Mozilla seems broken. I love Firefox and its mission, but I have no idea what Mozilla’s mission is. And they seem too beholden to Google to really make a browser good enough to threaten them.
I think we need another “true” open source group of devs who just love browsers and love writing browsers who would like to fork and work on.
I would support such a group, but I don’t think it exists and don’t know how to effectively encourage it.
But I feel like donating money to Mozilla is actually counterproducti
What would a browser good enough to threaten Google look like? Has anyone else produced one?
I think the decline of Firefox market share has a lot more to do with forces outside of its control than the quality of the product.
If you're using Chrome on mobile, and the differences between the desktop versions are negligible, why would you not just stick to Chrome on desktop as well?
I think this is actually a good example of where Firefox could really make a difference on desktop. Introduce a very powerful extension framework, allowing things like what Chrome is removing in manifest v3. Killer extensions will be built and people will switch for that. For the users who would inevitably install malware extensions, there will always be Chrome. Firefox doesn't need 100% market share, just one big enough that it can't be ignored.
Can you point out what you feel is the single most noticeable difference? I use Firefox as my daily driver but I also use Chrome, and I never noticed any difference.
I find Firefox to be noticeably slower than the various Blink-based browsers and Safari (when available) when running on the same systems. I'm referring to the overall responsiveness of the UI and the application itself, as well as the rendering of sites, and the subsequent interaction with them. I find this to be the case for a fresh installation with no extensions, all the way through to an installation with common ad blocker extensions installed. Firefox is just plain slower, from what I can tell.
Firefox's extension signing nonsense is another pain point. As part of my work, there's a fully-trusted custom extension developed in-house that I need to install. It's trivial to install in the various Blink-based browsers. On the stable releases of Firefox, though, I have to jump through numerous hoop to get it installed and usable, and this has to be done each time the browser restarts, which is often in my case.
Chrome on the other side has good integration into Googles ecosystem, has better support from Webapps (yes, this sometimes is a relevant topic), is depending on the platform significant faster, and seems to have some better side-features here and there. So its whole identity is to be THE Google-Browser, well polished for the modern World Wide Web.
Similar stuff is with Opera, Vivaldi, they all have their own special identity which they support with accompanying features. Like Vivaldi being an app-suite which offers more than just web browsing, or Opera with their Gaming-Browser catering to give gamers a good selling point. Not sure that Brave is doing today, but they were once strongly focused on AdBlock and earning Money?
Firefox on the other side has nothing of this. It once was the everything-browser, which could be anything through extensions. A mail-client, ftp-client, web-archiver, note-app, office suite, and much much more, all depending on the Users preferences. But that is lost, and now it can't even restore lost basic features. At this point it's just a window to render Web-stuff, with a better Adblocker and customization than Chrome. And even this is not advertised well. I mean the last ads I saw from Mozilla were not even about anything specific, just random pictures...
That is exactly what they are saying.
What is there to fix? I use Firefox as my daily driver, and I think it's already flawless.
To me all major browsers look and feel the same. There are subtle visual queues to remind us of which app we're using, but browsers are pretty much interchangeable nowadays.
What exactly do you believe Firefox does wrong that Chrome of even Edge or Safari do right?
My impression of Mozilla as a company over the last decade is that they are in the business of burning money under the pretext of doing good. And while doing that, they ignore the product which enables them to earn the money.
> I use Firefox as my daily driver, and I think it's already flawless.
It's not bad, but far less than what it once was and could be.
> To me all major browsers look and feel the same.
The differences are deeper than just visual gimmicks. But true, on the core-abilities there is not much more than this. And this is a big problem too, it seems people today don't even know what's possible in this space. It's all the same, because to few people know it better.
> What exactly do you believe Firefox does wrong that Chrome of even Edge or Safari do right?
It's wrong to be the same as the leader. Be different.
Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, they are all different, and they sell well enough with being different. Firefox has nothing like that, it's just building on a history they mostly buried.
Chrome, Edge and Safari are doing: a) being the default and b) being the default.
There are more than 18K open bugs in Bugzilla for Firefox. That's far from flawless for everyone.
It's behind even Edge on features, let alone Vivaldi or something.
• No integrated option for vertical tabs
• No integrated ad-block (I know there are reasons but still)
• They broke the old extensions system, and its replacement is inferior
• Bundled development tools 99.9% of users don't want or need
• Built in Win98 era profile handling when this is the OS' job
• Can't sync toolbar settings or search engines
(as per discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38048385 )
• Needs custom stylesheets to even hide the immovable built in tab bar
• Needs `about:config` tweaks to enable custom stylesheets
In re the last 2: FFS this is meant to be the customisable FOSS tool here!
Why does HN always assume everyone is a power user
Complaining that Firefox provides development tools when all major browsers also ship with those it's simply absurd.
So is complaining about lack of an integrated adblock when Firefox was the one who created that feature and allowed any third party to roll their own.
Whining about vague complains about profile handling when Firefox made it trivial to run multiple profiles perfectly independently as separate processes, and even to pick and choose which profile to run at app start.
And the peak of absurdity is complaining that Firefox is customizable and allows you to do stuff no one in the world cares about.
There are plenty of reasons why feature requests are triaged, and your post is a poster child of absurd feature requests.
No it is not, and here is why.
1. How many developers work on Firefox? Chrome & Chrome or Webkit-based browsers are already some 95% of the market.
Citation: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
It is borderline irresponsible to work on Firefox now. Test on it, yes. Develop on it, no.
2. There is already a developer edition: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/
I am just arguing that more functionality needs to be moved to that from the ordinary mass-market edition.
> So is complaining about lack of an integrated adblock when Firefox was the one who created that feature and allowed any third party to roll their own.
No it isn't. It's a feature of competing products. I am arguing Firefox should be the power users' tool. So replicate the key functions the competition have.
> Whining about vague complains about profile handling
Dude, if you don't understand it that doesn't mean it's vague.
When the Mozilla suite was developed, the main Windows OS was Windows 95, which did not come with a browser. IE was not only an add-on it was a paid-for extra.
Now the OS provides profiles and functional separation. Lean on it, make the default edition as small and as fast as possible. Less is more.
> And the peak of absurdity is complaining that Firefox is customizable
Again, ISTM you don't understand me. I am saying it's still more customisable than Chrome and they should lean in to this. Don't make it necessary to frig `about:config` and add a config file to move a freakin' toolbar. This is not a hard point.
> and allows you to do stuff no one in the world cares about.
So you don't know how to customise your browser. I do. I care. I did my research.
E.g. citing the Classic Addons Archive:
« 19,450 Firefox add-ons created by 14,274 developers »
https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive
A lot of people care a lot. 15,000 developers falsifies your ludicrous "no one in the world cares about.
Like many others, you are mixing up "I don't care" with "nobody cares", and you are wrong.
Firefox is Mozilla’s flagship product, the organization wouldn’t exist in its current form without it. It’s understandable if people are frustrated it doesn’t appear to be getting the org wide funding it proportionally deserves.
You aren't donating to firefox the browser, you are donating to Mitchell Baker.
But maybe this is also just my impression. Why not start with a website listing reasons and strengths of the different browsers, and research the selling points of browsers and Firefox specifically. Maybe this could be used to figure out which features could be used for advertising, and which features Firefox is missing to compete with others.