Firefox was top dog when chrome came out - it had unseated IE already for many users fed up with XP-era crapware.

Firefox was not simply 'bloated', but designed for classic HTML rendering at a time when javascript (aka 'web 2.0 ajax') dev was taking off and memory was not as abundant as it is now - though slow, it was more that the core architecture was out of date than it was 'bloated'. Indeed firefox was already a stripped down version of 'the mozilla suite' (see also seamonkey, thunderbird, etc - all of which predate chrome).

Chrome then came in, borrowed another project's browser engine, and decided to say 'screw memory, just fork processes' and avoided the whole multithreaded thing all together, oh yes, and open blank tabs faster with a little animation for perceptions sake.

This facilitated html5/javascript bloat, and by extension kept it in the lead as the only browser that could handle it.

of course I'm biased here (as is parent) - but chrome unseating firefox which unseated IE is born out by the facts.

Maybe in mindshare for devs but Chrome officially unseated IE browser saturation in 2012. Firefox didn't pass IE until 2015 [1].

Firefox was amazing on its resurgence in mid-2000s but did get into memory/bloat stages that opened it up for minimal/performant Chrome that was also more secure at the time primarily due to the process per tab. This possibly did lead to more js bloat later, initially it was lightning fast and also had a debug console and was based on Webkit which was better than Firefox rendering.

Firefox definitely saw Web 2.0 come in from 2006 on and was revolutionary in web development/debugging with Firebug and eventually that was part of the browser and is now industry standard to have a console/debugger on the browser.

Most developers were using Firefox by 2005-2006 and then Chrome a couple/few years later and it has been top for almost a decade now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...

This is the big one for me. When I'm not developing I actually prefer to use Safari-- I like it's interface better and it feels more at home in macOS. It's "good enough" too.

What I'm really a user of is the Chrome Dev Tools. Firefox's are looking quite solid lately but I just haven't switched over.

Firefox highlights the edge lines of the selected element automatically, and in all directions (if I recall correctly). I have to use an extension – VisBug – to achieve that in Chrome.

There's also the fonts window, which lets you in on what fonts are used on the page, and lets you modify the selected element's font settings – size, weight, slant/italic etc.. I pay a lot of attention to typography, so that part is important to me.

Also that it's not Chrome or based on Chromium is reason alone to like Firefox, because we need diversity for healthy web standards. That Chromium is open source is a red herring and open standards are more important.

I know developers have been preferring Chrome and for good reasons, but I've switched back to Firefox for the last 3 years and personally I find it hard to use Chrome these days, because Firefox has a better UI.

The only downside is that Chrome's dev tools still has some capabilities that Firefox lacks, but Firefox has been improving a lot, as you have seen.

2. There's a general passive-combative conversation about browsers going on ("I like Firefox, I don't get why people like Chrome" and vice versa) that I never wanted to be a part of, mostly because of how disrespectful and counterproductive it is.

3. In a thread about ad-blocking, I got what is effectively an ad for Firefox.

I don't want any of this nonsense on my side of the table. "Use my product because I value it!" No, go away, I don't need this.

My choices are rarely uninformed. I spend time considering what to pick where I'm able to. I'd like my choices to be respected as such – not have my face plastered with someone else's unprompted opinion.

Here's an example of a better conversation:

– I liked this part of Firefox, and I wish it was in Chrome too.

– Do you not like Firefox whole, then? If so, why?

– Because of X, Y, and Z. I used it intensely for a month or so, so I got a good look at the way it behaves. I know X is solvable, but not Y or Z (I tried), and they're critical to my browsing experience.

– Okay, I see. I hope you consider (browser diversity, or whatever issues using Firefox's supposed to solve), because they're important.

– Oh yeah? Can you tell me why?

...and so on. A respectful conversation that sparks curiosity and provides context, without annoying any of the parties in the process.

Otherwise, you get what you give. Seems a fair approach to me.

You'd like your choices to be respected, but you are incapable of offering civility. Is that also a choice we should respect, or is it beyond your control?

"My name is Bond. James Bond."

And didn't get to this spot on any kind of technical or feature merits, but essentially by relentless nagging on the Google search page to have users install it. Sure, devs/geeks etc were eager early adopters, but the bulk of users were steered this way by Google.

Microsoft have been stalling IE development for years, which allowed Mozilla to gain huge marketshare. This resulted in a lot of people learning, how to install a third party web browser. By the time Chrome was unveiled, Mozilla have coincidentally slowed Firefox development to a crawl. I remember the point, when the stable Firefox version was close to unusable, while everyone technologically proficient used a development release. It have been so bad, that some addons simply recommended not using the stable Firefox version. Btw, things have only gotten worse since then.

Chrome's dazzling success is result of it's aggressive advertising as well as sabotage and mismanagement, that killed off alternatives.