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> The trouble with Firefox chasing Google Chrome compatibility is that, once they get there, Google will probably change something so some Google service is essential to an add-on.

I'd be more concerned that, once they get to Chrome compatibility, they've simply sacrificed one of the key things that differentiates them from Chrome. Firefox's die-hard adherents use extensions heavily, and many of the most popular, particularly those that are on Firefox and not elsewhere, depend on the old XUL layer or other APIs that have no replacement.

I don't think users are going to see it as a great improvement that they have access to Chrome extensions they didn't want in the first place. Instead they're going to focus on the fact that they're losing the functionality that's been keeping them using Firefox.

I don't think you'll need Google to act maliciously or really do anything at all to have this end poorly for Mozilla.

the fact that they have no replacement for removed [and much-used] functionality seems completely nuts to me. their market share will plummet. i understand that old stacks must be removed at some point for security/performance/ergonomic reasons but leaving so many extension devs and users out in the cold with no alternatives is unthinkable.

i really believe they are signing their own death certificate. neither google nor yahoo will pay much for search traffic of a browser no one uses. i say this as a long-time fan, nightly firefox user and bug submitter (since v1.5). everything since Australis has been an unmitigated trainwreck :/. When Classic Theme Restorer [1] stops working, i'm sorry but i'm out....probably to https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium for the time being.

my hope is that someone builds out a nice cross-platform browser around servo, or at least i can hack on https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml

http://electron.atom.io/ is an option, too

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

> Almost nobody runs mobile Firefox, so that turned out not to matter much

Well. The number of installs of Firefox for Android is a nine-digit number.

Depending on your perspective that can be thought of as a big or small number.

But it certainly is not "nobody".

I have hundreds of apps installed on my phone I never use.

Per https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpr... it doesn't look like the usage numbers are 9 digits.

That sub-9 digit number includes me though, hard to understate the importance of this fact.

(that said after reading tfa, if there's really no tab groups after next year i'll be really upset, especially after the whole "it's ok that we're removing it because now it's just an add-on" thing)

Most or all stats will show mobile FF browsing usage at about IE6 levels, and I don't think you'll find anyone caring much for the later market any longer.

We [web developers] owe a lot to FF, Firebug, etc, but the writings on the wall for mobile and desktop. Chrome is going to have to screw up really bad, and likewise for the base installs of IE/Edge and Safari. These days, I'm more likely to suggest Brave over FF, if someone really requires a Chrome alternative.

> These days, I'm more likely to suggest Brave over FF, if someone really requires a Chrome alternative.

Brave is just a reskinned Chrome.

> We [web developers] owe a lot to FF, Firebug, etc, but the writings on the wall for mobile and desktop.

Where I work developers have mostly switched to Firefox over the last few years. Firefox is just a better browser (faster, less bloated) under the hood. Yes, Firefox will have a difficult time sine they don't have their own proprietary walled-garden ecosystem as a distribution channel, but the technical product is solid.

Do you mean chromium? And it's much more than a skin, lol.

And it's not the experience for many to have a faster browsing experience, but I'm not going to argue how anyone quantities that -- really don't care what others use.

On desktop, I find the tooling much worse and sluggish. But the thread was about mobile, and there are a vanishing number of users of mobile FF.

> Brave is just a reskinned Chrome.

No, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13534564.

If you [web developers] ignore mobile Firefox, you do all of us a disservice. Having a choice of browsers on mobile is important to me; Firefox is one way on Android you can avoid being fully locked in to Google's ecosystem and a crucial piece of the puzzle for anybody who wants a Google free Android device.

I understand business realities, and why Firefox mobile would rate a lower priority than many browsers. But I think competition in this space is incredibly important and I urge you not to ignore us [Firefox mobile users] completely.

It's not "chasing chrome compatibility", it's sharing the same base.

Firefox wants to add its own APIs to webextensions. Chrome will too. They may not always match with each other with the newest APIs. It cuts both ways here, it's wrong to characterize it as something where only Chrome will be adding features and Firefox will play catch-up. Firefox is "copying Chrome" only as far as copying the base API.

See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Contribute/Triage#Bug_Queri... for the current list of APIs that are planned or being decided on.

> Almost nobody runs mobile Firefox, so that turned out not to matter much.

FWIW, I love mobile Firefox and I really don't understand why folks use Chrome instead.

Because it syncs with my desktop Chrome install and especially the password manager.

If there's one thing that sucks it's typing secure passwords into a phone.

Mobile Firefox syncs too. For years.

But most important: addons like ublock work on FF mobile as opposed to Chrome. Huge time, functionality and bandwidth saver!

That does not help if you're using Chrome as your main browser, there's no cross-synchronization. Which I do because it's just way faster, and especially rogue tabs can't shoot down the entire browser including its UI.

e10s might be the thing that could save FF, but I fear that it's way too late.

There actually are some cross-sync addons out there, IIRC. Or at least there were; I used to use one when I was still in the process of migrating from all-Chrome to all-Firefox.

Because Firefox is slow and pages are sometimes broken because nobody uses Firefox mobile. I also used Firefox Mobile for the sake of using uBlock Origin. But since I discovered Adguard for Android I can keep using Chrome (beta) which is way faster and it also supports web compression for http content (also speeds up).

Also use Mobile Firefox because Chrome is 'sticky' on android, 'oh you signed in by clicking the dialog when you where tired, let me sign you into everything else and re-enable sending your web history to us as well', I disable it then accidentally turn it back on and they don't have a 'I want to turn this feature of permanently' option its always 'suspend' not 'disable forever'.

So I switched to Firefox on Android, it's not 'quite' as smooth but Ublock Origin works great so on balance I like it better.

As a die-hard FF mobile user....

FF is slow, pages rarely load the first time and I constantly have to manually reload, the interface for making config changes are requires sooooo many clicks. I have no real experience if chrome is better because I never use it, but FF mobile has some real warts

most sites that are slow are also slow on chrome. so doesnt even bother.

the only solution is installing noScript. the only version available is in beta. but it works fine.

you will be suprised how few sites I have to whitelist to see the content I want. and usually besides faster, they get much more usable without Javascript!

I do use noscript. By default on every site. This slowness is different than your typical js-bloat slowness

I use Firefox for Android on a Moto E 2013. It's faster than Chrome. Ditto for my other phone, a Galaxy S3.

Exhibit A: You can't tell the GMail app to use anything but Chrome (at least on iOS).

I'm sure there are more such examples. Even if a default was changeable the initial setting (as we saw in the Microsoft vs. Europe over IE) is very powerful.

and for whatever reason (i'll give benefit of doubt its a bug), every time i open a link it asks me which browser to use, no matter how many times i set the default to firefox.

How do you set firefox as the default? I didn't think that was possible.

i dunno, whenever i open a link it had radio button that says "use this to open links every time?" and i click yes then select firefox. but ya doesnt work so apparently you can't.

Encouraging all of your addon developers to create addons for your biggest competitor?

How is that a good idea?

It isn't. But, you know... open-source. Developers make stupid decisions all the time.

Having more addons available for more browsers is good for the open web, even if these browsers aren't specifically Mozilla's.

> nobody runs mobile Firefox,

I'm here :(

I use it to play YouTube in the background.

Reading this on mobile Firefox with > 100 tabs open. We're out there! ;)

except mobile firefox is the future.

and most extensions are making do with xul. I use noscript and stylish and httpsEverywhere. life is good.