Firefox is losing userbase a lot faster than some other browsers are gaining it, is that Firefox users' fault or Firefox's?
I use Firefox because I think the sync service it provides is great and that some of the customization is unmatched, not because I think I'm some soldier fighting the Chromium monopoly.
Don't underestimate the power of small contributions. You could say the same about people using konqueror 20 years ago, it brought KHTML which brought us webkit. You could say the same about people using firefox at the same time. You could say the same about people using linux in middle 90's, the same about GCC... I could go on showing more examples.
Simply using a software is a form of contribution: at the least it improves statistics. People making small contributions are important; small donations to wikipedia, bug reports, translations, fixing a small bug, improving a feature you need, talking with devs to guarantee a device works... I personally made many of these small contributions and although most of them didn't ended up on the "market leader project", it certainly made them good enough for people to keep using them and to encourage other people to contribute too.
The fact that Firefox got backdrop-blur support in mid 2022 speaks volumes about Firefox's priorities.
I get the point you're trying to make, I use FOSS because I believe more people should be using it and if I don't, who would? But that doesn't work when it comes to Firefox. There are a lot of good free and open source browsers right now, no matter what engine they use.
If a chromium based FOSS browser gets popular enough, there are better chances of it surviving and breaking away from Google's monopoly at the same time. It does not matter what Google does with Chrome, as long as independent forks are able to exist within that same space and can get just as big.
Perhaps it speaks more to your priorities? I can't see anyone outside of a web developer who needed that feature 1 time or even caring that backdrop-blur wasn't implemented.
The fact that you're salty about a specific CSS property and that it's reason enough to boycott a browser speaks volumes.
The point is, if Firefox can't even make basic web features like blur work on the browser (that are available on even no name mobile browsers) I can't expect Firefox to ever surpass Chrome or other competitors and it's evident.
> The fact that you're salty about a specific CSS property and that it's reason enough to boycott a browser speaks volumes.
As a web developer, I 100% stopped development on Firefox because it doesn't support even the most basic features all other browsers have. Like it or not, it's an inferior product because of the missing web APIs.
You know what's better than fighting monopoly with an ideology? Fighting monopoly with an even better product that supports the ideology. Firefox is sadly not that.
I wouldn't call backdrop-blur trivial or a basic feature. It's non-trivial to implement and used very little. Why should it be a priority?
> (that are available on even no name mobile browsers)
What no-name mobile browser that isn't based on an engine like Chromium has implemented more "basic" features than Firefox? The fact of the matter is that large corporations like Microsoft have given up trying to implement their own custom browser engine and pivoted to using Chromium.
> it doesn't support even the most basic features all other browsers have.
Like backdrop-blur?
> Fighting monopoly with an even better product that supports the ideology.
You're trivializing browser development as if you could build a better browser in a weekend.
Of the 4 major browsers developers only one isn't a billion/trillion dollar corporation; one uses it's monopoly in search to bankroll and push it's browser, one uses their monopoly position in smartphones to force their browser on users and restricts the feature set of it's browser so as not to detract from custom App development, one threw in the towel and just rebranded Chromium, and the last is a non-profit that's financially dependent on the other three for handouts.
Why shouldn't it be? If Firefox can't lead in web development, how do you even expect it to keep up with times?
I'm not sure why someone would defend Firefox's incompetency. I see things as they are and I make decisions based on that.
Even if I see things as they could be, I'd rather not bet my money on Firefox.
A browser doesn't need to be an operating system.
Judging by the massive amount of Google Chrome advertising I see literally everywhere, including billboards and the sides of buildings, I assume it's Google's fault
i honestly have no idea what people complain about when they do. maybe i just have stockholm syndrome, i dunno.
But Firefox is mostly independent eh? Did they stop taking google money yet?
Firefox is the only even vaguely independent browser engine that keeps up at all with google.
I use it these days and I am considering to start chipping in too (I am at my limits currently so I will have to stop something else though).
But I really really want something like my old Firefox back...!
Well yeah, that's how all the forks are when they start out. It's less than a year old (started in Nov 2021) so I'd be worried if it didn't keep up with upstream security patches.
AFAIK Librefox re-forks from the newest FF everytime there is a release and apply their fixes as patches.
Did something change? Last I checked almost all funding for Firefox was from Google.
> More than 90 per cent of Mozilla's funding comes from web search providers that pay for the right to be the default search engine in Firefox in their regions. According to the organization's latest financial figures [PDF], $430m of its 2018 total revenue of $451m came from those internet giants – primarily Google, we understand. These deals were due to be renewed or renegotiated by November this year.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search...
I believe it's listed under royalties and also receivables in the annual report, though that does not specify Google specifically, but you can look at the numbers and figure they are a large portion if the news was accurate.
[2] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-202...
Firefox was mostly funded by Alphabet/Google to avoid antitrust lawsuits/promote their search engine, one of the best scenarios for the "big corpo" is a product (firefox) that doesn't have many users and cater to the most anti-corpo users (users that wouldn't like to use "big corpo" products anyway). At this point mozilla is just a bussiness expense for the big corpo, the cost of doing bussiness.
"Big corpo" can argue, "look we are even funding the competence", the competence need to be small but relevant enough, so while you are thinking that you are fighting the "big corpo" the reality is that you are just helping to keep firefox relevant enough that the "big corpo" can't be sued.
The entire internet discourse is filled with "Chrome evil, use Firefox". Go to any browser discussion on the internet and 99% of the thread is "just use Firefox or Firefox is the best". You would think that everyone uses Firefox. The internet is a bubble. Reality is Firefox usage is pathetic. 32 MILLION people have STOPPED using Firefox in the past 4 years. The browser only has a 3.16% market share.
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Chrome is a good browser. Can be considered objectively better than Firefox given its superior performance, equivalent if not slightly better resource usage, web compatibility and integration with the Google ecosystem (which the vast majority of internet population use (excluding niche tech circles)).
I have no vendetta against Firefox. At the end of the day, it is just a browser and that is a personal preference. But people act like it is some sort of saviour that will bring them to the light. There is such an aggressive tribal mentality with browsers. It makes no sense as all browsers look the same, feel the same and have the same functionality. Just a matter of preference given your needs, and for 70% of the population, Chromium delivers.
Even if it were inferior in any aspect to other options, I'd still use it for the above mentioned reasons.