Mozilla CEO quits, pushes pivot to data privacy champion... but what about Firefox? I know people who even today donate to the Mozilla Foundation and swear by the Firefox web browser. Their numbers are declining by the day. And when I see Mozilla Corp's CEO Mitchell Baker stepping down, I wonder if it's really because she'll be more useful devoting all her time to the foundation than overseeing Firefox's …
I hope that the new CEO's push to focus on privacy will at the very least mean that Tor will finally be integrated into Incognito mode.
Or better yet Mozilla could start building out the HORNET network (a high-speed version of the Tor network i.e. DarkNet) and integrate that into their browser. I suspect usage will skyrocket if they do this.
It is really interesting that whenever a story appears anywhere regarding Mozilla foundation or Firefox, these guys appear out of nowhere advertising that browser.
For example we don't see Vivaldi browser fans. Speaking of which, the new CEO should ask for a technical review about why Vivaldi had to choose Chromium instead of Gecko. Why is it so hard to integrate it and the reasoning behind PWA cancellation.
Brendan wasn’t fired, nor was he ever going to be, given that he co-founded Mozilla. He was only CEO for 11 days, as he stepped down following upset over the discovery that he had made a political donation to people who were anti-LGBT, which is inevitably going to happen because we’re talking about a Catholic who has always supported religious causes. Evidently, despite everyone knowing he was a Catholic and all that entailed, there clearly wasn’t an issue 20-something years ago when he was liberating everyone from the clutches of Internet Explorer, I can only assume that was because not suffering with constant illegal operation errors was more important to everyone than whether someone privately cared about the gay community.
When Firefox inevitably dies, folks will be stuck with crippled MV3 for extensions, left with the choice of a proper HTTPS intercepting proxy to block ads at the content level or the hope that a chromium fork manages to implement full adblocking support within the browser itself. Perhaps at that point, people will go back to caring more about their free software working as best as it can instead of whether developers working on it are committing the modern day sin of embracing old-fashioned religious beliefs.
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"It is really interesting that whenever a story appears anywhere regarding Mozilla foundation or Firefox, these guys appear out of nowhere advertising that browser."
I can't speak for anyone else, but in my case I was responding to an expressed desire for Tor to be integrated into incognito mode. Firefox doesn't have it yet; Brave Browser does. It was a simple statement of fact and was not intended to trigger anyone.
They already have Tor Browser. It's Firefox with modifications, so it'll look similar and already supports it. Is there a situation where that's not an option but normal Firefox is? I have a feeling that the Tor node operators are happy this hasn't happened, because it will rapidly increase the traffic through the network from people who don't need it. That will add some more noise for those who need it to hide in, but it will also increase the bandwidth requirements and those are mostly being covered by volunteer node operators who don't have unlimited budgets.
This is true. The author of this article stipulates there are only 2.2% of users using Firefox but fails to account that the derivatives based on Firefox combined have a slightly larger user base.
This is a rehash of the browsers are obsolete mindset which is just not true. Apps made to run Electron are literally worse (or better depending on how you like tradeoffs in speed and security) browsers. And the free online version of Word as well as other small businesses websites means the browser isn't going anywhere.
Until Mozilla discontinues Firefox for good you can pry it from my dead body, Safari and Edge are my alternatives if there really is something that doesn't work. Google is a nonstarter and Brave is okay, but at that point might as well use what's built in.
If you do that, say bye to corporate, government and education desktops. Why would they do it while Tor people based their stuff to Firefox ESR?
IMHO even the "they won't be able to spy your browsing!!!" coming "on" by default is a mistake since private data vampires already "run as roof" at the background. It just breaks sites and for general user= "browser is broken". See top 20 websites.
I am telling all of above from from the general end user perspective while I am building servo browser from source on Linux right now. I really wonder what they wasted and the performance of it.
Oh, once GRUgle fully impose Manifest v3 on their cattle, sorry, users, I think that a fair number of them, well, those that care even a tiny amount about privacy and security, anyway, will come back to Firefox. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't care very much about privacy and security, and they make up of most of Google's herd of cash cows.
Many mobile users use Chrome because it comes by default on their platform, and because it ensnares them via their Google Account (and, of course, a lot of people just don't care). That lock-in then extends for the same users to their desktops, and, for much of the world that is potentially up to 80% of the user base.
Chrome further got lucky because it came to prominence during a period when IE was particularly crap (also helped significantly by lots of advertising/promotion on the Google search engine), and when, according to some, Firefox was allegedly also somewhat lacking and slow (although that's never a problem that I have experienced, maybe more of a Windows thing? (or perhaps a Windows + nasty too low spec craptop laptop thing?)).
And, as ever, because many Firefox users take their privacy seriously, many will block untrusted JavaScript and content via NoScript and the like, and so will simply never show up in the logs of JavaScript-driven usage analysis tools (only in the actual server logs, which tend not to be used by analysis tools so much these days), so usage is likely under-reported by probably at least half. Not that reports of Firefox browser share apparently continuing to decrease isn't rather disheartening, but I am sure that there are still rather more Firefox users out there than (often vested interests) would like to claim.
despite my best efforts - and YEAR working GENTLY on my offspring to show them the evil of googles and chromes, they both, in their teens, use chrome on their desktop and firefox has been buried. And apple is their phone of choice, of course. No point to expand on the whys, they're typical.
... stop complaining old man, why can' tyou be proud your kids recognize such ancient terms as 'desktop' and 'computer'?! :(
... many will block untrusted JavaScript and content via NoScript and the like... but I am sure that there are still rather more Firefox users out there than (often vested interests) would like to claim
Definition of user: Someone who generates cash for the advertising industry.
> and when, according to some, Firefox was allegedly also somewhat lacking and slow (although that's never a problem that I have experienced, maybe more of a Windows thing? (or perhaps a Windows + nasty too low spec craptop laptop thing?)).
Look that's just disingenuous, everyone knew Firefox sucked at the time in comparison to Chromium. That's why they went on and rewrote their whole rendering and JS engine ... which then had performance and crashing issues for years - and today I will admit is probably the fastest for PC.
Then again last year I tried the Firefox ecosystem. Found the Firefox mobile app would crash or stop loading pages regularly. So it still sucked in comparison. Chrome or Edge still works better across all my devices so..
It's just a bit silly to pretend that reality never existed.
> Could it have more to do with browser's ever-increasing irrelevance
Firefox was as irrelevant back in 2010 as it is irrelevant now.
Gosh, I wish all software could remain as irrelevant as Firefox.
Here's to the next decade of Mozilla Firefox! Well done, keep going and you will win by default! ------------------>
Mozilla DOES have a problem. The ridiculous CEO pay that's infected the world has also infected nonprofits, unfortunately.
The foundation should have the goal of making the best web browser, AND NOTHING ELSE. There shouldn't even BE a CEO, that position shouldn't exist at a nonprofit. The foundation needs to take a hard look at what they're doing, eliminate the CEO job, and move to a proper nonprofit structure of a board and managing director, with none of them being paid more than $200k/year.
This is becoming more popular these days with the Raspberry Pi Foundation taking a similar route. Foundations are becoming a hollow promise and people will notice and eventually flee.
How to stop this? I don't know. There's always someone in charge and it seems they're always scheming to get their hands in the cookie jar.
I refuse chrome. I was using it for years, but all of its alleged advantages disappeared one by one, as it became a bloated, memory-hogging privacy nightmare with greater and greater restrictions on what I could do to prevent it spying on me. At least, in firefox, you can turn that stuff off.
I'm not typing this in chrome, but I have started using it when I need to log in to some vital(ish) services, buying tickets, doing tax return. Because you never know when your non-chrome browser becomes a baddy in the process you need to complete right now. Usually around the time of 'submit' button...
sure, I clean cookies and such after every session, but I still feel, every time, like I've let myself be raped for the sake of convenience.
Their numbers are declining by the day
I started to use Firefox because it worked in pretty much the same way on every platform I needed: Windows, Solaris, Linux, Android. I don't need all those now, and the constant unnecessary UI changes that keep breaking things which used to work fine are really irritating. I also find an increasing number of sites that just don't work properly with it, and although I do run uBlock and NoScript I have problems even when I turn them off. I'm probably going to be one of those users that stops using it, but as far as I'm concerned I won't be abandoning Firefox, it will have abandoned me.
I think part of the problem is that your opinion isn't very clear. You've mentioned several problems that Mozilla and Firefox have, said that the user numbers are low, which we all know, but you didn't really express much of an opinion on anything going forward. You didn't say what we should do, nor what Mozilla should do, nor really what you expect to happen in the future though I can guess that "Firefox ceases to exist" isn't extrapolating too far. Nor even how you feel about the decline. It doesn't help me make an opinion on anything particularly important, other than "The Mozilla CEO is paid too much", but that isn't an opinion I can do anything about.
"But you could build that into the Firefox browser too"
That's where it started, Netscape Communicator. Two functions (more really, when you consider what TB does) via two interfaces to one executable. It included the original social media, IRC and Usenet. Then, in their infinite wisdom, or whatever it was, they split them. The original still lives on at https://www.seamonkey-project.org/ Unfortunately this scores even worse in terms of site non-recognition although el Reg comes down on the good guy's side of the line.
It would make a great deal of sense if they were put back together as the min product with, as you suggest, some of the more recent protocols such as Mastodon added in. Failing that I wish the Document Foundation would take TB or SM under its wing, maybe Firefox as well. It would surely promote it better and add the one function it doesn't have in the office suite line-up.
Yes, that would be great, however, linking all this back in would be a bit of a nightmare I would expect.
I love Thunderbird, but there's loads of people that are frustrated with them not adding new features or fixing bugs quick enough, which seems to have spawned this: http://betterbird.eu/
Thunderbird is always complaining they don't have enough money to do what they want, which is sad. I do donate, but not as regularly as I'd like :(
...You could download the Mozilla Firebird beta and it was less than 1 MB in size. After about 20 years no one has been able to match the wonderful lightweight experience that it game the user. Times have changed and the internet along with it and operating systems too. So in the coming years I can see myself moving on from Firefox. But only when I have to. Even now I have other browsers installed though I only use them for certain tasks. Maybe someday browsers can go back to being small tools the do simple things but I don't think that's likely. They will just be replaced by things that mask the bloats and memory usage as part of the OS.
That's not an altogether fair comparison, however.
Back then, the web was HTML + more basic CSS + a fairly small sprinkling of JavaScript (+ sometimes embedded blocks where various plugins or applets did their stuff, semi-separate from the browser itself, and sometimes being a particular source of browser crashes).
Nowadays, CSS has got more complex, JavaScript plays a much (much) bigger role in many websites and web applications (and JavaScript engines have got much more complex, in order to speed it up), we have SVG graphics, web fonts, built-in audio and video players, web sockets, web assembly [1], etc, and so browsers are therefore inevitably more complicated and much bigger than they used to be.
[1] I honestly don't know how much web assembly gets used in real life yet (I've never knowingly encountered it, or perhaps I just wouldn't know?), but it's certainly yet another very hefty chunk of stuff that has ended up in many browsers. (Whether it is actually justifiably useful or perhaps more really a "hey, we have invented moar cool stuff" experiment is very definitely another question.)
There is a certainly a question to be asked about how useful or essential all of these things are, but at least some of them definitely are properly useful and probably also reasonably justifiably seen as essential for what most of us now regard as "full-featured" modern contemporary websites and web applications.
I am definitely a great believer in sites being as simple as they can be, and in minimising added bloat, and while in some ways it would be good to go back to the sites of 20 years ago (but without all the tables-for-layout junk!), I am sure we would soon find the lack of many things that we nowadays regard as very normal (such as scrolly map applications, text editor components, etc) rather annoying…
Fair to whom? As I said, things have changed over time. So I don't see the need to call foul over apples vs. oranges. It is evolution in progress. I don't know where it will wind up but I do think that we are losing more than we gain when the code base for any complex enough web browser must contain a poorly implemented OS. Hopefully with time this problem will be solved.
I'm one of those diehard Firefox users. The past year or more Firefox is just not compatible with some very important web sites, like banks, USA government, utility companies, etc. and I find myself having to switch over to unGoogled Chromium to deal with the government, deal with financial transactions,or purchase an item from a nationwide store that is not Amazon. If this is true for others and these measurements are based on government sites that son't play nice with Firefox then of course the numbers will be low.
I think I run into about one site a year that doesn't work right on Firefox, none of which I use on a regular basis. That's hardly a reason to abandon Firefox. Heck, the same may be true for Chrome - some sites might be broken in a way that they don't work for Chrome, especially if it is an Apple specific site that was designed/tested with only Safari.
I only very rarely have a problem with a site not working on FF. It can be because I monitor and control my updates tightly and some banks, for example, like a super-up-to-date browser. I'll update at that point. Sometimes I have to turn a privacy add-on off for a minute, though that's usually an indicator to dump that site. Some sites don't work because they are utter boxes of ordure, over-complicated and poorly structured. I usually just don't bother with those. I *might* try Chrome on them if I really need to.
As far as I'm concerned, the whole idea that FF has to compete with Chrome and Edge is meaningless. Why should it? What's so marvellous about large numbers? An awful lot of people read the red-top 'news'papers, but does that make them quality? There's always space for a minority product which has its own attractions and following, and journos need to get off the simple logic of more-is-better just to fill column inches. It's a reason why I'm not an iPerson, Apples apps are generally functional but frankly mostly third rate and their famed "intuitive" interface is now anything but. Doesn't stop them being big sellers.
/harrumph
Sure, but if it's too much in the minority, then nobody will listen to them, and the bigger players will just badly implement standards or create their own crappy ones, unless there's some competition to stop them.
Microsoft tried with stupid tags, Google tries with their FLOC etc.
I know there's the W3C, but they shouldn't be the only voice.
I don't run into many at all that won't work on FF - and the response for me is that the site is not incompatible with Firefox, it's incompatible with the supposedly open and well-documented standards that these bloody browsers are supposed to render.
I remember IE6, the stuff that was written for it's extended ecosystem, then the abandonment of that browser and multiple, very expensive websites that didn't work in anything else, even when IE itself was long dead, and the support, migrations of browser and application platforms, and the extreme expense involved. That should be a history lesson that's recent enough for all in IT to remember, or have the story passed on as recent enough to be vivid.
Demand the website, webapp or whatever the hell else is supposedly written for the web - whatever that means anymore - works in _all_ the browsers. One of the easiest ways is to obstinately continue to use FF, even if just for that one reason.
The bad thing is that its not only websites but also ERP software, time clock software and other things, using the IE6 functionalities.
Since such software is usually quite expensive both in price/replacement cost and time to re train the employees, it zombies on as does IE6.
Luckily the companies with these issues i know have been reduced to two over the last decade. The others have finally moved on.
One of the two remaining ones has staff actually still covertly using a Win 3.11 logistics software in the background for reference and cross check whenever the not-so-new and shiny IE6 based atrocity "feels incorrect" or is so stuffed up it needs to think a minute per mouseclick until it deigns to react.
Unfortunately, this ends up being similar to a "my computer is slow" problem*. I don't doubt that you're having these issues, but I can't say I've had any. My known Firefox issues affect only two sites, and one of them just has a button that doesn't expand so I had to bookmark the subpage to get there. Since I haven't experienced the problems you have, it's hard for either of us to figure out which one of our experiences is more common.
* I assume nearly everyone here has had the experience of someone who says their computer is running slowly. Usually, they're not wrong, but the cause could be so many things and the symptom is so vague unless personally tested that it is difficult to know exactly why and how to fix it without checking the machine concerned.
I also would like to share my personal opinion on the matter.
First of all, I'm glad the CEO will change, it's clear that Baker didn't do that well, and her posts let me clearly understand what kind of person she is, not the right one to carry on Mozilla.
Second, I'm a "browser hopper". I've used all of them at some point. Chrome, Chromium, Vivaldi, Brave, Edge, Opera and some minor others. I'm now back to Firefox for the following reasons.
I identify as a power user, I daily drive Linux, I'm a developer, BUT... I'm not obsessed with security and privacy, in fact those aspects come at the very end of the list when judging a browser.
To me what matters the most is the ecosystem and simplicity.
1) Ecosystem: a browser for me must be something that I can use on any device and platform, Windows, Mac, Linux, Android. Interoperability is very important. The last browser I used was Vivaldi, but only recently it got history sync between device and even that was not enough as the sync rate is very limited, I often had to go into the browser's internals to manually force a sync update (even on Android!!!), Firefox updates much more frequently, much more fast and the process is more reliable. Not to mention that Vivaldi doesn't have a ARM64 release, which for me makes it unusable on my Android tablet, which I modded to dual boot Windows on ARM (it's actually pretty good for light work, heck I can run IntelliJ on it while traveling). Sorry to say this, but Vivaldi was absolute crap.
2) Simplicity: before Vivaldi I was using Firefox and before that Edge. When it first came out I was skeptical, wow yet another Internet Explorer I was thinking. But I did try it anyway because after all it was based on Chromium, how bad could it be.
My. God. I loved it, it was the best, super fast, super light, as soon as it came out on Linux I switched there too! Then Microsoft started acting like... Microsoft. Today that browser has been completely destroyed, full of crappy UI elements which I and no one else I can guarantee you gives an absolute shit about. Why Microsoft WHY?!
Similar story for Brave, full of crappy scam crypto-things, which yes can be disabled, but still very annoying.
3) Last point and probably the most important, Extensions: yep, to my knowledge Firefox is the only browser that meets the aforementioned requirements and also supports extensions. Thank you very much Firefox, just thank you!
Nowadays uBlock is mandatory, any browser on Android, even those with an "integrated ad-block" module sucks!
I laughed so hard at the recent Vivaldi changelog on Android that mentioned making the ad-block more powerful, but it actually was the same as before duh, again Vivaldi is crap. Like even browsers like UC Browser and the one integrated in the famous download manager 1DM+ are better at blocking ads and pop-ups hahahahaha.
So at the end of the day, that one and only choice I have is Firefox. And to be honest this scares me a bit. Considering how bad it's doing, if tomorrow it's going to disappear from existence I would be lost.
Another thing that worries me is that Mozilla seems to not listen to the user base. One thing that it's missing on Firefox is PWA support. If I'm not wrong it was removed for "security" reasons. Guys, the vast majority of users doesn't care about such meaningless things, their thinking is simple: can I use this PWA app with Firefox? No? Then I have no choice but to rely on Chrome.
There are a TON of comments on their forum asking them to bring the feature back, but as of today still no response. Here's the thread anyway: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progressive-web-apps/idi-p/35
P.S: sorry for the long post
With so many "apps" these days actually just being Electron which is then just actually running individual browser AND webserver instances for each "app", it's honestly pretty nice to run PWAs. And in many instances far nicer than adding another tab, a lot of cases I want a taskbar button etc (and on mobile it's especially nice to have things acting like An App).
Now, granted my own history with Firefox has it always being kinda unusable for me for some reason or another, but it's really hard to give up webapps just to use a different browser. And with Firefox making such bold claims about privacy and sandboxing, surely the attack surface isn't actually that bad? And it's probably worse, and certainly worse for Firefox, if your potential users are using Chrome instead...
+100 to this post, especially the comments about Edge. I'm a long time Firefox user. When they did the Proton update I felt that 2 total design language overhauls in 4 years is way too many for software that's just supposed to quietly stay out of my way. Further, the Mozilla communication surrounding that update left me with zero confidence they wouldn't similarly wreck my workflow for no apparent benefit repeatedly in the future. So I switched to Edge and, wow. It seemed like a Chromium implementation with just a few nice tweaks. Built-in sidebar tabs = huge. Gradually though we've seen Microsoft being Microsoft; more and more crud is shoved in the user's face, serious bugs are introduced, every day I'm aggressively reminded that this software is not designed for my benefit but rather to market Bing, Copilot, and "Microsoft Rewards". And now we have lots of css that fixes the worst mistakes of Proton. So back to Firefox.
I just want a browser that stays out of my way if I leave it alone, is customizable, and is not fundamentally designed to spy on me or sell a coupon-clipping service.
All Mozilla have to do to take a serious bite out of not just Chrome and the whole extended family tree of Chromium – INCLUDING Electron – is this:
- Fix the bugs. Seriously, just fix the damn bugs, already. There as so, so many...
- Cut the tracking, telemetry and privacy-snooping features at the source-code level.
- Cut the value-adds that nobody wants nor asked for, starting with Pocket.
- Return to the "principle of least surprise", meaning absolutely no "experiments", no modal popups interrupting the user's flow just to try to sell them on a frivolous new colour-theming gimick, no surveys, no up-selling of features: zero surprise, it's a browser, just be a browser and always be a browser.
- Make desktop integration a first-class feature: starting with effort to make the look and feel fit with the desktop environment!!{infty.}
- … and the U.I. font-size match the desktops font-size and DPI!!{infty.+2}
- … and task-bar/launcher/launchbar/launchbarx integration so that multiple, segregated, privacy-sandboxed profiles can coexist as first-class buttons, thereon. (Without the hacks needed to achieve this, today.)
- Oh, and give us PWA / `--app` support (again, with nice taskbar integration on the host desktop) so we can just use a Firefox instance to kill off Electron apps for all those cases where the available desktop app is just a site wrapped in Electron.
After all of the above, there are a tonne of easy, low-hanging fruit to grab to distinguish Firefox from the rest:
- First class advanced tab management and organisation, multiple selection, copy links to the clipboard, etc...
- Advanced user keyboard shortcuts and re-mappings: closing all tabs, closing tabs to the left or right, closing unpinned tabs, closing duplicate or old tabs...
- Built in RSS support with synchronisation of read articles via the Mozilla account...
- Use of a hardware token to encrypt synchronised passwords and other data.
Some are provided hap-haphazardly by plug-ins but I REALLY struggle to trust those because they invariably require permissions I don't want to grant and often require extra permissions because of feature creep. I do still trust Mozilla – technically – and, by building these features right into the browser, could begin to make advancements, again.
Something tells me that this new management change will not result in a single solitary one of these obvious and often trivially easy quality-of-life and privacy related changes will ever be made.
I think your first four points are excellent. The rest doesn't fit my own view of what Firefox should be, which is, as you say: "zero surprise, it's a browser, just be a browser and always be a browser". The rest of the feature set is mostly unnecessary for typical desktop browser users, but perhaps it could be fit into an expanded "Firefox Plus" (or whatever cool name someone comes up with) if there's the market for it. One person's extra feature is another person's bloat.
I would like improved tab management, though, and easier access to multiple sandboxed profiles would be appreciated though not essential - still within the realm of just being a browser (and a darned good one, hopefully).
I'd argue that the remainder of the points would serve to erode the market for Electron, which is essentially Chromium and V8, and that that, too, would serve in the battle to prevent a web browser monoculture from developing.
There are a tonne of things that use Electron-based "native" clients but don't provide any benefit that couldn't be served by Firefox in some kind of "PWA mode" and providing the necessary features to do so would amount to a few new command-line parameters, assuming that the previously mentioned profile isolation features were first class.
"I like Pocket"
I don't. An awful force-feeder for a mix of clickbait content, lightweight drivel, content behind paywalls or needing registration, or preachy liberalism straight out of the filler pages of NYT or the Guardian, but without the decent news coverage they sometimes do. I did give it a try (and over at their website anyone who wants can check out what's "trending") but I've seen nothing that is educational, well researched, thought provoking, well written, genuinely interesting and indeed little or nothing that can be described as important.
But my dislike is about me, for those happy to be delivered a stream of very lightweight US metropolitan liberal consciousness then Pocket is truly perfect. They will be fed such gems as these - all from the Pocket web site:
"You deserved a better grilled cheese sandwich",
"Why can't we give up the notion of the ideal body?"
"How I rewired my brain in six weeks" (that last brought to you by our very own BBC),
"Remembering and honoring Dr Martin Luther King Jr: A primer".
"It's time to expand how we discuss egg freezing",
"How to lighten the lunch-packing mental load",
Not to mention a very generous helping on LGBTQetc, and a shed-load from the "personal angst" and "shallow self improvement" departments. Maybe packaging shite like Pocket with Firefox was counter-productive.
- Fix the bugs. Seriously, just fix the damn bugs, already. There as so, so many...
It's a common problem with all volunteer-staffed operations (and many paid staff ones too) that introducing new stuff brings much higher status than fixing old problems. It's an endemic issue with open source software, almost all of which bloats with ever more features and ever more bugs.
Something tells me that this new management change will not result in a single solitary one of these obvious and often trivially easy quality-of-life and privacy related changes will ever be made.
Indeed, but there seems to me to be a common cause of the paucity of competent, properly maintained non-spyware browsers, and that is that end users will not pay for their browser.
With no direct commercial link between what users might want there's always an uncomfortable accommodation necessary with advertisers - in the case of Vivaldi and Brave that's stated and they appear to be scraping a living from various sources (and are Chromium based), in the case of Firefox the big bucks arrive from Big G, so we can be confident that Big G's interests are considered.
...but I'm not sure what the point of it was.
Someone at the Reg hates Firefox? And that deserves screen space because...why, exactly?
Firefox has a small share of the market, therefore...what?
Firefox users don't visit U.S. government sites with great frequency or volume, thus...bad? (Also, weird metric.)
I install, use, and update most browsers, meaning the Chromium cluster, Safari, and Firefox, plus the Tor browser, mostly to mollify clients with documented compatibility testing. They all work, routinely.
We don't care which a client - or anything else - uses. We don't back brands, we back function and results.
Firefox works fine. What's the problem? And why the vociferous howling?
"Someone at the Reg hates Firefox? And that deserves screen space because...why, exactly?"
Because every page impression is the chance* of ad revenue for The Register, and extremism attracts eyeballs.
* Reading this on Firefox with NoScript and an ad blocker, so I'm neither contributing ad revenue nor stats to anything other than a log reader.
I've been using Firefox forever and will be for the foreseeable future. It works perfectly well and I never have a problem with not being able to Interact with websites. Banking, government, whatever, all work fine.
This article just sounds like someone venting their displeasure about Firefox. I for one will never join the Chrome lemmings.
Could Mozilla make Firefox great again? Sure, but it'd take a pretty big culture shift from the way things are being done now.
The emphasis on privacy and security is a very good starting point, but they need to really lean into that and expand on it. They also need to bring back something that gives Firefox some kind of competitive edge over other browsers. They had their XUL extensions, which could do things no other browser could, but then they dropped them in favor of the much less capable Manifest style extensions. Yes, I get there were some security and performance reasons for that, but if they had really wanted to, they could have salvaged at least most of XUL. NoScript is a great example. The NoScript of today is a pale shadow of it's XUL incarnation. Same with AdBlock, which has maybe 10% of the capabilities of the XUL original, simply because the Manifest style extensions don't allow for a lot of things. The XUL versions could stop the browser from even downloading the ads/scripts, as well as executing them.
Something else they need to do is stop aping Chome's shitty UI. That also means they can't be ripping out and replacing the UI code every couple of years. I get there are plenty of people who will go on like you ran over their beloved pet if you move something a single pixel, we see plenty of that here in people who incessantly whine about Windows 11 when it's really only superficially different from 10 (which they also whined about when it came out), but when a majority of your userbase are all saying something is bad... maybe listen. Maybe don't just charge ahead with the changes anyway and expect that people will continue sticking around after being kicked in the teeth repeatedly. Also, has no one learned anything from the mistakes of Windows 8 and the idea of trying to cram a mobile UI onto a desktop? I hate the whole "hamburger" menu idea period, but it's even worse on the desktop. Trying to cram all the functions that used to be in different toolbar menus into a single menu is just bad UI design. Bad, and lazy. When Microsoft made the Ribbon UI they kept in the same spirit as the menubar system that preceded it. On mobile systems it makes a bit more sense, but mobile apps are generally also cut down versions of the desktop app because of the constraints of mobile platforms. Sure, it's more work to maintain a desktop UI and a mobile UI, but it shouldn't be so onerous that an outfit like Mozilla can't manage it if they've done the smart thing and kept the UI code separate from the rest.
Another thing that might be interesting is if Mozilla dogfooded Rust with Firefox. Rewrite the entire browser using Rust, which then plays into the whole security angle because it should make the browser largely immune to exploits related to buffer manipulation. It also serves as a real world proof-of-concept for Rust. I might even consider approaching Vivaldi and Microsoft about the possibility of basing a version of their browsers on the Firefox engine instead of Chrome. I might also consider bundling Firefox and Thunderbird as a quasi-return to the old Mozilla suite. Those are the two parts most people want, so it'd make sense to have them together. They already use a lot of the same code, so it'd be a pretty minor increase in the size of the app. And at this point, email apps are pretty much feature complete. Aside from being able to integrate with Exchange or other proprietary email systems, there's really not much else you need in an email app. They could probably even strip out the Usenet bit and stuff it into an extension with very few people ever being the wiser.
Lastly, there's no legitimate reason for any Mozilla CEO to be making a 7-figure salary. Just, no. A mid-six-figure salary would be pushing it IMO. Stop paying execs so much, especially when things are definitely not improving by any objective measure under their watch. Where do I sign up for one of these jobs? I get a massive raise even when things go to shit? Hell yeah! Mozilla could pay me half of what their previous CEO was making, and if things still don't improve, at least they saved a couple million, Also, stop wasting money buying shit like Pocket when it's clear you have no real plan for what you're going to do with it. If Mozilla hired me as the new CEO, paying me 50% less than the current outgoing CEO, they could plow that extra money into Firefox and Thunderbird development. You could probably hire at least a dozen full-time employees with that kind of money.
Firefox isn't beyond saving. Afterall, it came from the old Netscape code base which had been largely relegated to obscurity by Internet Explorer. Then the Mozilla suite started making significant inroads, followed by the efforts to split off just the browser in Phoenix, later renamed Firefox, and also the email app in Thunderbird. It will, however, take kind of a bottom up rethink and rework by Mozilla. They can't just keep copying Chrome and make milquetoast efforts at improved privacy. They need to figure out something that will set their browser apart from the rest and lean into that hard. Then they also need to stick with it. So, once again, I'll volunteer my name to be the new Mozilla CEO. I'll even take a 50% pay cut from the previous CEO if they agree to divert that money directly to Firefox and Thunderbird development. If Firefox's fortunes improve, they can give me a raise, otherwise nothing more than cost of living increases pegged to the consumer price index.
I hate the whole "hamburger" menu idea period, but it's even worse on the desktop.
If you right click on the background of the tab bar you can select Menu bar. That puts things back where they should be. I haven't worked out if there's a way to get rid of the hamburger but at least it's redundant.
One of my few caveats about Gwenview, is that by default, it has no menu bar. As with some other applications it can be restored by hitting CTRL+M; but people new to these apps won't even know what is missing on the vanilla experience.
Plus removing such things is so needless. Like Fat Slab design, it seems merely implemented to change the usual in order to change the user. No more stuffy old WIMP !
Same with Fx's move to Australis. People weren't hankering for such inelegance or pining for minimalism, and for those who were it could have been incorporated into several Fx themes; but no, designers' desire to make their mark generally means removing useful tradition --- and if possible prevent any restoral of things liked just for sweet fascism's sake.
It's a total ignorance of the principle behind the concepts of interface and implementation in computing. You keep the interface constant so that consumers of the service it provides, be they human or other software, are unaffected by the implementation behind it. When this basic principle is ignored, forgotten or maybe not even learned one has to wonder about the quality of the product as a whole.
Steve Jobs is claimed to say something like "The war is over, IBM won, it is time to move on" back in 1980s to Apple. He wanted Apple to concentrate on markets where they have success instead of trying to beat PC clone sales and market share.
If people looked to performance and quality of code, all would use Linux or BSD. It isn't good vs evil either, they choose definition of evil in elections.
While I was trying to explain why she or anyone stay the hell away from apps like life 360,I typed "life 360 Mozilla" at 7 AM local to search engine. A result popped up too. IMHO this should be the foundation of new direction.
Is it a generally known fact so people don't mention it? Alt right, crypto bros and conspiracy theorists hate Mozilla and Baker. I bet they are investigating new CEO's cultural background,religion, some education grants etc right now. Actually as this is a British site, let's call what they actually are: Neo Nazis. When I cared enough to follow the trails, it always ended up in some alternative browser community.
"Firefox did not keep up with the market and what people really want"
The main issue is not "the market" but a total disrespect and inconsideration for the people who actually want to use it.
Instead, it mutated to a "surprise, another feature you dont want and we also messed up everything in the useability sections" russian roulette (with a fully loaded revolver without any empty chamber) after every friggin´ "update".
Keep it barebone, as others have so well said, a browser WITHOUT "surprise". Surprises like a nest of angered killer hornets in a wedding cake, surprises like sudden memory greed and performance hits, surprises like an ever mutating interface that starts to hide what you need most and instead pushes useless, unwanted (!) trash like pocket in your face.
Oh and accepting my choices to NOT reactivate $idontlike after the updates would also be nice.
Firefox is still needed, addons like the javascript blockers, privacy badger, ublock origin seem to work most efficiently on firefox. Too bad with all the bloatware and designer fallout cruft, firefox itself gets more inefficient as it tries to cope with too much fingerfarben* "design" while forgetting what a browser should do.
*(Kindergarten finger paint for smearing on paper, windows and the occasional playmate.)
Stick to chrome, or edge (and creating click bait articles), that's up to you. As long as you're happy knowing they're crippling ad blockers and other related technologies, sucking out your personal data and ripping through your memory like there's no limit.
Me, I prefer the underdog who isn't as evil as the rest.
I'll preface this as saying I'm a big Firefox fan and hope they manage to stick around, if for no other reason than to make sure there's always a choice. However, Vivaldi will let you split the difference in a lot of ways. They implemented their own ad blocker, which they say is done in such a way that it will be immune to the Manifest v3 hammer falling. The caveat is that the interface for it is pretty clunky, and that's being kind. It has all the functionality of Manifest v2 AdBlock extensions, but you have to manipulate it via the settings pane, there's not a convenient little popup anywhere. However, since we've come full circle and there are some sites which really only work with the Chrome rendering engine, Vivaldi means you get that without having to give up the more potent ad blocking.
I want to use Firefox.
My browsing is predominently mobile based. Firefox has many nice things I would like, but it does not have the one nice thing I need - and neither does any other mobile browser - the killer feature which is functional text re-flow.
There is only one mobile browser which has pretty well nailed that functionality, and that is Opera. Yes I can hear the howls already, and I am very aware of the issues de-jour surrounding Opera.
I can only assume the inability of other browsers to succesfully implement word wrap/ text re-flow as well as Opera* has, is because of some cast iron, nailed down proprietry copyright code - perhaps someone could enlighten me.
Opera (mobile) may not be the killer app, but it certainly has the killer feature (and often is first with them) and so that pretty much wraps it up for Firefox and other browsers for me.
A pity, but there you have it - I have actively chosen to drop to an even lower percentile than the Firefox userbase.
*Yes, I have tried, yes I have seen, and no it isn't, it really isn't.
I agree, the word wrap seems to be a proprietary Opera feature, not even present in Chromium either.
I'm curious why that is, because on any desktop browser, if you zoom in or change the window size, the text will reflow to fit the width. But on mobile, all browsers but Opera will just keep the text the same and add horizontal scroll bars.
I'm bemused by this quote. I think it's pretty clear that browser market share is just market distortion.
Whatever comes pre-installed (historically IE, now Edge, Chrome, Safari) gets used the most. Whatever gets advertised as the thing you should definitely use instead (Chrome, and to a lesser extent Edge) often replaces the pre-installed thing.
There's no competition here based on what people want.
Quite right. Even decades on from the "this site looks best in Internet Explorer" era...we still have sites that are developed for specific browsers as well. Look at the Office 365 dashboard / suite of apps. Functionally they appear the same, but the visual artifacting and weird bugs you get if you use anything but Edge get on your tits eventually...Microsoft even refuses to put a proper "fall back" font in their CSS styles...so by default on Linux the Office 365 dashboard looks like shit because the Microsoft fonts don't exist on Linux by default.
In December I got an email from Mozilla saying they were trying to raise $3m in donations by the end of the year and were really close. So I sent them a few bob to help them towards that magical figure.
Come January and I read that Mozilla's CEO had awarded herself a $3m pay rise.
I won't be donating to them again.
I tried out chrome many years ago, it grabbed all the resources and slowed my pc to a crawl (back to Mozilla).
Firefox should go back to calling itself Mosaic. What is “Mozilla,” a portmanteau between Mosaic and Godzilla? If it’s a joke, guess what, I maybe only just figured it out right now.
Dumb joke, guys!
Also, “Firefox” is a fictional Mig 31 that you control with Neuralink… and then only if you think in Russian !
"What is “Mozilla,” a portmanteau between Mosaic and Godzilla?"
In 1998, the Mosaic Communications Corporation released the originally named "Mosaic Netscape", which was called "Mosaic Killer" internally. This internal name morphed into Mozilla. The Godzilla reference and subsequent logo came after the name change.
Despite everyone's preferences and feelings about hamburger menu and UI _refreshes_, I believe there are few items where Mozilla dropped the ball and which both prevent Firefox from being a complete offering and also forces users to at least dabble in Chrome
* JavaSctipt/node.js: It's incredibly tightly bound with Chrome. Firefox has no answer for the hot reloading, run-time inspection and debugging that comes with. Regardless of what one might think of node.js, it's a large part of the developer ecosystem and Firefox doesn't even have a foot close to the door, despite it's great in-browser development tools.
* Servo: I'm glad to see they're considering resurrecting that. Firefox desperately need an embeddabble version.Ideally to the point where Gecko/Servo can be drop-in replacements for the Chrome Embedded Framework, i..e the think that drives all those Electron apps. Or for Gecko/Servo to be an alternative _browser tech_ implementation for Qt
* WebRunner/PWA: Others have called this out. It's not a huge thing, but another one of those _small_ quality of life things
The above aren't necessarily likely to convert people to Firefox, but at least stop people from having to use Chrome for entire categories of tasks and then not bothering to go back to Firefox, because who wants to use two browsers?
Strangely enough, I have never had issues with your "gaps".
Perhaps I don't partake in web sites that offer that kind of thing? I dunno ... I do not actively avoid such things, though.
Maybe I'm missing out ... or maybe they are not quite as necessary as you believe?
The only browser I have installed on my daily driver is Firefox.
::shrugs::
You can be a happy and productive Firefox user without ever running into the above. Even the developer tools inside every Firefox are likely seldom used by the average browser user.
The gaps are not about Firefox, the browser, but prevents Firefox/Servo/Spidermonkey/etc, i.e. Mozilla's technologies, from participating in the larger eco system built around browser technologies. It's behind-the-scenes, below-the-water-line stuff mostly and support all sort of developers. Without Firefox/Mozilla tech, the default (often only option) is Chrome. It's become entrenched, cfip. Electron which is the "Chrome run-time". Slack and VSCode are both Electron. It further cements Chrome's rendering engine and the V8 JavaScript engine as _standards_.
Having Firefox be a first class platform for developers is really just about JavaScript in the browser, It's about the development tools connecting to the browser's debug and tracing APIs, code hot reload code and more. Chrome has that solidly sown up and one cannot substitute Firefox for that. It means the developers use Chrome and take it as the gospel standard.
The Firefox browser should be a flagship/demo implementation of Mozilla web technologies, not the one and only use case.
Chrome has (1) Brand recognition. As has been pointed out, what was one IE == Internet is now Chrome == Internet. (2) a massive marketing machine behind it. I use DDG and Firefox but those times I need to switch to Google, it will prompt me for either a Google account or Chrome. (3, in the past) Very shonky, drive by download tactics. Its there and it is now its own ecosystem. (4) Security departments trying to lock down browsing to one, or at most 2 browsers (neither of which is Firefox).
Was exactly is Firefox trying to be? Not Chrome? That works for me. But, it doesn't work for the great unwashed. So .... what is Firefox's main selling point? How can it tap in to the huddled masses?
I don't have the answer to that, or I'd be applying for the CEO job.
Privacy doesn't seem to be a winning card. Look at all the drooling idiots giving all their information for another Tiktok or FB fix. (Less 1984, than Brave New World or a good mix of both)
I really think that the best prospect for Firefox is if some government, such as the EU, would force Google to divest itself of Chrome. Not because it is the dominant browser, but because Google is so dominant in search and has large take of the advertising cake, too. Sort of like if Ford were to have a near monopoly on Roads. "This road best travelled in a Ford Explorer using octane 102 Ford Petrol" - undulating bumps that the Ford suspension rides out, but all cars endure because they aren't in sync with the road surface or one lane on a Freeway reserved for Ford cars.
"Firefox did not keep up with the market and what people really want. A lot of hardcore Firefox fans are now happy Chrome users."
Well, Mozilla DID keep killing off its users' favorite features, force unwanted UI changes, and not once but TWICE nuke its entire add-on ecosystem from orbit. It's almost as though they were deliberately trying to kill off the Firefox userbase.
This raised the question: With Thunderbird spun off, if Firefox dies on the vine, what the hell is Mozilla even FOR?
I detest and despise Chrome. It's a horrible browser with terrible habits that phones every damn thing I do home to the mothership. I refuse to use it unless absolutely necessary, like I refuse to use Google search when I have an alternative. But at this rate, soon there will be no alternative. Unless you do everything on a fruitphone, it'll be Chrome, Chrome, Chrome, or, well, Chrome.
But that's not a monopoly. Honest.
No serious student of browsers, just a user with some experiences.
Have 7 working machines at this desk; two Linux, a dual boot Linux/Windows and the rest Windows (also two old servers and an XP box gathering dust, but I’m sure with some work -)
I used Firefox for years, but have found it recently, on all these machines, seeming: 1) slow 2) unreliable (locking up) 3) annoying with it’s prompting to update 4) memory hogging.
My current favorite is Brave, and I don’t understand the antipathy I read here. It’s fast, blocks ads and respects my privacy.
After that I use Chrome, then Opera or Firefox, and, then, forgive me, Edge.
Started with Mosaic (when most of the planet hadn't heard of some new-fangled thing called the Internet), then the original Netscape Navigator, then Firefox.
PC and phone it's still doing the job perfectly fine without me being subjected to Micro$oft's latest marketing strategy every week.
I know that Mozilla needs some form of monetisation. That said, they literally had enough to cover development funding for decades in the bank a few years ago.
Instead of focusing on privacy and technology, they spend all the money on also ran efforts and fund raiser events. Just pouring money into marketing and VPN companies. When the belt needed tightening, they fired engineering instead of middle managers and marketing staff.
I just don't have a lot of sympathy for the organization and management. They need a return to management born off engineering mindsets. Not whatever fluff they've been pushing the past decade.
I went from Mosaic to Netscape to Firefox, largely ignoring IE except where company-specific web apps (eg intanet) required it.
I disabled Edge on my latest phone without even running it.
The reason? Mozilla buld a web browser. Micro$oft and Apple build marketing tools masquerading as browsers.
Still use Firefox as my primary browser everywhere, everyday. Works for me better than Chrome, though at times I wonder where they focus in terms of development is.
Browsers like Brave or Vivaldi, they didn't last past 5 minutes when I was taking a look at them, and I also dumped Opera as my second choice years ago.
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