with Google
[c] the idealist; the open web, open-source advocate
There is, of course, some amount of overlap between the audiences. But Chrome (despite Chromium), Edge, and Safari are largely missing audience [c] entirely; some of audience [b] will try to avoid any Chromium-derived product.
These and other interactions create conflicting pressures between people who want Firefox have close feature-parity with Chrome, and people who want Firefox to stick closer to the mission of providing an open, elegant, minimalist browser open to user customization.
These audiences are, in increasing order of vocalness:
[a] the impressionable; the next-wave of web user who has recently gotten online
[b] the alternative-seeker; the average web user who is uneasy with Google
[c] the idealist; the open web, open-source advocate
There is, of course, some amount of overlap between the audiences. But Chrome (despite Chromium), Edge, and Safari are largely missing audience [c] entirely; some of audience [b] will try to avoid any Chromium-derived product.
These and other interactions create conflicting pressures between people who want Firefox have close feature-parity with Chrome, and people who want Firefox to stick closer to the mission of providing an open, elegant, minimalist browser open to user customization.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12129691