7 years later Firefox still hasn't caught up to 2017 Firefox in functionality. Using ancient versions of Firefox isn't an option, so I switched to Vivaldi.

Are we only allowed to compare to chrome?

I miss session manager, tab mix plus, a few others.

I really miss having a gesture extension that runs at the GUI level, so it doesn't stop working while pages are loading and lag all the time and not work in certain places. And that one isn't even about XUL, they simply refuse to implement the mouse callback in the new system.

Firefox has yet to top Firefox 57.

Bring back multi-row tabs.

Actually, while we're at it, bring back XUL. And apologize to all the addon developers and users they straight up lied to.

> Bring back multi-row tabs.

I can't live without multi-row tabs but it's totally doable in current Firefox. It's now possible with just CSS. It still breaks every so often when they make big UI changes but it's manageable.

It's the reason that Firefox is my main browser.

If that's your main reason have you tried vivaldi?

Vivaldi is great on paper (if you don't care about it being F/OSS), but it's wildly unstable compared to all other major browsers including Firefox. Every time I try to use it as a primary, I end up running into something blocking within a week, reporting it, and switching back to whatever.

Which is a shame, because, stability aside, it really is the best option among Blink-based browsers, at least for the power user. No containers, sadly, but the problem there is Blink itself.

I played that game for a while, it gets old. Also the UX is not nearly as good as TMP when it comes to moving tabs around.

dropping anything goes xul was a large improvement in security. Extensions still have a lot of power.

Why not drop the browser entirely and get maximum security? Firefox without TMP is not worth using for me.

I've been led to believe that xul played a large part in the memory leaks, security issues, and poor performance Firefox was known for.

Firefox definitely gets better, as much as it frustrates me sometimes. It's not hard to come up with examples, I've yet to see any other browser use persistent or temporary containers per tab and per site - just to name the most obvious.

It becomes better after it became worse. It's not that hard to make it better after you burned all the bridges who lifted your product into the sky. Though, at this point, there isn't much left anymore outside the core-abilities.

Firefox has been always the best browser as it is the only open and free (as free from adversarial incentives).

Unfortunately many people (especially here) have advertised Chrome instead, naively believing Chrome to have these important properties.

Chrome has always been the controlled frontend for Google business and Google is readily willing to hurt the browser to aid its business and keep its dominance.

Blink is also open and free enough. The wide usage of it, and the manifold companies pushing successfully against Google, is proof enough. Firefox on the other side is not free from hostile behavior itself. The manifold bullshit that Mozilla did over the years telling.

And in general, your requirement is not matching the demand of the majority of users. I don't give a f** if something is open or liberated, I'm a user, I care firstly whether it's doing what I need, and being open&free are just tools to balance the powerplay of the creators.

But if not enough people are using the browser, they have no power anyway. And if there is only one developer, then we as the users have not way to balance our power against them. Mozilla has shown over the last decade that the user has no power in their game, which shows that free and open software in itself has little meaning.

The multiple blink-browsers are showing better how this is supposed to work, then the one project who always claims this as one of their main goals.

Majority of the Blink browser users are Chrome users, followed by Edge users and then somewhere come Opera users, what depending on the polls is on par with Firefox users or far behind it.

But none of this matters as I was talking about browsers, not browser engines, that are not the same thing and none of the Blink browsers listed above are open source browsers.

Majority of the users are using the browser they are told to use. If everyone is telling them to use Chrome, they use it. And there practically has not been much resistance to Chrome. How many IT people have told over the years to not user Chrome, and use Firefox instead? There was huge resistance to IE, but not to Chrome, and it pays now its dividends.

Is Chrome now doing what the users want? How many people are upset about the latest moves by Google. For me it was obvious result for long time, I was actually surprised that it didn't happen earlier. Now based on the reactions, many users didn't expect it.

Yes.

For a long time, chrome has had significantly better memory use. I really tried firefox again 2 or 3 years ago. If you have to keep jira open all day for work, it was unusable.

Regardless, your comment illustrates why Baker should have been fired for cause. Browsers are not really evaluated on technical merits past a minimal quality threshold. Rather, browser marketshare is built on distribution -- like any business.

And firefox was incompetent at that. Google has effectively used search; Microsoft effectively uses their OS; Apple effectively uses their OS, etc. And all products work this way: this is the reason Slack sold to Salesforce, ie Microsoft was using Office's distribution to effectively clobber Slack with Teams. The same reason that Google pays billions of dollars to Mozilla and Apple to be the default search engine.

What could have been done here? I dunno, but focusing on technical measures is not the right lens. BD is and was the necessary component, and that could have started with companies that don't want to see Chrome be the sole browser in the world. What could you have done to get eg Facebook or other companies with large web properties to ask their users to use Firefox? What partnership could have been forged with Microsoft when they were broadly uninterested in browsers? What could you have done to make Firefox a better browser for technical users specifically? etc.

Firefox could have build a niche, e.g. be clearly the best browser for developers - like native autoreload API support. Or the most secure one. Or be the best browser for power users. Or or or. But you need a vision for that.

Apple started their comeback with developers who liked the combination of a slick UI, commercial software and a unix shell (Got a G4 Cube around 2002 or so, then a Macbook). Dominating that niche made them hip and then everyone wanted one. The rest is history.

Everyone uses Linux, even if MS did everything to push MS on servers. And don't forget Apple spend millions (billions?) on pushing OSX to the server two (I had some XServe and XSans). But Linux dominated, and not because of Red Hat.

Many people and perhaps in the future everyone uses Postgres, even if MS and Oracle spend millions (billions?) to prevent this.

Are there other browsers that have successfully built a niche? And how does one use that to bring in enough money to sustain a reasonable sized organization? To me it neither seems easy, nor any guarantee of success.

Well Mozilla got >$6.000.000.000 - so I do thing this is enough money. Do you think they would have needed more money?

Brave currently tries to grow from the secure niche. I think Chrome started from the developer niche, with developer tools, being embeddable, open sourcing a rendering engine etc.

I am not sure clawing back a significant amount of marketshare can be done with any amount of money. As long as there is no access to a distribution channel that is similar in size and low friction to what the other browsers have, it will at least be extremely tough. Far from "easy".

Vivaldi has been around for 9 years now, and they manage to get by without regular donations from Google.

"Firefox keeps getting better?"

In which way?

Its “appeal has become more selective”

I can only think of @scope in css

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:scope

I have no problem with Firefox staying as it is. But do not push new products via it. Focusing on the things other companies cannot copy (privacy, extensibility for the user) is definitely the angle for Firefox IMHO.

A personal gripe is FF's refusal to implement WebSerial or any form of screencast functionality.

Just use a screencast tool. It's a browser, not an OS.

I'd rather not use something that's less convenient, less consistent, and generally worse.

Chrome is better for websites that are specifically tweak to run well only on Chrome. Surprisingly, such websites are not trivial in amount and traffic.