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>>Clearly, that has something to do with either security or performance, where Firefox has a perceived lag.

This is completely false

It has something to do with MARKETING and the fact the Google is largest marketing company in the world and has the ability to market chrome far far far more effectively than Firefox

IE is crap, so Windows users seek a replacement for IE, use to their only option was Firefox. Once Chrome came on the market with a HUGE marketing push people started to migrate

It was 80-90% marketing, not technical

Even if Firefox is better preforming people are not going to switch as only Technical people give a shit about performance numbers.

Edge on windows 10 is starting to eat into Chrome partly because MS is bringing back the IE6 marketing and integration tactics that got them in Anti-trust hot water in the 90's

No Firefox, absent Google Discontinuing the chrome Browser, will never break 20% market share again, I do not care how must better it preforms.

Mozilla needs to focus on Power Users, and Privacy. They are failing at both with these moves IMO

>>you wouldn't want to switch to Chrome, because Firefox was just plain faster?

They they take away my TreeStyle Tabs and a few other Extensions I dont care how much faster it is, FF will be removed my all my systems

TreeStyle Tabs is the the Main reason I use FF today. I dont understand why browsers have tabs horizontally across the window, it looks stupid and is unusable once you get above 20 or 30 tabs open So you talk about have 100's of tabs open, it is pointless if I do not have TreeStyle or some kind of Vertical Tabs. And no the Stupid Dock style of doing it on Chrome and other WebExtensions based hack is neither desirable or usable

> They they take away my TreeStyle Tabs and a few other Extensions I dont care how much faster it is, FF will be removed my all my systems

This is what I don't understand. What would you use instead? Do you see another vendor attempting to recreate XUL-like extensions? Built in functionality like the stuff in Vivaldi doesn't count, since those aren't extensions.

>>This is what I don't understand. What would you use instead?

Does not matter, Likely Vivaldi, or Chrome.

I will not reward FF or Mozilla, it may seem petty but I will not continue to use FF after mozilla ignored its users in this manner.

From day one Devs, users and the wider community has been telling mozilla we do not want these changes.

Clearly they do not want me as a user of their product so I will oblige them and stop using their product

I expect to be ignored by a large for-profit corporation like Google, if Mozilla is going to act like google I might as well just move to Chrome.

> Clearly they do not want me as a user of their product so I will oblige them and stop using their product

Got it, spite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP0MXJAQhmo

Chrome never tried to cater to users like you, so you'll reward that browser because they never bothered to try.

>>Chrome never tried to cater to users like you

That is right, and that is the point. If you do not understand why or how that makes a difference I likely will be unable to explain it to you.

I may not go to chrome, Vivaldi, the new Opera, Some Fork of the good firefox, we are still a little ways away from the the day Mozilla commits Suicide so....

Also I do want to add, my problem is not them removing XUL, my problem is them removing FUNCTIONALITY, if they come up with something else that REPLACES feature for feature XUL fine, if they take everything people are losing and build it in as not an extension that would be fine to, if they Add a option in the Configuration for TreeStyle Tabs with out an extension that would be grand

I am not beholden to extensions, I am beholden to the FUNCTIONALITY.

> Got it, spite.

Even if that's true, isn't it a pretty poor reflection on a product if its users dislike its direction so much that they are willing to abandon it in spite?

I don't think so. The product is the binary, which can perform better or worse, or have more or fewer features than the competition.

The direction of the product isn't the product itself, and reflects more upon the people who direct the "direction" of the product. This feels more like damage to the brand -- but as usual, I don't know whether the opinion on HN actually translates to the overall population of web users.

I mean, the new Macbook Pro is certainly a failure [doesn't go to 32gb ram], and hell wasn't that iPod a total failure [no wireless, less space than a nomad]? (I know, I know, that was Slashdot.)

I agree, perhaps that's more about the brand than the product per se. But in a market where you have to convince your users to replace the pre-installed browser that more or less works pretty well already with your alternative implementation, it seems like brand perception is a pretty important thing. And while a community like HN might not be accurately representative of users at large, it does tend to have a disproportionately high percentage of "trend-makers" who influence other people's decisions on technical subjects.

> But in a market where you have to convince your users to replace the pre-installed browser that more or less works pretty well already with your alternative implementation, it seems like brand perception is a pretty important thing.

Yes, but now we're talking about people who (likely) moved to Chrome because it just felt so darned snappy, not because it had great extensions (it didn't) -- or just had Chrome preinstalled.

If Firefox is faster, people who are after speed might just move over from Chrome. If the Firefox brand represents "faster than Chrome" rather than "it doesn't do tree style tabs anymore", they might still be okay. If they had Chrome preinstalled and had never used Firefox, they wouldn't miss the extensions, and probably wouldn't care that tree style tabs doesn't exist.

> And while a community like HN might not be accurately representative of users at large, it does tend to have a disproportionately high percentage of "trend-makers" who influence other people's decisions on technical subjects.

Meh. I think people just use what they want to use. How else do we explain why the Rio Karma didn't destroy the iPod? I mean, it's pretty obvious to me that technical, music loving "trend-makers" required gapless playback. How else do you listen to live albums/mixtapes/DJ mixes? The iPod is "just" an intuitive UI/UX and good branding! It makes you use Musicmatch/iTunes!

(Yes, I had a Rio Karma and I later switched my iPod over to Rockbox -- guess how much luck I had "recommending" people to switch to their iPods to Rockbox?)

> If Firefox is faster, people who are after speed might just move over from Chrome... If they had Chrome preinstalled and had never used Firefox, they wouldn't miss the extensions, and probably wouldn't care that tree style tabs doesn't exist.

Maybe, but I'd hesitate to throw an existing user out in hopes of wooing a new one. You're right that it might work, might even pay off in the end, but it's a risk that I'm not convinced they have to take.

> Yes, I had a Rio Karma and I later switched my iPod over to Rockbox

I only used the earlier solid-state Rio's, and never knew much about the Karma, so can't really comment there. I did try Rockbox and at least for me was a pretty dismal failure due to bugs and crashes...not something I would have recommended to anyone.

>>Yes, but now we're talking about people who (likely) moved to Chrome because it just felt so darned snappy,

I think you confuse why people move to chrome over IE on windows. The normal every day user uses chrome for 1 of 3 reasons

1. They hit upon a chrome ad today or years ago when Google was heavily advertising chrome even when you searched now that is their browser and they stick with it

2. A person that works on, setups, or services their computer installed it

3. They are heavily in the Google Eco System and want all of the features and conveniences that come with using Chrome with google account (bookmark sync, alerts, hangouts, etc)

None of which has anything to do with Chrome's or firefox's speed, or security.

None of which Firefox can overcome or change by removing functionality.

People that use FF today generally fall into 2 groups. People concerned with Privacy, and people that want functionality that the other browsers do not offer

FF is rejecting 50% of their user base with move.

I don't give a damn if the functionality I want is in extensions or the main product. I give a damn that it exists. If Vivaldi has the features I want and Firefox can't have them I will use Vivaldi.

Personally, for me, I'll just stop updating firfox until someone makes treestyletabs again (chrome or firefox, or edge, doesn't matter to me).

Security be damned

I personally would likely stick to an older version of Firefox until some other browser on the market offers similar functionality. Tree Style Tabs are the one killer feature of the Firefox ecosystem versus other major browsers, at least for my use.

> >>Clearly, that has something to do with either security or performance, where Firefox has a perceived lag.
> This is completely false

> It has something to do with MARKETING

"perceived".

Perception can come from marketing.

They they take away my TreeStyle Tabs and a few other Extensions I dont care how much faster it is, FF will be removed my all my systems

TreeStyle Tabs is the the Main reason I use FF today. I dont understand why browsers have tabs horizontally across the window, it looks stupid and is unusable once you get above 20 or 30 tabs open So you talk about have 100's of tabs open, it is pointless if I do not have TreeStyle or some kind of Vertical Tabs. And no the Stupid Dock style of doing it on Chrome and other WebExtensions based hack is neither desirable or usable

I came to say pretty much the same thing.

Same

>TreeStyle Tabs is the the Main reason I use FF today. I dont understand why browsers have tabs horizontally across the window, it looks stupid and is unusable once you get above 20 or 30 tabs open So you talk about have 100's of tabs open, it is pointless if I do not have TreeStyle or some kind of Vertical Tabs.

I don't see why people like vertical/tree-style tabs. To me it's always seemed extremely messy. Tab groups, searching, and a scrollable context menu at any mouse position, to me, is a much smoother and faster workflow.

Ctrl+Shift+E opens up tab groups and I can begin typing to search. When both my hands are already on the keyboard, this is most convenient [0]. When my hand is already on my mouse, however, I can right click and scroll to open up a context menu of all tabs within my Tab Group [1]. I also have a mouse gesture for opening Tab Groups so that I can switch groups if necessary. I frequently have 300+ tabs open, organized into tab groups of 20-40 related tabs (mostly research/tutorials/google docs for various MMOs I play)

I was actually frozen at FF44 until the Tab Groups add-on functioned properly. And I'll likely be frozen at FF57 [2]. Sadly, my way of tab management never seemed to catch on and the add-ons that enable it soon won't be supported.

For those interested in my tab management, I use Tab Groups and Fire Gestures (almost entirely for the '[Popup] List All Tabs' feature). I bind List All Tabs to both scrolling up and scrolling down, as scrolling up is originally Tab History.

[0] https://my.mixtape.moe/tukpwo.webm

[1] https://my.mixtape.moe/gqlawp.webm

[2] http://fasezero.com/lastnotice.html

Jesus from the rest of the comments, you'd think Mozilla was removing the XUL interface just to spite people. It's being removed because it's incompatible with making Firefox multi-process and sandboxed. Firefox is literally the only major browser that hasn't moved to a multi-process and sandboxed model yet, and it shows hard in performance and in security vulnerabilities. I'm very excited to see Firefox finally catch up.

>>Firefox is literally the only major browser

and I view that as a good thing, not a bad thing.

Being a clone of "every other browser" is not desirable to me

>and it shows hard in performance and in security vulnerabilities. I'm very excited to see Firefox finally catch up.

I care less about performance and more about functionality.

I can overcome performance with larger processors and more memory, I have 12 core system with 64GB of memory, FF is not hurting my system.

great! multi-process firefox will better utilize your 12 cores and 64GB of memory

It would except the user interface will be stripped so bare you can't actually have more than a dozen or so pages open at once! I know there are many people in the same position as me. They open a lot of tabs. When Google killed off vertical side tabs (which were only ever a hidden option you had to enable manually anyway), they went back to Firefox. And now Firefox is taking the vertical side tabs out in the street and shooting them too.

If Firefox included vertical side tabs and committed to supporting many-tabbed browsing as it went pseudo-Chrome-mode, I imagine many fewer people would be irritated.

https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/

Wow, I actually like all of those features. Really hope they get implemented into the stable version!

It wont, it is already deprecated the the Dev is already saying devolvement will already stop soon

You are offering an alternative that will be made obsolete by the same change:

https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/868

this link keeps posting this link

1. No that is not a Replacement for TreeStyle Tabs, far from it

2. It uses XUL as well and will be killed in 57 unless new API;s are made

this link is not the solution to the Extensions problem we are complaining about

The OP asked for:

> If Firefox included vertical side tabs...

> > If Firefox included vertical side tabs...

> […] as it went pseudo-Chrome-mode

The problem is Firefox is killing that and other addons as it goes pseudo-Chrome-mode.

The "XUL Interface" is largely a misnomer. Firefox has had extension interfaces that are compatible with multiprocess firefox for years. Yes, you can break compatibility, but if you do it right it will keep working. Also the browser will tell the extension that it's not allowed to do that so the extension developer will know to fix their extension.

Don't get me wrong. I love the webextension idea. But it doesn't replace the ability to have extensions with the same power as the browser itself. I would love for Mozilla to promise compatibility for webextensions and say "you are on your own" for traditional extensions. They can mark them as bad in the store, even refuse to fully review them so that I know that they are why my browser is broken. But sometimes that power is incredibly useful, and I would hate to see that taken away.

Like many others the only reason I use firefox over chrome is because of a couple of extensions and if they were gone I would switch because internal sites at my work tend to break less and internal extensions generally only support chrome.

After vertical side tabs are impossible in Firefox because Chrome banned them because someone at Google "didn't like how they looked", I want to see you run 679 tabs on Firefox.

What do you mean? They are running this experiment: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/

Does that do collapsible tree structures of tabs?

Does that allow me to bookmark a whole tree and reload it later?

Can that auto hide and auto reveal?

Or is it a shitter half copy of tree style tabs that will never actually be released because it would "confuse normal users".

I'm not a normal user I don't want a crippled product. Normal users use Edge, Safari, IE or Chrome anyway. They won't use Firefox because it doesn't come pre-installed or get advertised on google.com. There is no point in Firefox chasing normal users. They need to chase power users and importantly web-developers.

No, it won't do trees: https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/498

But I found this: https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/issues/868

"I've been talking with the people implementing WebExtensions for a while now, and they are committed to adding the APIs necessary to support something like TabCenter (or TreeStyle Tabs, or any of the other side-tabs add-ons). I don't know their final timeline, but I would be very surprised if the new APIs weren't available before we turned off old-style extensions, and I have already started working on a new branch that implements TabCenter as a WebExtension."

So TreeStyle Tabs can be ported to the new system or an equivalent addon can be built.

I personally use TreeStyle Tabs. I have not tried this Tab Center thing and did not know about the tech behind it.

OK what about Vimperator?

Follow this ticket: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061

anything "can" be ported once mozilla creates a API, even TreeStyle

The point is there is no API to do it today, and unlike the dev I do not believe the new API;s will be in 57, I see no evidence to support such a claim.

Further if you continue to read on the issue, you see the developer has clearly said this is an expermint that will never be mainlined and development will likely stop

"Having said all that, it's likely that at some point in the future, TabCenter will no longer be developed, and at that point, we'll recommend people switch to one of the other side-tabs add-ons."

he continues

"TabCenter isn't something that will live forever."

So no TabCenter is not a replacement for TreeStyle, and never will be

I didn't know about that. I'm liking it a lot, even more than Tree Style Tabs, because I just wanted vertical tabs, not the rest of it (the tree, etc). But as someone else has said they will just abandon this because it'll "confuse users" so it's like I'm using a feature with an expiration date :(

Is it weird that I prefer Firefox? The only time I use Chrome is when I'm debugging some code.

Chrome gained a lot of market quickly because of perceived faster speed. Note that perceived is in great part because they took effort to make it seems faster that it was (it was faster that FF at some point though, there's no denying that).

Firefox is now working on well-designed speed upgrade, which will very clearly overtake Chrome. It just takes longer, due to design, and available manpower.

Chrome gained a lot of market because it was marketed well as an IE replacement. Speed was one of the features in the marketing material, yes, but speed alone is doubtful to be the reason why Chrome exploded in popularity the way it did.

I'm excited about things like Servo, too, but not if critical (to my use case) features are removed. I switched from Chromium to Firefox solely because of the existence of Tree-Style Tabs. I really hope Mozilla has a plan to preserve that workflow.

plain faster is still slow if you don't have tabs on the side like with Tree Style Tab :/