And IMO this is where Firefox is getting worse.

Firefox used to be much less user-hostile. Now it draws too much attention to itself, like it's trying to be a lifestyle brand.

Using Firefox feels like walking through a busy shopping mall, and I worry that the folks making Firefox don't know any other way that life can be.

Post-update pages (if they must exist in the first place) should look like:

> You're using the latest version of Firefox! (Need a VPN? Try ours!)

> You're using the latest version of Firefox! (Discover the best of the web with Pocket from Firefox)

…but instead it feels more like:

> YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED SIGNING IN TO POCKET YET! SIGN IN NOW! (btw firefox updated)

> Buy our VPN Buy our VPN Buy our VPN Buy our VPN Buy our VPN (btw firefox updated)

I wish Firefox would focus on being a useful tool (like the rest of the software I use). Compare Firefox's first-run experience with that of GNOME Web: Firefox is obnoxious; GNOME Web just gets out of the way.

I believe in Mozilla's mission circa 2004, but I'm not convinced that Firefox does any more.

The other day I opened up Firefox to discover that the theme had automatically changed to some garish pink monstrosity, overlaid by a popup that asked if I wanted to keep the new "colorway".

Oddly, I did not.

Did you actually took the time to setup firefox to your liking once? From the above post it looks like you didn't.

Pocket is pretty much invisible, especially if you remove the button from the toolbar. The only time I see mentions of the mozilla VPN is when I go to the configuration of an existing container and I see the option to integrate it to mozilla VPN.

> Did you actually took the time to setup firefox to your liking once?

Yes. I use Firefox pretty much exclusively.

I'm saying that the first-run experience, and the amount of setting up it takes to make Firefox less intrusive, illustrate that Firefox is not as focused on being a useful tool as I would like.

Compare that to browsers having more market share and firefox isn't any more intrusive or less focused at being useful. Chrome is totally shitty in stock form as well unless you love ads and don't care about privacy.

Oh, of course! I'm most definitely not saying Chrome, Edge or Safari are better. I'm saying Firefox is just as bad.

I mean, the fact we're even discussing whether or not Firefox is more or less user-hostile than Google and Microsoft illustrates my point perfectly :)

I have set up Firefox to my liking but UI reworks and new anti-features mean that I have to invest significant time for each update to just get things back to how I like them.

I agree. More than this, it's not just “I don't like change and I have to tweak Firefox to my liking”; it's “I don't trust that Mozilla is acting in my interests; I expect that any changes are to my detriment”.

You can use one of the forks such as librewolf or any other fork which comes with a firefox already tuned with a more privacy oriented focus.

When my browser developer is happy that others decide what I see on the net is when I bail.

It is not like every update break everything. They did one major update that broke a number of extensions and they didn't even do it without prior announcement and time for extensions developpers to adapt them. Appart from them those are tiny changes.

I actually don't use the direct Firefox branch anymore, although my wife and daughter have it on their computers so it is often available to me. I tend to use Firefox Developer branch so a lot of these complaints people are seeing I haven't experienced. (haven't experienced in the normal Firefox on other computers either so sort of weird, maybe I set up a don't bother me with changes profile a long time ago and I just forgot)